#concise. accurate. desirable. wonderful.

[thebest-medicine]

highkey in love with this tag response to my tickletober day 12 fic ashdhfkskdkgkl

#concise. accurate. desirable. wonderful. #you are right. they should. and they do. #also hehehe there’s one more part to this series it’s a fic I stretched out over days 1 12 and 31 #smoresbythefyreside #replies #tickletober #ha #mine

[mluleki2]

Reflection on my collaborative practice with a multidisciplinary team.

Definition of a multidisciplinary team.

A multidisciplinary team in a healthcare practice is a group of professionals from different healthcare disciplines who work together to provide comprehensive care for patients. This team approach allows for a holistic assessment and treatment plan that considers the physical, emotional, and social aspects of health and well-being.

Members of a multidisciplinary team may include doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech therapists, psychologists, social workers, and other healthcare professionals, depending on the patient's needs. Each member brings their expertise to the team, collaborating to develop and implement a coordinated care plan tailored to the patient's needs. (Rushtaller T et al, 2006)

Different events that I was involved in with a Multidisciplinary team.

Working with the other MDT members this week—who include hospital chefs, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists—was a wonderful experience for me. My Burns patient needed an injection or medicine on Monday to aid with pain relief after doing an ADL of eating. He was in discomfort after dressing his wounds. I began to speak up for the patient, explaining why the nurses must divide a patient's digits so that he may engage in various areas of occupation with minimal assistance or supervision. They complied with my requests and carried out my instructions perfectly.

To help the patient reach his desired goal of ADL retraining and to promote rehabilitation through his engagement in occupations, the nurses also began to reduce the amount of assistance they provided, particularly with feeding and dressing his lower limbs. When I was present, the hospital chefs assisted me in feeding by giving the client his lunch when I was present so that I could evaluate and provide the compensatory techniques a patient may utilize when using his upper extremities to eat. Together with the nurse, I worked closely to convince the patient of the value of performing passive mobilizations, which I did while his wounds were open. I also worked closely with the patient to accurately inform him about the possibility of contractures developing if we don't perform those exercises and what is meant by contractures. Before I could start the client on an exercise program, nurses gave him medications.

How collaborating with other MDT members and using a client-centered approach helped me to grow as the therapist and provide concise treatment to the patient.

"Multidisciplinary teamwork is considered a core component of effective care delivery (Wagner et al. 1996, 2001, Ouwens et al. 2005), which may also enhance relational coordination among professionals." Working with other healthcare professionals helped me build positive relationships with them, which in turn led to better collaboration. We shared treatment goals for the patient, and I even explained to them why I planned to make the wrist extension splint for the patient's left hand and how important it is to prevent contractures. The nurses also updated me on the patient's progress from the time of admission to the present.

How my strengths helped me through the MDT approach.

One of my strengths was my ability to read patient files containing results from physicians and other healthcare professionals. This helped me to grasp their treatment goals for the patient and determine whether we were all working toward the same end result. Using the client's blood pressure reading from the doctors, I was able to determine whether the client would be able to participate in my sessions based on his blood pressure that day and the precautions to be taken during the rehabilitation program. I had to combine my theory with the client's blood pressure reading and my scheduled session to determine whether the client would be able to participate in them on that day.

Conclusion.

I learned the importance of how working together with other medical professionals is essential in delivering complete treatment that takes into consideration every component of a patient's health. Bringing together different opinions and areas of knowledge helps to create efficient treatment treatments, and improves patient outcomes. Additionally, collaboration reduces unnecessary repetition of activities. A more holistic approach to treatment benefits patients, who feel guided and supported by a group of practitioners working together. In the end, collaboration improves decision-making and ensures that patients get the best treatment available.

In the future, I will make sure that, in addition to treating the patient, other healthcare professionals are aware of my aims for treatment. By working together, we can give appropriate, holistic treatment that will enable the client to fully recover and restore his function.

References.

1.Batalden P.B. & Mohr J.J. (1997) Building knowledge of health care as a system. Quality Management in Health Care 5(3), 1–12.

2.Janssen A, Robinson T, Brunner M, Harnett P, Museth KE, Shaw T, et al.. Multidisciplinary teams and ICT: a qualitative study exploring the use of technology and its impact on multidisciplinary team meetings. BMC Health Serv Res. (2018) 18:444. 10.1186/s12913-018-3242-[PMC free article] [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

3. Maslin-Prothero S. The role of the multidisciplinary team in recruiting to cancer trials. Eur J Cancer Care. (2006) 15:146–54. 10.1111/j.1365-2354.2005.00625.x [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

 4.Rushtaller T, Roe H, Thürlimann B, Nicoll JJ. The multidisciplinary meeting: An indispensable aid to communication between different specialties. Eur J Cancer. (2006) 42:2459–62. 10.1016/j.ejca.2006.03.034 [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

[sec-print]

Brochures Printing Services in Ghana

In today's digital age, where online marketing dominates the landscape, one might wonder about the relevance of printed materials like brochures. However, brochures remain a powerful tool in the marketing arsenal, especially for businesses targeting local audiences. In Ghana, where the market is diverse and competition is fierce, investing in high-quality brochures can make a significant difference in standing out from the crowd.

Importance of Brochures in Marketing

Brochures serve as tangible, informative pieces of marketing collateral that potential customers can hold, read, and refer back to. They provide a comprehensive overview of products, services, or events and can be easily distributed at various locations, from trade shows to local businesses.

Why Quality Printing Matters

The effectiveness of a brochure heavily relies on its visual appeal and print quality. Poorly printed brochures can leave a negative impression on recipients and fail to convey the desired message effectively. Therefore, investing in professional printing services is crucial for ensuring that brochures reflect the professionalism and quality of the business they represent.

Understanding Brochure Printing

Before delving into choosing a brochure  printing service provider, it's essential to understand the basics of brochure printing.

Types of Brochures

Brochures come in various formats, including bi-fold, tri-fold, and gatefold, each offering unique advantages depending on the content and purpose.

Factors Affecting Printing Quality

Several factors influence the quality of brochure printing, such as paper type, printing technique, color accuracy, and finishing options like coatings or embossing.

Finding the Right Printing Service Provider

Choosing the right printing service provider is critical for achieving the desired results with your brochures.

Researching Local Printing Companies

Start by researching local printing companies in Ghana, considering factors like location, reputation, and experience in handling brochure printing projects.

Evaluating Services Offered

Look for printing companies that specialize in brochure printing and offer a wide range of services, including design assistance, proofing, and finishing options.

Reading Reviews and Testimonials

Customer reviews and testimonials can provide valuable insights into the reliability and quality of service offered by printing companies.

Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Printing Service

When selecting a printing service provider for your brochure project, consider the following factors:

Quality of Printing Materials

Ensure that the printing company uses high-quality paper and ink to produce durable and visually appealing brochures.

Printing Techniques and Technology Used

Look for a printing company that utilises advanced printing techniques and technology to achieve crisp, vibrant prints that accurately represent your brand.

Turnaround Time and Delivery Options

Consider the turnaround time for printing and delivery, especially if you have tight deadlines for distributing your brochures.

Pricing and Budget Considerations

While cost is an important factor, prioritise quality over price to ensure that your brochures effectively convey your message and reflect positively on your brand.

Tips for Designing Effective Brochures

Even the highest quality printing cannot compensate for poor design. Follow these tips for designing brochures that captivate your audience:

Understanding Target Audience

Tailor your brochure design and content to resonate with the needs and preferences of your target audience.

Creating Compelling Content

Craft concise, persuasive copy that highlights the benefits of your products or services and prompts action from the reader.

Using High-Resolution Images and Graphics

Include high-quality images and graphics that enhance the visual appeal of your brochure and reinforce your brand identity.

Choosing Appropriate Fonts and Colours

Select fonts and colors that align with your brand guidelines and enhance readability while maintaining visual interest.

Importance of Sustainability in Printing

In an increasingly eco-conscious world, businesses are turning to sustainable printing options to reduce their environmental impact.

Eco-Friendly Printing Options

Look for printing companies that offer eco-friendly alternatives, such as recycled paper, soy-based inks, and energy-efficient printing processes.

Benefits of Choosing Sustainable Printing Services

Opting for sustainable printing not only minimises environmental harm but also aligns with consumers' values, potentially enhancing your brand reputation and attracting eco-conscious customers.

Case Studies: Successful Brochure Campaigns

To illustrate the impact of professional brochure printing, let's examine some real-life examples of businesses that have utilised brochures effectively:

Examples of Businesses Using Brochures Effectively

Hotel Chain: A hotel chain in Ghana saw a significant increase in bookings after distributing visually stunning brochures showcasing their amenities and services.

Restaurant: A local restaurant attracted new customers by distributing mouth-watering brochures featuring their menu and special offers.

Tourism Agency: A tourism agency generated buzz for their latest travel packages by distributing informative brochures at trade shows and events.

How Professional Printing Contributed to Their Success

In each case, professional printing played a crucial role in capturing the attention of the target audience and conveying the brand's message effectively.

Conclusion

Investing in professional brochure printing services is essential for businesses in Ghana looking to make a lasting impression on their target audience. By choosing the right printing service provider and implementing effective design strategies, businesses can create brochures that stand out from the competition and drive meaningful engagement with potential customers.

[blockchaincouncil]

The Essential Guide to Prompt Engineering in ChatGPT

In an era marked by extraordinary advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the emergence of sophisticated language models such as ChatGPT has redefined the boundaries of human-machine interaction. These models, which are powered by the powerful GPT-3.5 architecture, have an exceptional ability to comprehend and generate text that resembles that of humans. They have created new opportunities, such as automating customer service and facilitating content creation. Regardless of the wonders of AI-generated language, prompt engineering is critical in determining the effectiveness, relevance, and coherence of these interactions.

The key to realizing ChatGPT's full potential is prompt engineering, which involves skillfully crafting and designing prompts to direct AI models. It is the process by which AI developers and engineers provide contextual instructions to the model, allowing it to generate outputs that are coherent and aligned with user intent. In this comprehensive guide, we investigate the complexities of prompt engineering, including its significance, techniques, challenges, and central role in shaping AI-driven conversations.

As AI technology becomes more integrated into our daily lives, prompt engineering is a critical pillar in ensuring that the interface between human communication and AI-generated responses remains solid and reliable. Let us embark on a journey of discovery through the essential guide to prompt engineering, where we will investigate the nuances that govern the interaction between human imagination and artificial intelligence prowess. To learn more about AI prompt engineering, Blockchain Council offers a variety of Prompt Engineering courses.

Recognizing Prompt Engineering

Prompt engineering is the creation of well-defined instructions or inquiries, known as prompts, that direct the response of an AI model. This procedure is critical for achieving the desired results and producing context-relevant content. AI developers can influence the quality of the generated text and the direction of the conversation by providing a clear and structured prompt.

In the case of ChatGPT, prompt engineering is critical for generating responses that are accurate, compelling, and in line with the user's intent. With appropriate inputs, the model may produce relevant and illogical results, limiting its usefulness in practical applications. Certain Blockchain council courses will assist in understanding and comprehending the full potential of prompt engineering.

What a Prompt Engineer Does

A quick engineer is essential for training and refining AI models like ChatGPT. This position necessitates an in-depth understanding of the model's capabilities, limitations, and the task at hand. A prompt engineer's expertise is in creating prompts that effectively guide the AI's responses while avoiding potential pitfalls such as biased or inappropriate content.

The prompt engineer works with AI researchers, linguists, and subject matter experts to create prompts that balance specificity and generality. The goal is to provide enough context and constraints to guide the AI's behavior while allowing for creativity and adaptability.

Creating Efficient Prompts: Effective prompts are painstakingly crafted to elicit the desired response or information from the AI model. Here are some important factors to consider when creating effective prompts:

Clarity and Simplicity: Prompts should be unambiguous, concise, and straightforward. Avoid using overly complex or ambiguous language that could confuse the model.

Contextual Information: Provide relevant context to help the AI understand the user's intent. This could include background information, pertinent facts, or task-specific details.

Implement constraints and guidelines to direct the AI's behavior. You can specify the tone, format, and key points to be included, for example, if you want the model to generate a formal business email.

Include examples of the desired output to help the AI model understand the desired format and style of the response.

Iterative Refinement: Rapid engineering is frequently an iterative process. To achieve the best results, constantly modify and test your prompts.

Reducing Prejudice and Ethical Concerns

One of the most difficult aspects of prompt engineering is resolving ethical and bias issues in AI-generated content. Prompt designers must be cautious to avoid reinforcing stereotypes, offensive language, and inappropriate content. Furthermore, they must actively collaborate with ethicists and inclusion specialists to ensure that the AI model's responses adhere to ethical standards.

Quantifying and Evaluating Prompt Efficiency

Evaluating the efficacy of prompts is critical for improving the performance of AI models. Prompt engineers use a variety of metrics to evaluate the quality of generated responses, including coherence, relevance, and user intent alignment. Another critical component involving human evaluation involves experts assessing the accuracy and suitability of the outputs.

Conclusion

In the rapidly changing landscape of artificial intelligence, prompt engineering is critical for maximizing the potential of models like ChatGPT. Because of prompt engineers' expertise in crafting context-rich instructions, AI models can generate relevant, accurate content that meets user expectations. As AI continues to influence our interactions with technology, the role of proactive engineers in ensuring responsible, ethical, and effective AI-driven conversations will become increasingly important.

Prompt engineers act as facilitators on the path of AI development, guiding AI models toward a future in which human-computer interactions are seamless, meaningful, and transformative. Their ability to strike a delicate balance between instruction and originality paves the way for a new era of communication facilitated by AI. As we navigate the complexities of AI development, the essential guide to prompt engineering illuminates the path to a more intelligent and empathetic AI-driven world.

#prompt engineering

[kaypeace21]

Byler vs mi!even parallels

Or more accurately the juxtaposition between the 2 ships. For those unaware juxtaposition is when  ‘two things are seen or placed close together for contrasting effect.’ I’ve mentioned these before in larger posts (which had various other topics) but I decided to just make a concise post about all the contrasts between the 2 pairings. Because personally I’m more interested in how these pairings contrast  eachother rather than the few things they have in common.

1) Will & El calling for Mike in the upsidedown-in s2ep2

AND- Mike only coming to help Will (not El).

It was like how Nancy in s1 called for Jon, and jonathan pulled her out of the upsidedown.  And as Jonathan and Mike both pull Nancy and Will back from the upside down , Jonathan says “I got you”. And Mike says “I got him “ twice. But mileven is like how barb while in the upsidedown called for Nancy (but nancy didn’t hear her screaming her name-cause it shows symbolically Nancy does not return Barb’s romantic feelings). Just like mileven

2)  "crazy together" vs "what makes you crazy?". And "so stupid" vs "not stupid".

Flo  in s1: “only love makes you that crazy and that damn stupid.”

Mike: “if we’re both going crazy. we’ll go crazy together right?”will: “yeah, crazy together “ *smile and stare longingly at eachother *————————————————————-Mike: “they do say it makes you crazy”El: “what makes you crazy?”(the exact opposite of crazy together as she continues to be confused over every explanation he gives of love 😂)————————————————————-During the byler fight  Mike says “el’s not stupid!” After this, Will calls himself “ so stupid “ 4x .  rips up photo where they said they’d go crazy together and cries . But, El after fighting with mike happily says: “there’s more to life than STUPID boys .”  El’s catchphrase being “not stupid” which she says in s2 before going to see Mike at the school. And Nancy before Mike says he loves El / Mike during the byler fight (about mi!even) say “El’s not stupid!” Cause Will not El loves Mike.

3a-3e) Mi!even Breakup vs byler Fight: pics,comics, first boyfriend vs never getting a gf, apologies, and cinematic framing

A) El right after she dumps Mike looks at a pic of a male celebrity ,and gushes /giggles over the pic. Will cries looking at the Halloween pic of mike from Halloween (where they said they would go ‘crazy together’) rips it in 1/2 splitting pic-mike and pic- Will apart.

B) after the breakup Max introduces her to wonder women comics and says she shouldn't spend all her time with Mike. (And El and max happily read comics. El is not even thinking about Mike but the comic's story). Will at cb tries reading a comic to distract himself from the fight he had with mike- but angrily throws it to the ground unable to distract himself. Then he proceeds to cry and have his breakdown.

C) El after the breakup refers to Mike as her "first boyfriend" (after gushing over boys in a magazine). Implying more bfs (other than Mike) in the future (and her desire to have other boyfriends other than Mike). Will during his fight with Mike admits he never wanted to get a gf but just wanted to be with Mike for the rest of his life .

D) Mike never apologized for "lying" to El. With Will he apologized immediately and went into a storm to apologize a 2nd time. Like max assumed Mike would do with El- Mike ran to Will (as Max said) "begging for forgiveness". But with El he says “what did i do wrong?’ 2x (Kind of like how ted, after pissing off karen says “what did I do?” 2x). And then Mike waits by the phone for her to apologize- while saying sexist stuff about her/laughing over cheese-burps. And instead of saying sorry for lying- he just apologizes for being "jealous" of the Elmax friendship which was only established after he lied.

E) framing of the breakup/fight.Mike has drastically different expressions after the byler/mi!even fights and the difference in weather and music selection ,convey how Mike is feeling. He looks regretful with Will, and almost annoyed with El dumping him.  Mi!even breaks up to upbeat music on a sunny day (the break up being in front a crowd and a joke) vs the morose music and the storm shown (with just Mike and Will fighting ). We are supposed to take the byler fight seriously and the mi!even one as a joke.One scene was supposed to make us sad another was a joke (of a stereotypical middle school breakup). One ends with Will crying and the other has el laughing and high fiveing Max as the lyric "she is cold as ice" plays. I mean - El lied to her friends the day before but then dumps mike for doing the same...k’ (that doesn’t scream how childish/not serious m*leven is).

4) Byers Shed scene vs Pool Shed scene: "best thing I've ever done” vs “most important thing”

When Mike says in the pool shed she’s the “most important thing in the world” to him. she cuts him off and says Hopper is right about them spending too much time together. But when Mike in the shed says asking Will to be his friend was the “best thing he’s ever done” (it was practically the cliche of true love breaking the curse) XD.

When Mike says to El  “you’re most IMPORTANT thing to me” in the pool shed. In s1 Lucas told Mike “remember , El is the most IMPORTANT thing”. And in s3 when Mike mimics Lucas’ sentiment/phrase- steve in s3 says “everything people (lucas) tell you is IMPORTANT (m*leven) is b*llshit.” why in s3 dustin calls m*leven “b*llshit” too. El doesn’t even acknowledge the comment (and neither should the audience- cause the words were empty/ b*llshit). The framing of this mi!even scene was not cinematic or heartfelt, and neither was the delivery from Mike. He’s not crying, trying to reach her with proclamations of his genuine feelings. There’s no dramatic music, framing, lighting or shot composition (and the scene was incredibly short).And El just responds and cuts his supposed ‘true feelings’ off- only to agree with Hopper and says “ what if he’s right”  . I didn’t speed this up FYI.

Juxtaposed to the MUCH longer byler shed scene. A literal single tear falling down his cheek as Mike , recounts the first day they met. This whole monologue is only of tight shots of just their faces (their bodies aren’t shown like in the pool shed scene). With contrasting colors of light and shadow.This is a personal moment between them and them alone- and the fact we zoom in on their faces (expresses this to be important emotionally) . And when we see Will’s reaction to Mike saying “it was the best thing I’ve ever done”. We just see Will’s face only- no music is playing and all we hear is  Will’s whimpers and Mike crying in the background.*

5) (At Will’s house)Max & Mike talk about  Mike’s “trust” in Will despite being a “spy”- VS- (At El’s house) Max & Mike talk about Mike’s “distrust “ of El for being a “spy” .

Max in s2 at Will’s house questions how Mike can still trust Will now that he’s a spy for the mf . Max (in s3) at El’s house: says that Mike doesn’t trust El- and Mike mentions that her spying is why he doesn’t trust her.   Mike in s2: “if anyone could stop them it’s Will“. Max: “ I thought we couldn’t trust him that he’s a spy for the mf now?” Max in s3 calling Mike out  : “El has saved the world twice. And Mike still doesn’t trust her.” Mike: you want to talk about trust really?! after… Eleven spied on us! I guess girlfriends don’t lie they SPY!”

Not to mention - the fact is… El has “saved the world twice but Mike still doesn’t trust her” to fight the mf. Yet he 100% believed Will could defeat the mf -despite Will being possessed/a spy for the mf . And despite the fact Mike  thinks Will has no powers - unlike El ( but we all know he does , though :P). And, Mike even says Billy is dangerous cause  the “mf is in him …Billy’s mind is sick, diseased” (but with Will possession -Mike still trusted him).  Max rolls her eyes and stares challengingly at Mike cause she remembers what Mike said about Will in s2- and the hypocrisy . And she finds it annoying how little faith he has in her compared to his almost unmoving-trust in Will (who at the time was possessed) . Mike has 100% trust and faith in Will-but simply doesn’t trust El.  And MAX KNOWS IT! Cause she’s paying attention. Like her facial expression/raised brow, at the end, is a challenge- you think non-superpowered Will could defeat the mf but not El with a history of fighting monsters? You say Billy possessed by the mf is dangerous- but still have more faith in Will possessed by the mf- than your own gf?!

6)Starwars ref :Mi!even is paralleled to Luke/Leia (siblings) While byler is compared to Han/Leia (couple).

Mike in s1 writes a d&d story for Will inspired by star wars.  in ep one Will tells Mike “it was a 7, the demogorgan it got me.”At the end of the season Mike writes a whole story of him and his friends killing a 7 headed monster, and showing the decapitated head of the monster to king Tristan (Will). Similar to how at the hospital he tells Will to not worry cause “it’s dead now”. This is right after Will rolls a 14 (cause Mike and Will are 7s together). And Mike who is a fan of starwars has King Tristan give them medals after killing the monster. Cause he wants Will/king tristan (instead of Leia -a girl) to present him with medals and be his romantic love interest (and praise him for being a hero). Meanwhile- Mike and El  in s2 (who were verbally paralleled to siblings/cousins in s1) are compared to luke/leia ( siblings who kissed before realizing they were siblings- with the ”trap” ref). The duffers even stated El lifting the train (with Kali’s help) was supposed to parallel luke lifting up a ship with the force (with Yoda giving him advice).

7) Byler is compared to the romantic ghostbusters pairing of Venkman/Dianna. Mike is a ghost buster (hunter) and El is a ghost.

Mike (in s2) gets in a fight with Lucas, proclaiming he’s Venkman. In ghost Busters, Mike -is Venkman- and Will -is Dana Barret- who Venkman flirts with shamelessly until she is possessed (cough Mike did so in s2). Dana finds a demon-dog in her fridge, and hires the ghost busters. And right before Venkman goes on a date with her she is possessed by the big-bad, Zuul, and is transformed into the gate-keeper. Who controls demo(n) dogs to rampage the city. Venkman proceeded to try to talk to the real Dana , ignoring her possessed form and eventually realizes how serious her condition is, and is forced to sedate her. Eventually with the help of his team, Venkman closes the gate to Zuul’s dimension, rescuing Dana in the process. And Venkman plants one on Dana before riding away in triumph. Meanwhile El is just a ghost.

8) “They’re not in love they’re not even from the same planet” vs “welcome to my world”.

- Erica making he-man and barbie kiss: “Hey , They’re in love!”Lucas (livid- and standing right next to a rainbow forcing them apart): “No, actually,  they’re not. they’re not even from the same planet.”  El even watches he-man in s1! Mi!even is not in love!

Cue El and mike being compared to ET(ALIEN) and Eliot (HUMAN)-WHO AREN’T FROM THE SAME PLANET (by the Duffers in multiple interviews and in the pilot script ) .   And then there’s the  old euphemism of “girls come from Venus, and boys come from Mars”.  The Duffers saying mileven isn’t in love cause they’re not from the same planet (aka the same gender) -is just them telling us Mike is gay so he can’t fall for El-who is a girl/diff species. They literally have Will say to Mike “welcome to my world” as a contrast. So El telling mike he should ‘stick with his own species’ (aka boys) is another gay hint. He-man is also joking referred to as gay.

in s2 they even had El wear the same shirt as a 1986 movie character (staring Winona Ryder). The movie is called coincidentally “lucas”- and he’s in an unrequited romantic relationship with a gal named maggie. And he later says him and Maggie are  from “different worlds.” El being movie-Lucas in a unrequited romance, in this scenario. And the other easteregg is the Duffers have st-Lucas  say the “planet/worlds” similar to movie-Lucas.

not to mention the mileven romeo and juliet ref from s3. In freaks and geeks (canon inspo for st) a couple right before they breakup is called ‘romeo and juliet’. And there is 14 y old boy Sam (called hom*phobic names)  obsessed with a girl the whole show. Others say they are from “different planets’, and others say how they’d be good together.Before dating him , she said she thought of him as a sibling (like el with the brother comment). when they finally do date at the end of the series- all they do is makeout  and Sam realizes they have nothing in common and they break up despite everyone saying he’s “crazy” to dump her.

Also, Notice in the same season lucas says mileven is ‘not in love’ and compares mileven to he-man and barbie .  Dustin has a  he-man & Et next to each other (along with a ghost buster sign above them, and the ghostbusters-trap next to et). This just reinforces the mi!even eastereggs I’ve already talked about -  and how they want you to make the connections  about mi!even not being in love.

9)As of s3, Mike has known Will for 9 years and El 9 months.

They even had s3 do a “3 months later” epilogue-breaking the tradition of s1 & 2 which had a “1 month later “epilogue. They prob did so-just so they could have this parallel. And no I don't count the year they never interacted as time they "knew" eachother .

10) El’s first words to Mike were “no”. Will’s first words to Mike were “yes”.

This detail pointed out by @especiallynothim​

11)They have El & Will have pics of Mike on Halloween (same night of the ‘crazy together’ speech). El only has a pic of Mike being miserable  and Will has pics of Mike staring at Will, and smiling next to him.

despite the joke Mike never smiles in photos , this isn’t the case when mike is next to Will (he always smiles with Will). Cause being crazy with Will makes him happy - unlike his relationship with El who he fakes being ‘crazy’ about .

zoom in of Halloween pics:

12) Mike gives El a poster from his basement-and then puts another Will drawing (and a new poster) in the available free space he made by giving her the poster.

Not to mention El has loads of Mike related stuff in her room, but Mike just has Will related stuff in his room.

13) vending machine

Mike claims him and El are on a “break”. Which Max and Will say isn’t the case. Mike tries taking a kit kat-who’s slogan was “having a break have a kit kat.” Not only does El knock out every candy but the kit kat-aka they’re not a break (it’s a breakup). the kit kat) is between Will’s fav candy & skittles (slogan: taste the rainbow). And Mike picks the rainbow colored m&ms instead  . Also D3 + D4= D&D  (it was a 7)

14)

Mike (to Will): "Remember the first day we met? 

*Mike remembers in perfect detail the day they met, and his words to Will.

El (to Mike about his romantic confession): Remember that day? You talked about your feelings your heart.”

*Mike : that was SO LONG AGO i don't really remember. What did I say exactly?

15) driving away

the car scenes hint Mike was thinking about Will (and not El) . They had in s2 mike (in the center of the group) sadly stare at Will (alone) driving away -2 times . To indicate that (secretly) the 2 other times he was in the center of the group- staring at both cars leaving (with Will and el leaving at the same time) - he was once again thinking of Will.

Mike looks back at the Byers house that he has associated with Will for 9 years (he just lingers there and looks back , as his friends leave without him) like how Will turned to watch Mike leave (and hold hands with El)  as the crew  go up the hill without him.  showed these clips on my youtube channel: strangernerd . The framing is identical! (Will thinking of mike/Mike thinking of Will.)

16) When will and el move. El is smiling 1/2 her face in light. While Will is crying 1/2 his face in shadow

She’s not as distraught or crying like Will is. She’s smiling with light over ½ her face because even if El struggles in a new environment she’ll be fine without her friends/Mike who she knew for 9 months. Honestly, other than Mike, she only knew the others for 3 months (since El never went out and only hung out with Mike). She’s hopeful . Will won’t be - because he actually loves Mike and won’t be able to have a new party , and will be a mess without his support system of friends, that he’s had for years! (Why jonathan looks at him concerned- when he’s just crying. With absolutely no hope in his face- covered in shadow , the opposite of El).

image by @tsugarubecker​

s3 script:

#byler #byeler #mike wheeler #will byers #el wheeler

[the-insomniac-emporium]

Mia Deserved Better: An Analysis of RE8's Themes/Symbolism

Foreword: I would like to thank @lepusrufus for posting about both Mia and Miranda, and at one point directly saying that Mia deserved better, which is a large part of what caused me to start examining her role in the canon story. Now, I will say that this post, like some of my previous explorations of Village (such as my attempt to determine Donna's age), will not be the best organized. My ADHD makes such things rather difficult for me. However, I have tried more than usual, and have broken up this "essay" into several distinct sections. Still, I am worried that my thoughts will not be as concise or coherent as they were inside my head.

Under read-more for length and spoilers for RE8: Village.

Introduction:

Village is, inarguably, about parenthood. Is it a horror game? Yes. Is it also science fiction? Also yes. But is it still, at its core, a story, and therefore contains imagery, symbolism, and themes? Yes. Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with Mia deserving better. My proposal is as follows: While Village is overall about parenthood, it is more about motherhood than fatherhood. Furthermore, Mia's background + actions from the previous game tie her story directly with Mother Miranda's, making their potential interactions massively important to the story... and could have served the theme beautifully. The missed potential in her involvement in the story is honestly a little bit absurd.

Now, let's examine each of the Four Lords + their sections, as the beginning of analyzing the game's theme.

Lady Dimitrescu + Castle:

Ah, perhaps the clearest (albeit unimportant) bits of theme within the whole game. We are immediately presented with another parent, with three daughters she loves very, very much. Initially they work as a team to capture Ethan, easily overpowering him. When they do split up, each still has dialogue regarding their family members. Each of the daughters expresses a desire to be like their mother/make their mother proud. Lady Dimitrescu herself gets very upset every time one of her daughters perishes, and delivers some important dialogue about this in her final confrontation with Ethan.

To paraphrase, Lady D says that Ethan has done something unforgiveable, caused damage that can never heal, and deserves to die before his daughter. That last part is interesting, in the sense that Lady D seems to believe that outlasting your own child is a fate so terrible that she would not wish it upon anyone, including the person who killed her daughters.

Throughout her dialogue and actions, Lady D serves as an important figure of a living mother. What do I mean by that? Well, the only other mothers we see in game are Mia and Miranda. The former doesn't show up until almost the end of the game (seeing as the "Mia" at the start is not actually the real Mia), while the latter does not have a living child, and her behavior has (presumably) changed quite a bit since that loss. As Ethan goes through Castle Dimitrescu, he watches (he causes) Lady D to go through what Miranda did all those decades ago. When we see her loss, when we experience her loss, it is something we connect with, even comparing it (as Lady D does) to Ethan's loss of Rose.

For the more visual side of symbolism, we can turn to Lady Dimitrescu herself. She is very tall, is visibly older than the majority of the Village cast, and has a fairly classic (old-school) motherly look. Everything about her reinforces her position as an example of a mother, especially when she's with her daughters and becomes such a strong figure of protection. Her height allows her to seem the caretaker for her children, even though they are scary/intimidating in their own right.

Donna Beneviento + Waterfall House:

Yes, the baby/fetus/monstrosity is part of this. No, it is not the only bit of thematic work in this section of the game.

To begin, you can find out that Donna is officially the adopted daughter of Mother Miranda. Her birth parents are dead, implied to be from especially tragic causes (more than is the norm when it comes to "orphan making"), and she has suffered greatly from it. We see that she has been seemingly neglected by Miranda, and is incredibly isolated. The tragedy of her loss, along with the consequences presented by it, are something to keep in mind further down the road, when we inevitably deal with Ethan's own death.

One of the consequences of the environment Donna was raised in is, arguably, her reliance on Angie. While interpretations of their exact relationship (aka how much control Donna actually has at any given point) vary, the two very clearly have something akin to a mother/daughter vibe. Alternatively an older sister/younger sister sort of thing. This shows in the way that Donna holds/carries Angie, as well as the contrast in their demeanors. Moreso, the fact that Donna gave a part of herself to create Angie is almost enough to make the symbolism nonnegotiable.

We also see that Donna has a strong understanding of family/family dynamics, through the way that she uses her powers to manipulate Ethan. She dissects his connections to Mia and Rose, taunts him with the lengths he's willing to go to save his child, then shows him a grotesque version of parenthood: The aforementioned fetus monster. Does the monster represent Ethan's fears, or Donna's?

What if the monster is how Donna sees herself, in some way, perhaps thinking that it's her fault her parents died? Bit of a stretch, but it's not a keystone of my theory, so I'm just throwing it out there. We could, however, go a step further and ask ourselves if Donna has noticed the way Miranda neglects her, and the fetus monster is how Donna thinks Miranda sees her. A baby, true, but grotesque, so terribly imperfect compared to her "real daughter" (Eva, obvs).

Regardless, the monster presents an ugly side of parenthood. It shows us the blood, the hunger (with the way it repeatedly attempts to swallow Ethan whole), the wailing. If Lady D shows us the love of parenthood, the bond, Donna in turn shows us the hate, the misery. Everything that one must endure to reap the rewards of family.

Lastly, we get one last bit of symbolism with Donna's death: We play a game with Angie. A childhood classic, hide and seek. Ethan chases her down repeatedly, stabbing away, seemingly only hurting the doll. But what happens when he kills Angie? It turns out that he killed Donna. You kill the child, you kill the parent. A reinforcement of the connection that comes with parenthood, along with another notch in Ethan's family-murdering belt (not saying that he's the "true antagonist" or anything, just keeping track for one of my later points).

Moreau + The Reservoir

Let's get the worst possibility out of the way: Moreau, weakest and sickest of the four lords, lives in a reservoir, where he is relatively safe. To defeat him, you have to drain the water, forcing him onto dry(ish) land. Paired with the main ideas of his section (which I will detail after this nightmare), one could theorize that he's meant to represent birth itself. Again, he's safe in his ("womb") water, and becomes vulnerable when he leaves (like a fragile newborn). Kinda gross, in my opinion, and also not a strong enough connection for me to care much about. It was merely an interesting (albeit horrifying) enough thought that I felt it warranted sharing.

Moving on to the big stuff with Moreau: He's a baby. Evidence: Whiny, has difficulty moving around, struggles to adapt to his growth, throws up a bunch, loves his mother very much, cries for his mother when he's in trouble, etc. Although Mother Miranda does not care for him, he clearly cares for her, and plays yet another role of an abandoned child (like Donna). Without Miranda there to protect him, he perishes terribly, crying out for someone who does not care to answer.

Hearing him cry out for Miranda, over and over, only for her to continue ignoring him is a key piece in the build-up to our confrontation between Ethan and Miranda. The game, in many ways, centers around the comparison between the two. In my humble opinion, Mia should have been involved in this comparison, as opposed to supplying the solution to the result of said comparison. Yes, I know that was a lot of words that don't mean much yet, but trust me, I'm getting there.

Heisenberg + The Factory

Ironically, of the four lords, Heisenberg is the most similar to Mother Miranda. In his massive factory, he is alone except for his numerous experiments, the results of decades of playing God. In comparison to Ethan + Mia, Heisenberg represents artificial parentage, or more accurately, the artificial creation of "life". While the others Lords also performed experiments, they used living subjects. Heisenberg instead chose to use corpses, which he then "brought back to life" with cybernetics + his powers, a somewhat futuristic version of Dr. Frankenstein.

Together, Miranda and him show a rotten side of parenthood (whereas Donna + Moreau showed us the uglier side of the children themselves). To put it simply, they are bad parents. They throw their "children"/experiments into the fray, uncaring, using them as pawns for their own greater gain. The most important part of this is that Heisenberg offers to "help" Ethan: By using Rose as a weapon. In his act of refusal, Ethan demonstrates one of several important distinctions between himself and Mother Miranda. Where she is willing to use her "children" (read: lives that she is responsible for) as tools, he is not.

Miscellaneous Symbolism/Imagery:

The old hag is one of my favorite parts of Village. She's seemingly nuts, has a crazy old lady laugh, wears bones that make soothing bone noises when she moves, and she draws lots of symbols in the dirt. If you look closely (I can provide screenshots if anyone desires, but it will take a bit of work to get them onto my computer), she's drawing one of the most iconic images in the titular village: The winged unborn. This symbol acts as the key you build up after every fight with a Lord, understandably called the Unborn Key (which turns into the Winged Unborn Key). Whether this counts as foreshadowing towards the hag's identity reveal is technically irrelevant, but I like to think it does.

In essence, you build up the key, this depiction of an infant, to progress in the game. The more wings it gains, the closer you are to your goal of rescuing your child.

The cadou itself is very clearly fetus-shaped. Furthermore, the only place within the human body that we know it ever gets implanted is in the "tummy" (thanks Moreau), aka roughly where someone's womb is/would be. Every infected person we see presumably had the Cadou implanted there (though I think it would be interesting if implanting it in different spots caused different mutations. of course, that is a discussion for another day). To become immortal, you have to "bear" a "child". Does it get more direct than that?

Mother Miranda gained her immortality in part for her grief at the loss of her child. She embodied the despair that Lady D spoke of, becoming an eternal source of anguish. Just as the loss of a child is a wound that lasts forever, so too would Miranda last forever (well, until Ethan comes along).

Mia is a loving mother, who puts up with the BSAA making her move across the world, deals with the complications of having a mold husband and mold baby, and has proved herself (see her section in RE7) to be an immense badass. Previously I had forgotten that, and even embarrassed myself in the comments of another person's post by implying she wasn't a tough, ass-kicking machine. Y'all remember feral Mia? People talk about "poor Ethan's arms", but sometimes we forget that Mia was one of the people who did a number on them. Furthermore, she's one of the only living people (from outside the village) to have any connections (pun intended) to Mother Miranda. They worked together, although possibly not directly, on Evelyn. If anyone in Village has a chance of really understanding Miranda's plight, or knowing the truth behind it, it would be Mia. Yet we don't see them interact a single time. Which leads me to the next section...

Conclusion On Theme + Missed Potential:

Okay, okay, so it's pretty obvious at this point that, as previously stated, the game's theme is parenthood. Every section has its symbolism, the story is very obviously about a man trying to rescue his daughter, etc, etc, but what's the point? Is there a lesson, or a more focused interpretation of the central theme? Let's take one last step back, and focus on something I've mentioned a few times now: The comparison between Ethan and Mother Miranda.

Recurring dialogue from Ethan, Alcina, and Mother Miranda all point towards the developers acknowledging that the characters are similar, but there's nowhere near as much conversation about it as I would like. Several times we have the antagonists ask Ethan how he's so willing to kill someone else's child, or prevent them from (essentially) doing what he's doing (aka saving his daughter). While Ethan responds with a mix of "well you started it" and "aghhh fuck-a-you, bitch", there's a much more solid, unspoken difference: Mother Miranda sends her underlings to kill, so that she may revive her daughter. Ethan kills (read: does the work himself) to get his daughter. The difference is much bigger, and more important, at the end of the game, when we realize just how far it goes. Ethan dies to save his daughter. Time and time again Mother Miranda has killed others for her work, but in the end she is stopped when someone willingly dies to stop her.

Where does Mia come in? Mia, the badass mother, the one who once worked alongside Mother Miranda, should have been the nail in the coffin. She is the one who survives, who lives on to raise Rose, she is the silent solution to Ethan's sacrifice. Miranda, you fool, what could you have accomplished if you had held onto your makeshift family? Through Mia (and Chris, to a lesser degree), his "loss" becomes a victory. There's a certain poetic justice that comes with Rose's full family being instrumental in saving her, when Miranda so readily spurned her own family.

Mia could have had an actual conversation with Miranda, their history giving the latter a reason to actually listen. I'm not saying that Miranda would have changed her mind/plans, but the conversation would have been a well-needed contrast to Ethan's "arggg what the fuck is happening, I only have two reactions to things. agg fuck you". Additionally, I feel that Mia (who was captured and had to endure who-knows-what) deserves the opportunity to be the one who points out Miranda's mistakes, who delivers the final "fuck you" to her. More than that, she's the one at the end who can say that hey, maybe she can understand some of what Miranda did. Was there anything her and Ethan wouldn't have done to save Rose? As much as Ethan is a foil to Miranda, Mia could (and should) have played a similar role.

When so much of the story and symbolism revolves around Miranda's experience as a mother, it only would have been fair to shine a light on her equivalent. Her better.

There's more I wanted to say/feel like I didn't properly get across, and I might add more to this at some point, but it's 5:40 AM right now, and I'm starting to feel like my brain is slowing down, so... Feel free to reblog/comment and add your own thoughts!

#mother miranda #mia winters #ethan winters #rosemary winters #resident evil: village #re8 village #god what do I tag this as

[stellocchia]

I really liked Wilbur's lore stream from yesterday, so you guys are getting a short stream analysis from me

As always dialogue is color-coded: Wilbur, Tubbo, Ranboo

And since I'm the least concise person ever everything is under the cut

The stream is (DSMP LORE) A Year Later

The stream starts with Wilbur singing the L'Manburg anthem to Ranboo. It is interesting to notice that, just like all the streams since he's been back he doesn't start off the stream by addressing chat in any way but already taking with someone in-universe.

"I'm a big big fan of the song (...) (Wilbur notices that Ranboo was muted) so sorry, let's try again: have you heard that song before?" "Yeah I have, I have. I have- I've had a friend that sings it quite a lot" “Good, good, and I was gonna say, it’s obviously based on Hallelujah right? But the thing is, the thing is Ranboo, right? But the thing is- the thing is Ranboo, right? Is that the reason we did it is because Tommy used to sing Hallelujah to the plants" "Oh, to the plants?" "Yeah! In- in the- around the- around the uhm... around the thing! You know the- the caravan? (...) so, my man, Tommy used to sing to the plants to make them grow better and that was the song he used to sing and so I thought what a way to honour Tommy, you know, one of the most- one of the most loyal members or of our fair nation than by naming the song after him, you know? And singing it based on his little- his little Muse. Tommy is a- Tommy is all of our Muse really I'd say"

I cut as much of this quote as I could while still leaving it well understandable and leaving in everything I wanted to talk about, but man is it long... So let's break it down a bit at a time:

1) The friend that Ranboo referenced that sings the anthem a lot is most likely Tubbo considering that they met him later on in this stream while he was singing that very song

2) The memory of the song seems to still be a particularly pleasant one for Wilbur, which probably explains why Ghostbur as well was so fond of it. He speaks about it positively throughout and it generally seems like an overall positive moment of reminiscence, probably because it's a callback to a simpler time when Wilbur too was, you know, happier overall. It's a reminder of a time before the worsening of his spiral.

3) Also interesting that they kept it in canon that Tommy singing to the plants was what inspired the anthem. Especially because I'm not entirely sure if that's the case considering that the actual anthem wasn't written by cc!Wilbur but by a fan upon his request (obviously this is outside the story).

4) Last thing I wanted to mention was Wilbur describing Tommy as a Muse. Muses in mythology are the inspirational goddesses of the arts, music, and science, Tommy aside from the anthem obviously isn't that. But it is interesting that Tommy does take a central role when it comes to motivating people. We could say that Techno's speech on the 16th was inspired by him since it was directed at him. Similarly, Niki and Jack had their arcs revolving around him. Tommy was able to rally the troops with ease multiple times. And Dream's obsession with him itself is the main motivator for, like, 90% of his actions. So, while he may not cover the role of a muse literally it's not a comparison that is too far off...

They headed to the museum afterward and took notice of the Ranboo poster being missing. And then they headed off to L'Manburg (which, by the way, looks amazing, thank you cc!Phil for that one).

"It goes by L'Manhole now apparently" "I- yeah it's kinda- ugh- I'm not a fan. It's kinda rude to L'Manburg's history, you know? It- it's called L'Manburg. It's called L'Manburg. NOT Manberg, not L'Crater or whatever. L'Manhole, I don't care, it's now L'Manburg, it's always L'Manburg, okay?"

It's interesting that not too long ago he was saying that even L'Manburg itself (with an emphasis on the name) wasn't what was actually important, the purpose of it was. He admits later on that he lied in that conversation, but it's impressive how quickly he trusted Ranboo enough to let him see how much he still cared about L'Manburg when he was so intent on lying about it not too long ago.

Wilbur's enthusiasm about seeing the flag is another nice confirmation about him still caring deeply for his old nation.

"Damn, I really went down to bedrock, didn't I? Holy shit I did- I did a number on this place" (I wonder why Ranboo didn't correct him on this, because Ranboo knows that Techno, Phil, and Dream are the ones who actually exploded the country down to bedrock...)

They end up seeing Tubbo on the other side of the crater and head over to him. While they're heading there Tubbo is singing the anthem himself in a very mournful tone.

One interesting thing that I noticed it's that it's Wilbur that heads towards Tubbo's location instead of having Tubbo go to him like he mostly did with Tommy for example. I suppose it could be because Tubbo having been a president himself is in less of a subordinate position to Wilbur than Tommy who's always been a simple soldier.

"It's like looking in a little mirror, look you're wearing my suit still? How long have you been wearing that?" "Oh I just put it on, just for today" (in a similar fashion to Jack bringing out the L'Manburg uniform to reminisce, Tubbo also brought out clothes he strongly attaches the memory of L'Manburg to)

"Ranboo have you met Tubbo?" "Yeah, yeah. I've- I've met him, I mean we've, uhm... we've been around" (Ranboo still minimizing his relationship with Tubbo to Wilbur. Of course, this is because he doesn't trust him but it's interesting that he isn't even honest about that)

After a bit of back and forth, Wilbur starts apologizing to Tubbo. At first, like most other times he's having a serious discussion he puts himself in an elevated position to tower over Tubbo. It's a neat way to show how his own desire for control affects him, having Wilbur literally elevate himself over others when speaking to them. Literally putting Tubbo down in this situation. Which does make the beginning of his apology very obviously feel insincere.

"I'm sorry for making you president specifically before blowing it up and I'm sorry for when I did this *pointing at the crater* and blew all this up and making this whole. I'm sorry that I uh- that I said that you were the president of a crater"

This is that first part of the apology I mentioned. Just to clarify, I don't actually think that it was entirely insincere. It just feels less impactful due to Wilbur putting himself in a position of superiority over Tubbo, especially because it's something we've seen him do before. It's also to be noted that this time, like others before, he seems to be apologizing less out of actual guilt and more out of a desire to earn forgiveness. Which is not a critique by the way. I just feel like that's a misconception Wilbur has, that apologies serve the purpose of confirming to him that he's doing a good job at changing more than to actually make amends for what he's done. The reason why I think that's the case for the beginning part of this apology as well it's because of how fast he went to ask tubbo if he forgave him, which did put a certain level of pressure on Tubbo in this situation.

"I mean it wasn't- this wasn't all you Wilbur" (thank you tubbo for finally dispelling some of those misunderstandings)

"Yeah so me and mainly Ghostbur honestly, like-" "Ghostbur" (some more of Wilbur not being too fond of Ghostbur)

"Right is he [Ghostbur] this obsidian crap then I take it and these- these fucking dumb lanterns up here" (a bit more)

To correct Wilbur's misconceptions Tubbo starts off asking if the other knew Dream, to which Wilbur responds with how much he appreciates Dream and how he's his hero, which makes Tubbo backtrack and blames most of Doomsday on Techno and Phil. Which, as we know, isn't actually accurate and I have a feeling that this misinformation will be harmful later on once Dream is out of prison (though I don't blame Tubbo for backtracking with how enthusiastic Wilbur is, that was the basic conflict-avoidant approach that Tubbo seems to prefer).

"They rained tnt for days" (if this is actually canon then Doomsday was even more of a tragedy than we previously saw it as. It was days filled with fighting and destruction. Then again, Tubbo has misremembered traumatizing events before)

"Techno and Phil, they hated the government. I mean it was partially my fault as well" "But you didn't blow it up" "No I didn't. I would never have wished or anything like this to happen" "So it was just Techno and Phil?" *long pause* "Y-yeees"

Two things to say here:

1) I appreciate someone in canon recognizing that it's not Tubbo's fault for what happened to L'Manburg and blaming the people who actually blew it up, similarly to how I appreciate Wilbur bringing up with Tommy that it was clearly Dream pulling the strings with his exile with Tubbo. It's nice having it stated plainly for people to hear

2) This is the misconception I mentioned. This is most certainly gonna backfire at some point.

After that Wilbur commends Tubbo quite a lot for rebuilding New L'Manburg (once again being dismissive towards Ghostbur) and is clearly enthusiastic about it, even going as far as to say that that mattered more to him than them building him a grave.

"I just, I feel lost without L'Manburg. All my core beliefs, everything died with it" "You feel lost without a nation..." "I have no purpose anymore" "I guess that's where anarchy fails" (I think this may be the first time someone admits it to someone else, even though that lack of purpose and feeling disoriented is very obviously a shared sentiment amongst the ex-citizens)

After that, it's when Wilbur invites Tubbo to join Paradise, the, supposedly burger van with a small house attached to it that wasn't supposed to become a nation. I have a feeling that the proposition coming right after that exchange may imply that Wilbur changed his mind on it. He does purposefully put himself again in an elevated position when making the proposition.

"Would you like to come join me in Paradise? Literally" "Hmmm, I'm not sure Wilbur. I'm not sure I trust you man, I need to- in order to follow someone I need to trust them" "Wait, wait but you- I thought you forgave me! I thought it was, you know it-" "Wilbur I forgive you because I like to hang on to the hope that people can change, but-"

This is what I mean when I say that Wilbur's apologies come with expectations for the person he's apologizing to. By asking Tubbo first if he forgave him when he originally apologized, he already made it harder for Tubbo to refute that. And now we learn that he expected trust to come along with forgiveness. He's not doing this maliciously of course, but he does seem to have some misconceptions on this.

"I know you had that- that at the festival? With Technoblade? I never spoke to you properly about this. I- I could have saved you" "But you didn't" (other people brought this up, but this is a neat little parallel to the one scene in exile where Ranboo was lamenting about how he should have gone with Tommy and Tommy shut him down pointing out that anyone could have gone but no one actually did)

There is a second round of apologies and Wilbur is still standing higher than Tubbo, BUT he does put himself on his same level after he did a bit more pushing and found that Tubbo was standing his ground. He finally puts himself on the same level as Tubbo and openly acknowledges his boundaries which is the first actual real effort to change that we've seen from Wilbur. Which I'd say is a pretty important step for him.

"Wilbur in order for you to gain my trust back you have to prove it, I can't just give it out anymore. I used to be able to but I just- I just can't" (acknowledgement of how Tubbo's trauma also affected him deeply)

"You know I still have dreams, right? Of the explosion. And- and of the fireworks. And- and all of it. I- I still- I vividly see all of it. Every day. It hurts. It hurts a lot Wilbur"

I want to commend Tubbo here for being able to open up like this, especially considering how much he generally leans into denial and how much he usually suppress. And on top of that this is Tubbo acknowledging that both Wilbur's actions (the explosion) and Techno's actions (the fireworks) have hurt him and STILL hurt him and affect him deeply. It's quite a big admission especially for him.

"Sorry feels like such a weak word. I feel like there's nothing stronger that I can say" (first time that he's standing on the same level of Tubbo while apologizing)

"You're so strong man. Genuinely. You just- just the fact that you proved to me just there that you have this memories, that you have this nightmares and you still find it in your heart to forgive me. That's... you're a fucking champion man. You- you're a hero"

It's interesting that the reason why he claims Tubbo to be strong here is because he forgave him. It's not something that's inherently about Tubbo, like the fact that he still found the strength to go on and rebuild after the events he mentioned, for example, no. What Wilbur brought up is the one thing that Tubbo did for him. Which tells me that he still clearly has a bit of way to go to learn how to make amends and how redemption actually works, but, you know, that's to be expected honestly.

Wilbur moves on by inviting Tubbo to at least come and see Paradise, just to see what they'd made and Tubbo refuses because he wanted to spend more time reminiscing. Wilbur this time respect Tubbo's boundaries with no pushing which is yet another step forward for him honestly. Wilbur also gives Tubbo a "lucky rabbit's foot" that Tommy gave him to cheer him up and assure him that he had no problems with him not going.

With this their conversation comes to a close and Wilbur and Ranboo head over to Paradise (though not before Ranboo has confirmed with Tubbo that he actually does want to be left alone).

"You know I was gonna say 'this is hard' but obviously it's hard. I mean, you know, I've..." (a bit of reflection on his actions for Wilbur, you love to see it!)

"It's gonna get better! It's gonna get better! And it's gonna be worth it when I see them smiling. All of them. Tubbo, Jack, Niki, Tommy, anyone!" (I'm pretty sure that this is a genuine sentiment right here. It really does seem that wilbur's Big Plan right now is just to make amends and change)

"Do you know who the original L'Manburg group were? Do you know who we were?" "I- I think most of them yeah... I think it was like: you, Jack, Niki, Fundy I believe as well" "Fundy was a bit after. Fundy was after we'd gotten independence"

I wonder if that's an actual misrememberance on Wilbur's part (c!Wilbur, not cc!Wilbur, I'm sure cc!Wilbur remembers this) or just him wanting to put some distance between his good memories of L'Manburg and Fundy. Because Jack and Niki weren't there for the independence war either and yet he singled out Fundy who was. And I doubt that he'd forget about his son being one of the people who lost their first life in the final control room. In addition to that Wilbur didn't mention Fundy before among those he wanted to make smile.

I really think that this was intentional and that it was because, well, Wilbur felt deeply betrayed by Fundy. And we as the audience know that Fundy only ever publicly stopped acknowledging him as his father to be able to stay undercover as a spy, but he doesn't. It wouldn't be so weird that he wanted to erase Fundy from his memories of the time when he was supposed to be happy.

"I try and keep this on the low because I don't want uh- I don't want people to use it against me is the main problem. I do wa- I didn't even tell Tommy, I lied to Tommy" "Yeah?" "I'll be honest I'm gonna tell him soon that I lied to him because if it- it kinda eats away at me. But I told- I told tommy that I didn't actually care about L'Manburg and that it was just like a tool for me to use to gain, you know, power and stuff, but it's not- it's not true. L'Manburg is- was really important to me. And it is still to this day"

Once again I'm surprised how little it took Wilbur to trust Ranboo with stuff he hasn't really told anyone else. Makes you really understand how low of an opinion of himself he has that when the first person that calls him "alright" out loud just gets his undying trust. Especially considering that Ranboo doesn't trust him back and hasn't been the most honset with him so far. It's also a nice spelled out admission for anyone who didn't get how much Wilbur cares about L'Manburg from the longing look he gave to the camaravan's replica in the stream where he said he never cared.

"I wanted history to live on, not as a stain caused by me, you know. I basically took a big shit on the history books it feels like" (just another interesting little insight on Wilbur's view of the situation)

"I've heard about what's Tommy's, you know, moved on... and how jack's moved on, and how Niki's moved on and everyone's moved on from L'Manburg at least partially, but Tubbo man, he's still..." (he only thinks the rest of them moved on because he hasn't spoken almost at all with two of them and he never really listened to Tommy. Also, again, Fundy is not mentioned)

"I don't know where I'd be without you [Ranboo] here right now man, I mean T-Tommy's great and all and he's here but I- I feel like, you know, I don't wanna- I don't wanna string him along too much because he's- I- when I look at him. When I look at him when he's helping me out building things with me I see the same eyes that looked at me when... when... There were some- there weren't some fun times in the ravine of Pogtopia. I wasn't a very well man and I can just see Tommy from that day"

This one was one heck of a confession!

I don't know if this is me misremembering, but I'm fairly sure that this is the first time he's admitted to not being great to Tommy specifically. Again, Tommy is the one person he met with so far that he hasn't apologized to. Heck! He told Tommy to his face that him being sorry for his actions didn't mean he wouldn't do them again. It's a pretty damn big admission to acknowledge that that behaviour (which is the same now, if not worse when only related to Tommy) wasn't good. It also shows that he's at least a bit aware of Tommy's emotions which is rarely shown honestly. Though whether he cares because of Tommy or because being around Tommy makes him feel guilty (which is what you'd expect him to feel) and he doesn't like that is to be determined still, mostly just because the phrasing was a bit uncertain at the moment.

"I know what it's like to have no one- or at least feel like no one trusts you. Uhm, and I- I've realized that if- if no one's with you then how can anyone really know when you've redeemed yourself? So that's why I'm here I guess" (Ranboo's answer to why he trusts Wilbur. Which he doesn't, but still)

And the stream ends with Wilbur saying he hopes Tubbo comes around to try out one of the burgers (though he does repeat that he doesn't want Ranboo to pressure him to join) and complimenting Ranboo a bit more.

#dream smp #wilbur soot #ranboo #tubbo #c!wilbur #c!ranboo #c!tubbo #character analysis #dream smp analysis #long post #I said it would be short and I most definitely lied #but you guys should know that I'm not capable of brevity by now #so honestly it's on you if you believed the title

[bribe-the-door]

Don’t Blame the Drunk Calling [1]

the one where you’re harry’s roommate and you both have messy dating lives

a/n: hello sweetest babes!!! it’s han -- i know i haven’t been writing much fo anything for ... like a year now? but we’re BACK! we are back and kicking!!! this is the beginning of something i’d like to continue so ... stay tuned :) ily! <3

____________________________________________________

“What are you smiling about?” you asked, sarcasm lingering in the tone of your voice.

Harry sat opposite of you, legs curled up under himself. His face glowed from both the light of his phone screen and the words being sent his way. Watching his lips twitch into a smile made your own stomach churn.

He remained quiet as he typed; the clicks of his keyboard and the whoosh! of a sent text served as a response to your question.

“Well?” you pressed.

Your second attempt hung in the air between you two. He chuckled under his breath and continued to scroll through his phone, probably looking for an emoji of somesort.

“Hm?” Harry’s eyes never left his phone.

You sighed, voice quiet. “Nevermind.”

He looked up at the change in cadence, shaking his head as if to refocus himself. His phone was then turned over on its face, a silent promise of ‘I’m listening’.

“What is it?”

It was your turn to bite at your lip now, except this wasn’t in a flirty way. Or a smirking way. There was nothing cute about the jealousy you so fervently tried to hide on a daily basis, living with the boy who stole your heart last summer.

And then promptly stomped it into the ground.

“Y/n,” he interrupted your self-spiral. “What?”

You shrugged it off as if you hadn’t been the one to press in the first place. “I don’t know, it’s just my job as your best friend to pester you about the new girl in your life.”

Harry’s eyes widened, a nervous laugh following in suit. “The new what?”

“Isn’t that why you’re smirking at your phone?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

You narrowed your eyes in his direction, wishing for laser-vision or something of the like.

He pursed his lips, pondering. “Her name’s Elise, not that you’d care to know.”

Elise.

The pounding of your heart sped up and simultaneously grew quiet as it fell into your stomach.

She wasn’t the first, after the both of you… you know.

There was Brie, Anna, the girl you only saw once because she snuck out in the middle of the night, then Sage, most recently Elisabeth.

And now Elise.

“Y/n?” He asked again.

“What?”

He paused, holding onto your gaze for mere seconds too long. “Are you jealous?”

“Why would I be jealous? Of a girl I haven’t met? That you’ll probably bring here for a few dates and then hook up?” The words steamrolled from your lips. “Not everything is about sex, you know.”

Harry bit back a laugh, shaking his head.

“What?”

“Sounds exactly like someone who needs to get laid would say.”

Your mouth fell open with a spread of embarrassment across your cheeks. “What the hell--!”

Harry stood quickly, throwing another taunting smirk in your direction. “I’ll leave you with that to ponder. I, on the other hand, have a date.”

You muttered a string of curse words under your breath, bidding him farewell and silently hoping he’d stub his toe on the way out.

“We’ll try to be quiet tonight, you know, when I’m getting laid.”

“Oh fuck off!” A throw pillow was, accurately named, and launched in his direction. His laughter could be heard even once he was down the hall to his room.

Maybe he was right.

*** It had been a while since… you know. It had happened. And you wished that period of absence was lesser than, but given the way things were working these days, it wasn’t something to depend on. Your own relationship with hookups and casual dating wasn’t anything to boast aboutーthey were few and far between (when they did happen).

You preferred to keep to yourself; nights spent alone with a good show and a glass of wine far more filled your fancy than any night with a stranger, but lately, you’d been feeling rather lonely. Like you wanted to be needed.

Desired.

Even if just for a moment (or hour, or so).

Harry had long since left the living room and you sat in silence, pondering. The buzz of an earlier glass of wine lingered in your head and only encouraged your decision to open the dreaded app on your phone.

Your profile, carefully curated with pictures of you laughing with friends, moody mirror selfies, and a screenshot of a fuckboy’s attempt to slide in your DMs (as a warning of what not to do), sat vacant for a few months now. There were a few unread messages in your inbox and you deleted them all. It was time to start over.

All to prove Harry wrong.

Swiping like it was a video game, you matched and matched and super-liked anyone to your liking. Bryan, Timothy, a few Chrises, some guy named “T”, they all piled up somewhere on the internet as your next potential fling. It only took a few minutes on this dull Saturday night for Chris #3 to message you.

“Hey cutie” was all that you earned from your search, and you played along, wine helping your case.

Chris didn’t keep your attention long, though, and you continued swiping out of boredom. It was then that you swiped to Aly’s profile.

It was a curious feeling, the way your heart rushed to a rapid beat in your chest. Pausing, you studied over her face in the first picture. Then the second. And the third, fourth, and fifth, too.

How did…

You tapped to the settings of your Tinder app, confused. Indeed, it was set to “Everyone”. When this happened, you were unsure. Maybe Harry had gotten a hold of your phone one Wine Wednesday and changed it as a prank. (Not that it really was a prank…).

You peered over your phone sheepishly, as if you were expecting Harry to jump out from behind the couch and cause a scene. Like you were somehow 13 again, hiding from your parents and reading Seventeen magazine. A slow burn flourished over your cheeks, ignited by the juvenile sparks in your chest.

You pressed the settings button again, biting your lip as you did so. It wasn’t as ceremonious as you were making it out to be, but your body had other plans.

Women only.

The checkmark sealed the deal, and that was that.

A new kind of rush filled your ribcage, holding back the beating of your heart that very likely could be heard from across the room. You swiped back to the main screen, Aly’s profile still front and center. Carefully hovering over the picture of her face, you paused before swiping right.

To your surprise, it highlighted in blue and showed your pictures together.

“Matched!” it said in a celebratory font.

Your phone hung in your hand absent-mindedly as you sat, sinking further into the couch. Does this mean something? You wondered. Am Iー?

Before you could answer, your phone vibrated in your hand.

A single “1” shone like a beacon over the Messages tab in the app. Something told you it wasn’t Chris #3 trying to redeem himself from earlier.

Aly’s name was illuminated at the top of your screen, her profile picture shrunk down to fit the small space but her smile was still just as friendly. Your heart picked up in its cadence, thudding prominently in your chest.

It’s just a girl, y/n, you thought to yourself. It’s just a girl, on a dating app, that I matched with.

Aly: Hi :)

Okay, simple. Concise. Not a lot to work with but certainly not a lot to get worked up over, either. Your fingers danced over the screen, going back and forth between the “Hey” with a smiley or a “What’s up?” and a wink. Was a wink too forward? What if you responded with the same thing she sent. Would she think you’re an amateur? That you don’t know how to talk to girls?

Aly: Are you from around here? Your third picture is from the Firefly, right?

You paused again, rethinking everything.

You: Hey! I am, the Firefly is my go-to. You?

Send.

It was almost instantly Aly sent a response, excited someone else was familiar with her favorite spot, too.

Had you ever crossed paths?

The conversation flowed between the two of you seamlessly, your anxiety fading away as Aly provided most of the questions and seemed eager to talk. Before you knew it, an hour had gone by and you’d ignored a few other texts to talk to this random stranger.

Harry had sent a few, one was the link to a tiktok, one of those “the person who sent you this…” (it was about food; how typical) and a text reminding you he’d be bringing Elise home tonight. He made sure to remind you that he ‘apologized in advance for the noise’ and that he’d ‘make it up to you’.

Aly sent another message, the banner across the top of your screen pulling your attention from Harry’s attempt at pushing your buttons.

Aly: You down to get drinks sometime?

The butterflies started their rampage in your belly all over again, this time much more intensely than the last.

She wanted to get drinks? Already?

You weighed your options: one; drinks with a hot girl at Firefly or two; get wine and bring it back to your apartment while Harry had this Elise girl over.

There was nothing to lose with your offer, so you swiftly typed out a suggestion and hit send without second thought.

You: Wanna come to mine and drink some wine? I just baked banana bread :)

Her response was immediate, a quality you quite admired about Aly: she was bold and brave, exactly the opposite of yourself.

Aly: Red or white? ;)

***

The moments before Aly was slated to arrive were the longest of your life. If you’d thought your heart was beating quickly before, this was overdrive. You shared your address, along with the promise of baked goods, and waited.

A soft knock at your door sent your feet flying to the entryway. You brushed the hair from your forehead and fidgeted with the buttons on your flannel, and with one more deep breath, you unlocked the deadbolt.

Aly was shorter than you, only by a few inches, but her bold eyes drew you right in. She smiled, sly and curious, offering the black plastic bag of wine before greeting you.

“Hi.”

Her salutation hung in the air between you as you took her in. She was just like her pictures and she drew you in all the same as she had on Tinder.

“Hey,” you answered, taking the bag from her outstretched hand. “Come in?”

You stepped back to allow her to shuffle past you, her coat already coming off before the door shut behind the two of you.

“This is cozy,” she said. “Just you?”

“No, I have a roommate. He’s bringing someone home tonight, supposedly.”

She chuckled, “Interesting living with a guy, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

You took her coat and tossed it over a dining table chair. Aly had already made herself at home on the couch, opposite of the corner you normally staked out as your own. She continued to look around, biting back a smile every so often.

The string lights around the crown molding illuminated her face with a soft orange glow as she took everything in. She tossed her phone aside, arms outstretched across the sofa behind her. Her smile was everything, and you almost forgot why she was even here.

“Do you, uh, want me to open this?” You nodded toward the bag in your hand, its weight bringing you back into the moment.

Aly nodded, “Want me to come with?”

“Sure.”

She pushed off of the couch to follow you into the small kitchen, finding a spot in front of the sink. It was comfortable having her here, the way she just ‘fit’ in without even trying. Like it wasn’t new territory for her.

Her arms were folded in front of her chest and she watched you intently.

Aly had bought both red and white, taking your answer of “depends on the day” a bit literally.

“So…,” she started, stepping in closer. “What’s your story?”

“Hm?”

“You know,” Aly laughed, “Why’re you on Tinder?”

Luckily you were searching through the silverware drawer when she asked, intent set on finding the corkscrew. “Just a 24-year-old thing to do, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” you sighed, turning to face her. “My roommate and I have a bit of a bet going.”

Aly raised an eyebrow, asking you to continue. You found the corkscrew and shut to the drawer with your hip, shyly turning back toward the counter with the wine to divert the attention from yourself.

“It’s stupid. He’s … he’s a bit of a player.”

“Okay, and?”

So she wasn’t going to let this go. “He brings a lot of girls home, and I don’t bring many guys home.”

The bottle of red popped! open and you set the corkscrew aside. You felt Aly step in closer behind you, offering a glass from the counter.

“I’m not a guy, though.”

“Yeah,” you laughed, feeling the warmth returning to your cheeks. Your tone shifts, voice getting quieter. “You’re not.”

“So what does that mean?”

You hand her a glass, generously full of the deep red alcohol, and shrug. “I’m not sure. What does that mean?”

She cocks her head to the side and smirks again. You’re painfully aware of how she licks her lips before speaking, and watched intently as she took a sip of the wine.

“Do you want it to mean something?”

“Well I mean,” you stammer over your words, “If you want it to mean something?”

Aly stepped toward you, closing in on the space between the lot of you. Her glass is raised, she nods in your direction, and you tap your glass to hers. You both take another sip and she waits to respond.

“I think it would be fun, you know. For it to mean something,” she shrugged. “I mean, isn’t that why you invited me over?”

Your eyes grew wide and you laughed nervously. “I didn’t think it would actually work.”

“Wouldn’t work? Oh, baby,” Aly shook her head, “I knew from the moment I saw your picture that I wasn’t going to just let you go.”

Baby. Your head swirled with thoughts, overwhelmed to say the least. “Sorry, I, uh,” you giggled to yourself again, flustered. The sip you intended to take was more of a gulp, and then another.

Aly joined your laughter, touching your shoulder in efforts to console you. “Was that too forward of me? I’m sorry, I forget that this is new for some people.”

“How’d you know?”

“You’ve been picking at your nails since the moment I got here and talking at the speed of light,” Aly leaned back against the sink. “You’re an open book, y/n.”

She took a long drink from her glass, now half empty, and stood silently.

“An open book, hm?”

“Yep. Totally.”

You paused for a second, the wine in-hand going down much faster than you anticipated. “What else do you know about me then?”

Aly’s eyes widened, a smile creeping up on her face. “Let me see.”

It was your turn to lean back against the counter and wait for what she had to say. Her eyes sized you up and down, and she hummed a “hmm…” just for good measure.

“Shy. But only when you don’t know her well. Confident, but that’s mostly with the help of wine. This roommate? You like him, at least a little. But you’re on Tinder… matching with women? Interesting character development in my book at least.”

You shook your head, embarrassed at the impressive correctness that she boasted in her assumptions. “Mostly right.”

“Only mostly?”

“Yeah,” you hid behind another sip of wine, “You forgot about the part where I’m really into you.”

“Oh,” Aly reached behind her to place the now-empty glass on the counter, stepping closer to you once more. “You’re really into me?”

You nodded.

She took another step in. “How much?” Her voice was nearly a whisper.

You could hardly hear her, over the hammering of your heart, but your brain was busy working up a witty response.

“How much, baby?” Aly pressed.

She was dangerously close to you now, only inches from your face. The mention of you being ‘confident’ but ‘mostly with the help of wine’ was no truer than in this moment, and you didn’t answer her with words. But instead, a kiss.

Aly didn’t hesitate to kiss back, hardly leaving you the time to place your wine glass (empty, too) on the counter. She leaned into you and wrapped her arms around your neck, pulling you closer. She knew exactly what she was doing.

It was just like kissing boys, you quickly realized, except this felt better. Aly led, moving her lips in synchrony with yours that, once you two found a balance that worked, made your head spin. The butterflies in your stomach morphed into something more; less about the nerves and more about the want.

You didn’t care about anything in this momentー

ーWhich was exactly when you heard the front door slam shut.

“Y/n!” Harry called out from the entryway. You heard his keys hit the table, along with another thud and the low murmurs of another voice.

Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck.

“Y/n!” He called again, “Are you evenー?”

He rounded the corner as you pushed out from behind Aly’s grasp, her own surprise catching up with her.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, quickly changing directions to face Harry. “Hi, yes, I’m here.”

Harry eyed you, clearly seeing the person behind you. “Hi…”

“Um, Harry,” you paused, stepping aside to bring Aly into view. “This is Aly.”

Aly spoke up from behind you: “Yeah, I know.”

You turned on your heel. “What?”

Harry hadn’t said anything since seeing Aly and remained quiet in the doorway of the kitchen. He raked a hand through his curls and stared at the ground.

“Hi, Harry.” Aly said, her tone laced with awkwardness.

Oh.

He cleared his throat. “Hey, Aly.”

Oh, no.

“Do you…?”

“Yeah,” they both answered in unison.”

“...know each other.”

________________________________________________

part two coming soon!

#i'm so nervous about this lmao #harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles fan fic #harry styles reader insert #fan fic #lgbtq #fanfic #original writing #one direction fan fic #one direction imagine #writing

[mentalisttraceur]

Imagining what it might be like to split into multiple minds and merge back into one. As I do sometimes.

The lessened conscious experience, maybe a guiding remembered goal, the memory of a vision or decision process too big or too foreign slipping away like the details of a dream after waking up.

What would I need to think, while whole, to ensure that the parts, once given independence, did what was desired? Extreme trust fall! Give up a part of yourself, and hope it doesn't betray you, doesn't go off-mission more than acceptable, comes back, willingly fuses, and that you haven't grown too incompatible from your different experiences in the meantime!

At least within the same brain you know you're all stuck in there together. You share the compute wetware and the flesh vehicle. You can only disintegrate so much through deeply habitualized avoidance of thinking "into" each other, and you're inescapably bound by cause-and-effect. This puts a hard limit on how much incentives can diverge. But if parts could split from the whole bodily, like if you were shape-shifting goo? Suddenly you really have to trust the part that you let go, and set it up pretty carefully before splitting. But even just within the same brain, if you can see enough possible ways for it to go badly, any cognition that you let execute outside of conscious dominion can seem risky. Especially if you're not the conscious stream that gets the steering wheel.

And then the reintegration. The merging. I have the most trouble imagining what this would be like. I suspect the difficulty is because I'm a pretty well-integrated human brain - I'm overwhelmingly certain that I am a singlet, and in fact my conscious self seems to "cover" more of my mind than some other normal people. Which means my cognition is really used to the many little integrations - that my conscious mind is quite experienced at smoothing over the mergers. Or perhaps more accurately maybe my conscious mind is the story cobbled together by all the mergers. Because, to be clear, the human brain definitely does this - how could it not? There's many parts and they physically can't be constantly reconciling everything instantly.

Anyway, if I had to guess, the integration is experienced kinda like this: first mind contact - thoughts pop up seemingly spontaneously that weren't there before. The more "different" the parts have had time to become, the more of the new stuff will be absolutely incoherent mental noise. Random blips of qualia and cognition like those little errors on old videos, sensory experiences coming from the wrong "mental directions" (like a smell coming from where sounds should be), etc. New associations - you think familiar thoughts but they suddenly start triggering unexpected feelings, memories, or other thoughts. New perspective, especially self-perspective: you suddenly see yourself or other things in ways you never have before. (In the "splitting into multiple bodies" hypothetical this is easy to imagine as suddenly merging one part's memories of looking at another part, into that other part's conscious stream, but within the same brain this might be suddenly seeing memories of the same events from a different mental reference frame: with more or less feeling of control, with different reactions, with different interpretations or thoughts about it.) And of course this can be gradual. Very gradual. If both parts are adaptive and perform valuable functions, then they'll probably be busy doing those things - they might not have time to play the complex game of thinking exactly the right thoughts to set off cognitive ripples in the other part, or to process the cognitive noise they're getting from the other part.

I wonder how many common human experiences come down to this. Like when people dissociate in traumatic situations and say they felt like they were onlookers, that could be just the main conscious "thread" (main? main in what sense? main perhaps only in the sense that this is the one that has conscious continuity/integration with the part retelling their story later) losing the controls to some other thread. And the key point here is that other thread of cognition perhaps always has some conscious experience of it's own! But if it and the "main" one don't regularly "mix", you'd never even know.

I've had a phrase in my mind for a couple years now. "We're all multiple (some of us just have stronger partitioning of experience and memory)". I kinda wanted to do a Proper(tm), concise post with just that concept, but never got around to it. I still think that's pretty true. But the neat thing is, it cuts both ways. Originally what I had in mind was us singlets having better integration, weaker partitioning. But now I'm thinking that maybe some of us singlets just have stronger partitions that the obviously unintegrated multiples. So strong that we can go our whole lives and never notice. It seems reasonable that in the entire space of possible human brain configurations, some adaptive configurations have the conscious self-narrative talky bit (since we never hear the stories of any part that doesn't both have access to the talk-y controls and doesn't want to tell stories about itself) fairly strongly and persistently partitioned off from other substantial and/or possibly-conscious parts, which do their roles silently, or at least without feeling the need to describe or explain or identify themselves.

#cognition #habitualization depth #multiplicity

[dahniwitchoflight]

Lord and Muse class thoughts

So

Had a thought about the powers of the Lord and Muse classes

that stemmed from the new idea that the functions of the classes themselves are on a spectrum of sorts, and not just their activity or passivity

So every function exists on some sort of Spectrum

Manipulation, Creation, Destruction, Application, Relocation and Information

since it was noted that whatever a Muse’s function is, it’s closer on the spectrum to a Witch’s (Manipulation) than it is to a Sylph’s (Creation)

And that got me thinking about what would the ends of the spectrum even be?

And at first I assumed Creation/Destruction as the most likely candidates

But I had to give a thought to, what if it was the Lord and Muse’s functions? Since the Lord and Muse are also the bookends of the activity spectrum, wouldn’t it make sense as Master classes that they’d be the bookends here as well?

Which got me thinking, what if the Master classes don’t have a shared function after all?

I’d had vague theories throughout that what separated the master classes apart from the rest so far, was that they were both an activity pair (Active Lord/Passive Muse) AND an function pair at the same time through the shared verb of “Definition” since that was something distinct I could separate from the rest of the 6 regular functions

but the I had this thought, what if it was both that the Master classes were partnered and were not partnered sort of at the same time?

Like, for instance, Muse’s function can only be expressed in a Passive way, because once you express is in an Active Way, it’s no longer a Muse’s function, but a Lord’s

And then it hit me: Inspire and Command

To Inspire someone is to passively bring them under your will and get them to do what you want, it’s not an active command, since the person can choose to ignore the inspiration, but it is highly suggestive and greatly powerful, and just like the rest of the passive powers, it requires an understanding and working with what a person would already choose to do in character for them anyway, requires a greater understanding but comes with less overwriting control

but to Actively bring someone under your will is to Command them, it’s no longer just an inspiration, it’s no longer something you can ignore or choose, it’s a Command. And for a command it doesn’t matter what the person is like, what their will is like or whether the person would realistically choose to do on their own because a forcible command overwrites all of that. 

and that’s, exactly what Muses and Lords DO. not in Homestuck I mean but like, just the base definitions of the words. 

They’re both people who bend other’s to their will, and that’s why Muse and Lord are special but also aren’t paired with another 2 pairs of classes AND that’s how they can be the bookends of both the activity and the functions spectrum

So they DO have the same function in the sense that both of their words are defined as the ability to bend another to their will and being the active and passive counterparts to it, but it also leaves no room for any extra two master classes despite the seperate functions, because of the natural way they themselves get inverted like that

Muse is the Most passive along the spectrum to Lord’s most Active

Muse’s function Inspire is at one end of the function spectrum, versus the Lord’s function Command being at another

So now with that thought, I wonder what the spectrum of functions looks like?

From what I can tell, Inspire and Manipulation so seem very close, and so Command and Information must also be close, and this to me makes sense since Information is often used as bargaining tool that forces people to do things, knowledge is power after all

Creation and Destruction seem the two most likely to be in center, since they feel the most removed from the concepts of Inspire/Command, but Creation still hinges on Inspire’s side, Destruction with Command’s

The finally Application and Relocation, Application is all about using the objects natural function to do what it do normally, so that sounds more Inspiring than Commanding, versus Application being a forcible moving of an object to wherever the user please, so that sounds more Commanding

so if I had to place things in a tentative spectrum:

Inspiration > Manipulation > Application > Creation <> Destruction < Relocation < Information < Command

and then to make everything fit my pedantic abolsutely meaningless pattern, we can change Command to Instruction lol which is nice because then it also starts with I just like Inspiration

Inspiration > Manipulation > Application > Creation <> Destruction < Relocation < Information < Instruction

Which also gives the Lord some leeway to yknow, not be evil, since in Homestuck the idea of bending another’s will to your own without regard for what they want is pretty evil idea, so a command seems inherently a bit too... much?

An Instruction however also contains that same amount of authority without being quite as forceful upfront as a command, but can be if desired

Mostly I just don’t wanna throw all Lords under the bus just because Caliborn exists lol buts it like how Manipulate/Change is the same thing for Homestucks’s purposes, the exact word used doesn’t matter, it’s the intended meaning

in which case the intended meaning for Muse and Lord is:

Muse Class:  Invites Inspiration of (Aspect) or one who Invites Inspiration through (Aspect)

Lord Class: Commands (Aspect) and/or Commands with (Aspect)

writing it like this it’s really easy to see how their couldn’t be a passive Lord function or an Active Muse function

but

the main idea is still, whatever you call them, they are doing the same thing, Bending things to their Will

and the most accurate way to write out their full powers would be as follows:

Muse Class: Invites (Aspect) to Bend to their Will, or one who invites Will Bending through their (Aspect) 

Lord Class: Bends (Aspect) to their will, or Will Bends with (Aspect)

I kinda wish their was a concise verb that means “Will Bending” though that’d be perfect

but the closest thing is the definition of the, which again splits the idea into two very Lord or Musey words?:

“Bend Someone to your Will: To use your Power or Influence to make someone do what you want them to do”

Power Command Authority Instruction: these are a Lord’s Powers. 

Influence Inspiration Trust Alliance: these are a Muse’s Powers.

(THOUGH. I supposed you can take the same scale and make it so the Lord/Muse are at the center of it in a single function, with Creation and Destruction as the bookends instead, in which case the spectrum would look like:

Creation > Application > Manipulation > Inspire/Define/Command < Information < Relocation < Destruction)

It essentially kind of Doesn’t Matter? But I do firmly believe now that whatever it’s called, the powers of the Lord or Muse are to bend things related to their Aspects to their own wills

Maybe it was Lord English himself who invented the whole idea of the Commands in Homestuck in general? That would be a pretty literal interpretation of his powers, and than once he was done with them he just didn’t bother cleaning it up/let the tech fall into other people’s hands

I mean, they are things that literally exist only to try and bend another person’s will to whatever it is you write in them

and is not the idea of bending a word to you will the act or redefining it? So I guess this doesn’t really change my ideas about Lord and Muse, but it did help me clear them up

Inspiration/Definition/Instruction whatever, what matters is that the thing is doing what you want it to do

#Homestuck #Homestuck^2 #Lord Class #Muse Class #active or passive #I never really got around to making this kind of post before #because I never really had a thing I really agreed with when it came to Lord or Muse #but with how Alt!Callie is using her powers in Homesauqred #and how its been compared to others #I feel like this is clearer and more accurate than what I used to think

[mirekat]

Gutting a Book: on Grad School, Fanfic, and Relearning to Read

Had some intense fandom feelings so I did an essay about it. 

There’s a lot of debate out there about whether or not writing fanfiction makes you a better writer, but what I’ve found most striking over the past year is how reading fanfiction has made me a better reader.

As with any trainee historian, a huge proportion of my life is given over to reading. Monographs, articles, my students’ essays, conference proposals or cover letters when I’m on departmental committees—they’re all words on a page and on a good day I’ll spend hours working with them. But these words are means to an end, not an end in themselves. And the sheer volume of words demands a specific approach to reading. In history patois, the term for this approach is ‘gutting a book.’ I’ve always cringed at the image—too reminiscent of childhood fishing trips—but it’s accurate enough. You learn from other grad students how to parse an argument from a book’s introduction, conclusion, subheadings, a few quotes and maybe a longer block of a chapter that’s directly pertinent to your dissertation. And that’s it. A corpus rendered into digestible parts. There’s no time to immerse yourself in texts when you’ve got 300 of them to process before your qualifying exams.

So I’ve become, of necessity, very good at gutting a book. That’s not inherently a problem: it’s a skill that’s made my big messy interdisciplinary dissertation possible. But somewhere along the way I lost not just the capacity, but the desire, for sustained engagement with text-in-itself. First I stopped reading poetry, then I mostly stopped reading fiction. When I did pick up a novel I was impatient with it, skidding around the twists and turns of plot. A far cry from my Bloomsbury-groupie undergraduate self, who would linger over pages thinking about words.  

Enter The Plague, and, shortly thereafter, Star Trek fanfiction. With the city closed, teaching all online, and, during the summer, a sharp uptick in the intensity and anxiety of my activist life, it was the perfect time for me to develop an obsession with Deep Space Nine. And when I felt like the narrative on the screen was wearing thin, I headed over to AO3 for more. That was where I began relearning how to read—to read gently, carefully, not trying to capture something but to connect.

There are a few factors at play, I think, in why fanfiction was able to foster this kind of attention. To begin with, I had a preexisting relationship to the world and its characters. Starting a new ‘original’ novel or short story, I’d always catch myself waiting for the author to explain why I should care—a habit that springs from the version of my advisor that lives in my head, Metis-like, hammering on the question but how does this contribute to the historiography? That critical impulse, and the goal-directed reading practice it feeds, was blunted by my visceral commitment to the Trek universe. Desire (in multiple senses of the word) was a given.

The patience that came with desire, in turn, freed me up to focus on craft—an aspect of text that’s carved out and discarded in the process of ‘gutting.’ For someone like me, with a limited attention span, the concise, momentary quality of many fics encouraged the kind of reconnection that’s necessary for describing prose. I’d tear through a thousand-word story the first time I read it, but something about it would catch on me—an image, a turn of phrase—and I’d feel compelled to go back and revisit the scene. And why not? A thousand words is nothing, in grad school terms. Bite-sized. Only the second time, knowing I’d gain nothing new from tearing through it again, I’d end up observing it instead, noticing how the words that had hooked me connected to other words, and wondering why that was, and wondering if the author had anticipated my responses and if it mattered whether or not they had. Eventually I was thinking about the play of sounds themselves, their tactility, words on the tongue. Reading again, the way I used to do.  

And yet that kind of analysis wasn’t the end point of my relearning how to read. I take a lot of pleasure in it still, but I also realize it reflects the impulse that demands I justify (to my advisor, to ‘the historiography’) any time spent with words. By this logic, time reading fanfiction isn’t wasted if the fic is good, and if I can explain why it’s good in terms half-remembered from high school English Lit.

Except I don’t only read fics I can justify in those terms. I don’t only enjoy fics I can justify in those terms. And the more I’ve accepted that I’m not reading fic in order to practice for ‘work’ reading, the more I’ve let myself read. I spend time with stories because they make me laugh, or they get me off, or—this is especially the case with trans readings of Trek characters—because they reflect something about my own way of being in the world that I want to see more of. To be clear, this isn’t to say I can’t find these stories elsewhere. Of course not—I’m a queer trans historian myself, writing a dissertation about queer trans life which, I hope, will be gutted in its turn by other queer trans grad students. But I want more. I want more stories about existing while queer and trans. I want more stories about fucking while queer and trans. I want iterative, derivative queer and trans stories, schools and shoals of them, combining and recombining in unexpected ways; I want stories that are impossible to gut because there’s too much of them or because their shape is totally unfamiliar and I can’t even begin to guess where the guts would be. I want stories that don’t try to justify their existence to me, because they don’t have to—because they exist to answer a different reader’s raw desire for more.

That’s what I mean when I say fanfiction has made me a better reader. Not just that it’s helped me find the patience to form relationships with texts, not just that it’s helped me relearn how to tease out the intricacies of prose, but also that it’s helping me let go of the idea that words are only worthwhile if they are useful. There’s utility in gutting a book, but there’s violence too. And there’s something about reading a stranger’s fic, reading it for what it is, that feels both precious and surprising—like a bright thing in the water, silver flickering briefly under your fingertips and then gone. Maybe you’ll find it again. Maybe you won’t. But it’s out there, and it exists for itself, and that’s reason enough to keep reading.  

#on fanfiction #meta #academia

[bradleyljones34]

Local Landing Page SEO - Breaking It All Down!

What Is Local Landing Page SEO? 

Every business needs a landing page, and there are many ways to get one. The two most popular methods of getting your own customized landing pages are through website design or hiring someone who specializes in this type of service. Landing Pages start with creating an enticing headline that entices readers to explore further; these can be eye-catching images, big bold text headlines, and other strategies like soft-selling the benefits before presenting any details about the product itself as well as providing contact information so people know how they can reach you if necessary after reading what's on offer here today!

What Is The Difference Between A Local Landing Page and A Normal Landing Page?

Creating Local Landing Pages:

A local landing page is a web page that is optimized in your area. This can be for the state, county, or city you live in and these types of pages are best when optimizing for keywords like "plumber in charleston" instead of just using the keyword "plumber". When adding geographic modifiers to this type of search engine optimization drastically improves rankings on localized searches.

Creating Normal Landing Pages:

Now, let's take the example above and say a landing page is built for the keyword "plumber" and no geographic modifier is added. You might think that the company with a landing page for "plumber" will rank better than one who has set up their site to target Charleston's plumbing market, but Google knows its user is looking specifically for plumbers near them. So who do you think will actually have an edge? The professional here in town or the anonymous business on google?

How Do Search Engines Handel Local Search Results Differently? 

The internet is a wild and crazy place. Search engines are constantly evolving to keep up with the ever-changing methods of communication, so it should come as no surprise that they have also evolved in how they deliver search results for user queries. Below we will discuss ways in which google handles different types of queries--primarily those related to location or region--specifically focusing on their handling of "local" type requests such as service-based business and local brick and mortar stores among other things.

Google Understands User Search Intent

Google's among other search engines like Yahoo and Bing know that depending on what words or phrases are being searched for, the searcher is looking for someone (or something) local. Someone searching "emergency plumbing service" will show drastically different results from those of a person who searches "how to unclog your sink." One person clearly wants help locally while the other wants educational information so they can handle their own plumbing issues themselves without any assistance.

More Actions on Google Maps for Local Searches.

More and more google has been adding more features to their maps with the ability to see a list of local establishments in one's area as well as places that are nearby, or popular destinations. This makes it easier for people who want to find a specific type of business in a specific area to be able to find it quickly and easily.

What Makes A Great Local Landing Page?

There are many components needed to make a great landing page that will not just rank well, but convert visitors to high-quality leads.

Page URL Structure

This is the simplest, yet most important step when it comes to ranking in local SEO. A local landing page URL should have the keyword and the geographic modifier in it.

Examples:

www.companyname.com/plumber/charleston

or

www.companyname.com/charleston/plumber

or

www.companyname.com/plumber-in-charleston

The Page Title Needs To Be Local SEO Optimized

The page title needs to follow needs to be well optimized for local search by following the same rules as above and should have your keyword and geographic modifier in it.

Example:

The Best Plumber In Charleston

Get The H1 Title Tag Right Too!

You should never use more than an H1 Title Tag on your local landing page. Often you can use the same title as the page title or you can add different modifiers at the beginning of the H1 Title Tag.

Optimizing Local Landing Page Content For A Search Engine

The copy should be concise and clear - no redundancies or too many words in one sentence! A lead-generating local landing page needs to have the primary keyword plus secondary keywords plus geographic modifiers throughout the content so keep this in mind as you design yours for your local SEO ranking boost. Write the content with user experience in mind that is engaging relevant to the services or products you offer and keep it location-specific for it to rank high in search.

Business Contact Info Is Very Important!

If you have a physical location where local customers visit your business for goods or services, it is important to list the name of the store along with its address and phone number on an optimized landing page. This will ensure that when Google visits this page, they can cross-reference other sites like Facebook or Yelp so they know not only that it's relevant geographically but also trusted enough by these outside sources in order for them to list accurate information about your product/service without being spammy.

Eye Catching Call To Actions

If you're wondering what a Call To Action is, think of it as your landing page's most powerful tool. It is the thing that prompts a customer to take action and do something, like buy your product, sign up for more information or download an app or call to schedule a service with your local business.

The best call to action is eye-catching, concise, and highlights a specific action that is desired.

Call To Actions are usually found at the top of the page or in bigger text than other parts of the content because they draw attention to themselves.

When designing your call to actions keep these best practices in mind:

Use bright colors

Use big text

Use words or phrases that trigger action

Use in multiple places throughout your local landing page

Let Customers Know How To Get In Touch

Customers who find your local landing page in organic results when searching for a city-specific service or place of business need multiple ways to connect you. Make sure to have a phone number, contact form, and a live chat widget. This will almost always lead to higher lead conversions when a client or customer is looking for what your business is offering.

Embed A Relevant Map On Your Landing Page

A map embed is powerful visual enhancements that show your customers where you are located. It's a common misconception that Google Maps will automatically be embedded on all of your local pages, but this isn't the case and it needs to be added manually.

Embed Map Directions On Your Landing Pages

You should always embed driving directions from the center of a city you are targeting on your local landing pages to your location if you have a physical location. This will give you an added boost to your landing page and your Google My Business listing.

Link Out To Niche Related Authoritative Sites

You should have a list of niche-related websites that you are targeting on your local landing pages. Each page should be linked out to these sites with anchor text to send a signal to Google relating your content to the niche term you are trying to rank for in search. New Paragraph

Link Out To Local Authoritative Sites

If you want to rank in organic search for your local business using location pages for your brick and motor or service area business for lead generation you must link out to local authoritative websites too. This means governmental sites, education, hotels, airports, etc. These will once again send strong local signals back to Google that you service this area.

Embed YouTube Videos On Your Local Landing Pages

Video is also a powerful way to rank your local landing pages in search engine results pages. Embedding videos from YouTube are a great way to power up local landing pages and see even faster local SEO ranking improvements. This is because Google owns YouTube and therefore passes that love on to your location pages. This is something that many digital marketing companies have not capitalized on for their clients. This is a powerful and often overlooked strategy that can help to give your business an edge over competitors.

Reviews From Trusted Sources

Another must-have for your optimized local landing pages are reviews from your social media accounts, directories, and your Google My Business listing. The more authoritative, local and niche related the better. The more you provide high-quality reviews on your landing pages, the higher that page will rank in Google.



To make your reviews even more powerful they should include your keyword and locations where you provided services. When a local customer or client writes relevant reviews about your business this way it will lead to a better user experience, higher ranking in search in multiple areas you service, and in turn bring more traffic to your site overall.

What About Ranking In The Map Section of Google?

If you want to rank higher in Google's map section, it helps to know what kind of ranking your website gets. A Google My Business listing and an optimized website can both help you rank better. If you want to rank in a larger service area that says 5 miles around your office, you need a way for search engines to understand that you service the areas and local landing pages on your site, and citations on other websites are how you do it. Google is now adding services it finds on your website to a companies GMB listing automatically. If they are doing this with the services they find on your website don't you think they are also taking into account the cities listed on these service pages too?

Are Local Landing Pages Really Important?

Yes, they are! If you think for a minute that using some generic service pages on your website and sending backlinks to them will rank them in all your cities and generate you a ton of leads, you will be very disappointed. You want local clients or customers then you need to target local keywords and phrases with your local landing pages.

Bonus Tip For Ranking?

If you want to really power up your local landing pages you need to get generating user signals to the search engines.  This will tell the engines that people love your services and are actively using them.

So get like shares, comments, links, phone clicks and forms filled out and you will see your pages rank even faster!

Lastly, Do Not Forget About Responsive Design.

Location-based SEO will get you ranked better and faster, but you still need to make sure that your website is fully responsive. It needs to look great on all devices and browsers. More and more clients and customers search the web on their mobile phones so make sure your website rocks no matter the screen size or device!

Conclusion

The most important thing is that you create a landing page for every single city and neighborhood in your area. When it comes to local SEO, the more specific you can be on where people are searching from, the better chance they have of finding what they're looking for. It's worth investing time or money into creating customized localized pages so that when someone searches "pizza near me," Google will know just who they’re talking about! If this sounds like something you'd like help with, we've got experts waiting by to do their best work for you. We'll make sure that all of your online marketing efforts lead back to one place--your custom-made landing page! Contact us today if you want to see how at 843-327-8644.

About Us

Disruhptiv Marketing & Media is a full-service website design and SEO company that specializes in helping small businesses grow their online presence. We provide the latest web design, search engine optimization, and social media services to help you take your business to new heights. Our team of experts will work with you every step of the way from start to finish so that your site not only looks good but it also performs well on Google for all potential customers searching for what you offer.

FAQs

Via http://www.disruhptiv.com/local-landing-page-seo-breaking-it-all-down

source https://disruhptiv.weebly.com/blog/local-landing-page-seo-breaking-it-all-down

[robertehortonaz]

Local Landing Page SEO - Breaking It All Down!

What Is Local Landing Page SEO? 

Every business needs a landing page, and there are many ways to get one. The two most popular methods of getting your own customized landing pages are through website design or hiring someone who specializes in this type of service. Landing Pages start with creating an enticing headline that entices readers to explore further; these can be eye-catching images, big bold text headlines, and other strategies like soft-selling the benefits before presenting any details about the product itself as well as providing contact information so people know how they can reach you if necessary after reading what's on offer here today!

What Is The Difference Between A Local Landing Page and A Normal Landing Page?

Creating Local Landing Pages:

A local landing page is a web page that is optimized in your area. This can be for the state, county, or city you live in and these types of pages are best when optimizing for keywords like "plumber in charleston" instead of just using the keyword "plumber". When adding geographic modifiers to this type of search engine optimization drastically improves rankings on localized searches.

Creating Normal Landing Pages:

Now, let's take the example above and say a landing page is built for the keyword "plumber" and no geographic modifier is added. You might think that the company with a landing page for "plumber" will rank better than one who has set up their site to target Charleston's plumbing market, but Google knows its user is looking specifically for plumbers near them. So who do you think will actually have an edge? The professional here in town or the anonymous business on google?

How Do Search Engines Handel Local Search Results Differently? 

The internet is a wild and crazy place. Search engines are constantly evolving to keep up with the ever-changing methods of communication, so it should come as no surprise that they have also evolved in how they deliver search results for user queries. Below we will discuss ways in which google handles different types of queries--primarily those related to location or region--specifically focusing on their handling of "local" type requests such as service-based business and local brick and mortar stores among other things.

Google Understands User Search Intent

Google's among other search engines like Yahoo and Bing know that depending on what words or phrases are being searched for, the searcher is looking for someone (or something) local. Someone searching "emergency plumbing service" will show drastically different results from those of a person who searches "how to unclog your sink." One person clearly wants help locally while the other wants educational information so they can handle their own plumbing issues themselves without any assistance.

More Actions on Google Maps for Local Searches.

More and more google has been adding more features to their maps with the ability to see a list of local establishments in one's area as well as places that are nearby, or popular destinations. This makes it easier for people who want to find a specific type of business in a specific area to be able to find it quickly and easily.

What Makes A Great Local Landing Page?

There are many components needed to make a great landing page that will not just rank well, but convert visitors to high-quality leads.

Page URL Structure

This is the simplest, yet most important step when it comes to ranking in local SEO. A local landing page URL should have the keyword and the geographic modifier in it.

Examples:

www.companyname.com/plumber/charleston

or

www.companyname.com/charleston/plumber

or

www.companyname.com/plumber-in-charleston

The Page Title Needs To Be Local SEO Optimized

The page title needs to follow needs to be well optimized for local search by following the same rules as above and should have your keyword and geographic modifier in it.

Example:

The Best Plumber In Charleston

Get The H1 Title Tag Right Too!

You should never use more than an H1 Title Tag on your local landing page. Often you can use the same title as the page title or you can add different modifiers at the beginning of the H1 Title Tag.

Optimizing Local Landing Page Content For A Search Engine

The copy should be concise and clear - no redundancies or too many words in one sentence! A lead-generating local landing page needs to have the primary keyword plus secondary keywords plus geographic modifiers throughout the content so keep this in mind as you design yours for your local SEO ranking boost. Write the content with user experience in mind that is engaging relevant to the services or products you offer and keep it location-specific for it to rank high in search.

Business Contact Info Is Very Important!

If you have a physical location where local customers visit your business for goods or services, it is important to list the name of the store along with its address and phone number on an optimized landing page. This will ensure that when Google visits this page, they can cross-reference other sites like Facebook or Yelp so they know not only that it's relevant geographically but also trusted enough by these outside sources in order for them to list accurate information about your product/service without being spammy.

Eye Catching Call To Actions

If you're wondering what a Call To Action is, think of it as your landing page's most powerful tool. It is the thing that prompts a customer to take action and do something, like buy your product, sign up for more information or download an app or call to schedule a service with your local business.

The best call to action is eye-catching, concise, and highlights a specific action that is desired.

Call To Actions are usually found at the top of the page or in bigger text than other parts of the content because they draw attention to themselves.

When designing your call to actions keep these best practices in mind:

Use bright colors

Use big text

Use words or phrases that trigger action

Use in multiple places throughout your local landing page

Let Customers Know How To Get In Touch

Customers who find your local landing page in organic results when searching for a city-specific service or place of business need multiple ways to connect you. Make sure to have a phone number, contact form, and a live chat widget. This will almost always lead to higher lead conversions when a client or customer is looking for what your business is offering.

Embed A Relevant Map On Your Landing Page

A map embed is powerful visual enhancements that show your customers where you are located. It's a common misconception that Google Maps will automatically be embedded on all of your local pages, but this isn't the case and it needs to be added manually.

Embed Map Directions On Your Landing Pages

You should always embed driving directions from the center of a city you are targeting on your local landing pages to your location if you have a physical location. This will give you an added boost to your landing page and your Google My Business listing.

Link Out To Niche Related Authoritative Sites

You should have a list of niche-related websites that you are targeting on your local landing pages. Each page should be linked out to these sites with anchor text to send a signal to Google relating your content to the niche term you are trying to rank for in search. New Paragraph

Link Out To Local Authoritative Sites

If you want to rank in organic search for your local business using location pages for your brick and motor or service area business for lead generation you must link out to local authoritative websites too. This means governmental sites, education, hotels, airports, etc. These will once again send strong local signals back to Google that you service this area.

Embed YouTube Videos On Your Local Landing Pages

Video is also a powerful way to rank your local landing pages in search engine results pages. Embedding videos from YouTube are a great way to power up local landing pages and see even faster local SEO ranking improvements. This is because Google owns YouTube and therefore passes that love on to your location pages. This is something that many digital marketing companies have not capitalized on for their clients. This is a powerful and often overlooked strategy that can help to give your business an edge over competitors.

Reviews From Trusted Sources

Another must-have for your optimized local landing pages are reviews from your social media accounts, directories, and your Google My Business listing. The more authoritative, local and niche related the better. The more you provide high-quality reviews on your landing pages, the higher that page will rank in Google.



To make your reviews even more powerful they should include your keyword and locations where you provided services. When a local customer or client writes relevant reviews about your business this way it will lead to a better user experience, higher ranking in search in multiple areas you service, and in turn bring more traffic to your site overall.

What About Ranking In The Map Section of Google?

If you want to rank higher in Google's map section, it helps to know what kind of ranking your website gets. A Google My Business listing and an optimized website can both help you rank better. If you want to rank in a larger service area that says 5 miles around your office, you need a way for search engines to understand that you service the areas and local landing pages on your site, and citations on other websites are how you do it. Google is now adding services it finds on your website to a companies GMB listing automatically. If they are doing this with the services they find on your website don't you think they are also taking into account the cities listed on these service pages too?

Are Local Landing Pages Really Important?

Yes, they are! If you think for a minute that using some generic service pages on your website and sending backlinks to them will rank them in all your cities and generate you a ton of leads, you will be very disappointed. You want local clients or customers then you need to target local keywords and phrases with your local landing pages.

Bonus Tip For Ranking?

If you want to really power up your local landing pages you need to get generating user signals to the search engines.  This will tell the engines that people love your services and are actively using them.

So get like shares, comments, links, phone clicks and forms filled out and you will see your pages rank even faster!

Lastly, Do Not Forget About Responsive Design.

Location-based SEO will get you ranked better and faster, but you still need to make sure that your website is fully responsive. It needs to look great on all devices and browsers. More and more clients and customers search the web on their mobile phones so make sure your website rocks no matter the screen size or device!

Conclusion

The most important thing is that you create a landing page for every single city and neighborhood in your area. When it comes to local SEO, the more specific you can be on where people are searching from, the better chance they have of finding what they're looking for. It's worth investing time or money into creating customized localized pages so that when someone searches "pizza near me," Google will know just who they’re talking about! If this sounds like something you'd like help with, we've got experts waiting by to do their best work for you. We'll make sure that all of your online marketing efforts lead back to one place--your custom-made landing page! Contact us today if you want to see how at 843-327-8644.

About Us

Disruhptiv Marketing & Media is a full-service website design and SEO company that specializes in helping small businesses grow their online presence. We provide the latest web design, search engine optimization, and social media services to help you take your business to new heights. Our team of experts will work with you every step of the way from start to finish so that your site not only looks good but it also performs well on Google for all potential customers searching for what you offer.

FAQs

source http://www.disruhptiv.com/local-landing-page-seo-breaking-it-all-down source https://disruhptivmarketing.blogspot.com/2021/04/local-landing-page-seo-breaking-it-all.html

[woofieheadintranslation]

Translating Wang Wei’s Autumn Dusk in the Mountains

Alright, back with some 王维 (Wáng Wéi). Specifically, his poem 山居秋瞑 (shān jū qiū míng), which translates roughly to “autumn evening at a household on the mountain”. This is a little wordy, though, so I’ve shortened it to “Autumn Dusk in the Mountains”.  This is a wu-lü: a five character, eight line regulated poem. (By regulated, it means that the tone of every single character is controlled). It also rhymes on every even line, and uses the same rhyme throughout. It is a very complicated poem to translate, as I have unfortunately discovered for myself.  Some background information about Wang Wei: He was a Tang dynasty poet, painter, musician, and politician, especially well known for his paintings and poems about nature (山水). Landscape poetry, basically. His poems often reflect a very Buddhist sensibility- simple, concise, insightful.  Chinese Text: 山居秋瞑 王维 空山新雨后， 天气晚来秋。 明月松间照， 清泉石上流。 竹喧归浣女， 莲动下渔舟。 随意春芳歇， 王孙自可留。 Word by Word Translation: 1. empty/mountain/new/rain/after 2. sky/air/late/come/autumn 3. bright/moon/pine(s)/among/shine 4. clear/spring *as in fountain, stream/stone/above/flow 5. bamboo/voice, rustle, noise/return/wash/girl 6. lotus/move/down/fishing/boat 7. though, free, at-will/spring/fragrance/rest, stop 8. prince, nobles, the poet/naturally, self/could/stay As you can see, there’s a few words that already could have multiple interpretations. There are actually many translations of this poem. I’m going to be using three as a reference.  Translation 1, David Hinton - https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/16/poem-week-autumn-twilight-dwelling-mountains-wang-wei:  Autumn Twilight, Dwelling Among Mountains In empty mountains after the new rains,  It’s late. Sky-ch’i has brought autumn- bright moon incandescent in the pines, crystalline stream slipping across rocks.  Bamboo rustles: homeward washerwomen. Lotuses waver: a boat gone downstream. Spring blossoms wither away by design, but a distant recluse can stay on and on.  It’s a lovely, very evocative translation. However, I think it strikes a little bit different of a chord than the original, especially in the last two lines.  Translation 2, Wai-Lim Yip - Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres:  Autumn Dusk At A Mountain Lodge Empty mountain after fresh rains: It is evening. Autumn air rises. Bright moon shines through pines. Clear spring flows over stones.  Voices among bamboos: washing girls return. Lotus-leaves move: down glide fishermen’s boats. Here and there, fragrant grass withers. O Prince, you do not have to go.  Clearly different from the first. The lines are shorter, they’re in simpler language, and it’s reads less modern than the first. Translation 3, Xu Yuanchong: Autumn Evening in the Mountains After fresh rain in mountain bare Autumn permeates evening air. Among pine trees bright moonbeams peer; O’er crystal stones flows water clear. Bamboo whisper of washer-maids; Lotus stir when fishing boat wades. Though fragrant spring may pass away, Still here’s the place for you to stay.  This translation is notable for the rhyme, which is very masterfully done. 佩服你, Mr. Xu. However, I don’t have the same feelings on rhyme- it’s wonderful if you can include it, but I will never approach a translation with the intent to rhyme. English is not a language that rhymes well. It kind of sucks, actually, which is why you get terrible rhymes like “fire, desire” and everything ending in -ion. In comparison, Chinese is positively incestuous in sound. For example, in this poem, the ending word of the fourth line- 流 (liú), meaning “flow”, sounds exactly the same as the ending word of the eighth line- 留 (liú), meaning “to stay”. Chinese rhymes are more subtle and common, and also has a more important place in poetry, which is why rhymed poetry in Chinese feels more meditative and natural than rhymed English poetry.  Us English speakers are well accustomed to slant rhymes, eye rhymes, blank verse and free verse, and as long as clarity of meaning, accuracy, and beauty of language is preserved, I’m fine with taking liberties with form. Chinese speakers won’t be reading translations, after all.  This is my opinion, of course- I know many people are adamant about rhyme in translation.  With that said, let’s begin.  Line 1: 空山新雨后 空山 (kōng shān): Empty mountain. Pretty straightforward! Xu Yuanchong uses “bare”, but presumably only to rhyme. 空 does actually have some Buddhist implications, but it’s a moot point because there’s no way you can include that cultural context in a translation anyways.  新雨 (xīn yǔ): New rain, fresh rain. Hinton uses “new”, the other two “fresh”. I am going to go with “new”. I think it’s more accurate, and also carries the implication of “fresh” without being so in-your-face about it.  后 (hòu) means “after”.  Therefore, I translate line 1 into: Empty mountain, after new rain In reading the Chinese, you’d generally pause after the first two characters- empty mountain- so I’m adding a comma for that effect. Additionally, this matches the sentence structure I’m going to use in line 2.  Line 2: 天气晚来秋 So, to outline the difficulty of translating this line, I’ve put all three translations side by side.  Hinton actually connects this line to the first: In empty mountains after the new rains, It’s late.  I’m not going to do that, because although it does have a nice effect, it’s not accurate to Chinese, where each line is a distinct unit.  Hinton: it’s late. Sky-ch’i has brought autumn-  Yip: It is evening. Autumn air rises.  Xu: Autumn permeates evening air.  Literally the only thing they can agree on is that, 

1. It’s late in the day, and

2. It’s autumn.  I could not figure it out, so I searched on Baidu. Apparently, the common interpretation is this: After the new rain of line 1, the air is cold and crisp, making the poet feel autumn has arrived. With that main interpretation is mind, I am going to aim for the ambiguity of the original. 

天气 (tiān qì) actually means “weather” in modern Chinese. This is translated as “sky-ch’i” in Hinton (sky-qì), due to the possible implications of the Daoist concept of what you probably know as “chi” or “qi”, but I think is a bit of a stretch. I am going to defer to the expertise of Yip and Xu, and translate this as “air”.  晚 (wǎn) means “late”. 来 (lái) means “come”, and 秋 (qiū) means “autumn”. Ignoring the 来 for now, and only taking 晚 and 秋 into account, there are two options. 晚 could be separate from 秋, and refer it being late in the day. A.k.a, it’s evening. Or, 晚 and 秋 could be put together, making “late autumn”. I’ve decided on the interpretation of “evening”, due to the fact that there are lotuses in line 6 and lotuses generally aren’t part of a late-autumn landscape. However, I’m actually going to use the hyphenated compound “late-day”, because it’s slightly more ambiguous than “evening” and more faithful to the Chinese 晚.  Now for 来! This is the only thing that can be called a verb in this line, and though it generally means “come” or “has come”, everybody has gone for very different translations of both the word itself and how it’s used to connect the nouns.  Hinton has used “sky-ch’i has brought autumn”, making the autumn directly dependent upon the air.  Yip has smushed autumn and air into one concept, making it simply “autumn air”. This air “rises”. I am wholly unsure why it is rising. He presumably has a reason, but I cannot for the life of me figure it out.  Opposite to Hinton, Xu has made autumn the performer of the action. The autumn “permeates” the air.  I am tentatively going to go with: In late-day air, autumn arrives.  Several reasons for this: Firstly, this puts “air” before “autumn” and “comes”/”arrives”, as in the original. Secondly, it connects the air and autumn without making one explicitly dependent on the other. Thirdly, “arrives” happens to somewhat rhyme with the word I’ve picked to end the fourth line. In the original poem, the last word 秋 (qiū)- autumn- in this line would rhyme with 流 (liú - flow- in the fourth.  As an interesting aside, some people make an argument that these two lines are actually representative of the poet’s interior life and state of mind. Wang Wei’s career only really kicked off when he was... forty? Basically a dinosaur, in those days. If this is the interpretation, 空山 (empty mountain) becomes less literal and more about the Buddhist implications of 空 as a state of being, and 晚来秋 (late-come-autumn) can become “late arriving autumn” in the sense that in Wang Wei’s life, everything has arrived slightly late for him. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to find enough ambiguity in the English for this interpretation, so we’re going to have to stick with the previous.   Line 3: 明月松间照

明月(míng yuè) means “bright moon”, “luminous moon”. 松间 (sóng jiān) means “among pines”, “between pines”. 照 (zhào) is the action; it means “to shine”. Hinton uses “incandescent”, but I think that’s a little too strong.  In the original order: bright moon between pines shine.  In English: Bright moon shines between pines.  Line 4: 清泉石上流 清泉 (qīng quán) means “clear springs”. The water type of spring, by the way.  石上 (shí shàng) means “upon rocks”. “Rocks” is somewhat harsher than 石, though, so I’m actually going to use “pebbles” here, which happens to be an eye rhyme with “pines” in the previous line, as well as starting with the same letter. 

流 (liú) is the action; it means “to flow.”  This line evokes a very lively, very crisp feeling, and is also a parallel to line 3.  In original order: clear spring over pebbles flow.  In English: Clear spring flows over pebbles.  Line 5: 竹喧归浣女 竹 (zhú) simply means bamboo.  喧 (xuān) means voice, or noise, or rustle.  归 (guī) means “to return”. 浣女 (huàn nü) means washing girls- girls who are washing clothes. Thus, “the washing girls return”.  The difficulty lies with 喧. You can interpret it as the bamboo making noise, as in the Hinton translation- “Bamboo rustles”. Either the bamboo is rustling independently, or the washing women moving through the bamboo is causing it to rustle.  However, the more common interpretation is that 喧 doesn’t refer to a rustle, but instead to the voices of the washing girls as they return home from work. Yip uses this interpretation, with “voices among bamboos”.  I’m going to try to word this in a way that makes both interpretations possible, as well as preserving the original structure of the line, where the implied cause of the event is actually described after the event. The washing girls are mentioned after the noise that they presumably cause. It’s a lovely effect, reminiscent to the film technique of zooming out. (This same structure appears in line 6, which is the parallel to this line.) With this in mind, I’m translating this line to: Noise among the bamboo: washing girls return.  Line 6: 莲动下渔舟

Along with line 2, this gave me the most trouble.  莲 (lián) means “lotus”. Hinton and Xu use “lotus(es)”, Yip uses “lotus-leaves”. Both work.  动 (dòng) means “move”. Hinton uses “waver”, Yip “move”, Xu “stir”. I think 动 is actually a bit more delicate than the English “move”, due partially to the fact that it can also mean “to touch”. I am going to use “stir”, because I think it preserves that delicacy while working similarly to “move” in that the lotuses could move, as in they receive the action, or the lotuses could be moving (or touching) something.  下 (xià) means “down”. Hinton has incorporated it into “downstream”, while Yip has used “down glide”. 渔 (yú) means “fishing” or “fisherman”. Different from 鱼, actually, which simply means “fish”. 舟 (zhōu) means “boat”, and so 渔舟 means “fishing boat”.  It’s 下渔舟 taken together that’s the problem. You see, 下渔舟 can mean “fishing boat going downstream”, yes, but it can also mean “getting off a fishing boat”, as in an actual person, getting off his boat. There are actually more interpretations- these are just the two most common ones.  Unfortunately, having the same level of ambiguity in an English translation is impossible. I’m going to have to pick something. I tried to consider the fact that this line should parallel line 5. 归 (guī), the middle character in line 5, is a parallel with 下 (xià). They perform similar roles within their respective lines, and more importantly, should theoretically contrast in meaning. To recap, 归 means to return. 下, therefore, could mean “to leave”, to “cast off” from shore.  Due to this, I’m eschewing the other possible interpretation, and translating this line into:  Lotuses stir: fishing boat casts off.  I really wish I could add “fishing boat casts off from shore”  in order to somewhat rhyme with “return” in line 5, but I’m not going to add a word that’s not in the original.  Line 7: 随意春芳歇 Alright! Moving on.   随意 (suí yì) means “careless” or “random” in modern Chinese. In this poem, it works a little like “though” or “despite”. For some reason, Hinton has translated it as “by design”, which is nowhere close, Yip as “here and there”, which I guess captures the “careless” and “random” meaning, and Xu has translated it as “though”, which I think is most accurate.  春 (chún) means spring, 芳 (fāng) refers to "fragrant”, and most likely some sort of fragrant plant. This could be, as Hinton translates, “blossoms”. It could also be “grasses”.  So far, we have “Though fragrant spring grasses...”  歇 (xiē) means to rest, or to stop, which is not exactly “withers”, although that does also work. I’m going to translate it to “fade”, which is not as specific as “withers” is.  Thus:  Though fragrant spring grasses fade, Line 8: 王孙自可留 This is also a line that many people have translated very differently.  王孙 (wáng sún) can mean “noble” or “prince”, and later also came to mean “recluse”. It is possibly a reference to a passage called “Summoning the Recluse” from The Songs of the South, the Chu Ci, an essential and very ancient Chinese text. This is what Yip calls upon with his translation of “O Prince”. It is also possible that this simply refers to the poet himself. I wrestled with this for a long time, and eventually decided on “prince”.  自可 (zì kě) means something along the lines of “could”, or “you could”. 自 can mean “self”, or it could mean “naturally”, as in 自然 (zì rán). I think “could” gets across the meaning well enough without needing to add “naturally”.  留 (liú) means “to stay”.  Combined, 自可留 could mean either “you yourself could stay” or “you, naturally, could stay”. It’s actually quite casual- I think “O Prince, you do not have to go” as in the Yip translation is too pleading, and “but a distant recluse could stay on and on” is a little too... profound? Poetic? “Still here’s the place for you to stay” is better, I guess, but I have a bone to pick with the use of “the place”, as if there’s some cosmic inevitability to staying, as if it’s the ultimate place or something. It’s not.  With that in mind, I’m translating it like so: You, prince, could stay.  Final Translation:  Empty mountain, after new rain- In late-day air, autumn arrives.   Bright moon shines between pines- Clear spring flows over pebbles.  Noise among the bamboo: washing girls return-  Lotuses stir: fishing boat casts off.  Though fragrant spring grasses fade, You, prince, could stay.  I’m still not really happy with the fifth and sixth line- I wish they were more parallel in sentence structure, but unfortunately the rules of English don’t allow that. In order to make it parallel, I’d have to translate line 5 as “bamboo noise”, which- ugh, or line 6 as “stir among the lotuses”, which is unnecessary and clunky.  I tried! I’ll probably look back on this two months later and be like- Jesus Christ, what were you thinking? Bonus Experimental Translation:  Empty mountain after new rain-  Autumn comes late evening in air.  Luminous moon / between pines shine-  Crystal spring / over pebbles flow.  Noise among the bamboo: washing girls return-  Movement among the lotuses: fishing boat goes downstream.  Though spring fragrances cease,  You, prince,  could stay.  I rate this poem as 2/10 in terms of Wangxian applicability. I could see a very specific scenario in which a quote from this could be useful, but that’s pretty much it. Yeah, this one isn’t going to show up in my fic anytime soon.  Gorgeous poem, though. 

#wang wei #autumn evening in the mountains #王维 #山居秋瞑 #poetry #chinese poetry #chinese literature #translation #english translation #wangxian #i guess #i mean they're the reason why i'm doing this #a series doubling as both a plea #and a resource for fic writers #to please incorporate chinese poetry into your fics

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9 REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO IMPROVE YOUR COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS | 15 BEST PRACTICES

Having strong communication skills helps you in every stage of your life. It is especially crucial for your professional career. In this frenetic world, we massively rely on sharing information, resulting in greater emphasis on having effective communication skills. Good interpersonal communication skills and written communication skills are essential to deliver and understand information immediately and precisely.

Communication is a process of understanding and sharing information with someone. To communicate well is to understand and be understood. It can be done in various ways:

Verbally: your voice

Visually: images, graphs, maps, infographics

Non-verbally: body language, eye contact, gestures

Written: books, websites, emails

Communicating your thoughts effectively is a vital life skill and should not be neglected. In contradiction, inadequate communication skills can have an adverse impact – It may result in misunderstanding, disappointment, and in some cases, failure.

One can say that even a lifetime is not enough for mastering communication skills. However, there are many things that you can do to improve your communication skills and ensure that you can transmit and receive information effectively. In this article, We will discuss the importance of communication skills. And how to improve communication skills at work. Let’s get started!

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

Having good communication skills helps you throughout your life. It affects your work life, social gatherings, and personal life. Especially in your professional career, you need to communicate effectively with your colleagues. Good communication skill is going to be the key to delivering your point precisely. Communication skills help you to tailor your thoughts and present them accurately. Having effective interpersonal communication skills can do wonders for every aspect of your life.

#1. COMMUNICATION SKILLS ENHANCES YOUR VALUE IN THE WORKPLACE:

You may have already experienced it in your life that people tend to give more value to people who can express their thoughts properly. It is the same for your professional life as well.

Whether you are looking for a job or already have one and looking for a promotion, you need to communicate effectively. Your chances of getting a job or getting a promotion depend on how good you are at communicating with your boss, or anyone in front of you.

Communication skills are essential for presenting your ideas appropriately, write concisely, and working as a team. Having the capacity to listen attentively, speak coherently, and making a comfortable environment is valuable in any organization and can require a wide range of skills:

Listening to others and exhibiting interest in the conversation.

Dealing with phone or online conversations properly.

Encouraging interaction in your team.

Expressing an opinion or asking a question.

Having the ability to convince others.

#2. HIGHLY IN DEMAND BY BUSINESSES:

According to many surveys every year, verbal and written communication proficiencies are consistently ranked in the top ten desirable skills by the employer. Employees are often encouraged to take online courses and in-person training to improve their presentation and communication skills.

Skills potential employers seek:

Communication (written and verbal)

Organization

Teamwork

Critical thinking

Analytical skills

#3. HELPS YOU BOOST YOUR CAREER GROWTH:

In the workplace, you have many tasks that require you to communicate with your teammates. You might need to request information, address problems, provide directions, work in teams, engage with clients, etc. If you want better synchronization and effective teamwork, good communication skills are essential.

Also, as the workplace is becoming more global, there are many factors to consider for communicating well in such a diverse environment. Having the ability to convey messages clearly and understand other people means work can be completed more effectively. It adds extra benefits to the company as a whole.

Employers seek employees who can think for themselves. The employees who can initiate, solve problems, and are interested in the success of the company. If you want to prove your worth as a valued member of the organization, it is crucial to communicate your thoughts, and ideas properly.

#4. ENABLES YOU TO SPEAK CONCISELY:

It is a natural human behavior to get nervous in front of superiors or clients. Communication skills training helps you to adapt and deal with all the different scenarios in your life. And it also allows you to get the most out of any situation.

#5. BUILDS BETTER RAPPORT WITH CUSTOMERS:

Customers expect nothing more but to be understood by a company. They want companies to listen to their problems and pay attention to their feedback. Engaging with customers and listening to their queries is an essential part of your business. It can be face-to-face, online, or any other possible medium of communication.

#7. HELPS YOU TO LEARN BETTER:

Communication skills have played a significant role in your existing knowledge and beliefs. You learn to speak in public by first having conversations, then by answering questions, and then by expressing your opinions. It is a process that you acquire with experience.

You learn to write by first learning to read, then by writing and learning to think critically. Good interpersonal communication skills help you grasp information and communicate your ideas concisely and in a meaningful way to other people.

#8. IMPROVES YOUR PROFESSIONAL IMAGE:

Having good communication skills makes an impressive first impression. It also reflects on the people you interact with and influences their thoughts about you. Throughout your career, you will be representing your business or company to customers or clients. Your professionalism and attention to detail will reflect positively on you and set you up for success.

#9. OTHER PERKS OF HAVING EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

In today’s competitive business world, good communication skills are essential at all levels. And many successful organizations comprehend how crucial it is to have effective communication with teams and departments. There are various other benefits:

More perceptive decision-making and problem-solving skills.

Productivity improvement.

Persuasive and compelling corporate elements.

Clearer, more streamlined workflow.

Sound business relationships.

Successful response ensured.

Having a healthy and transparent workplace where everyone can express their problems and opinions is critical for the growth of the company, and well being of employees as well.

As an employer, you must make the workplace better for employees and provide proper guidance to improve their communication skills. Communication skills are not the only factor for the growth of the company and its employees.

Punctuality, productivity, efficiency, task management capabilities, good work ethics, and many other factors are involved in the path to success. Keeping a tab on all these factors and improving them is as important as improving communication skills.

If you want to know more about the employees, their daily activities during working hours, you can use EmpMonitor. With the help of EmpMonitor, you can monitor their daily activities like clock-in/clock-out, break times, active hours, office hours, productivity hours, etc.

EmpMonitor provides many astonishing and valuable features that can really change and improve the work environment and improve overall productivity at your workplace. Get your free trial now!

HOW TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS AT WORK?

Having the ability to communicate effectively is a fundamental skill. It helps you create strong connections with others, solve the conflict, show empathy, and even convince others. You communicate verbally, non-verbally, and in writing consistently at work to help meet the requirements of your work. Follow the steps below to help you focus your efforts and improve your skills in the workplace.

#1. LISTEN TO UNDERSTAND:

If you are having a conversation with someone or during a presentation, be sure to give your undivided attention to the people talking. Avoid any distractions, silence phones, and turn off any social media notifications. Concentrate on being in the moment and use your body language to indicate your curiosity about what someone else has to say.

You should turn your body towards the individual speaking, sit up or stand straight, maintain eye contact as they speak to show attentiveness. Listening to others represents your respect for the people around you and your workplace.

#2. BE AWARE OF THE AUDIENCE:

Communication is a two-way process of sharing information. Even when you are not talking, how you conduct yourself sends prompts to the person in front of you. Try to understand your audience when communicating to help get your information across. In the workplace, your communication is formal and you need to maintain professionalism. It should incorporate language that is respectful and constructive to communicate.

#3. ADAPT TO THE ATMOSPHERE:

It is essential to consider your surroundings while practicing good communication skills. The information you are trying to share should be appropriate for the environment. Using academic and industry-specific language in the lunchroom won’t be necessary. But in a presentation or meeting, being professional and technical is a must.

#4. EXPRESS EMPATHY:

If other people feel that you understand them, they will be interested in communicating with you. Having the ability to understand other’s feelings and show empathy is what makes you a good human being. It is also a sign of higher emotional intelligence. You can validate or re-emphasize their point or just smile at them.

#5. EXHIBIT A WELCOMING DEMEANOR:

People will be more likely to communicate with you if you have a welcoming and approachable attitude. Making eye contact, smiling, handshakes, or just giving a friendly nod will make you approachable and kind. Honesty and kindness will help you build relations with your colleagues and also a positive work environment.

#6. CONVEY CONFIDENCE:

People tend to pay attention and respond positively when you communicate confidently. Although communicating confidence and assertiveness is a skill that requires thorough practice. People are more responsive when you communicate with purpose and in a way that emphasizes your belief in yourself. Knowing your strengths, being positive in the workplace, accepting compliments, taking constructive criticism, and even knowing how to motivate others are all examples of ways you can radiate confidence at work.

#7. IMPROVE YOUR WRITING SKILLS:

Although written communication skills are often ignored, how you present your ideas in the written form can indicate a lot about you. Others sometimes misinterpret your written inflection or message while reading. Conscientiously re-reading an email or editing a memo can help you maintain professionalism at work and prevent miscommunication. Keep it professional, use direct language, and privately read aloud any written communications to ensure your message is concise and positive.

#8. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BODY LANGUAGE:

Your body language says a lot about you while communicating with others. It is essential to be aware of how you stand, where you place arms, and make eye contact to show welcoming and friendly behavior.

Your professional synergies, conduct at meetings, and even how you move around can be the key indicators about the type of employee and coworker you are. Focus on these non-verbal signs to be sure you are conveying an appropriate message for the workplace.

#9. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TONE:

It is crucial to pay attention to your tone while talking to someone.

Maintaining a professional tone for workplace interactions shows you respect those around you and can help you gain the trust of your peers.

#10. COLLECT YOUR THOUGHTS BEFORE SAYING:

It is very important to be careful about what to say and when to say it. Before saying anything, consider what you say is conducive to completing a task or supporting someone else. Collecting your thoughts before talking can help you avoid an embarrassing situation and can be an effective way to maintain positive workplace relationships.

#11. BE IMPARTIAL:

Treat everyone kindly and equally. Consistency is the key to communicating with others. It helps you develop positive work relationships. Your behavior with your colleagues should be impartial and positive. Consider how responsive you are when someone approaches you, then reflect upon ways to support them through encouragement and understanding.

#12. LOOK FOR SIGNS FROM OTHERS:

Learning to understand the non-verbal indications others give while interacting can help you respond positively and quickly. Communication is a key interpersonal skill that can help you support those around you and reveal your leadership qualities. Their body language either with purpose or subconsciously can tell you many things about their mood, emotions, or perspective.

#13. SEEK FEEDBACK:

Feedback helps you at great lengths to improve your communication skills. You can either ask a friend or colleague about your interpersonal communication skills. Listen to every suggestion they offer, it might be hard. But it can help you see the traits that you are not aware of.

#14. KEEP LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES:

Practicing your skills is one of the best ways to improve them. Keep looking for any opportunities at work to socialize with others and observe interactions. If there is an opportunity to lead a discussion or present on a topic, consider taking advantage of it. All this will help you hone your skills and demonstrate desirable leadership qualities to a manager. Think about the ways to practice your skills away from work.

#15. SEEK GUIDANCE FROM EXPERTS.

You can also find a mentor and ask for advice to improve and practice your communication skills. There are conferences and seminars that you can register for and attend to help you work on your skills. And there are tons of books available that you can utilize.

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WRAPPING WORDS:

The ability to effectively communicate with your clients, colleagues, and managers is essential. It does not matter which sector you are in, good communication skills can help you build teams, inspire high performance, and enhance the workplace culture. Just remember, communication is a two-way process, so pay attention to others’ verbal and nonverbal signals as well as your own. Knowing the importance and trying to improve your communication skills is just a start to your journey. You can only harness it with proper practice and experience. Just keep calm and keep improving your communication skills. It will do wonders for your career growth and life.

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

#Employee Monitoring #Employee Management #Employee Productivity #Employee Monitoring Software #Communication Skills