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st-just · 3 years

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Barely coherent rambling about nation-states, culture, the Hapsburgs, and Canada

Because why have a blog except to occasionally purge one of the essays floating around half-formed in your brain. To be clear, it’s still half-formed, just on tumblr now. 1,666 words, here’s the Deveraux essay mentioned. Book is Martyn Rady’s The Hapsburgs: To Rule The World

So I’ve had like, nationalism on my mind recently.

And so there’s a kind of recurring beat in left-of-centre American political discourse (like, not ‘internet rnados screaming at each other’ discourse, ‘people with doctorates or think tank positions having debates on podcasts or exchanging op eds’ discourse) where you have some people on the radical end list some of the various horrible atrocities the country is built on, the ways that all the national myths are lies, and how all the saints of the civic religion were monsters to one degree or another – this can come in a flavor of either righteous anger or, like, intellectual sport. And then on the other end you have the, well, Matt Yglesiases of the world. Who don’t really argue any of the points of fact, but do kind of roll their eyes at the whole exercise and say that sure, but Mom and Apple Pie and the American Way are still popular, and if you’re trying to win power in a democracy telling the majority of the population that their most cherished beliefs are both stupid and evil isn’t a great move.

Anyway, a couple weeks back Deveraux posted an essay for the 4th of July (which I don’t totally buy, but is an interesting read) about why the reason American nationalism is so intensely bundled up into a couple pieces of paper and maybe a dozen personalities is precisely because it isn’t a nation at all. Basically, his thesis is that in proper nation-states like England or the Netherlands or wherever, there really is a core population that is the overwhelming demographic majority and really have lived in more or less the same places since time immemorial, and that once the enthographers and mythologists finish their work, all those people really do identify with both the same nation and the same state as its expression. America, by contrast, is by virtue of being a settler nation whose citizenry was filled by waves of immigrants from all the ass ends of Eurasia in a historical eyeblink, even before you add in the native population and descendants of slaves lacks any single core ethnicity that is anywhere close to a majority, as well as any organic national traditions or claims to an ‘ancestral homeland’ that aren’t obviously absurd (and we are trying to include the descendents of slaves and the native population these days, to varying levels of success). All this to say that his point is America is a civic state, not a national one, with the identity of ‘American’ being divorced from ethnicity and instead tied to things like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the whole cult around the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, and [FDR and/or Reagan depending on your politics].

Which, like I said, don’t totally buy, but interesting. (to a degree he overstates how homogenus ‘actual’ nation-states are, he makes America sound very special but if his analysis holds that it’d presumably also apply to several other former settler colonies, in the American context there’s a fairly solid case to be made that the whole ‘nation of immigrants’ story and the racial identity of whiteness were constructed to function as an erratz national ethnicity, with incredible success, etc, etc).

But anyway, if we accept that the American identity is bound up in its civic religion and the mythologized version of its political history, it’s absolutely the case that there’s several segments of the left who take incredibly joy in tearing said civic religion and national mythology apart and dragging whatever’s left through the mud. I mean, hell, I do! (reminder: any politician whose ever had a statue dedicated to them was probably a monster). And, well, call it a greater awareness of historical crimes and injustice, or the postmodern disdain for idols and systems leaking out through the increasingly college-educated populace, or the liquid acid of modernity dissolving away all unchosen identities, or a Marxist cabal undermining the national spirit to pave the way for the Revolution or whatever you like, but in whichever case, that critical discourse is certainly much more prominent and influential among left and liberal media and politics types that is was in decades past.

And, okay, so I finished Martyn Rady’s The Hapsburgs a few days ago. And I mentioned as I was reading it that the chapters on the 19th and 20th centuries reminded me quite a bit of courses I’d taken in school on the late Ottoman Empire and Soviet Union. Because all three are multi/non-national states (Empires, in Deveraux’s terminology, though that’s varying degrees of questionable for each, I think. Moreso for the Hapsburgs than the rest) who outlasted their own ideological legitimacy. And in all three cases it just, well, it didn’t not matter, but even as all the ceremonies got more absurd and farcical and the politics more consumed by inertia punctuated with crises, things kept limping along just fine for decades. Even in the face of intense crisis, dissolution wasn’t inevitable. (The Ottomans are a less central example here, admittedly, precisely because of the late attempt to recenter the empire on Turkish nationalism. But even then, more Arab soldiers fought for the Sultan-Caliph than ever did for the Hashemites, and most prewar Arab nationalism was either purely cultural or imagined the Empire reformed into a binational federation, not dissolved).

But as Rady says in the book – losing WW1 crippled Germany, it dissolved Austria-Hungary. And in all three cases, as soon as they were gone, the idea of bringing them back instantly became at least a bit absurd.

And okay, to now pivot to talking about where I actually live but about whose politics I (shamefully) know significantly less than America’s. I mean, maybe it’s because most of my history education from public school was given by either pinko commies or liberals still high off ‘90s one-world universalism, or maybe it’s just a matter of social class, but I really can’t remember ever having taken the whole wannabe civic religion of Canada seriously (the only even serious attempt at sacredness I recall was for Remembrance Day). Even today, the main things I remember about our Founding Father is that he was an alcoholic who lost power in a railroad corruption scandal.

Really, in all my experience the only unifying threads of national/particular Canadian identity are a flag, a healthcare system, those Canadian Heritage Minute propaganda ads, a bill of rights from the ‘60s, and an overpowering sense of polite smugness towards the States.

And that last one (or, at least, the generally rose-colored ‘Canada is the good one’ view of history) is taking something of a beating, on account of all the mass graves really rubbing the public’s noses in the whole genocide thing. At least among big segments of the intellectual and activist classes, most of the symbols of Canadian nationhood are necessarily becoming illegitimate as Canada is, in fact, a project of genocidal settle colonialism.

But it really is just purely symbolic. Most of the municipalities who cancelled their Canada Day celebrations are going to elect Liberal MPs and help give our Natural Governing Party its majority in the next election, no one of any significance has actually challenged the authority of the civil service or the courts. And, frankly, most of the people who are loudly skeptical of all the symbols of the nations are also the ones whose political projects most heavily rely on an efficient and powerful state bureaucracy to carry out.

(This is leaving aside Quebec, which very much does have a live national identity insofar as the vigorous protection of national symbols is what wins provincial elections. If I felt like doing research and/or reaching more there’s probably something there on how pro-independence sentiment has largely simmered down at a pace with the decline of attempts to impose a national Canadian identity).

I mean, Canada does have rather more of a base for a ‘national’ population core than the US (especially if you’re generous and count the people who mark French on the census as a core population as well). At the same time, no one really expects this to continue to be the case – even back in Junior High, I remember one of the hand outs we got explaining that due to declining fertility most or all future population growth would come from immigration (I remember being confused when my mother was weirdly uncomfortable with the idea when it came up). I suppose our government gets credit for managing public opinion such that anti-immigration backlash hasn’t taken over the political conversation. Which you’d think would be a low bar but, well.

But anyway, to try and begin wrapping this rambling mess up – it does rather feel like Rady’s portrayal of the late Hapsburg empire might have a few passing similarities to the future of Canada. A multinational state whose constitution and political system and built on foundations and legitimized by history that no one actually believes in anymore, or at least no more than they have to pretend to to justify the positions they hold, but persisting because it’s convenient and it’s there and any alternatives are really only going to seem practical after a complete economic collapse or apocalyptic war. (Though our civil service is a Josephist’s dream by comparison, really.)

Or maybe I’m premature, and the dominant culture will just be incredibly effective at assimilating immigrants into that civic identity. Anecdotally, the only people I know who are at all enthusiastic about Canada as an idea are first generation immigrants. I could certainly just be projecting, really – I’ve never really been able to get all that invested in the nation-state as an idea of more moral power than ‘a convenient administrative division of humanity’, and certainly liberating ourselves form the need to defend the past would certainly rectifying certain injustices easier.

Or maybe I’m just being incredibly optimistic. Half the economy’s resource extraction and the other half’s real estate, so decent odds the entire place just literally goes up in flames over the next few decades. BC’s already well on its way.

#politics #political theory #nationalism #in this essay I will #this is theoretically a writing blog #the hapsburgs: to rule the world

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phoenotopia · 4 years

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2020 October Update

So... we've launched. And our launch was... actually kind of... bad...

This is a dev blog, so I'll speak on it. But before that, we do have the game's steam page up. If you're anticipating the PC release, please do visit the steam page and add it to your wish list. It would help us a lot.

VISIT STEAM LINK

...

So what didn't go so well?

1. We launched in Nintendo's Americas and Europe territory. If you've been following the release, you'd know that America got the game first. We didn't move to launch in Europe at all since I thought the EFIGS languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish) were pre-requisites for Europe. By the time I learned that this wasn't necessarily the case, and attempted to course correct, the damage was done. We had half the allotment of keys to do outreach, and maybe some European outlets that would've covered us, did not.

2. When the game launched, rather than a victory lap, what we experienced was more of a public lashing. We did get some reviews that praised the game highly, but just as many reviews lampooned the game for its high difficulty or other failings. I've since released two patches (or 3, depending on how you count it) to address the difficulty. A lot of overnighters. If you recall in the last blog post, I thought it'd be a good start if we got 20 or so reviews on Open Critic. But we've only 8 as of this writing, and the aggregate score isn't so hot. So that's a fail by my metric.

3. A publisher reached out to us because they were interested in physically printing the game! Yay! But... to advance our talks, they wanted to see the game's sales numbers to ensure that there's a good chance their investment could be recouped. And unfortunately, the game's sales numbers are pretty low. They backed out :(

Some hard lessons were learned. The biggest lesson for me concerns how well we playtested the game. Looking at the original playtester list, it's a short list. You may recall from a previous blog post that our ability to test was severely hampered by technical limitations. Add to that, a lot of people on this list are objectively really achieved players. We're talking power ranked in Smash Bros, regular tournament goers, and people who've played and bested every Souls game. And as the maker of the game, I am most blind to the game's challenges.

Now, I'm definitely more of the opinion that you prioritize PC development first. I still have some reservations about some stages of PC development. But if you do PC/Steam first, you have the great benefit of being able to do Early Access, which gives you access to a greater testing pool. I now view it as an invaluable part of the equation. If we had been able to do Early Access for 1 or 2 months before release, we probably could have ironed out most of the game's difficulty and balance problems. Hard lessons, indeed.

There were a lot of other notable events that occurred over the past 2 months - the travails of press outreach, realizing my own limits as a developer, feeling defeated and getting back up again, etc. There's too much stuff to chronicle or go into detail. But it wasn't all bad.

Some good things did happen...

We got a publisher to publish for Japan! It came as a huge relief, because clearly, we don't know what the heck we're doing.

The publisher has been an invaluable source of information and feedback. They've recommended some changes to the game to improve user experience. Some of these changes I was hesitant to do at first because they concerned systems I thought integral to the identity of the game. But after trying it, I have to admit, they're good changes.

So a Japanese version of the game was moving ahead. And it looked like that'd be it. I wasn't planning to move forward with any other language translations due to the game's low sales and our funds being depleted.

But, I was approached by a translator who urged me to move ahead with translations. He told me he was willing to work for only a small price initially and then be paid the rest after from a percentage of the game's sales until the cost of the translation was paid in full.

I was surprised translators were willing to work under such a model since it's entirely likely the game's current low sales trajectory would continue and they wouldn't earn back the full cost of translation. But I was also flattered they were willing to take a risk with me. After that, I approached some others with the same hypothetical deal, and long story short, we're now moving forward with French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian translations. As for why these languages in particular, they were languages for whom I had contacts (because they reached out to me at some point in the past). And also because they were deemed more likely to be profitable based on their home country's gaming market/buying habits. I'd be personally happy to have my native language be represented, but it's not expected to be a profitable territory. But if the game does better in the future, it may justify the costs of translation. There could be a chance!

The plan right now is to get the game supporting these first round of languages and then to patch that into the Switch version as well as launch the PC version with these languages - all in December. A lot of things need to align for this to occur, so a delay isn't out of the question. It'll be busy... I'll update the blog again in latter half of December, probably near the game's PC launch date... OR to announce a delay. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Fan Support

While the past two months have been grueling, one good thing remains constant - fan art! Thank you everyone who submitted. It means a lot to me and the team!

Big thanks to Pimez who's taken on watching over the reddit community as moderator. He also combs the other communities and makes sure I see every new art piece. Despite juggling his own life and all these tasks, he still found some time to draw.

Pimez's piece reminds us that just because the new game's out doesn't mean we can't still celebrate the original flash game. The jail dog is a dog found only in jail and only in the flash game. I imagine Gail is just tossing a stick, and they're playing fetch.

A new artist to this scene æv draws both the Phoenix logo AND a super cute picture of Gail playing the flute. So precious, you want to pinch her cheek. Even the Sand Drake is enthralled!

Another new artist, beet4ppy arrives on the scene with two pictures! One features a no-nonsense battle-hardened Gail looking stoic and tough! Kinda reminds me of Vinland Saga actually. The other, a more cheerful group composition - I must say I'm a big fan of Fran's classic anime-style eye!

A returning artist, Cody G, returns with a picture depicting the tribulations of cooking. Gotta love Gail's frantic expression! I've heard the complaints, which is why we've added an option to slow the cooking mini-game down. An improved button font is also on the way.

Gamesing with two undertale x phoenotopia crossovers. Thomas being a robot builder makes sense taking a role similar to Alphys. But why is Alex dressed like a clown? Perhaps there is a hidden meaning here...

A new artist, Warotar, draws both a pooki wearing Gail's clothes and Gail wearing pooki clothes. Awww. The pooki is a bit scary - it kinda reminds me of a tragic event in a certain anime. But the Gail is adorable!

POL#5655 submitted this one to KM's discord which made its way to me. Here, a stylized Gail appears unnerved by the dark red eyes stalking her in the background. Are they bats or something more sinister?

A new artist, MilesCPW, arrives on the scene with three rare well-vectorized arts! Love it! One scene depicts Gail balancing a bomb on her head - that's a speedrunning trick I only learned about recently after someone emailed me a video O_O

The other drawing gives us new insight into Katash - he could actually look cute if he wasn't trying to kill you.

And the bees... Okay, this one got a chuckle from me :D

A returning artist roccy_chair draws this heart-warming scene from the beginning of the new game. Aww. Mika doesn't get much screen time for story reasons, so it's nice to see her represented.

UnrealWorld_32 returns with another drawing of Gail in Panselo, this time capturing a more idyllic time. I like the tranquil nature of this piece. And Gail does in fact play the guitar, denoted by the guitar in her room.

Returning artist shafiyahh draws a nice portrait of Prince Leo - looking regal and princely. I like the storybook art style of this piece. It made me immediately think of "the Little Prince" - one of my favorite books actually!

Negativus Core returns with a beautiful group composition of Gail and the gang - flying from a Switch shaped window - totally sensible considering the game is only Switch right now. As usual, I'm impressed by Negativus Core's use of challenging angles to frame a more dynamic shot of the characters. Great job!

And it wasn't only artists bearing the banner. I'd like to give a big shoutout to everyone in all the game's little communities (from the reddit to the discords to this tumblr). I've seen this community help newcomers with gameplay and walkthrough advice, discussions, updating the wiki, and so on. It does bring a smile to my face. Thank you everyone!

#phoenotopia

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thesunnyshow · 3 years

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Name: Juliet

Writing Blog URL(s): @wonderlustlucas

Nationality: American

Languages: English, beginner level French, teeny tiny bit of Korean

Star Sign: Virgo

MBTI: ISFJ-T

Favorite color: Pastel yellow

Favorite food: My mom’s Sunday gravy

Favorite movie: Howl’s Moving Castle (The Lion King is a close second though)

Favorite ice cream flavor: Specifically Turkey Hill’s Double Dunker (get it— it’s so good)

Favorite animal: Humpback whale

Go-to karaoke song: She’s Kinda Hot by 5 Seconds of Summer

Dream job (whether you have a job or not): Neurosurgeon! Or a Twitch streamer HAHA

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? Ahhh probably coffee, I love tea but I need my coffee </3

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose? Shapeshifting! Clearly the superior superpower I don’t take constructive criticism.

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? This is weirdly specific, but I would love to be in Scotland during the 1700’s. Alternatively, the 1980’s.

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you? 100%. I know everything happens for a reason but getting a redo and being able to fix all the big mistakes I made would be pretty nice.

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? One horse-sized chicken! 100 tiny horses would be crazy tiring.

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? I would probably be the gay side character that gives good emotional advice but is hella lonely LMAO

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? Yes, both!

What are some small things that make your day better? Driving with the windows down and music blasting, picking up coffee, playing video games, & talking to my internet friends on Discord.

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? I discovered my love for writing through Warrior Cats roleplay😭

What fandom(s) do you write for? Right now, only Kpop, but I wouldn’t mind writing for 5SOS or some of my other fandoms!

When did you post your first piece? On WattPad, December 2015. On Tumblr, April 2018 :)

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? I write everything! Fluff/smut/crack is my favorite and slight angst (usually just slow burn though cus I’m soft).

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? Again, I write anything and everything! Currently, second or third person reader inserts are my main style, but I also do ships and would love to write more OCs.

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? Before Tumblr, I was on WattPad for different fandoms but eventually fell off. Then, when I got into Kpop in 2017, I found that urge to write again and decided to move to Tumblr since WattPad was becoming… weird. Plus Tumblr was a better fit for me!

What inspires you to write? To be completely honest, it’s the little things throughout the day that inspire me. For example, “Honey” was inspired by me not being able to open my locker in high school. “I Hemoglobin You” was based off my friend giving me a head rub while I was donating blood. Kpop idols just so happen to be my muses that I like to put into random moments of inspiration!

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? High school or college AUs are my favorite, along with some good ol’ friends to lovers slow burn. Angst isn’t my forte so I usually just stick to fluff, smut, and some crack. I haven’t written any but fantasy AUs are some of my favorites too! (RIP to my League of Legends AU that I started and haven’t touched in months.)

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? Just like other fanfiction authors inspire me, I hope some of my work inspires others. Considering fanfiction is free, there is so much out there to read and when I find a good story that inspires ME to write better, I’d love for my writing to do the same.

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? 3 options: 1) Skip that scene and jump ahead to one I’m excited to write; 2) Erase what part I’m on and completely redo it; or 3) Drop it. The majority of my works usually take a few months to write as I will completely stop working on it until I find the right inspiration again.

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? “Four” is definitely my favorite work. It’s one of my longer pieces and there was a lot of raw emotion in there on my end. I love the relationship between Hyunjin and the reader and especially love the ending. “Greatest Gift” for Chanyeol is my most successful, and one of my other favorites!

Who is your favorite person to write about? Easily Hwang Hyunjin. It’s so easy to place him in any of my works, and sometimes it’s a struggle to NOT write him. It sounds stupid but sometimes I really feel like I “know” him so being able to describe him physically and mentally is easy for me.

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? Yes and no. Yes, because most of the time, fanfiction is totally original as well and requires just as much thought as a 400,000 word novel. No, because fanfiction uses a specific person as a muse.

What do you think makes a good story? Detail and realistic dialogue! Of course, everyone has their own style of writing, but detail is especially important to me. Sure, you can have a great plot, but having concise, detailed writing to get immersed into makes a story so much better. I also find realistic dialogue to be a big deal— I hate when teenage characters are speaking in deep analogies because, if we’re being honest, my daily language is 95% just “Bruh.” If you’re like me, I’d actually prefer realistic dialogue over anything else.

What is your writing process like? Process… yikes. Sometimes… I have a random thought and then I’m like… hell yeah let’s write that. I actually have no process. I don’t outline, I just start writing and keep writing until I’m finished. Then I’ll read it all over to make edits, then I’ll use the Read Aloud feature to catch any mistakes I missed, then I’ll run it through Grammarly before posting!

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? Hm, maybe? In the future, possibly, but as of right now I wouldn’t use any of my fics to do so.

What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? Oh, gosh, tropes. Gotta love them. Friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, stuck together (AKA forced to share a bed), and fake relationships are my favorites. They may be corny, but I also love truth or dare or 7 minutes in heaven games in fics cus… they’re just classics. Also love fics with a popular x shy pairing. I can’t say I dislike many tropes, but I definitely have a love/hate relationship with vampire and werewolf tropes because of how romanticized they are.

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? Hm, to be completely honest, only a little bit? I mainly write for myself, it’s like a guilty pleasure to just get all my thoughts and desires out, and then I just so happen to make it public on Tumblr. Nevertheless, receiving comments and asks actually make my day, and sometimes I still struggle to wrap my mind around people enjoying my writing! So, thank you to everyone who has ever left me a kind message, I truly appreciate it ♥

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? Getting involved! I think one of the best ways to grow is to join networks, which not only gives you the opportunity to share your work on a greater scale, but also allows you to make connections. Like real life, making connections and making friendships with other writers can play a huge role in growing as a writer and growing your account.

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? Yes :( As someone who’s involved with other fandoms, I’ve heard the way some people think of fanfiction and it’s really sad. People do not know how much goes into writing and just see it as cringey and disgusting when it’s just… not.

Do you think art can be a medium for change? Yes! In all its forms, art is something a creator can use to influence their audience (in a good way, hopefully).

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? Like I said in #40, I mainly write for myself. Even when I’m writing a request, chances are if I like the request enough I’m going to create a story out of it that fits my personal desires the most.

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? No! However, I’d still consider myself a small account and do not have TOO many works posted. But so far, I don’t think I’ve faced this problem :)

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? Only a few! My best friend Maggie is on Tumblr with me and only 2 of my other pals know I write fanfiction.

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? How much I love each and every one of them for supporting me and sticking around even when I won’t post for months🥺❤️

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? Don’t psych yourself out! In the time I’ve spent on Tumblr, I’ve never received any substantial hate. My main advice is don’t write fanfiction to get popular on the app, write fanfiction because you love to write and love your muses!

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? No, as much as Tumblr can be annoying at times, I love the people I’ve met and the content I’ve found and wouldn’t have wanted to use any other platform.

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? @pinktea99 — Mo, you’ve been around since the beginning honestly, and without you I wouldn’t have been able to come out of my shell! Thank you for all your love & support & for being my SF9 buddy❤️

Pick a quote to end your interview with:

“Like mate, stop procrastinating.” — 3RACHA

BONUS ROUND: K-POP CONFIDENTIAL

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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So, it’s Friday evening, and it turns out I have more thoughts about things that happened this week. I almost never do Discourse on this blog, on whatever subject, but sometimes even your friendly local depressed historian gotta say things. If you’re not in the mood for a long-ass meta-y text post, just keep on scrolling, no hard feelings.

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which obviously a lot of us were upset about, and profoundly relieved that it did not end up being completely catastrophic, the usual spate of posts began to pop up, alleging that people only cared about Notre Dame because of the loss to Western/European/Christian history, that nobody had been this upset about the National Museum of Brazil or the outbreak of arson at three black churches in Louisiana in the same week, and so on. I don’t blame anyone for making those posts, because I know they cared about those issues and wanted to ensure that their importance was communicated, especially when something major like Notre Dame was getting all the airtime. However, I couldn’t help but notice how that followed the same pattern as all Woke Tumblr Discourse (tm). An event happens, people express reactions to it, and are then attacked or indirectly shamed for not expressing reactions to another event. Or there’s the usual cycle of “nobody will care about this because it’s not happening in America”-style posts, or passive-aggressive insinuations that “you don’t care if you don’t reblog this.” And -- I say this with the greatest kindness possible, because I know, I know you guys care -- it’s... not helpful.

The culture of Tumblr and other left-wing sections of social media often rests on enacting performative wokeness, on showing that you care about the most Progressive (tm) issues, or that you have thoroughly scrutinized your fandom tastes or political beliefs for anything Problematic and/or can prove yourself to an imagined moral standard (and there have been some great metas written on how this essentially replicates conservative evangelical purity culture, with the goalposts switched). This is why we keep having to circulate (and doubtless will have to do so with increasing frequency) those posts reminding the left not to eat its young and flame all prospective Democratic challengers to Trump in 2020 to a crisp before the right wing, which is only too happy to let us do the work of sabotaging ourselves, even gets a chance. This is also why you see the posts responding to said angry “nobody cares about this!” posts, in which people mention the fact that not visibly reacting to all the (vast and terrible) injustice in the world does not mean they don’t care. The world is a big place. So is the internet. I can guarantee you that people do care, and just because you didn’t see immediate evidence and response to it when you opened up your Tumblr dash is not proof of a collective nefarious conspiracy.

Take me, for example. I am a thirty-ish academic and historian who considers myself well-informed and literate in current events. I read national and international news every day to find out what’s going on (because I live in England, the answer is Brexit, and the status is Failed). And yet, there are plenty of things that I only hear about for the first time on Tumblr, often attached to one of those “nobody cares about this!” posts. And you know what? I do care. I care a lot. And I’m guessing that most other people do as well, because no matter how it may feel, the majority of individuals are fundamentally decent people with basic empathy for others, even if our whole system is a nightmare. But the urge to demand why nobody is Discoursing about this issue (again, among a vast and exhausting sea of them) needs to take a few fundamental things into account.

First, the American media (as a large portion of readers are relying on) simply does not report this stuff. Look at what’s happening in that godforsaken country right now; does it really seem like the kind of place that’s eager to tell you about Brazilian museum fires or black-church arson? I’m someone who makes a conscious effort to read the news no matter how depressed it makes me, and I still miss tons of stuff, because it’s not there. The Western media reported on Notre Dame, people knew about it, and were upset. But when those of them who did not know about the National Museum of Brazil learned about it, they were also upset. We can definitively say now that the National Museum was a bigger and more irreplaceable tragedy in terms of what burned. But we were also apparently 15-30 minutes away from losing all of Notre Dame. You can be upset about both these things. You can express empathy for the history lost in both cases. There is not a greater moral value attached, and you’re not racist for caring about Notre Dame if you heard about it first (unless you’re only upset about Notre Dame for reasons related to race or perceived cultural superiority and are peddling vile conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims intentionally burning it down, in which case you are a racist). Almost everyone who learned about the National Museum fire was just as horrified.

2019 is a hard and monstrously unfair and tremendously difficult place to live. The internet has made exposure to both all the information and no real information at all simultaneously possible. Not everyone can display active engagement and empathy with every tragedy everywhere. People have jobs, lives, kids, work, school, other commitments, mental and physical health to look after and even when they read the damn news, there’s no guarantee whatsoever the news is going to report it. If they haven’t made the conscious effort to search out every scrap of terribleness that exists in this hellworld, they.... really should not be shamed for that. If they don’t care even after they learn, that’s another debate. But again, in my experience, most people do. But if they are first exposed to it by someone claiming they won’t care, that makes them less likely to engage with it, and to want to enact meaningful change. Firing wittily sarcastic takedowns at easy targets on echo-chamber liberal Twitter is one thing. We all enjoy a good roast and venting our frustration at times. But as a long-term engagement strategy, it’s going to actively backfire.

I talk a lot about being a teacher, and my experiences with my students, but it’s relevant again, so here goes. The kids in my classes come in believing some pretty strange things, or they flat out don’t have a clue even about what I consider basic historical knowledge. If my reaction was to shame them for not knowing, when they have expressly come to me to learn better, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bad teacher. My strategy, whenever a student can actually be nudged to answer a question, is to pick out whatever correct thing they said. Even if the rest of the answer is wrong and we need to work through it, I start by highlighting the part of it that was right, and to build their confidence that I’m not just going to tear them down when they respond. Freshmen are scared of not knowing things and to be made to look like an idiot, so I try to assure them that I’m not going to do that and I will constructively engage with their contribution and treat it seriously. You can then move to dealing with the other parts of it that may not be right, or even Mmm Whatcha Say side-eye. It is a long and often frustrating process and sometimes after reading their essays, you wonder how much of an impression you made. But if you actually want to get people to care about things, you can’t mistake Ultimate Wokeness or Look How Progressive/Anti-establishment/Enlightened I Personally Am for the simple requirement of being a decent person. You can have the greatest and most necessary beliefs or value systems in the world, but if your response to people is to lash out at them even before they begin the conversation, you’re setting yourself back. And I know that’s not really what you want to do.

This should not be interpreted as some wishy-washy “everyone just needs to be nice to each other!!!” kindergarten-playground-rule. I frankly think the whole system could use a good nefarious dismantle, and you sure as hell don’t get there by mistaking insipid moral equivalence for necessary action. But accepting the existence of people different from you, and considering how you want to engage with them, and understanding that issues are complicated and people are flawed, is a fundamental part of being a mature adult (and this has nothing to do with chronological age; there are 15-year-olds who are plenty more mature adults than 50-year-olds). I honestly do love the desperate desire to make people care, and that, for the most part, is why people who identify as liberal or left-wing do so, because they want to (and they do) care. But it’s also why they can be bad at winning elections and getting into meaningful positions to enact this change. The right wing stays on message and sticks together. Even if they absolutely hated Trump, plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for him anyway. The left did not do that. The greatest virtue of liberal thought, i.e. its determination to include multiple perspectives, has increasingly reduced it to smaller and smaller camps where only the purest survive, like some kind of ideological Hunger Games. It might be great for making yourself look good to your hall of mirrors, but.... not so good for actually doing something long-term.

Once again, this is not to blame anyone for being upset and worried about things, for wanting people to know about them, and so forth. But I am gently-but-firmly suggesting, in my capacity as old, salty, queer spinster academic aunt, that perhaps you consider how you start the conversation. Once again, it’s my experience that most people want to know and want to care, but there are countless factors that mean not every bad thing in the world will be acknowledged everywhere by everyone at all times. You can care about different things for different reasons. That is okay. You can care about something because you have a personal connection to it. That is also okay. You can not care about something because you just don’t have the capacity and are emotionally exhausted and there’s so much shit in this world that you have to compartmentalize and set boundaries. That is also okay.

For example, I was obviously very upset about Notre Dame, and still am, though I’m relieved it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Am I happy it’s going to be restored? Yes. Am I unbelievably angry that a half-dozen of the elite uber-rich could just suddenly throw billions of euros at it for its restoration, when it had to struggle for years to get funding for crucial renovations? Yes. Do I feel as if that if the vaults have suddenly been opened to restore one major European Christian landmark, it’s incredibly heartbreaking that that level of instant capital just won’t be addressed to actual endemic, long-term issues like global warming and social inequality and the Flint water crisis and whatever else, and that this is a sad and troubling message for our society in many ways? Yes. All of these things exist together. And I imagine most people feel the same way.

In short: I realize this is the internet, and therefore just is not designed to do that, but maybe we can give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, and think about how we would like to educate and engage those we come in contact with, whether virtually or in reality. We can do it wherever and whoever we are, with anyone that we meet, and I wonder what it would be like if we did.

#hilary for ts #history #notre dame #Le Discourse #anyway yes #i just felt like it needed to be said #nothing particularly original perhaps #and it has been said before #but still #long post

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taleslations · 5 years

Text

Tales of Xillia Short Story; Wingul

After six years, I’ve finally finished translating Wingul’s side story! You might have read excerpts on my blog already, but this is the whole thing. Many thanks to my proofreaders, @thehostilecredence, @lydiemalen, @guardianoftime and @overflags ♥

Just in case Tumblr messes with the formatting, I’m including a link to the doc here.

Contents warnings: canon-typical violence, blood, vomit, mentions of suicide, character deaths.

This short story introduces a number of new characters:

Nils Frieden: Wingul’s retainer and best friend. The story follows his PoV.

Lars Long Dau: Wingul’s father.

Yan, Ying and Bruno Long Dau: Wingul’s uncles.

Wings of Remembrance

❖ The Birth of A Prince

Countless nights of festive banquets followed the first cries of the baby.

On silver plates, piles of beasts hunt all over Auj Oule just for that day. In golden cups, the amber glow of exquisite liquor. Round tables were buried under victuals. The grandeur of the feasts was carved into young Nils’ memory forever.

Nils was growing up in the territory owned by the Long Dau, one of the most prominent clans of Auj Oule. The Long Dau clan held considerable renown and power in the northern continent and ruled over many smaller clans in the region.

According to legends, the Long Dau were the descendants of one of Kresnik the Sage’s seven sons. This meant of all the clans of Auj Oule, the Long Dau were among the ones with the most noble, divine, worthy name; they were one of the most fit for reigning. This was the burden placed on the shoulders of all who bore its name.

But for ten long years after he had succeeded the previous leader, Chief Lars had failed to produce an heir. As he had three younger brothers, one of them would succeed him in the case he died childless, but none of them could hold a candle to him.

In a society where power and influence were dependent on one’s name and physical strength, the lack of a proper heir could signify the decline of a clan. For that reason, the birth of a prince was Lord Lars’ most fervent wish, and the fact that Lin safely came into this world held a great meaning for the Long Dau’s future.

The future chief was sleeping defenseless in his cradle, watched over by a bright young child. He was yet unaware of the enormous burden he would have to bear on his frail shoulders, and was a symbol of hope for the people.

Lin Long Dau, heir of the Long Dau patriarch, just born. Nils Frieden, retainer of the Long Dau, four years old. Their first season of water.

Nils’ mother had been the Long Dau queen’s dresser ever since she was a young girl and was thus allowed entrance in the palace despite being a commoner. Being a lady-in-waiting was a great honor for an unmarried girl, but Nils’ mother never misused her position, and her cheerfulness, modesty and eagerness to learn earned her the queen’s recognition. As a result, everyone in the palace doted on Nils. That is how, when Lin was born, Nils was chosen to be his playmate and promised the honor of being his bodyguard in the future.

One day, his mother learned the meaning of the prince’s name from the queen, and told the story to Nils in secret. According to the queen, “Lin” came from a word that signified “reincarnation” in an ancient language. This referred to one of the legends of Rieze Maxia that said that the souls of the departed crossed the realms of the human and spirit worlds to be reborn as a new life.

“Prince Lin’s name,” his mother had added after finishing her explanation, “is the essence of the world itself. It is a most noble name.”

Nils had never seen a spirit or the flow of souls, but he thought that no name was more befitting the heir of the Long Dau. To him, the little prince was both noble and divine, and he admired the wisdom of his brow, the fairness of his cheeks and the beauty of his ebony locks. There was no greater joy to him than the prospect of serving and protecting his young master.

Powerful men and their successors were distinguished in both literary and military arts–or so propaganda said. In a world where a ruler’s very person was a symbol to the people, their image was often glorified. However, if one was to scratch a little under the surface, one would often discover that they were as plain as day, and that the flattery was nothing but empty words dispensed to make them appear impressive.

Lin, however, was without exaggeration a child prodigy whose name would be engraved in Long Dau chronicles.

When he was learning to speak and to walk, he looked like little else than a blubbering baby always running after his big brother. When he was old enough to play around all day, however, Lin started to catch up to Nils despite their age gap, up to the point that their positions eventually reversed.

If Nils himself was bright for his age, he was nowhere near Lin’s level, whose fountain of wisdom seemed bottomless.

The young prince learned to read and write with Howe’s philosophical theses, sharpened his mind with the movements of pieces across a shogi board, and could often be found in the armory, a military strategy book in one hand, questioning officers about past battles. The soldiers, weary of his nit-picking questions, eventually begged Lord Lars to hire him tutors who would keep him occupied in the domains he had taken an interest in.

And it was not just scholarly matters. Lin also showed no little interest in the arts. Works that one would normally never see in Long Dau land were gathered around him from all over Auj Oule–and even the whole of Rieze Maxia. Raised with such top-class elements, Lin honed his culture and sensitivity, while Nils was blessed with a kind of education his status would have never allowed, all thanks to his young master.

The two boys were like two parts of one whole and could only be seen in the palace hand in hand.

Lin always looked serious, his expression sharp like a blade, his black hair flowing in the wind like silk threads, but Nils’ cheeks were always rose-red as his blond curls swayed from the rhythm of his laughter. The two of them ran around in the garden like puppies and cuddled together at night like chicks.

Lin understood the value of knowledge more deeply than most adults, which was unusual among the Long Dau ruling class.

As was the case with his father Lars and the previous leaders, prowess in battle was usually what determined someone’s worth in the Long Dau clan. Lin’s father and uncles all believed that subjugating one’s opponent in battle was the ultimate way to prove one’s power. Military tactics elaborated on a desk or political maneuverings were considered a thing for cowards who had no confidence in their own strength, and it was believed that leaders had to make a name for themselves through the flapping of standards and the clash of steel against steel.

Once Lin reached the age where he could wield a weapon, he would have to prove his power as the son of Chief Lars the Great and would most likely be thrown into rough fights whether he liked it or not. That is, at least, how it would have been had the Long Dau–had Auj Oule itself–continued on the same path. However, the world was starting to move towards a big upheaval.

❖ The Battle of Fezebel

For many years, relations with Rashugal had been at a standstill, but talks of an imminent invasion were recently spreading.

Rashugal was a major country in the South of Rieze Maxia, separated from Auj Oule by the Fezebel Bay. Unlike Auj Oule, where various clans divided the country, Rashugal was united under the single rule of House Fenn. Rashugal, which was trying to expand its influence under a strict political system, must have been looking for some time for a chance to round up Auj Oule, which was always too absorbed in old-fashioned clan squabbles to notice what was happening on the other side of the sea.

The battle was predicted to take place in the Fezebel Outback, the only slip of land joining the two countries. Lars Long Dau was chosen as supreme commander by the Auj Oule king and was tasked with assembling an army to crush the enemy.

Skillful and robust warriors from hundreds of clans rallied under Lord Lars’ banner. The Long Dau capital was overflowing with men in heavy armor, and feasts for victory were being held every night at the castle for the patriarchs.

Blending with the more famous clans were the Outways, a small clan from the north. It was only a few days before they all departed to the front that a boy only twelve years of age came to an audience on behalf of their aging chief. As the Outway clan was small, it did not have enough warriors to fight on its own and would therefore enlist under the Long Dau banner, following the command of the young substitute.

Since Nils was a commoner, he was only allowed to watch the audience from afar. The boy, Arst, was the same age as himself. He was tall—perhaps the size of a small adult—but lean and quite clearly still in his growth phase. He did not look very reliable. He would probably look more like a true warrior in a few years after his muscles developed, but for the time being they were still invisible under his war attire.

Lin’s father and uncles were listening to Arst’s words with a serious look, but they were laughing inwardly. To oppose Rashugal, they would need to dispatch everyone regardless of standing, but, in their minds, the boy before them would be nothing more than a decorative leader. He would be surrounded by faithful aides, and after swinging his sword a little, he would go back to camp to play commander. That way he would be able to say he participated in his first campaign.

“Look at them, a small clan that fell to poverty a long time ago, trying to put on airs… And all they can send us is a kid. This is ridiculous.”

“We could assign him to Lord Yan or Lord Ying’s unit and let him learn the hard way what a true battlefield is.”

“Hey now, if he runs from us crying, we’ll be regarded as poor babysitters!”

After the audience was over, the four brothers and other court officials were freely sharing mockeries of the boy, and delighted laughter could be heard from everywhere in the room. Lin, however, did not seem to share their mirth, keeping silent instead. His face was paler than usual. Even though he was often trying to act mature, he was still an eight-year-old child. He must have been intimidated by the rough atmosphere.

“Oh my, it seems that this was a bit too much for Prince Lin. Do not worry, my prince, all you will need to do during this war is wait for reports on your mother’s lap.”

The laughter resumed. But Lin did not pay any attention to the mocking adults and grabbed Nils’ arm with a trembling hand.

“You must be tired,” Nils said, trying to be reassuring. “Don’t worry about all this.”

“Nils. That man from the Outway clan… I have a bad feeling about him.”

Nils stared at him in disbelief. “He’s only twelve, like me!” he almost said, but the look in the young genius’ eyes silenced him.

No one at court took Lin’s worries seriously. But it would not be long before they would pay the price for their arrogance.

The clash between Auj Oule and Rashugal, later named “The Battle of Fezebel,” ended in a painful draw. The Fezebel Outback, located in a usually stable spirit clime, was engulfed by a giant tsunami that swept away men and horses alike. Both armies suffered tremendous losses. The countless soldiers’ families and friends, who had sent them away to battle and would have expected them to at least die with honor, were deeply wounded in their heart. Territory disputes thus ceased for a while.

Many years later, the world would learn that this tsunami was caused by the spirit Maxwell’s fight with another world’s army when they to breach the schism separating the worlds. However, at the time, no one could have known about such events far beyond their imagination.

Right before the tsunami struck, Auj Oule’s army had breached one of Rashugal’s flanks and was encircling the enemy, excited by the prospect of victory. Clans who were used to fighting each other had been thrown into a sudden alliance, and as expected, this unity did not last. Thinking only of claiming glory for themselves, the different clans made hasty attacks, and as a result reacted too late to the arrival of the tsunami. All the clans, from the Long Dau on down, suffered great damage.

Though he himself had miraculously survived, young Arst’s unit was completely annihilated. Many leaders were saved while their men perished, which was something to be expected on a battlefield, or so everyone thought at the time.

❖ Chief Lin

As the confusion brought by the war died down, Arst’s accomplishments came to light. It was said that he led his troops to wipe out a regiment of the Rashugal army and threatened the famous Ilbert the Conductor’s perfect record. If not for the tragedy that then struck, they might have broken through Rashugal’s defenses and led Auj Oule to victory. He was also said to have sensed the tsunami coming and pushed for a retreat to safety before it was too late.

Other rumors said that he took advantage of the confusion of the disaster to murder the Long Dau officer who had ridiculed him in front of the leaders and caused his warning to be ignored.

The allegedly murdered man was one of Lin’s relatives and, like Nils, was one of his attendants and friends, though he was older. He was also engaged to Arst’s sister. Taking their situation and history into consideration, it was hard to imagine that Arst would hurt him.

After they had lost so many men, discord between the big Long Dau and the small Outway clans worsened. However, the vague fear that Arst inspired in the tsunami survivors was now deeply ingrained.

It was not just because of his prowess in battle. Rare were those who possessed the natural talent to steer their ship through the most terrible of storms without working to acquire the necessary skills. If Arst was indeed one of such people born with the natural ability to lead, chances were high that he would soon threaten the delicate balance which supported the world of Auj Oule. The best course of action would be to subjugate him while he was still inexperienced—before he realized that he was strong enough to hold his own.

But in the end, Arst’s youth dulled the judgment of those around him.

Three years after the Battle of Fezebel, the boy succeeded his father and revolted against the Long Dau, the surrounding clans under his command, much to the surprise of the ruling class.

Hearing that he had been betrayed by the kid of a small clan indebted to him, Lars flew into a rage and gathered a punitive force to subdue him. However, despite boasting that he would demonstrate how they were on a different level when he left the castle, the patriarch did not make a triumphant return with a weepy Arst in chains—instead, he came back in silence, his corpse wrapped in a bloody banner. Merely three years after his first battle, Arst had slain the renowned chief of the great Long Dau clan.

Arst’s goal was not to seize power of the Long Dau clan for himself. He held a greater, revolutionary ambition—to accomplish the unification of Auj Oule, something no one had ever succeeded. In Auj Oule, which was ruled by blood and tradition, his ambition was expectedly seen as laughable. However, his voice eventually became an inspiration and started to stain the land. Even King Merad of the ancient and most noble Sarakhs clan was considered as a possible target. Moved by Arst’s unprecedented great cause, many people gathered under this youthful man who led them into battle with excellent skills and wisdom, and they formed a military force that transcended clans and factions, which they named Taurus.

After Lars’ death, Arst’s name had become some sort of taboo that created an uneasy atmosphere in the Long Dau castle every time it was mentioned.

“Lin.”

Nils was extremely worried about Lin, who had just lost his father. He was destined from the start to become head of the clan, but he was only eleven and still grieving his father. It was far too soon for him to assume the succession.

“Are you all right?”

“Am I all right?! Define ‘all right’.”

“...Don’t push yourself. Lord Lars was so strong, and yet he was killed in battle. We should have listened to you that day.”

Lin’s eyes, which until then were looking at the distance, suddenly focused on Nils.

“But I’ll protect you, I promise. If Arst Outway comes to get you, he’s definitely going down!”

Nils smiled awkwardly, trying to cheer him up, but his words did not have any effect on Lin, who looked down again.

“My uncles are completely obsessed with the idea of slaying that man. They won’t listen to anything I say. I will probably have to fight too in the near future.”

When Lin looked up again, his face, illuminated by the moonlight, looked like he had suddenly aged ten years.

Like Lin had predicted, Yan, Ying and Bruno Long Dau embarked on a quest to avenge their brother and capture Arst. The young man’s plan for a new Auj Oule and his foundation of Taurus sounded like a daydream to Nils, a sweet story that would have tempted him if he had been born in a lonely village. But to him, who had the duty to support and protect Lin and the Long Dau’s glory, it was nothing but a lie. According to Lin, their control was already greatly disturbed from the moment the young man had started doubting the system. In that case, Arst’s existence was not something they could tolerate, for the sake of Lin and the Long Dau’s glory.

However, even at this time, Yan and the others were not paying attention to the changing times brought about by Arst. Their aim was to humiliate and execute him, then put Lin on the Long Dau throne with themselves as regents, and reap all the power for themselves.

They ignored all the tactics Lin suggested, such as manipulating public opinion, feint operations, siege formation, or even the most basic marching tactics. They acknowledged Lin’s uncanny ability to move pieces on the strategy board but were convinced of their own superiority due to their long experience in actual combat.

They believed that they could crush Arst by sheer force of numbers, even though Lars himself had not been able to defeat him. That led them to their demise. In the year that followed Lars’ death, Yan and Ying were slain one after the other. Lin led a punitive force against Arst to avenge them and managed to corner him several times with his unconventional tactics, but suffered defeat due to the noble generals’ propensity to protect their own interests. The youngest brother Bruno, who had been sent out to subjugate Arst, met a most disgraceful end when he lost control of his horse and fell into a ravine while fleeing the battle.

The Long Dau lost all influence, and following Bruno’s death, many courtiers and nobles chickened out and fled the palace. Arst was now being called “Gaius,” which meant “He Who Pulls the World Behind Him.” His power was increasing steadily. Some ran to his side and swore loyalty to him in self-defense, while others placed their bets on the winning horse hoping to expand their territory. Although she had stayed strong after Lars’ death, the Long Dau queen committed suicide, unable to bear the sorry sight of the court anymore. The castle was losing its shine with each passing day.

All that was left by Lin’s side were a few loyal retainers like Nils or lower class nobles who had missed their chance to retire.

❖ The Battle of Mon Highlands

With Gaius’ rise, the Long Dau, who used to be respected as one of the most powerful clans of Auj Oule, were on the verge of collapse. Despite this, more than a thousand soldiers stayed under Lin’s command and wished to retake the honor of their clan by fighting Gaius alongside their young chief.

To Lin, this war was a way to avenge his father, uncles, and even his mother who had chosen death willingly. One year had passed since their first defeat, and Lin had perfected his strategy, to the point where he managed to corner Gaius’ army in the steep mountain ranges of the Mon Highlands. Under the skillful command of the young chief, whom his men had taken to call “The Little Strategist,” the tactics of Lars’ time, which relied exclusively on force and were often nothing but a waste of resources, endangering the lives of the soldiers unnecessarily, were deemed useless and abandoned. The morale of the men going into battle was high.

Nils was standing near Lin and was looking at his slender face as he was waiting for the enemy’s move, observing the formation he had built on the snowy land. It was a little hard to believe that Gaius would let himself be surrounded so easily. He probably had a plan. But then Lin had probably already foreseen that possibility. He could not possibly think of ending it with a draw...

The wind was getting stronger. Thinking to fetch a fur coat for Lin, he turned toward the officers’ tent, but at that moment he felt a presence. To his surprise, he saw none other than Gaius himself appear on a small hill with a few soldiers.

He looked brazenly defenseless for a young man now at the head of a big army. Gaius still bore some resemblance to the boy he had caught a glimpse of five years before, but the way he made his presence noticed was completely different, and Nils felt overwhelmed. Lin, who had noticed him as well, simply said to wait. The time when they exchanged formalities through messengers was over.

Gaius eventually entered the enemy lines and approached Lin. If Lin were to throw away his honor, it would be possible to take him down here. However, Gaius looked like he did not fear such possibility.

“Lin Long Dau.”

Gaius’s voice was imperious.

“Call back your troops. The ground here is soft. If your men continue advancing northward in large numbers, they will most definitely cause an avalanche.”

“Lin, he's probably just trying to get out of a difficult situation. Don't listen to him,” Nils warned, forgetting his place.

But Lin simply asked coolly: “I don't understand. If you are speaking the truth, why aren't you using the situation to your advantage?”

“I am not one to be blinded by victory and cause the death of excellent soldiers through underhanded tactics. They are precious warriors who will one day support my country and help me forge a path for the good of the people.”

Nils heard Lin draw a sharp breath. He, too, understood what Gaius’ words evoked—the terrible tragedy of Fezebel from five years ago.

“I do not wish to adhere to an old-fashioned system that clings to name and birth. I want to build a country where the strong show the way to the weak and help them achieve happiness. I do not wish to lose the people who would become the foundation of my country simply because they are currently my enemies.”

“Are you telling me to trust the words of a seventeen-year-old boy?”

“Yes. I am talking to you, who are now facing me at barely thirteen years of age. To you, Lin of Long Dau, renowned descendant of the Seven Sons of Auj Oule, who succeeded your father at the young age of eleven.”

Nils felt Lin tense at the evocation of his father’s death, and unconsciously stepped between them to shield him—or was it to contain his murderous impulse?—but the imposing youth was not finished speaking.

“Your father was blinded by glory and came back home having lost many men to the tsunami. All because he had discarded my words as the whinings of a child and ridiculed me.”

“...If I had participated in that battle, it would not have ended in a painful draw. I would have led Auj Oule to victory. And I would have slain you there and then.”

“If you had been leading instead of your father, the outcome of the battle might have indeed been very different. And the more you corner me with your brilliant tactics, the further ahead you push me.”

Having said everything he had come to say, Gaius turned on his heels. Nils called out to Lin but received no answer. Eventually, Lin issued a single order sharply.

“Call the troops back to Dargu Gate.”

The troops were confused. Gaius’ army was right there. Had Lord Lin lost his nerve?

The officers did not bother to hide their bewilderment and their complaints as they urged the soldiers to rebuild their formation and retreat. As if it had been waiting for this very moment, a wave of snow started sliding down the slope, as if a part of the mountain itself was collapsing. It destroyed the tents easily and engulfed the carts and wicker trunks. The mountain’s rage eventually subsided after what seemed like an eternity. In the distance, one could see Arst’s red armor, shining vividly in the color of blood.

That night, Lin and Nils were resting in one of the tents they had managed to salvage from the avalanche.

“Nils. The Long Dau will submit to Ars—to Gaius.”

“Lin, no! If you do that, what will become of the Long Dau clan? Think about the court, Lord Lars’ legacy, your beautiful language... You cannot do that!”

“It is not like everything will be lost. However, the clan has already fallen. I could not protect my father nor stop my uncles. This is my responsibility. Only a fool believes blindly in his superiority and endangers his clansmen pursuing a goal for the sole purpose of self-satisfaction. It is like waving a flower in the darkness and deriving glory from its torn petals. Such a commander is only worthy of disdain.”

“I’ll fight! Even if I’m the only one left standing, I’ll fight to protect the Long Dau’s honor! You can’t bend your head to that arrogant guy. Please order me, Lin! For you, I’ll kill him, even if I have to die in the process!”

Nils had unconsciously grabbed Lin’s shoulder when talking, but Lin shook off his hand and replied.

“Nils, I’ve made my decision. ...If you are not happy with it, leave.”

Lin’s words seemed cold, but Nils felt as if he was apologizing.

Apologizing? To whom? To his father Lars, who had used the clan as he pleased? To his mother, proud and wise, who had encouraged his education? Perhaps to the countless nameless soldiers who had lost their lives on a battlefield?

I don’t need your pitiful repentance. All I want is to protect you. You, my precious master who brought your clan to an end at such a young age.

Lin...

Nils knelt down and took Lin’s small hand into his own, then brought it to his forehead, while tears were silently running down his face.

Lin submitted to Gaius, ending the Long Dau’s rule for good. There were many courtiers and nobles who had already switched over to Gaius, so the ones that remained adjusted easily to their new circumstances.

A few years later, Gaius gained control of Merad’s main base, Kanbalar, and proclaimed the birth of a new Auj Oule. This event was known as the “Dawn of Auj Oule.”

Lin, who had received the title of “Wingul” in the meanwhile, was tasked with defending the throne and its new king. Nils’ precious friend, the wing of the Chimera, now led tens of thousands of soldiers with his legendary talent. That sight was both sublime and pitiful to Nils.

Gaius did not make a distinction between those who swore loyalty to him directly and those who gathered under one of his allies, and respected pre-established relationships. Those who were loyal to one of Gaius’ followers rather than Gaius himself, like Nils was to Lin, were allowed to keep working under their previous masters. Past quarrels were meaningless in the face of Auj Oule’s unification, which would finally be completed with the death of Merad, who was biding his time for a counterattack. The conventional walls that divided society in classes and clans were crumbling down.

“Is that what it means for the world to change?”

Lin quietly chuckled at Nils’ pondering. Nils could see his cheeks were white like wax behind his hair.

The Long Dau court was no more.

One day, Lin headed for Xian Du with Nils and a few guards. The Kitarl clan, founders of the city, had been in disorder ever since their patriarch had been killed by one of their young men. The clan was shaken by internal strifes which had Gaius worried. Lin, however, had more expectations for the clan than strictly political ones.

Like the Long Dau, the Kitarl were respected as one of the Brilliant Seven, the most powerful clans in Auj Oule. According to the legend, their origin dated back to over two thousand years ago, though there was no proof of their existence further than a few hundred years. Still, it was quite clear that their history was much older than that of other clans. They had settled on the soil of Auj Oule a long time ago and forged its prosperity and culture. This was an honor both the Long Dau and the Kitarl shared.

However, while Rashugal was walking on the way to prosperity thanks to measures introduced after it became one single big nation, Auj Oule had slowly been falling into decline.

Lin turned to Nils.

“Nils, can you see that building over there? Between those two summits.”

“Yes. I can’t believe they built something like that up there. It’s the coliseum, right?”

“When he was twelve, Gaius achieved victory of the tournament of that year.”

“When he was just twelve… That’s why he was so strong in the Fezebel war?”

“His opponent in the finals was the heir of a large clan, so his victory was never officially recognized. Unlike the Outways, that clan had power and influence.”

At the time, Gaius’ life had been ruled by his name, and his fate decided by others. He must have chosen his way in life because of all these experiences. Hearing Lin talk about Gaius’ past as if he empathized, Nils felt a pang of jealousy.

“Do you know the name of this flower?” Lin suddenly asked, pointing to a flower on the side of the road.

“…No. It looks a bit weird, doesn’t it?”

The flower had clusters of colorful petals attached to the stem.

“It is called a ‘gladiolus’ and is also known as the ‘sword lily’,” Lin explained as he dismounted from his horse. He walked to the flower and picked it.

“A Kitarl tradition is to offer this flower to the warriors who go to fight in the coliseum.”

Nils and the guards stared at Lin, waiting for the rest.

“The bell of battle that resounds through the battlefield. The cries of frenzied souls. The bitter grudge of the women who, unable to bear arms themselves, can do naught but bury their sons and husbands. For a very long time, the land of Auj Oule was governed by blades and blood. I think that this flower should become a tribute to the memory of those who have lost their lives thus. Gaius is seeking a new Auj Oule, not one that is built on a mountain of swords but one that lies beyond the tears and the carnage of war.”

When he was finished, Lin attached the flower to his horse’s bridle. The horse shook his head in discontent at first, but eventually resigned itself to sporting his new ornament.

❖ Booster Development

With Lin, Nils and the other men, Gaius suppressed Merad’s army, and Auj Oule was finally united as the Auj Oule united territories. During the Battle of Arklund, their forces seized the laboratory installed in the Labari Coal Mines, where they learned of the existence of a strange weapon using rare spirit fossils. They set out to understand what it was.

According to their own scientists, it was a weapon that enabled artificial control of mana. However, the captured rebels could not tell them much about it, as those weapons had been supplied by Rashugal, and they did not know the details of their conception—they only cared that it was a powerful weapon. Since their numbers were few for their rebellion, that was more than enough for them, and they did not care about how it worked.

That is how research about “boosters”—tools to amplify mana for a more efficient and general purpose—started.

Over the span of two years of testing on animals, their practical use came to light. But since the “basculer,” a main component of the device, was to be inserted directly into the brain, a human test subject would have to be chosen with utmost care if they hoped to make progress.

Nils was scared. At that time, Lin had just suffered serious injuries from his defeat against the murderer of the Kitarl chief. Lin had not taken this defeat as a simple humiliation, but as a sign that he was too weak to serve as Gaius’ aide. Lin excelled as chief councilor, but when it came to the sword, Nils was much better than him. Once you got past his guard, he was easily defeated.

But this was Lin. He was likely to do something reckless out of his excessive sense of responsibility and self-sacrifice. Eventually, as Nils feared, Lin volunteered himself as a test subject with no regard for his own well-being.

“Are you kidding me? You are the Long Dau king. What kind of king would sell his own body!?”

“Former king. Now I am just a man who has offered himself to Gaius. Besides,” Lin added after a moment, “I want power.”

A blood-curdling scream resounded in the laboratory. The life-or-death experiment on a live person had fortunately managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, but that was the only good news about it. Words could not describe the scene they were witnessing.

Unable to bear the abrupt condensation of mana, Lin lost his mind and cursed in Long Dau, screamed in pain, and threw up vomit and blood before his head dropped and he passed out. It was a good thing that they had preventively restrained him. If his limbs had been free, in madness and agony, he might have either slit his own throat or massacred everyone in the room. Even though he usually was a master at self-restraint, Lin’s mind seemed to have been completely broken by the demon in the booster.

At first, connecting to the booster for a few seconds had such a toll on his body that he needed over fifty hours of rest to recover; it was the height of torment. But with repetitive use, his boosted state stabilized, and he eventually could keep a relatively clear mind. Every secondary effect caused by the mana surge, such as his personality change and his hair turning from ebony black to white like an old man, was closely monitored. At the rate they were going, the device would soon be able to be put into practical application.

After a while, they implanted the booster directly in Lin’s brain rather than use the basculer to connect to it. The device was now truly part of his body.

Nils, who had only been able to watch him go through those painful experiments and surgeries, secretly wished to become a test subject as well. He thought he could alleviate the burden on Lin if he was not the only one to shoulder it. His fears of breaking his mind or injuring his body were nothing compared to what he felt when he saw his precious Lin suffer.

…But Nils had next to zero compatibility.

Thanks to Lin’s sacrifice, booster performance skyrocketed, and they were even able to get equivalent results from wearable devices without relying on dangerous implantations. At the same time, they started gathering children from all over Auj Oule to help with the experiments. Those children, who had lost both parents due to war, famine or other tragedies, would be completely taken into care in exchange for their involvement in the development of those weapons, which was still incomplete, though now relatively safe. The booster institute Lin was in charge of was, at that point, operated in utmost secrecy, as it could influence Auj Oule’s fate greatly.

There were still many mysteries about people’s mana lobes. The scientists explained that not being able to use a booster did not necessarily mean one’s spirit artes abilities were lacking. However, that did nothing to alleviate Nils’ distress at being unable to share Lin’s pain and prevent him from shouldering all the burden on his own.

What came as a severe blow was the appointment of a second aide by Gaius’ side, equal to Lin. The man who thus received the title “Jiao” was none other than the one who had beat Lin and cornered Gaius—the giant from the Kitarl clan. The former patriarch murderer had cleared his name and become chief of the clan, and, of all things, was allowed stand side-by-side with Lin as Gaius’ hand.

It’s because of your folly that Lin got involved with this booster stuff!

Those men raising weapons together despite their various feuds for the sake of lofty ideals were, in some way, extremely rational, though it could be said their self-control bordered on tenacity. At the same time, Nils could not be the one to stand by Lin’s side despite wishing for it more than anything. But despite his increasing sense of futility, Nils kept fighting.

❖ A Small Hope

It was around that time that he met a little girl. New children were being brought to the institute regularly, so it was not unusual to see new faces. However, this particular girl’s gaze strangely took hold of Nils’ heart. She was quiet and looked intelligent, with loose curls and a beautiful face. But it was not her cuteness that touched him, but her lonely expression, reflected in her sad eyes. It seemed that the other children were keeping distance from her.

At first, he thought it was because she had just arrived, but after a while the situation showed no sign of improving. According to the researchers, the girl had astounding booster compatibility and her test results broke all records. That caused the other children to be jealous of her, which is why they avoided her.

Without realizing, Nils started speaking to her.

“Ah… Are you ‘Test Subject Number One’?” the girl asked, surprised.

Test Subject Number One. That was Lin. It made sense. Indeed, Nils’ blond hair looked like how Lin’s hair did due to the booster’s side effects. Lin’s slender build was different from Nils’ tall body, but adult men must have all looked the same in the eyes of a child, at least as long as they were not close.

So that was how it was. Trying to explain would be bothersome, so Nils simply nodded. In fact, if he had been able to participate in the tests, he would have probably received the title ‘Test Subject Number Two’ or something like that, so it was not a complete lie.

“…Everyone left. They told me to go away. That they would catch the gloomies if I got close. …I’m a bad girl,” she said. She was fidgeting with the hem of her dress—folding then unfolding it, stretching it then folding it again, as if she believed that she could enter their circle if she just made the perfect fold.

“How can I make friends with everyone?”

…It’s not your fault. It’s this world, created by the adults’ selfish ambitions! he almost replied, but he swallowed his words. The children had all lost their way and had all acquired the “right” and “duty” to live in this institute. It was better for them to do well here.

Nils himself had wished to be part of it.

“It’s difficult to express how you feel, isn’t it?”

“…Yes.”

“If words are too hard, you can find other methods. Like a smile, or holding hands…”

“I don’t have to speak?”

“You need courage to speak to someone face to face, don’t you? I think it’s okay to draw strength from something else in such a case. It doesn’t change how you feel, after all.”

After telling her that, Nils took the girl’s strange doll and made it move and talk. “Hello! I’m your best friend!”

“Ah ha ha, that’s funny!” the girl laughed.

From then on, Nils would talk to the girl every time he saw her. The doll was later turned into a booster and now talked on its own and expressed the girl’s hidden feelings, becoming a good partner for her.

“It seems that you are giving special attention to one of the test subjects,” Lin suddenly asked him one day.

“It’s nothing. She doesn’t get along well with the other kids, so I was a bit worried,” Nils answered.

Did Lin think Nils was carefreely playing with children while he was suffering from the side effects of his own booster?

Even within the children’s society, social interactions were difficult, especially since many were bearing deep wounds in their hearts. Nils wanted to believe that anyone would want to relieve them a little.

“It could hinder the experiments. Please stop meddling.”

“I’m sorry if I overstepped. But you don’t have to put it that way. Besides, she was all alone, yet no one else stepped in to help her.”

“An adult showing her special attention would have the opposite effect. It would only cause unnecessary problems.”

“But Lin, to heal a broken heart, you first need to give it a place where it feels safe. Didn’t all those children come here because of tragic circumstances? If we only focus on results and ignore their fears and anxiety, it would be like trying to plant seeds on dead soil. If we want them to bloom, we need to provide them with water.”

“Too much water would cause the roots to rot. You don’t need to go out of your way to treat them like children. They will find their way on their own.”

“No! Plentiful water makes trees grow and strengthen their roots. We need to nurture them for them to bear fruit!”

Nils refuted all of Lin’s cold arguments.

There was something he had always wanted to say.

Ever since you started walking alongside Gaius, you became sharp like a blade. But you’ve pushed yourself too far and started distancing yourself from those who care about you.

“You were burdened by determination and unwanted responsibilities and had no choice but to become an adult at such a young age. I’ve witnessed your pain from up close, and I’ve always wished I could take it from you. But these children are different. They don’t know anything about complicated matters like the sake of the country or diplomacy or anything like that. They’re just fragile, ordinary kids who don’t even know how to spell their own names.”

Memories of his childhood flashed almost painfully through his mind. The Long Dau lands full of heath fields which they ran around. Lin’s face, swaying between small purple flowers in a sea of grass spreading over the thin ground.

At the time, none of them would have imagined that their kingdom would fall, that their days would be filled with sadness. They just played and laughed and hugged each other to their hearts’ content and thought the only thing they needed was a promise to always be together.

“This is the only place these children have in the world. They’re not able to climb up the steep cliff on their own. They’ve bet their whole life and happiness in this dark closed world. They don’t care about results or abilities or whether we achieve our goal.”

He pictured the girl’s shy smile.

“Please, let them find happiness.”

His dear friend, who he’d valued as much as his life for as long as he remembered, was slowly getting out of reach. Lin’s heart was far away. That is why seeing Jiao—their former enemy—stroll into the institute as if he owned the place was painful to Nils.

He apparently had a connection to one of the children, which was why he sometimes asked to visit the place. He was now one at the peak of his power as one of Gaius’ direct subordinates. Instead of leaving that child in the institute, Nils thought that he should take her in and offer her a blessed life.

One day, upon learning that Jiao had arrived, Nils confronted him alone.

“I’ve heard there’s a kid you know here.”

“Did Wingul tell you? Well, it’s true that I know her…”

For all the noise he made, he was looking down with a complicated expression. There was now no trace of the violence he had displayed during his duel with Lin, but thinking about what Lin had endured then, Nils could not help a sarcastic remark.

“You’ve become a big shot now. You should just adopt the kid. Or maybe you don’t actually want to be associated with children struggling in a place like this?”

“Don’t say that. You know how my life is. If something happened to me, she would lose someone dear again, and that would definitely break her heart.”

“Don’t try to deceive me. This is just a convenient excuse.”

No, that’s wrong. I’m just taking it out on him.

“To begin with, I can’t even face her. I’m the one who brought tragedy unto her.”

Jiao refused to say more. He must have been referring to some specific past incident, or perhaps talking about the chaos the country had been plunged in for over ten years.

And that chaos was partly caused by the Long Dau clan itself. Many loyal soldiers who followed Lin’s vision had been killed by Gaius’ men, leaving mourning families behind. Lars and his brothers, on their end, used to squeeze villages dry when they commandeered supplies for war. Even before, for a very long time, countless famished people could not survive winters. No matter who won, war only left people’s lives in ruins. Nils wondered where he would have fallen if he had not been serving Lin closely.

“I’m sorry, Jiao,” he whispered, ashamed of the way he had used him to vent his conflicted feelings.

Jiao buried his face in his fur collar, as if to hide his eyes.

On a moonlit night of early Amnis, voices warning of intruders resounded throughout the facility.

They were only a handful. However, the enemy was clearly used to battles. They employed the guerrilla tactics of insurgent tribes and their discipline outshone that of regular troops. They were thoroughly trained in peculiar ways and passed through the defenses with ease.

To top it all, their weapons were very strange. They did not just fight physically but also used artes, yet there was no sign of them emitting mana or reciting incantations. It was possible to shorten casting time of high level artes, but this did not seem to be what they were doing. Their weapons opened fire in silence and killed their targets in an instant.

Massacre was not the intruders’ aim. After killing the guards who had had the misfortune of crossing their path, they did not look back and went forward, deeper into the facility. They were no doubt here to look for the boosters.

In that case, the children needed to be brought to safety immediately.

Jiao and Lin were in the laboratory. In other words, if the enemy reached their target, they would be found by both men at once. They would be like mice in a trap, and one could feel sorry for them, but they would only have their bad luck to blame.

An unfamiliar man appeared in Nils’ field of vision as he was running, his weapon in hand. The man was wearing a dusty jacket and a long scarf. His eyes looked empty, as if he had given up on life.

When Nils pulled out his sword and turned toward him, he felt a burning pain in his chest.

“Sorry. I’m in a hurry,” the man said in an empty voice.

Despite how small the weapon was, a single shot had been enough for Nils to stiffen and struggle to breathe. Blood was oozing off his chest, like he had been pierced by a sword.

He crouched down, and eventually lay on his side. The sound of hurried footsteps and a battle reached his ears. The explosive sounds that resounded through the hallways from time to time must have been coming from that weapon that had wounded him. The commotion eventually died down, and silence fell.

“Nils.”

That was Lin’s voice, echoing through his spinning mind. That monotonous, yet warm voice he cherished so much.

“…Yeah. ‘m fine. Jiao?”

“Don’t worry, all the children were evacuated safely. The little miss is safe as well.”

He could feel their presence nearby, but it was too hard for him to turn his head in their direction.

“Nils, don’t close your eyes. If you lose consciousness, you won’t be able to come back.” Lin voice was calm, but he was white as a sheet. “I promise you, I’ll revive the Long Dau clan one day, just like you always wished. So please…”

“Lin. The children… make sure they’re happy,” he rasped. “Just like we always were…”

Lin opened his eyes wide as if he had been hit in the chest, and nodded vigorously.

Satisfied, Nils sighed and lost consciousness. That single strange wound in his chest was a fatal wound.

The institute was closed soon after the attack, and the children were moved to another establishment, where they were given warm care under the supervision of Wingul of the Chimeriad.

After that, Wingul started calling himself the Ebon Wing of Auj Oule. No one knew if the single wing’s imagery was alluding to his position as Gaius’ right-hand man or to the fact he was mourning the loss of his closest friend, his other wing.

Lin Long Dau, former Long Dau chief, 27 years old. Nils Frieden, his subordinate, 31 years old. Their last season of water.

#tales of xillia #wingul #wingul the nova #nils frieden #xillia characters #xillia stories #credit: yumexhanabi

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absynthe--minded · 5 years

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an excerpt from the intro to The Great Fandom History Mess

Who Am I?

I’m Absynthe - absynthe--minded(two dashes) on Tumblr, nelyafinwe on Pillowfort, walksnfoxs on Twitter. I’ve been in the Tolkien fandom since I was nine, lurking on fansites and on deviantART. I joined Tumblr in 2011 because I wanted someplace to post my Polyvore outfit creations, and quickly found myself immersed in the Phantom of the Opera and Labyrinth fandoms. In 2012 I reread the Silmarillion (my last readthrough had been when I was twelve) and read The Tempered Steel by Lyra on Silmarillion Writers’ Guild; I consider this to be my entry into the fandom. I lurked and mostly reblogged fanart from character-specific tags until 2013, when, inspired by the Tumblr blog incorrectlesmisquotes, I started Incorrect Tolkien Quotes. People loved it, and I became quite successful over a period of months, and because I wanted friends I sought out greater involvement in the Silmarillion fandom at large. By the time I was interested in joining the fandom, the first Hobbit movie had come out, and I gave up on my preferred Third Age focus since it was almost entirely dominated by the fans of that film. I wasn’t part of any of the big cliques, though I followed and reblogged from people all over the fandom, and my experience of The Drama was largely one of a relative outsider. I still consider myself a relative outsider, as very few people talk to me even now despite a fairly impressive follower count and a high level of likes/reblogs on both my personal blog and ITQ.

Why Do You Want To Do This?

Well, the short answer is that people who entered the fandom after it all went down are asking about it. People are wondering why certain questions cause drama, why certain bloggers don’t want to talk about certain subjects, why certain arguments always escalate into high pitched shouting matches. And because I was seeing much of this play out from the perspective of a fringe-dweller, I figured it would be helpful to pass on. I realized quickly, though, that I only had one perspective, and as a result any account I gave would be biased. So I sought out input from others specifically because I wanted to give a more balanced account. I don’t want to misrepresent any point of view, and my goal is solely to give the “next generation” (so to speak) a lesson to learn from. No names are attached to this examination, and I’m doing my best to refrain from passing judgment. Real people got hurt, and many of them want to move on with their lives. They should have that right. I will also say that I genuinely didn’t know how harmful and personal it got - I was anticipating stories more like mine, of dogpiling and isolation and general dispassionate cyberbullying or dismissal, not the intensely personal harms that were done. As a result, my focus and scope of this project has changed - I’m limiting discussion of those specific harms because the goal is to document fandom trends rather than catalog harassment or anger, and I’m not going to be naming any names, not even those of the people who gave statements. I will also say that I’ve since realized that I was older than quite a lot of people involved, and I wish I could have used that age and experience to do more to deescalate the problems. It’s... it does hurt to know that so many people were badly hurt. I wish I could have stopped it. And if I get to a point where this project is only going to hurt people, I don’t anticipate I’ll continue. At the end of the day, fandom history is important, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of peace of mind and healing.

#the great silm fandom history project #I was getting in way over my head and I am genuinely shocked and heartbroken to hear about the wrongs that were done

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megashadowdragon · 5 years

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jaune will have an uncle who is partly based on jin from blazblue

Monty Oum was a huge BlazBlue fan and based Penny’s fighting style (and possibly her origin as a robot girl) on Nu and her Murakumo Unit “sisters who were made with souls like how penny is a robot girl with a soul) with those floating swords her weapon is divine radiance murakumo which starts off as a big sword it turns into 8 floating blades surrounding the user, and their armor. . and I think qrow with his giant sword that can turn into a scythe may have been inspired by ragna whose giant sword can turn into a scythe

and yang xiao long took inspiration from bullet (their weapons

who appeared before her Bullet was included in the JPN 1.0 arcade version, which came out in November 2012, while the Yellow trailer was June 2013.

So yeah, it’s impossible for Bullet to have been inspired by Yang, and there’s a greater-than-zero chance Yang was inspired by Bullet, especially considering that Namine from Dead Fantasy 6 (8?) copies moves from Nu 13 (the most obvious is Nu’s 5C).

both of them had someone disappear from their lives tager ( who lost his memories ) and raven ) and they chased after them going around trying to find info but while tager cared about bullet raven straight up abandoned yang.

the seemingly minute differences between Aura/dust and Magic is a leftover from how Ars Magus and Magic work in Blazblue.

, Qrow is basically just a color inverted, older version of Ragna the Bloodedge, down to their weapons.

the finale of Volume 6 has a LOT of similarities to the ending of Chronophantasma, what with the heroes fighting a giant artificial enemy bring about a change in the protagonist.

hawkeyedflame . tumblr . com/post/152581160728/on-rubys-elusive-character-development-or-why

“ jaune is a foil To Ruby. She’s a prodigy who quickly became a deadly warrior at a young age and is welcomed into Beacon two years early as a result while Jaune is a hard worker who progresses slowly and had to lie his way into Beacon because of his nonexistent combat background. Ruby is a strategist specialized on pre-defined team attacks and wields a self-made weapon capable of long range combat. Jaune is a tactician specialized in creating new team attacks according to his analysis on the battlefield and wields a family heirloom only capable of close range combat. Ruby has a rather broken family but they fully support her decision to become a huntress while Jaune’s family is large and united but they don’t support his choices nor have any faith on him. Ruby is a tomboy who dominates the battlefield but doesn’t enjoy dancing whereas Jaune tends to act girly and is initially terrible at fighting but also a great dancer. The more you look into them as a pair, the more contrasts that can be spotted in the details.”

jaune has a more “feminine way of dealing with emotions” while ruby has the more masculine way of dealing with emotions

aminoapps . com/c/rwby/page/blog/why-its-good-for-jaunes-semblance-to-be-a-support-type/xpp7_XQ4s2u6RGX2zboa6JwM2XMekWGZd68

“Joan of Arc is known for breaking gender stereotypes about what it meant to be a woman. And if you think about it in a lot of ways Jaune doesn’t fit into the stereotypical “man box.” We are don’t “men don’t cry.” He wears his emotions on his sleeve. While in the real world men (and in the world of RWBY BOTH men and women ARGUABLY) are told to be strong. And that many people superficially equate physical strength with heroism (Raven?) it is fitting that Jaune’s semblance doesn’t so much doesn’t so much empower himself, as it empowers others. (as well as himself but its more effective on others in the team since they are more skilled than him) The so called “Feminine” strength.” P.S. Hmm as a follow-up to my The Importance Of Foils Part 2 post. I think that Ruby, despite being a girl, fits into the “man box” better than anyone else including it’s UNHEALTHY WAYS OF DEALING WITH EMOTIONS. The only difference is on remnant, it’s not because a man doesn’t cry. But because “a hero doesn’t cry.”

ruby first activated her silver eyes leading to her to learn about them when she saw pyrrha jaunes partner impaled by cinder and burnt to ash failing to save pyrrha her awakening being in reaction to her death while jaune activated his semblance and realized what it was when he saw rubys partner weiss impaled by cinder and was able to save her life awakening his semblance to do so allowing him to learn what his semblance was ( which is a good example this is an example of them being foils and how its been shown and effected their storys )

and as rubys foil it would fit for jaune to also have an uncle who is based on a main blazblue character except rubys uncle qrow is honorary while his is biological and jaunes uncle will be based on jin kisaragi ( who was called the hero of ikagura and for the jin from an alternate timeline

becomes one of the six heroes hakumen ( who was the leader) and jaune wanted to be a hero like his father and grandfather etc and jin fell in love with a red haired woman ( who uses a spear) who ended up dying in an alternate timeline for the alternate jin who ends up going back in time and ends up becoming hakumen ( so it would fit for jaunes uncle to reference him along with the connection with jin and ragna ) who is blonde with blue eyes and practices iaido he uses a sword with power over ice so it would be fitting if jaunes uncle uses a blue sword made of ice dust.

@tsff21 @blackhakumen

@undeadwicchan

@kaen-ace-of-ravenclaw

#rwby theory #rwby #rwby meta #jaune arc rwby #rwby jaune arc #rwby jaune #Jaune Arc

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marginalgloss · 5 years

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the penknife through the boards

‘...days, even weeks later, he was sitting on the grey pebbles of an island, one of the innumerable cold grey Chonos islands, sullenly training his glass not on any wildly exotic migrant but the commonplace resident blackish (but white-footed) oyster-catcher wading about in search of its living. Farther along there was another, a lacklustre female; and neither betrayed the slightest interest in the other: clearly this was not their breeding season, whatever the snipe might think...He fixed it with his telescope, and there indeed was Jacob looking at him through another and making signs – untimely mirth? Whatever the signs were they were very soon lost as the brig rounded yet another great sea-worn cliff in the direction of Surprise, and Stephen’s attention was at once seized by a very noble sight – two black-necked swans flying steadily south, quite low over the water, so low that he could hear the rhythmic beating of their wings. ‘I cannot just sit here, watching pale-footed oyster-catchers,’ said Maturin aloud. ‘But what other course is open to me?’’

Blue at the Mizzen is the last book that Patrick O’Brian finished before he died in 2000, aged 85. There would be another unfinished novel published posthumously but, having worked my way slowly through this series, I don’t feel I need to read it. By all accounts it ends mid-sentence; I doubt it would contribute much in the way of what is fashionably called closure. As it stands this final book ends on a pleasingly optimistic chord. But there is nothing final about it, no sense of an ending close at hand. The writer Jo Walton has written an excellent series of short blogs on this series, and in her assessment of this one she mentions how it seems like O’Brian would have gone on writing this series as long as he drew breath. It’s hard to disagree.

With Napoleon out of the picture, the plot here is effectively a fictionalised re-telling of another episode from the life of Lord Cochrane, namely his role in the fight for independence of Peru, and the creation of the Peruvian navy. Earlier novels have mentioned this for some time, and the politics of it are quite complicated, but for the reader it is largely an excuse for an epic transatlantic sea voyage from Britain all the way to the Pacific. By this stage O’Brian’s descriptive writing is not what it was, nor is his pacing, but it’s solid, compelling stuff. The gentle wash of his long sentences, with their curious pedantry, nested sub-clauses and old-fashioned elegance, is never less than charming.

Even at this late stage, the author is setting up characters to play a greater role in future instalments (though of course there would be none). Christine Wood returns to Maturin’s attention and affection, and there is Horatio Hanson, the son of a Duke who is reluctantly accepted by Aubrey as a midshipman. Hanson redeems himself on a number of occasions, almost to the degree of being set up by the author as a sort of apprentice to Aubrey. There’s even some nice scenes back in England with Sarah and Emily where it seems inevitable that we must return to them at some stage to witness another stage in their lives. Here, more so than in the preceding novels, O’Brian really seems to be taking an interest in the younger members of his cast of characters.

It ends with something of a bang. There’s a big battle, and Aubrey is quite badly wounded in the melee. In fact he comes out of it far worse than in any recent confrontation. But once word of his exploits reaches home, his dream is granted, or at least he achieves that measure of security which he has long craved: he is made a proper admiral. Thus, I imagine, he sails home a hero. (That is assuming Jack survives his wounds. In another version of this story that happens only in my mind, he dies on the long journey home. But I can’t imagine O’Brian ever countenancing such a thing.)

Maturin has done all right, too; Christine Wood might have refused his initial proposal of marriage, but she does so in such a way that seems to leave it an open question. I imagine a future in which they live together in a sort of celibate, platonic ideal of more-than-friendship, residing perhaps in a quiet wing of the greater Aubrey household. There is a very striking sequence in which Maturin believes he sees a vision of Christine, while riding alone in South America:

‘On the next stretch they passed through an invisible barrier into a thinner, cooler air, and there were his – not illusions: perceptions might be the better word – of Christine again, clearer and sharper now, particularly as she moved across a dark wall of rock. A tall, straight, lithe figure, walking easily and well: he remembered with the utmost clarity how, when she was reading or playing music or training her glass on a bird, or merely reflecting, she would be entirely apart, remote, self-contained; and then how she would be wholly with him when he moved or spoke. Two strikingly different beings; and the delight in her company, as he delighted even in the memory of it, seemed to him essential happiness, fulfilment. Of course he was a man, quite markedly so, and he would have liked to know her physically: but that was secondary, a very remote stirring compared with gazing at this phantasm – this now remarkably clear and sharply-defined phantasm against the rock-face.’

This passage also serves as a fine summary of the relationship between Jack and Stephen. Two strikingly different beings delighting in one another’s company – each entirely apart, alone, yet coming together in movement and speech. This is about as intimate as people can ever get in O’Brian’s world.

***

I’ve now written something about all of these novels. (Unfortunately tumblr does not provide me with a convenient way to list them, but you can find all the pieces by clicking on this tag.) Summarising them turns out to be easy, in a way, because they are so continuous that after a while one blends into the next. They are so very much part of a greater whole that in a very real sense they might as well be part of a single endless manuscript. The final part of it might have been lost but that detracts little from what remains.

These novels are timeless in the sense that when you read them you forget the order in which they were written. There are machinations of plot, but these are mostly incidental. Nothing is allowed to disturb the beautiful essential routine of naval life in the early nineteenth century. Bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast, and coffee. The practice of gunnery in the afternoons, at captain’s expense. Port after dinner and toasted cheese in a silver dish, followed by a duet between cello and violin. There is something comforting about all this. The books are formed around a conservative vision of life which seems alien to life in the twenty-first century. It might even have seemed alien to most people in the nineteenth century. You could say with confidence that these books belong to no time at all.

It is the opposite to when we call something ‘dated’. When we say something is dated, we mean we notice the cultural residue of the time it was made in the details of its production. Almost all films and popular music are dated because they are reliant on era-specific technology as a means of reproduction. Most novels are also dated, for different reasons. O’Brian’s books are not dated. The first book was published in 1969, and the last book was published in 1999, and you would never know this from reading them. There’s no crack in the text against which we can press ourselves to glimpse the twentieth century drifting by.

Perhaps there’s a pedantic argument that says this cannot be the case. Perhaps we can find literary techniques at work in these books that would have been totally alien to a reader in the Napoleonic era. This may well be true. But what I mean to say is that these books do better than most in allowing the author to entirely disappear within them. Better to say, in fact, that the books themselves — all twenty-odd of them — speak with a singular voice best ascribed to the books, and not the author. It is as though they wrote themselves until one day they stopped.

But of course they didn’t really write themselves. In the last few years of his life certain facts about O’Brian came to light that were, at best, embarrassing; at worst, a minor scandal. We learned that he left (or abandoned) his first wife and child while the latter suffered from a disorder of the spine. He may have lied about being an intelligence agent and he may have lied about his sailing experience, or at least his did nothing to correct those misapprehensions amongst his fans. His name was not even O’Brian; his Irish ancestry was, apparently, a convenient fiction. Little of this is awful enough to be placed beyond the category of ordinary human failings, though much of it seems strange, or even cruel. But once known it is difficult to forget about. And if Master and Commander was published tomorrow it seems inconceivable that the same author could escape similar scrutiny for so long.

Today we expect artists to be good people. We need them to be exemplars of quality. We need to admire them. Our expectations for them are higher than they are for politicians or other public figures. It used to be the other way around: the politician would be crucified in the press for cheating on his wife, while artists could sleep with whomever and ingest whatever in the name of expanding the boundaries of the possible. Now, we already expect the worst of politicians. We expect them to lie, to cheat, and even to misbehave in their personal lives, perhaps because we have grown accustomed to accepting the line between personal and professional conduct. But the artist must be always at work. And we want them to be everything we can’t be: happy, secure, modest, successful. With moments of excitement, perhaps, but for the most part we want them to be dependable, capable, calm. We want them to be honest.

All of this is what is so appealing in O’Brian’s novels. Theirs is a vision of a world at work which is also, somehow, a work at rest. It is a very old English vision: the peasant in his field, the craftsman in his shop, the soldier at the gates, and the lord in his tower. All capable, calm, and happy in their understanding of what the world requires of them and how they must relate to it. The ideal mood is of things ticking over under the oversight of a supremely competent leader. An authoritarian? Well, perhaps. Democracy is certainly out of it; revolutionaries and radicals of all kinds are never to be trusted in these books. How much better to be ruled by a benevolent king of some sort. Rule by consent, of course, but it must be a rigid, unspoken sort of consent.

There is something wonderfully comforting about all of this. To give yourself over to someone else — to put all your trust in your own well-being in the judgement of that person — this is what these characters do for one another. The ship is only the symbol of all that: the thing which endures through ingenuity, in spite of everything, even though it is so desperately fragile. There’s a line somewhere in those books where Maturin remarks that he feels safe within the thick timbers of the HMS Surprise, and a seaman laughs, and says that there are parts of the Surprise so thin you could push a penknife through the boards and find the ocean. It is a haunting image, but a resonant one. The boards are always so thin.

#books #patrick o'brian #blue at the mizzen

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tinkdw · 6 years

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hi tink ^_^ was wondering if you think both endgame human!cas and endgame angel!cas are both valid interpretations? im genuinely interested as I can't see the whole human!cas being a thing, and I'm open to learn more if you think that's what is actually going to happen. idk his experience as a human was miserable, i feel like maybe im missing something?? :0 u dont have to answer this if u dont want, as it may cause wank. ty

Hi!

Here’s my “overall” Cas meta from a while ago, nothing’s changed and a few other meta writers added to it so it’s a good view I think as to the whole concept:

https://tinkdw.tumblr.com/post/165781313412/why-do-you-think-cas-should-becomechoose-to-be

It’s a really crappy topic for divisiveness, in my experience the people who have, relatively, as much as possible, objectively analysed the author intent in the show have come to a pretty solid conclusion within the meta community that Human!Cas appears to be endgame based not on his experience as a human but the outcome, his overall arc since season 4 and the Chekhovs gun style flamingly blatant reminders throughout the show such as the repeated asking him if he wouldn’t rather be human, his choosing to be an Angel to go into battle powerful enough to save the people he loves and putting what he wants to one side and his clearly not wanting to be a soldier anymore.

It’s kind of like saying endgame Dean is for him to be emancipated and being able to openly watch Oprah and Disney etc even though on the surface he says he doesn’t like that stuff. Because the pretty obvious sublimation is there.

With Cas the sublimation isn’t quite as clear but it’s really all there. Yes he suffered as a human but he literally came out of it and said he missed it, while previous to being human he was curious and wanted to try human things (eg kissing meg) and afterwards we’ve seen him actively choosing to act more human, smiting less and fist fighting instead, acting more human, I mean the big one for me was when Dean asked him “and you’re okay with that?!” When he told him he got grace back to be able to fight and he just totally brushed it off saying he needed it to fight:

https://tinkdw.tumblr.com/post/171244776157/kanayaks-tinkdw-cas-i-got-my-grace-back-i

He later takes more grace which he had been previously rejecting but only to save Dean and then took his own grace back when again it’s needed for a fight whilst telling us the quote that the craziest thing a man can do is die.

He’s literally saying he’s killing himself / his wants for the greater good.

He needs grace for the fight and to be a good useful soldier and to save his family but does he want it?

Want v Need.

One of the biggest themes of the show.

Cas needs his grace to be useful when times are hard but is that what he wants?

In my opinion the show has repeatedly emphasised that it isn’t. I also think it’s clear he doesn’t want to be a soldier anymore and these things go hand in hand.

Others may use canon to say they think it is. Both interpretations are totally valid as long as they are based on canon and actually analysing the canon in a consistent manner.

The issue I have is certain people cherry picking and projecting their stories into it and claiming it’s an overall Cas’ arc since inception meta. That’s just not how meta writing works.

You can absolutely write that stuff but you can’t claim it’s objective and fully inclusive of canon and logical when it is just picking parts that fit your own desire for the character. Like, I didn’t want Lucifer to be centre stage in s13 but I didn’t just ignore it when it was.

Cherry picking things ie the one time Cas said “I just wanna be an Angel” when he was depressed, distraught at Dean’s death and wanted to stop feeling things as proof it’s what he really wants isn’t what I’d call meta writing of the whole story. That’s like saying Sam really wants to be a hunter and tag along beside his brother in the impala on the road for the rest of his life because he was a depressed, vengeful mess after Jess’ death and said ok let’s go. Is it really what Sam wants for himself and the rest of his life though? No way! That’s been clear too.

Even worse when some people claim to be bullied or triggered by other view points. Someone even screenshotted a few sentences I wrote that if you took away the top and bottom sentence looked like I was making no sense and anti Cas (me anti Cas. Lmao) but in the context obviously made sense and decided to create a wank storm about it because they didn’t like human cas meta and wanted to make me look bad. People need to grow up. This isn’t a meta discussion about interpretation it’s being a dick and being unable to contemplate another interpretation.

It makes a discussion totally impossible which moots the entire point of blogging on tumblr in the first place.

Absolutely all interpretations are valid, it’s just a case of how you pitch your interpretation. If you want to state your interpretation of a character absolutely go for it! I used to be all up for Angel!Cas meta until a few utter assholes decided to be personal and ridiculous about it. Now I don’t touch it with a barge pole. Same as M*gstiel.

But that doesn’t invalidate anyone’s good, thought out, canon analysing endgame Angel!Cas meta.

For example my own interpretation of the siren episode is different to many other meta writers, we can discuss it and have polite and great conversations without getting triggered / defensive because we aim to discuss author intent, our own interpretations and do so in a civil manner. There’s one meta writer in particular I’ve had altercations with in the past over some differences of opinion on speculative things and ways of writing meta but who I get on well with, admire and like talking to because we are adults and literally get over it.

There’s also a few people who unfortunately though I agree meta wise about things on the show have been so nasty irl to myself and others that I’ve cut them off completely.

Interpretations are interpretations until they are canon, I’m lucky that most of mine have become so or are clearly on their way but I can also be wrong ie I thought Asmodeus would be more important to character exposition than he was, life moves on. I also didn’t realise quite what it would mean that he would be a Bucklemming own concept and not really used by anyone else, I thought perhaps he’d be used by others by the wasn’t, now I have that knowledge in my pocket meta on anything that sets up for Bucklemming use is kinda meh don’t bother analysing it much it’s probably not hugely important to the overall story being told by the showrunner, ie Nick.

All interpretations are valid is very true. Eg. I can interpret Cas’ story as a metaphor for a queer kid (and in particular trans) coming from a conservative family and emancipating themselves and someone else can interpret it as an immigrants story.

If the show starts changing this then I will change my meta, because my meta is an analysis of what the show is doing, not what I want. For example I never wanted Dean to be queer representation, I was totally heteronormative and would have been totally cool with him ending up alone or with a woman, it’s the show that made me want something different for him through consistent and repeated canon blatant hints at something else. Same as Cas, I was totally ready in season 4 to just like him as a cool character and for him to bog off back to Heaven after being useful but he was captivating as an ally and it grew from there. For ages I would totally have put to one side the hints at a romantic part of his story and loved for him to become the third brother, it’s the show that made me see more between him and Dean, I never would have imagined that myself, I was a boring heterormative adult more interested in the individual characters’ stories than shipping, I thought shipping was just maritime transferral of goods before I was like wtf and googled Destiel after 10x05 cos I’d finally found a name for what I’d been seeing evolve for 6 years.

Sam goes for Cas’ own individual arc and what he wants. I never had a clue what I wanted from him until the show told me what I should want by repeating something clearly over 10 years. If they suddenly change any part of the story then they change it (and I’ll be annoyed they changed something so entrenched but I’m not going to bitch @ tptb for it or whatever, it’s their choice, they’re the creator and once it’s changed I’ll meta that) but so far it’s been the same, clear story to me for 10 years.

An interpretation is an interpretation but it’s when you start, as I do and some others do, saying you believe this one is the authors intention that you have to be more careful about backing it up with canon and logic and not getting #triggered when someone disagrees.

If you’re going to pitch it as what you believe the author intent is then you have to leave your personal projections at the door and work solely based on the canon, the production, what the author may have said outside of canon etc. It has nothing to do with your own wants for the character or show.

It also means when someone has valid canon supported arguments to the contrary you can have a really interesting discussion and I love that.

#meta writing #meta discussions #meta #what gets problematic is when ppl cant see past their interpretation or attribute it to the author based on nothing concrete and wildly #speculate or bash other interpretations based on actual analysis of canon #i know i look like im aggressive but 99.99% of the time im hitting back at #ppl being dicks #because no #ill scroll by to a point but start tagging tptb on twitter or using main tags here for unfounded wank #or screenshotting my meta to take it out of context to start your own wank #is just bullshit behaviour and i have zero tolerance for it #human!cas

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kaylabliss · 6 years

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Since I'm posting again...

I figure I'll post about why I've disappeared from Tumblr for about a million years. I missed all you people that I don't actually talk to but enjoy seeing posts from.

This year has been total shit. I don't know what my last "update" was, but I doubt anyone else will remember either.

I'm finally on ADHD medication (as of November), which has made a very slight difference in my ability to function. However, I'm thinking of asking for something different. I'm on Adderall XR, and I'm wondering if Vyvanse would be more helpful. It costs twice as much, but if it helps, it would be worth it.

Despite taking daily amphetamines, I've gained even more weight and I'm at my highest weight since pregnancy. (I'm not taking Adderall for weight loss, of course, but it would have been a really nice side effect. I have little to no appetite, but I still eat way too much because depression anxiety and laziness.)

In January, we found out Toys R Us was closing. My partner has been a supervisor there for ten years, so this was a pretty devastating blow for us. His last day was in April. Fortunately, he was only unemployed for about a month. In the week after TRU closed, he helped a local mom and pop toy store owner move some shelves that they'd bought from the TRU liquidation. That got his foot in the door, and now he's actually making more money there than he was at TRU.... To the tune of an extra $250 a week. Better yet, they love him. And his boss? Small world, he was my favorite patient at my old job. So we're going into this with me already knowing and liking his boss! And a fun bonus: when new movies come out, they rent out entire rows at the theater and all the employees and whoever they want to invite can go see it. Eric went to see Solo with them-- I've been trying to convince him to go out and do things with people for literally our entire relationship, so I was THRILLED about this. Also, the store sells mostly older collectibles, so when he saw what his toys were worth, he was psyched. He sold two of his old action figures this week for $400, and he gets 60% of that on consignment.

The salary increase and extra money is great, because in February, my car broke down. The transmission died, and as it was a POS 1996 Lexus, it would have cost four times what the car was worth to fix it. So we've been sharing a car, which has been difficult, but thankfully both our jobs close at 8 and we're right across the street from each other. While he was still at TRU, he was sometimes getting off around 10, which meant keeping my daughter out way too late. But now we can start saving for a down payment on a car, and actually afford car payments without having to live on ramen.

Also in February, his mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. This has been hard. Last week, she had her final surgery to remove the cancerous mass from her lung. She came home on Thursday and she's doing well. Aside from the anxiety over her diagnosis, this has been hard in about a dozen other ways. She had some moments where she was legitimately scared that she wouldn't get to see Shilo grow up, and this was made even harder when she lost her hair. She looked different, and Shilo acted scared of her. I don't know if she was having trouble recognizing her or what. And then to top it off, they've always been pretty well off financially and have always been able to help out their kids when needed-- including us. But there was a lot of things their insurance didn't pay for, and they had a $100 copay for each radiation treatment for six weeks. We haven't needed help with money, thankfully, but under normal circumstances they may have been able to help us get a new car. They also missed their granddaughter's graduation in Texas, which I know was disappointing. Eric's unemployment was actually helpful though, because he was able to stay home with Shilo for the greater part of his mom's chemo and radiation.

All that aside, there have been a lot of daily stressors and disappointments for me. I don't know how much I should really go into here, since someone could stumble into my blog.... Eh, I think I have it locked from public view, so.

One of the biggest things that bugged me was my mom. I didn't get to see her for Christmas because on Christmas eve, it was more important to her to go pass out coffee at a local men's shelter. (I know it sounds noble, but sometimes I wonder. She's wound up dating several of the men there.) I had to work on Christmas day. I didn't see her until the end of January at my niece's birthday party. She didn't bring Shilo's Christmas presents with her, because we had planned to do lunch before the party but neither of us felt well enough for it, so she decided not to bring the presents. I brought her and Lily's presents, because I knew it could be a while before we could get together, and it was already a month late. After that, she said several times she would come over with them. One day, she had told me she was going to be down the street at Walmart and would drop by... She actually called me from Walmart to ask me for diet advice.... And didn't come over when she was done.

In May, she finally just brought the presents to me at work, because she was at a dentist appointment in the same complex I work in. I didn't ACTUALLY see her until last week.

In all that time, she knew about all the crap I've been going through, and she hasn't checked on me one single time. In fact, the week after my car broke down, she called me to brag that she had traded in her perfectly good, brand new car for an even newer car. This was particularly infuriating to me, because I was busting my ass working overtime and working every single holiday and I was barely making rent (forget any chance of getting even a cheap functioning car), but she's on SSDI and is taking on this huge car payment for literally no reason.

Then, when we finally did get together and go to lunch, she spent the first fifteen minutes listing every celebrity who has ever @ her on Twitter (despite me saying repeatedly "I have no idea who that is" and showing zero interest in the discussion because c'mon), talked about herself the whole time, and didn't ask me any questions about how things are going. When I did manage to get a word in, it was about Shilo's behavior at school, and she took over the conversation again to tell me about this place where you can drop autistic kids off for a few hours (but they're not even a licensed childcare facility, which makes me nervous, and they don't list their prices on their website which means I can't afford them). They also have family classes and actives and whatever, but still, I'm sure I can't afford them.

One of the things that really hurt me though? She had been "too busy" to see us for nearly six months, but she had time to make a 400 mile round trip to the other end of the state to spend time with my high school roommate and her children... Two weekends in a row, including on Mother's Day weekend. But yeah, too fucking busy to see her own daughter and granddaughter. When I tried to confront her on it, she was really blasé about it and deflected the conversation.

And? She didn't tell me that she broke up with her boyfriend months ago, and was not living where I thought she was living. In fact, I'm pretty sure she straight up lied to me about it, because she sent me what appeared to be an accidental text about moving, and when I said "wait what, you're moving?" she said "oh yeah from one trailer to the other" (they were living in a trailer park where you can only stay six months due to the sewage system or something, so they bought two trailers so they could move to the second every six months).

It's all made me feel really alone. I miss my grandma, because she never would have treated me this way. My mom is the only "family" I have, and she has zero interest in being part of my life.

Anyway, done with that section.

Shilo has been very violent at school, to a point where we actually got TWO behavior referrals in one day (a slip explaining her behavior and consequences-- usually involves missing recess, having to eat lunch in the principal's office, and/or writing an apology letter). It's been frustrating, and I haven't been sure what to do since I work so much and have my own issues with executive function and lack the ability to keep a stable routine. I'm hoping next year will be better, and I'm going to get a behavior intervention plan added to her IEP so we can figure out WHY she acts this way instead of just trying to correct the behavior after it happens. They do try to circumvent the behavior, mostly using social stories before transitions and things, but I don't think it's working.

Another big thing is that I got my IUD removed, and while I'm pissed about having a real menstrual cycle again, I'm shocked at some of the effects the IUD had on me that I didn't even realize. It turns out it was really dampening my sex drive, and portions of my personality. Suddenly I was interested in sex again and attracted to anything that moves lmao. An increased sex drive is a bad thing for me though, which I won't go into here.... But in short, let's say that it's caused some hurt feelings due to rejection.

So yeah, that's most of it. If you actually read my wall of text and whining, thanks! You're a champ.

#personal #complaining

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seo78580 · 5 years

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17 Charts That Show Where Content Marketing is Heading

I started content marketing in the early days. So early that when I first met the WordPress founder, he had just raised $1.1 million for WordPress.

Fast forward to today and WordPress is worth over a billion dollars.

Similarly, when I first started with content marketing, there were less than 30 million blogs that existed and now there are over a billion.

In other words, things have changed drastically and now it’s what more competitive.

We are at a point where you already know you need to leverage content marketing. But what areas of content marketing should you focus on?

How many blog posts do you need to write? What are the best ways to monetize your traffic?

How can you ensure that what you are doing will work in the future?

To shed some light on where content marketing is headed, I’ve gathered data from 183 companies who are all leveraging content marketing. Each company makes at least 5 million dollars in revenue a year and generates less than $1.9 billion a year.

These companies are in all different sectors, from B2B to B2C, and are part of all the major industries out there. Most importantly, they have been leveraging content marketing for at least 8 years.

Now, I know many of you don’t have a company that generates at least 5 million dollars a year, but the stats and data I will show you are still relevant to your blog.

So, let’s dive into the stats to see where content marketing is headed.

Expect less traffic from social sites

What do you think has happened to social shares over time?

As you probably guessed, social shares have gone down because the algorithms (like on Facebook) really limit organic reach.

In the early days, people saw big lifts in their social share count due to the fact that these social sites were still growing in popularity. But once their growth slowed down, so did the number of times the shares each piece of content generated.

If you are wondering why just think of it this way… when people share content on social sites it drives users off of the platform. By keeping people on Facebook longer (or any other social platform), they make more money as people click on ads.

If you are expecting to grow your blog through the social web, think again. It’s slowly driving less and less traffic each year and you should expect it to get worse.

You need to take an omnichannel approach, but focus on search

Can you guess what’s the most popular traffic channel for a blog?

SEO made up 51% of the blog’s traffic and to no surprise, social media was the 5th most popular channel.

But what was surprising is that referral traffic was in 3rd place at 11% and email was at 9%.

Instead of just focusing on link building to boost your rankings, you should focus on link building to also increase your referral traffic. In essence, you can get more bang for your buck by increasing two different ways to drive traffic with one strategy.

Whether it is guest posting or generating PR, you should try and get as much referral traffic as possible as it creates steady traffic that isn’t too affected by algorithm updates.

As for email, you may think it’s dead, but it’s alive and kicking strong. Remember, everyone who works in the corporate world still uses email.

Don’t be shy about collecting emails. You can use tools like Hello Bar to do this with ease.

Now going back to SEO for a moment… here’s why you have to blog.

As you can see from the graph above, Google has continually shifted from ranking web pages to pushing up content over time. And it doesn’t look like that the trend is stopping anytime soon.

Blogs are generating, on average, 60 to 62 percent of a site’s search traffic. Sure, it’s going to be different for the Amazon’s of the world, but you aren’t them… and neither am I.

SEO is also getting more competitive because there are more blogs popping up and people are creating tons of content. But you have no choice but to do the same if you want to keep up.

You need to build a content marketing team…

Well, just look at it this way…

On average, mid-sized companies now have at least 2 full-time employees managing their blog. It’s because they know content marketing isn’t going anywhere without putting in real effort and you need to take it seriously if you want to grow fast.

And on top of having dedicated employees, the average mid-sized company has a bit more than 10 contractors working on their blog.

Now, I don’t want you to get scared by that number as a lot of those contractors are writing content. They are not working full time… it’s as simple as some of them writing only a handful of content pieces a month.

Or it could be as simple as them helping you produce video content or create infographics.

With your blog, you should consider hiring more contractors as writers instead of hiring full-time employees as it is cheaper.

It’s also more efficient to have contractors as you can scale up and down faster. On top of that, you’ll find that you will save money in the long run as contractors and consultant tends to be cheaper than full-time employees.

You need to write on average 5.7 articles a week

Out of the 183 blogs we talked to, they publish 22.8 pieces of content per month on average.

And can you guess how long each of them is?

Well, they say that if you want to rank on page 1, you need to write content that is 1,890 words.

Most of the blogs we analyzed and talked to all followed one common theme… as time went on, they started writing longer posts.

They are now averaging 2,118 words per post. In 2016 that number peaked out at 2,381 words because people started producing in-depth guides, which caused that number to spike.

But what they found over time is that writing content that is too in-depth, such as guides, doesn’t necessarily guarantee higher rankings.

To give you an idea, years ago I wrote a 30,000-word guide on SEO. Can you guess what page it ranks on for the term SEO?

It ranks on page 2.

Now, this guide to SEO is much shorter and ranks on page 1.

In other words, it is better for you to create more content than it is to create one super long blog post.

Think of your content as fishing hooks. If you have more fishing hooks out, there is a greater chance of catching a fish.

The same goes with blogging, the more content you create (assuming it is high quality), the higher the chance you’ll have of attracting more visitors.

Think of your blog as a funnel.

At the top of the funnel, you want to attract as many people as possible. The more people you attract, the more revenue you’ll eventually end up generating.

As you can see from the graph above, 24% of customers first found out about the company through their blog.

Now, that doesn’t mean they converted into a customer right when they landed on the blog for the first time. More so, they learned about the company first through their blog.

Not only do search engines love blogs, so do people. And the trend is continually rising over time.

Blog readers will boost your conversion rate

When someone reads your blog, it builds trust and causes your conversion rate to increase.

The graph above shows how someone who reads your blog is 74% more likely to convert into a customer compared to someone who hasn’t read your blog.

Advertising is only getting more expensive each year. By blogging more frequently, you can boost your conversion rates.

But don’t expect people to convert right away when they read your blog.

The average number of times someone needs to come back to your blog before they convert is 3.15 times and they tend to convert over a 2-week period of time.

Now, you’ll also find that as you create content people don’t just open up their wallets and give you their money. You need to push them to convert.

The trend we saw is that blogs are leveraging more methods than ever to convert visitors into customers.

Email marketing is the main method bloggers are using, which isn’t a surprise. But the number 2 method is remarketing.

When I dug into it, these companies on average spend $51,409 a month on paid ads. And each year they saw their ad costs drastically increase. But what’s helped reduce their blended CPA is remarketing all of their blog readers.

In the coming years, remarketing will overtake email as the main way companies are converting readers into customers.

You’ll want to leverage this channel as well as it is much more affordable than search ads.

Growth opportunities are outside the United States

What countries do you think most blog readers are coming from? You probably are going to guess the United States or other native English speaking countries.

It used to be that way 10 years ago, but things have changed.

At one point it was 91% but now it has dropped down to 53%. This has also created a trend in which companies are now translating their content to different languages.

It’s taken a while for companies to adopt the concept of globalization with their digital marketing but now it’s catching on fast.

I was able to ride the trend before most people because I got pushed to do so by a Google employee. It was the best marketing advice and it seems to be true for pretty much every blogger out there.

As you can see from the chart above, the biggest traffic gains content marketers are currently getting are from translating their content into multiple languages.

The second biggest gain is coming from updating old content. Content marketing is no longer a game of cranking out hundreds of articles a month. If you want to continually do well, you have to maintain and keep your old content up to date.

When you are building out your content marketing team, focus 50% of their effort on updating old content.

Move over WordPress

The last biggest trend is WordPress isn’t the only content player these days. If you are going to write a blog post, might as well get the most traffic by placing it everywhere.

Medium and Tumblr are also great for content. Remember, Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content. There is nothing wrong with putting content on your blog and then publishing it on Medium and Tumblr a week later.

You can do the same with the social shares… in addition to sharing your content on Facebook, you can publish your whole post a week later on Facebook.

And if you are creating video and audio content you can upload them to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and any other platform that will accept it.

You’ll see huge growth in video and audio content over the next few years.

Facebook, YouTube, and every major platform want their slice of the television market.

Because of that, their algorithms are acting more favorable to content types that keep people on their platform and engaged for hours… hence, you need to expand outside of just text-based content.

It’s also why I’m big on YouTube right now. It diversifies your traffic sources in case you get hit by a Google algorithm change.

Conclusion

If you are going to take one thing from the charts above, you need to focus on translating your content to other languages as it isn’t as competitive.

In addition to that, you need to focus on creating video and audio-based content. Videos have already starting to take off, podcasting isn’t there yet, but it will within the next few years.

I would also tell you to blog, but you probably already have one. 😉

What other content marketing trends have you noticed?

The post 17 Charts That Show Where Content Marketing is Heading appeared first on Neil Patel.

from DIYS https://ift.tt/2UGWDPC

#DIYS

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slowjamsintrafficjams · 7 years

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an update,

For as long as I can remember, its always been me eagerly anticipating what’s next. What’s the next bigger, better, and more exciting thing I am going to get myself into. It was always me looking to the horizon seeing happiness just over the ledge, but never quite close enough to feel fully content.

Lately, maybe because I am entering my “late twenties” (I guess anything after 25 is “late” ew), I have done more life thinking and seeing how planning ahead is actually the only way to get things done. I thought moving out to the big city, away from my suburb hometown, would somehow intrinsically fix all my angst, instead it has only led to more -- its the same but different. In retrospect, I probably moved out for a lot of selfish reasons and did little to no planning for it, but I can chalk it up as another life lesson and be fortunate enough to be able to make mistakes like that and still be able to fall back on my foundation of home and my family.

It has been a very long time since I sat down and took a mental minute to type my thoughts out to the great void of the internet, but I am always glad when the opportunity comes along because it is always feels to refreshing in the end.

I probably haven’t used my Tumblr religiously for 2 years or so, but it always feels like a familiar home when I log back in and scroll through the inspirational photos from other blogs. Instagram has obviously been the platform that most of us have shifted to, but for some reason the feelings I get from scrolling around on Instagram vs Tumblr are very different. Seeing all these bloggers on Instagram travel the world and have the nicest things makes me feel inadequate and self-loathing, whereas Tumblr always feel inspirational and a sense of wanderlust with a touch of appreciation for life. Two very contrasting feelings, so maybe its time I pick up the one that makes me feel more positive feelings rather than the one that leaves me empty and jaded.

I’ve faced a lot of challenges and experiences in the last few years, but none greater than accepting myself and loving who I am for what I am. Its been a journey; to say the least. There have been breakdowns, teary eyed car drives alone at night, multiple therapists, loss of friends, addition of friends, and acceptance from some of the most unexpected people in my life. But everything on this journey we are on has a reason and I am a firm believer in that. Life has been so kind and has shown me a new side to it that I didn't even know existed. Love... just so much love.

Its hard to type these words to myself, but coming out has been one of the best experiences in my life. I’ve seen the most growth in myself in just a short period of time. It’s all been easy by having a partner by my side that has made me feel comfortable enough to even say these things and be the person I’ve always been, but now openly with my friends and loved ones. Its been the true litmus test to relationships in my life. Everyone has shown me so much support and acted like it didn’t even matter, which it technically doesn't. I didn't want that whole process to change how people view me because in the end I am still the same person and this changes nothing about who I am or my values.

I’ve been fortunate enough to only have love and support from my family, friends, and especially my boyfriend who has been nothing but a champ to deal with my continuous tribulations. The world brought us together in the most organic way and we had so many similarities that it was an instant hit from the start. My heart has been so full lately, that I can’t be scared to type these words any longer. Granted, no one will probably see this, but its a big deal to me and its been one of the final steps in this process that I've been meaning to take care of for a while.

For all of those people out there that were always blowing up my inbox (for years) with “are you going to be closeted your whole life?” or “you're so gay, just come out already” --- all I can say is thank you, but I had to do all of these things in my own time and your anonymous asks weren’t going to be the driving force behind me coming out and taking control of my own life.

With that being said, its time to carry on with what I've already been doing and working on myself, making myself better, but also always trying to make those around me better too. Without the support group I had in my friends and family I don't know if I could have done it, to be quite honest. Blessed and grateful are always understated when I use them because life truly is so kind of gracious with me.

live life with the attitude of gratitude and it will be kind to you if you are kind to it

xoxo

ps if you made it this far you deserve an award for getting through that word vomit above haha.

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paranoidsbible · 7 years

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What to do if Doxed

===What to do if Doxed=== Non-profit and free for redistribution Written on May 12th | 2017 Published on May 13th | 2017 For entertainment and research purposes only

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===DISCLAIMER=== The Paranoid's Bible and its writers hold no responsibility for the acts of others. The Paranoid’s Bible is for research and entertainment purposes only. Please visit our blog for more guides and information: https://www.paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Preface=== Many of us fear having the light of curiosity shown on us, be it through being doxed or someone becoming a bit too interested in us and what we're about. Sadly, many people don't take the needed precautions of lessening their digital footprint and removing their information from the internet. A lot of people just let it sit and fester until someone comes along and picks at the infected blister that was a forgotten account or teenage edginess, however not all is lost. If you've read the Paranoid's Bible injunction with the OPSEC, Meta Data and You, Uncle Daddy's Big Book of Deception and Hostman guides, you may have already started your adventure in privacy, yet, if you haven't... well, that's what this guide is here for: To you teach you that it's never too late even if you've been doxed. ***Reminder:*** Don't look at any other guides until you've read this one fully. You may jump the shark and do some actions too early, which could lead to greater consequences. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Stay Calm and Don’t React=== The majority of people who've been doxed had had their information found through simple search engine queries or because they, themselves, provided this information without knowing that they've done so. This is because we've been conditioned by social media and sites like Reddit to crave the instant gratification of arbitrary numbers that come with exposing ourselves online; baring everything we can to the perverse, voyeuristic masses that give us a +1 click on our profiles. Because of this, you've most likely have fell for the meme that the current state of doxing is something akin to CSI's take on hacking. Don't fret, though, most people who threaten to dox someone haven't found the information or aren't willing to use it, ergo relax and don't panic of a threat. Yes, take it seriously, however not all states will grant you the legal power to sue or track someone down in a digital witch-hunt. What you can do, though, is quite simple: Remove your information. Before you remove your information, you must first monitor yourself and the threat at hand. Don't react, for if you do then they get a bigger rise out of you and a reason to actually dox you, or if they already have done so... provoke you more and continue this assault. Simply remember: Stay calm, breathe and don't react. You don't need to defend yourself or get into a digital slap fight on the internet. Just ignore it and learn that by not reacting to any threats or accusations, you deny them one of the things they want the most: You acting out. Now move onto the next chapter. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Realize it’s not always You=== One thing most people need to realize is that it’s not always them but what they are perceived as representing. Due to the political climate being so explosive, people on both sides of the spectrum are targeting each other simply because they can. This means that a Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Communist, Capitalist or Fascist or whatever will be picked out from a series of people on social media and made into an example of what happens to someone’s political or ideology’s opponent. This means you, at any given moment, could be targeted simply because you fit a preconceived image or notion of what someone believes their enemies to look like. It's a small consolation to realize you weren't chosen, possibly, because of what you said or did, however it still means someone was upset enough to target you. Take precautions and start lessening what you say or do online when it comes to specific topics. Choose your battles carefully and wisely. Not every comment or person needs a response. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Identify the Source=== One of the things you need to do before looking toward cleaning your digital footprint is to identify the source of your dox or the leak of your information. While the Paranoid's Bible is a great resource for cleaning up your information and denying anyone access to it, that's a step best to take before being doxed. If you've been doxed or received a threat of being doxed, then you need to ensure your information hasn't been posted by someone within your community or on another website. If someone has posted your dox/information, then you must identify what information they've found. If it's public information, there's not much you can do about it. This information includes your home address, phone number (landline), place of work, place of education, birth date, full name and even your car's license's plate, however while public it is personal information and some websites might actually remove it upon simple request. You must first ensure the website isn't encouraging this or a part of the act taking place. If they aren't, and it's a site like Reddit, then go ahead and ask the administrators and/or website owner to remove your information. If it's an image board or a forum, then don't ask anyone and ignore it further. However do identify what information they have found, as you can work on lessening the damage by removing information that they've yet to found. If the information is private, like passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers or anything similar, then yes, you might actually have a case for a potential lawsuit. ***But Remember:*** It must not be information that was made public by your own actions or a data breach or leak. If this information can be found VIA Google or Bing, then a lawsuit can't take place against the people posting your information but one could be placed against the owners of the database that got breached and/or leaked. Personal information, while both public and private, doesn't matter much because either way it matches one of the above descriptions. So don’t fret so much over whether or not it’s personal information but whether if it’s private or public. Once you’ve gotten that mindset in place, you’ll see how doxing, while quite alarming, isn’t really up for any legal actions most of the time due to the information being found readily on your own accounts or a search engine. The Paranoid’s Bible guide goes into further detail on lessening your chances of being doxed and how to properly shrink your digital footprint. Now that you’ve identified your source(s), move onto the next chapter. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Act Accordingly=== Once you’ve identified the source, and learned of what information has been posted, you can act accordingly to the level of threat that’s being presented to you. While everything that’s classed as a potential threat may seem dangerous, not everything must be met with a call to arms or requests of a personal army or attorney at law. If it’s just an account or e-mail address, then continue ignoring it and working toward removing your data and lessening the information that’s out there on you. If they’re obsessed with an old account that you can’t or have forgotten to remove, then they’re distracted and haven’t worked toward finding more information. This means you can work toward lessening the potential harm and continue toward a safer experience online. If they’ve found your home address, regardless of how they did it, then you must look toward what you can do to lessen the potential harm that can stem from this, like, for instance, replacing your mailbox with one that can lock to prevent theft of mail. You can ensure your windows are locked and covered by blackout curtains to prevent spying, and you can even remove your phone’s custom voicemail message to the default robotic one. You might want to look toward the PB’s "Home Phone and Landline Security" & "Home Security and You" guides. Remember though, just because they have your address or phone number doesn’t mean they’ll do anything. Most people are satisfied with going “I doxed you! You live at 123 Road Avenue, New York, New York!” and hoping someone else will say or do something. You have to fear at most, usually, getting the sophomoric junkmail spam that consists of boxes, pizzas and possibly even prostitutes. While nothing more than a prank, it does cause panic for your younger targets/victims, like the teenagers that Tumblr has inexplicably targeted. If you’re under the age of 18 or live with someone else, you must let them know what’s happening if it has progressed as far as your phone number and/or address being posted online. The reason for this is so the other residents within the home know what’s coming off and for you, the target/victim to tell the home owner and/or adults living with you what’s happening. If it advances enough to a possible lawsuit and court date, then they’ll know about it anyways. It’s better to come clean now and deal with the brunt of the lecturing now than later as, like it or not, parents and guardians do know how to handle things better than most minors. Ultimately, the worst they can do is tattle to your parents or contact your place of work, or go as far as to contact your landlord. This has a 50/50 chance of working against you or not, ergo another reason for you to lessen your digital footprint online. Less you do online, the less they have that they can use against you. This means less accounts, little to no social media use and learning to not tell the internet everything you've seen, said or done on any given day. Again, the Paranoid's Bible is a good resource that should be read after this guide. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Steps to Take=== Before we tell you what steps to take, realize that these are but small steps compared to what the guides we've mentioned in the preface can teach you, however avoid those guides till you're done with this one as it'll prevent you from making things worse. Now, however, progress by continuing with this guide and follow the steps that we've set forth. ***First and foremost:*** Learn to not react, to anything said or done to your or your accounts, and once this is over don't mention it, ever. If you let people know it's bothering you, they'll continue their assault on you and your privacy. They'll push forward, looking for even greater ways to provoke you into doing something potentially harmful to yourself and others. Even if the information is incorrect, don't react. Just ignore them and take things slowly. ***Second, to help lessen the trust in any of your information being posted, do the following steps:*** - Blur out your house/property view on online maps. For Bing: 1. https://www.bing.com/maps/ 2. Type home address 3. Get to street view 4. Center squarely on house 5. Look for (?) question mark near bottom right. Be careful as it can be hidden sometimes. 6. Click it 7. Select "Report an image concern" 8. You'll get a pop-up or new tab with a panoramic image 9. Select your house, a little red square will appear then 10. Voice your privacy concern. Stating vandalism and potential break-ins by criminal elements. 11. Fill out the rest of the form + Captcha, wait 12. Save ticket (#) Number For Google: 1. Go to Google Maps and type in your address 2. Bring up the street view of your property 3. Look to the bottom right hand corner of the screen you should see an Icon Labeled: “report a problem.” 4. Click on “report a problem.” 5. You will get a page labeled “report inappropriate street view.” 6. Look for the words “Privacy Concerns” and click on them. 7. If you want your house blurred, click on “my house.” Then choose the option: “I have a picture of my house and would like it blurred.” 8. Adjust the image and show Google which part of the photo needs blurred. 9. Type the verification code at the bottom of the page into the box provided and click submit. 10. Check back in a few days to see if the image has been blurred. For Yahoo: Special thanks to /r/n0esc from Reddit! 1. Visit https://www.Yahoo.com/maps 2. Drag the gray icon that resembles a person (top-right) to your street. (If it won’t drag, then your street has not been photographed for Yahoo.) 3. Click on “report image” at the bottom-left of the screen. It will take you to a different website. 4. Click on “request blurring,” and follow the directions. - Change your phones’ voice messages to the default robotic one. This is to prevent people from confirming and verifying your number as being related to you. This also hinders people and will push some off of harassing you or constantly calling your phone number(s). - Never answer the phone for anyone you don’t recognize. Names and phone numbers should always be scrutinized before picking up and answering. If it’s important, they’ll leave a voicemail. Yes, some people will leave harassing messages, too. If you don’t respond or make mention of these messages, no one will know. This will prevent (some) people from getting the satisfaction of knowing they’re getting to you. - If you’ve the money and time, change your phone number to a new, private and unlisted one. - Get your mail ASAP. The longer you leave your mail in the mailbox, the sooner someone may snap it up for nefarious means. Always get your mail and packages right away! - Get off the blogs and stop saying things online. It’s better to lurk and learn instead of interacting and putting yourself into danger. ***If things turn violent, please follow the below:*** - Don’t open letters or packages you don’t recognize. If you didn’t order or request something in the mail, don’t risk it. If you suspect something, open all packages and letters over a plastic container large enough to house the item you suspect. While wearing gloves, eye protection and a face mask, ensure the item is being opened as carefully as possible. Record and save everything in case of issue. - Don't delete asks/PMs/fan mail/chat requests that contain threats or anything of a similar violent nature. These can used in potential legal actions, also make copies of these by hitting CTRL+S to save a copy to your computer, and then save copies as screen caps. - Don't delete any voice mail left on your phone(s), this can be used in potential legal actions. - Don't destroy any documents sent your home or business, again this can be used in potential legal actions. - Look into purchasing cameras for your property. - Do notify the police of any incidents that happen, like property theft or damage...etc - Cut contact with anyone you suspect. - Don't react. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Afterwards=== This is the end result of social networks and the forced "inter-connectivity" meme of smart gadgets. The more we move forward to web 3.0, the smaller our pool of privacy shall become. While we can scream and whine about lawsuits and calling our uncle in the FBI, none of it matters because you've put yourself in harm's way in the first place by not remembering the simple golden rule: Don't post your real world information on the internet. Don't post your name or address online. Don't talk to strangers and don't post images of yourself, where you live, or go to school on the internet. Call it a fad from the 90's, but privacy rocks.

#dox #doxing #doxed #what to do #privacy #security

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