#which might explain why i dont feel the desire to read them when theyre done lmao
Note
I dont know if you are taking requests but if you are, could you please write something where reader has trouble masturbating, every time she tries she just CANT, so anakin (theyre just friends but they always had lots of sexual tension) helps her out and does it for her so she cums for the first time. THANK YOU!!!
A Dream Come True - Anakin Skywalker x fem Reader (smut)
Masterlist
Read it on ao3
Wc: 5.4k
A low warmth is rising in your belly, pulled from the depths by your wandering fingers. They’re working against your clit, rubbing it side to side, faster and hard, trying so desperately to remain in that warm haze of pleasure you’ve spent so long building up. It feels good, but you need more.
The many late nights spent with your girlfriends cross your mind, and how you would sit by idly during each one as they discussed their own personal affairs in the bedroom. You were the least experienced, but listened in awe as they told you the latest on what their partners have done to surprise them in bed. How they made them scream and shake, their eyes roll back into their head, and cum all over until they couldn’t take anymore.
You were too embarrassed to admit you’d never felt that way before. You thought you were broken.
Which is why you’re here, fingers glued to your hard nub, rubbing furiously to try and get yourself to feel something. You do feel something, but it’s not earth-shattering, leg-shaking, eye-rolling like your friends had described. Frustration fuels your movements as you attack your clit, holding your breath, forcing the warmth to build and build and build--
Nothing.
Your arm aches with the strain as you halt your movements, chest heaving when you allow yourself to breathe. Self-pity outweighs your disappointment as the subtle warmth dissipates, any pleasure that you had given yourself slipping away.
Broken, a small voice whispers inside your head. There’s something wrong with you.
What other reasoning could there be to explain why you can’t feel good?
Maybe, you argue, there needs to be something inside. That was always a big topic of discussion with your friends, how they “loved being filled.” Gathering your wits, you move your finger down, exploring your folds until you find your opening. Squeezing your eyes shut, you push a finger in, wincing at the sudden intrusion.
It stings more than anything, but you’re desperate so you decide to give it a chance. You’ve tried this before, and it’s never felt like anything more than a finger inside of you-- which is exactly what it is. And now, this situation proves to be the same. You feel around, hoping to find that spot everyone raves about, but your fingers are too short and the angle is weird. You push your finger in and out like how you think you’re supposed to, and it feels like nothing.
Maybe you need two?
You let another finger join the one that’s already inside, struggling to get it in.
Ow, you wince as your body rejects the intrusion. Your heartbeat picks up, a sudden anxiety joining the whirlwind of exasperation and discontent that has come from this situation. Is it supposed to hurt this much? The remnants of the need to satisfy yourself are still present, so you try again.
Making it back to your apartment had been a relief this evening, as all day you had been battling a relentless urge down below. You’re not too proud to admit that your… situation… had been a direct result of spending the day with Anakin, a good friend of yours who needed help finding a data entry in the corner of the Temple library. The entry supposedly had something to do with a cloaking mechanism for battleships, and when you had asked why he needed it when the Republic already had cloaking mechanisms, he mentioned that he was trying to translate the same technique to his own personal starship. No battlecraft as small as his has that ability, and with a ship as fast as his, it would give him a huge advantage on the battlefield.
You could listen to him talk about it all day.
You virtually had, as the data entry was just one small piece of paper-- a piece of scrap blueprint scrawled on a fragile, worried edge of some larger text, worn with time. You spent hours searching all over for it. Once you had finally dug it out of a dusty box in the deepest corner of the library, Anakin had lifted you into the air effortlessly, swinging you around as he hugged you and laughed.
You had walked home with a damp spot in your underwear, an undeniable throb that needed to be relieved.
He had no idea. No idea that his hands shot sparks up your spine as they closed around your waist. That his laugh turned your blood to lava, and his beautiful, smiling face made your heart skip a beat. He had no idea that he is the cause of your desperation, the reason you are torturing yourself by dangling an unknown pleasure before your face, knowing you can’t have it.
You manage to sink your second finger in a little, but the sting is too much, and you have to pull them both out.
Broken.
The door to your apartment suddenly swings open, and you throw your sheets over your bare legs in a panic. Your eyes find the clock next to your bed-- Shit. You’d lost track of the time.
The sound of those boots are unmistakable, and you find that praying you’re wrong is pointless when he calls out your name.
“Y/n--?” Anakin rounds the corner to peer into your room, features lighting up when he finally finds you. Curious eyes roam over your figure, wondering why you’re in bed when it was barely evening. “Are you feeling okay?”
Your cheeks flame with heat, and you can’t find the words to explain yourself out of this situation. Mentally, you’re beating yourself up for losing track of time, especially since you knew Anakin was coming over tonight. While searching for the data log, you mentioned you had always wanted to try his favorite childhood drink-- ruby bliels-- and he promised he’d treat you tonight after you found the blueprint. It was his thank you gift to you, but now you needed to find a way to get him out of your apartment before he realized what was going on.
Your mouth hangs open like a gaping fish, and you know it’s too late. Anakin’s brain is as fast as his superhuman reflexes, and you can see the gears click into place as his eyes flit from your red cheeks, to the messy covers strewn over your legs, to the crumpled panties lying discarded on the floor. Your hand is even still frozen between your legs, your activities becoming clear as he senses the remnants of pleasure and disappointment still hanging around the room.
“Oh…” is all he says, looking lost for a moment. You expect him to apologize and turn away, run out of the apartment and then never speak to you again. You wouldn’t blame him. Finding a friend in this position can never be a comfortable experience.
Instead a slow smirk crawls onto his face, and he leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. “You need some help with that?”
You should have known. The smug little bastard-- of course he’d find this amusing. Your face grows impossibly redder, and you wish a black hole would just open beneath you already and swallow you up. Anakin finds your humiliation endearing, and laughs good-naturedly.
“Alright, okay, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to it,” he slinks out of the doorway, crooking his finger in the air to close the door after him. “I’ll be in the kitchen setting up for the bliels when you’re done--”
“Wait!”
You’re just as shocked as he is at the words that leave your mouth. He freezes in place, the door still open a crack. There’s too many thoughts running through your head right now, but the one that stands out the most has you pulling your hand away from your center, sitting up in bed so you can address him clearly.
You never thought you’d be able to speak these words to him. For so long, you had wanted him in every way possible. But he’s a Jedi, unable to form attachments, and more than that-- a friend. A very good friend. And breaching the topic that you know you both feel for each other had the potential to ruin it all.
But the minute he had opened that door, still dressed in that black leather armor, hair perfectly curled and messy, so tall and strong and devilishly handsome leaning against your doorframe-- he was beautiful, and you’d be a fool not to take advantage of his offering. Even if it might have been a joke.
You had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t.
“I… I do need help.”
There. You said it. And you’re pretty certain the only reason you could force the words past your lips is because his back is still facing you. But then he opens the door again, turns to meet your eyes, and cocks his head.
“Really?”
You’re not sure how to feel about the concern on his face. You guess it’s better than him being disgusted, or awkward, or uncomfortable. And it’s not an outright rejection. That realization gives you the push you need to explain yourself.
“I think there’s something wrong with me.”
Now he looks concerned. Walking a few steps into the room, he stops by the edge of your bed and folds his arms across his chest. He’s studying every inch of you, reaching into the force to try and gauge the nature of your words. “What do you mean?”
He’s standing so close now, you can see the blue of his eyes and the wrinkle between his furrowed brows. It does nothing to calm your sizzling nerves. However, you’re concrete on your desires now. While you would have liked to confess your feelings for him in a more… romantic way, the intensity of your need for him in this very moment overshadows rational thought. Besides, it’s not like this is a declaration of love. That could always come later. For right now, you need his help, and you’re certain that you can trust him not to make fun of you or shame you for trying in if he declines.
“I can’t…” you take a deep breath, staring at your hands in your lap. “I can’t make myself feel good.”
Your voice is so quiet, embarrassed and ashamed, but he catches the yearning under it all. His face smooths, comforted by the fact that you’re not injured or dying in some way. Deep down, something sparks alive in his veins.
That’s the issue? Well… it’s definitely something he can help you with.
“Hmm.” His face is thoughtful as he scans your position. His hand gestures vaguely down your body. “Do you want to show me what you’re doing?”
Your blood freezes at his request. For some reason, it didn’t cross your mind how asking for his help would require him to see you… naked.
“If you’re too embarrassed, we can just--”
You cut off his words by throwing the blanket off. There, like ripping off a bandaid. His eyes drink in the exposed skin of your legs, and although they’re closed and he can’t be seeing much more than he’s already seen before, they darken. A small twitch of his fingers, and the door clicks shut behind him.
He takes a seat on the side of the bed, next to your legs, and rests his metal hand on your knee. Your heart beats like a hummingbird's wings at the sudden proximity, and the nerves pile up again at the thought of what’s going to happen.
“Wait-- um… actually, can you come here?”
You reach out to take his metal hand from your knee, and pull him up the bed so that he’s hovering over you. He’s still sitting, the upper half of his body twisted toward you, caging you in with a hand on either side of you. He’s smiling softly, and his eyes twinkle with something fond.
He doesn’t need to ask to know that you’re nervous. The rigidity in your muscles, the flightyness of your eyes, the hammer of your heart-- he can feel it all, and he wants nothing more than to quell your fears. So he lifts an arm to cup your face in his large hand, smoothing a thumb over your cheekbone in a silent request for you to look at him.
Once you muster up the courage to meet his eyes, his smile grows, and he says something that steals your breath.
“Can I kiss you?”
Oh, how long you’ve wanted him to say those words to you. Countless nights, you’d run them through your head, imagining all the scenarios in which it could happen. Certainly, this was not one of them, but you definitely aren’t going to complain.
You don’t trust yourself to speak, so you give him a nod, and lean forward a fraction in invitation. Your veins sing with anticipation, warmth spreading from your cheeks to every small nook and cranny of your body as he angles your face up toward his. Your eyes flutter close, and he leans down, and--
Bliss.
His lips are warm against yours, soft, applying the gentlest of pressures. You always thought he’d be a good kisser-- he was experienced, and he’d hinted at some of his more scandalous escapades a couple times in passing conversation. You’d asked him before, how he could do that when Jedi aren’t allowed to form attachments, which resulted in him going into a full lecture on how non-attachment didn’t translate to abstinence being “The Jedi Way”, even if it was supported within the Order. Really, it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anything, until he fell on the defensive position that he was almost certain Obi-Wan had done stuff as well.
Which-- great. Now you realized you were less experienced than even two Jedi.
These thoughts are snuffed out like candles, one by one, as Anakin kisses you. In fact, your whole mind goes blank, a wave washing over all of your worries away and dragging them out to sea. You’re drifting on that wave, drowning in the heady feel of him, the warm taste of him. His slow inhale reminds you to breathe as he moves his lips against yours languidly. It’s heaven, the way he’s yours for just this moment. He might not think anything of this kiss, but to you, it’s like your deepest fantasies are coming true. With each moment that passes where he tilts his head and closes his lips over yours, you can pretend that he is yours, completely and unconditionally.
Eventually he pulls back, eyes fluttering open, and you realize you’re still lost at sea.
“Good?” his voice is low and raspy as his gaze bores into yours. You wonder if he knows how intense his eyes can be sometimes.
“Yes.”
He presses another quick kiss to your lips, your heart spasming at the act, before he trails kisses down your jaw, tasting the skin of your neck. Your breath picks up again, hands finding his curls as you gasp at the feeling. His teeth skim over the junction of your neck and shoulder, and he presses a kiss to your throbbing pulse. He means for the kisses to be distracting, soothing, so that you’ll be more comfortable with him, and he thinks it’s working until a faint moan leaves your mouth.
So it’s really working.
Anakin’s eyes flick up to yours, and you can feel the smirk against your skin. Embarrassment crashes down on you again but Anakin repeats the motion, nipping at your skin and then smoothing his tongue over the mark, sucking gently to try to elicit another reaction. You gift him one against your will, and suddenly he’s got lava pouring into his veins.
You’re so lost in the feeling of his mouth on you that you don’t even realize his warm hand has travelled from your face, down the middle of your body, gripping onto the pliant flesh of your thigh and pulling you toward him. You let him, rolling your body into him to try and relieve that reappearing ache in your center.
It’s the same feeling that had built up all day, and it’s returned with a vengeance. You can feel the wetness seep out, slicking your thighs up. Your clit throbs and your pussy clenches around nothing, begging for something to satisfy the ache. You rub your thighs together to help, but Anakin slides a hand to the inside of your thigh and coaxes your legs apart. Any embarrassment you felt before has been beat out by a yearning for his touch, the need to have his fingers on you, inside you--
“Show me how you’ve been doing it,” Anakin mumbles into your neck.
You open your eyes, pulled up from the haze of pleasure he’d submerged you in. Your hand only shakes slightly as you release his hair and bring it back to your skin. He pulls back a few inches to watch, the heat of his body so close to yours causing goosebumps to erupt all over your body.
His eyes hone in on your hand, following its descent to your warm center. You still can’t wrap your head around the fact that someone is seeing you like this, but now your veins sing with a satisfied realization that he’s the one seeing you like this. He’s the only one who ever has. And he seems to like what he’s seeing.
You don’t miss the way he inhales, the way his teeth capture a sliver of his bottom lip as your fingers finally reach your heat. You begin to do what you’ve always done-- rub your fingers back and forth over your nub, working that pleasure from it.
It feels good, different than what it felt like when you were alone. You’re sure his eyes on you, the proximity, his mere presence has something to do with that. You can still taste him on your lips and you close your eyes, licking them to relive the kiss. You focus on the warmth of his body, the dip of the bed where his arm is planted beside you, the weight of his other hand still holding your thigh open, the scent of his black leather and spice of his shampoo. It definitely feels better when he’s here, the knowledge of him watching adding to your excitement.
But still, you can only build yourself up to a certain point. The pleasure plateaus, and soon you begin to feel awkward at the fact that nothing is happening. It’s not enough to make you moan, or move, or show any reaction really. Your hand stills, and you look at him uncertainly.
Anakin blinks and brings his eyes back up. “Have you tried fingering yourself?”
You almost choke. You’re not sure why his blunt nature surprises you anymore.
He’s looking at you curiously, completely serious, waiting for an answer. So you clear your throat and slide your finger down to your entrance, pushing in.
It goes in easier than before, and there’s no sting. But you don’t even have to move to know you’re literally going to get nothing out of it, and trying is useless.
“This is what I’m talking about,” you tell him. “It doesn’t feel like anything. And when I try two, it hurts. I think I’m broken.”
“You’re not broken,” he frowns, smoothing your hair away from your forehead and replacing it with a kiss. Your heart melts at the action that you’re sure is meant to be comforting, but only deepens your adoration of him. He sits up and you immediately miss him, although you understand he needs a better angle as he slides his hand from your thigh to the top of your pelvis. He hesitates, questioning. “Can I?”
You pull your finger out and push yourself up onto your forearms, nodding for him to go ahead.
His touch is light as a feather as his fingertips make contact with your swollen nub. Your breath hitches in your chest, thighs immediately opening wider on their own accord to get him to increase the pressure. He watches your face as he fulfills your silent request, massaging your clit in slow, gentle circles.
Fireworks are exploding behind your eyes, and you melt into a puddle on the bed. He’s barely even touching you, and somehow it already feels so much better than anything you’ve done to yourself. Quiet whimpers fall from your lips and the sounds make him need a steadying breath, reminding himself to go slow. Obviously, no one has ever touched you before, and he doesn’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.
The sight of your head tilted back, teeth biting at your lips to quiet your sounds, fingers clutching at the bedsheets-- a very sudden, very real desire to absolutely ruin you slams into him.
But no. That can come later.
He brings his metal hand up to your face, thumb tracing over your bottom lip and pulling it from your teeth. “You don’t have to be quiet with me,” he tells you, the ministrations on your clit with his other hand never ceasing. Instead, he picks up the pace, increasing the pressure, drinking in the sight of your hips moving against his fingers.
You’re absolutely drenched, dripping down your thighs and puddling onto the bedsheets. You’re not sure you’ve ever been this wet before, or felt this good before, and the warmth you’ve always felt is transforming into a ball of heat in your stomach. You hone into the feeling, the heat pulsing with each pass of his fingers, each wet slide of him against you--
“You have to breathe, Y/n,” Anakin chuckles, slowing his touch. You gasp in a deep breath, whining at the loss of friction, but he appeases you by slipping his fingers from your clit to your entrance. He doesn’t push in-- instead he circles his finger around it, collecting your slick, reading your every response.
“Please, can you…” you buck your hips up, but he doesn’t allow his finger to slide in until you finish your sentence. “Can you put it in?”
He can’t keep the tiny, darkly satisfied smile off his face. He’s always had fantasies of you like this, squirming beneath him and begging for his touch. He basks in the fulfilled wish of his, drinking in every second so he can remember it for later. Meanwhile, his finger massages your hole, dipping in with just the tip before pulling back out.
“Fuck,” you hiss, once again surprised at your own reaction. Your head is far past the point of clouding with lust, and now you’re dizzy with pleasure and the need to just have him inside of you already. “Anakin, please.”
“Patience,” he answers teasingly, although he does mean it. You can’t rush these things. And… he does have to admit that he loves seeing you so desperate and messy for him. Your neediness has him strain against his own pants, but he pushes that aside. For now, another dip of his finger into your throbbing pussy has you arch off the bed, urging him deeper, and it’s heaven to witness.
He didn’t want to go all in just yet, but you’re gushing around his finger and taking it so well. So he lets you have it, sinking his finger all the way into you. You feel him go deeper and deeper, the never-ending length of his finger a stark contrast to your shorter ones. He’s reaching places you were never able to, and even the slide of him inside you elicits a deep, warm pleasure that spreads to the tips of your fingers.
He keeps his finger all the way inside for a moment, still as he feels your walls clench around him. Once he’s sure you’re all good, he begins pressing into you with shallow thrusts, thumb returning to your clit and rubbing in time with each push of his finger.
Curses spill from your lips, and Anakin can’t help himself. He leans down over you and captures them in his mouth, swallowing your cries of pleasure. The kiss is wet, dirty, and the muffled sounds of your moans combat the indecent slick and slide below. Soon, another finger is nudging at your opening, and you press yourself deeper into his lips in anticipation of that painful sting.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, his finger slides in a couple inches and he keeps both of them there, letting you adjust as his thumb rolls over your clit. You had never been able to use two fingers before, and your head goes fuzzy as he pushes them deeper. Your walls stretch around him pleasantly, accepting the welcome intrusion as he reaches deep inside you.
How is it fair that he can make you feel so much better than you can make yourself? It doesn’t seem right in the whole grand scheme of things, but you decide not to question it as his fingers suddenly curl inside you, searching. It feels odd, and he pulls back from your lips to concentrate for a second until-- there. Found it.
You almost knock your head into his as you shoot up, a startled cry leaving your lips as your vision whites with pleasure. Your fingers claw at his back, meeting the leather that still sits on his shoulders, and scrabbling over the smooth material for purchase. Anakin laughs at your reaction, easing you into a more comfortable position as he holds you against him with his metal arm behind your back.
You can’t find it in you to care that he’s laughing, not as long as he keeps rolling the pads of his fingers into you like this. His wrist curls, applying a harder pressure as he rubs against that spot, and your head falls back, hips pushing forward, the lewdest sounds you’ve ever heard leaving your mouth.
“You like that,” he notes, proud smile ghosting over your lips. He kisses the corner of your mouth quick and sweet, then asks, “Is it better when I go slow or fast?”
“Both,” you gasp. “Either. All of it. Oh my--”
“Soft or hard?”
“Anakin--”
Your brain is unable to focus on much else other than the feel of his fingers coaxing that blissful heat from your center. He plays around with paces and pressures, but everything feels good, it feels great, it feels amazing, it feels euphoric. Before long, your legs are shaking and a weird feeling comes over you, and you’re crying out,
“What’s happening?”
Anakin pauses, his entire body stilling as he meets your eyes. You’re completely serious, that much he can tell by the vulnerability in your eyes. He frowns, unbelieving at this revelation.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Have you ever had an orgasm?”
You whine and shift your hips into his hand, trying to get him to keep making you feel good. If this wasn’t your first time being with someone else, Anakin would have held your hip still and forced you to talk to him no matter how much you begged and pleaded. But, it was your first time with someone else, so he was deciding to be nice. He soothes your craving, resuming his movements but at a much slower pace. A pleased sigh from you fills the silence of him waiting expectantly for your answer.
“Um..” you swallow, hips meeting his hand with every thrust. “I don’t think so. No. Nothing’s ever felt… like… this…”
It’s like a sneeze, except much, much better. The way his fingers prod into you, slick with your arousal, the tips brushing and massaging against that spot that have you careening into his body. You would have toppled over on top of him if he wasn’t so strong and rooted to the bed. He holds your shivering body against his chest with his metal arm, lips marking their way around your chin and jaw as your head falls back in ecstasy.
He’s immensely turned on, that much is obvious from the painful straining in his pants. But it’s easy to ignore, knowing now that you’ve never fallen off that brink of pleasure before. He’s curious about it, oddly saddened by the fact, and wants nothing more than to show you the absolute highs he could help you reach. So he focuses back in on rubbing your clit with his thumb, fucking you deeply on his fingers. He allows you to clutch at his back and bury your hands in his hair, moaning in abandon.
Anakin shares you pleasure as the ball in your stomach unleashes, a blissful warmth crashing over you and invading your every cell. For a moment, your body isn’t yours-- it convulses and clenches around Anakin’s fingers, your cries bounce off the walls, your eyes squeeze closed. You hope the hands twisted into his hair don’t hurt him because you physically can’t let go as you ride that pleasure-filled haze, the feeling in your limbs abandoning you to be replaced with something much stronger.
For a while, the only sounds in the room are your gasps of air and the blood rushing through your ears. Anakin waits until your muscles relax, and then he slides his fingers out of you, smoothing his hand around your waist to join his other behind your back. He lays you down into the pillows again, burying his face in your neck as you struggle to get your legs to stop shaking.
“Y/n,” he mouths a line up your neck. “You there?”
“Mhm,” you gulp, the shock of that intense, pleasurable feeling just beginning to fade.
He pressed his deep chuckle into the spot right under your ear. “Good. I thought I lost you for a moment.”
If you were in your right state of mind, you would have laughed at his teasing. Now, all you can do is cup his face lazily in your boneless hands, pulling his face up so that you can look at him. His cheeks are flushed the slightest pink, eyes dark and sparkling, lips so red and full and inviting…
You kiss him, and he’s yours for a moment longer.
If only it could always be like this. If only this could be a daily experience, and afterwards you could take care of him, and you could feel that wonderful euphoria with him at the same time. If only he wouldn’t have to pull away soon, untangle himself from your still-shaking limbs, brush off what just happened, and be on his way. If only he could be yours forever.
All of this, you try to tell him through the kiss. Your lips are hot, sliding over with a wanton need. He feels your yearning, and he can tell it’s a different kind than earlier. You move to deepen the kiss, but he pulls away.
“I know what you’re thinking,” his low voice murmurs, and now he doesn’t look so playful. In fact, he looks very serious, and the rumble of his words causes your stomach to drop. “You should know, Y/n, I want you too.”
The whole room could be on fire and burning and falling to ash around you, but you wouldn’t notice. Everything pales in comparison to the flames that erupt in your heart at the sound of his words.
“You do?”
He purses his lips, running his eyes up and down your face. You’re nervous, and hopeful, and so, so scared. And also… still shivering. Most likely due to the cold, at this point. And he’s sure the drunken affects of your orgasm are still holding sway over your mind.
“This is a conversation I think would be much better held over some ruby bliels,” he decides, and begins to unwind himself from you. You let him, that hopeful spark still searing through your veins. Before getting off the bed, he presses a kiss into your hand and then smooths over it with his thumb.
You want to say something cute or witty, but the only thing your dumb brain can come up with is, “Okay.”
“Okay,” he smiles fondly, moving toward the door. “I’ll meet you out there. Feel free to remain pantsless.”
This has you rolling your eyes, laughing lightly as you fall back against the pillows. Don’t tempt me.
The prospect of a future with Anakin is at the forefront of your brain, blood pumping thick as molasses as you struggle to convince yourself this is reality. He shuts the door behind him as you leave, and you roll onto your stomach to scream into the pillow.
This was a dream come true.
#anakin skywalker x fem reader#anakin x fem reader#anakin skywalker fic#anakin fic#anakin x fem reader fic#anakin skywalker x fem reader fic#soft anakin#friends to lovers#star wars prequels fic
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yeah so a girl at my college found my tumblr but i wanna talk abt stuff so i guess im doing it here now bc i dont have the courage to block her for reasons i will now explain
like?? i met this girl and i was like oh shit she seems so cool and so cute and i wanted so badly to be in her group of friends and bro i been trying so hard to be One of them but i just KNOW im not.....like maybe they dont necessarily hate me but im definitely not Desired there which sucks bc theyre the closest thing i have to friends in college......and i just see them spontaneously (or not, how would i know) going out together or hanging in each others rooms and im so JEALOUS and insecure and i hate who i am when i feel that way. i thought i had finally drawn a hard line with myself this one night when like.....they kept doing this thing (specifically that girl i met the first day and this guy who i thought actually liked being around me) where they would put their finger up like #1 whenever i said anything bc they made a "list" where i was number 1 and they told everyone what it was but specifically said not to tell me.....and yes that could easily be a joke, i have made worse jokes with my friends, but im so uncertain with my place with them that i wasnt sure if it was even meant to be a joke.....like are they laughing at me or with me.... then later that night my roommates and that one dude were hanging out in my room while the first girl i met and the others went to get a board game, when suddenly he looks at his phone, says "theyre here!" and runs out the room, and when i look down the hall Girl1 and her best friend and Dude are running into the elevator and i said "why are you ditching me" and they just laughed and said "GO!!" and left.....and that got me SO upset i really wanted to go back to my room and just cry forever bc WOW that could not have made it more clear to me that they hate me like ik im mean but thats some shit i wouldnt have even done to my closest friends. but i just sat there the whole night trying not to cry bc my roommates were still there... then they text me asking to come down to the 5th floor and im so fucking whipped bc im lonely and i have no friends so i go and they just give me a gummy bear and leave and im like. i know im a terrible person but i feel like this isnt a Friendly kind of Prank..... then Dude texts me like come outside we promise we wont run away and something kinda snaps in me like god FUCK you guys i might rather be alone than this fuckimg bullshit and in my head i felt like a line was just drawn like i cant be friends with these people i cant keep this bullshit up. anyways that was all one night. the next night i go out with some other ppl bc im feeling like shit and when i come back Girl1 and her best friend are drinking and the latter is WASTED and Girl1 sure isnt sober and im feeling so awful so im like well i can fake friendship for one more night if it means i can get alcohol. then Girl1 tells me she has a crush on me? and im .....yikes.....so i pretend i didnt remember anything bc i was drunk.....but then she asks me out sober,...and i said yes bc shes cute and my brains like "this is ur way in!" but its been a week and im remembering the way her and all those people made me feel and it just doesnt make sense? like she was nice sometimes SOMETIMES she invited me out somewhere just us but i always ended up being busy but otherwise? there were absolutely no cues to her liking me and im pretty good at reading people....like was all of that shit supposed to be bc she liked me? bc i didnt pick up on that at ALL plus nothings changed about how she or anyone else acts with me? i have even less of a good feeling abt her bc her and her bestfriend didnt say hi to my friends from home when i passed them in the dining hall and said "oh go say hi to my friends! theyre over there!" and they didnt smile at them or say hi when we passed them again later....im starting to think this is all a big prank.....our first date is this tuesday but im honestly expecting to be stood up or led into a dark alley to be beat up deadass
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⊰ “ I literally read all your discourse stuff in the tags and OMG... I couldn't agree with you more. The making Sasori into an emotionless person is one that particularly gets on my nerves. And when they make him seem worse than he really is. I don't know if there is a term for that. Like doing the opposite of woob. But it's just really nice to see someone else on the same wavelength.” ⊱
I’m gonna put this under a read more bc boy I never shut up !
Thanks anon I’m glad you agree its always nice to open the IB to an anon whos not tying to have beef KGKDKGJdG. I mean yeah Sasori’s totally a stoic but the thing is thats all he is. Its a facade. A very good one which was ingrained into him by the teachings of his village & his own pain but its just an ‘act’ so to speak.
Sasori is VERY capable of emotion & very much experiences emotion. He may not express it openly or even deny it but its absolutely a thing. He is not emotionless. He is not unable to truly feel. ( Hes not even unable to form connections with others. Sasori’s loneliness up to a point was NOT his own doing. Its made clear Sasori wasn’t a ‘loner’ because of being an edgy little prick or anything like that. He was a loner because of his Prodigy status & his reputation. He was not even ten years old & he was already renowned & infamous throughout the war, they were calling him Sasori of the red sand. Suna’s enemies out of fear & suna itself out of lionising his proficiency as their solider & weapon. It was claimed he soaked the desert sands red in blood hence the moniker. Its not that he wanted that. He just did what he was trained to do. Its not that he wanted to be alone. His loneliness & desire for human affection is.... a big part of him. )
Its really sad actually because Sasori himself doesn’t seem to fully understand his own trauma ( I dont expect him to of course, like. . . theres a lot ) & not only that but it was... Idealised to him.
He ‘feels numb”. Its a heavy result of his obvious depression which started when he was only 5 & lost his parents. But he explains it as being like a puppet & embraces it as such because not only is Sasoris literal coping method puppets & this is his way of comforting himself but this “numbness” was taught to him as ideal by his village. So instead of understanding an issue he can work on & improve just thinks its how shinobi are suppose to be.
THOUGH AT THE SAME TIME.... Sasori’s incredibly intelligent ( Scarily so, hes literally a high-level genius ) & I’m pretty sure one of the many key elements of his story was his own realisation that his villages teachings were flawed & they were using him & other shihobi as mere instruments of this flawed idea which was wildly inhumane & unfair, particularly when they came to try & blame him for the death of his only friend ( noted as the only person who treated him as a person ) when he was actually trying to help said friend.
Sasori fashioned himself entirely as a big old fuck you to his village surrounded by & using the only happy place he knew. The only things he found reliable & safe. Relating humans & puppets became so easy for him, idealising puppets in place of people was second nature especially due to his village treating people as puppets.
That said Sasori knows what hes doing. While theres a break in reality there for sure Sasori knows the whole human puppet thing is morbid per se. He knows its going against ‘morality’ & ‘humanity’ & all that kinda thing but thats one of the appeals of it. Hes making a statement in that way. shinobi dont like to admit it but Sasori emphasises that theyre all just puppets. Toy soldiers. However by making them human puppets Sasori in a way thinks hes improved them as well, helped them, preserved them, because now they’re eternal. Like this is definitely not a one dimensional thing. Its extremely compound.
SO YEAH!! Big time agree with you I know people seem to take pointing out the tragic nature of any villain is woobifying but... Its not. Its not when A) its canon facts, its what the character is SUPPOSE to be & B) pointing out these facts are not being used as absolute excuses for the ‘bad things’ the character has done / is doing or being used to demonise any other character to make that character look better.
( Huge example being the Loki vs Thor situation in the marvel fandom back in the day )
The reverse-woobifying thing is definitely something I’ve encountered multiple times & it annoys me too, just as much as woobifing itself does. It seems in general tumblr has an issue with moderation because I guess people hate dimension & also like. Your villain doesn’t need the Most Tragic of backstories to be a good one. I personally believe ALL villains have a reason to be what they are but they don’t have to be particularly traumatic like some people seem to think. Nuance is nice. Its good to have some villains that are relatable but not because their stories are overwhelmingly sad. Because the thing is... Pain & suffering doesnt come in one shade & what someone else might overcome another person might not & so on . .. Plus its also good to have villains who just arent really sympathetic at all. But like like... as a whole tumblrs not as big into diversity as it always claims in ANY way.
I DIGRESS tho. In particular I’ve found characters who are either explicitly LGBT confirmed or HUGELY LGBT coded are a huuuge target for the reverse-woobie & thats a.... massive problem which was largely why I was being feral in my tags gjkdkgkkdg.
The fact that still the only characters who are LGBT & particularly dimensional that we get are typically villains is a problem to start with but thats another topic. Its fine to love & support lgbt villains but... Definitely something wrong with the reverse-woobie being so predominate when it comes to them. The reverse-woobie in this instance is so replusive for me bc it enforces the idea that LGBT people are not sympathetic or relatable & when they ARE then its ok to pretend theyre not LGBT & effectively erase that part of them. Like I have had people in another fandom explain to me that their reason for erasing a characters sexuality as gay was because they found him to be relatable & sympathetic to them & they were not gay so they preferred to see him as bi or het more like themselves all the while trying to claim hetero or biphobia if you attempted to explain how wrong & inherently homophobic that is. ( lol @ “”Heterophobia”” in general tho )
This character was also a HUGE target for reverse woobifying from the fandom despite the fact he was the FURTHEST thing from a candidate for that imaginable. He was in fact canonly more an anti-hero than an outright villain. The fandom also liked to ‘harass’ people who they deemed were ‘woobifying’ him which essentially related to like... Liking the character & defending him from droves of homophobes in any way. Which was major awkward because theyd throw explicit tantrums about people calling him a “gay icon” in any way but weirdly enough this “anti-woobie” thing with him ONLY came into existence when he was confirmed gay. Prior all the straight fangirls making him their extra deluxe perfect lover boy husbando for their reader x him fanfics were never bothered about ‘woobifying’ in any way.
Dont get me wrong I think some people have genuine good intentions in mind for the reverse -woobie in fandom in regard to this, an idea of pointing out that lgbt ppl are capable of being horrendously evil too ect, which is fine & all but it’ll always leave a bad taste in my mouth if the villain in question is literally a canonically tragic one. Especially when the justification is playing on tropes particularly used to demonise lgbt people. Like I mentioned as an example for Sasori treating him as an entirely emotionless monster while simultaneously empathises hes a-spec or whatever given emotionless / unfeeling / inhuman ect are huge tropes used against a-spec people to dehumanise & demonise us.
Its every bit as awkward, & in fact I would argue far more awkward than people trying to woobify villains who lack “proper” motive. I wish people would be more careful about what characters they’re reverse-woobing n why.
#⊰ ° ⧗◞ OOC ⊱#seeing ur character done wrong no matter what way is always bad but#it feels extra bad when it seems like theres a layer of personal prejudice behind it#which is seems to be the case with most my favs like i cant catch a break huh GKKDKGKDKG#anyways if ur an rper its always dangerous to look at the tags or anything bc... thats how it be.#discourse for ts#long post
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@therewas-a-girl
replied to your post
“preview of my next fic (Dinah/Diggle; T for now but will be higher)”
I like how well u capture dinahs dry sense of humor btw
aww thank you. she has a few of those moments in this fic. :)
@therewas-a-girl
replied to your post
“y'all why are you sleeping on my fic I want people to actually read it...”
I was about to write this in the fic but i realized it wouldnt be relevant there. I thibk one issue might be the cheating element. I mean it is for me. I dont willingly go out to look for fics about people cheating. Idk i never have. But then again maybe this is just me xause i know plentybof ppl who ship things like that - like canarrow even before sara came back and oliver and laurel were over. So idk
I mean - yeah. I get that. totally. and I’m not saying I’m condoning cheating or saying that this is in any way an ideal or healthy relationship. because like idk if you read my other spartancanary fic but I actually had dinah have the line “you’re fucking your problems away” and like, it’s dysfunctional and wrong but that’s... kinda what makes it a rich story, for me? idk if that makes sense. I just think it’s an interesting relationship, you know? plus, call me annoying but like - I like writing non-white ships. as in ships that have all parties be people of colour. (in fact I might include a white people joke just because.) there aren’t enough of them out there esp in dctv where most of the big superheroes are white.
and I’m glad you brought up canarrow. I’m sure I’ve come across a fic about sara and oliver’s first time together in the back of a car or at some kind of festival or something, and like, oliver was very clearly cheating on laurel and not just with anyone - with his girlfriend’s sister. but in the comments no one brought that up, that I can remember, anyway, and it was actually quite widely read if I remember correctly. but I’m searching for it and I have no clue who wrote it lmao so it’s not hugely substantial evidence that I’m right :P
I do get that maybe ollie was the kind of douche to do that to his girlfriend whereas diggle wouldn’t do that to the mother of his child, and I know it’s different in that sense. but I also think - john is in a realllllllly bad place rn with his ptsd (which he does have even if the show will never vocalise it) and the injury he sustained while on lian yu. and I feel like when you’re in a bad place you do things you regret. or things you wouldn’t normally do. I think that’s what’s happening to john here. and dinah is a good person too and she hates the idea of being the other woman but in the last month or so she’s found herself feeling really lonely. and it’s like that line from a streetcar named desire, my favourite play ever by tennessee williams - “you need somebody, and I need somebody, too. could it be - you and me?”
@therewas-a-girl
replied to your post
“preview of my next fic (Dinah/Diggle; T for now but will be higher)”
Your characterisation is on point as ever and i have a very special love in my heart for quiet moments between teammates - regartkess of if theyre lovers or friends. Im a tually very here for a fic exploring dinahs feelings and where her head is. What shes doing with her life. How THIS life has impacted her as a person. Id read that with love bc i love her character
yeah I mean the first bit minus a few moments could be construed as just a really intense friendship (which is what I’m feeling like the writers will go for with them because wendy mericle and juliana harkavy have both said that it’s not going to be romantic) and I am totally here for the moments of peace between the team. but yeah I think there are a lot of gaps to be filled in with dinah’s character and a lot to her story we don’t really know. plus those five months where she gets promoted and seems more confident as canary is also development done offscreen. glad you like my characterisation - esp because I barely write one character and have only just started writing the other and I wasn’t sure how they would come across on paper.
@lancedinah
replied to your post
“okay, medical people of tumblr. can anyone explain to me what john...”
I'm not the medical side of tumblr and I still need to watch the episode but usually with degenerative nerve damage it means that it is irreversible and once your nerves begin to get damaged they become weakened and that can cause tremors to occur.
ah I see. so basically (spoilers) diggle got a bit of shrapnel in his chest during the explosion on lian yu and that led to degenerative nerve damage, resulting in him being unable to fire his gun. but if you’re saying it’s irreversible I can see how it would affect john mentally too, as well as the tremor.
#therewas-a-girl#me.txt#replies#lancedinah#arrow#john diggle#dinah drake#spartancanary#otp: i've never felt this way before
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it’s the Jake’s Mental Health Corner Update time (this is long and probably Do Not read it)
let me Tell u something. me? i gave up that ‘trusting people’ shit a LONG Time ago. bro ive been so fucking paranoid and depressed lately its not even a bitfunny anymore and having semi-relapses and some of its not my fault but also Some of it is? Like i’ll legit get a thought in my head and instead of stopping it like i usually do ill let it spiral. and spiral. and spiral. and spiral
until all i can think about is how everyone probably talks about me behind my back or they dont like me as much as they say they do or i’ll Fuck up(tm) again and make the worst assumption but ill make the mistake again of saying it out loud and i wont be able? to Explain why i think the way i do other than ‘ idont know Guess im just fucked up’ and then that’ll get all my friends to leave
But maybe that would be better you know? Because sometimes i think im such a shitty person anyway like, the last time i tried to help someone ,REALLY help someone, it was just for my own gain. I just wanted to prove to myself i could do it , so that i could lift up my own self esteem. And even to this day sometimes i still feel like that about people? not...Like i dont act on it anymore but it seems lately
sometimes my only two feelings for people are either this fuckin Pity or a ‘oh god ill never be as good as them’ envious feeling? Which are both awful? i either get fuckin like... freakishly jealous yet idolizing that they’ll always be better than me, or i feel They can never get on my level (not that thats a bad thing because whomst the fuck wants to be on this shitty stage) and i’ll be nice to them but out of pity?????
that or nothing at all. that or i dont feel anything at all and im just acting out the part of being their friend. sometimes i wonder if im really even capable of caring about people Genuinely? like other people talk about? and that sounds so .....like, Mind-boggling, but sometimes i feel like the ‘care’ that i give people will always be dirty and unclean. and tainted by my own desires. is that normal? like is it normal to feel like no matter what, you can’t really selflessly love someone else? even if you do favors for them and never ask anything in return (which to be fair i never do that anyway, i Always gotta have Something), you’re still using them to some degree because you’re just tricking them into liking you you know? like youre only doing those favors for them to get them to like you Its Manipulation(TM) right?
I can try to be as Nice as a fuckin saint but in the end im still just doing it so that ill feel loved. Like it’s still only just for me. and i see so many people that love their friends and s/os so dearly and so...purely? like that sounds meme-ish in this day and agebut i mean it. i see people that have a pure love for others and i just wish i could. feel that. i wish i had that because i feel like i cant give it to people even when i want so Badly to
or thats how i see it in my head anyway
but maybe im overthinking it? And also talking about it just makes me feel even more awful for a second because i dont want people to see this part of me that feels like im a shitty person because when you talk about how shitty you are i feel like people start to see it too. like ‘oh yeah you Do do that now that you Mention it’ and i just cant stand the fact that theyre gonna hate it as much as i do
I wish people didn’t hate me? or i wish i didnt constantly feel like they did. I feel like even if people don’t hate me for good reasons that they cant see they’ll find something else to hate about me that’ll be just as valid. like that i interrupt people too much or only know how to make conversations by making everything about Me again or im so torn up about isolating myself but i wont stop doing it, i wont stop ignoring people and turning people away even though it Fuckign eats me away inside? I Hate doing it!
and then i cling to a specific number of people while pushing everyone else away, every one that tries to get in and see what im all about i just push them away and stick to the same people who already Know and are gonna get sick of me eventually and then who is gonna Care? no one will because i ignored them and the people that i didnt ignore found out how awful i am , still am, even after all this time even though they trusted me to get better
I feel like i havent gotten better at all
Outside of my social life I still can barely feed myself, i still can barely shower or brush my teeth, i still cant go on walks even when i really , really want to even when i just want to feel the sun i cant. I cant go outside because ill get people looking at me and i cant stand strangers looking at me. i just want to be alone but also im more terrified of it than anything and being so alone in this world is whats eating me up inside. not doing anything is whats killing me, not getting to talk to anyone face to face is whats killing me, But i cant stand doing it! i cant stand doing it whenver i do get the chance
And no one can help me but myself and i know this. i know its my job. its my responsibility. i Know this
but you cant stop wishing you know? when youre like this, you cant help but wish for something to come along and just magically. make it all disappear. magically make all your problems better and thats the problem? thats the entire problem with people like me. because logically, the only thing that makes things disappear? The only thing that makes it so you dont have to feel bad anymore? well
Well.
You Know What.
But im not gonna ever attempt That again
I think im fine now. writing it all out really...helps...even if this is just like some nonsensical piece of garbage and honestly i think i make it out to be worse than it is. Its fine yknow? it goes away pretty quickly. and it feels nice to have a platform to put it on , where people Might see but not guaranteed see? like theres a chance they can, and you can still feel acknowledged and like you exist, but you dont have to freak out about it. thats nice. thats kinda why i still use this site after its descent into Hell
if you made it to the end of all this Congrats my friend and i know this might seem like super....uh, Heavy but Really....it Passes. it comes and goes. Im Done Now good DAY
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Jaylen Brown: ‘Sport is a mechanism of control in America’
As the Boston Celtics star prepares to play in London, he talks to Donald McRae about race, the NBA and the death of his best friend
Jaylen Brown is one the most intelligent and interesting young athletes Ive met in years and it seems fitting that, midway through our interview in Boston, he should retell a parable that brings together Martin Luther King and the great American writer David Foster Wallace.
Weve got two young fish swimming one way and an older fish swimming the other way, the 21-year-old star of the Boston Celtics says as he considers the enduring backdrop of race in the United States. They cross paths and the older fish says: Whats up guys, hows the water? The two younger fish turn around and look back at the wiser fish and ask: Whats water? Theyve never recognised that this is what they actually live in. So it takes somebody special like Martin Luther King to see past what youve been embedded in your whole life.
Three years before his death, Foster Wallace included the parable in one of his most widely-read pieces of writing. Yet it carries fresh resonance when said with quiet force by a young basketball player who stands apart from many of his contemporaries to the extent that there have been numerous articles in which an unnamed NBA executive apparently suggested that Brown might be too smart for the league or his own good.
Brown was the No3 pick in the 2016 NBA draft and now, in his second season with Boston, he is a key figure as the Celtics arrive in London this week as the leading team in the Eastern Conference. Weve already spoken about Browns desire to learn new languages and his interest in books and chess while he loves playing the piano and listening to grime artists from east London. Even more intimately he has relived the death of his closest friend Trevin Steede in November. In the two games after that devastating loss Brown produced inspirational performances, which he dedicated to Steede.
He has also looked forward to playing in London on Thursday, against the Philadelphia 76ers, and answered a question as to whether his young Celtics team may become NBA champions in the next few seasons: Why not this year? People say maybe well be good in two years but I think were good now. Right now weve got one of the best records in the league. I think we could be as good as we want to be. But the more we let people construct our mindset, and start saying two years from now, is the moment we lose.
Last week the Celtics beat LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers 102-88. Excitement and anticipation surrounds the Celtics but race still stalks our conversation and it has echoed hauntingly through Browns life. Racism definitely still exists in the South, he says, remembering his youth in Marietta, Georgia. Ive experienced it through basketball. Ive had people call me the n-word. Ive had people come to basketball games dressed in monkey suits with a jersey on. Ive had people paint their face black at my games. Ive had people throw bananas in the stands.
Racism definitely exists across America today. Of course its changed a lot and my opportunities are far greater than they would have been 50 years ago. So some people think racism has dissipated or no longer exists. But its hidden in more strategic places. You have less people coming to your face and telling you certain things. But [Donald] Trump has made it a lot more acceptable for racists to speak their minds.
Jaylen Brown takes on LeBron James earlier this season. Photograph: CJ Gunther/EPA
Brown admits that, when he was 14, It wounds you. But when I got older and went to the University of California [Berkeley] I learnt about a more subtle racism and how it filters across our education system through tracking, hidden curriculums, social stratification and things I had no idea of before. I was really emotional because one of the most subtle but aggressive ways racism exists is through our education system.
In his year at college, before pausing his degree to play in the NBA, Brown wrote a thesis about how institutionalised sport impacts on education. I was super emotional reading about it, he says of his chosen subject. Theres this idea of America that some people have to win and some have to lose so certain things are in place to make this happen. Some people have to be the next legislators and political elites and some have to fill the prisons and work in McDonalds. Thats how America works. Its a machine which needs people up top, and people down low.
Even though Ive ended up in a great place, who is to say where I wouldve been without basketball? It makes me feel for my friends. And my little brothers or cousins have no idea how their social mobility is being shaped. I wish more and more that I can explain it to them. Just because Im the outlier in my neighbourhood who managed to avoid the barriers set up to keep the privileged in privilege, and the poor still poor, why should I forget about the people who didnt have the same chance as me?
What did he think of Colin Kaepernicks protest against police brutality and racism which the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback began even before Trumps election to the White House? It was peaceful and successful. It made people think. It made people angry. It made people want to talk. Often everybody is comfortable with their role in life and they forget about the people who are uncomfortable. So for Colin to put his career on the line, and sacrifice himself, was amazing. But Colin was fed up with the police brutality and pure racism. He speaks for many people in this country including me.
Did Brown understand from the outset that Kaepernicks career was in jeopardy? Absolutely. I wasnt shocked how it turned out. Colin was trying to get back into the NFL and find another team and hes more than capable. But I knew it was over. I knew they werent going to let him back. Nobody wanted the media attention or to take the risk. They probably just wanted to blackball him out of the league.
Thats the reality because sports is a mechanism of control. If people didnt have sports they would be a lot more disappointed with their role in society. There would be a lot more anger or stress about the injustice of poverty and hunger. Sports is a way to channel our energy into something positive. Without sports who knows what half of these kids would be doing?
Were having some of the same problems we had 50 years ago. Some things have changed a lot but other factors are deeply embedded in our society. It takes protests like Kaepernicks to make people uncomfortable and aware of these hidden injustices. People are now a lot more aware, engaged and united in our culture. It takes a special person like Kaepernick to force these changes because often reporters and fans say: If youre an athlete I dont want you to say anything. You should be happy youre making x amount of money playing sport. You should be saluting America instead of critiquing it. Thats our society.
Has his anger been amplified during Trumps presidency? Not really. I just think Trumps character and some of his values makes him unfit to lead. For someone like him to be president, and in charge of our troops? Its scary to be honest.
Trumps Twitter war in November with LaVar Ball tipped the scales, for Brown, beyond credulity. The President accused Ball of being ungrateful following the release from China of his son, LiAngelo, and two other UCLA basketball players after they were caught shoplifting. He demanded a thank you, Brown says of Trump. Its ridiculous. What happened to people doing things out of the generosity of their heart or because it was the right thing to do? There have been multiple situations where its been ridiculous but that one was like: OK Im done. Im done listening to anything you have to say. A 19-year-old kid makes a mistake overseas and [Trump] demands an apology from his dad? I think Trumps unfit to lead.
Jaylen Brown dunks during a game against the Brooklyn Nets. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
Browns readiness to talk about politics and culture might account for the surreal suggestion in 2016 that he was too smart for the NBA. From the outside, smart seemed a euphemism for troublesome. What did Brown think when, as a teenager, he heard words unlikely to be used in conjunction with a white athlete? It was hinting at something very problematic within society. It bothered me but I was so focused on getting to where I was going I never dissected it or pointed it out to anybody.
But I disagree that an athlete cant be intelligent. Some people think that, in basketball, we have a bunch of masculine adults who dont know how to control themselves. Theyre feeble-minded and cant engage or articulate ideas. Thats a narrative they keep trying to paint. Were trying to change it because that statement definitely has a racist undertone.
Brown chose Berkeley because he knew he would be stretched academically. Has he missed the intellectual stimulus since swapping college for professional basketball? Absolutely. Ive missed it so much. Im in a good environment here but at Cal I was learning something new every day. Im now trying to keep well-balanced instead of single-minded. I take piano lessons after I spent the last year teaching myself piano. If Im frustrated or had a bad day, but need to keep engaged, practicing the piano does that for me. Same with the YouTube [vlogs which he makes]. I use the camera so I can show something of this life to the everyday person who is interested in seeing what its like for an athlete on a day-to-day basis. Everybody puts you on a pedestal especially when youre playing well and they make it seem like youre not human. But Im just a regular guy.
During his first year at Berkeley, in his spare time, Brown learned Spanish from scratch and became fluent. Im not as good now, he says. I started again because therere so many conjugations that slip your mind if you dont practice. But I also just learned the Arabic alphabet. Im proud of myself because the pronunciation is hard.
Brown starts to say the Arabic alphabet out loud and, to an untutored ear, he sounds impressive. Yeah, he says with a grin, Im trying.
He describes himself as an introvert and it must be hard being quiet and reflective in a boisterous sporting environment? Absolutely. Its not just the locker room. In life if you stay quiet youll get left behind. So I had to learn to be more vocal and outgoing. I just try to be respectful of everybody. But the closer you get with guys the more you talk to them. It becomes like a family especially when youre winning. Last year I was much quieter but this year my opinion is valued more. We have a good locker room.
Jaylen Browns Celtics are set for a deep playoff run this season. Photograph: CJ Gunther/EPA
The value of that locker room was felt by Brown after the tragic suicide of his friend Trevin Steede. Brown found the will to play against the NBA champions, the Golden State Warriors, the night after Steedes death and he inspired the Celtics to a memorable victory by scoring the most points [22] while producing tenacious defence. After the game Kyrie Irving, the Celticss superstar, gave Brown the ball and said: This ones for Trevin.
Before they played again, in Atlanta, where Steedes family live, Brown visited his friends mother and other grieving relatives. He then went out and shot a career-high 27 points. Im so thankful for the people around me. They lifted me up. I dont know what my mental state would be right now without them.
I met Trevin when I moved to Wheeler which is a big basketball school in Marietta, Georgia. Trevin was a year older so he was a sophomore and I was a freshman. They brought me in and there was only one spot left on the team and it was between me and him. They gave it to me.
I didnt know anybody when I first got there so at lunch in the first week Id eat by myself acting like Im on my phone. Trevin came up to me after the third day. Id seen him in workouts but I didnt really know him. He said, Man, come sit over here with us. Ever since then, we were best friends.
How did he hear about Trevins death? His mom called me. Im thinking shes just checking on me or saying hi. But she called to tell me hes passed.
Brown looks down and his hurt is obvious. He also admits he needed the support of Steedes mother to face Golden State. I probably wouldnt have played unless she called me. Brad Stevens [the Celtics coach] asked how I was doing. I told him, I dont think Im able to come in today. He said: Thats fine. Take your time. Three seconds after I hung up, Trevins mom called. I told her I wasnt doing well and I probably wasnt going to play that night. She said: You know thats not what I want and thats not what Trevin would have wanted. So if you can find it in your heart to go out and play for him, do it.
Did he play in a daze, or was he inspired by Trevin to help Celtics win? I didnt feel anything. It was like I was out there by myself.
The chance to play in London lifts his mood. I visited London for the first time last summer. It was great. I went to see Big Ben because one of my idols is Benjamin Banneker [the African American scientist who, among other achievements, worked with striking clocks in the 18th century].
This week Brown would like to hear more grime and to see Arsenal. I like Barcelona because of the players theyve had traditionally from Ronaldinho to Messi. I really like Arsenal too. I like their tradition, and their diehard fans. I hope to see them in London. I think Thierry Henry is going to be there so Ill just hit him up and see if I can get some access to the [stadium] tour, get some shots on the field. Last summer I became really close with Thierry. I got to talk to him and we keep up with each other and he gives me advice about sports and life. Hes one of the all-time greats.
At the Celtics training facility, on the outskirts of Boston, Brown rises to his full 6ft 7in. He looks around the empty court before turning back with a smile when I say weve covered a lot of ground from the mysteries of water for two young fish and the enduring problems of race in America to the impact of learning and the pleasure of following sport around the world. Yeah, Brown says softly, stretching out his hand, thats the way I like it.
The NBA London Game 2018 sees the Philadelphia 76ers host Boston Celtics at The O2 on 11 January. The game will also be live on BT Sport and NBA League Pass.
Sign up to our weekly email, The Recap, here, showcasing a selection of our sport features from the past seven days.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/09/jaylen-brown-boston-celtics-nba-interview
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Increase Your Landing Page Speed (By Stealing Our Homework)
If you’ve read Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report (and you really should), then you already know why speed is so important this year. Slow-loading landing pages have always been an obstacle to higher conversions, and now Google is punishing poor mobile load times in its search rankings. To be successful in 2019, we—marketers—need to be thinking fast. But are we?
To find out, we polled almost 400 marketers on their attitudes around page speed and asked what (if anything) they were doing to get faster.
Just 56% of marketers are happy with their mobile load times, according to the 2019 Page Speed Report.
Almost three of every four respondents said they had taken steps to improve their page speeds over the last year, and that’s pretty good. Alarmingly, though, only half of marketers we surveyed are satisfied with their load times on mobile.
So most marketers are trying to get faster, but many aren’t where they want to be. Which begs the question: what are people doing to speed up their landing page load times?
Computer, enhance!
Only 39% of marketers have bothered to find out how fast their pages are actually loading. Not great.
Here, we start to see why marketers are somewhat pessimistic about their page speed progress. Just over half have optimized their landing page images—ostensibly one of the simplest ways to speed up your load times—and even fewer have done any of the real technical-sounding things they need to get faster. (I mean, fair, they sound pretty boring to us, too.)
Here’s a doozy, though: just one in three marketers have run a website speed test to find out whether their load times are impacting their conversions. That’s the easiest one!
And hey, we get it. Marketers are being asked to do more than ever before, often with fewer resources. If you’re a small team (or a single person, the smallest of the teams), you might feel you don’t have the time or expertise to meaningfully improve your page speed.
But I’ve gone and done the hard work for you—me, a film school graduate who, until recently, believed that his Apple computer was impervious to viruses. (Hoo boy, it is not.) I’ve spent hours talking to Unbounce developers, reading how-to guides, and generally just bombarding my brain with the most dull, technical page speed information I could get ahold of. (Apologies to said developers.) And if I can get my head around it, there’s no excuse for the rest of you.
Below, I’ve simplified some of the most effective ways to increase your landing page loading times in a guide. For each fix, I’ve indicated the technical difficulty and the estimated time it’ll take, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself in to. Use the table of contents below to jump to what’s relevant to you, or go ahead and do it all in order.
Jump to a Landing Page Speed Fix
How to Check Your Landing Page Speed
Run a Google Speed Test (5 Minutes)
Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer (5 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes
Reduce Your Page Content (15 Minutes)
Optimize Your Images (30 Minutes)
Host Your Videos Elsewhere (30 Minutes)
Audit Your Hosting Solution (30 Minutes)
Implement a CDN (30 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes
Minify HTML, JS, and CSS (15 Minutes)
Enable Browser Caching (15 Minutes)
Set Up GZIP Compression (15 Minutes)
Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins (30 Minutes)
Convert Images to Sprites (30 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes
Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS (45 Minutes)
Start Hand-Coding with AMP
Final note: If you’ve built your page with Unbounce, you can skip a lot of this stuff—we make many speed fixes on the back-end automatically. In this post, look for the ‘Building Pages in Unbounce?‘ callout boxes to see if a given fix is something you need to implement.
Look for these callout boxes throughout this post to get Unbounce-specific tips and learn how we automatically optimize your landing pages to make them load super fast.
How to Check Your Landing Page Speed
First things first.
Before you throw on your hard hat and start hitting things with a hammer (both figuratively and literally), it’s important to have some idea of what’s working—and what’s not—on your landing page. That means running a speed audit.
It’s important to point out that, regardless of which speed test you use, you don’t want to get too hung up on your score. Achieving a perfect score is not always technically possible (and it might not even be desirable). Instead, use your results as a general guideline to improve page speed and implement the fixes that make sense for you.
Okay—let’s test them pages.
Run a Google Speed Test
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes
There are a bunch of great tools for testing your page speed, but why not start with the big dog itself? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an awesome way to do a quick performance check-up with at-a-glance recommendations. (Ryan Engley, Unbounce’s VP of Product Marketing, explains how to interpret and act on your PageSpeed Insights results in this must-read blog post.) Then there’s Lighthouse, a newer tool from Google that provides a comprehensive analysis of your how your page presents to end users.
You’ll also want to run your page through Google’s Test My Site tool, which will check your speed from a mobile perspective.
Clicking on individual results in PageSpeed Insights will reveal your problematic page elements.
Running a Google speed test should only take a couple of minutes, and the results will help you identify some of the top opportunities to boost your landing page load times.
Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes
Running a speed test with Google should be your top priority, but PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give results tailored to landing pages. For that, you’ll want to run your page through the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which not only provides feedback on page performance but includes a bunch of advice on creating more effective campaigns and kicking your conversions into overdrive.
Unbounce’s Landing Page Analyzer provides feedback on page speed, but also actionable advice on things like SEO, message match, and mobile-friendliness.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Then you’ll definitely want to give our Landing Page Analyzer a shot. Get best-practice recommendations for conversion optimization and see how your landing pages stack up against others in your industry.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes
With your results from both Google and Unbounce, you’ll be well-equipped to move onto the actual work of making your page perform better. It’s time to pick up that hammer.
These fixes should be simple enough for anyone to tackle, regardless of their technical expertise.
Reduce Your Page Content
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
We’ve marked this as an easy opportunity to increase your page speed, but it probably won’t feel like that when you start thinking about which elements on your page you can junk. Marketers love big hero shots, beautiful supporting imagery, and fun, animated explainer videos. But how much of that content is actually helping you drive conversions?
Visual content accounts for a huge portion of the size of an average web page—images account for over 20% of web page weight, as pointed out by Kinsta—and each element creates an HTTP request. That’s when your visitor’s browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the elements of your page. Too many calls can be a serious drag on your load time, so one of the simplest ways to improve your page speed is cutting down the number of elements you include.
Look at each piece of content on your page critically, then ask yourself: “Does this spark joy?” “Does this increase conversions?” If you don’t think there are pieces you can toss, try running an A/B test with a slimmed-down version of the page. The results might surprise you.
Bottom line: stick to the fundamentals of good landing page design and try to keep the number of elements (and thus HTTP requests) to a minimum.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We recommend that you keep things pretty lean, but we’d never remove content from your landing page. (Must resist… desire… to do best practices…) This is one optimization that you’ll have to tackle on your own.
Optimize Your Images
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Once you’ve trimmed some elements from your page, you’ll want to optimize the content that made the cut. Poor image optimization is the most common reason for slow page loads, especially for mobile visitors. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest issues to fix.
These are some quick tips for shrinking your images and improving your page speed. The goal here should be getting images at least under 800kb, but the smaller we can make them, the better.
Resize your images
It’s easy to chuck a larger image onto your page and rely on your content management system (CMS) to compress it to the appropriate size, but it’ll still be loading at least some of those extra pixels on the back end, and your visitors are going to feel it in the load. When you add an image, make sure it’s the same dimensions that your page will be rendering it.*
*This doesn’t necessarily apply to Unbounce’s retina image support—read up on that here.
Choose the right file type
Most people don’t think too much about the format of the image they’re uploading, but it can have a dramatic effect on page performance. The file types you’re probably most familiar with are JPEG and PNG—and, yes, there are differences.
JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, which means it’ll lose some data during compression. That typically gives you a smaller file, but it can come at the expense of visual fidelity. Generally, images with significant color variation (say, photographs) perform better as JPEGs, and any dip in quality can usually go undetected.
PNG is ‘lossless,’ so the image’s appearance won’t change when resized, but it tends to make for larger files if there’s significant color variation. PNG is ideal for simple images with defined shapes, like those with text. Saving PNGs in 8-bit (rather than 24-bit, which has a broader color palette) can help shave off some extra bites.
Here are some optimization tips for JPEG and PNG (and GIF, that villain) from Google itself.
Use compression tools
Before your weigh-in, it’s good to run images through a final round of compression. There are plenty of image compression tools on WordPress, as well as some free, standalone ones like TinyPNG. These shrinky gizmos offer a simple way to cut down your image sizes without braving the cursed labyrinth that is Adobe’s export settings. (Hey, I’m a words guy.)
Your takeaways here are:
Ensure your image dimensions match how they’ll actually be displayed
Use JPEG when a slight dip in visual fidelity isn’t the end of the world (like photography), but PNG when it is (images with text and sharp lines)
Compress images to keep the file size as tiny as possible
If you want to take a deeper dive into image optimization, we recommend that you check out this post from Search Engine Land, which goes into detail on making images smaller while keeping them beautiful.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got you covered. Unbounce’s Auto Image Optimizer shrinks your images as soon as they’re uploaded so you can focus on making the best landing page possible.
Host Your Videos Elsewhere
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Why carry something yourself when you can make someone else carry it for you? That’s my motto for landing pages and life, and it’s why I’m no longer welcome on Unbounce’s company hiking trips.
Hosting videos on your own domain can be great for SEO purposes, but that’s not usually our goal with landing pages. We want everything to load in a flash and give our visitors the best chance to convert. Depending on your hosting solution, though, your videos might be slowing down your page speed, suffering from playback issues, and taking up an uncomfortable amount of server space.
Done properly, transferring videos to a third-party platform can shed some extra load time and help your pages render faster. Consider moving video content to Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, then using a light embed technique so that your videos only load heavier playback elements when your visitors actually click on them.
Building Pages in Unbounce? As a disclaimer: Using light embed codes with Unbounce (or any custom code, for that matter) will require some technical knowledge to implement and could, in rare cases, cause issues. Check out this Unbounce community post for more information.
Audit Your Hosting Solution
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Loading speed isn’t just determined by what’s on your landing page. Your web host also has a major influence in how quickly your page rolls out to potential customers.
There are three common models for web hosting:
Shared hosting
Generally the most affordable solution, shared hosting is when your website is hosted alongside other sites on a single web server. Everyone draws from common resources (like storage space and processing power), which means—you guessed it—you need to share.
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting
This is essentially a mix of both shared and dedicated hosting. With VPS, your website still shares server space with others, but you’ll have dedicated resources that no one else can dip into. The result is more power and flexibility, but it tends to come with a higher price tag.
Dedicated hosting
For those who’ve had a traumatic roommate experience (who hasn’t?), dedicated hosting means your website has the server all to itself. More resources, no sharing. That’s great if you’re heavy on digital content and get a ton of traffic, but dedicated hosting is also the most expensive option and requires the technical know-how to set up and maintain your server.
Low-volume websites can generally get by with the cost-effective shared solution, but once your traffic starts to rise, you might not be getting enough juice from your web host to deliver content quickly—and that’s when load times start to suffer. (Give this post from Search Engine Journal a read for a more comprehensive explanation.)
It’s also important to note that the whereabouts of your web server can have a significant impact on your page speed. If you’re not using a content delivery network (CDN; more on this below), you’ll want to make sure that traffic from foreign countries isn’t encountering too much latency.
Think your hosting solution might be impacting your page speed? Run your site through a server speed test like this one from Bitcatcha, and use WebPageTest or Pingdom to see how your quickly your landing page loads in other countries. Depending on the results, you might decide it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan (or change web hosts altogether).
Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to worry about this one—Unbounce’s global hosting solution boasts 99.95% uptime and ensures that your landing pages always have the necessary resources to load super fast.
Implement a CDN
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
When your landing page gets a visitor, their web browser pings your server to get the content necessary to build out the page. Simple, right? Everyone downloads your website information from the same place, regardless of their location around the world. Well, that’s usually fine if the visitor is in or close to the country that your web server is located, but when they’re halfway around the globe, chances are they’re going to encounter some latency.
To avoid that, you should look into deploying a CDN, which caches your website across a network of data centers and proxy servers all over the planet. Say your own server is in the United States and someone from Lithuania is trying to visit your landing page. Instead of downloading your content from across the Atlantic, that visitor can pull a cached version from a server nearby.
Setting your website up with a CDN is pretty straightforward and—depending on your traffic—generally affordable. Here’s a list of some popular CDN providers from Mashable.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got five global data centers supporting the Unbounce CDN, which means your landing pages will load in a flash regardless of where they’re being accessed from.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes
These next speed fixes are a little trickier, but they should be manageable for marketers with a little technical know-how. Still, a mistake here could mean actual damage to your landing page.
Our recommendation? Do some research, make a backup, and—if you can—consult briefly with a developer on your team. It never hurts to have an experienced colleague to turn to if you get in over your head.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We talk a lot about WordPress through this next section. If you’re using our plugin to publish Unbounce landing pages to a WordPress domain, some of these recommended speed fixes can actually cause technical issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification if you’re ever unsure.
Minify HTML, CSS, and JS
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
All those lines of HTML, CSS, and JS code that make up your landing page? They’re packed with spaces, line breaks, and other bits of formatting that make it more legible and easier for us to interpret, but each makes your load time just an eensy bit slower—and the web browsers your visitors are using to render your page don’t particularly need them.
With minification, the goal is to cut out all of that extra junk and condense your code so that browsers can read it faster. Here’s an example snippet of Javascript code from Wikipedia:
var array = [];
for (var i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
array[i] = i;
}
After minifying, that code would look something like this:
for(var a=[i=0];++i<20;a[i]=i);
There are plenty of free online tools that will do this for your landing page, like Minify Code, as well as a bunch of WordPress plugins. Be sure to check out this post from Elegant Themes, which is an awesome resource that dives into the many options at your disposal.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Do we minify? We practically invented minifying. (Editor’s note: We did not.) Unbounce compresses all of your code automatically, making your landing page as slim as can be. No coding your pages from scratch and no minifying that code in the background? We’re making this too easy for you.
Enable Browser Caching
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
The goal with any landing page should be getting prospects to convert the first time they visit, but the reality is that not everyone will. Sometimes, visitors will need some time to think about it: they’ll bounce, do more research, check out some competitors, then come back to your original offer. Browser caching ensures that when they return, your page will load even faster—and that’ll make them more likely to convert.
Not sure if you’ve already got caching enabled? Before you start, run a quick caching check using a tool like this one from GiftOfSpeed.
If your site is built on WordPress, enabling caching is as easy as adding a plugin.* (WordPress is almost too easy, huh?) Check out this list of caching plugins, most of which include quick instructions for getting set up.
*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these caching recommendations could create big problems. Check with us first.
For those not on WordPress, enabling browser caching on your own is pretty simple if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. For example, on Apache web servers, it comes down to inserting a little bit of code into the .htaccess file on your web host or server:
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”
ExpiresDefault “access 1 month”
</IfModule>
This article from Varvy provides a great how-to, as does this one from WinningWP (which discusses enabling browser caching from a WordPress perspective but is applicable more broadly).
If all of this makes you nervous, there’s likely a simpler method for you to set up browser caching. Most web hosts will enable caching for you if you ask. Depending on your hosting solution, it might be as easy as making a phone call. (Although, now that I think about it, that might be more daunting for some of us.)
Building Pages in Unbounce? Seven-day browser caching is enabled on all Unbounce-built landing pages, so this is a speed fix you can comfortably skip. Maybe use this free time to treat yourself to some self-care? You’ve earned it.
Set Up GZIP Compression
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
When a visitor reaches your landing page, their browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the page and the server transmits them back. Naturally, that process moves faster if the information being sent is compressed to be as small as possible. Here’s where GZIP compression comes in.
(You’ll want to check to see if GZIP compression is already enabled before you get started.)
As with browser caching, the difficulty of setting up GZIP compression is going to be determined by how your website was built. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck: many WordPress plugins will enable GZIP compression for you almost automatically. If you don’t use WordPress, well, we’re headed back into your server.
This article from GTmetrix provides a quick overview of the importance of GZIP compression and how to enable it. With Apache web servers, you’ll need to add this chunk of code to your .htaccess file.
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent
</IfModule>
And again, if this is beyond your comfort zone, your web host will probably help you set up GZIP compression if you ask nicely.
Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to ask us nicely, because we’ve already done it. All Unbounce landing pages are automatically compressed during data transfer. (But be nice to us anyway, alright?)
Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
WordPress is wonderful in its simplicity. As we’ve seen throughout this article, page speed fixes that might require a front-end developer on a static website can often be achieved by simply installing a WordPress plugin. Want to enable browser caching? Boom, W3 Total Cache.* Need to minify your scripts? Pow, Autoptomize.* Developer, shmeveloper.
But because it’s so easy to add functionality through plugins, WordPress websites have a habit of collecting a lot of them—along with all the of the bits and bites of code that make them work. Those add up.
Take a look at the scripts and plugins you’ve added to your website and decide whether they’re essential to your visitor experience. If they’re not, junking them could help cut some extra seconds off of your load time. (And guess what? There’s a plugin for that.) You can also disable plugins one at a time, then retest your page speed to determine which ones are problematic.
*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these plugins in particular might start a fire.
Building Pages in Unbounce? This is more of WordPress fix, but it also applies to Unbounce customers that have inserted a bunch of custom scripts onto their landing pages. Learn how the Unbounce Script Manager helps you keep things tidy.
Convert Images to Sprites
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
If your landing page includes a series of similar-sized images (say, for a client logo bar), you can shorten your load time by combining them into an image sprite, then use CSS to display specific chunks of that sprite at a time. This post from WebFX provides a great step-by-step guide for creating CSS sprites.
Joining smaller images into a larger file might seem counterintuitive, but again, the idea here is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your page and ultimately make it faster. Each individual image requires its own call—combining images into a single CSS sprite means your page only needs to make one.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We don’t build CSS sprites for you, but you can certainly use them on your Unbounce-built landing pages. Check out our documentation on custom JS and CSS with Unbounce.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes
We’re into the scary stuff now.
These are fixes you should absolutely not attempt unless you know what you’re doing or you’ve consulted extensively with a front-end developer. (We even had one of the Unbounce devs fact-check this article, and we’ve never felt smaller.) Proceed with caution.
Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS
Difficulty: Hard / Estimated Time: 45 Minutes
Those CSS and JS scripts that make your landing page beautiful and enable cool, dynamic functionality? They could be one of the major reasons that your page is loading so slowly. (Bad news for my flashing, neon visitor counter.)
When a web browser runs into CSS or JS in the head of your document, it’ll wait to download and process that content before continuing to render your page’s HTML. That might sound like a good thing from a user experience perspective—after all, we want people to see our landing page as it was intended—but it actually means that visitors can be left waiting on a blank screen while everything loads in the background.
To avoid this, we need to implement techniques for preventing render-blocking CSS and JS on our landing page. (Refer back to your Google PageSpeed Insights results to check if any scripts are slowing down your page load.)
Reduce render-blocking CSS
There are a couple of ways that we can neutralize render-blocking CSS. One option is to defer all CSS until after the HTML has loaded. That’ll certainly improve page speed, but it will also present non-styled content when the visitor first reaches our page. Not ideal.
The other, more preferable option is to defer most style rules until the HTML has been rendered, but inline the CSS necessary to correctly display content above the fold within the HTML. That way, visitors will see the properly-styled content as soon as they hit the page while the rest will load out of view. Pretty sneaky. This is a great tutorial using a real-life example from codeburst.io.
Another page speed opportunity for you here is combining your CSS files. By moving your style rules from several files to just one (or maybe two, tops), you can reduce the number of times that visitors need to ping your web server and improve your landing page load time. Here’s a good resource from GiftOfSpeed on combining and compressing you CSS scripts.
Eliminate render-blocking JS
Like CSS, JS scripts can prevent your landing page from rendering as quickly as you might like. We can avoid that by deploying the defer and async attributes. The former tells the browser to wait until your HTML is rendered before it begins pulling in JS scripts, while the latter asks that JS be downloaded simultaneously without interrupting the HTML download.
An important note is that not all JS scripts are equal: some are critical to the rendering of your page and need to be addressed right out of the gate, so they’ll have to stay at the top. Dareboost does a good job of explaining how to distinguish between critical and non-critical JS, as well as how to implement deferred and asynchronous loading.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Unbounce optimizes for most Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations, including the removal of render-blocking elements. That means you can skip this one.
Start Hand-Coding with AMP
Difficulty: Very Hard / Estimated Time: ∞ Hours
Alright, “∞ hours” is an overstatement, but implementing AMP is no small task. Developed by Google, the AMP project is an entirely new framework with which to build your web pages. The goal? Dramatically improve page speed, especially for mobile users.
AMP is made up of three core components: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. That means you’ll need to learn new markup, as well as understand the framework well enough to get your landing pages validated and make sure they actually work.
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of building with AMP here, but the AMP website has a bunch of resources (including tutorials) to help you get started.
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Improving your landing page speed can sound intimidating, but even small tweaks will make a big difference for your load times. Tackle the easy stuff first, then move onto more challenging fixes as you get comfortable. And above all, keep testing: seeing your improved speed results after each undertaking will give you the confidence and motivation to move forward.
Or, you know, just build with Unbounce. We automatically handle most of the speed fixes listed (or at least makes them super easy), which saves a ton of time. That means you can focus on what matters: getting more conversions and improving ROI.
from Digital https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/increase-landing-page-speed/
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Here’s Why Your Girlfriend Is A Totally Crazy Bitch, According To Her Zodiac Sign
Jesse Herzog
Aries (March 21st April 19th)
Shes loudmouthed, bossy, impatient and impulsive. This girl wont think twice about slashing your tires or lighting your entire closet on fire. Shes undisciplined, action-oriented and fearless. While thats fun in the beginning-all that lack of self-control and devil-may-care attitude-I shed a tear for the person who crosses her. Shell run her mouth about what you did (or maybe something she perceived you did- shes not big on fact checking) to your friends and family, blow up your Facebook with public posts and will flood her Instagram feed with photos of her just hanging out with other people to make you jealous. Shes like a toddler with access to a smartphone and your house keys.
The good news is, because shes so impulsive and doesnt always think things through, chances are shell just destroy the first thing she comes in contact with, be it your brand-new NorthFace jacket, your beat up, virus ridden six-year old laptop, or your ego. As long as you keep the truck locked in the garage and your lucky Von Miller jersey tucked safely away, theyll be safe. She lacks the follow-through to go looking for the stuff you actually care about.
Taurus (April 20th May 20th)
The bull is prone to laziness, possessiveness, jealousy, materialism and penny-pinching. Shes a whole lot of fun in the beginning. Shell treat you like royalty-the lady bull will shower you with gift and home-cooked meals, long, sensuous massages, a powerful sex drive and an unflappable demeanor. That said, once the bloom is off the rose and the Bull settles into her routine is when things can turn ugly.
If she thinks your work-wife is a little too much wife and not enough work, prepare to come home to the Spanish inquisition. If you really cross her, that sweet little Ferdinand lass of yours will turn into Toro the Bull. I hope youve put away your valuables, because theyre about to get smashed to smithereens. When shes really done (and mind you, it takes a while for her to get there, but once shes through, theres no turning back), after the screaming, the stomping, the pouting, the accusations and the destructions of your things (not hers, shes spent way too much money on her things), you better keep an eye on that bank account- especially if its shared. Shell drain you for every penny you have, and not think twice. The bull is soothed by food, wine and material goods, and if she feels youve crossed her, shell think nothing of emptying your pockets for her own satisfaction.
Gemini (May 21st June 20th)
If youve hooked up with a Gemini, youve probably been temporarily blinded by her chatter and charm. Being with a Gemini is like being inside a butterfly pavilion. Everything is so light and easy, so pretty and stimulating, you dont know where to look first. Shell enchant you with her tinkerbell laugh and her childlike interest in everyone and everything. Youll think youve fallen into a land of fairies and pixie dust. Believe me, you havent.
Shes superficial, ADHD, unable to commit, wracked with anxiety and has zero direction.
Everything is new and fun and interesting to her whirling dervish of a mind, that she retains minimal information and is constantly flying off to the next flower. Shes a tease, because she cant settle down with one person but sex is also oftentimes too much for her, so she flits about driving everyone, including her partner, absolutely crazy. Shes also incredibly moody, given her dual nature, and a ball of nerves due to her tendency to bite off more than she can chew.
Cancer (June 21st July 22nd)
If youre with a Cancer, be prepared for the tears. Nonstop. Over everything and nothing. The woman has zero self-esteem and is constantly looking for outside reassurance. At first she may seem interesting and mysterious, due to her hard outer shell, but once youve broken through and committed yourself to her, she turns into a stage 9 clinger.
You better have lots of tissues, endless patience and unlimited minutes and texting on your phone, because she will be on you, 24-7. A night out with the guys is enough to send her into a tailspin for a week. Shes not one to speak her wants and desires, expecting you to read her mind, and becoming livid when you dont. This woman acts like shes PMSing a full 24/7, 365. Cancer is also the sign on the mother, so shell be on your for kids within the first few weeks of dating. Dont trust her when she says shes on the pill- make sure youre double-bagging that thing and always check for pinholes in the condom wrapper.
But hey, its not all bad. Cancer woman tend to have great racks, so if youre a tit-man, youre in for a treat.
Leo (July 23rd August 22nd)
Off with their head! is the Leo womans motto. She doesnt just admire Beyonc- she actually thinks she IS Beyonc, and you, peasant, will treat her as such. She has a jealous streak to rival the Taurus or Scorpio woman, only hers is compounded by a flair for the dramatic as well. Prepare for public fights, drinks to be thrown in your face, screams about how you were lucky she ever spoke to you, how she cant believe she wasted her time with someone only made/did/went to (insert income/job/school here) and will stomp off, after stomping your foot with one of her stilettos.
You might think shed stomped off home, but chances are, once she cooled down a bit, she stomped off to your apartment. You may very well come home to the kitten side of your Leo lady, now that the panther has licked her wounds a bit. Youll find her curled up in your bed, smelling like a whole perfume store, skin glistening, makeup perfectly applied, hair cascading all over her leopard print silk nightie, and practically purring to you how very, very sorry she is.
Just remembereven kittens have claws.
Virgo (August 23rd September 22nd)
The Virgo woman is the original nagger, complainer, and hypochondriac. At first it seems sweet- she shows her affection through acts of service. Shes so is highly organized so youll never have ask twice where your socks are, if a bill has been paid or whats for dinner. It will all be pre-planned and taken care of, complete with an excel spreadsheet and a marked-off Google calendar outlining the next six months.
Slowly thoughthe nagging starts. The criticisms. The phantom sicknesses. Your house will smell like protein powder and B-12 tablets from all the supplements she takes (and will make you take too). What started out as gentle urging to maybe go to the gym more or take that night class will turn into a full-blown criticism of your beer gut and lack of professional ambition. While initially the sex will be earthy and sensual (although there WILL be a towel laid down and dont you DARE get a drop on the sheets), eventually it will dry up completely. If thats not enough to turn you away, the placement of the humidifier, nasal strips, compression socks, white cotton granny panties and neck pillow, to ensure a restful, healthful sheep should make you run for the hills. Unless youre another Virgo, in which case you can live happily in a little hypoallergenic bubble with her till the end of your days.
Libra (September 23rd October 22nd)
Think back to when you met your pretty Libra lady. Remember how she smiled, tossed her hair and gazed at you as if you were the only person on the planet, and the most interesting one to boot? Remember how you left feeling like royalty? Well youre not. She does that with everyone. Its how she gets her way.
It doesnt take long for the psycho to come out in Libra, but shes so skilled at making people see what she wants them to see, you may very well never notice. Shes so socially graceful, so charming, and such a skilled conversationalist that manipulation comes as easy to her as breathing. She has such a wide variety of friends and lovers, and is so adept at keeping these people from meeting, that she doesnt just live a double life, she lives a tripe, quadruple life. But damn if she isnt so sweet and feminine and look to you like the big strong man (or woman) you are that youll ever believe a word Im saying! (Believe me- Im a Libra myself). In the end though, its not the lying, half-truths and manipulating that will do you in- its the indecisiveness. This woman can debate and deliberate till the cows come home. Lucky for you, Libra tends to be rather self-involved, so she probably wont notice that youve packed your bags and left the city till youre long gone. She was too busy debating the merits of ketchup versus catsup.
Scorpio (October 23rd November 21st)
Im not going to even bother explaining how the Scorpio woman reeled you in. Chances are, it was a mixture of sexual titillation, fierce intelligence and The Rules. This woman knows the game, and she plays it perfectly.
Should you cross her thoughwelldont say you havent been warned. Scorpios natural ruler is Pluto, the planet of death, destruction and regeneration. Their secondary ruler is Mars, the planet named after the God of War. Its a potent combination. She can play a long game, and oftentimes will. Here is the woman that will live with the knowledge of your affair for months on end, smiling sweetly at you the whole time, while putting arsenic in your coffee. Here is the woman who will track down the person youre sleeping with and begin torturing them with anonymous notes and threats, hang-up phone calls, drive-bys and all other sorts of mental manipulation. Miss Scorpio will do it so craftily everyone will think that your lover is the crazy one. Here is the woman that will, in the end, find your prized possessions and light them on fire, while she makes you watch, and then walk out the door with your childhood best friend, who shed locked under her spell from the first moment she found out youd wronged her. Revenge isnt just a dish best served cold- its her favorite dish in the world.
Sagittarius (November 22nd December 21st )
Sags, the archers of the zodiac, are known for their athleticism, sense of humor and chummy attitudes. Never ones to take themselves seriously, they are the proverbial lampshade-on-the-head party girls, and their live-and-let-live attitude and bawdy jokes will have you clutching your sides. Much like their male counterparts, the archer lady doesnt see the point in dilly-dallying around before jumping into bed with you. The reason youll stay? Even though shes easy, she has almost no-hang ups about antiquated notations of female sexuality, and she wont blow up your phone with questions about Where is this going? or I never do that, I hope you dont think Im a slut!
The real reason shes not blowing up your phone? Shes too busy doing it with everyone. The woman has no concept of fidelity, and when you catch her cheating for the seventh or eighth time (and she wont try and hide it, Sags are all about honesty), shell be baffled as to why youre mad. Shell then becoming incensed that you are trying to own her, and the dishes will fly. Along with the television. And the radio. And your weight set. And anything else she can get her hands on. All the while shes destroying your house, shell be telling you exactly how SHE feels, with zero regard to your feelings in the coarsest language possible. My best advice for the person dating the Sagittarius lady? Go into it viewing the relationship as fun, not fidelity, dont ever except to tie her down and make sure youve got the number for a good clinic on speed dial in case you need an emergency shot of penicillin for when she comes back from her road trip from Vegas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas- except for that pesky case of the clap she brought home with her.
Capricorn: (December 22nd January 19th)
Chances are you met your Capricorn lady somewhere defined as classy, like a high-end auction, law-firm meetup group or interning at the White House. Thats because the girl has goals. Shes ambitious in the truest sense of the word, and nothing stops her from achieving her goals. Not even you. Especially you.
Shes the kind of girl you can take home to mom, with her twinsets, pearls and perfectly highlighted hair. Shes extremely intelligent, and will be able to talk recipes with your mother and politics with your father. Shes a firecracker in the bedroom, and most kinks wont make her bat an eye. But before you sit there thinking whats the problem? lets take a look at YOU, dear reader. Chances are, youve got a family with money, connections or some sort of family name. Shes not with you because she likes you. Shes with you because of what she can get from you. Youre nothing but a peg on her way to the top, and once shes reached the top of whatever it is shes chosen (and believe me, she will), youll have served your purpose and be tossed aside. If the sex was good she may keep you around for a couple more years to release her frustrations, or even convince you to marry her, but proceed with caution. The Capricorn lady only has #1 in mind, and that sure as hell aint you.
Aquarius: (January 20th February 18th)
The water-bearers are charming and quirky. You probably met her when she was volunteering at the animal shelter you adopted your dog at. Shell always be unconventional and intellectual, and probably seems fairly easy going and upbeat. Shes the truest humanitarian, and knows her mind- when she makes a decision, she sticks with it.
Things will start to sour when all that unconventional, quirky energy becomes just plain annoying. Youll struggle to follow her logic since shell speak in obscure quotes and non-sequiturs. Aquarius being the most detached sign of the zodiac, youll find she doesnt really have any friends, just tons of different acquaintances from different backgrounds she collects. She has no idea how to relate to another person, be it physically or emotionally, so when your grandmother dies and youre weeping and distraught, shell probably just stare at you and wonder why youre crying- the woman was 87 years old, after all.
She wont waste much time worrying about it beyond that, and just shrug her shoulders and stick her nose back in her book about underwater basket weaving or whatever asinine subject shes interested in at that moment. Sexually shes incredibly selfish- again, because, its because shes got a loner complex and is completely disconnected from her partner or friends. Shell let you do all the work, never once thinking to reciprocate. Eventually you probably wont even be the one to leave- youll just wake up one day and find that shes up and left the country to work with underprivileged llamas in Nepal, leaving behind nothing but her astronomy diorama and a few science fiction books she couldnt fit in her suitcase.
Pisces (February 19th March 20th)
No doubt you met this girl at a bar, because she loves to get her drink on. And her coke on. And her molly on. Anything to get blotto. Pisces are the addicts of the zodiac. While at first all that drinking and recreational drug use seems fun and free-spirited, it quickly turns into a string of crushing hangovers, accompanied by an empty bank account from all those trips to the bar.
The Pisces woman has even less ambition than the Gemini. Oh shell work if she has to, but she prefers to spend her days and nights at the bottom of a bottle, writing poetry that makes no sense, smearing paint on a canvas or simply staring at the sky. Shes got a martyr complex, and youre fights will start because you have no idea what its like to be her. Shell become morose and dark, speaking in short phrases and thinly veiled suicide attempts. Occasionally youll see her temper come out, with its drunk, lashing tongue and uncontrollable crying fits. Eventually youll recover from this one in a rehab facility of your own, once you finally realize that all the tears, booze and drugs were never really going to end in suicide and finally get up the strength to come up for air and dry off and dry out from your Pisces lady.
if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)}; jwplayer(‘jwplayer_7nNXwmvY_ydB0cBQo_div’).setup( {“playlist”:”https://content.jwplatform.com/jw6/7nNXwmvY.xml”} );
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/heres-why-your-girlfriend-is-a-totally-crazy-bitch-according-to-her-zodiac-sign/
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February 26, 2018
Where to begin? Probably with a deep breath. Two months from today, I will be on a plane back to the States, which means I have reached the half way point. Time certainly doesn’t slow down. Today I went to the immigration office in Kampala to swap my tourist visa out for a student visa, symbolic of some sort of greater permanence, of this becoming a kind of home and less of a quick stop along the way.
This week is probably also the busiest week of the semester so far (or so it feels). Last week was spring break, which I spent on my rural homestay, with a family in Soroti, in the Serere district of Northern Uganda. We left last Friday on the 16th and returned just last night (Sunday). The week left me with an awful lot to process through, which made jumping into this busy week quite challenging. Today, I struggled to balance the need to prioritize processing, with some of the pressing academic tasks that needed to be done. This has been a consistent thread this semester, but it felt particularly heightened today. I spent the week totally unplugged from technology and the rest of the world and reentry last night brought me 169 new emails and zero desire to read any of them. The emotional energy required to talk with people and explain my week to them proved difficult to find. Many of you have already responded to my inability to explain with understanding and grace.
Tonight, in an attempt to sort through the emails remaining unread from last night, I read the notes from the first La Vida training, which happened last week while I was away. (Update in case I haven’t told you— headed to the Adirondack’s to Sherpa in August!!) Per usual with God’s timing, the “devo thought” from the training was so poignant and relevant to my inner dialogue that I could have cried. It was taken from Elton Trueblood:
“The man who supposes that he has no time to pray or to reflect, because of social tasks which are urgent and numerous, will soon find that he has become fundamentally unproductive, because he will have separated his life from his roots….A man has made a step toward a genuine maturity when he realizes that, though he ought to perform kind and just acts, the greatest gift he can give others consist in being a radiant and encouraging person. What we are is more significant in the long run, than what we do. It is impossible for a man to give what he does not have.”
Yesterday, Will had reminded me to give myself permission to prioritize my mental, emotional, spiritual health/need for processing and reflection, even if that meant temporarily setting aside an assignment or other academic task. You know me enough to know that this advice is a tough pill for me to swallow, even though I know it’s true. Today, it was abundantly clear to me that lack of processing, even briefly, was leaving me “fundamentally unproductive,” no matter how much I tried to discipline myself. And so here I am, engaging in one of the most cathartic exercises I’ve ever known, writing. As usual, I am grateful for your willingness to sit patiently and listen while I attempt to sort through the richness of this experience and put it into words.
Spring Break 2k18… last year during spring break there was a giant blizzard. This year, in Sortoti, the average weekly temperature was somewhere around 100 degrees (not even hyperbolizing here). I went into the week expecting I would sleep in a hut, slaughter a chicken, carry water on my head, and milk a cow. I did none of the above. There’s a lesson on perception and expectations in there. When I was dropped off on Saturday, my host mama matter-of-factly informed me— “This week, it will be too hot for activities, but we will prepare food, eat, and sit.” That turned out to be an incredibly accurate synopsis of the week. In addition to the heat, we are currently on the tail end of dry season, which contributed to the lack of activity, since my host parents primarily farm. The third and final factor that shaped the level of activity of the week was that both of my host parents are in their 70s, incredibly strong and fit, but still doing less physically demanding work at this stage of life.
However, here are some things that I did get to do:
Bucket bathed… a lot
Drank 4,000 Nalgenes a day (don’t worry Mom, I stayed hydrated)
Rested
Star gazed
Ate food
Went to church
Visited the village center
Learned to remove the internal organs of a chicken prior to cooking it
Washed dishes
Did laundry
Drank tea
Swept and mopped the house
Learned to cook a lot of things in the outdoor kitchen— posho, lots of different kinds of potatoes, soup, greens, millet/potato/sorghum bread…
Constructed an underground oven and cooked sweet potatoes in it
Rested
Read 600+ pages (spread between three books)
Sat in silence
Listened to the radio
Beat, winnowed, and separated millet
Rested
Ate more food
Visited the neighbors
Sewed pillowcases
Shelled G-nuts
Picked, cut, and ate jackfruit
Spent too much time in the pit latrine after eating jackfruit
Watched thunderstorms from the porch (It rained four nights in a row. Before leaving for the week, Eddie told us the mzungus always bring the rain to Soroti. I thought it was a crazy superstition, but it turned out to be absolutely right.)
Drank more tea
Rested
Picked and ate fresh oranges
My mama’s favorite phrase was “you go rest now,” since my room was like an oven during the day, this usually meant finding the shadiest spot and reading my book or journaling, rather than taking a nap. In combination with the amount of time I already spent sitting in silence with my host parents, or by myself in between other activities, this was wild. Before leaving, I asked people to pray for my ability to be present. God responded by providing opportunities to be present in excess. Retrospectively, the time that I had this week to reflect, contemplate, learn, and rest was truly valuable, but my impatience made it difficult to recognize in the moment. I experienced a week of simplicity, with little urgency. A culture not enslaved to clock time or schedules, but guided by the needs of the present moment, subsistence, and the daily rhythm of the earth. It was simultaneously one of the most challenging, defining, and enriching (still convincing myself of the last part) parts of the week.
The week included some of my most challenging experiences in communicating cross-culturally– navigating difficult conversations, pushing myself not to be dismissive of a differences of opinion rooted in cultural conditioning, doing my best to practice humility and openness, and learning that I have an accent that is at times hard to understand. This is something I still need to unpack, but you can ask me about it if you’re curious.
Much of what I learned this week came through lots of observation and listening. I learned a lot about the historical and current politics of Northern Uganda and it’s rocky relationship with President Museveni, who punishes the region by withholding government resources or using discriminatory policies, because of the imbalance of power based in tribal/ethnic divisions. I learned about theology, community, he education system, marriage, death, parenting, family, environment, land and agriculture, politics, and history all as they’re shaped by the culture and context of Northern Uganda. Detailing each of these would take an incredible number of words.
I also learned about some of the most prominent poverty related issues Ugandans are experiencing, particularly related to education and medical care. Serere is and has been one of the most impoverished areas of Uganda. However, hear me on this. When you close your eyes and picture poverty in Africa, that image in your mind is not a universal representation. I learned that about myself and my own preconceptions this week for sure. I wrestled (and still am, present tense) with the task of attempting to define and understand poverty and all that is wrapped up in that. In the West, one might look at my host parents and consider them poor. But they do not struggle to put food on the table, they sustain themselves through the land they own and the food they grow. They understand conservation, care for what they own, and work very hard. If measured, their land and animals could translate to monetary value that would increase their material wealth significantly. At the same time, in the village this week, I observed acute poverty that has been unmatched by anything in the previous two months. All the while, I was reading “The White Man’s Burden,” a convicting critique by a former World Bank economist of Western involvement in the developing world, particularly through aid, military and political interference, and all forms of residual neocolonialism. I don’t think I will ever stop grappling with the irreparable damage we have done in our pursuits of materialism and power, and our misuse of resources and privilege. This paragraph is insufficient to express my questions and tangled thought processes about this particular topic, but for now, it’s what I’m capable of writing.
By the end of the week, I had more questions than answers. Honestly, what else is new. On Friday morning, we were picked up and drove to Kapchowra, about an hour away, where we spent the weekend. On Friday night, we spent time in intentional debrief, which was helpful, but in many ways only began to scratch the surface of our 25 different experiences. Saturday, we had a day of emotional (but definitely not physical) rest. After a lovely breakfast, we hiked Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano and home to the famous Sipi Falls, one of Uganda’s bigger tourist spots. The ten mile hike was exhausting, but refreshing and breathtaking. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
We had a quick thirty minute respite after the hike before we began a “coffee tour.” Kapchowra is the OG home of the Arabica coffee bean, discovered long ago by a lucky farmer who just wanted to find out why his goats were getting hyper after eating the leaves of some tree with redish colored berries. On the tour, we got to learn about and help with the process of making coffee, from picking beans to pouring a steaming cup and everything in between. Definitely a highlight for me, even if it was a horribly touristy activity. Shown in the photo below is me shelling coffee beans. Not pictured was the slap happy, caffeine induced state my roommates witnessed me in after the effects of having more coffee than I’ve had in two months kicked in. Let’s say I was laughing at everything and didn’t get the most sleep I’ve ever gotten, but it was quite worth it.
On Sunday morning, we hiked to the top of the little hill above the guest house for a small worship service before our departure. I was asked to give a brief testimony about what God has been teaching me in this first half of the semester (in 5-10 minutes??). I spoke about patience. presence, and newness, the ways that He has been revealing my restlessness to me, but it felt next to impossible to come up with some concise summary of the work He has done in me in the past two months (and is surely continuing to do). Thanks for sticking with me and reading this long post to the end. If it feels open ended, that’s because my thoughts are open ended in so many ways right now. I don’t want to settle for a pretty packaged or over-simplified version of the week. In some areas, I settled for brevity in this post, because I don’t want to risk sounding like I have the answers. I know the week was hard; I know the week was valuable. I know it left me with even more to ponder than I already had, which I didn’t know was possible. As I talk with you individually in the coming weeks, don’t be afraid to ask me questions, because they will help me in my pondering, but know that I am unresolved and still figuring out how to understand.
A brief post-script. Some people (not necessarily any of you) have made comments to my USP friends and I that come with a perceived bravery or accomplishment in what we did last week. “You lived in a rural village in Africa?! That must have been so hard, you are so brave!” or something of the sort. All I will say is that I am not brave. My attitude at points during the week was not even in the ballpark of praiseworthy. This whole thing is as far from being about me as possible. I felt like an outsider this week, even though I was being welcomed into a community. Don’t hear me being dismissive of your encouragement. But I challenge all of you to not let your perceptions of African poverty to shape your visions of my experience. I think these kinds of comments, while well intentioned, are rooted in subconscious (read: often distorted) pictures of the reality of a place like this. I hope that as I communicate to you, the things I say will never glorify or manipulate the things I am experiencing as a result of my own pride and desire for affirmation. Please call me out if you ever see or hear this in my words. Thanks again for being in my corner.
All my love,
Abs
Spring Break February 26, 2018 Where to begin? Probably with a deep breath. Two months from today, I will be on a plane back to the States, which means I have reached the half way point.
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so my boyfriend just dumped me.
I wrote a massive stream of thoughts down below.
im not going to spell/grammar check it and i only write these things to look back on in the future.
if you read it, it will be hard to follow
i write them in a way i know i will understand, because theyre intended for me.
so a lot of context isn’t written down, because I expect myself to already put that context into the right place.
ultimately these are a collection of thoughts many many many other people think, and youre not reading anything new anyway.
In the long term this is a good thing but I’m still in shock.
One of the last things he said was ‘I think you’re mistaking being woke for being retarded’.
I had to look at it and think objectively. What if I am retarded?
Am I just retarded? I asked deep within and it’s like my body was rejecting any possibility of it being true with denile.
I know now the truth is I’m just not on the same plain as these people. It’s foolish for me to try to connect with them on that level with those questions. Whether I am or I’m not retarded, I’m in a completely different world from them and it’s just not comparable.
Still, I had to ask. Am I retarded? Whenever I looked deep enough to find an answer, a part of me just threw back denial at any possibility of it being true.
I never claimed to be woke or all-knowing but I didn’t say that because that starts a typical pattern of discussion.
I do care what he and many people think and it’s just damaging to pretend I don’t, but if I gave in to that and tried to correct him it would just build on how much I care. Trying to acknowledge it and let it pass.
I don’t blame him at all. This sounds like self-pity but I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m still shook but I think I’ll be alright once I’m done processing it and acknowledging it all.
Again, I don’t blame him. I’m surprised it hasn’t come to this already
I guess this is the time something good came from being a dick.
I’m wondering if I get to say this is the meds. I get hella mood swings from my medication. Like super fast switches
I’m honestly a different person, entirely different personality, on this medication. My mood literally switches every couple of minutes, sometimes quicker. I would switch between mania and extreme irritability less than a minute apart from each other after starting the medicine.
I do believe that made me act like a dick to him and many people I know.
Am I allowed to say it’s not entirely my fault because of that though. Many others, including the old me would say I can’t. I’m still to blame. Any loss of control over self is just the result of me not manifesting the willpower to make a change within myself.
I do try to make this clear to anyone reading
but these are thoughts from deep down within
where things aren’t expressed with words, but just the understand of myself I only truly share with myself.
If you think you understand what I’m saying, you most likely don’t. Even if you think I’m wrong on that.
It’s the bane of my existence. Truly.
The feeling of not being understood while others say they understand.
If I say nobody understands me, or you don’t understand I become a cliche
and also people can respond with ‘I know I don’t understand, thats why im asking’.
when i try to help people understand my world, it leads to them understand less and less and less
while asking more and more and more
and I’ve seen it happen a thousand times... to me.
I know the pattern, exactly how it starts. When I notice that, I try to explain to them that I know how it starts. They’re just not going to understand the answers to the questions they ask, it’s an endless cycle.
They believe they’re different for some reason though, that they will be able to understand. Or that’s what it is on the surface. Really, I know they aren’t real and that they’re being controlled in a way to just enact conversations in a precise enough way to get to me.
I’m speaking in material world terms though.
They sometimes get offended when I insist they don’t understand.
when we eventually end up screaming at each other, because I gave into their persistence
and it plays out exactly how I knew it would
they say I don’t understand
then I point it out, they won’t understand. I’ve had this conversation many times before and you just won’t.
but they still persist and it just goes on
I forgotten how I started talking about all of this.
but yeah my boyfriend dumped me.
this is what I actually wanted but right now I’m still shocked. which is what happens.
I was a dick to him, and many other people. I’m surprised he stayed around that long. since february. half a year.
I’ve gotten fat since then. I’ve become very ugly. I’ve been very mean, very ignorant and just yeah not a nice partner.
also we never kissed lmao
never felt i could authentically go into kiss him
he did try once when we was at the door, but i turned my head and pretended to be looking at something. I pretended i didnt know.
honestly I prefer girls. i wont go into why, its just really my personal whatever you want to call it.
It’s how I feel. I don’t like females. almost none of them. It is sexism. that is the definition of what I feel. i wont try to convince anyone to think the same, or act in any way other than avoidance.
but after lots of observation i came to a conclusion. its a long winded one, and again, its something about me that I just know. I don’t have the feelings in words.
but yeah, I just dislike females. Almost all of them.
the ones I don’t like i must objectively admit, I hold them on a pedestal because im sort of crushing on them. they’re no different, despite that fact though.
i also struggle to talk to them. i also had a bad history with my mother and sisters.
you can blame it to that and i accept the possibility of it being down to that too. im not saying men are better (unless thats literally what im saying. its just sort of a stream of consciousness)
anyway yeah
im attracted to girls more but i dislike females
so i dont persue them
and if i ever do, im too fucking shy
like i cant make eye contact with them. im so chill around guys like my heart doesnt even race. im so authentic
but i just freeze and i dont know what to say
so yeah, i went for a boyfriend instead
yeah maybe sometimes im into that, but deep down its not a lot
maybe just as one night stands. as relationships it doesnt work.
and i guess thats part of why it fucked. I wasnt inclined to put the effort in after the initial manic phase of me falling for him
i like not using my phone. i ignore or dont even check messenger for days
i usually reply to my one main friend only, then ignore the rest. even that is around once every 4 hours at most.
and in person i treated him as more as one of my friends, not even a main main one. just a casual.
I also snapped and got moody about various things everytime i was around him.
it just builds up, and tonight i was being very moody. trying to make sure things go my way, because i didnt want a personal project to go differently to how i planned.
it meant alot but deep down. I wanted control
i felt like control was being taken from me, and that was one of my only forms of control. This is where I believe my ego is destroying my life(in one way), although idk how my ego comes into that.
i didnt want to admit that, even to myself
even though a part of me was acknowledging it at the time, while fearing i might continue to desire control
leading to psychotic breaks and a downward spiral in the years to come.
him and my main friend were taking the project into their own hands. scrapping my ideas for it, and replacing it with their ideas
they both agreed they was better ideas. im in denial but im making my self type, yes, they were better ideas than mine.
i didnt want to admit that. i didnt like that fact. it was threatening, and if a concept like that can be threatening, i presume my ego is involved.
on another note, im going to meet an internet friend, the end of this month, were gonna do shrooms and acid.
sure ego death likely isnt that simple but its worth a mention.
also ego is releated to sense of self and distinction between things in the universe. im not looking for ego death, per se (maybe i am and im just unaware), i just want to not care what people think and what way people might percieve me
so yeah. i was being moody and making sure my ideas were in there. while they insulted my plans together.
its not painful, but i physically felt a sigh of sadness in my chest.
ive felt much worse though. especially last time my bf dumped me. the first time he did. we didnt speak for a week. he came back. i went through so much pain in that time, that when he called me back and got back with me. i just didnt care. i met him like once a month after that and ignored him. surprisingly he took his time (months after that) to dump me too.
I know there’s a lot of great features about me, but theyre far from the surface
so i dont know why people stay with me for that long. there are no reasons for them to stay with me, that they can see without being me.
there really really are plenty more fish in the sea. fish much better for them.
so again. its a relief this happened. As long as he doesnt come back and develop on this.
as long as it ends clean like this. its all good.
I need time to process shock right now.
Also to truly acknowledge how I feel and just feel.
then he’s gone.
i dont have to worry about him. im also glad i got to use him for a project in time
needed him for something else but oh well. its not something he wanted to do though
and i wasnt being very grateful, just more demanding of him doing it.
we also had plans. me him and my main friend. but i didnt want him there because i just feel like its extra baggage.
so i dont have to worry about that
he got me a birthday present for my soon coming birthday.
idk what he plans to do with that but if its edible he can just eat it. if not, he has friends, they can have it.
this made me think though.
its understandable why he did this. he chose to leave because ultimately i was creating an unpleasant experience for us both while not actively trying to make a pleasant one.
the reason my friend hasnt left though, is simply because he’s loyal enough to stay that long. we have a stronger bond and feeling of understanding with each other. weve known each other very long and done a lot together
but how long until it becomes too unpleasant for him.
im aware i need to be kinder to him. i honestly dont feel i have the power to be nice when im in that state though
nobody on the outside can see that
its simply me being a dick
and whether meds are to blame or not, how long would he choose to be around that
he has plenty more options
and hes similar to me, he can just move on
i need to be more open to what he says
i need to let go of my desire for control
i dont need him,
but i want him in my life
to have him leave my life would be a huge change. hes the only reason i really stay in this country other than my doctors being here.
i want to explore usa, just party and do lots of shit
but i have a perceivable future with him
if he leaves i need to figure out a way to keep my health up, while in the US
change is an important part of my life. Change and adaptation.
thats not what is holding me back from him leaving
but I do want the future, that involves me and him going far.
Whether he takes me along or not he is going far
and i dont want to just be a leech, I want to be there with him
I also dont have anyone physically
that im as okay with as him
i dont want my mood swings to destroy friendship
im aware of it while its happening but i cant snap out of that.
its so strong. my exterior convinces my interior that i am right, therefore, i disagree wholly with him
when he’s almost always right
and its a shitty situation
i feel so strongly about it then, that this time i am definitely right. even though all the other times like this I was wrong
then later on, i reflect and realize he was right again while i had some hints of truth+logic but was wrong
how long is he going to put up with it?
is it long enough for the meds to be tapered down enough for the mood swings to disappear.
if so, will our friendship be as strong and undamaged as it is now, on the way out.
it would be foolish to tell him tonight because its 4:30
its the emotional irrational time of night.
but tomorrow i... i dont emotionally want to
but tomorrow i must tell him that im different on these meds
and i dont want to snap at him
im aware i do and that hes right
and most of all, i understand why my boyfriend left, and the reason my friend hasnt done so yet is because hes more loyal and connected to me
and that i dont want him, my friend, to leave. He has many valid reasons to, and im not the greatest friend
but i dont want him to leave. the others can leave. i dont give a shit and i havent for a very long time
but if any person is important to me, its him and my good health consultant.
not even family
just him
family have been a hindrance more than a help
he’s the one truth
i dont know what that means
but i tried to type what he is quicker than i could think as to be as honest as i could with myself.
hes the worthy one in this unreal universe. the one who can succeed. who deserves it.
the one i want to succeed.
if i dont succeed, i want him to. whether i do or dont
if i die and lose everything
i want all my potential to go into him so he can use it for good.
i dont want to cause him to leave, and i must ask for his understanding and patience until im off the medicine
my personality and how i even feel placed in this world is so different
i was extremely dissociative off the medicine
and i know, off the medicine i will think/realize that the medicine is just used as a means to host me
make me the same as everyone else and stop me from thinking freely. its thought control
and thats the truth but ill be much more aware of it off the meds
like i literally just
wow
extremely dissociated is all i can hope to say
you wouldnt get it unless you felt the level yourself
but on them
im like a moody, menstrual 15 year old girl
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