WordPress How To: Title Formatting Guidelines

Post Titles and How To Optimize Them

Here on Fae’s Journal, authors will search for ideal focus keywords and keyphrases and include them in the post title. And anyone with a WordPress site will benefit from this simple procedure. A focus keyphrase is the topic of the page and what your post is about. Including the focus keyphrase for your post helps search engines understand how to list your post where it should be displayed in search results.

Yoast SEO

We use the Yoast SEO tool to help find ideal keyphrases. In the post interface, the Yoast plugin is located at the bottom of the input area and can be used to look up potential keywords to decide upon the best focus keyphrase. Depending on the length of the post, the focus keyphrase should then be repeated throughout the post several times in a contextually logical way.

But Not Too Much

Just like Goldilocks, too much of a good thing can turn into a bad thing. Your post should not be overloaded with the focus keyword or phrase. In general, if the post is longer, it should have more instances of the focus keyphrase. But a short article once or twice is okay.

Focus Keyphrase in Headings

It’s a good idea to have the focus keyphrase in headings as well as embedded within paragraphs, too.

WordPress How To: Paragraph Formatting Guidelines

Gutenberg Blocks

The WordPress Gutenberg editor allows you to easily format your posts. Gutenberg works by chunking the parts of your post into blocks, which allows for great flexibility and customization possibilities. One major benefit of using this editor over a more traditional editing method is that elements can be moved around easily, posts look good regardless of what sort of device it’s being accessed on, and on the admin side of things, it requires fewer plugins to run your WordPress installation.

Use Headings to Outline Key Points

Use headings to split up the post into manageable paragraphs. It’s best to have headings that outline the general points of the article, so they can see if the paragraph that follows is pertinent to their needs.

Headings Make the Article Easier to Read

The goal of breaking things up is to make your articles easy to read and digest in small bites. Studies have shown that most of the time, people don’t read the whole article. Their eyes scan over a webpage to find keywords and important information, tracking key points instead of reading word for word. Shorter paragraphs help people identify important information.

Pull Quotes and Quotes Can Be Used in Moderation

What Is the Ideal Paragraph Length?

Paragraphs should not exceed 300 words. If your paragraph is longer, find a place to split it into two paragraphs. No one likes a tl;dr situation where there is a wall of text. So split those paragraphs up!

WordPress How To: Image Formatting Guide

WordPress Image Size Limit

The WordPress limit for image size is 2560px by 2560px. However, there is a balance to be found. Serving high-quality images while maintaining a low screen load time must be taken into consideration. I often use sites such as CloudConvert to compress image files to make them smaller while maintaining high-quality resolutions.

Aspect Ratios

With modern web pages, made to display on computer and mobile screens, using aspect ratios to scale images to ideal sizes is the best practice. We use the Kadence theme on Fae’s Journal, and images are scaled to the ratios in the image below. WordPress will center images to their absolute center. So, it’s best to start with the aspect ratio you will scale to in mind when making graphics.

Featured Images

On Fae’s Journal, featured images should be used with every post. Not every WordPress theme uses featured images. But we use it here. Featured images are the images that are displayed on homepage and on pages linking to articles. So if your WordPress site uses featured images, upload them in the left menu of the post interface. You can also set an exerpt below the featured image, if your theme is set to display excerpts of posts.

Font Formatting Guide

For graphics and PDFs, we use the following fonts and colors. The color scheme on the site is similar to the color scheme used for graphics. But for the site, making sure the color scheme works for websites is more important than pretty colors.

For web fonts and color schemes, it’s important to ensure the color palette is high-contrast and visible to users. A high-contrast color palette uses colors that are visually distinct. High contrast makes it easy for the eye to distinguish between various elements. Can users see the difference between the normal and link text? Is the hover text ok? Does anything clash?

Next WordPress How To: Categories, Tags, and More

I am going to continue this How To series with a post about categories, tags and some specific Yoast SEO stuff.

The post WordPress How To: Formatting Posts appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Last Time

Last term I looked at DJT with derision, and rolled my eyes at everything he did. Because it seemed like he came in after the inauguration completely inept, and unprepared to fulfill the duties of his position, and everyone around him seemed like they were equally scrambled as they made the transition from private business to public governmental officials. He had blunder after blunder and they were horrible, and rage-inducing, but there was an overall feel in my social circles of “look at that buffoon he really has no clue, does he?”

All That Has Changed

That’s not what’s happened this time around. No. He and his people have had time to prepare. They published it all for anyone to see in Project 2025. And now? The moment he was sworn in they came in and began implementing all those horrible initiatives at breakneck speed.

Illegal and Dangerous

Not that he has any legality to be doing all that he’s doing. There’s nothing the government likes more than procedures and standards. There’s a way to do things. that DJT seems to think he’s entirely exempt from. But he’s steamrolling through and no one in his camp is willing to stop him. And there’s seemingly little anyone can do with a president who’s determined he doesn’t have to follow the laws that are there for a fucking reason.

Terrifying

It’s frankly terrifying. I feel sick about their attacks on immigrants. I’m scared shitless about their attacks on equality. And the funding freezes, the firing of all the inspector generals, the attempts to drive out thousands of career federal workers. It’s all terrifying. And the speed at which it’s happening is flat-out astonishing. There are no procedures in place to do any of the horrible things he’s announcing will happen. But he keeps pumping out order after order. And nothing is more in DJT’s sights than Wokeness and DEI.

Woke

I am so, so sick of the word woke. WOKE IS NOT AN INSULT. And it boggles my mind how the word has been twisted into something that IS an insult, something that a conservative magahead is completely repulsed by. Woke is used derisively as if it’s maybe the worst thing ever.

What if we…

Let’s do a little thought exercise. In your mind, I want you to replace the word woke with the word empathy. Automatically, the concepts surrounding the term woke are framed completely differently. Where woke is used as an insult, having empathy is a trait that a logical person wants to embody.

Empathy and Kindness

Someone who is ‘woke’ has empathy for others, and cares about the obstacles another person might face in their lives. A person with empathy can imagine a world where things are made easier for everyone, not just themselves.

It’s honestly as simple as that. Woke means caring about the lives of others. It’s being able to look at things from a different perspective. Woke means you worry about the barriers others might face to get to the same goals that might be easier for you. Woke means that even if something wrong in the world doesn’t affect you, you still want to fix it for those who it does. If something can be done to facilitate a better life, someone who is “woke” wants that. It’s so freaking simple, and I don’t understand how it’s been so skewed and vilified. Well, I do understand how. It was a whole campaign on conservative socials. But it still honestly boggles my mind.

Possible Retribution for BLM Protests?

There is no one pettier than DJT. I wonder if this campaign against DEI is in part a petty punishment for the protests that happened under his tenure as president. It would take a lot to convince me otherwise. And it was a campaign. The rhetoric spun around all the maga circles until the language was thoroughly streamlined. Now, everyone says the same old lines. So predictable.

Let’s Talk About DEI

DEI is the new thing the maga heads are attacking. DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Never in a million years would I expect that it’s the new ghost in the room, that they’ve spun and now all of a sudden a DEI hire means that person was hired in an inequitable manner.

DEI is a lot of things. It’s about breaking down barriers people of color might experience, and so so much more. It’s about women, it’s about people with disabilities, it’s about people with mental health struggles, it’s about poor people! It’s about LGBTQ people (And as an aside, another whole rant will be dedicated to the trepidation I feel for my fellow rainbow associates.

DEI is ADA, folks. And that’s frankly terrifying on another whole level. I don’t understand why someone would be against all of these things that I was raised to believe were good things. Equity? Inclusivity? Diversity? These are now bad things?

What would an ideal world look like to these people?

No wait. I already know. Cis-white males in charge and everyone else subjugated and oppressed. It took him 9 days to open his first concentration camp. We’re so far down the slippery slope and I hope everyone understands that.

Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street

Deep into a discussion about current events with a friend, I pointed out that a lot of these people need a good preschool lesson on kindness. And it suddenly occurred to me just how backward this all is. We’re upside down, folks. The world they want to make is not the world I was taught, from a very young age, that we as a society should aspire to have.

I was born in 1980 and that means that my early years were peak Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street years. I watched those shows every day. And the messages and morals of these shows became deeply foundational to me. And I know I am not alone. People of my generation were taught about a different world from all this dystopian nightmare that we’re seeing with DJT.

Sesame Street

Let’s remember the world that Sesame Street taught us about. Who lived on Sesame Street? We had a diverse cast of human characters and Muppets. The characters were women, Latino and Hispanic, Black, White, immigrants. There were people of all color, and there were people who had a disability. The Muppets were also diverse and had their own quirks, their own origins, etc.

Sesame Street taught us that this was the world that we wanted to embrace. That diversity is a good thing. That we as a society are working to build a world in which we can listen to the voices of people from all walks of life. Sesame Street helped to give young people of my generation a well-rounded perspective on how things are, and how things should be to allow everyone to live their best life.

Wikipedia points out that:

During Sesame Street’s first season, some critics felt that it should address more overtly such affective goals as social competence, tolerance of diversity, and nonaggressive ways of resolving conflict. The show’s creators and producers responded by featuring these themes in interpersonal disputes between its Street characters.[59] During the 1980s, the show incorporated real-life experiences of its cast and crew, including the death of Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) and the pregnancy of Sonia Manzano

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street

Mr. Rogers

Mr. Rogers, too. He talked to us and helped us to learn about our emotions, how to regulate them, how to feel about ourselves and others. His life lessons came from a place of deep empathy for all people. He wanted us to be able to understand the perspectives of others and how our lives might shape our beliefs and identities. He wanted to teach a generation how to live together.

They Shaped a Generation

Both of these shows taught us, the generation that I belong to, that we want everyone to live a life that is fulfilling, even if they have a disability, even if they are coming into the country from another country. And I embraced that lesson. Deeply. A whole generation of kids did.

The people who think that because I strongly support equality, diversity, and inclusion in my life means that I am some woke liberal who has been brainwashed should remember the worlds that we grew up watching and the morals of the shows we watched as children.

Our Voices

It’s critical at this point we stop doom-scrolling and do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to fight back. We have got to do something. Someone has to do something. Our country is being dismantled. We will be rounded up, and people are going to die. And I cannot stand by and let that happen while I do nothing.

The post Woke Is Not An Insult and We Must Fight Back appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

53% of White Women Voted Against THEMSELVES

Let that sink in. I get that the people who voted for Dump Truck Drumph voted to uphold white patriarchal values in which rich white men are the pinnacle and no one else matters. But white women, really. What the fuck?

Never associate me with one of those women

Everything that man stands for appalls me. He disgusts me. And the people who voted for him, well, I don’t even want to share a country with them.

Thanks to…

Thank you Black men and women who voted against the hate. Thank you Latina women who voted against hate. The cognitive dissonance of Latino men voting for Tr*ump baffles me. Absolutely confusing how that’s happened.

Fuck you to…

Everyone who voted for him. Don’t care if you’re family, “friends”, colleagues, or people I don’t know at all. You disgust me and I don’t want anything to do with you.

What now?

What happens to his criminal cases now? The man is a rapist, a felon, a grifter, a rasict, a fraud. He’ll throw out those cases as fast as he can.

What about the insurrectionists who should be in jail? They’ll be free.

What about LGBTQ+ protections? I’m legit afraid.

What about women’s rights? Fuck.

What about student loan repayment forgiveness? Ugh, fuck.

What about the country I grew up in? Done. Gone.

I am glad Athens is a liberal bubble. Sometimes I need to shelter myself from reality.

The post Election 2024: Disappointed and Disillusioned appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

What is the Bronze Age Collapse?

Archaeologists and Anthropologists will tell you that the Bronze Age Collapse is one of the greatest periods in history that no one knows about. But plenty of people do. A quick YouTube search will pull up hundreds of videos detailing this time period. I am fascinated with it.

So what is it?

The Bronze Age Collapse, occurring from about 1200 BCE to 1150 BCE, was a culmination of events that caused the demise of many historic and once mighty societies. Multiple forces played into the collapse: environmental changes that caused drought and famine, invasions and/or migrations of people namely the Sea Peoples, the destruction of major population centers and historic cities, and disruptions to historic trade routes that caused bronze production to plummet.

Whole civilizations disappeared, written languages were forgotten, and after, the world was thrown into a dark age while whoever was left tried to pick up the pieces of their world and put it back together. It’s wild stuff.

Who are the players here?

The Hittites, Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, and all the other interconnected kingdoms of the day were all involved. Some of them survived, in some form. Others completely collapsed.

Why Did the Bronze Age Collapse Happen?

People far more educated than I have so many resources available that I am not qualified to explain the details. I am not a historian, just someone who loves history.

Warfare Changed

Armies emerged that fought with swords instead of spears so they could take on chariots, the tanks of that time.

Sea Peoples

The Sea Peoples were groups of people appearing from mysterious places across the sea. They arrived to burn cities, invade, and cause mass destruction all over the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Historians now think these people might have been running from drought and famine of their own.

Climate Change

Drought peppered the landscape, and once flourishing farms dried up to dust. This could have been happening for centuries before it was collapse time, but all of a sudden within a few generations the lands that were once fertile and lush were no longer productive.

Fascinating

The fall of civilizations is a fascinating topic that people devote their entire careers studying. And this particular societal collapse doesn’t just encompass the fall of one society, but an entire network of great civilizations that had been around for centuries, all terminating in this one cataclysmic time period. It’s a super interesting point in history to set a story.

Enter Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed is an incredible IP that can be a launching point for someone to get really into history. I’m talking about myself. I have always found history to be interesting but Assassin’s Creed does something really compelling: It immerses you into the history as part of the gameplay. This makes you feel like you’re a part of the history. You’re surrounded by it. You’re listening to the sounds of the people around you, you’re looking at the markets, the landscapes, the outfits, the people. To me, Assassin’s Creed makes history come alive in a way that just telling a story cannot. And through that immersion, deeply impactful stories can be lived, not just listened to.

And this time period? The Bronze Age Collapse? Legit thousands of stories could be told.

Would this be too similar to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey? Origins?

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey takes place during the Peloponnesian War from 431-422 BCE. Origins takes place in Ptolemaic Egypt from 49 to 38 BCE. The Bronze Age Collapse occurred from 1200 BCE to 1150 BCE, more than 600 years before the time explored in AC Odyssey and a millennia before Origins.

Why Go Back to the Mediterranean?

This region of the world was the birthplace of great civilizations, and there’s so much incredible history to be spun here.

Assassin’s Creed is Alternative History, Remember?

Sure, sure. I get that the people at Ubisoft take real history, and weave some fiction through it to tell their own stories. That’s part of why the IP is a game and not a history software. But what they can do is bigger than that. I have learned an incredible amount of actual history from each AC game that I have played, from the Borgia Italy with the Ezio Trilogy to the French Revolution (bonus: I played the game in French so it was incredible, let me tell you), to the Peloponnesian War. I have immersed myself in both the fiction of the Assassin’s Creed world AND the real history through each game. And I think they could do so, so much with the Bronze Age Collapse.

Ubisoft Knows the Potential

Ubisoft knows how much potential their games have to get people to learn real history. I loved the part in Origins that let you walk around and learn about Alexandria, etc from a purely historical standpoint, with no violence or hidden blading people (though I love that part of the game too!)

In 2023 Ubisoft partnered with the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford England to explore Odyssey’s depiction of Knossos and the Labyrinth of King Minos and the myth of the Minotaur:

Visit the island of Crete in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and you’ll encounter the ancient (even by Kassandra’s standards) Knossos, one of the oldest documented Greek settlements. Excavated by Sir Arthur Evans in the early 20th century, Knossos was home to the Minoans, a civilization of Greeks that came and went more than 1,000 years before the events of Odyssey. Venture underneath the ancient palace as Kassandra or Alexios, and you’ll uncover the fabled Labyrinth of King Minos, where he hid the mythical Minotaur. While this might be where Odyssey begins to divert from history, the Labyrinth and Minotaur, like most myths, is rooted in reality. In fact, the myth is the subject of the current exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth & Reality.

The museum featured an area with Ubisoft’s depiction of the Minoan palace projected on a screen and an interactive display to explore the area. This wasn’t the first time Ubisoft has hammered into the historical elements in their stories and partnered with museums, they also had a partnership with the British Library for an Alexander the Great exhibition.

A Plea to Ubisoft

So there you have it. Ubisoft people, Assassin’s Creed development teams, please! Think about this idea, it’d be so freaking cool!

Also, one more thing. Is Ubisoft Quebec really where most of the AC games are made? C’est pas juste, ça! Je parle français, je voudrais travailler avec eux!!!

The post Bronze Age Collapse: Assassin’s Creed Idea appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

ARC Reviewing

Y’all know I love to read. A few books I’ve read lately have been stellar and I’ve posted my reviews of them. One book I’ve enjoyed very much that I posted a review as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) is The Unlikely Pair by Jax Calder, which is now live on Amazon so you can go pick it up. It’s available on Kindle Unlimited and for purchase. I also adored The Alien Scientist by Eryn Ivers which will be published August 14th!

But…

What to do when I agree to read an ARC of a book and it’s not very good? I want to help authors and give constructive feedback. One day I want to join their ranks and publish my own story. So being honest but forthright is helpful, in my opinion. But what if an author sees my review and gets offended?

But when a book is not very good, I am not sure what to do other than be honest. It’s the neurodivergence in me that is nearly able to override all other social norms, honesty taking precedence over making another person feel right.

This is incidentally how I Know I’m most likely auDHD and not just ADHD. The neuro spicy in me is spicy.

I’m trying to get through one right now that I think needs work. It’s been a struggle to get to where I am in the book but I need to finish it in the next few days. A review will be forthcoming and the Southern moral compass in me and the neurodivergent need to be honest are currently at war with one another on how to tactfully review it.

Plans for the site

You might notice that I have updated the theme once again, now I am using the Kadence theme. I am really liking this theme a lot. It’s modern looking and clean, but not overly simplistic. Each post is displayed with a featured image too, which ups the professional look in my opinion.

I have several things I am planning for the blog. I’ve been working hard to diversify the things I have offered here so people will find value in the posts I make. It’s still a personal blog, that’s why I am writing this post, but I want people to come to my site and say hey, that’s a good site to look around on.

Fanfiction Page

I write fanfiction, and I am working on a page to compile my various stories that I have written. Linking them from my blog seems like a logical thing to do. The work I have created makes me proud and I love the fandom I write in, BTS, almost exclusively Sope (Yoongi and Hoseok).

So, I have a draft page that I’m working on to link my ao3 titles here so people can read their descriptions and click over to ao3 from this site to read my stories. I will not be hosting my stories here, they will remain on ao3.

More shopping centered posts

I shop a lot on Amazon so I will continue to post reviews and links to the products I buy on Amazon here in hopes of generating some commission income. My push to improve the image of my site does have to do with the fact that I am a teacher and would like to earn money from my site, after all.

Google Ads? Not any time soon

Speaking of earning income, Google thinks my site has low value content so I will not be having Google Ads on my site any time soon. Which is so unfortunate, but everything on the Internet is so polished and refined now that a personal blog where I post about various things just doesn’t quite fit in with the sites that Google wants to advertise on. I am disappointed in that, but it is what it is. For certain, I am not going to change my content. Personally I don’t think it is ‘low value’. What I post is authentic, I post what I feel like posting. Sometimes that is a free Google presentation theme I made, while other days it’s a book review. And then some days it’s a plain, old-fashioned blog post.

Work

The first full week of school is about to wrap up for us. That is, if I get off my butt and get ready for work. So I guess I should do that! Happy Friday to all!

The post General Update Week of August 9 appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

I love journaling. I also love notebooks, and when I am writing, I almost always start the writing process on paper. If I see a blank journal, I will probably buy it. There’s just something about all that fresh, blank paper that lends itself to creativity and brainstorming. For me, writing with pen on paper makes the words flow differently. Outlining and character development comes easiest in this medium when I am in the early stages of writing.

Keeping a Journal

I also like to keep a journal. It’s something I’ve just always done. I don’t know how many blank journals I’ve filled throughout my life, but the number would be substantial. I love to look back and see what was going on in my life, how I was doing and what was on my mind while I was writing in my journal. Sometimes it was maybe that I wasn’t doing so great, and other times things were going well. Regardless of whether I was in a good headspace or not, keeping a journal has been an important part of my life.

Do you keep a journal? Do you like to collect blank journals to use for future projects, or do you only shop for a new blank journal when you completely fill up your current notebook?

I tend to collect blank journals, myself. I like different weights of paper, different line styles, different covers, sizes, and binding types. If it’s cute, unique or eye catching, it’s really hard for me to resist picking up a new journal, even if I don’t need a new one.

Blank Journal for Daily Journaling

Sometimes you just need a blank journal to get you in the mood for cataloging your thoughts. Maybe I have just the thing for you!

Keeping that in mind I designed this cute journal that you use for daily journaling, writing, note taking or whatever you might think of and you can buy it from Amazon!

The post Blank Journal for Daily Journaling appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Dog Ownership is Different

Dogs are intense. Dogs are harder to own than cats, which I have had since college. Cats meshed with my chill laissez-faire lifestyle. Had Sunny not arrived on my doorstep the last day of school in May, I wouldn’t have made the plunge to dog ownership at all.

I officially adopted her after exhausting all efforts to finding her previous owners. She wasn’t microchipped, but I posted on my personal Facebook and made a post on Nextdoor via Pawboost and PetFBI. I posted signs all over the neighborhood, went door to door to ask if they had seen this dog or knew where she belonged, and asked everyone I saw on walks if she was a familiar face among the dog owners in the neighborhood but she had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

She has settled in well here and me and my son are over the moon in love with her. She’s brought a joy to our lives that we needed and I just cannot believe how much a dog can change your life for the better.

There are mysteries I’ll never get answered about her life before she came to me, like why she didn’t know how to walk on a leash but was definitely cared for because she’s so gentle and sweet. She wasn’t spayed or microchipped but had been housetrained.

I do think someone dropped her off in my neighborhood the morning I found her, and it was a serendipitous moment that I ended up finding her!

Story time!

It was the last day of school, and my team had made end of the schoolyear t-shirts that we were all going to wear. I was so excited about the shirt, so much so that I laid it out the night before on a chair to sort of display it.

But being neurodivergent the next morning I completely forgot to put the shirt on and went to school in a different shirt! Upon arriving I saw everyone in their shirts and was so upset that I had forgotten mine.

My assistant principal is awesome though (now she’ll be my principal this coming school year!) and she told me I could run home and get it. The last day of school is really chill for the most part, and I live close to my school so I ran home. Funny enough, I almost decided to not bother going but a few teachers talked me into it. It was really cool that not only my team were wearing these shirts, a lot of other teams had ended up buying them and almost the whole school had them on!

An Amazing Confluence of Events

Honestly, there was an amazing confluence of events at play here because to this day I keep thinking about what would have happened had I a) not forgotten to wear the shirt and b) decided not to go home and change into it.

Because none of this would have happened! It really is sometimes a tiny, inconsequential decision that ends up making big changes in your life.

I had called my mom to chat and I’ll never forget the moment. Because once I came home, ran inside and threw on the shirt, I turned back around to leave and there on my porch is this dog! She was looking hopefully at me, like she’d seen me come home and ran up to greet me. And I said, “Oh who are you?” This lost, scared, and nervous dog grabbed onto my heart and held on tight. I was immediately in crisis mode and grabbed some ribbon from inside to slip through the collar she had on. She had a collar, but later we found that she was not microchipped, and didn’t have a rabies vaccination tag. Hoping to find someone looking for her, took her back outside. She looked like she’d just slipped out of someone’s house. There was no one looking for her.

Had to get back to work

I knew I had to get back to school quickly so I led this poor scared dog down the street and noticed right away that she didn’t know how to walk on a lead. Strange. So I scooped her up and ran down the street to a neighbor’s house. I had seen her with a dog vaguely the same size/shape as Sunny so I wondered if she belonged to her.

However, upon knocking I heard a dog barking from inside her house, so I knew the dog in my hands wasn’t her dog. I almost turned around and left because I’d never even spoken to this neighbor! She opened the door and we talked. Upon hearing that I was a teacher and needed to get back to work she agreed to watch the dog for the day. I promised her that I would come back after work and pick her up. Meeting her has also turned out to be an incredible boon as she is the best!

So having secured the dog for the day I went off to work. Throughout the day, I posted on Facebook and the lost pets sites. That afternoon, I returned prepared to pick her up. It was surreal, to be honest. My neighbor took her to a vet and checked for a microchip and did not find one and Sunny accompanied her to her volunteer bookstore job with her dog Rusty.

She’s Mine Now

That afternoon I took Sunny back to my house and we started our journey together. Again, if any of the small decisions made that morning had gone differently, I might not have found Sunny at all. That makes me so incredibly sad to imagine, and so thankful that everything came together the way it did to put her into my life when I needed her so much and didn’t even know it.

She is spayed and microchipped now, took care of that! I got her this doggie onesie to wear after her spay but it was too big, she looked like she had a dumpy diaper in it and it didn’t keep her from licking. But had I gotten the right size it would have been good!

Anyway, long post but once you become a dog owner you find yourself really involved in your dog! Update: While we were on vacation my dog ate rat poison! Read about that here!

The post Dog Things appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

How Do People Talk About Living in Atlanta?

People who live in Atlanta would never say “Atlanta” is where they live. Atlanta is an enormous city plagued by urban sprawl, so it now encompasses an area that was once hundreds if not thousands of disparate communities.

People within the broader city of Atlanta will be more likely to say the county they live in, like Cobb or Gwinnett. They might also give the smaller municipality where they actually live, like Chamblee or Decatur.

ITP/OTP

Another big distinction is ITP or OTP, Inside / Outside the Perimeter (I-285). Those who live ITP view going OTP as going into the vast wilderness. While people OTP see going ITP as going into the City like one would travel from Hoboken to Manhattan and say that they are going “to the City.”

The author at one point states something like ‘Dane lives in Atlanta just east of I-85’. Do they have any conception of just how broad a statement that is? The area that vague description encompasses that could still be said to be “in Atlanta” is very large.

Atlanta is Large

From a brief estimate, traveling from Suwannee to Fairburn is around 55 miles and would take over an hour with minimal traffic. Below is a quick Google Map screenshot.

So a statement like “just off 85 in Atlanta” could be talking about 85 South of Atlanta, like Riverdale, or College Park, or it could be within Atlanta, like Decatur, or it could be north of Atlanta, like in Lilburn or Buford. The huge disparity in those neighborhoods, and that’s just a few examples, cannot be overlooked.

In summary, Atlanta is HUGE. And I think that if choosing to write about an actual place, one should talk about that place in a realistic way and the way that people who live in that area actually talk. Maybe that’s being nitpicky. But it sort of broke the spell for me.

Beyond the Nitpicking

Beyond that, I didn’t find the characters themselves to be realistic, mature, or very likeable. I feel like that sort of breakup would be final, too, in the real world. I don’t see any coming back together. And maybe Dane felt that way too, because he all of a sudden couldn’t control his boners and thought about doing it with everyone. But hey, I don’t know… with the way he talked about his appendage in the 3rd person…

Gag.

View all my reviews on Goodreads. Read other mm romance book reviews I’ve written.

The post Review of Fighting the Flames Within by Casey Morales appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

But I gave the tarot deck away and it’s almost impossible to find now. I have searched for Tarot Deck directories and found one but it doesn’t have the artwork that was on the back of the cards, just samples of the various cards. My memories are quite vague of the artwork on the cards, and even the artwork on the back of the deck is unclear in my mind. I just remember that I really, really liked it.

It’s sad, honestly. I am not super into tarot or anything now but I wish I could find that deck of cards out there on like eBay or Etsy. There are an actual million types of tarot now though, so the market is even more saturated. I didn’t even get them at some place special I think I got them at a MediaPlay store or something like that. Been a long time since you heard that store name, I bet. Those were the 90s.

The post The Search for the Lost Tarot Deck appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

So yeah. I got into writing fanfiction in 2020 around the time COVID locked us all in our houses. And then I wrote a lot of it. After a while I was like, hey, I’m pretty okay at this and maybe I could transfer this to writing about my own characters. And the goal was born in my head. I am currently in the beginning stages of writing a novel. But that really means I’m just wanting to write a novel. Limited writing has been done on said novel.

Writing a Novel? Sounds Easy… But there’s an issue

The issue being that my writing is stymied since I started on ADHD meds. But one of these days I will publish my own novel. I am getting started with the behind the scenes things like learning how to do Amazon’s KDP thing and learning how to promote my book through the ARC process and how the MM romance genre works.

Reading MM Romance Books for Research

I read over 100 books last year as “research” on Kindle Unlimited. Yes some research, but really, I just like reading. But I have written many many fanfics and I think my writing would transfer well to the MM Romance genre. It’s just, since I started taking Vyvanse, and my brain started working properly for the first time in my life, I haven’t had the need to hyper fixate on writing to get that dopamine fix. I think that’s the only explanation for it.

But boy can I read, and read a lot. Another thing I am wanting to do is write romance book reviews for some of the gems and duds that I have read. And there are a plethora of each sort, for real! I have so many book reviews I could post. I just need to get around to doing them.

The post Writing a novel appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

But first I wanted to post an old poem I found that I wrote in my senior year of high school, probably in 1997. I’ve lost and re-found it so many times throughout the years, through different computers and it’s a work I’ve always been proud of. So I post it here to preserve it forever, hopefully!

Jingle and Jangle by faebell

Somebody made their keys

jingle

and jangle their way down the hall,

and I cringe at that jarring interval between time 

and space 

a new place to live 

and I sit on my windowsill and 

blame the world for my feelings. 

My ceilings getting lower

and the walls are closing in

so go ahead

try the door,

it doesn’t work anymore,

I’ll just sit on my windowsill and

hate

the things outside me,

the things within

something,

somebody made them scream out

and get bold, 

flung out into the cold

and the house we’ve sold means

nothing

is left, but the key

attached to that jingle and jangle of a key chain, slipping

from the warmth of a pocket

and crashing to the linoleum floor with a

clang,

and then is silent. 

The post Poetry appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Even now that he’s someone they called the “Dragonborn”, he wonders how much longer they can keep their backward prejudices up. He’s heard it all since he got here, bandits saying they’re going to skin him for a rug, guards with nothing nice to say. He’d even been denied admittance to several smaller cities, apparently they do not trust Khajiit here, even half-Nord ones.  He’d never particularly liked knowing he was half-Nord, his father abandoned them when he was a baby and he didn;t like that he was different. There weren’t any other half-blood Khajiti kits, it was just him, the freak.

His father was a Nord, and much to his displeasure growing up, Yoongi is more human-like than Khajiit. He has big Khajiit ears, and a sleek tail that helps him balance, His head is covered by thick dark hair but his face is bare with high cheekbones, a soft pink doll mouth and a cute button nose his mother always liked to swat at. His eyes are all Khajiit though, small, slanted and cat-like that glow slightly in the night.

He is slim like most Khajiits but his torso and body are covered with only a light amount of hair. That’s what the other kits had teased him for the most, calling him bald and making fun of his pale white skin with no hair to keep the sands off him. Elsewyr is a desert land, and the kits love rolling in the sands, the fur over their bodies protecting them.

He’d never fit in with the fullblood Khajiits, his appearance too human-like with human limitations, his senses not quite cat-like enough to play the games the other kits could. 

His mother had sent him out with a trading caravan so he could see more of the world. She knew nothing of Skyrim, and wanted him to explore that side of his identity. And so now here he is. Freezing his tail off in Skyrim, met with rude glares and sneering voices wherever he goes Bet they weren’t expecting him to be the Dragonborn, finding themselves with a new dragon problem he quickly got wrapped up in thanks to being in the wrong place at the right time.

But yes, it had been him that absorbed the dragon soul after the fight at the Western watchtower, much to the dismay of the Whiterun guards who he’d been fighting alongside to bring the fire breathing dragon down.  Reeling, unsettled after the powerful dragon soul whipped its way into his very bones it seemed, he staggers to the side of the road to take stock of what happened. Then, it’s like the heavens crack open and a great voice rings out. Yoongi thinks that it’s just his bad luck to have all this happening to him. 

The Jarl tells Yoongi that the Greybeards have summoned him to High Hrothgar. He is to go there, climb the 7,000 steps to High Hrothgar tower and meet the Greybeards. Great, he thinks, opening the door to Dragonsreach, just what I need is more trouble with these Nords.  

 “I’d have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes..” One guard had said, looking at him with wide eyes, soft hair falling in his face, making him seem younger than a guard should. Shaking his head, Yoongi figures he’s just another prejudiced guard and he sets off again, but his Khajiit ears tell him the guard is following him, several paces back. He picks up his pace, he needs to be alone, his thoughts are getting overwhelming.

He hears the guard speak, “Hey! Wait up!” he’s hurrying along behind him, waving his arm a little.

Yoongi turns, “Do you need something? I am not a skooma dealer, sorry kid.”

The guard finally catches up to him and stops, a little out of breath.

“What? No, I’m Hosek,” he says by way of greeting.

Yoongi raises an eyebrow at him. “Yes?”

The guard seems shaken, visibly takes a moment to gather his thoughts and then tries again.

“I mean no, I don’t want skooma, I’m not like that. What I mean is, I can help, is what I mean. I know you’re probably not looking for someone to go with you but I can help. Do you know how to get to High Hrothgar?” He looks at Yoongi expectantly. “That’s what I thought.”

He looks earnest enough, Yoongi thinks. He knows not to trust Nords but he has a point, he has no idea how to get to High Hrothgar and apparently, that’s where he needs to go.

The guard continues, “I have family there in Ivarstead, I can see you get there safely. It’s not an easy journey.”

The guard, Hoseok is his name apparently, looks at Yoongi in such a way that it’s hard to say no. So he doesn’t. Shrugging, he tells him to keep up. And so, they set off without delay. The next day is spent traveling, mostly keeping to themselves. Yoongi knows enough about Nords not to trust them, and he’s not about to change his ways just because one cute Nord decides to help him. 

Sundown finds them setting up camp a little ways off the path, and Hoseok has gone to collect firewood because even on the 17th of Last Seed the night has enough of a chill in Skyrim that even Yoongi who has soft fur on his arms and legs feels the chill. He’s set out his bedroll, wondering what is taking so long when Yoongi hears a distant shout.

Hoseok must have run into trouble.

“I thought he was going to be looking after me,” Yoongi mutters to himself while rushing to where he heard his voice. Coming into a misty clearing, he spots a terrified Hoseok pinned down by the biggest spider he’d ever seen, eyes scrunched closed, screeching.

With venom dripping down its fangs and dinner on its plate, the spider seems ready to strike. Hoseok is unable to move, looking death in its face. Yoongi picks up a rock and throws it with all his might at the spider, but it just pings off the side of its armored body, not doing anything to distract the spider who has found his dinner already thank you very much.

Not thinking, only reacting, Yoongi leaps from a rock onto its back, driving his dagger into the top of its head. The spider goes lax, life draining from its body. Sliding off of it, Yoongi rushes to Hoseok.

“Are you ok? Are you hurt?” Hoseok looks dazed, those wide eyes once again taking in Yoongi like he’s something amazing.

“It – it came out of nowhere, I didn’t hear it or anything,” he stammers, his whole body shaking, “I’ve never seen one up close like that, I mean, not about to kill me” he trails off. “I’m a pretty horrible guard actually, spiders terrify me.”

Looking defeated, Hoseok casts his gaze down.

Yoongi realizes he should say something. “Eh, we don’t have spiders like that in Elsweyr either, they’re pretty horrible.”  

He spots the abandoned pile of firewood. That looks like enough, let’s get back to camp so we can cook something. Offering his hand, he pulls Hoseok to his feet and sets off to collect the firewood. Hoseok looks after him, then shakes his head a bit and follows him back to camp sheepishly. He’d like to not make a fool out of himself again. Tomorrow will go better, he hopes. 

Read my other BTS Fanfiction, linked on my site but located on AO3.

The post Skyrim / Sope AU Idea appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

My favorite Oscar Wilde Quote is:

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

But Oscar Wilde was witty and there are a lot of quotes of his that I particularly like. A few more are:

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

― Oscar Wilde

Don’t you just love Oscar Wilde? I have always loved both his down to earth thoughts, connected with it more readily than other writers from previous times, and been fascinated by his life and the controversies therein. I love when people are determined to be themselves even with it’s not the norm. And in his time, it was actively dangerous to be as himself as he was. May we all walk in his footsteps.

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