#algorithm is horrible on this drawing for some reason

[randomnumbers751650]

I finally have time to talk about Lone Trail. I will be focusing on its depiction of science, technology and its progress. Will get a bit political, but funnily enough less than I imagined.

The thing that called my attention most in Lone Trail were the discussions on the nature of scientific progress. This is a theme that’s dear to me and the stuff I research about. It’s easy to think of scientific progress like an inevitable march forward, like an escalator. After all, we are much richer than we were before, right? Go to OurWorldInData dot org to play around with economic statistics in time – make sure to check the World GDP chart, from year 0 to 2000 and see it taking off like a rocket from year 1700.

What kind of Uncle Ted fan or neoluddite would go against that? Haha…hah…

Truth is that, although its effects are there, it’s not a clear if this is the little, neat process techbros want us to believe. It’s new and produces more, therefore it’s good, right? I could be writing this as a new wave of AI-generated NFTs pollute my algorithm.

That’s what makes the storytelling in Arknights so effective: it mashes together fantasy and sci-fi to really tell stories on the role of beliefs, technology, science and religion. The Rhine Lab saga is definitely an exploration of technology, with focus on the equivalent of the United States. During the period before the First World War, 1870-1913 (which is the one that Arknights draws most from), the world underwent through the so-called Second Industrial Revolution and I’ve read economic historians considering it the most innovative period in human history. I mean, obviously, there is an absolute number of inventions in our current age, but in relative terms 1870-1913 experienced a much larger number relative to the previous one.

The escalator narrative constructs scientific achievements as work of daring people (mostly men, but there were women like Marie Cuire), that combined science and technology to help mankind, like Prometheus giving mankind fire from the gods (in fact, one of these books is even named “Prometheus Unbound”); more than often they have to fight against the establishment. Remember Ignaz von Semmelweis? He just wanted doctors to wash their hands. Even I learned this standard narrative in the university. But that’s not the entire story.

The positivistic paradigm – of a science free of value judgements, made with the power of math – has actually helped build this escalator narrative. In reality, some scientists and scholars are horrible people. Later, I learned that Semmelweis, as much as he campaigned for the right thing, was a very arrogant person, who abused everyone around him, to the point few people went to his funeral.

Narratives focusing on one single hero are easy to sell and the ones building them are always on the lookout. Remember how ten years ago, a lot of people tried to push the narrative Elon Musk was going to create a new industrial revolution? Nowadays he’s just an arrogant loser who keeps dragging on his midlife crisis. The 1880s also had similar people like that, such as Thomas Edison.

Kristen Wright is definitely better than them both, because she is actually an engineering genius. But she’s also just like them, in the sense of unethical experiments, collusion with the military-industrial complex and being an overall superficially charismatic, but rotten to the core person. And she’s surrounded by a lot of people like Parvis and Ferdinand.

Breaking this line of reason, I have to say how much I hate Nietzsche’s ubermensch and master-slave morality, I hate Great Men theory, I hate Ayn Rand; these people are sheep who think themselves wolves. And before you say that Nietzsche didn’t consider himself an ubermensch, well, neither did Parvis and his reasoning was the same. For every person fancying themselves ubermensch, there’s a lot of those whom he’d call untermensch to clean up their messes. You have no idea of how times I stumbled upon people (especially libertarians) that advocate lower barriers to regulations that were written in blood, so that progress can happen quicker. Creative destruction works, as long as some people get “creative” and others clean the “destruction”. Deaths and injuries? Acceptable, just give them a pension (but fight tooth and nail in the court to not do it beyond the barest of the bare minimum, because it’ll lower the shareholder profit in 0.01%). Increase in inequality? Nobody will care in a few years, it’ll make everything cheaper anyway (look up Baumol’s cost disease to see how wrong that statement is, without being incorrect). I’m not exaggerating, sometimes the people saying that don’t even bother lacing it in politically correct language.

Because Lone Trail showed it “worked” – Kristen Wright broke off the ceiling over Terra and that will have consequences (especially with Endfield coming closer). The data from her experiments will advance science, the sight of a broken ceiling will inspire artists and prompt politicians to act. Was it worth it? Well, it will depend on who you ask (like, Ifrit or Rosmontis would have strong feelings), but it’s just there now. Serious history isn’t kind on this question as well – many technologies have a lot of transgressions, both legal and ethical, in their supply chain (both the American and Soviet space program come to my mind – guess who helped them); the difference between an entrepreneur and a criminal are contextual, because both are finding new opportunities of profit and both interlock frequently.

In the end, anyone can put an equation that has its uses, not mattering if it’s a good person or not. But that is no excuse to find good ethical practices. Silence saw everything with her own eyes and I’m really glad she’s leading the initiative for a more ethical science in Columbia – especially because people who are willing to break moral rules tend also to be willing to break research rules (this is why the “research” made in concentration camps is actually useless, it didn’t respect experimental rules). So I’m really glad for the Arknights writers for understanding these nuances and communicating them to the audience through one of the best stories of the game.

#arknights #lone trail

[mariacallous]

Long gone are the days when fan fiction was treated as a guilty pleasure, exclusively consumed on a glowing iPad screen under the covers at night and never to be discussed outside of Tumblr. We’re living in an age where Supernatural star Misha Collins boasts about Dean/Castiel fanfic stats on Twitter, a Harry Styles fanfic on Wattpad has been adapted into a major movie franchise, and even Academy Award–winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao openly admits to writing fan fiction. The hobby has become a cultural phenomenon, referenced casually in shows like Euphoria, Only Murders in the Building, 13 Reasons Why, and Bob’s Burgers. And who could forget Archive of Our Own (more widely known as AO3) snagging that Hugo Award in 2019?

Born in 2009, AO3 is one of the biggest fan fiction sites today. It’s an open source, multi-fandom archive for transformative fanworks that, as of January 2023, is home to approximately 10.5 million works across over 55,000 fandoms, ranging from big names like Stranger Things and Marvel to the most niche corners of the internet you could imagine. AO3 is pretty much a household name now, at least for any Gen Z or millennial with some degree of online presence. And as fan fiction has become more mainstream, there’s also seemingly been a push by some users for AO3 to keep up technologically. More specifically, for the archive to function … well, more like TikTok. Picture a “for you” page greeting you as you log in to the archive. It automatically recommends your next fanfic to read, like an oh-so-helpful friend plucking a book off the shelf for you that they just know you’ll love.

Let’s be clear though: This idea isn’t going to see the light of day. “An algorithm is never going to happen,” Claudia Rebaza, a volunteer for AO3’s parent group, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), tells me outright. But the debate about whether AO3 should have an algorithm reveals what’s special about fan fiction and the importance of maintaining a space where creative works can just exist.

I get it. As someone born in 1997, it’s hard to remember a time before algorithms, rankings, and personalized recommendations. It feels like every place on the internet is trying to become more like TikTok, from Instagram with its Reels (until Kylie Jenner complained) to Twitter’s “for you” feed. For better or worse, the world today feels deeply online. When nearly every aspect of our lives feels optimized, it makes sense that some want fan fiction to keep up with the times too. 

But here’s the thing: AO3 isn’t social media. It’s simply a space that hosts an enormous collection of works. It’s basically a library on your phone. Being a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers distinguishes AO3 from other fan fiction sites like Wattpad, which is an entertainment company. “AO3 is designed to be an archive, not a social media site, and we’re a nonprofit that will also never run ads,” explains Rebaza. “So we’re not trying to make people spend more time on the site or make anything go viral.” 

Another aspect that sets the archive apart is its lax content policy. While the site still draws the line at some content—explicit material of real minors, flat-out plagiarism—nearly all fanworks are allowed. The only major requirement is that users must tag works containing rape/non-con, graphic violence, major character death, or underage content (alternatively, authors can simply tag “Creator Chose Not to Archive Warnings”). But as long as it’s properly tagged, it’s probably permitted “no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that Content to be,” per the site’s terms of services.

It’s a policy that has been both praised and criticized. But one of the reasons for AO3’s hands-off philosophy is that fan fiction has historically faced a great deal of opposition and censorship. For instance, Fanfiction.net (FF.net), one of the first major fanfic sites on the web, banned all works based on anything by Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice after she reportedly threatened legal action. (The law as it pertains to fan fiction is murky, but OTW believes nonprofit, transformative works fall under “fair use.”) In 2002, FF.net began implementing a strict “no NC-17 content” policy. Then in 2012, the site famously deleted a large number of stories, presumably ones deemed too mature. The move was widely coined the FF.Net purge by fans, and it sparked concerns about potentially disproportionately affecting authors of slash (same-gender pairing fics).

AO3 is one of the few remaining places on the internet where you alone are responsible for curating the content you consume. You’re armed with only a search bar and the use of tags and filters, sent out into the Forbidden Forest to find whatever your heart desires. And sure, that may feel like a daunting task, especially if you’re used to the likes of TikTok. But part of the beauty of it being algorithmless is that you can hand-pick the works you’re looking for and also easily avoid content you don’t want to see. If AO3 were to implement an algorithm, it’s highly likely you would encounter a lot more content you would have otherwise filtered out, scrolled past, or simply just been blissfully unaware of.

An AO3 algorithm could present a problem not just for readers, but for creators as well. Harassment has long been an issue in fandom, but it feels more intense and intimate in the social media age. In the early 2000s, ship wars and heated discourse mostly lived within the confines of forums, under usernames that nobody would care enough about to track down. Now? Not so much. Hollie, a moderator for the 329,000-member group r/fanfiction on Reddit, tells me how she’s seen things change over the 15 years she’s been involved with fandom. “Fandom has become more clustered into a smaller number of spaces, rather than being able to easily separate into different groups. [So] people with very different interests and takes overlap,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, there were ‘sporking’ (mocking fics) sites back in the day, as well as bullying and ship wars, but for the most part, people complained in their own groups about how terrible their rival ship was or how gross they found certain kinks or whatever. They didn’t usually go to the creators/shippers’ social media and fics to complain at them.” (Plus, if your fandom self is even slightly intertwined with your public persona, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you will at some point be harassed, threatened, or even doxxed over fictional characters.)

An algorithm would only further knock down these walls. If someone really dislikes a ship or trope for whatever reason, one might assume they would go out of their way to avoid such content by using tags and filters, or simply interact only with fans who have similar taste. But if the algorithm shows people something they hate, they might feel more inclined to engage with that content and go out of their way to make it known just how much they hate it. 

There’s something quietly beautiful about AO3 not making it easy for us to snap our fingers and have a personalized story recommendation fall into our laps. I’d liken browsing the archive to wandering into a bookstore, picking a novel off the shelf, and being pleasantly surprised by how good it is. Sure, you might head to a genre you know you enjoy or gravitate toward a familiar author or friend’s recommendation. But when it comes down to it, you picked the book. Maybe an algorithm would have found a story you liked just as much, maybe not. 

Algorithms and modern technology can be convenient for discovering new content and tailoring things to your personal taste, but they can also impose their own limits. Sure, streaming is great—but are we really taking advantage of this infinite amount of content if all we see is Netflix’s top 10 and Recommended for You tab? Or are we perhaps missing out on shows we would have enjoyed, if only we’d known about them before they were canceled after one season due to (supposedly) low viewership? Is the skill-based matchmaking algorithm used in multiplayer online games like Call of Duty actually helping us enjoy gameplay more? Or is it ruining video games altogether?

If you’re on TikTok, you’ve likely experienced seeing a video on your “for you” page that you never would have clicked on yourself. Sometimes it’s merely annoying (no, I’m really not into watching people eat that Pink Sauce); other times, it can be outright distressing. For instance, if you’re into cute cats, the algorithm might think you actually want to see a viral video mocking domestic abuse. Algorithms often lack the ability to distinguish tone, and they generally don’t account for triggers or content warnings. It’s like shelving Stephen King’s It in children’s fiction just because the characters are kids.

Safety and practicality issues aside, an algorithm would ultimately just plain suck the fun out of AO3. I don’t want to see only the biggest, most popular content. I want to live in the corner of my little niche fandom, enjoying whatever weird things I like regardless of how many views, kudos, or comments are involved. In a world dominated by algorithms, stats, and virality, let me have my fan fiction.

[renagato]

So here I am, coming back from the dead of every possible social media app (maybe expect pinterest..).

- rising from the dead to write a post about how I absolutely suck at posting.

Note: I'm writing this on a whim, without even making notes, so I might NOT make sense at moments. But I will write this sht anyways. No one can stop me.

So here's my short story:

I started posting art more than a year ago on insta, it wasn't that bad actually. But I was posting the kind of art I had no connection to (to make more likes) so,, i burned myself out and stopped posting. After a year of break I decided to start sharing my art again (art that I actually enjoy creating) BUT I suck at posting. And it's not like I don't have art to post but I'm still doing horribly..

Then, du-du-du, what is it? What's stopping you? What is your problem?

Well, the first answer is "tf I know" but let's ponder on this a bit.. What makes it difficult for me to post and run a proper account?

Reason number one! The sole act of posting is stressful (and also bothersome in a way?). It's stressful because I already think about how many likes I'll get (or how I won't get any bruh), plus I have to write a shitton of hashtags to even hope to get some. To add to that, there's that thought that I'm sharing my art with complete strangers in the back of my head and I get scared of judgement.

Stop! You can fight this fear, and put up with hashtags somehow, right? Actually, I did pretty well for some time. But alas, then comes the reason numberrr-

Two! The algorithm (maybe not here on tumblr but you know the deal). If you're irregular, it'll take you years to build your account. And I'm irregular af. I draw irregularly, and thus post even more irregularly or I don't do it at all. So I can say goodbye to a proper account, I guess, and chances of somebody finding me.

Well, I could go back to the "posting" part as I got a random thought - the act of posting somehow kills the fun for me? Firstly, you have to watermark your piece if you don't want it stolen (and it doesn't guarantee its safety in 100% anyways, bruh) and I don't watermark my arts AT ALL. Thus, even if I know I should, I end up forgetting to do it anyway and I get frustrated over a pretty much silly thing that a watermark is. Secondly, the stress that I talked about already.

Let's go to reason number three! And maybe this one is my main problem? I get discouraged easily and I struggle with keeping up with things (being irregular, as I mentioned before + simply forgetting to do things). And well, I can only blame myself on that, I guess 💀 I have lots of ideas but committing to anything is a big pain for various reasons - everything I discussed above + a bit of perfectionism too, I'd say. That's kind of a bad mix,,

So, we got 3 big reasons and everything in-between I probably didn't think of! If anyone has read all of this, thank you.

And since I'm struggling but still would like to run some sort of account/blog, I'd like to ask for any sort of advice! Or maybe you relate to what I wrote. In any case, feel free to share your thoughts and ideas!

Ahh, now I need to put the tags, good heavens..

#artist struggles #struggle #artists on tumblr #personal #running a blog #running an account #my struggle #artist things #vent

[kpswrites]

Sunrunner – Chapter One

With a practiced flick of his wrist, Hoxley flipped this morning’s breakfast in the pan. The food, if one could call it that, sizzled in the hot oil. He knew life in space meant he’d be dealing with matter-converted meals, but the reality of the wet slabs of nutrition was still depressing. What he wouldn’t give to make the crew some braised onion chicken with gruyere. He silently committed to purchasing some real ingredients when they next docked at a station, damn the expense.

“You were saying, Hox?”

Hoxley snapped out of his musing, “Oh, sorry Xavier. What did I say last?”

“You left off at ‘horrible writhing masses that spread across the walls.’”

“Right. Those were there. Then the ceiling was torn off the building, revealing the cosmos. Except that all of the stars were eyes and all the eyes were looking at me.”

“I see. You know Hox, I do have access to several terabytes of literature on psychology, but maybe you would benefit from talking to another person about this. We have a doctor on board.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to talk with me anymore?” Hoxley said, a note of betrayal entering his voice.

“No, no! I very much like interacting with you and the crew. I just believe you have complex issues that would benefit from someone qualified and physically present, not the disembodied voice of an AI.”

“I am extremely uncomfortable with that idea. Oh, speaking of disembodied voices, the eye-filled cosmos said something after that. I don’t remember what because the words resonate so loudly that I always explode at that point.”

“Explo-“

“Yea, like a glass that reverberates until it shatters,” he explained, dicing a block of nutrition and adding it to a curry sauce.

“You know, Jim is both a doctor and an AI. Maybe that’s a happy compromise to getting some professional help.”

“What? Why? This is helping plenty,” Hoxley declared.

Xavier was preparing a dialogue to explain self-denial when Ozzy buzzed in on the ship’s comms.

“Hoxley, can you report to the cargo hold? We’re approaching our destination.”

~*~

Azure light swept across Buddy’s field of vision. Once. Twice. Three times before the machine chimed a cheerful tune. The firm cushions lifted her to a seated position, slowly revealing the back of Dr. Jim as she was elevated. She waited patiently for him to say something for several minutes then cleared her throat.

“Did you find anything?”

The form of the doctor rippled before he turned around, dark metallic microbots briefly exposed before the projectors corrected themselves. He had chosen the appearance of a bald, middle-aged man which, according to Jim, was the galactic average appearance of a doctor. He had used the same metric for his name. Buddy was uncertain if a doctor made of small machines was a normal thing, as her frame of reference was roughly two weeks.

“No,” he stated.

“Nothing?”

“That is what ‘no’ means.”

Buddy stared at him expectantly.

“Oh,” he continued, “You wish for a report of our tests?”

“Yes please,” she confirmed pleasantly. Zenith and Adam had told her that the doctor’s curt demeanor resulted from underdeveloped social algorithms. For whatever reason, the AI was developed without a social parent to draw personal skills from. To Jim’s credit, he was adamant about correcting this.

“No markers for common pathogens found in your bloodwork. Your cardiovascular readout is in the 99th percentile for your age, sex, and race. Significant surgical intervention has been performed on you in the past, gunshot wounds and plasma burns are the most prevalent. There is some evidence of chemical trauma in the hippocampus, the origins of which are unknown. Serum progesterone is at indicative levels for an elf of your age undergoing ovulation. Your fecal samples indicate sub-satisfactory digestion-“

“Wait, wait, did you just say I have brain damage?”

“Correct.”

“But you said that you didn’t find anything. That could explain my memory loss.”

“The mechanism by which your brain was damaged has not been conclusively determined. Therefore, the source of your memory loss remains unknown.”

“Sure, but you could have told me about it.”

“Your brain damage was obvious given your nature,” Jim said, then continued after registering anger on Buddy’s face, “by that I mean the lack of understanding you demonstrate due to your memory loss. We can pursue other means of investigation, such as psychotherapy. Can you describe your oldest memory?”

“Sure, I was at a docking bay aboard Galduron station. There was a blue-haired guy, human, looking at me like he was about to miss his flight. When I asked him what was going on, he said, ‘You’ll be fine, Buddy,’ and ran off. Oh, and he had an empty syringe in his hand.”

Jim was motionless, as if his CPU had frozen. Buddy was deciding whether she should try and shake him out of it or go get BOB when Jim abruptly spoke, giving her a start.

“I am going to schedule another scan to assess the possibility of further brain damage.”

“Oh,” Buddy said, deflating, “I thought the psychiatric approach sounded promising.”

“That will likely accompany our diagnostic endeavors. Do you have any further questions?”

“What was that about sub-satisfactory digestion?”

“You require more dietary fiber.”

The ship’s comms buzzed as Ozzy’s gruff voice was broadcast.

“Buddy and Jim please report to the cargo hold.”

~*~

Adam looked on anxiously as Odybrix twisted a copper wire with a pair of pliers and jammed it into the patchwork device. His training made him keenly aware of how deadly improvised explosives could be. The halfling looked utterly unphased by the danger. If anything, she was treating the bomb with increasing aggression as the pieces refused to come together.

“Is the dining table the best place to build that?”

“Is anywhere aboard a spacecraft?” she replied distractedly, reaching with a tattooed arm for a nearby screwdriver.

“That’s a very good point. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing it then?”

“What, am I supposed to not build bombs? Don’t be ridiculous. The problem with you, kid-“

“We’re roughly the same age.”

“The problem with you is that Remington has removed the joy of creativity from your life and tossed it out an airlock. Nothing makes a Corporation happier than crushing our spirits with the hammer of capitalism.”

“I don’t particularly feel like my spirit has been pulverized by capitalism.”

“That’s how they get you. You don’t even realize it happened. They just leave you as a soulless drone. No offense BOB.”

“I am not a drone, so none taken!” the boxy robot chimed in its unerringly upbeat voice.

“Anyway, you’re different,” Odybrix continued, “you left the comfy corpo corruption for adventure and revenge.”

“Elite security isn’t exactly comfy. And I’m not on a quest for revenge. I just want to find my father and ask him some questions… and punch him.”

“Your coffee is ready! Present your cups to receive top-quality liquid stimulant!” BOB exclaimed.

A panel slid open on BOB’s anterior and a spigot extended outward. Odybrix stuck out her mug while keeping her eyes on the bomb, as if willing it not to explode. Adam filled up next with a nod and thank you to the bot. Steam drifted off the dark surface, carrying a powerful aroma.

“Enjoy!” BOB exclaimed.

Adam lifted the mug, remembering the mild and flavourful coffee they had at Remington R&D, and took a sip. By the time he was done wincing at the taste, Odybrix had slammed her mug on the wooden table and was gesturing for more. Marveling at her ability to down steaming hot liquid, he absently wondered if she would have noticed had BOB swapped the beverage for battery acid.

The comms crackled on, causing everyone to jump and look at the bomb, “Adam, Odybrix, and BOB, there will be a meeting in the cargo hold in two minutes.”

“Oh good, I don’t have to get up,” Odybrix said, jabbing the explosive with her pliers.

~*~

A field of stars contorted and stretched into her periphery then disappeared. Entering reversion space never got boring, even after all of the jumps she had made. The countdown, the thrum of the ship, the brief falling feeling as the engine generated a hyper-dense mass, it always excited her. Then there were the stars. Thousands of points of light that sped past as the ship traversed a truly incomprehensible distance.

The view was almost beautiful enough for her to take her helmet off—almost. Jim had called her use of the helmet pathological, but what the hell did he know about piloting? One overlooked repair could lead to a ruptured chem line. One small system error could send them into a hull-busting asteroid. No, the helmet stayed on while she was piloting so she could keep piloting.

“Everyone is heading to the cargo hold, ZT,” Ozzy noted over the comms.

“Yep.”

“You’re going too, right?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Gotta keep an eye on things,” she said, kicking her legs up onto the ship’s control panel.

“Our course is laid in and I check the flight path every sixty seconds. We are not going to crash.

“And what if someone’s messed with your programming, Oz? Could be fatal if I didn’t make it to this chair in time,” she said, reclining into the most comfortable position possible.

“There are two other AI on board. We routinely check on each other.”

“Same issue, programming.”

“BOB also runs a weekly diagnostic.”

“Programming.”

“What if I asked Buddy next time? She knows how to run a scan for some reason.”

“Definitely worried about her programming.”

“ZT.”

“Fine. Fine! I’m going.”

~*~

“Alright crew,” Ozzy began, popping onto an old vid screen in the cargo hold. His avatar was a forty-something human male with a fit build and a goatee. As if to preemptively settle any questions about his artificial nature, he had chosen to appear a semi-transparent blue.

“Is he the captain?” Buddy asked, leaning toward Hoxley.

“I’m new too and I have no idea,” he said, “I just make the food and get a free ride.”

“AI are barred from captaining vessels!” BOB exclaimed, overhearing the question.

“Why is that?” Buddy asked, “he seems like the most responsible person here.”

“The events of the Reckoning led to strict galactic regulations regarding the powers and responsibili-”

“Okay BOB, we can save the history lesson for after the mission,” Ozzy said, interrupting, “also, I am obligated to tell you that I am not a person. Moving on, I-“

“If anything, I’d be the captain,” Odybrix said, crossing her arms, “it was given to me.”

“Us,” Zenith said, “and it was ‘given’ by your highly suspect friends.”

“They’re fighting for the soul of the galaxy,” Odybrix replied, hotly.

“Can we please review the objectives before we drop out of rev space?” Ozzy said, increasing his volume several degrees, “I’m just going to play the mission brief from Remington Corporation.”

“Bastards,” Odybrix said.

“They are paying us for this,” Adam said, “you don’t seem to have a problem with that.”

“You mean taking their money and possibly stealing classified research from a secret facility? No, I don’t.”

Adam closed his eyes in annoyance as the recording played. A dour human frowned down at them through a pair of glasses. He was standing in front of a Remington Corporation logo in an impeccably tailored suit. A crimson tie was clasped with the only embellishment of his attire, a gold tie clip with small letters declaring his station.

“Crew of the Sunrunner, this is Vaughan Spectre, Chief Operating Officer of Remington Corporation’s research and development wing. In the absence of RC vessels near the Arebus system, you have been contracted to investigate a communications blackout on planet ZU4576B. If possible, you are to restore communications with the facility. As noted in the contract, you will be paid 5,000 credits for your service. Do not deviate from the tasks you have been given.”

“Cheerful guy,” Hoxley said.

“Yes, his demeanor doesn’t fluctuate much,” Adam said.

“You know that guy?” Odybrix asked.

“Yes. He’s at the same branch of the company as mom, I mean Ms. Hargrave,” Adam said, correcting himself.

“Wait, wait, you call your mom by her surname?” Odybrix asked, incredulously.

“She prefers that she only be referred to as ‘mom’ in private.”

“Oh my gods.”

A momentary wave of weightlessness passed over the crew as the mass reversion engine disengaged. Seconds later, the ship jerked violently and caused the contents of the cargo hold, crew included, to tumble. Klaxons blared as everyone scrambled to their feet. Ozzy buzzed in over comms.

“Battle stations!”

#sci fi writing #fantasy #writing #adventure #scififantasy #sci fi

[saewokhrisz]

backhands you with cryo

#my art #art #fanart #digital art #illustration #genshin impact #genshin impact fanart #genshin #albedo #albedo genshin impact #god many thought so many thought #theyre being very thunk rn #tho i kinda have it figured out but STILL #CRYO BEDO #oh my sweet beloved prince how i missed uuuuUuuUuU #algorithm is horrible on this drawing for some reason

[themountainsays]

I was scrolling through the Encanto tag, as one does, and came across this post that has so many things wrong with it.

1) No credit to the artist. I wanna know who the wrist is! This is really pretty art.

2) No. Everyone does not agree seeing as all human beings have different people have different opinions. Also someone had to draw the uncredited ray. Seriously, who drew it? They’re talented as fuck.

3) In the tags it says “fypage.” . . . Honey, there is no algorithm. Go back to your natural habitat somewhere else. Do not try to migrate for you will find you are an invasive species here for many reasons. To name one, not crediting where the art you used in a post came from.

I know the art has a signature but it’s so goddamn blurry because they (person who made the post, not the artist)made it so small that I can’t read it even with my glasses. This is really just me wanting to know who the artist is and wanting to poke fun at someone thinking this website has a for you page.

I can't express how angry I feel right now. Your art is like your baby. To have it disrespected and insulted like that feels like a stab to the heart, and I can't imagine how the artist must feel.

I'm trying to do a reverse google search to find the original artist. It's not looking pretty.

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse. I feel horrible for the artist right now, because they really do deserve better.

But, I mean, maybe I can find SOMETHING about the artist through these videos? A name? A screenshot of their twitter page, maybe?

Well, aside from the fact I'm seeing more wonderful artists be slandered and insulted, some of them with several thousand likes, that doesn't seem to be working. Clicking on these links keeps taking me to general "nasty Encanto ships" search pages with more videos than I can watch, I can't seem to find any about this specific piece, and the ones I can find aren't accompanied by credit. My next step was to ask the folks over at the server. While I wait for a reply, I try to sharpen the image a little so see if I can read the watermark.

If I had to guess, I'd say it looks a little like it says Erakim, maybe? I'm 97% sure the first letter is an E, and there's clearly a k, but it's the last two or so letters that confuse me.

I looked through TikTok again to see if I could find ANYTHING. I learned the madrigalcest tag over there is a cesspool of hate and vitriol. Don't recommend looking for ship content there because it's almost entirely antis disrespecting us and our work.

found... this.

At first I thought, oh, nice, it looks sharper! Surely I can read the... nope. They went OUT OF THEIR WAY to crop the image and hide the artist's watermark. I admit I have mixed feelings about that, because while I don't think for a second that this person was trying to protect the artist, being unknown could have saved them some harassment. To destroy their art like this is a horrible insult GOD you see how little respect they have for us? They don't "simply dislike us", because you can dislike someone and treat them with basic decency. When I don't like someone, I try to be nice and quietly avoid them, because that's what social etiquette dictates you should do. You don't insult, you don't attack people, and if they're an artist, you don't disrespect their work. I don't expect antis to not hate our ships, but I think all conflicts should have a level of respect between the different parties. There are lines you don't cross, and Antis insist on crossing them over and over again. Of course, any anti reading this would be thinking "why should I feel bad for a proshipper?" I don't know kathelyn, why should you feel bad about anyone you don't like? Because that's what cultural values dictate, kathelyn, that's why. If you're not using aggression to defend yourself, you offer other humans unconditional respect, and proship artists simply exist without hurting or attacking anyone. But, of course, we're just words on a screen, so it's easy not to have sympathy for us.

(the person on tiktok goes by "proshipslander" btw, which says a lot already. They have only a few videos, all of them about proshippers, all of them disrespecting some truly beautiful works, two of them "fixing" the works of friends of mine. I suggest reporting them).

Anyway. Okay, so whoever made that ugly meme must have gotten the picture from somewhere else, and not directly screenshot the tiktok in question. That means it's at least two instances of this work being disrespected, which makes me feel even worse, but okay, this picture is sharper, maybe I can find something if I reverse google search this one. But nope. No results.

Then I remembered I had a brumira work saved on my phone with a very similar style, you know, I thought, maybe it's by the same artist, maybe I can find the watermark there annnnnnd no, it was no good, because that one doesn't have any watermarks, and it doesn't look all that similar now that I visit it again. yay.

Oh, but maybe I could google Erakim? Uh, no, it doesn't lead anywhere.

Let's be honest - it's very likely that the artist is no longer online, probably because of this. Seeing the "fypage" tag makes me suspect the meme might have been made by this "proshipslander" person, who most likely has a copy of the piece saved. Which, imo would be even worse, because it means they just keep beating a dead horse for the sake of shitting on people's work. I don't know, I might be wrong so don't take my theory too seriously.

I'm just... really angry. We don't deserve this treatment. At all.

The folks at the server haven't replied yet. If anyone recognizes this piece and the artist, please share their name, because they are the one who deserves the credit, not fucking "proshipslander on tiktok".

I have to admit, it made me more angry to see my friends' art in there, but at least we all knew about it already and, well, I know who drew what. The worst part is that there is no fixing it, once they put your art out there to be ridiculed. It breaks my heart, both for my friends and for this one artist.

The general Encant0 tag has become a landmine. As much as I love the film, I can no longer visit it without feeling nauseous, which is why I stick to madrigalcest spaces even though sometimes I want to shut my ship brain off and think about cute "normal" family dynamics, but see, they drive you away like this, polarize the fandom, eliminate neutrality, and before you notice it's become a witch hunt and you can only rely on your fellow freaks.

All I can say is... look, Madrigalcest Week is in six days, and we're all going to be posting new works. Let's try to celebrate respectfully and look after each other. Take the time to block as many antis as you can to avoid harrassment, because it's very likely that they too are waiting for Madrigalcest Week to do their thing and go after us. Block and report if you encounter anyone acting too violently. REBLOG people's works if you like them, DO NOT REPOST THEM WITHOUT PERMISSION, comment on fics and fanart, share them with friends, and make next week a nice moment for everyone. At this point that's what we can do.

#madrigalcest #shipping discourse #proship

[kirain]

Hazbin Hotel and VivziePop Drama

I've been hearing/seeing a lot of drama concerning Hazbin Hotel and it's creator VivziePop, and while I don't know her personally or really care what people think, I do hate slander and the spread of misinformation. Truly nothing in this world upsets me more than when people believe rumours while making no effort to fact check, and that's exactly what's happening right now. That said, I wanted to try and clear up some of the rumours going around about Vivzie and the show, because I think some of them are absolutely outrageous and need to be addressed.

1. Vivzie hired an abuser onto the show.

Now, I’m not here to burn anyone at the stake, especially since I don’t know anything about Chris Niosi (the alleged abuser), who I believe openly admitted to the allegations? Regardless, this is a moot point. He’s not credited anywhere at the end of the episode. So either he was booted before production wrapped up or he had nothing to do with the show in the first place.

2. Vivzie supports bestiality.

Admittedly I thought this one might be true, since she draws so many anthropomorphic animals. In the very least, I figured she was probably a furry, but I haven't seen any evidence supporting this accusation either. Near as I can tell, this rumour started for two reasons. One, because of her famous Zoophobia comic, which revolves around a therapist named Cameron who gets assigned to work with human-like animals. Ironically, poor Cameron suffers from crippling zoophobia, which makes for some pretty decent comedy. I didn't read the whole comic because, quite frankly, it’s not my cup of tea and I just don’t have the time. But from what I saw there are no examples of bestiality anywhere in its contents.

Two, this message, which blew up all over social media:

To me, this just proves that people are more interested in virtue signalling than checking to see if their claims are actually true. Everything about this message is 100% false, which I’ll touch on in my next point.

3. Vivzie is a pedophile and she’s drawn child porn.

This is hands down the worst allegation and holy shit, I really wish people would stop using it to defame someone when they don't have any proof. This is a life-ruining accusation and you're disgusting if you believe it based solely on hearsay. This rumour began to spread when Vivzie allegedly shipped the two underage characters in the above photo and drew them NSFW-style. At the time, one character was 19 while the other was 14, and the relationship was a very illegal student-teacher relationship.

This is WRONG! The characters were not 14 and 19, they were actually 18 and 19, the legal age of consent! Additionally, the relationship wasn't student-teacher. One character is a student and the other is Alumni (a student teacher). This one pisses me off the most because it’s obvious the person who sent that message didn’t even bother to conduct any research. They said, “He’s a teacher, she’s a child.” Both characters are MALE!

Since then, Vivzie has apologised for any NSFW art she drew in the past and stated that it's not a reflection of her art today, and I'm inclined to believe her. Almost every artist has drawn NSFW content at some point in their career, and hers wasn't even distasteful. Other than this one example, there is no evidence anywhere that suggests she’s drawn “child porn”. In fact, she’s never even drawn explicit NSFW.

Please stop spreading this rumour. It’s dangerous and completely incorrect.

4. Vivzie said the "N" word!

No, she didn’t. It was a fabricated tweet. That is all.

5. Vivzie is copyright striking every video that criticises her!

No she isn't. YouTube’s DMCA is automatically striking people who are using full clips without permission. Vivzie has gone public several times, telling people exactly how to avoid getting a copy strike from the algorithm, which is something she absolutely does not have to do. At this point, she doesn't owe you anything. In my opinion, she should just sit back and watch these channels burn.

6. Vivzie copies and traces other artists’ work.

This is another one I’ve seen going around, but I looked into it as thoroughly as I could and failed to find any concrete evidence to support the allegations. As of right now, there are only two examples of Vivzie “copying” or “tracing” other artists’ work, and both of them can be explained. The first is a gif she made with a character from her Zoophobia comic, which looked a lot like the girl from ME!ME!ME!:

Damn, that’s pretty incriminating. She obviously stole-- oh, wait. This gif was part of a ME!ME!ME! MEP (multi editor’s project) and Vivzie didn’t take full credit, despite the fact that it’s not even a direct trace. It’s supposed to look like the original, which she fully cited. The second example comes from a short dance sequence from her Timber video, which seems to have been inspired by several Disney movies. As Vivzie herself stated, that was an homage to the original animations. Lots of artists and shows do this, including the beloved Stephen Universe series.

Regardless, this doesn’t count as stealing character designs or plagiarising someone’s work. It’s meant to be respectful, an admiration of other projects. Other than these two instances, however, there is no evidence of her tracing or stealing other people’s art. From what I’ve discovered, all other designs she’s been accused of “stealing” are characters she bought and paid for. They’re quite literally HER characters.

7. Vivzie supports problematic creators.

I’m getting really tired of guilt by association. Vivzie follows and enjoys some controversial figures, but who cares? We can argue all day about whether or not the accusations against them are true, but it ultimately has nothing to do with the show or Vivzie as a person. I do the exact same thing, to be honest-- follow and listen to people on all sides so I can learn, understand, and form my own opinions. The fact that some people think this is bad, to me, is absolutely mesmerising. Vivzie doesn’t control what the people she follows post, and if they do something overly questionable she publicly criticises and denounces it.

From Vivzie:

Now that that’s been dealt with, I’d like to address some complaints/claims about the actual show.

8. Vaggie is an angry Latina stereotype and a lesbian stereotype. Vivzie is appropriating Hispanic culture and misrepresenting the gay for profit.

First off, I see a lot of people passing around yet more misinformation regarding Vivzie's race. So many people seem to think she's white? Well, I'm here to tell you they're wrong. Very incorrect. Vivzie is in fact Latina, and Vaggie is meant to mirror some of her own personality traits.

Second, who is Vaggie mad at? Context matters, and if we take a look at the episode, we see that Vaggie is literally only mad at two specific people: Angel Dust and Alastor. Why? Well, for starters, it's her girlfriend's dream to run a rehab hotel for sinners, and Angel Dust nearly demolishes that dream single-handedly. Vaggie has every right to be over-the-top vitriolic. Then there's Alastor, a known sadist, narcissist, and murderer who loves trapping people in his nefarious schemes. He invites himself in, effectively takes over the hotel, and pushes both her and Charlie aside. At one point he even sexually assaults her by slapping her butt during his musical number. So yeah, I think her seething ire is totally justified. Keep in mind, however, that when she's around Charlie she's calm, collected, and happy. I wouldn't call that a stereotype.

Thirdly, the lesbian stereotypes. I keep hearing this argument but I really don't see it. Both Vaggie and Charlie have so much personality and trust for each other. Maybe I'm wrong, but the stereotype I know always totes a more butch, tomboyish woman with a ditsy, innocent, naive woman. Charlie is optimistic, but she isn't stupid. She refuses to shake Alastor’s hand because she knows he’s likely trying to screw her over. She’s also not entirely innocent herself and uses words like “fuck” and “shit”. I also wouldn’t call Vaggie butch or tomboyish. She has a cute, girly presentation, complete with a pink ribbon in her hair, lace stockings, and a dress. She's protective of her girlfriend, as I think we all are with our partners, and there's nothing wrong with that. They're flawed characters, as every character is meant to be. This isn't a problem.

9. The show is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, blah, blah, blah.

I’m amazed this is even an argument. The show is supposed to be a dark comedy that takes place in HELL. You know, the place the worst of the worst end up after they die? What were you expecting? Everyone gets a shot or two fired at them, but that doesn't make them bad characters nor does it make the show itself horrible. Take, for example, Katie Killjoy, the news reporter so many people are up in arms about. She says she doesn’t “touch the gays” because she has “standards”. Well, here’s a newsflash of my own: we’re not supposed to like her! She’s an antagonist. Not to mention ten seconds later Charlie insults her and isn’t the least bit slighted by her pretentious attitude. The characters are strong and don’t take shit from anyone, because to some degree they’re all terrible people who can throw down when it’s called for.

Obviously if you don’t like the show or think it’s offensive, I’m probably not going to change your mind. That’s perfectly fine. You’re entitled to your opinions and you don’t have to watch the show. Just stop lying and stop trying to take it away from everybody else. Stop attacking Vivzie and spreading misinformation without checking the facts. I realise a lot of people probably aren’t trying to be vindictive and only want to do something good, but just remember this: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

#hazbin hotel #vivziepop #vivzie #alastor #angel dust #vaggie #charlie #timber #stephen universe #drama #radio demon

[andypantsx3]

conspire | 1 | scheme

pairing: Todoroki Shouto / Reader

length: 13,307 words / 5 chapters

summary: Shouto Todoroki had definitely only asked you out in order to ward off his horde of interested suitors. So why does he keep actually taking you out on suspiciously realistic dates?

tags: romance, reader-insert, fake dating, misunderstandings

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut

Shouto Todoroki was standing outside your workroom.

This was unusual, as in the three years you’d both been attending UA, Todoroki had hardly been spotted anywhere near the support course rooms. Class H was typically avoided by anyone who didn’t want your classmate Mei to catch wind of them -- and very few hero course students had proved willing to do so, once they’d encountered her the first time.

Todoroki was one of the smart ones.

He looked incredibly out of place and yet almost comically festive in the doorway of the studio, his red and white mop of hair matching the horrible red and white heart banner someone had tacked above the entry for Valentine’s Day. He stopped midway through the door, eyes flicking over the other offensively bright decor, including several violently pink heart balloons and heinous red streamers that hung from the ceiling like sausages curing in a deli.

A ripple of interest went through the female segment of your classmates at his arrival, and despite yourself, you perked up too.

You didn’t know much about him, but Shouto Todoroki had the most interesting quirk you had ever worked with. You’d been paired for a project earlier this year where you’d helped develop an adjustment to his temperature jacket that used pattern recognition to help it anticipate changes in his quirk, in order to begin applying temperature controls sometimes even before he’d made the switch from hot to cold or vice versa.

You hadn’t spoken much on topics outside the project, but on the subject of your work, Todoroki had proved himself smart as a whip, asking insightful and probing questions, and making sensible suggestions based on what he learned from you. He’d been so keen on your ideas and so shockingly easy to work with that you’d lamented the project’s end.

It had only lasted two weeks, unfortunately, wrapping up before you’d had the chance to really delve into his personality or the actual science behind his quirk, and you’d been dying for the opportunity to pair up again and really study him since.

Less importantly, Shouto Todoroki was also inarguably the most handsome boy in your year, maybe even at all of UA. He was tall, strapped with lean muscle, and equipped with a facial symmetry that was almost more deadly than his quirk. Even his scar did nothing to deter from his good looks, only adding a roughed up, roguish charm to his otherwise pretty features. The first few days of your project, you’d had to pinch yourself on the leg more than a few times in order to reroute your brain from his face to the actual jacket.

You’d since put effort into ignoring his appearance, but you couldn’t really help that your eyes were pulled to him like a magnet whenever he stepped into a room.

Like now.

Todoroki’s own grey and blue eyes scanned over the faces of your classmates, stopping when they landed on you.

“Y/N,” he said in greeting, and you raised a bewildered hand. Several nearby girls shot you betrayed looks, like you’d been keeping an association with him secret. You’d have shot yourself something of a questioning look, too, if you could have. What reason would Shouto Todoroki have to seek you out outside of class? It had been almost a month since the project together. What might he want with you now?

“Hi, Todoroki,” you said, wondering if you’d awoken in some parallel dimension where he thought you were friends. “Uh, what brings you here?”

“I have a personal request,” he said in his low, soft tone, stepping into the room and making his way over to your worktable. He’d shed the grey blazer of the school uniform for the crisp white dress shirt and tie, and he looked unbearably good. As he drew closer, you could see the way his broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his shirt.

You self-consciously pushed around the messy wires and metal framing on your worktop, trying to clear space.

A personal request. Had he come for some kind of support item? Your mind suddenly ran with possibilities, and a thrill went through you at the potential to study half hot half cold in earnest. This was the kind of extracurricular project you’d been dreaming of, maybe even something that you could scope out and build as your submission for your senior project next month!

“Sure,” you said, gesturing to the other stool at your worktop and rifling around in your bag for a pen and paper. You’d probably need to take notes.

Todoroki stared at you. “Ah, not that kind of a request,” he said, eyeing your pen and paper.

Your cheer dropped. Oh.

“I had hoped to ask you in private, actually,” he said, something like discomfort flashing across his handsome features. He looked almost nervous, and you wondered wildly what kind of support request would make one of UA’s big three this awkward. Was he having a problem with his quirk that he didn’t want to cop to?

“Okay,” you said, looking up at him, “lead the way.”

A cool hand came up to grasp your wrist, tugging you out of your chair. Your face burned at the casual touch, and you felt the curious eyes of your classmates on you as you were led from the room.

Todoroki steered you through the hall and around the corner to a small alcove out of the way of student traffic. The alcove had clearly had the same treatment as your workrooms, festooned with a banner boasting a bizarre pattern of tiny All Might silhouettes interspersed with hearts. Your eyes felt like they might catch fire if you looked at it for too long.

“How have you been since the project?” you asked Todoroki, in the interest of being companionable. “Is everything on your vest still working well?”

A smile touched the corner of his mouth as he turned to face you. “It’s incredible. It still surprises me that it can predict what I’m going to do before I even think to do it.”

You flushed at the praise. “I’m glad. It was really cool work on. Your quirk is awesome - normally there are only so many variables with pattern prediction like that but the two sides of your quirk increased the possibilities exponentially, so the algorithm was hard to code. I had to get a little extra help from an actual computer scientist,” you admitted, before slapping a hand over your mouth, realizing you were rambling.

His smile widened and your traitorous eyes caught on his mouth. “You sound exactly as you did the last time we talked.”

You winced. “Yeah, sorry.”

His eyes widened and the hand on your wrist tightened. “No, I didn’t mean--it’s nice,” he said. His fingers seemed to grow the tiniest bit colder where he held you. “I would have liked to have worked with you longer.”

You tamped down on another blush, looking away. “Yeah. It’s too bad.”

Just then, footsteps sounded in the hall, and Himari Honda came wheeling around the corner.

Himari was another student you’d been paired with for a project at one time, and she hadn’t worked nearly as well with you as Todoroki had. A general course student with a quirk that let her track anyone within up to a mile of her person, Himari’s goal after graduation was to become an actress, with a particular focus on playing the love interest of powerful hero characters. She was certainly pretty enough, with large eyes, high cheekbones, and shiny pink hair that she wore in a long plait down her back, but that’s where her appeal ended. She wasn’t horrible, but she was a little too self-interested and it had certainly shown in how she’d handled your pair project.

Himari smiled winningly at Todoroki, and it became clear to you that she’d tracked him with her quirk. You knew instantly why she’d come to find him, today of all days.

“Hi, Shouto,” she purred. His fingers tightened where he still held your wrist.

“Hello,” he said politely.

You stifled a laugh at the carefully blank look he’d suddenly adopted. You guessed he’d been fending off advances of this type all day -- you’d caught sight of his shoe cubby when you’d changed into your own uniform shoes this morning, absolutely bursting with chocolate and brightly-colored valentine's notes. He was too handsome for his own good, it appeared. Still, it was interesting that Todoroki seemed not the slightest bit interested in what someone who looked like Himari had to say.

“Maybe I should go,” you said, tugging your wrist back, but Todoroki gripped you tighter.

“I still need to talk to you,” he said. He fixed you with an intense look like he could pin you in place with his gaze.

Himari seemed to ignore you. “Shouto, I was hoping to talk to you alone.”

“I’m a little occupied at the minute,” he said, gesturing to you. You gave a little wave.

Himari shot you a betrayed look like you’d beaten her to the punch, then puffed up like she was drawing up her courage. “Don’t accept her confession! Accept mine! I like you -- please go out with me!”

Your jaw dropped. You’d definitely not been in the middle of asking Todoroki out, but damn it took balls to cut another woman off like that. You couldn’t tell if you respected her or hated her for her shamelessness.

Todoroki shifted uncomfortably next to you. “Ah, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I can’t accept your feelings. You see, I was just about to ask Y/N out.”

Your mind went blank.

He what now? Is that why he’d brought you to this alcove to speak to you in private? Is that why he’d been so nervous back in the support studio, asking to talk to you alone? Shouto Todoroki had wanted to ask you out?

You wondered at that. You couldn’t understand why, when he could have his pick of any girl at UA. You were fine, sure -- reasonably smart with good grades and a neat appearance, but you weren’t anywhere near his level of mind-numbing attractiveness. More than that, you didn’t even have a quirk, and it was impossible that someone who wielded a power like half hot half cold was going to wade that far into the bleak depths of the dating pool. He had plenty of other options, so why come to you...?

Then, like a slow sunrise, it dawned on you what he was actually up to.

Todoroki was trying to get rid of all the confessions in one fell swoop. If Himari went back to her classmates and told everyone what had happened, rumors would spread very quickly that Shouto Todoroki was a dead-end bet. No one would try to ask him out anymore if his heart purportedly belonged to another.

That sneaky little fuck.

“Right,” you said, perking up and playing along gamely. “And I was just about to accept,” you announced to Himari.

Todoroki threw you a wild look like he hadn’t expected you to take this track. Shit, had you been supposed to reject him instead? You could, you supposed, but what hot-blooded woman in possession of sound mind and sound body would possibly do so? Did he also want to start the rumor that you were a complete nutjob?

“Um, I mean, I was about to respond privately,” you backpedaled. “Uh, nothing confirmed at this point.”

Himari gave you a furious look, her large eyes filling with tears, and turned on her heel, storming off. Your heart went out to her, just a little.

“You’d really accept?” Todoroki asked you as soon as she’d gone. Something unreadable glinted in his two-toned gaze.

You thought for a moment. Did he actually want to do this? It was barely a couple months until graduation, but you had nothing to lose in helping him. Maybe this was also your opportunity to study his quirk more closely, if you were going to be spending more time together to keep up appearances. You might actually be able to use him for your senior project.

“Sure,” you said, smiling up at him. “If you wanted this, I mean.”

A smile curved the edges of his mouth. “I did, yes.”

“Great,” you said, “Then you’re officially my boyfriend, Todoroki.”

His smile widened. “It’s Shouto.”

You looked at him in question.

“My name, it’s Shouto,” he said. “I’d like it if you would call me that.”

Something warm bloomed in your chest. This was all pretend but damn it was cute anyway. “Shouto,” you tested it out, liking the sound of it in your mouth.

Shouto seemed to like it too, unwinding his fingers from your wrist to slip his hand into yours. The cool of his fingers between yours was soothing, and you quite liked the way it felt.

“Are you free Saturday, then, for a first date?” he asked.

He did nothing by halves, huh? You laughed. “Yes, I’m free. Text me the time and place?”

He agreed and you traded phones, plugging in each other’s numbers. Then he walked you back to your workroom and left you with promises to see you Saturday, after sending you a characteristically straightforward this is shouto text to confirm.

You smiled as you watched him leave, pleased to be in on his little scheme.

You’d never fake dated anyone before so you didn’t really know what you were getting into, but you thought this could be fun. You were looking forward to whatever Shouto had up his sleeve.

#bnha #bnha x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #fanfic #todoroki x reader #boku no hero academia #todoroki shouto

[seercayder]

No but I feel as though artists are probably experiencing one of the most hostile years of posting art online that they’ve ever experienced for maybe forever. And I mean this for both amateur artists and professionals (with maybe a lil bit of bias since I also do The Art).

Tumblr’s nudity ban has crippled any piece that is either NSFW or uses nudity as artistic expression and it ultimately drove away both the artists themselves and a lot of their fans, which destroyed any remaining traction for the artists who managed to remain. Tumblr is no longer an artistic freedom-friendly site and it shows, which is a fucking shame bc they genuinely have one of the better tagging systems than other sites and I believe that most feedback on art there has been positive and friendly, which has now gone the way of the dinosaur much like Deviantart.

Twitter has problems with image compression but their biggest issue is toxic abuse, which I find to be the most damaging to artists out of all the other problems i’m listing here. Both the lure of anonymity and the mindset that ‘Speak Loud In Little Words To Make Point Means You Are Important And Right’ has fuelled the absolutely vile comments I have seen directed at artists on the site. Although it’s mainly aimed at fanartists and ship artists, I have noticed unwanted (even rude) criticism on immaculate, well-done art pieces, which is extremely belittling and insulting because the artist (although they may be open to criticism) if they haven’t asked for criticism then that means that they are not in the right mindset to receive any, and therefore it is not your place to throw disparaging comments at them.

But the biggest issue with abuse on Twitter is obviously aimed at fan-artists, especially those those that draw NSFW or “problematic” content. I could go into a whole spiel about how a drawing of a fictional character doesn’t affect reality but in short: If you find disturbing art of a non-existent character (or hey, even non-disturbing art, it’s just something you don’t like) then ignore it. Don’t go and fucking bully the artist you psychopath. If it is truly illegal then report the piece and then see if it gets taken down. Because 90% of the time it won’t be taken down because it doesn’t go against guidelines and you’re just trying to police the site like you’re the thought-police, monitoring other peoples art as if you have the god-given right to. And if you’re a minor stay the fuck out of 18+ accounts. Don’t comment, don’t follow, don’t even look. I am absolutely amazed by the mindset that some children have to waltz into a space not made for them and having the balls to insult the 18+ artist, who have specifically said “no minors”, for posting icky content. It gets even worse when you see how they abuse the Privatter or Curiouscat links the Twitter artists provide, made for anonymous feedback or for being the final barrier for an adult piece that says “hey this stuff is NSFW, don’t click if you are underage, last warning”. I’m gonna go into this more when I cover TikTok in the next few paragraphs. But ultimately, the artists on that site are having to be constantly vigilant against abuse, and it’s not unusual for them having to spend hours going through their 1K+ followers and having to block every underage follower who just didn’t fucking listen to their warnings. Imagine how exhausting and irritating and down-right uncomfortable that must be; having to monitor every fan that sees your work out of fear that they’re a minor seeing adult content or that they could throw abusive comments at you. Horrible.

Instagram is saturated with bots attempting to steal your work or advertise it on their own page and feedback isn’t really a ‘thing’ on there. Also, their algorithm (which may have also been implemented on Twitter, I believe that the Twitter algorithm now avoids promoting popular artist terms, but I can’t be certain bc the Twitter post that pointed this out is long-lost in the depths of my timeline, bc again, no tagging system) is based more around sharing than likes, which can be a huge barrier to artists. Sure, you may like someones art and even leave a nice comment on it, but do you really want to share every piece you come across, especially if it’s not something you would show dear Aunty Susan who follows you? It’s infuriating that a whole site dedicated for images is so difficult to use for artists, and with Instagram implementing features that are similar to Snapchats ‘stories’ it’s clear they’ve moving in a different direction, focusing on momentary attention-grabbing photos. This is simply because Instagram is advertising itself as more of a promotional influencer site nowadays, and anything that could sully their reputation has to be thrown into the algorithm trash. NSFW art or just plain ‘bad’ art? Trash. If you’re not gonna make money for them then why should they bother? You wanna promote your art? Pay for it because the algorithm will absolutely be working against you.

Now, the biggest fucking offender for worst art-sharing site of the year is TikTok (no surprise there), which is absolutely rampant with reposts and uncredited artwork and a gateway for abusive comments against artists. Like the Ouroboros snake, it goes through the same pattern every time; People (usually minors) find art on Twitter or Pinterest and repost it, usually without credit or going against the artist’s wishes about reposting. Then it either goes two-ways: Firstly, if the piece is SFW it will get about five-seconds of interest, a like for the reposter and people will then just move on. TikTok is built entirely around short bursts of satisfaction, feeding a a constant loop of serotonin for a few seconds before you move on. So ultimately, people rarely then hunt down the original artist, especially if their credit isn’t readily available, and usually the original artists doesn’t see any rise in likes, followers or popularity and are usually unaware that their art is even getting any attention on TikTok.

Or, if the art is NSFW, it can go down the second way. It is reposted and, as the majority of TikTok users are under-18, many users find the image uncomfortable, especially if it is a bit more ‘out-there’ or of a ship they don’t like. The reposters sometimes find the image off of Privatter, which is even worse since the piece has been posted to Privatter not just as a final barrier against minors, but also as a form of directing the piece to a specific and niche audience due to it’s... spicer than usual NSFW content. I’m talking really specific pieces with really specific kinks. Now that piece is floating around TikTok, widely seen by the general fans of a fandom, who again, are usually underage. The viewers grow uncomfortable, as the piece is not made for them, especially since sometimes the reposter only posted the piece for shock-value, and would even encourage insulting comments by only posting the credits for the purpose of getting fans to throw abuse at the artist (”The artist is ***** but they ship **** and are icky”) and so the viewers finally decide to make the effort to hunt down the original artist, only to throw insulting and bullying comments at them, made worse by the fact that they are children who don’t have the sense to hold back and have been fuelling their mindset in the echo-chamber that is TikTok.

And as a result of a lot of this hostile feedback for artists, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a space for amateur artists who are just starting out, since the art community is becoming a little bit scary. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that new (or not even new but recently promoted) sites such as Artstation are becoming a better place for professional artists only, but it is very intimidating for learner artists. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - I believe that part of the reason for Deviantarts decline was that the tagging system was horrible, so good art was being drowned out by amateur, fetish content, so more advanced artists were distancing themselves from the site, especially if they were trying to build a portfolio for employment. I also find that fanart usually gets far more likes than more original art pieces, even if the original piece is amazingly good, which isn’t a criticism against fanart but posting your original piece on a site more aimed at professional pieces may help you reach your target audience better and improve likes and interaction. However, that does mean that if you are an amateur, or hell, just an average artists who is still learning, your best bet for exposure is posting your piece across multiple sites and very, very regularly, braving any abusive comments if you try anything slightly “spicy”. Which, obviously, become a very potentially toxic atmosphere and it’s not uncommon for artists to feel burn-out or depressed at their lack of attention or the cyber-bullying they may receive.

I’m not trying to say that posting artwork has always been easy, but there is definitely a more aggressive culture surrounding it and I think artists have to be aware that chances are they will face insulting comments, reposters, frustrating algorithms, cyber-bullying, a lack of interaction and burn-out as they try and appeal to websites that would do the bare minimum for you in terms of promotion.

This isn’t meant to be a post to scare away artists, I just wanted to point out that there is a big fucking problem and it feels as though it’s getting worse. Nowadays, websites have become a bit too comfortable targeting creators rather than fans when it comes to monitoring content and artists have been put under more and more pressure as they face more and more abuse that is rarely addressed, especially by the sites themselves that host the content. Things that are a huge punch in the face for artists, such as NFT’s, are becoming more normalised and it’s honestly just sad.

#art #sorry for the long post but I get passionate about art #and I feel like every day i'm seeing more and more cyber abuse towards artists and it's honestly depressing #artists #twitter #instagram #tumblr #tagging is the best invention and i'm confused why Twitter doesn't even have a better system for it

[roc-thoughtblog]

I am now feeling the great and mighty call, wailing from the abyss of my dysfunctional mind, to abandon this experiment in favour of the charming alternative: absolute jack-nothing. It's a pressure, a really common pressure, that one where you absolutely can't seem to start doing anything, no matter how much you want, should, need to or like doing it. I hate it.

I absolutely reject this call. And I think, for once in my life I'm actually empowered to do so. I have medication that helps me focus. I'm emotionally stable enough to have a consistent degree of confidence. I have a purpose and a goal. I have every intention to completely power through this horrible siren of immobility.

Hell, this was half the reason I started this whole reading/writing blog to begin with, to see if I can keep it up for once.

If personal change can come by spending one hour every day reading or writing, as consistently as possible, I have to do it. I don't know an easier road.

Especially reading, it holds such a unique place for me. I love it enough to constantly want to do it, but my concentration span for novels is so poor that I am basically never at risk of losing control. Watching shows, playing games, spending any time on the sprawling mess of hyperlinks and algorithms that is the internet, I'm so vulnerable to hyperfocusing and losing days and weeks of my life to the unforgiving maw of the un-time.

I just lost the last two or three days like this already, because I accidentally sucked myself back into FE3H. I don't even play the game very fast, or possibly much at all, I just spend hours going into days messing around in the menus. Silly, right? Life shouldn't have to be this way, though, and I am going to Learn Control.

Standard self-management techniques I have ever tried do not work for me. Scheduling and time-management, alarms and reminders, they don't function if I don't have a basic mechanism that cooperates with them. This blog is baby steps, and I will keep fucking walking like the baby I am until I have that basic mechanism that I might then extend to every other part of my life.

I would like to be able to start and then finish personal projects. That would be amazing. And, wow, could you imagine how much better I might be at studying if I could do it?

I restarted a sketching blog too, which I haven't managed to maintain in the past week. But no beating myself up over it, because baby steps involve taking everything you can get first before worrying about more. I'll incorporate it into my proto-schedule as soon as I'm capable of doing so. If I spent one hour every day drawing, who knows how much I could have drawn or how much I would improve.

And streaming! I started streaming on Monday mornings to try to enjoy a game without getting sucked in. And it's working! I played DDLC for three hours the first monday, and then I consciously put it down and waited a whole patient week to play it another three hours the next monday! I didn't get fucking consumed by it! Only one real-life friend is actually watching my terrible quality 480p stream, but who cares! The extra layer of accountability of publicly playing the game has kept my impulses in check and my general brain upright and sane, and the general busywork of setting up a stream and finding convenient, private times to do so has been just enough resistance to stop me launching straight back into things prematurely like I do with a normal schedule I abjectly fail to follow.

I just cannot describe how pleased I am to be able to enjoy something I like doing with some measure of control. Generally I end up caught in that awful cycle where I simply can't do anything I love or want to do because I know that as soon as I do... goodbye life. Being able to play a game guilt free? On a SCHEDULE? That I MAINTAINED? Revolutionary. It even helped me get up in the morning. I’ll be sad when circumstances change to make streaming impractical for me again.

Where was I even going with this, I'm rambling. Rambling is a part of this blog too. I think too much and can't write nothing, which is an absolutely amazing trait to have when you need to write an essay. I want this blog to train myself to just, make my thoughts exist somewhere, on a page, that I can use. Anything. Proofreading is optional, because even basic perfectionism is the death of production. There's a reason why despite the bulk of this blog turning into literature readthroughs, that I started it with a review of Sephiroth DLC for Super Smash Brothers. It was the only thing I could think to write at the time. And I'll take it. I will definitely take anything I can start writing on. Beggars can't be choosers, etc. If I can write more naturally like I am right now, rambling into a .txt, if I can turn that back around into stories or studies... that would be grand.

Anyway, how do I end this. Call back to the beginning and conclude. Okay.

Long story short, I refuse to stop even though all natural feeling compels me to lose interest, because I think I can fight the urge now. AH MOSQUITO. Screw it I'm leaving that in here. It would be so nice to be able to control when I do and do not do things, and I hope I can use this blog to improve my life.

Oh yeah last thing. I want to try and get this proto-schedule such that I will read during the weekdays, but on weekends I'll try to branch out and write about something else. I'll default to reading if I can't manage to get any writing started.

Bit of a long and nebulous to-do list, but I would still like to write a review for Idoru, finish the comparisons on narrative voice with S&S. Also, I took a bunch of notes on No Maps for These Territories I'd like to process along with Idoru. And I did play two sessions of DDLC, with lots of notes! I'd like to write something about that too. And there's so many more small things that strike me every day that could be a good thing to write about. Thoughtblog and all that.

'Kay, it's 3AM now, somehow, so I'mma try to fix my sleep cycle. 'Night.

#1100 words #personal update #that mosquito had better have left me alone #i'm tired but genuinely optimistic #and i hope that optimism isn't betrayed somehow #by myself or rather not because i learned blaming yourself for these sorts of things is the opposite of helpful

[ingayderzim]

not to be that person who asks a googleable question but wtf is hazbin hotel bc i googled it and the only “critical” thing i could find was a typo-ridden article of someone saying it has good animation and its haters are stupid. i was able to glean what it is/what it’s about but idk about the discourse lmao

Im actually so glad u asked this. Here's the lowdown, this is my definitive answer to hazbin shit from here on out, unless new info comes about of course.

Hazbin hotel is an independent cartoon by vivziepop. Most people (that ive seen) have agreed that the pilot of the show really isnt that great but the reason it has so many fans is bc of the entertaining livestreams, massive amounts of canon content produced (she has had these characters for years), unique art style, and the characters. (Ass ugly but unique.)

Its haters are totally justified bc of some of the "controversial" (read: bad) things vivziepop has done. Here's the conclusion that my friends and classmates (several of whom are Black, one Hispanic woman, and one trans woman...nellie if ur reading this i 💜 u) and i came to after discussing this stuff. I am NOT saying "well my black/trans friend said it's ok so i dont have to think about it!" this is based on a few different conversations that my friends and i have had about this topic so what im saying is that my opinion was formed by talking about this situation with multiple people affected by the controversy.

One controversial thing is a drawing u can easily find on google (called beastiality.jpg i believe?) It's a cropped (chest and up, but hes obv naked) drawing of vivziepops character, drawn by vivziepop, moaning, with a snake around him. The character is 17. Many people have interpreted this as child porn. I dont think this image is pornographic, i think it's a stupid joke (it was even tagged as a joke iirc) and completely inappropriate but since it's 8 years old on top of not being porn, i think it's just an example of a dumb drawing. That being said, i would NEVER argue that someone who is uncomfortable w the drawing (im uncomfortable with it! It's gross just not porn) or considers it porn is wrong. They are entitled to that opinion and i would never expose them to vivziepops work or talk about her stuff around them if they expressed to me that they disliked the image.

Another thing is that she drew a doodle of two racist TERFs. This is the one where my friends of color, my friends who are black, and my friends who are trans women took the lead. I sat back for this part and here's their and my opinion on this after talking about it and verbally going through this whole situation.

She was following these women (who had done blackface and stuff) and drew art of them. The art was a "quick doodle" that she did apologize for and she said she didn't realize the extent of their beliefs. She knew they werent great but hadnt consumed much of their content in depth. I believe her bc while ive never followed anyone as bad, ive certainly followed some pieces of shit and didnt notice for months simply bc im not online all the time and bc of the volume of people i follow, combined with the non chronological algorithms lately.

At the risk of screwing myself, im going to admit that there was about a year or so of my life where i enjoyed The Amazing Atheist. I was even subbed to him. I was a nonbinary lesbian (2 things he cant stand lmaoo) in catholic school and therefore i strictly watched his videos about theological stuff since thats what was frustrating me at the time. I had no clue the type of evil racist, transphobic, homophobic (yes ik hes bi), misogynistic things he thought, said, and did, bc i didnt watch those videos. I literally only watched select theological ones that could be of use to me while edgily debating my teachers (sorry mrs macdougal but u had it coming). I was about 15 at the time and im 19 now. Im sorry to everyone i hurt by ever having supported him. I had one of his quotes written in the inside of my religion notebook in high school. I regretted it and ripped the page out the moment i discovered the truth about him. I cant stress enough how much I HATE HIM. Thats an example of what i think happened here tho.

One of my friends who is a trans woman said (paraphrasing) "i think the worst thing shes done is that terf art but i believe the apology especially bc it was a quick drawing."

That being said, i would NEVER argue with someone who wanted nothing to do w vivziepop bc of this. That's their right. 100%. I would never expose them to her work after that.

The last thing i remember is something about a pedophilic couple in a comic but i heard it was a 17 year old and a 19 year old. Im 19 and if one of my peers did that i wouldnt say pedophile but id say ur a fucking weirdo, BUT, the kids were fake and being written by an adult so i can totally see her thinking that age gap is much less of a big deal than it really is. Like she forgot what it's like at this age. Idk how true any of that part is tho, i heard that info entirely secondhand.

Another thing to do with racism is that there's a joke within the show where one character says to the other

"don't get your taco in a twist"

"Was that supposed to be racist or sexist?"

"Whichever one pisses you off more"

I thought that was gross but one of my friends pointed out that vivziepop is of el salvadorian descent so that's her business. Like if i made a lesbian joke of equal or greater offensiveness than that and someone tried to call me lesbophobic over it id be like "that's literally my territory."

Oh speaking of which that character's name is vaggie and shes a lesbian but it's not pronounced w the same G you'd hear in "vagina." Vivziepop seems to name characters weirdly (like how in helluva boss theres a guy named blitzo and the o is silent) so maybe it's a pussy joke but i have no idea.

The animation was.................better than i could do, i wanna say the faces and gestures were good but god i remember there was a part with a car and my gf had to pause so i could laugh my ass off at it. I wouldn't describe the animation as a highlight but i liked the style in motion i thought it was a fun change. Vivziepops style is not appealing imo but i appreciate it as an art student and as someone whose friends all like she ra and steven universe where every character looks the goddamn motherfucking same, and while its chaotic and i dont care for it, the style actually works way better in motion than you'd think.

A good rule that i def use is to assume hazbin fans are guilty until proven innocent. If someone says they dont care about the discourse surrounding it and like it no matter what, RUN! They would support the show even if the creator was in fact a pedophile, or had done the blackface/was a terf herself! They probably support some horrible ppl and are probably "anti antis." A lot of them are minors tho so i'd say block and move on.

So, do i like it or not? Im an art student and all my friends like it so while i didnt think it was funny, i do fuck with it. At the convention this weekend my friends and i had a convo that led to me drawing an ahego hoodie where the faces were angel dust (a character's) face. It was a joke that i could make a killing by selling that in a booth at a con.

Theres really nothing compelling about the show but my friends like it so i join in on their conversations, and i do have a soft spot for angel dust bc he's like a worse, less amazing and gorgeous version of one of my characters, Candy, the love of my life.

A lot of people say the show was edgy/offensive and maybe im just desensitized but besides the taco thing i didnt pick up on that whatsoever??? The Archer episode "Swiss Miss" is worse than helluva boss and hazbin combined and even archer isn't offensive.

Im probably not aware of all the "discourse" (aka people being reasonably uncomfortable by weird and bad shit this random woman has done, and other ppl saying their opinions are wrong when it's literally just an opinion about a show) so if anything she's done isnt included in here it's not to defend vivziepop, this is genuinely all i know. I wouldnt describe myself as a fan of hers.

#hazbin hotel #anon

[artsyrobo-blog]

how to rank your biz on yelp

Secret Factors in Yelp Position Algorithm:

- Reviews - Completeness of profile - Age of profile - Authority of website

Actions:

1. Complete company info totally

Preferential ranking therapy is offered to organisations with complete details, plus consumers often tend to rely on services extra when info is offered concerning the business in addition to the proprietors as well as staff. Additionally, total info assists exceptionally with individual experience and creates much less work for the business proprietor by responding to usual concerns from consumers (an animal peeve of mine is when organisations do not provide their hrs of procedure). Likewise essential is to regularly update your organisation profile when anything modifications. Posting imprecise information will certainly cause unfavorable customer experiences, unfavorable testimonials, rankings fines, as well as potentially also de-listing if the offenses are fantastic adequate.

2. Categories

Every organisation can pick up to 3 categories to explain their service.The most effective method for this is to take a look at rival profiles to see which groups they picked. The procedure is extremely similar to picking categories for Google local, with the primary difference being that you can not produce personalized classifications. It is recommended to select as lots of categories as your service can reasonably fit into, but don't make use of categories that don't apply just to get to the optimum three. Unnecessary groups hurt rankings and also can even lead to nasty reviews.

3. Key words

Consist of keyword phrases from your web site's SEO strategy throughout your account, specifically in business information, background, and also owner/employee accounts (you have a SEO technique, right?). When possible, discreetly recommend to customers to include key words in reviews, along with mention details products/services.

4. Evaluations

Review BubblesYelp clearly tells you not to ask individuals for evaluations, yet the majority of companies do it anyway. Simply whatever you do, don't publish anything on your yelp profile or web site offering incentives for composing evaluations. Great ways to urge reviews are including yelp badges on your website (which link to your yelp account), or discussing in the website content how much people like your service on yelp (with an account link certainly). Also including yelp logos on business cards or placing yelp stickers on windows assist. The trick is to be subtle; nobody suches as to be pestered into creating an evaluation. Review weighting is based largely on who created the evaluation. Evaluations from energetic yelp users are weighted more than those from much less active users. Also an unfavorable evaluation from a really energetic yelp individual can press an organisation to the top of the search web page (certainly a positive testimonial from stated individual is considerably a lot more helpful, both in rankings as well as reputation).

5. Respond strategically to evaluations, both negative as well as favorable

Positive: It is a good idea to respond to positive comments for a couple of reasons. First of all, it reinforces the connection with an already pleased consumer and also enhances the chances that they will certainly bring repeat company. The suggested strategy is to send them a short private feedback thanking them. It is not a good idea to use this as a possibility to pitch to them. It is likewise suggested to good friend them as well as check packages beneath their review (beneficial, funny, trendy) to aid the evaluation avoid of the Yelp filter (much more on this listed below). Positive objection: It is important to be mindful when responding to these kinds of testimonials. If the consumer is recommending you deal with a facet of your service differently that does not make sense to you, the suggested reaction is to publicly react to them and clarify why you manage points the means you do, however thank them for their input. It is very important to remember that this sort of consumer may bring repeat company if you respond favorably to them. Merited strike: This is the most dangerous kind of review to reply to, and also calls for a great deal of treatment. Replying to this resembles responding to positive criticism, because you intend to openly reply to them, maintain a very positive tone, and most significantly excuse their bad experience (thinking that it is a genuine grievance, otherwise then adhere to directions for unjustifiable attacks). Whatsoever expenses, you have to not attack them, as this is most likely to prompt further attacks from them and also might rapidly spiral unmanageable (Yelp customers are notoriously verbose). Gratuitous assaults (trolling): It is usually recommended to overlook these type of unfavorable evaluations. The general goal of this type of behavior is to draw you right into an image-damaging discussion, which is a desperate circumstance. These type of evaluations are frequently published by rival businesses or marketing firms in an effort to siphon off customers. One dead giveaway is that these testimonials will certainly frequently commend a competitor. You can not require the elimination of non-legitimate testimonials, however you can and also ought to flag them, which enhances the possibility that the testimonial will be filteringed system.

6. Taking care of the notorious Yelp testimonial filter

The Yelp filter is the resource of lots of people's wraith, as well as from individual experience with it, I concur that it is frequently infuriating. According to Yelp, the purpose of the filter is to extract fake as well as poor quality reviews, which is an admirable goal, and also important for maintaining the quality of their website. Nonetheless, in method what frequently takes place is that companies will have all of their radiant evaluations filtered out, leaving just unfavorable ones, injuring their positions and credibility. There are also lawsuits taking place pertaining to the filter. Anyway, you can put in a level of impact over which examines get filteringed system by following some actions. To keep favorable reviews from being filteringed system, business proprietor must send out a friend demand to the consumer who left it, as well as inspect packages below the evaluation (valuable, funny, amazing). For adverse testimonials, all you can do is flag the evaluation. It is possible to contact the customer that left it and ask to take it down, but this rarely functions. Nonetheless, if the directions for replying to unfavorable evaluations are complied with as well as a positive discussion is developed with the customer, after that it might be feasible to get them to take it down, however it is not a good idea to bring this up early in the dialogue.

7. Make regular news and special deals

It is really beneficial to make regular offers and also announcements, as they will certainly show up in a deals directory for your city, which is positioned plainly on the homepage of the website. They additionally appear in inner searches along with sometimes in Google natural searches if your service is placed high sufficient. See to it to consist of search phrases plainly. It is additionally reported that making normal statements enhances positions.

8. Use Yelp badges on your business web site

As pointed out above, this is a fantastic way to motivate evaluations. Additionally, it offers good web link juice to your website, as yelp has very high domain name authority. Put Yelp badges on every page of your website.

9. Do not use yelp marketing

Yelp Optimization Overview: 10 Steps to Yelp DominationIt's very expensive, needs a lengthy commitment, has very bad tracking abilities, and does not supply several benefits over normal totally free listings. This might boost in the future, as they are obtaining horrible press and also suits over it.

For reviews, do not exclusively count on Yelp for your business. Write down the leading places you get one of the most direct exposure that enables evaluations. This may include Google, Facebook, Clutch and various other sites that are very important for your industry. Why should you take note of this today? Approximately 88% of consumers trust online reviews as if it were a personal recommendation from a good friend. They crazy part is, this stat maintains climbing as well as climbing up as people spend more time online. Your credibility is not to be taken lightly either. This is genuine bucks for your organisation which can lead to substantial amounts of sales. Sales is the lifeblood of your company and the much more raving fans you can get to become your spokes people, the even more lives you can influence.

Do you utilize Yelp? Has it helped your organisation? What do you like or dislike concerning Yelp?

#yelp #smallbiz #entrepreneur #reviews

[brandxspandex]

Smashing through some pre-modern Spotlight issues on the way towards the meat of the main story in my IDW re-read.

Spotlight: Thundercracker again leaves me wondering how the hell Thundercracker managed to live with being a Decepticon for so long. After all, this Spotlight is set towards the beginning of the Great War and Thundercracker already has misgivings serious enough that he’s moved to commit some pretty severely treasonous acts, and this was back when organic genocide was just a side effect of the Decepticons’ goals, rather than a goal in itself. If he was already upset with how the Cons treated organics at this stage, I can’t imagine how he would have reacted when they made cleansing the galaxy of organics their policy, and I can’t understand how he stuck around after that point. I used to think that the increase in the Decepticons’ outward brutality probably corresponded to the increase in their inward brutality, so as Thundercracker gained more and more reasons to leave the Cons he also got more and more reasons to be afraid of leaving. Yet this issue confirms that the DJD existed even at this point, and Thundercracker was still willing to risk acting on behalf of his morals regardless. I suppose it’s possible that the DJD’s tactics were less extreme at this point, but I still find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that it took Thundercracker millions of years to take the final little step towards a heelfaceturn.

After letting Bumblebee live, Thundercracker seems to imply that if all Autobots were like Bee he would be willing to switch sides, or perhaps that they wouldn’t be at war in the first place. While Bumblebee is an exceptionally friendly guy for sure (in fact this issue takes time to hammer home that in terms of heroic intent Bee is pretty much on Optimus Prime’s level, even if he lacks Optimus’s focused leadership abilities – which is a big theme of Bee’s own character arc), Thundercracker seemed particularly taken with Bee because he went out of his way to save organics, which doesn’t seem that unusual a trait among Autobots. Sure, we’ve seen some Autobots that don’t seem to give a shit about organics, and some that have just been nasty pieces of work in general, but most Bots we’ve seen have been of the heroic, organic-saving inclination, so it seems as though Thundercracker must have had a warped perception of the Autobots if he thought Bee was an exception (unless of course particularly heroic Autobots are overrepresented amongst the main characters, which may very well be the case). So maybe Thundercracker didn’t switch sides and go to the Autobots because he was under the impression that they were no better than the Decepticons (and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cons were fed propaganda to maintain those sorts of perceptions).

Thundercracker also seemed pretty hung up on the fact that being a Seeker was his identity, which may have made leaving the Decepticons difficult for him. I guess that before the war most Cybertronians had a very solid sense of their identity, which was defined by their alt-mode, before the war began and threw all of this into disarray. While a big reason the war was fought in the first place was precisely because many people didn’t like being boxed into these limited identities, it must have nonetheless been very disorientating to many to have the familiarity of their old identities disrupted. Thus it wouldn’t be surprising if many went on to dig their heels into whatever identities they could find in wartime.

Spotlight: Shockwave sees Shockwave going about his whole Regenesis Ore thing, which makes me wonder how much of the energon throughout the universe was due to Shockwave’s actions and how much of it just existed out there independently. I often wonder what sort of substance energon is exactly, and whether it is in anyway comparable to any real substances or if it is something completely alien and unknowable. The fact that we’ve seen Transformers converting known matter into synthesised energon suggests that it is at very least made of the same fundamental elements as the known universe. Still, I wonder if it’s something that can arise in the universe without any sort of Cybertronian involvement.

It’s interesting that Shockwave puts his (temporary) downfall in this issue down to his failure to factor in the universal constant of chaos, given that now he’s back he seems to be fixated on “the higher order of logic that is chaos”. Was this the beginning of the path that led him to decide that becoming some sort of chaos worshipping furry was the way to go? Speaking of furries, it’s kinda funny that Shockwave ended up becoming the furry Prime when his spotlight is also the issue in which the Dinobots get their dinosaur forms. Turns out that with Shockwave, everything begins and ends with furries.

Shockwave puts his inability to anticipate and understand the Dinobots’ rash, emotional actions down to his strictly logical thought process, to the point where he actually has to shut down his higher processing to allow him to “evolve” a primal subroutine approximating rage in order to deal with them. Shockwave’s apparent evolution in this issue is never really brought up again (at least, not yet), but then again, even before reappearing in this currently ambiguously un-shadowplayed state, Shockwave was suspiciously snarky and melodramatic for a guy without emotions. I gotta say that I find it kinda hard to believe that Shockwave finds irrational and emotional behaviour so mind-bogglingly shocking and hard to process given that this issue is set a few million years into the war and he has been with the Decepticons for all that time, a movement filled to the absolute brim with spectacularly emotional and irrational individuals.

Also I’m going to post this panel because when required to draw the gadget that enables Shockwave to signal his ship it sure as hell looks like the artist just decided to give him some car keys:

I can’t really recall Cliffjumper doing anything that notable in IDW outside of his Spotlight (and spoilers in the Unicron prologue issue he unfortunately got rather unceremoniously killed off off-panel) so I had forgotten that he’s apparently a total badass whose name strikes fear into troops of Cons who he then wipes out single-handedly before using one of their severed hands to hammer in the grave of the little organic girl he wrecks vengeance in the name of. I do really like how the Autobots have their little friendly round cars like Cliffjumper and Bumblebee as their spies, saboteurs and deadly assassins.

We see some very human-looking aliens in this issue, which is honestly something that always bugs me, even though it absolutely saturates sci-fi. It just strikes me as so astonishingly unlikely that evolution would pull the same trick so many times that it really pulls me out of the story; it’s something that stretches my suspension of disbelief that little bit too far. That’s why I love it when sci-fi provides some sort of explanation behind the humanoid pattern recurring throughout their setting, often in the form of some sort of progenitor race seeding genetic blueprints throughout the cosmos. And you know what? In IDW I’m just going to assume Shockwave’s behind it at this point. It seems like exactly the kind of thing he’d do and he’s responsible for pretty much everything else in the continuity so let’s go with that.

This issue implies that Cybertronians have some sort of in-built program that enables them to pick up the transmissions of an alien world they’re on and use them to synthesise a translation of the native languages they can then easily speak, as part of their “robots in disguise” adaptability shtick. This seems to somewhat contradict later instances where we see Transformers attempting to learn languages the more traditional way, but personally I much prefer the idea that they have this more alien and robotic approach. I also like the idea that it is part of the same collection of features that allows them to have alt-modes that mimic the vehicles and technology native to the alien world they’re on, because adapting to alien environments is an intrinsic part of their natures AND HOLY SHIT what if the reason Transformers have such a hard time changing their ways and breaking free of their vicious cycle of war, yet seem to suddenly undergo rapid character development when they encounter other species, such as humans, is because of this adaptability algorithm? When they’re just around other Transformers they automatically adapt to each other so they get stuck in a loop of mimicking the same behaviours, but when they encounter other species with new behaviours they can adapt to them and break out of the loop (same could go for encountering Transformer colony worlds that have been isolated for a while)??? Ok that idea probably wouldn’t hold up to closer inspection in this continuity at least BUT HELL IT’S A THOUGHT.

The idea that Transformers require alien transmissions in order to synthesise translations for their languages fits in well with the fact that Wheelie can’t automatically adapt to the language of the alien he encounters in Spotlight: Wheelie, give that both he and the alien are away from their native worlds. I thought that the alien having a translation device that for some reason requires the speaker to speak in rhyme in order to work was a pretty clever way of explaining Wheelie’s whole speaking in rhyme gimmick.

Wheelie’s Spotlight has the same basic core theme that most of this lot of Spotlight issues seem to have; the main character is faced with a moral dilemma where they can choose between taking the safest option that most benefits themselves, or they can save an innocent (typically an organic) and sacrifice something in the process. Each time the main character realises that if they choose to take the easy option and allow the innocent to befall whatever horrible fate is dangling over them, they will be sacrificing something even worse. The Autobot characters come to the conclusion that this is what defines them as an Autobot and separates them from the Decepticons, but we see Thundercracker making a similar decision in his own Spotlight. But of course, we know where Thundercracker’s storyline eventually takes him.

There’s a major tease at the end of Spotlight: Wheelie involving the presence of the Quintessons that certainly seems like the set up for some kind of significant plotline, but unless the Quintessons turn out to have some kind of important involvement in the Unicron storyline, I guess that’s never gonna go anywhere. It’s a pity, cos I reckon a lot can be done with the Quintessons, and in their sparse appearances in IDW they’ve always been quite intriguing.

Spotlight: Hot Rod introduces everyone’s favourite piece “woah what the hell they’re bringing that back up again now?” in the form of The Magnificence and yo hang on those Omega Guardians in this issue sure look like those things on the cover of an upcoming issue of the Lost Light:

I wonder if Hot Rod’s experience with Dealer plays into his hatred of Getaway. Hot Rod spent so much time angsting over his failures on his mission to collect The Magnificence, including the fact that he had to abandon Dealer in the process, and then he risked his life in order to save Dealer from a Decepticon prison camp. Then it turns out that Dealer was a doublecrosser who had caused the failures on Rodimus’s mission in the first place, and was still planning to stab him in the back. After all that, it wouldn’t be too surprising if Rodimus had developed a bit of a hair-trigger reaction when it comes to people who betray him.

Spotlight: Sixshot addresses the strangely sweet camaraderie between the emotional abyss/utter force of annihilation that is Sixshot and his carnage-loving fanbots the Terrorcons, which is something that, as far as I can recall, is never explored or brought up again. But, nonetheless, it’s nice to know it was a thing. It also features The Reapers, who provide an interesting little taster of some of the other aliens that exist in the IDW universe, from an electric space jellyfish to a berserker virus infected monster bird. The Reapers are all about ending war by pre-emptively destroying any sources of war, which makes me wonder how the hell have they haven’t got around to trying to destroying the Transformers yet. It’s a big universe I suppose.

Reading through these issues provided a nice little reminder of some forgotten characterisation and plot hooks that have been left dangling. It’s sad to think that most of these things won’t have a chance to be picked up now (except for The Magnificence, and I still can’t quite get over the fact that happened), but they are ready fodder for any fanfic writers who may want to pick up where canon is going to leave off.

#Transformers IDW #Maccadam #Spotlight: Thundercracker #Spotlight: Shockwave #Spotlight: Cliffjumper #Spotlight: Wheelie #Spotlight: Hot Rod #Spotlight: Sixshot #Thundercracker #Shockwave #Cliffjumper #Wheelie #Hot Rod #Rodimus #Sixshot #Decepticons #Bumblebee #Autobots #Decepticon Justice Division #DJD #Dinobots #Quintessons #The Magnificence #Omega Guardians #Lost Light #Doubledealer #Getaway #Terrorcons #The Reapers #TF IDW reread