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fiercynn · 11 months

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otw july 2 board meeting: what the hell was that

so the otw (@transformativeworks) board had their Q2 meeting yesterday, which was highly anticipated given everything that's gone down in the past months:

the @end-otw-racism campaign demanding action from otw on their own commitments made three years ago to better address racist harassment in otw and on ao3 (btw, support end otw racism's current campaign #Vote To End OTW Racism!)

recent revelations about how otw has mistreated its volunteers, regarding azarias and how the org reacted after the CSEM attacks on volunteers last year, as well as how the policy & abuse committee (PAC) is overworked and treated by the legal commitee overall (documented here)...

...and ongoing mistreatment of chinese, chinese diaspora, and chinese-speaking volunteers, particularly regarding an incident last year that put volunteers in mainland china at risk, and the board's recent unilateral decision to close the otw weibo account without input from the weibo account leads or any chinese-speaking volunteers

the AI shit

and probably more that i've missed, honestly. so! this is my summary of the meeting, focusing mostly on the issues related to racism; i have screenshots of the whole meeting but will at this point only share those i find most relevant/interesting! alt text will be included for every screenshot in the image, not below it.

and hold on, because this is going to be LONG!

pre-meeting ableism in #help channel so shit actually started going down the previous day in the otw board discord's help channel where there was a pretty ableist resposne to a person who asked if the board could consider adding the pluralkit bot to the server. i wasn't there, but hojarasca on dreamwidth posted about it, and i believe some other folks who were there will post screenshots soon too.

all of that conversation was deleted from the help channel by today, which is not unusual but did mean that a majority of people at today's meeting might not know what went down.

board meeting starts; immediate chaos the board meeting started at 8pm UTC, and it was clear almost immediately that the board was unprepared. what you have to understand about otw board meetings is that they are not really meetings where the board members discuss anything with each other. basically otw board members show up, share an agenda , give written updates on the items on the agenda, take votes on board decisions (but without any discussion publicly), and take questions. none of the materials like the agenda or relevant documents were shared ahead of time, and the board did not offer a way to submit questions ahead of time specific to the board meeting. (otw does have a contact us form to email their board or committee chairs, but i've never gotten a response lol.)

another weird thing that happened before the meeting started was that board member alex tischer was active answering questions in the help channel up to five minutes before the meeting, but didn't stay for the meeting. i don't think a reason was shared for this. this is relevant because alex has been criticized for racist responses to chinese volunteers, particularly those that ran & interacted with otw's weibo account, both in the past & last month when they closed their weibo account without any notice to the volunteers. this will also come up again later in the q&a section...

anyway. the meeting starts. all of the discussion directly about the meeting is supposed to happen in one discord channel called #public-board-meetings; the #help channel is supposed to be for tech issues etc. there is no separate channel for asking questions to the board - those are supposed to be posted in the main board meeting channel. and as far as we can tell, there are no mods of either of these channels apart from board members.

at the start of the meeting there are at least 209 attendees. for context, the last board meeting in march had 31. i've heard from people who have attended board meetings for the past couple years that there are usually 10-40 attendees per meeting. but again, given what's been going down, it's not surprising that so many people showed up!

and because there are a lot of people who haven't attended these meetings before, attendees immediately start asking questions, both process questions about the meeting and actual questions they want to ask the board. which again is understandable because there haven't been many answers given in the #help channel, and the board immediately muddies things further by giving confusing instructions about when to ask questions. they first say this - that they are going to proceed through their agenda, so people should hold questions that are NOT about any agenda items until the end. they imply that questions that are about agenda items are okay as they go through the agenda, but there will be conflicting instructions about this later...

agenda is posted & actual meeting content begins...kind of here's the meeting agenda that was shared. not...terribly descriptive lol

- Decisions taken since the previous meeting - Strategic Plan vote - Update on OTW's Diversity Work - AOB (Any Other Business) - Time for questions

people immediately start asking questions about various agenda items & also procedure questions. very few of these are answered. the first agenda item is posted - decisions taken since the previous meeting.

the board gives us "a couple minutes to read the above". everything's getting a little muddled already because people keep asking questions (reasonably!) about agenda items. there are several questions about the specific agenda item of "decisions taken since the previous meeting". some of the questions are getting answered by otw volunteers but none by board members at this point.

the board moves on to the next agenda item without answering questions about the "decisions" item. people are asking for a separate channel for questions but none is created. board members tell us they will try to get to all the answers at the end, but that we should send any additional answers to the board through the otw contact us form. many people point out that they've rarely gotten responses that way.

board gives a brief update (that was NOT on the agenda) from the finance committee chair, who was not at the meeting, to say that the 2023 budget was posted earlier this year, and that people can send questions via the contact us form. i'll note here that i sent a message to the finance committee with a question about the 2023 budget two months ago and have not gotten a response.

strategic plan update + question procedure still unclear the board then starts to give an update on the strategic plan, which board members are to vote on today. attendees ask if the full strategic plan draft was shared publicly before this meeting and we are told it was only shared with volunteers, not with members or the public.

they do share an infographic summarizing the strategic plan. hilariously, the first version they upload is so blurry that it's unreadable. they then share a gdoc with alt text. if you are new-ish to otw stuff, this infographic and the jargon in it are probably pretty confusing.

the board keeps giving us "a few minutes to check things out". people ask them to not do that and proceed because we can read while they are typing. questions to the board keep going unanswered and various other people say that we're supposed to hold questions until the end. we again get told conflicting things about how to ask questions. a board member asks us to hold ALL questions until the end, but an otw volunteer points to an earlier statement from a different board member & says that questions on the current agenda item are allowed.

at 45 minutes into the meeting, when most questions are going unanswered (and a lot of only being answered by otw volunteers, not board members), the board disables messages in the main channel so that they can proceed with the agenda. this is not usual board meeting procedure and was unannounced until they did it. people start getting really creative with emoji reactions because they can't ask questions. the board admits that they were unprepared for the number of attendees at this meeting.

attendees then start asking questions in the help channel, which has been put on "slow mode", which means each user can only post every thirty minutes. multiple otw volunteers share in the help channel that they warned the board about preparing for the meeting, and the only change the board made in response was to make it 30 minutes longer than usual.

in the main channel, the board does not have any public discussion on the strategic plan (which has not been shared, only the infographic has), and votes unanimously to approve it.

diversity work update, aka a glorified otw news post the board moves on to the "diversity work update", which is now a standard section of every board meeting. they share two updates - firstly, that caste has been added as a protected class in the code of conduct, and secondly that they've heard the concerns coming from @end-otw-racism supporters and others. both of which were already shared a month ago in this OTW news post from a month ago, which they link to.

seriously, nothing new is shared in this part of the meeting that wasn't in that post. some update!

q&a part one the board asks for emoji reactions again to see how many people are in attendance. unclear why they do this unless they were hoping people might have left? but alas for them, there are still 182 people that emoji react saying they are in the meeting!

the board FINALLY starts answering questions, but they do not yet re-enable messages so that users can ask more questions. they start by addressing the pluralkit issue from yesterday, but they don't give any response about the ableism that was allowed to go unchecked in the channel.

then, BAFFLINGLY, they start with answering questions from someone who wasn't able to make the meeting. how did this person submit those questions beforehand? NO ONE KNOWS. fortunately this person had (imo) good questions, but again, why were their questions given preference? unclear.

okay there were a LOT of questions and responses, so i'm going to stick to sharing the ones that were most important to me, which were about addressing racism within the otw and on ao3. hopefully someone else will summarize other issues!

we finally get our FIRST REAL NEW RESPONSE on a diversity/racism issue! the board says they plan to hire a diversity consultant by the end of the year.

we also hear that changes to otw's terms of service are being proposed to give the policy & abuse committee more tools to address harassment, including "racially-motivated" harassment.

board says the best way for people other than otw volunteers to get involved with anti-racism issues is...to stay up to date on what otw is doing, attend public meetings, and send questions through the comment form. what.

the board does not answer how they have reached out to fans of color in their work to address racism, which i assume means they haven't; they instead say that fans of color are free to provide input/feedback via the contact us form. emoji reactions explode

the board says that the strategic plan has initiatives to combat racism including improving diversity in recruitment (of...who? volunteers, board members? potential future paid staff?), hiring a diversity consultant, & forming "volunteer coalitions"

slight digression from my focus on racism issues because of how many times the board has told us to submit questions via their contact us form: very little clarity on how long it will take for answers to be questions, or how long people spend on responses

the goals for the future diversity consultant are to do an audit of the organization and offer recommendations on how to proceed. couldn't be vaguer lol

otw does not currently have plans to have an internal committee for diversity, equity, and inclusion work, since they're relying on the external consultant, but if the consultant recommends it they'll consider

by the time they've gotten through these responses, there are only five minutes left in the meeting! remember, messaging by attendees has been disabled for the past 40 minutes, so everything the board has answered so far is from people who got their questions in during the first 45 minutes (or, apparently, one person who managed to get in questions before the meeting).

q&a part two at this point, the board FINALLY re-enables messaging for new questions, but clarifies that they will only take them until 9:30pm UTC. which means anyone who did actually wait to ask their questions now only has five minutes to ask them! questions start rolling in immediately. again, going to focus on the ones about racism.

i'm listing questions in chronological order that they are asked, but please note that the corresponding answers from the board are coming WAY later than the questions. the board took until 10:20pm UTC (almost an hour after the meeting was supposed to end) to answer all the questions. mostly i'm telling you this because the emoji reactions on the answers by the board get more limited as people understandably have to leave the meeting lol

the first question of round two is about how chinese & chinese diaspora volunteers have been treated re: the weibo account closure, & board member alex tischer's role in this.

board response is horrifyingly empty, only promising the creation of a new "anonymous form" to receive feedback from chinese and chinese diaspora volunteers on the situation.

an attendee asks for better prioritization of racism & equity issues in the meetings, and better preparation from the board. (note that the addition of "diversity work update" to the agenda is not new, i believe it was instituted late last year)

in response, board admits they were unprepared despite volunteers warning them, says they will take advice from this meeting forward. emoji reactions are out in full force

an attendee asks more details about how the diversity consultant research officer (who is NOT a hired diversity consultant, but an otw volunteer in charge of the hiring process for a consultant) engages with the board & what goals they have for the future consultant

response from board is that they meet weekly, and that the research officer is herself in charge of identifying goals for the future consultant

an attendee points out that "curate your space" tools are not enough to protect users from targeted abuse, including racist abuse, and that asking fans of color to reach out to the board instead of the other way around is bullshit (my words haha)

the board's response to this is to offload that onto the future diversity consultant. SERIOUSLY.

an otw member asks if the diversity consultant will also look at accessibility for disabled users across the otw

board essentially says "yeah, sure" lol

an otw member asks how otw will remove barriers to becoming a voting member and diversifying membership & committee leadership

board's response is that they don't know the demographics of their members or volunteers, which...somehow means they can't remove barriers that would help fans of color or non-western fans from becoming members and volunteers? lmaoooooooo

an attendee asks for accountability in ensuring that the incoming board keeps the current board's promises re: DEI, pointing to improvements made by the 2015 board that were later reversed by a new board make-up

board does not seem to understand this question so answers an entirely different one! (seriously, i double-checked which question they were responding to.)

an otw volunteer asks what the plans are to deal with the "ongoing exclusion and alienation of chinese-speaking volunteers"?

the board repeats that they have opened a feedback form for chinese-speaking volunteers. that's it.

so those are all the questions i saw on racism; as i mentioned, there were TONS more good questions on board transparency and communications, protection of volunteers, moderating board meetings better, lack of feedback collection on the strategic plan, etc.

at PRECISELY 9:30pm UTC, messages are disabled again so that no more questions can be asked. all of the otw board responses that i shared above are from after messages were disabled again.

takeaways this meeting was a complete mess. the process was extremely unclear and made things inaccessible; while the board did (from what i can tell) answer all the questions posted, people were not able to ask all the questions that they'd planned because of the unannounced disabling of messaging.

and then, of course, there's the fact that the majority of the answers are bullshit, which is probably the least surprising thing about this meeting.

it's just ridiculous that they weren't prepared for this. given everything that's gone down in the past months, why on earth wouldn't they assume that people would show up with hard questions? the mismanagement and incompetence is frankly astounding. which i guess is the story of the last few months re: OTW anyway!

so...see you at the next one in a few months, i guess? 🤷🏾‍♀️

#this was fucking wild you guys #how does everything otw leadership do keep proving their incompetence #and recalcitrance to change #like how do you ignore the advice of volunteers who said this meeting would be big?#that's more than head in the sand at that point #they don't want to be responsible for everything that's come up #so they're just...ignoring it #and hoping the backlash won't be too big #we have to make sure that they're wrong & keep them accountable #fandom racism #organization for transformative works #otw #otw board #end otw racism #vote to end otw racism

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mitchelldailygames · 4 months

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Heroes of Song Devlog Part 12: Refining

Now that all the Exemplar Hero art has been revealed, I can get back to my main devlog series!

Here’s a picture with all the heroes. The alt text is a little brief on this one because I was worried about it being more exhaustive than the casual scroller was looking for, but reach out or look at my previous posts if you’re interested in more descriptive alt text. Art is by Warren Kennedy. Follow him on Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter.

My design principles:

The heroes are cute.

Kindness matters.

The world is weird.

Sometimes you don’t fight. Sometimes you do.

Health is hearts.

I’ve made quite a few small changes and additions since the last devlog that I’m going to run through quickly. I’ll probably miss something, since I don’t really want to go back and comb through my edit history, but I should be able to hit the main points.

Exhausted

I’ve added a condition called exhausted which makes it so a character can’t add any of their positive Aspects to their rolls. Exhausted is most commonly a consequence for running out of Effort. If felt like there needed to be more of a cost to using all of your Effort to balance it with using Spirit and to make it feel like it matters when an ability is used to damage Effort. It also just gives me more conditions to work with for special abilities, both for the heroes and enemies. It hasn’t come up in play yet, but I think it could be pretty impactful.

Slippery Scamp

I changed the Scamp’s Life of the Party move to the Slippery move. I think the new move is going to be more useful to Scamp players and is going to make the Calling play more like people will be expecting it to when they choose it. In my most recent playtest (which I will give its own post later), it seemed to be a good fit. It basically means you can crawl, climb, and squeeze in and out of pretty much any situation.

In the Works

I have some dual wielding rules drafted up. I think these are going to mostly revolve around decisions about what to hold in your hands. The main downside for holding a sword and a dagger, for example, is that you wouldn’t be able to also hold a shield and neither has the damage output of a two-handed ax doing a power strike. What I initially drafted out is a little on the complicated side, so I’m thinking about slimming the system down a bit.

I also wrote up a couple more runes. One is a Deflect rune, which I think fits the Zelda-like genre well. The idea is that you could knock ranged attacks back at the attacker. The other rune I wrote before but didn’t include initially was the Hood rune which would block senses like hearing and seeing. Both of these are a little wordy as currently written, but I think have potential.

I also have a couple more enemies written out that I’ll probably drop into the doc soon. One is a flying enemy. Another is a lizard-person enemy called a scalikin (which will probably eventually be a player option too).

Why’d You Have to Go and Make Things So Complicated

Some of the new additions, plus mechanics already present like the dodge/perfect dodge and weapon moves, make me worry a little bit about a pitfall I often associate with OG Pathfinder. In Pathfinder, there is a system for everything and I love it. But, I also come by memorizing a bunch of numbers and being able to quickly reference things pretty easily. That’s not necessarily the play experience I want associated with Heroes of Song and it just isn’t accessible for everyone.

So, I could strip things way back and cut a bunch of features—many of which make the game feel more like its inspirations. What I think I want to do instead, while also being mindful of bloat, is find a way to encourage tables to start simpler and add mechanics to their repertoire as they go. This is how it is handled in video games where new systems are doled out over time with a tutorial to go along with each new mechanic. I’m not sure exactly how to work this into a game book, but I think some direction about how to start with less experienced tables would be helpful. I might note this in enemy descriptions (e.g. the hobkin is an “easy” enemy, both to run and fight, while a sawshell is “moderate” because heroes will need to know how to use the stun mechanics to take it on). I might also include some tutorial encounters to go along with different mechanics.

Anyway, I definitely have a lot of work left to do! Don’t expect a full release of this game any time super soon! But I feel like I got some momentum last month and am excited about how things are going.

I also have some other projects in the works, so there will probably be other game releases in the coming months.

The world is weird; kindness matters.

--Daily

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #ttrpg design #ttrpg dev #heroes of song #ttrpg community #legend of zelda #indie ttrpgs

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beasts-of-jadewood · 9 months

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Goodbye Volcano High is just a week away! Yippee! To celebrate this occasion I will release GVH protagonist first-date ratings part 2, in which I rate how well my first dates with GVH characters will go based on what I know about them from fandom memes and promo materials. Part 1 can be found here. Contains spoilers for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 6, and now featuring alt text.

I think Naomi would be the type of person who would provide me with a full list of philosophical personal questions on our first date in order to acertain a comprehensive first impression of me that accurately represents who I am. For example, she may ask me what I would do with an elephant in my possession if I could not sell or give away the elephant, which was apparently a real job interview question someone had. While I would undoubtedly appreciate her hard work, I will not guarantee that I won't accidentally give out a response so profoundly disturbing and strange at some point during the process and possibly make her cry (for example, answering that I wish to recreate Thomas Edison's elephant electrocution procedure just to prove that I can do it better), leading to an overall 5/10 experience.

Much like the Trish date, I suspect that my date with Rosa will take place at an arboretum due to her interests. Because of this, I will likely be reminded of the fact that I once went to an arboretum in China during my childhood, to cheer me up after I completely failed at an extracurricular English speaking competition due to stage fright and the fact that I forgot to study the prompts they gave out before hand. I will then give an extended speech to Rosa about how my years of hard work studying English didn't matter in that moment because I fucked up one high-stakes competition and everyone thought I was a dumbass. If Rosa is able to relate to this as a potentially bilingual character herself, then my date will be a 9/10 experience. Otherwise, it's likely a 4/10 if she got weirded out instead.

Stella's interest in the occult is a major jumping point for my first date conversation with her, as I will use her knowledge of Tarot cards to discuss archetypes in the classic Hero's Journey and possibly analyze how each card's meaning corresponds to their respective Stand user in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. If Stella does not like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure then I will reveal the fact that I do not either and then go into an existential rant on why Part 6's ending retroactively made all the other parts pointless by undermining the agencies of previous protagonists with the idea of Fate being an unstoppable force that pre-determines all actions. Overall, this will be an invigorating discussion if nothing else. 7/10.

I don't know why but attempts at adding Sage's image to this post consistently results in an image of Rosa being added instead. Sage himself does show up on the final post after saving, but during the editing process itself his image keeps being replaced by Rosa. My conclusion from this is that Sage does not want to go on a date with me and may in fact prefer to date his original love interest Leo instead. I respect his loyalty to his lover even after he has been completely cut from the final game and thus functionally erased from existence. Sage is a good boy and I love him platonically. 10/10.

#goodbye volcano high #character analysis #indie games #dinosaurs

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specialability · 1 year

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2022 listening

I don't usually do this, but I'm going to make a music of 2022 list. It's funny, my spotify top 100 and my actual music app (musicolet for android, highly recommend) are very different so there's no point in posting either of them. There were a lot of individual songs, but I am still the kind of person who listens to albums from back to front. Going roughly from most recent to least...

spotify playlist (I tried to make a bandcamp playlist but it wouldn't work. :( if the album is available on bandcamp there is a link in the text)

Redcar les adorables etoiles by Christine and the Queens

I found Christine through the COLORS music channel on youtube. She is apparently a mega-star in France but I don't know how many people have heard of her over here. She sings in both English and French with a David Bowie / Annie Lennox electropop + funk style that I adore. Her previous album "La vita nuova" was full of quite sad raw lyrics, but the theme of this album is more romance. "My birdman" gets stuck in my head regularly.

Andor Original Soundtrack (Vol.1-3) by Nicholas Britell

I could gush all day about this show, but the soundtrack alone is very very good. Deep orchestral stuff with lots of hidden motifs and themes. Sometimes soundtracks for very good shows, which fit the show perfectly, are meh on their own, but this one really holds up. It's worth saying: none of the usual star wars themes or references appear in this album at all. If you listen to the main title theme in Vol. 1 and like it you will probably like the whole thing.

Awakening:Sleeping by MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS

A Japanese band that I believe had one or two anime songs at least a decade ago and has since became more indie. I was super happy to buy all their albums on bandcamp after having pirated them a decade or more ago. They started out with shoegaze / heavy alt rock instrumental, balls to the wall fast guitar and drums, added more vocals and went a bit more pop with their 2018 album No New World and have come back to a happy balance of both. "No need ft. Keita Ebina" is a great sample of the raw feeling that I love from them that feels like they're just on the edge of going out of control.

Profound Mysteries I-III by Royksopp

Royksopp said they were going to retire and I was sad I'd never see them in concert. Then they came back and released a ton of songs and went on tour but it's covid. Infuriating! But seriously it's kind of scary how some of these tracks are so Royksopp they could have been tracks from an album that came out years ago. There's definitely some more pop-y tracks and less of the hard electronica I really like, but there is a range of styles throughout. If I had to pick one it might be "Impossible" with old collaborator Alison Goldfrapp on lyrics.

Palaces by Flume

I discovered Flume only relatively recently despite him being completely in my taste (dance / house). His 2016 album Skin is almost wall to wall bangers and this 2022 album is similarly packed with tracks that can totally stand on their own. I was listening to "Say Nothing (ft. MAY-A)" on repeat for a while.

Be Here Soon by iamamiwhoami

Another artist I'm kinda shocked I haven't run into before. This is a video concept album so it's worth watching the videos on youtube to get the full experience. Her 2014 album Blue, which was also a video album, got indie-famous and Be Here Soon feels very much like a natural maturing from that. In the genre of "female singer-songwriters with idiosyncratic voices and not scared to get weird" an obvious comparison being Kate Bush or Bjork. "Zeven" is catchy while also (seemingly) being about OCD.

Pang by Caroline Polachek

I think she is pretty famous by now, but I first came across her via her cover of Breathless by the Corrs. She has a strong pop voice with a bit of that "weird girl" edge that keeps it interesting. And, of course since this is me, quite a bit of synth/electronica. This came out in 2019 but I only listened to it this year so it counts. She has a new album coming out in 2023 which a bunch of singles have already come out for. She also did a song with Flume up there in Palaces called "Siren". "Hit me where it hurts" is the one I was listening to on repeat.

The Green Knight Original Soundtrack by Daniel Hart

The movie was kinda eh, but back in January I got a lot of mileage out of this album. I feel like I don't know enough about medieval music to say whether it's truly historically accurate, but choral Christmas hymns sound different when sung in middle English with a slightly ominous tone and sparse strings in the background. There are some tracks that seem Jóhann Jóhannsson inspired like "Rest them Bones".

YESTERDAYS PAIN / CUT THE ANCHOR by LORN

Man I love LORN. Every single track he puts out is an instant classic for me. This mini-album is only three tracks but I could listen to it over and over. Music for when out walking on a cold dark night. Atmospheric dark electronica. Random snatches of lyrics. Depression music. "YESTERDAY'S PAIN" is so dense it will suck you in.

Dawn FM by The Weeknd

I don't think listing this is going to get me any hipster points, but I just really like his music. It is very clear where his influences lie and since I love electronic music and synth-pop too it's all good. I also appreciate that the album has a theme of decay and death that runs through all the music videos as well. The "Take My Breath" extended remix on Youtube is my favourite track.

Shin Megami Tensei V Original Soundtrack by Tsukasa Masuko, Shoji Meguro, Ryota Kozuka, Toshiki Konishi

Have I gushed about this game enough? No? Well here's something interesting I didn't notice until after I played Shin Megami Tensei 1, but the first CD in the album is string orchestra remakes of the original game's also amazingly excellent soundtrack. An old school synth sensibility, a mix of electronic and orchestral, atmospheric, dark and the occasional fast rock piece like the Da'at Battle theme, which you listen to a zillion times in the game and yet it still gets me pumped up. If you know me you know I love Etrian Odyssey's soundtracks by Yuzo Koshiro and I think this album is up there with those for me. "Spiral" by Ryota Kozuka is the track for the last area of the game and it is appropriately overwhelming and lofty. When I got into the area I seriously stopped and listened to it for a while because it blew me away.

Some bonus:

Nova/Moth by Burial + Four Tet

Looking at your pager by KH

Cybercism by OGRE

#misc #ruth listens to music

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sleuthdaily · 2 years

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for the record, I talked about it with some folks and do plan to begin adding alt text to these images going forward! at some point this weekend I'll go back and add it to previous posts. have/continue having a good weekend sleuth enjoyers

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idrellegames · 2 years

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Hello, I went through your previous asks about relationship approval systems, but I want to know how to lock/unlock romance routes like in visual novels? I want to lock out romance routes if a character approval point is low and only show the romance routes with characters who have high approval points. Would I still use <<if $chara_approval >=65>> and use Sugarcube's link markup? How does it work with a passage that displays character images for players to click on?

It all depends on how you want your system to work. By "like in visual novels" are you referring to a system where there's a general common route, after which the player selects a specific RO's route and they're locked off from any romance material for the other ROs? If it's a choice like that, you don't necessarily need a directional scale for RO approval, you can choose whatever value works for your game as the "unlock" point and go from there.

There's a ton of different ways to do it. For example, if you want to make it a permanent lock, you could throw in a variable for the RO:

Assume that there are four ROs (A, B, C and D) and the player as accrued enough points with two of them. The player needs more than 50 points with an RO to unlock them.

:: RO Selection

<<if $a_app >=50>>[[1. Choose Character A.][$romance_option to "Character A"]]<<else>>1. Unavailable.<</if>>

<<if $b_app >=50>>[[2. Choose Character B.][$romance_option to "Character B"]]<<else>>2. Unavailable.<</if>>

<<if $c_app >=50>>[[3. Choose Character C.][$romance_option to "Character C"]]<<else>>3. Unavailable.<</if>>

<<if $d_app >=50>>[[4. Choose Character D.][$romance_option to "Character D"]]<<else>>Unavailable.<</if>>

If the player has enough points with Character A and Character B, but not the others, that would display like this:

If you're displaying it with images, you can use similar link markup, but with some additions to make a clickable image (see the image link markup in the documentation here).

I'm sorry this is only an image of the code and not something you can copy/paste, Tumblr will only let me answer this ask in the Beta post editor and it won't let me copy/paste code into the post editor anymore. 🙃

Like with the link setters, I've used <<if>> statements to control what options are available. The components of the image markup is a little different from a text link:

[img - indicates the image markup

[Choose Character - this gives alt text if the image doesn't show up

|C:/game/images...] - this is the image source. In this example I've used a file path stored locally on my PC. If you don't know how to get images to display in Twine, I highly recommend checking out my post here and also HiEv's tutorial here.

[Next Passage] - the name of the passage the game will go to next

[$romance_option to "Character Whatever"]] - the setter

I've also added an "Unavailable Portrait" that displays when the player doesn't have enough points to unlock a character. This is added using a basic <img> source.

If you're using images, you will need to figure out a design for your page (how much space the images take up, where they are displayed, etc). You will need some knowledge of CSS to do this in your stylesheet.

#coding in twine #twine #twine game #sugarcube #twine help #interactive novel #interactive fiction #answered

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ph1lzascrows · 3 years

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What we know from Ranboo’s 1/30/2021 lore stream (the facts)

Ranboo did a 35 minute lore stream today, and now we seem to have even more questions than answers.

Did this I re-watch both BBH’s and Ranboo’s prison visits to compare the experiences? YES.

Did this I make note of every single thing that could have been off or weird between the two streams? YES.

Is the entire fan base confused about what is real and what is fake? ALSO YES.

So, here are the facts. Then we can make theories.

c!Ranboo starts his stream in the Panic Room. The place where he last confronted “the voice of Dream” supposedly getting rid of it for good.

c!Ranboo wants to go visit c!Dream in prison, despite them barely interacting, as some sort of closure to further prove that he has not done bad things. This is a bit strange. These two characters have barely interacted so the fact that c!Ranboo chooses to seek out c!Dream seems out of place.

c!Ranboo mentions being nervous, but not knowing why. He actually mentions this several times, including to c!Sam who even noticed his nervous behaviors and mentioned it directly.

At the Prison entrance, c!Sam takes a very long time to show up after the button is pressed. (He does not appear very quickly during both BBH’s and Tommy’s visit either, but it seems to take even longer for Ranboo’s stream) We do not know if this is intentional or not.

When greeting c!Ranboo, c!Sam sounds way more like his upbeat and friendly self compared to the colder more responsible warden persona he takes on when giving tours to both BBH and Tommy. The difference is night and day.

When going through the portal to enter the prison, c!Ranboo come out of the portal in a warped forest biome, instead of the blackstone and obsidian enclosed portal room we see in both BBH’s and Tommys streams. Fans initially thought that this was because something broke in the portal system, but c!Sam continued with instructions and c!Ranboo entered the prison through the same portal like it was normal. Only the portal location in the nether was changed and was not how it was earlier when BBH visited.

c!Ranboo enters the lobby of the prison from the main portal, and sees c!Sam standing behind the desk across the room. Suddenly we see only Sam’s face, because Ranboo seems to have been teleported to Sam’s location. (Timestamp 14-minutes, 20-seconds-ish in Ranboo’s Vod) Whether this was intentional or a nether portal glitch, we do not know. c!Ranboo has not been able to teleport like an enderman in the past so the quick location change is very strange. It is not really mentioned by either Sam or Ranboo.

Ranboo is allowed to keep his book, despite the extreme emphasis Sam made when telling BBH and Tommy they can bring nothing into the prison.

Throughout the prison procedures c!Sam continues to be kind and friendly to c!Ranboo. He often explains the procedures and different parts of the prison to c!Ranboo, more so than he explains things to both Tommy and BBH in their visits. Whether this is because c!Sam is being friendly and helping to calm c!Ranboo’s nerves or doing it for other reasons is unclear. Some of the explinations are quite specific.

All waivers and books that are signed by visitors and all introduction questions asked are the same for all visits to the prison. All rooms, checkpoints and stages to the prison are the same. (If the theory about c!Ranboo hallucinating the visit is true this is very concerning, because it means c!Ranboo does know the prison, well enough to remember all these parts of it)

-Now to the confrontation bit of the stream-

The item frame for c!Dream’s clock is missing in Ranboo’s stream. This is likely because of the modded texture pack Ranboo has been using to allow for the Nukes to be visible. However, it is still worth mentioning.

Dream immediately greets c!Ranboo and says that he is glad he visited. He states that they talk all the time and are close friends. Ranboo reaffirms that he has barely talked to c!Dream but Dream denies this causing c!Ranboo to confused.

Dream asks why c!Ranboo is acting different. (This could likely be a nod to the “other-state” or “wandering-state” Ranboo mentions several times on stream. He likens it to sleepwalking. This theory is unconfirmed, but I thought it worthy to mention)

Dream starts referring to himself in the third person, exactly like the voice of Dream c!Ranboo hears in his panic room.

In BBH’s stream c!Dream mentions burning several of his books. When BBH looks in his chest several empty slots are in the top row of the chests inventory (where the books Tommy had written in where stored). In Ranboo’s stream the entire chest is filled with books (26 books), all called “DO NOT READ” and filled with similar text, all exactly like his own memory book that he is carrying. The one difference is the addition of a single :) on the first page of every book. In a previous stream c!Ranboo made a point to delete all the markings and notes made by Dream, but now all of the new copies of his memory book have the :) added to them again.

Dream once again says that ‘c!Ranboo has helped c!Dream,’ and that ‘He is not even real’ that ‘He is actually c!Ranboo.’ Dream tells c!Ranboo that the reason he “got rid of the voice” was because c!Dream was put in prison and so it was ‘harder to remember his voice because he stopped talking to him. He used to talk to him every day.’ and that ‘c!Ranboo would help c!Dream do things he asked.’

After declaring once again “I’m not even real” Dream disappears from the cell. There are no particle affects and not notifications that appear in the lower screen when this happens.

Whilst panicking, the screen begins to warp. Suddenly, either the ceiling seems to fall onto Ranboo, or he seems to fall through the floor (the screen is getting really warped and hard to see at this point). Then Ranboo dies, with the death message saying “Ranboo hit the ground too hard.”

Ranboo ends his stream with a similar end graphic to previous lore streams of a black screen with a white smile. This time there is no crown. The crown appears later in a pattern fans immediately knew to be Morse Code. Ranboo confirmed later on his alt twitter, that the coded message at the end was “Not Free Yet.”

Those are the facts, literally what was seen and heard on stream and compared to BBH’s stream which happened earlier that day. If I missed anything or something is incorrect, please notify me so I can add or add to the post.

-Now go ahead and theorize, because god damn did this stream only provide us with more questions and zero answers. Thanks for that, funky enderman boy.-

#Ranboo #ranboo lore #dream smp #dream #dreamwastaken #mcyt #pandoras vault #awesamdude #dream smp lore #dream smp theories #funky enderman boy and smiley green blob really know how to play with our emotions huh?

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argentdandelion · 4 years

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How to Redeem Bête Noire

The following article relies on the idea Betty’s SOUL color means she is always afraid. See the tag "SOUL of Fear: Always Afraid?" on the ArgentDandelion blog for more information.

The antagonist of GlitchTale's second season, Bête Noire ("Betty") is a unique being with a SOUL of Fear. As previous posts would suggest, her SOUL of Fear likely means her motivations and actions are fuelled by fear. This includes her desire to wipe out monsters, supposedly because they pose a threat to humanity. Yet, as previous posts have pointed out, Betty's belief monsters threaten humanity is deeply illogical. However, her fears about them is so deep-seated that, to remove her motivation for villainy, her very SOUL would probably have to be altered.

Both SOUL trait loss and drainage have happened multiple times in GlitchTale, showing it is possible. While these have all happened to humans, and Betty is not human, nonetheless her SOUL was created from a human one and still has human SOUL-like properties.

Approach 1: Trait Drainage

Many human characters have eye, hair, and text colors matching their SOULs. Both Jessica Grey and Frisk survive the drainage or loss of their SOUL traits, as shown either directly or by changes in hair or eye color. In Jessica’s case, she loses and regains her trait multiple times in the series, without seeming to affect her bodily health. Were Betty’s fear trait to be drained the same way, it might mean she would feel a reasonable amount of fear, and perhaps make her amenable to reason. (if perhaps only temporarily) It is unlikely she would naturally lose her fear trait, especially as the season progresses, thought it might be possible to alter her SOUL properties artificially.

If Chara’s emptied SOUL, as shown in the Season 1 episode Continue (above) can be filled with multiple SOUL traits, it is possible Betty’s SOUL can be similarly drained and filled with other traits. Yet, if completely draining her SOUL would kill her, or put her in a comatose-like state of extended dying (Sans’ SOUL was partially drained, which must have interfered with reviving him), then partial drainage could be more feasible. At a few points, Jessica Grey loses her Integrity trait, but apparently only partially: her eyes remain halfway blue. This might mean it is possible to experience only a partial trait loss.

If trait drainage is impossible, trait swapping could be better. Betty’s SOUL was created by using the Bête Noire spell on an inverted SOUL of Bravery: Agate’s SOUL. It might be possible to invert it once more. While supplementary material states that the chances of surviving an unnatural SOUL trait inversion are low, this was applied to humans: if it’s possible for Betty, there no telling whether it would be equally dangerous.

Approach 2: Bicolor SOUL

The GlitchTale character Rave Rutrow has purple-and-yellow eyes, hair, and text, showing he has two SOUL traits. This is not entirely without canon precedent: all the SOUL modes parallel the colors of the humans that fell in, possibly meaning they’re limited to real SOUL colors. In the Nintendo Switch version of Undertale, Mad Mew Mew's SOUL mode is Blue/Red, with the SOUL split down the middle, possibly meaning humans can have two SOUL traits.

While Betty is not human, the similarities between her SOUL and a human one might mean a bicolor SOUL is possible. However, Rave’s two-colored SOUL is natural, while changing Betty’s SOUL to a two-color SOUL would not be. Partial drainage of her SOUL, and then filling it with some other trait might result in a bicolor SOUL. While adding the Kindness trait might be the most intuitive solution, adding Bravery instead would surely be more likely to work, since the SOUL has already housed the Bravery trait before. (Unless that simply makes Betty bolder and less conflicted, which might make her even more dangerous.)

Applications & Complications

Betty is occasionally anxious early on in the series: she might be interested in SOUL modification, if only to test whether it would make her stronger (to better kill monsters) or prevent panic from leading to bad decisions (to better kill monsters). It's doubtful Betty would agree to SOUL alterations if she believed it would change her perspective or motivations, because, of course, her fears would seem reasonable to her. Yet, afterwards, she might be able to interact peacefully with monsters without feeling any fear, anxiety, or paranoia, and it would be harder to keep up a plan to exterminate them if she feels no fear for them.

The easiest time to do this would be before Betty kills Sans, or assuming Asriel wasn’t able to run away and explain Betty’s true nature. (It’s after this point Betty’s disguise as a sweet, more-or-less normal human girl becomes less useful.) If Asriel didn’t corroborate Gaster’s claim on the Pink SOUL of Fear, it might be just an interesting coincidence. Betty’s magical power comes from her SOUL trait; were she to lose her trait and her SOUL to turn grey, she would lose access to her magic. If Frisk knows Betty poses a threat or considers her an enemy, Betty would likely interpret any offer to drain or change her trait as a ploy to weaken her. (and perhaps then kill her) After all, Agate told her humans can’t be trusted.

What if Betty is Actually Agate?

The particulars of how to redeem Betty differ depending on whether Betty and her creator, Agate ("The Wizard of Bravery"), are separate beings, or Betty is just a different body with different abilities that Agate is using. As of “Hate”, Betty’s connections with Agate seem to intensify, and perhaps even show she and Agate count as the same person.

Still, Agate may have essentially frozen her paranoia and insecurity in place by changing her SOUL to a pink one. So, even if Betty is actually Agate, changing Agate’s SOUL color might allow her to stop being so afraid. According to supplementary material, Agate was externally brave but internally insecure. The idea she would never be stronger than her brother, Copper ("The Wizard of Determination"), due to things beyond her control, made her insecure. Later losing to her brother so humiliated her that she lost her trait, and she later returned with her SOUL inverted to a trait of Fear. (Her SOUL turned pink only in a last-ditch attempt to perpetuate her existence by creating an abomination)

For all her/Betty's counter-productive decisions, Agate is actually smart. Her humiliation, insecurity, and power-mad status just made her very mentally unstable. If her fearfulness and anxiety were not locked in place, she might be persuaded to find more constructive ways to deal with her fear and desire to protect humanity.

The author of this post, ArgentDandelion, also has a Ko-Fi and Patreon by the same names, and invites you to gaze upon them.

#GlitchTale #Betty #Analysis #Character Analysis #Bete Noire #Bête Noire #Glitch Tale #SOUL Traits #Agate Lightvale

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6480n · 4 years

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[ID in alt text]

Just finished this art of my OC, Jira! He’s my main OC and sort of serves as my persona in many cases, so I’m super excited to be able to share this drawing. Since this is my first time posting him on this blog, I’m going to talk about his history and share a *bunch* of drawings under the cut (as well as WIP images from this drawing).

Text on his shorts says เสือทอง, or “golden tiger”, and he’s carrying bagged soymilk with tapioca, which is a common way to get soymilk in thailand!

The idea for this drawing is one I’ve had in my head for a few months, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off since I don’t have a lot of practice with perspective shots. I sort of wanted to give him a “casually defiant” look, as well as taking the opportunity to design a fun outfit based around colorful muay thai shorts. Unlike myself, I envision Jira as someone who primarily wears shorts (often with an incongruous top like a long coat), so I love designing his outfits because of the unique balance shorts give.

[ID: Two sketches from previous stages of the first drawing, one being a rough full-body sketch and the other being a refined sketch from the torso-up. end ID]

(^ I like his face in this sketch better than the final, lol…) I’m super happy with how this drawing turned out, especially the coloring and shading. I normally have the instinct to put my shading and highlights on another layer (borne from years of drawing art for petsites…), but I painted all the colors and shading on one layer and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I also added some sort of clip studio filter which gave everything a slight amount of color variance, which looks really cool!

Now, about the character himself: I made this guy back in about 2016 when I was getting back into Animal Crossing for the second time. I needed a secondary character for storage, so I invented Jira (who at the time was named 6480 since that was the username I was starting to switch over to), and gave him a connection to my then-main character (plum/Clove, who I’ll post about later) by way of a sort of flirty friendship. I thought it would be cool if they were like, friends who had houses on opposite sides of the same river and waved to each other and ate breakfast together and held hands and like….. yeah 🥺

Jira is super important to me for a ton of reasons, mostly because he developed as I grew up and the transition I made towards using him as my persona instead of Clove represented a lot of changes in my life and my personality. As he developed and I needed to name him, I decided to make him Thai (he started out inadvertently white cause there was only one skintone in ACNL… cringe), which marked a point in time where I became more invested in my cultural background. When I made him a trans man, it represented that I had become more comfortable and proud of my transness. His personality, which was more casual and open than Clove’s, marked the change in my own personality and growth in confidence. And I was able to explore my own ideals of relationships through the one he had with Clove.

Now, it’s 2020 and my new Animal Crossing game has him as my main character and Clove (as well as a couple others) as my alternate! I’m super glad to be able to look back on this and mark the ways I’ve changed over the years, and it’s really interesting that both of my personas since 2014 have been because of the AC franchise.

Here’s some sketches (I haven’t actually made formalized art of him until now, except for one drawing as an anthro monkey which I will not be sharing rofl):

[ID: Digital reference sheet for Jira in Animal Crossing style, in various different poses. He has tan skin and light brown hair. Text on the image says: name: 6480 gender: [male symbol] birthday: Oct 17th personality: smug occuption: barista hobbies: fishing, cooking, model making style: basic/iconic best friend: Lopez end ID]

Section of a reference sheet I made for my four ACNL characters, set inside the universe of my AC island.

[ID: Black and white digital sketch of an Animal Crossing character. He’s wearing a long coat, black shorts, and a cow skull on his head. He’s surrounded by a bunch of small mushrooms and weeds, and he’s carrying some fishing poles in a bag. end ID]

Drawing of my ACNH outfit as it was in April (autumn on my southern hemisphere island)

[ID: Colored digital sketch of two Animal Crossing characters. They’re sleeping in neighboring futons. One has pale skin, short yellow hair, and a sunhat, while the other has light brown skin and short brown curly hair. end ID]

Drawing of my ACNH character and my best friend’s :-)

[ID: Black and white sketches of Jira with more realistic proportions. In one he’s wearing a very similar outfit as the first image in this post; in the other he’s wearing a raincoat, a cowboy hat, and shorts that almost reach the hem of the coat. end ID]

[ID: Colored bust sketch of Jira in an orange shirt. end ID]

Aaaaand I think that’s all the good art I have of him. I’m not expecting anyone to have read this far but uhm THANK YOU if you did… you’re my number 1 fan… Don’t judge what I said in this post too harshly, *so what* if I base my personality around a character that only exists in my own head? 😭 Anyways, have a great day, and thanks for reading my rambling!

#my art #digital art #design #original character #oc.jira #drawing #outfit design #casual wear #illustration #fashion #outfit #clothing #thai #artists on tumblr #in-depth

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carolinegrahamreview · 3 years

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How To Make $500 Per Day from Launch Jacking

Launch jacking is an affiliate marketing strategy where a business can take advantage of a new product launch and write a review or blog post about their experience with the product. If your review answers the readers’ questions and convinces them to click on your Call to Action, they are taken to the product developer’s product landing page to buy the product. This strategy works for both physical and digital products.

Launch jacking is not only a strategy for earning affiliate marketing commissions, but it can be a great source to gain additional traffic and backlinks to improve your website’s domain authority. In turn, that improves your ability to get other content ranked higher in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). For example, writing a negative review will not likely cause the reader to make a purchase. However, if yours is the only negative review, prospects will likely click on your review to learn why. This traffic tells the search engines to rank your page and domain a bit higher, helping some of your other content rank higher as well.

When a company launches a new product, the product developer generally sends out a series of emails to their email list or buys ads that include links to their product’s sales landing page. Of course, the reader of those ads or email will often not just buy the product on impulse without doing a little more research first. The higher the price of the product, the more the prospect will do research before they reach for their credit card

Knowing this, most serious product developers employ a strategy to incentivize affiliates to create brand awareness and educate prospects as part of their customer acquisition strategy. The product developers offer commissions to individuals that send a prospect to their site and buy their product. Commissions on digital products average about 50% while commissions for physical products are much lower.

Where Do Product Developers List Products?

Product developers have many options when it comes to choosing an affiliate network. Here are several popular affiliate network sites.

Click Bank

JV Zoo

Warrior Plus

Deal Guardian

Peer Fly

Connection Junction

Share Sale

Affiliate Program Amazon

Market Health

When it comes to launch jacking, your job is to have the most compelling article or post that the prospect finds during their research. The more your page can alleviate any confusion a prospect may have about the product and assuage any fears they may have, the more apt they are to click on the Call to Action links you include in your product review.

What makes launch jacking so powerful is that there is little or no competition for keywords with the product name. When the product name is paired with a few popular search words, the resulting long-tail keyword creates a blue ocean keyword that is easier to rank for. Some popular launch jacking keyword pairings are:

Product name + Review Product name + Review from Real User Product name + Discount Product name + Deal Product name + Coupon Product name + Bonus Product name + Product Creator Product name + Pros & Cons

You can also combine keywords pairings such as Product Name + Review + Discount + Bonus.

How to Find Products That Are Ready to Launch.

Here are two popular site calendars where product developers can post the date of their product launch along with other information about their product for affiliates to use in their reviews.

https://muncheye.com/ https://v3.jvnotifypro.com/account/

Most of the listings on these sites are for new launches, however, reviews can be written for existing products as well. For existing products, you take the best elements of all the preexisting reviews and give it a new twist, thereby creating a better and more in-depth review. This can cause your review to leapfrog many of the preexisting reviews and allow your new review to rank well. The higher your domain authority, the better your chances of reaching the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP) spots.

For a new launch, first you need to find a product that will be launching in a few weeks. This will give you some time to write your review. When you click on a prospective product you’re considering writing a review for, look for ones that have a link to a Joint Venture (JV) page. The Joint Venture page is where the majority of the information you can use to write your review is contained. If you’re interested in a product without a JV page you will have to do a lot more independent research and write more original content for a compelling review.

Product Research

Before you consider investing the time and energy to write a review, you need to determine if writing a launch jacking review is worth your efforts.

When you find a potential target product, one thing you want to determine is how many other reviews already exist. Begin by entering the launch jacking keyword pairings you hope to rank for such as “product name” + “review” into your search engine.

If there are plenty of other prelaunch reviews already, your next step is to check the Domain Authority (DA) and traffic from the other sites to determine how hard it may be to get your review ranked on the SERP. I use the Alexa Traffic Ranking browser extension to do a quick check of their traffic. To find a site’s Domain Authority, Moz and ahref are two popular sites that will give you a limited number of searches for free. If all the other sites that have reviews are from a website with a much higher DA and traffic count, it will be harder to get your review near the top of the SERP.

Next, you will want to use the Google Keyword Planner and enter your launch jacking keyword pairings. Look at the keyword ideas to see if you have any competition. The search will give you some alternate keywords you may want to rank for, as well as get a sense of the number of searches and relative competition. What you may discover is that there is a lot of competition for “Product Name” + “Review”, but none for “Product Name” + “Pros & Cons”.

In addition to using a search engine like Google, look on YouTube to see if there are any reviews for the physical or digital product.

If there is limited competition, the next step is to learn a bit more about the creator of the product. You will discover that it will either not have a very good launch because the creator has no brand awareness, or have a very good chance of a successful launch based on previous successful launches.

Content Sources to Write Your Launch Jacking Review

At this point, your research indicates that you have a good chance of writing a review for a launch jacking keyword pairing that will rank well. Now is the time to write a review. Two sources you will use to write your review include the product’s sales page and the Joint Venture page.

Depending upon the type of product and your reputation, you can often request special review access from the product developer. For example, if you have a site that produces camping videos, a product developer for a camping product may agree to send you one of the first products so you can test it and write about your experience. For digital products, all the product developer needs to provide is a link, so digital products are often much easier to get access to for your review. This is one reason digital products make great affiliate marketing products.

On the Joint Venture page, the product developer will generally include their contact information.

Once you collect all of your data, you will want to write your review. You can cut and paste much of the content from the Joint Venture page and the product developer’s sales landing page as the basis of your review. You can then add some of your own narrative and naturally insert your launch jacking keyword pairing into the text. You will also want to include a series of Call to Actions, which will take the reader to the affiliate link that you have set up with the product developer’s chosen affiliate networks site such as Clickbank.

How to Write a Launch Jacking Review That Will Convert.

The assumption at this point is that you have a product you want to review and an account with the affiliate network that the product developed used. When you request the link, the affiliate network will provide not only the link to the product developer’s sales landing page, but also include your unique affiliate code. This way, when your reader clicks the link and buys the product, the affiliate network will know where the lead came from so they know who earned the commission.

Even if the buyer does not buy immediately and returns sometime later to make the purchase, that user is still associated with you, so you will earn a commission on the sale.

If you hope to rank, any review you write must be greater than 800 words. In fact, 1200 plus words should be your goal. Generally speaking, the more words and more times you can naturally use the keywords in your narrative, the better your chance it will rank on the SERP.

When you write your review, you will want to follow the format of a long-form sales page and include at least three Calls to Action to buy the product. The best reviews use many images or screenshots of the product throughout the review. Don’t be afraid to change up the font and text color to appeal to the three types of consumers of internet content; Skimmers, Scanners, and Readers. Make sure that all the images, titles, captions, and alt tags include the launch jacking keyword pairing.

If you are doing a video review, you can use the time tested Infomercial format.

Be sure to use the launch jacking keyword pairing such as “product name” + “review” in the title, excerpt, snip, and the first paragraph of your review, as well as the product name multiple times in your review. To have a successful launch jacking review, you should always follow good SEO practices.

Many launch jacking reviews start with an image of the product or a screenshot at the top followed by a short introduction.

After the introduction, include your first Call to Action.

Follow this up discussing the features and the benefits. Be sure to include how the product will help the buyer. Using bullets and screenshots will help this section stand out.

After the features and benefits section, include your second Call to Action.

Next, include any bonus that the product developer is offering the buyer for being one of the first to by the product.

After the bonus section, include your third Call to Action.

When you are happy with the review, publish it so the public can read it.

How to Build Quality Backlinks to Your Review

Just because your review is public does not guarantee that anyone will read it. Now is the time to tell the search engines that it is worth ranking it in the SERP.

To improve your ranking, it is always a good idea to include at least one video in your launch jacking review from YouTube. Include a link in the YouTube video description section that points to your launch jacking review page because it will provide a valuable backlink to aid in getting your review a better SERP ranking. Since YouTube is a Google asset, it likes backlinks from YouTube. That being said, consider uploading your video on Vimeo and Dailymotion to harvest their Link Juice as well.

Many launch jacking reviews include a video that demonstrates how to unpack and set up a physical product or how to use the digital product. The producer will often have some videos on their Joint Venture page that you can simply download and include in your review.

Hopefully, you already have a Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn page. If not, set them up. You should also consider Reddit, Pinterest, and Instagram. Make a post for each social media platform that includes an image and the launch jacking keyword paring you want to rank for in the title. Add some text such as “The following is a review of …” or “Discover the pros and cons of …”, plus a link back to your review page. All of these linkbacks from video and social media sites will tell the search engines to rank your review page higher.

Optimize Your Launch Jacking Page.

Your number one goal is to get organic traffic with all the backlinks to your launch jacking review page. Remember, it’s a numbers game, because only about 5-10% of people will ever click on your affiliate link. Over time, the traffic that you consistently receive will help your Domain Authority, making future reviews rank higher.

To squeeze out some additional value from the traffic that does not click on your affiliate link, many pages will offer visitors something related for free to just to get the visitor’s email address. Once you have the visitor’s email address, you can retarget them with additional offers.

How can you use launch jacking reviews to earn affiliate commissions and drive traffic to your site?

Source: https://www.stevebizblog.com/affiliate-marketing-hack-for-bloggers-making-money-from-launch-jacking/

#launch jacking #make money as an affiliate #make money online #make money #make money fast #make money from home #make money with affiliate marketing #make money 2021 #side hustle

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starfleetdoesntfirefirst · 4 years

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8tracks Backup

Edited 1/7/2020 to reflect that the new workbook can open your 8tracks folder and fix errored playlists you’ve already run with just a few clicks, which I hadn’t realized until I had time to use it myself!

The following is the new, up-to-date as of 1/6/2020 version of this reblog chain with extraneous and out-of-date information removed and a link to and information on the new workbook.

After 8tracks announced, with only a few days’ notice, that it was shutting down on 12/31/2019, an effort was made to preserve as many playlists as possible. The original 8tracks backup macro by VidderAdmin was downloaded over a hundred times across multiple continents, and the information from thousands of playlists was saved. Go fandom!

However, it turns out that 8tracks is staying up a bit longer—though we have no way of knowing how long—which leaves more time to save playlist information. To this end, VidderAdmin and the team that formed to work on this created a new macro workbook that fixes some issues and improves functionality.

The Updated Macro Workbook

- FIXED: playlists with Unicode producing 0kb files (and helps rerun files that failed)

- FIXED: missing images (and helps rerun files that failed)

- IMPROVED FUNCTIONALITY: helps rerun failures, allows user to choose folders to download to and to download to subfolders by fandom tag specified by user, accounts for extraneous text at the end of URLs without the user needing to ctrl+f and delete it, checks folders to ensure every text file has a matching image and reruns those without

You will need to have macros enabled to run the spreadsheet; here’s how to enable macros. Side note: genuinely friendly PSA that macros are default-disabled in Excel for a reason. Macro viruses can send and delete files and be computer-destroying levels of dangerous; always be careful what you choose to download and run!

Download: bit.ly/8tracksbackup

[Rest of ID in alt text] “8tracksbackup is a macro-enabled workbook that helps to quickly download playlist metadata (including the track list) and cover artwork based on URLs that you provide. We have also included some tools to help ensure those downloads worked correctly.

We're a team of volunteers hoping to preserve fandom history before it's lost, but we are not affiliated with 8tracks, and we are not affiliated with Internet Archive.

While we've done our best to test out the macros in this workbook and address any bugs or glitches, unfortunately we can't guarantee how it will perform, and you are using this at your own risk.

If you're familiar with VBA, you can take a look at the code yourself, but again please know that we can't guarantee how it will perform if you modify the code, or if you are sent a copy of this workbook that didn't come from us.

We've included some instructions within these tabs, but if you have further questions, please contact us at 8tracksbackup AT gmail DOT com and we'll do what we can to help.

If you are interested in submitting your 8tracks metadata and covers to the Internet Archive to be included in an 8tracks Fandom History Collection, please contact us at the email above by 12/31/2020.

If you'd like us to notify you when we've updated the workbook, or if you do not want your playlists included in our collection, you can fill out this Google Form: forms.gle/9Weh4RpKYnXFTrMQ6

Thank you for helping to save at-risk fanworks!”

So, do you need to re-run URLs you’ve already saved?

One of the main (and hardest to spot) issues in the original pre-New-Years macro was that JSON files (where the tracklists are) were coming out blank for playlists whose information included Unicode (pretty much anything not in the Roman alphabet; for example, Japanese lettering and Chinese characters).

EDITING TO ADD: I wrote the below struckthrough text before I’d used the new macro workbook, and I hadn’t yet realized that it has a sheet that quickly finds and re-runs the errored playlists in your 8tracks folder (and/or whichever other folders you point it at, if you’ve organized playlist files into multiple folders). It took me less than an hour to use it to fix all the errored playlists out of the over 6,000 total playlists I’d already run! So, my errored playlists from running the first macro are fixed, and if you have errored playlists from running the first macro, it should take just a few clicks and less than an hour’s running time to fix them. :)

So if you want to make sure that closer to all of the playlist URLs you ran through the macro have their tracklists saved, especially for tags/fandoms with many playlists with Unicode (for example, anime fandoms), you may want to re-run them with the new macro (which also has some convenient ways of finding the errored playlists).

However, don’t despair if you won’t have time to re-run URLs; having already saved a majority is much better than nothing having been saved! (If you don’t have time, you can also share your URLs with us at the email above in case someone has time to run them on the new macro, though please know that we may not have time to get to them. Please include a note that they were already run with a previous version—thanks!)

A note for folks who sent me, starfleetdoesntfirefirst, URLs to run: As I mentioned in another post, back in the days of the first macro I was able to get to some or all of what each person sent, but may not have time to get to all of what each person sent depending on when 8tracks shuts down. However, I almost definitely won’t have time to use the new macro to re-run Unicode-containing and other errored playlists I already ran. I’ll pass them along to the rest of this team, but given that none of us can guarantee we’ll get to them before 8tracks shuts down, if you feel strongly about making sure everything you sent to me gets re-run with the new macro, it may be worth pinging your Excel-having friends for aid. (I apologize for this; I didn’t anticipate things getting to this stage rather than a quick pre-New-Years effort!)

How to record & check (some of) which 8tracks tags have already had their playlists extracted

This Dreamwidth post is a place where you can comment to record which 8tracks tags, from any fandom (or nonfandom topic like “autumn”), you have extracted the URLs from, and check which 8tracks tags others have already extracted the URLs from, to avoid unnecessarily duplicating work. (You don’t need a Dreamwidth account to comment!) Not everyone who is extracting URLs is going to know about this post, so no guarantees of avoiding duplication, but it’s a start. :)

How to extract playlist URLs for use with the workbook

Instructions by @meeedeee adapted by me:

1) Do a tag search on 8tracks (or go to your own “liked” or “already listened” page if those are the playlists you want to save). Scroll to the very bottom of the page (so that all playlists have loaded and actually appeared on the page).

Note that if your tag has more than 1000 results, 8tracks will still only grab 1000.

2) Use a link-extracter plugin (like this one for Chrome) to extract all the links on the page.

3) Filter for links with the word “play” in them. This will pull up only the actual playlists. (There were 54 playlists tagged “Nyota Uhura,” and as you can see in the screencap, adding the filter “play” gives exactly 54 results.)

4) Copy into spreadsheet.

Note on Archive Team’s effort

Archive Team is also attempting to archive as many playlists as they can, by random number rather than by tag due to 8tracks’s 1000-playlist limit in tag search. These will probably be stored on the Internet Archive as WARC files, which means that it will be harder for non-power-users to access playlist info, thus our continuing this separate effort.

Per @meeedeee: As a result they dropped trying to archive by tags, instead they’re running 3.5 million random numbers in the hopes of grabbing what they can. On the back end of 8tracks, the playlist data is not stored by URL, or by tag, but by unique numeric identifier. Because of the volume that they have to run, the Archive Team will not be archiving the “look and feel” (user profile icons). Only basic metadata (playlist, user name, comments) and cover art. The meta data will be stored in a json format which looks like this and is not easily readable https://8tracks.com/mixes/3169100/tracks_for_international.jsonh

#8tracks #8tracks tutorial mostrecent

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yeonchi · 5 years

Text

Thinking about the future of EDGN

I’ve never asked a lot out of my fans over the years, but to some of my close fans (you know who you are), I’d really appreciate some helpful advice because this is an important decision I’m making that will affect both you, the fans, and myself.

To cut a long story short for a tl;dr, I no longer enjoy posting about the voice languages in localised Japanese games because of some recent events and realisations and I want to retire from the English Dubbed Game News page altogether.

It’s been about five years since I started all this with the Koei Warriors Rant Series and since then, everything I’ve done that’s related to English dub has brought me nothing but hate. I know it’s a bit of an exaggeration and some of my close fans may have something to say to the contrary, but I’ve been feeling quite negative lately and because of that, I think it’s a brutally honest summary.

After ending the Dub Logistics series, I thought the one thing I could do to repay my fans for their support over the years was to continue posting on EDGN. Personally, I think I’ve done enough already and also, as I said in a post back in August, I’ve been having doubts about the future of the page and what I want to do with it given my current interests. There are several factors that led to me having these doubts, which I’ll be outlining after the break. (I can’t even put horizontal lines in my posts with the rich text editor now, thanks Tumblr)

1. I was never interested in any game outside of the Koei Warriors series or any game I played in the past (eg. Dissidia Final Fantasy).

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to my fans because in the past, I’ve rarely posted anything outside of the series I was interested in, including the aforementioned series. If I came across something by chance and liked it, then I would do some investigation into it, but these days, the spark just doesn’t want to light up anymore.

I’ve never really taken the chance to buy new games because my family doesn’t believe in buying things that aren’t important and as such, I took that mantra to heart. While I never brought a PS3, I did get a Nintendo Wii, but I traded it in later for a Wii U and not a PS4, which I still regret to this day. I pirated my PSP, DS and PC games (let’s face it, who doesn’t) and played with emulators on my computer. I only got a Steam account to play Team Fortress 2 (laggy though it was on my shitty computer) and I never brought anything from it, which made it difficult for me to add friends on there (not that they really cared in the end).

By extension, this applies to anime as well, which is the reason why I never post anything outside of the same few animes on the Waifu Network or on my Facebook pages. My belief on sexism in anime has also contributed to this disinterest; the only reason why I’m still posting the same few animes is because I’m still somewhat interested in them and I’m grateful for how they inspired some personal projects of mine.

2. Various factors have led me to lose interest in video games, including the Koei Warriors Series.

The reason why I started my dub crusade in the first place was because of Warriors Orochi 3 (Ultimate) and Samurai Warriors 4 not being dubbed. The reason why I decided to jump ship was because of Dynasty Warriors 9 being dubbed, just not with the same cast I had grown to love. I know that there were extenuating circumstances for the latter, but given everything that happened between that time, my hope that the old English voice cast (since Dynasty Warriors 4-6/Warriors Orochi 1-2) would return to voice that game (and other future games) was gone.

In addition to the previous factor, I started to find myself with more commitments than I had in past years, along with some different interests that I picked up along the way. At first, I didn’t feel like playing games because of my commitments, but eventually, it got to the point where I didn’t want to play most video games again because of the disappointment I’ve experienced from Koei Tecmo. Learning about all the things that AAA gaming companies do to reduce expenditure and increase revenue turned me off from video games as well. In my opinion, it wasn’t so much a boycott (per se) than it was a loss of interest.

3. The original group of people who inspired me to start writing these rants are now gone.

I know I’ve had other fans since the start of all this, but the original group had a special place in all this because of it. There were four people in the original group, who I met on Koei’s original Facebook page, and they were as follows:

The first one did comment on my older stuff, but he left quite early, possibly since DW8E’s release. I saw that he deactivated his account some time in 2017.

The second one had a YouTube channel and he was an admin on one of my Facebook pages for some time, but then he left after a period of inactivity without any explanation.

The third one was the more prominent because of his LGBT status and mental health issues. In the middle of 2015, he announced to everyone that he was deactivating his Facebook account because it was a burden on his mental health. He reactivated his account some time later, but he deactivated it again in September 2017 and hasn’t come back since. During that time, I saw a post from him stating that he was going to take a lot of pills and commit suicide. I reported it to Facebook in the hope that it might encourage him to find some help, even though I remember him stating that nothing works for him anymore. When I noticed that he hadn’t come back to Facebook months after he deactivated his account the second time, I assumed the worst.

The fourth one, also known as the family man or “the last one standing”, deactivated his account in June this year. We never really talked much, but as I said in this post, I’m still grateful to him for helping me find the new weapon and Musou information in DW8E when the Koei Wiki didn’t have it yet (because the game was just released at the time).

4. The impact of the feud’s aftermath still haunts me to this day.

When I agreed to end the feud on a mutual understanding a couple of years back, I promised myself that I would quickly move on from the troll behind it and not keep reminding myself of everything that happened. However, I’m a person that’s prone to anxiety when I think of worst-case-scenarios and at times, I found myself thinking about what would have happened had my Facebook account been deleted just because a troll couldn’t take the L when he got owned by someone half his age (compare that to Leafy who made terrible criticisms of people who are older than him, then claimed that he can hide behind the fact that he is younger than them). Him coming back out of nowhere earlier this year didn’t do any favours for anyone either. Regardless of that, I’ve got my bottom ground and I’ll continue to live on it regardless of what anyone else thinks of me.

I’d like to take a moment to digress and talk about cancel culture and political censorship. Because both parties in the feud weren’t exactly that popular (we had our own little fanbases, but that’s it), me and the other party “cancelling” each other (admittedly) didn’t seem to have as much an effect as we had hoped. Other factors that contributed to this could be that cancel culture (an extension to call-out culture) wasn’t that much of a thing two years ago and when the other party tried to cancel me, he made no attempt to spread the word to his fans. It was likely that he was trying to show mercy, but that doesn’t explain why he kept reporting my posts relating to him and current events in Hong Kong, knowing that I would eventually get banned if I didn’t call him out on it. I was as much a victim than I admittedly was an offender of cancel culture.

Following the feud, I’ve become wary of social media censorship because I experienced what it was like for someone to get petty and get people deplatformed by mass reporting them. Other pages like meme pages have suffered the same fate in the past (mostly because people take certain jokes too seriously), but despite my hopes, it didn’t seem like Facebook was going to do anything about the petty mass-reporting of those pages. Recently, however, I’ve been seeing news on tech companies being grilled over the censorship of conservatives and President Trump criticising them for the same thing. I’m not saying that I’m supporting Trump backing the pages that are being censored (conservative, far-right, alt-right, you name it), but I hope that this can hopefully extend to random meme pages being reported for petty reasons.

5. Ever since I decided to stop being toxic, I found myself conflicted when confronted with more toxic comments to the point that I’ve started to become paranoid over negative criticism.

When I decided to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to EDGN, I hoped that the hate towards my page would be reduced somewhat, but I never expected that it would be gone entirely. Since then, three people have made negative comments on the page; one was a girl who saw one of my posts being shared on a private group, misunderstood the (new) purpose of the page and despite her attitude, was still somewhat respectful, one was a Europoor dub hater from Spain (from what I’ve seen and learnt, Europeans tend to be sub fans and/or dub haters because of their English comprehension and ability to read subtitles) and one was an Americuck soyboy dub hater who pointed out about “crybaby fans” (”fans” as in the gatekeeping term “fake fans”, never mind my theory that people, especially men, who call other people, especially other men, “crybabies” are actually spreading toxic masculinity) who liked stuff to be Americanised but didn’t acknowledge the Japanese origins.

I’m gonna go off on a tangent and do a bit of an ad-homimem here (but it’s alright because I’m going to rebut his point next) and point out that I called the Americuck a soyboy because he had quite a long beard, but to be honest, if I called everyone who had beards “soyboys”, that would make people like Count Dankula and Sargon of Akkad “soyboys” as well, so it’d be a pretty slippery slope if I didn’t clarify who I was talking about.

Now, I’m going to move back on another tangent and rebut the soyboy’s point, because I think this is a pretty important point to address. No one is saying outright that they want Japanese games to be Americanised in terms of cultural references (if 4Kids has taught us anything). Saying that Americanisation is responsible for bad dubbing is a bit like blaming video games for causing violence. If someone says that they would like a game to be dubbed into English in localisation, then it is presumed that they want the dialogue to be dubbed in addition to the text being translated (or “dublated”). Any cultural changes made to the game or the dialogue are entirely the responsibility of those who made those changes, like the gaming companies who censor stuff for Western audiences, so if you’re complaining about a Japanese game being too “Americanised”, don’t take it out on dub fans because chances are that they didn’t want the dub to be too “Americanised” either.

Completing the square and going back to the original tangent, I didn’t post any of their comments to the dub hater comments album because I had deleted it after the feud in the hope that I wouldn’t be as toxic as I had been before. You can probably already see how toxic I would probably be if the above responses were posted on the page and directed back at them, which would mean that I’m not upholding myself to the standards I wanted to follow.

6. I’m becoming more and more concerned about current events to worry about things like English dubbing in video games.

If you’re someone who has unironically thought that I was making a big deal over something you thought was minor, then this is going to sound very ironic for you. From all these years of learning and research, I’ve attained an expansive world view and while I have made jokes about current events in the past to lighten the mood or express my anger, deep down I’m actually concerned about these things, particularly in regards to Hong Kong during this politically sensitive time.

For some reason, my desire to make posts has decreased because in addition to the above factors, I’ve been getting more and more worried about current affairs. Granted, the point of things like anime and video games and the Internet is to provide an escape from reality, but in the end, I guess that you have to face it whether you like it or not.

Making the decision to stop posting on EDGN hasn’t been an easy one, but all the factors I described above have gradually made it easier. Like the Undub page did, I had considered changing the focus of my page to merely report on the voice languages of games without saying whether we approve or reject it because it isn’t dubbed in English/Japanese; that is, we report on them with an unbiased viewpoint. Not adding excessively biased pro-dub comments on our posts has made it more neutral, but in the end, it didn’t stop the dub hater cucks. I should point out that one of the reasons why I wanted to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to EDGN was so that we could reduce the amount of hate we were getting.

What was the original goal of me starting this dub crusade? If you have read my rants in the past, then you will have picked up my hopes that Japanese games would be localised to the West with full Japanese and English dubbing and that if game companies couldn’t achieve that, then they should apologise and explain why. Would I say that I achieved or failed to achieve this goal? Not really, because over the years, I learnt a lot about the video game and voiceover industries and gradually realised that it’s not as straightforward as I had initially hoped. To be honest, it was kind of stupid of me to hope that gaming companies would say anything straightforward about this, but on the other hand, I learnt that gaming companies are like politicians as well; they say the things they want to say and not the things people want to hear.

To my fans, particularly my close fans, feel free to send me your opinions about my decision, however if you’re trying to change my mind, then I’m not sure if it can be changed so easily. If you think that I haven’t lived up to what you expect from me, then I’m sorry, but in the end, I have to think of myself as well.

If I could say one thing to the dub fanbase, I want to ask why no one else has ever tried to do something like EDGN. You have your groups and pages on social media and yet, it had to take two people pissed off with the dubbing direction of gaming companies to do it. Granted, that was how the Undub page started, with the lack of Japanese voices in localised games, and yet they didn’t get as much hate as my page did.

If there is anyone out there who wants to follow in my footsteps and make a page like EDGN, let me be the first to give you my blessing because I’m not going to be like the Undub page when they discovered us and point fingers for copying their posts when in the end, games are the same to everyone. While transparency regarding voice languages has increased over the years, there was never a place where dub fans could know about what games were dubbed in English. You don’t have to be like me and make a series of rants about why some games aren’t dubbed, because I’ve already done it, but instead, I suggest going the unbiased route as I stated earlier. Of course, you don’t have to follow my advice - it’s your page, after all.

My plan is to retire from EDGN at the end of the year. I have 12 more games in the backlog, all with English voices, and I’m hoping to post them all on the page before then. I probably won’t remove myself as an admin (because I think there’ll be some petty, obsessed cuck who’ll dig out my posts and make a rant series on me or something), but I’ll probably have it so that I can forget about the page as time goes on.

With this, my dub crusade has come to an end. Once again, to the fans, I’m sorry and I thank you for your support. As always, it is your choice as to whether you wish to continue following me, whether on Facebook or Tumblr, after my retirement.

#english dub #video games #japanese games #japanese voices

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momestuck · 5 years

Text

Epilogues: Meat ch 28-32 [Epilogue 5]

So now we’re in different hands.

chapter 28

We return to John, this time with alt-Calliope narrating about his alarmingly blunt teeth. Also on further thought I have no more reason to use ‘she’ pronouns for alt-Calliope than proper Calliope (alt-Calliope does not even seem to use the name Calliope in narration, just things like ‘the dead cherub’), so I will use they pronouns, and will edit the previous post to reflect that.

alt-Calliope declares that they are not going to be ‘inserting thoughts into peoples’ heads’, though they will be ‘truthfully’ reporting those thoughts with more clarity than the subject of narration is necessarily prepared to acknowledge.

john would be mortified with human embarrassment if he could understand the clarity and precision with which i am willing to telegraph his thoughts. but his embarrassment is irrelevant to me. as always, the truth is paramount.

This mortifying description of how John thinks of Terezi includes a reference to “gap moe”, because of f u c k i n g course it does.

John worries if this makes him like a creepy weeb who collects body pillows, but in dialogue dismisses this as something that would only make sense to a human. Unfortunately, Tegiri exists to disprove that sentiment!

Despite alt-Calliope’s avowed dedication to ‘truth’, there is obviously more to this than not contradicting the ‘truth’ of events or thoughts... she is deciding how to present the ‘true’ information, what to state and what to leave implicit and what to brush over. a story also concerns what’s ‘relevant’ and ‘essential’, as Rose said so long ago.

chapter 29

Jane, it seems, has been using the trickster-mode lollipop during her campaign. This leads to an argument with the narration about whether or not it’s “problematic” - neither Jane nor alt-Calliope think so, though neither can be considered someone presented in a 100% positive light at this point...

(Jane mostly argues in the in-universe political campaign situation, when of course the argument about ‘trickster mode’ was the whole ‘caucasian’ shitshow)

Anyway, despite her prior statements, alt-Calliope is not above interfering in the narration if it’s for the sake of cherub artefacts.

jane rubs her eyes under her glasses and groans. trickster mode is also quite exhausting. what a strange quirk of human biology that excess euphoria must necessarily be followed by crippling despair. she carelessly tosses the lollipop on the floor, lurches toward her desk...

no.

she turns around promptly, her body jolted by the surprise of her sudden reversal. she bends over, cradles the lollipop reverentially, and situates it carefully in a place signifying respect: atop the mantle, after clearing space for it by shoving several brittle, worthless objects to the floor.

alt-Calliope narrates that she’s totally got Dirk’s number - “he probably thinks he’s a very clever boy, my brother did too” - as Dirk works on a long red rifle in between other tasks designed to distract.

Jane wonders about trying to blackmail Jake by revealing that he’s been having sex with trolls. Dirk challenges this as xenophobic. There’s an odd exchange...

JANE: What ISN’T xenophobic?

DIRK: Well, for one thing, what you just said there?

DIRK: Probably also xenophobic.

JANE: WHAT?

DIRK: Sorry, that’s just how it is.

DIRK: You either gotta roll with the woke shit, or decide to commit laborious, symbolic, melodramatic suicide in the process of utterly giving up.

This may be referring to his suicide in the other branch, I guess? idefk what this is trying to say ><

chapter 30

Karkat and Dave are attempting to win over Jake. This involves a lot of jokes about “neoliberal austerity measures”, super pacs, and so on... and the two of them playing off each other. Dave has been presenting “visionary”, “avant-garde” campaign ads based on SBAHJ.

alt-Calliope notes that Jake has now been freed from Dirk’s indirect narrative control, able to make his own decisions. In tiny text, Dirk grumbles about this. Without his control, he declares, Jake is a purely reactive ‘dead bug’; with it, Jake is like an ant controlled by Cordyceps towards a “greater purpose” (i.e., reproducing Cordyceps ¬¬)

Anyway, Karkat ultimately makes a speech: he doesn’t say he’ll be the best president, but that whichever one wins, it will set a precedent on the matter of troll reproductive rights that will last for a very long time. Jane is, necessarily, far more concerned with nice appearances than doing right:

KARKAT: NO MATTER HOW NICE SHE WAS WHEN YOU WERE KIDS, HER DEDICATION TO THE APPEARANCE OF THAT “NICENESS” HAS ALREADY LED HER DOWN A PATH OF CORRUPTION AND DUPLICITY.

KARKAT: BECAUSE WHEN YOU LIVE INSIDE A SKIN THAT’S A LIE, YOU’LL EITHER GROW TO FIT IT, OR COLLAPSE UNDER THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF YOUR OWN SHIT-SPEWING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.

KARKAT: TRUST ME, I FUCKING KNOW, BECAUSE I USED TO SPEW AN UNTOLD AMOUNT OF SHIT.

I think this is well put. I think it gets to the heart of a lot of things, that this story is talking about, apart from the free will/alternate possibilities stuff...

Anyway, that wins Jake over to their side.

chapter 31

Back to Terezi eating weird things in space. (Nice!)

Do god tiers need to eat? ...come to think of it, Terezi never actually went god tier.

Anyway, Terezi and John have a heart to heart. About the doomed timeline... and about Vriska. Terezi refers to the Remem8er flash, where she found a connection with the Terezi from the Game Over timeline.

TEREZI: TH4TS WHY 1M OUT H3R3

TEREZI: YOU S33...

TEREZI: TH4T DOOM3D T3R3Z1 M1SS3D VR1SK4 *SO* MUCH, 1T W4S L1K3 4 HOL3 1N H3R H34RT

TEREZI: 1 R3M3MB3R TH3 W4Y SH3 F3LT, B3C4US3 ON3 T1M3, 4LL H3R M3MOR13S C4M3 FLOOD1NG B4CK

TEREZI: 1 3V3N GOT TO S33 WH4T H4PP3N3D WH3N SH3 D13D

TEREZI: SH3 4ND 4NOTH3R VR1SK4 GHOST F1N4LLY FOUND 34CH OTH3R

TEREZI: 1T M4D3 M3 SO H4PPY G3TT1NG TO F33L TH4T, 4S 1F 1T W4S ON3 OF MY OWN M3MOR13S

TEREZI: 1T JUST R31NFORC3D TH3 F33L1NG TH4T TH3R3 W4S SOM3TH1NG SP3C14L B3TW33N US

TEREZI: 4ND 1 JUST K3PT H4NG1NG ON TO TH4T B3L13F, R1GHT UP UNT1L...

TEREZI: OH, 1 DONT KNOW

TEREZI: NOW???

TEREZI: 1V3 PR4CT1C4LLY D3VOT3D MY L1F3 TO C3RT41N M3MOR13S, TO TH3 1D34 TH4T TWO P3OPL3 C4N B3 M34NT TO B3 W1TH 34CH OTH3R ON SOM3 COSM1C L3V3L, 3V3N 1F TH3Y 4LW4YS S33M TO G3T 34CH OTH3R 1NTO TROUBL3

TEREZI: 4LL TH4T 1NV3STM3NT, 4LL TH4T S34RCH1NG...

TEREZI: 4ND FOR *WH4T*?

TEREZI: OV3R 4 SW33P TOG3TH3R, 4ND SH3 JUST D1S4PP34RS 1NTO THE VO1D 4G41N?!

TEREZI: WH4T 4 HUG3 B1TCH

T_T

Anyway, this gets to the crux of the matter: Earth C may supposedly be paradise, but it doesn’t feel like it for either of them. To quote a certain book series, “perhaps some people just don’t have the knack of being happy”.

Anyway, Terezi can’t bear to part with John just yet - so she offers to take a look at his tooth wound. There’s a very funny moment where alt-Calliope narrates the blade drawing in a way so as to personally antagonise Dirk, who is pissed.

Terezi removes the poisonous tooth and then dresses John’s wound - I’ll be interested to hear from @drc4ble if her wound care is up to snuff. Then they have post-surgery makeouts.

Literally any even slightly intimate moment lol (or even a fight)... I miss feeling able to be that affectionate with people.

Although this is a het scene, it actually feels surprisingly... not het. idk. Not sure how to clarify that.

alt-Calliope, I guess, hasn’t lost her obsession with shipping and intimacy from when she was small. She claims she’s merely allowing John to perceive his “true” thoughts - and that’s why he’s being so bold. But that involves a decision, right, about which of his thoughts are “true”?

chapter 32

Apparently “proximity to a black hole”, a proxy for void, renders Roxy’s internal monologue perceptible to alt-Calliope, even though it wouldn’t normally be for those “on a higher textual plane”.

as for alt-Calliope, narrated as Jade:

looking beyond the wall she faces, and beyond everything past it, through the very fabric of narrative itself. they scan the ciliary veins of pacing, motivation, foreshadowing, irony—a continuum that has been upended by the prince’s interference.

Dirk and alt-Calliope are back to arguing in the narration - about how diverse the crowds are, for example. Dirk dismisses alt-Calliope’s narration as “fake-woke”.

Anyway, despite Dirk’s needling in the narration, Roxy and Dave have a well-observed conversation about like, figuring out your gay/trans/nb/etc, coming out and so forth. Dave talks about like, various stages of more-or-less-ironic self-denial. Dirk gets increasingly irate at the discussion of gender and sexuality that doesn’t lead straightforwardly into like, clear-cut relationships.

Also he’s preparing to assassinate Jake. Unable to force his thoughts into narration, he just speaks out loud, and I guess alt-Calliope reports his words.

Dirk starts climbing the bell tower. Alt-Calliope tries various means to stop him: narrating that his feet feel heavy - he monologues that he has determination to get past this - dropping a bell on him - he monologues that he’s destroying the bell with his sword. Then they just dismiss him as boring...

Alt-Calliope resorts to warning Dave of the assassination attempt. This is turning into Death Note here... “ah, but what you didn’t realise is...” type shit stacking on top of each other. Dave stands in front of Jake, which would be a Heroic death, something Dirk isn’t willing to expose him to. But Dirk’s gun isn’t loaded with bullets, but with... tranq darts. But moreover, he was misleading us as to his intentions.

He wasn’t going to shoot Jake at all. He was going to shoot alt-Calliope/Jade... giving him back control over the narration!

That was interesting though. Cherubs are fuckin’ weird, I’ll totally concede. Still not sure what makes them tick. What they idealize, what they really want. It all comes across to me as a little cloying. Perfection to them is a sweetness beyond comprehension. Sugar so potent it’s poison to us. To our bodies, to our souls. Like the place she was operating from was a realm of self-construction. A bubble of pure, phantasmal confection.

Well, I for one have had enough of that goddamn toothache. I’m back in the protein saddle, motherfuckers. I’m clacking my tongs, and the charcoal is hot.

Now who’s hungry for meat?

Epilogue 5, in toto

So this is just a ludicrously meta version of Death Note now? ok, ok...

Dirk has essentially taken the role of Caliborn, in terms of representing one of two poles of what Homestuck is “about”. Where Caliborn was about tedious masculinity and over the top carnage, Dirk seems to want plots: plans unfolding, some kind of big elegant modernist [that may be incorrect] construction where everything is “in its proper place” according to an artistic vision.

alt-Calliope now seems to want to tell a story about the personal, about complex but ultimately happy relationships, and of course to let these characters fulfil ‘their own will’, somehow...

#momestuck

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lmfmp2021 · 3 years

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Developing And Improving My Origami Packaging

Now that I have critically reflected on my origami packaging at this point in time, I will now be making all these changes that I previously said about and picked up on. To start, I have firstly focused on the back on the design, to which I had added in a barcode and the weight too. I didn't mention this in my previous post as I only just remembered that I needed to add this on for it to become a real product. I did this by simply coping and pasting them from the previous jar labels. I decided to place these in either of the bottom corners as I thought that they wouldn't interfere with the flaps when they fold in. When looking at the back section, I have also changed the orange circle so that its no longer transparent. I have turned the opacity back up to 100%, to which I think this looks a lot more tidier as there wasn't really any need for it to match the jars this closely.

Additionally, the other thing I forgot to mention in the previous post is that the flaps covered up my little icon saying that there's no palm oil in them. This was simply because I forgot that it was there as it was completely covered up. Although, I thought that if I place it on the top left corner flap then this would clearly show this way.

Next, I decided to change the text at the front so that it would actually show the whole phrase this time. While doing this, I chose to slightly adjust the phrase so that it said something different. Instead of it saying ‘A selection of chocolate spreads’, it now says ‘A variety of chocolate spreads’. There was tow reasons for this, one being that this new version as slightly shorter meaning I could fit it on better, but also as I think it just sounds a little better and less predicable. By this I mean that I feel like the word ‘selection’ is used quite a lot of foods, so I wanted a slightly different word that mean the same thing.

Another thing I have chosen to change is the logo, so I have placed in the multicoloured logo as I feel that this just works so much better for many reasons. I then changed the circle around this logo, to the dark brown colour as I feel this gives a strong contrast this way. The reason I was able to use this colour was because I got rid of the rectangle that was going through the logo and circle. This was because this didn't show at all once it was put together so it made no sense to keep it, apart from to match the jars, but the concepts between the two packaging's, doesn't have to be this unified. As well as this, I also got rid of the same rectangle on the back too again for the exact same reason.

After doing all of this, I then remembered that I had to decrease the size of the front and back circles so that they actually fit in, without the flaps covering them. This process was very simple as I just had to hold down ‘shift’ and ‘alt’ for it to size down in the centre.

The other thing I have changed since the last screenshot is I have decided to make the repeat pattern cover the whole of the sides. So instead of it just being on the sides, this way it can show on the flaps as well. I think this small adjustment will make a massive difference as it was slightly annoying before on the position that the pattern stopped. This way, it wont happen this time.

Here, it is now showing where I have thought of a way in which I can make the base of the packaging work, with the orange colour. I mentioned in my previous post that I feel if I use the orange colour in with the dark brown, it will work, although I wasn't too sure on how I wasn't going to resent the orange shade. However, I have thought of using my them of circles to my advance as drawing a circle to fit the whole base but still have the brown showing in places. So this is what I did, where I then felt to have the type written inside this shape. To do this, I needed to copy and paste the circle and then use the ‘type tool’ and click on the shape once it changes to a circle instead of a square. I could then write out my description. Now looking at this, I think this works so much better as it actually has some interest to draw yo in now. At the same time, it has also been kept quite simple. The only other thing I have been able to change is the fonts, to which I separated the two paragraphs by using ‘ Helvetica light oblique’ for the top section and just ‘Helvetica light’ on the second paragraph. From doing this, it has just helped to show a difference, without being too dramatic.

Below is showing the final result from making all these adjustments to my design. From looking at this, I think its been massively improved as everything just looks neater and more in place.

Now moving onto the interior of the design, I realised that I didn't reflect much on the this part, although just from printing it out, I already found one issue. This was that the printer cut off part of my design. This then lead to many problems, one being that the measurements of the packaging is now not 21cm x 21cm. But the worse problem is the fact that it hasn't cut the sides off equally, mainly that one side from the centre is one measurement the other is completely different. This is a problem that I don't think I can fix. Although, when I actually put the packaging together before, it wasn't too bad. I could see that the base of one side wasn't in the centre like it should be.

Another thing I have changed since last time, is the composition. So instead of having the question at the bottom I decided it would make much more sense having it at the top, which I know that I didn't want to do at first as this is quite boring. But when you think about it, everyone will read from top to bottom meaning that they will read ‘no palm’ first, then the information and lastly the title. Whereas the title is what you ned to read first.

As well as this, I edited the logo so that it matches with the exterior now. I have changed the circle so that its showing the quarters with each colour being different.

The last adjustment I made was to get rid of the text saying ‘unfold to reveal more’ as like I said before, this seemed very tacky to me. I have then replaced this with an orange circle that is going around the logo. I have drawn the circle so that its fits the base again, as this will then match the other side, where the type is and this same colour theme.

As a result, I have now finally come to a point where I’m very happy with this design, layout and colours. So now, this means I will need to print out my final design onto some more thicker paper as this will then give the final product a more luxury feel. After that I think I will add the same green coloured ribbon that I found when creating my initial origami packaging. This is because green will match with the colour from my repeat pattern and should hopefully compliment with the other colours too. The other colour I could use is white as this would then match with the lids of the jars inside, although to me this shade is a little boring.

#development

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