#5 years is a lot easier for the audience to relate to

[mayorwatermelon]

I’ve decided for some reason to explain exactly what it is about being stuffed that is so hot for me. Maybe it’s so that I can understand it better myself? This will probably be kind of boring for some people, but in the tradition of using this blog as a locker for all the feelings that don’t have a place in the rest of my life, I’m just gonna fucking send it.

1a) The belly itself, MASOCHISM: pain in a sexual context turns me on; the pain of being waaay too full, feeling my stomach stretched to its limit, the pain of indigestion

1b) The belly itself, sounds and other sensations: the sensation and noises of digestion, and BURPING (relief from discomfort)

1c) Visual signs; being very visibly round, distended, the difference in size, shape between empty and stuffed

2) Exhibitionism: the process of getting stuffed/bloated needs to be witnessed. This is why, no matter how hard I try, I can never manage to stay away from having some sort of belly kink blog for very long. The sensations are one thing, but without being SEEN, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as gratifying. Additionally, outside of the world of bellies, I have always had a kind of slutty desire to be seen and displayed for an appreciative audience. The idea of being someone’s eye candy is very, very hot to me.

3) Praise: related to exhibitionist tendencies, I want to be praised for my capacity, for how round and noisy my belly is, for how my burps sound. I also enjoy being praised for like, everything about my body. I am secretly (although it’s probably not that much of a secret to people who follow this blog lol) a little vain. Or maybe I just need a lot of validation. [Being degraded, described as a pig, all of that, is very hurtful to me because of stuff that happened when I was younger. Fortunately, almost everyone I’ve interacted with has been extremely chill and never assumed that I would want that (probably bc I am a guy, although I did run into some of that when I was on *shudders* feabie)]

4) Dom/sub dynamic: so there are certain situations and partners where I do enjoy being dominant, and that feels very natural, I have realized over the last few years that I am much more submissive. The thing is, I am also (usually but not always) much bigger (5’ 11”, 215) and (always) much stronger than my partner, so it always seemed more “natural” to the women I’ve been with that I would be the dominant one. And I mean, logically, if I can at least bench press you if not lift you over my head, how are you going to make me submit?

But it’s not all about physical domination! All the ways a could domme find to gain control of me without having to physically overwhelm me (or that would make physically overwhelming me much easier) are, in fact, much hotter to me. The fact that someone would want me, and to dominate me, enough that she would come up with creative ways to gain that dominance is so good. It’s hot because it breaks with conventional norms and roles, it’s hot because it means that a woman finds me desirable enough to flout convention and bend rules to take advantage of me and claim me. And the hottest way, by far, is taking advantage of my naturally outsized appetite to make sure I am too stuffed to do anything but give in to your designs for me…

5) The not very kinky but still very strong need for emotional intimacy involved in stuffing aftercare! Belly rubs are affectionate and good and sweet! It shows that not only do you think I was a good boy for you, but that you care, and that is just the best.

Anyway, this was very silly and self indulgent (so is the whole blog lol), but if anyone was curious about the “whole picture”, this is pretty close.

[anonymous-dentist]

One thing I’ve noticed about Arkanis so far that’s just a little worrying to me is that the Lore is Constantly Happening. It’s the same problem I had with the QSMP, too: too much happening all the time will eventually overwhelm the creators and the audience. Especially if everybody has enigmas to figure out, then they have enigmas on top of enigmas on top of enigmas with no time to solve them

But this depends on how long Arkanis is projected to be. The QSMP was supposed to be a years-long project with legitimately no projected ending; it just happened to crash and burn just before it’s one year anniversary and not stop burning until the anniversary was over and the server could say it lasted 1+ years. And then it died.

But Arkanis? I’m thinking that it’ll be done sometime in January or February. It feels very Karmaland-y, and that’s a good thing! Karmaland 5 only lasted six or so months, which was a Good Thing!

I vaguely remember hearing that this current Arkanis is like a “season one” type of deal, and I hope that means that it’s shorter than not. This isn’t because I hope it ends quickly, it’s because I believe that there needs to be an ending Eventually so the server doesn’t fade into obscurity.

It does actually help that a lot of the creators seem to be focusing on their characters’ individual lores. Sure, everybody is involved in the overarching plot, but there is a Specific Character dedicated to that overarching plot. That’s Bagi, and she’s related directly to the enigma channel on the Arkanis discord.

And, unlike the QSMP, the individual lores all actually at least vaguely seem to tie into the Big Plot in some way. All of the Lore Details aren’t reserved for one or two people to discover, each character has an impact on the story and the story has an impact on them.

Tbh, this just shows the benefits of Arkanis being a dedicated rp server. Sure, yeah, you can be as invested in rp as you want as a player; Mike hasn’t been doing much besides building, I think, and that’s just fine. But the fact that Arkanis was advertised with a LOT of rp stuff and the fact that it has dedicated itself to the rp even so far as including the discord in it? Social media accounts are canon? That stuff? Really impressive.

The best way to combat burnout with this kind of stuff is to provide brain breaks. Have weekends off of lore or something. But another good way is to keep Lore from feeling like a chore. It’s fun to be an audience member actually impacting the Lore through the discord channel! It’s especially fun when you’re enigma-brained like several of the ccs are, and like a good portion of the audience is. If there’s a lot of information, it’ll be hard to get through. But it’ll be easier if you’re actually enjoying it.

And the way to enjoy it? The information needs to make sense, and that’s what Arkanis is absolutely doing right at the moment. It’s all confusing, but it’s also relatively easy to go “Oh! These characters were in the advertisements from August!” when there’s clear, yet still not too obvious, evidence showing it.

That’s what the QSMP consistently got wrong: the information just didn’t make sense. This came from a lack of planning and the workplace abuse the writers and actors faced. A lot of things came down just to what Quackity and/or the other higher ups thought would be cool or clickbait-y.

Arkanis is doing things right so far. Everything seems planned, the story actually seems to know where it’s going, and a lot of things somehow seem to relate back to the story in a way that makes sense.

But also? It’s only been a week. Who knows if the server will be able to keep this momentum up in a healthy way? I hope it does, and I have faith that it will. The guys behind the scenes almost seem to be taking the QSMP’s failures and learning from them while still creating and keeping a unique server identity.

I just hope it lasts!

[canonicallyobserving911]

Buck & Eddie: The Announcement

Still here! - 6x13 "Mixed Feelings"

I've posted several times about how 6x13 was the finale for me since the rest of the season COULD AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN YEETED TO THE SUN AND OBLITERATED but I digress.

The video above includes two scenes, one from 6x9 "Red Flag" and the other from 6x13 "Mixed Feelings". I've combined them to illustrate how they might be related. When Buck joined the team while they were sitting on the rooftop in 6x9, Eddie asked him, "Would you prefer an announcement?" and Buck replied, "Uh... I would" with the first scene from 6x13 when Bobby said, "Over here guys" because it seems like these were subtexts for the announcement of Buck & Eddie.

I've already completed two posts; one for 6x8 regarding the comment Buck made about "Raining Men" (linked here) and one that includes all six scenes of Buck and Eddie, Buck and Chris and the Buckley-Diaz Family for 6x13 (linked here). Also, I've mentioned before how I've watched 6x13 numerous times and each time I've watched it, I've noticed something new. The last time it was Bobby's comment of "Over here guys" that caught my attention because it reminded me of Eddie's question to Buck in 6x9 about if he wanted an announcement that prompted this post. It appears it may have been included as part of "the announcement" for Buck and Eddie too in addition to the "Raining Men" subtext that was included in 6x8, 6x9, 6x10 and 6x13.

Some may be asking, why is this important?

Well... it's important because IIRC, Buck and Eddie have NEVER entered the scene of a call LATE when they were with the 118. The entire team arrives at scenes together, they always have. The only time Buck and Eddie showed up to a call "late" or "just in time" was in 4x13 "Suspicion" but reminder, Buck wasn't in uniform and the 118 wasn't there since Eddie called it in and the 133 was dispatched 👀. Therefore, that scene was eliminated from this analysis.

Also, Captain Mehta was in 6x13 too (exactly two years later following the shooting - detailed post about Captain Mehta in 6x13 linked here) and I've been wondering why he was there if all they wanted him to do was play poker.

I've never believed that was it because reminder, Captain Shore was the 133's captain in 5x16 "May Day" and if the show wasn't trying to tell the audience something, she would have been at the poker table with Chief Williams (another person the audience hadn't seen since season 2 during the earthquake).

Eddie's and Buck's "late" arrival prompted A LOT of unanswered questions for me and I've listed some of them below.

Why were they late?

Where the heck were they?

Were they together? (Since they entered together, I think they were.)

What were they doing? 👀👀

Why didn't they enter the scene with everyone else?

Did Bobby know where they were?

If so, why didn't he call for them sooner?

Is it possible the way Bobby called them along with the way they entered the gym was the announcement about them becoming a romantic couple?

Based on the way season 6 ended, it seemed like the "RUSHED" and messy bridge collapse wasn't supposed to end the way it did and I've often wondered why Bobby was underneath the rubble instead of SOMEONE ELSE (based on the first set of BTS pics that were released, I have an idea of who it should have been but for some reason, it was all changed. Goodbye FOX network and hello ABC) especially since Bobby was trapped under Metro Dispatch's roof in 5x16. The storyline shouldn't have been for him because the team had already worked to get him out of the rubble in season 5 and it was significant then but not so much at the end of season 6. None of the rest of the season made any narrative sense and it's possible it never will if they continue the mixed up and forced narrative they threw in at the last minute for season 7.

It would have been easier if 9-1-1 would have just told the audience what they wanted them to know instead of expecting people to do mental gymnastics to figure things out but... anyway. Was Buck's and Eddie's entrance in 6x13 part of "the announcement" regarding them becoming a CANON couple? Only the showrunner(s), writers and producers know the answer to that question and HOPEFULLY it will be answered in season 7.

[mangoshorthand]

"Can we all agree that people who don’t share all my opinions re TUA S4 are stupid and I am very clever and valid please thank you?"

I feel you so much. I decided to stay off TUA related stuff almost completely as it just hurts my head if I see any bad takes as I wish people would look more at the core of what's wrong with this season, and I am not only talking about that good awful triangle which actually makes the season shitty the most.

The last season of Loki also only had 6 episodes, and it's ending was good. So I wish people would stop excusing it would have made more sense if they had more time to bring more story in like Sloane, if they got the 10 episodes they wanted. Well, they wasted enough screentime for Five and Lila, so there was enough time to include other things too.

I have once been told by a few people that a lot can happen in 7 years and that the plot and the season in general was good, and I needed to sit down for a minute. Yes.. we all have different opinions, but I am like.. you like cheating and plot holes? You honestly think the writers did good writing decisions? You think that's an honorable ending for the characters? Yeah? respectfully ripping my hair out

Sorry for this rant I got so angry again LMAO.

I suspect people who enjoyed it were not engaging with the show as anything beyond spectacle. It's totally okay to engage with things on that level, don't get me wrong, but I think anyone with even a mildly critical (i.e. analytical) perspective will discover issues with it.

I think people forget that writing effective stories does not mean realism. Characters aren't real people, they're one of many devices at a writer's disposal to communicate a narrative.

Yes, in real life a lot *can* happen in 7 years, but this isn't real life, this is a TV show. Audiences need to be able to track character evolution for the resulting character changes to feel satisfying and character driven. I do not feel the writers of TUA were successful in this regard.

(Having said that, this is easier to critique than achieve. In my Hard Feelings series there is a 11 year time skip between parts 4 + 5 and it's hard for me to judge whether fell foul of the same thing. It might make sense to me but that doesn't mean I succeeded in communicating it to readers.)

What's frustrating about TUA it is the waste of potential. What we ended up with was shallow and random-feeling. I was thinking this the other night: I genuinely didn't give a shit that they all died because they were not the characters I'd developed a relationship with. I was even a little glad, honestly. I watched them get subsumed by the ridiculous Bennifer blob and felt nothing but cheated.

There we go, I also ranted.

[mrryckman]

Stop making 8-episode seasons

When you look at why people complain about shows in recent years, so much of it boils down to a couple of issues issues:

- The pacing was inconsistent/the pacing lot felt rushed

- The audience couldn’t connect enough with the characters to care about what was happening

Why is this?

It’s because when a show has only 8 episodes, there isn’t enough wiggle-room to properly flesh out ideas and characters.

Take Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Only 8 episodes! The first season of the animated series had 20.

But MrRyckman, the animated show’s episodes were much shorter!

Timewise, the animated show’s first season came to a runtime of about 7 hours and 34 minutes, compared with the live-action’s 6 hours and 22 minutes, a difference of over an hour in runtime. That is not inconsequential, even if you cut the plot of a few episodes (which they did).

The other issue is that, whereas animated shows tend to dive right into the action (because animation allows for unique character designs and bright colors that makes it easier to distinguish things), live action shows tend to take their time. They introduce characters more slowly, take time to introduce more intricate plots, and use a fair bit of time to wrap things up. That results in a *lot* less time to replicate the same elements without just doing a 1:1 adaptation (which in this case would be extra-weird).

What makes shows memorable?

Shows become memorable when audiences connect with the characters, and this cannot happen when every season of your show has to be intensely plot-focused. Look at popular shows like Supernatural - each season of that show had between 16-23 episodes, most of which were around 40 minutes long.

Because each season had approximately 800 minutes to tell a season-long arc, Supernatural was able to have character-focused episodes where little plot happened. As a result, audiences connected with Sam and Dean (and Castiel. And Bobby. And others!) more!

This isn’t to say that all shows with shorter seasons are terrible. In fact, when the writers know what they are doing (or are adapting a work that can fit nicely into that timeframe), shorter-seasoned shows can become popular, too!

For the first 4-5 seasons of Game of Thrones, the showrunners were very adept at balancing plot and character moments. Heck, there were *tons* of characters that audiences connected with, far more than other shows with longer seasons, and yet audiences had no trouble connecting with them because the show was well-written. It gave us time to know the characters and understand more than just their basic motivations, and kept putting different characters together to show unique interactions that contributed to the show’s popularity.

Then the showrunners decided they were tired of GoT and cut it short. Despite the fact that HBO was more than happy to give them several more 10-episode seasons, they ended it at Season 8 and cut the final two seasons to just 7 and 6 episodes. Because they had to get to a predetermined ending, they rushed the plot, resulting in character assassinations and fast-travel of a sort that even the Dragonborn would be jealous of. And all at once, the collective consciousness of the Internet doomed the show to die just about as soon as it had finished airing. The shortened seasons didn’t help it - they actively hurt a show that had taken the attention of millions of people.

Why the shorter seasons now?

So if we have examples of long-running shows with huge fandoms (meaning more people willing to spend money on products related to said fandom) and an example of a show that ruined its reputation with two shorter seasons, why are 8-episode seasons suddenly the norm?

It’s a combination of multiple factors. For starters, networks are trying to make higher-quality shows to capitalize off what they saw as the successes of shows like Game of Thrones. Bigger set pieces, more CGI elements, big-name actors, all of which means more money. Instead of many low-budget shows, we now have a case of several big-budget shows. But in order to maintain that level of quality throughout, there have to be fewer episodes.

There are other factors as well (the popularity of binge-streaming, the fact that networks no longer have to care about syndication and reaching 100 episodes, to name a few), but overall, it is clear that networks seem to think that 8-episode seasons are the way to go.

Do I hope that the rise in negative reviews with shows like The Acolyte or the last two seasons of GoT will maybe force networks to reconsider this model and give us longer, better-developed shows? Absolutely. But I’m also cynical enough not to think they will.

[the-man-with-many-faces]

Hey, the internet is an interesting place, isn't it? The epitome of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Whats up! I'm Surya!

(This is an OC ask blog. Surya's 15 and a sumeru character, 5 star, and a pyro vision)

(Now for the backstory of how I created him. I'm a decently prominent user on hoyolab with 300+ followers (idk how) and somehow became a huge part of this online friend group that made a lot of genshin ocs and ship content and I love them so so much)

(so naturally I created a ship child of my own. Surya's the adopted son of Layla and Nilou (a rarepair I enjoy shipping) and I created a backstory and voicelines for him and everything)

(a lot of things are still in development and I encourage any and all interactions! But there are some guidlines)

(1. don't be toxic

2. Any ships are allowed but if something makes me uncomfortable (like I said Surya's fifteen (and I am a minor) so I won't respond to anything NSFW and anything that makes me uncomfortable in general)

3. May not respond to DMs.

AND THATS ALL

SILLINESS IS ENCOURAGED :)

Now for the voicelines!

Hello - Well, if it isn’t the all powerful nomad himself! I’m Surya, the adoptive son of the genius Rtawahist student Layla and Nilou, the greatest dancer of all of Teyvat! I’m not one for brute violence, but if you need someone for acting tips and psychological warfare, I’m your guy! 

More about Surya (Part 1): You want to know my secret to acting? Heh, many people had asked me that exact same thing before… of course I haven’t told them anything. They’d use my context against me. But I’d have no problem telling you, travelers - Why? Because you’d have no use for it, of course. Even with as much as I trust you, I have suspicions that you would use anything you could to get what you wanted. I don’t even mean it as a bad thing. In fact, I rather admire you for it…

About Surya - Part II-

Heh, you’re not going to stop pestering me about this are you? Fine, fine. I’ll quit stalling. The reason I’m so good in acting is that the people who act a role are always told to know a character. When they play their part they always seem so related to a character. Their mothers, fathers, siblings, best friend, lover… but never the characters themselves. As an analogy, obviously. They convey the personality of a character fairly well so that it’s easier for the audience to distinguish between the characters and what makes them significant in the plot. These actors even understand the character’s lives, their struggle, their relationships… but its not enough. It’s NEVER enough. You need to BE the characters. No… no… EVEN THATS NOT ENOUGH! You need to become the very god who would have created and controlled every aspect of the character as if he existed in this very world! Heh, must''ve sounded a little off my rocker there, but no true artist has a right state of mind. I was always rather interested in psycology as a child, before I even got into acting. Even the slightest twitch of a muscle can speak volumes of a person, traveller.

More about Surya 3: Studies - Guhhh, I wish I took something OTHER than Spantamad for the Akademiya. There’s just so much to memorize! And I HATE HATE HATE memorizing! Maybe I should just get a split nocturnal personality myself that would do all my homework for me. But seriously, if I didn’t convince former grand sage Professor Cyrus to tutor me, I’d have been kicked out YEARS ago.

Chat: Lore and legends - Mythology is interesting, but it’s not my thing. Why bother or ponder something that may or may not be real? I mean, I can understand why people care and enjoy it, but it’s a pointless concept to me. It doesn’t even affect us and our lives!

Chat: Good and evil - How many people have you met on your travels so far at this point traveler? About hundreds? Vision bearers like us must’ve been the ones who’ve made an impact (a genshin impact) the most on you. Out of curiosity, have you ever met someone with absolutely pure intentions, or intentions for purely satirical joy? Heh, of course few of the only people with pure intentions were my parents. I do love them so. 

I’ve heard you had multiple encounters with the Fatui? Must’ve met a few of the Harbingers yourself with all the trouble you’ve caused, heh. Do you think they do the things they do out of purely evil purposes? Il Dottore? Okay, that’s fair enough, you’ve got me there.

Chat: Knowledge and wisdom - According to what I’ve studied in the Akademiya, the definition of knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association. But our beloved lesser lord Kusanali is known as the archon of knowledge and wisdom. She was locked away when the Akademiya was corrupted by the former sages for a long time, wasn’t she? And got most of the wisdom she knows today by taking all of the dreams of the citizens of Sumeru. If so, if she hasn’t experienced things herself firsthand. So, can we really call her the archon of knowledge? I’m probably looking into this too much, amn’t I? Phew, sorry.

When it rains: Ahhh, the rain feels nice on my skin! I almost wanna burst into song and dance!

When thunder strikes: Agh! That sounds like a gunshot!….oh thank god. It's just thunder.

When it snows: It's pretty cold…hope my fingers don’t freeze and break off my hand.

When the sun is out: Whew, now it’s pretty hot! 

In the desert: The sun..is so hot….I’m gonna melt into a puddle in my shoes…AAAHHHH SCARABS!

Good morning: Do you have any sweets by any chance? I need some sugar to fully wake up now.

Good afternoon: The perfect time for multiple cups of Chai! And maybe psych people out just for fun, hehe.

Good night: Have a good rest, traveler. I’m just going to stay up a bit to study if you don’t mind.

About Surya: Psychology - Psychology is something I got into when I noticed amma’s nocturnal personality when I was a lot younger. Oh, sorry! I meant to say Layla, didn’t mean to confuse you there. I was curious about why she acted that way, was it out of free will or was it a mental disorder of some sort? Not that it was a bad thing, it was the only reason she managed to even complete some of her assignments in the first place! It’s something I apply to real life and my acting almost everyday. How do I do it? Tag along and maybe I can teach you.

About Surya: Morality (unlocked after Caeleste solem et lunam - Act 1) - Sigh, look traveler, I’m….aware the things I’ve done in the past were far from pardonable. But even then, you still helped me at my lowest point. Sometimes I get so into acting like someone else that I completely forget who I am and who I’m supposed to be. Hopefully my journey to find myself will help me realize who I really am.

About us: Mutual relations - Hey, um, about my moms….take care of them for me, alright? They’re definitely the strongest people I know, but I can’t help but worry for them, haha. 

About us: Unwinding - Genius Invocation time, haha! Who knows, maybe you’ll actually beat me! I do enjoy moments like these, where we don’t need to think about anything else other than the cards in our hands! 

Have I ever played against the General Mahamatra? I feel like he’d get too competitive and ruin the purpose of the game for me. And I’m…pretty sure he hates me.

About the vision - My pyro vision really adds that little ‘razzle dazzle’ to my performances! I kinda wish I got an electro one instead, but I’m not complaining! I’m not complaining.

Something to share - Y’know, the only reason why Professor Cyrus is tutoring me now is because I promised to analyze his rival Zaha Hadi’s cropping style for tomatoes! So he could get one up on her, hehe. It’s a little strange, but I desperately need the help.

About Layla - She along with Nilou had taken me in when I was just a baby! She was still studying in the Akademiya back then, so it was hard for her to balance all the work, but they somehow managed! And ‘other Layla’ is as much of a parental figure as normal Layla is, but they are definitely different in styles of….everything. Between her and Nilou, she’s the more logical one. I’ve got some math skills from her too! I don’t understand why she needs to work so hard, she’s one of the smartest people I know. Hahhh, such is the Akademiya. Making sure evry single cell in your body has knowledge.

About Nilou - Nilou was the more empathetic parent. I could talk to her about just anything in the world, and even if she doesn’t agree with me, she always tries her best to understand my point of view. People don’t usually realize how hard it could be to represent something that wasn’t connected to knowledge in the nation of wisdom, but she has managed to make a name for herself despite oppression from the Akademiya when it was corrupted. I hope I will be able to make her proud once I make a name for myself.

About Cyno - He…he isn’t here is he?! He kinda hates me. And by kinda, I mean REALLY hates me. The former General Mahamatra huh? He’s the person I have the hardest time figuring out. What gave him the determination to execute his idea of justice? Who says that it's even right? Granted, there really is no right or wrong, but you know what I mean, traveler. And the biggest question of all, how are he and the head forest ranger even as close as they are? It’s rather unlikely if you ask me. And I lied. The biggest question of all is why he tells those horrendous jokes of his?! If they’re told with the intention of making people feel more at ease around him, it's obviously not working. 

I told him my opinion personally at one point, and he forced me to sit down to listen to five of his best jokes. The man is terrifying, I’ll give him that.

About Wanderer - Wanderer? Who the hell is he….hat guy? Oh, Hat guy! The weird Inazuma exchange student! He’s in the Vahumuna darshan. He keeps to himself a lot, other than with that Akademiya errand boy he always eats lunch with. When I asked him about where in Inazuma he’s from, he got really defensive and told me to back off. Seems like he doesn’t want to talk about home. Homesickness, or wanting to get away from past memories there? 

About Tighnari - Hm, there’s nothing really strange about him. He’s mostly normal, and definitely one of the better research scientists I’ve seen. Definitely more ethical, as far as I’m concerned. Got quite the sharp tongue however, that’s certain. That’s gonna get him in a lot of trouble one day……what do you mean I better not let Cyno hear me say this?

Surya’s hobbies - I don’t even need to answer that question, do i? Acting and TCG!

Surya’s troubles - I’ve been told by many, MANY people that I’m way too honest. And a lot of people fear me about how much I observe people and how I know a lot of their secrets just by looking at them. I don’t exactly have many friends…but I don’t really need them. …..I’m glad you’re comfortable enough to hang around me though, traveler.

Favorite food - Do you wanna know a secret traveler? The best biryani….is from WEDDINGS. I’ve more than often found myself sneaking into other people’s weddings just for the biryani. Have I gotten caught? What do you think?

Least favorite food - I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE anything with alcohol. How do people even enjoy that stuff?! It’s bitter and gross. What do you mean wine can be sweet?! You’re lying!

Receiving a gift: 1 - Ah, I see you come bearing gifts!

Receiving a gift: 2 - Hmmm, not bad. I can work with this!

Receiving a gift: 3 - …….don’t take this personally but this is the most **** ***** **** ******* I’ve ever seen.

Birthday - TRAVELER! I heard it was your BIRTHDAY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUUUU..I’m kidding I’m not gonna sing, for now at least. May your birthday be full of good food, fun times with friends and happy memories! Here, I made a card for you! It’s nothing much…but I worked really hard on it! I heard you were still looking for your sibling. I’ve been inquiring about them when I’m not too busy. I do hope you end up finding them one day.

Feelings about ascension: Intro - Yeah! We’ve got the power!

Feelings about ascension: Building up - C’mon, no point stopping now!

Feelings about ascension: Climax - We’re almost there! It’s nearly showtime!

Feelings about ascension: Conclusion - You knew this was coming for a long time….I JUST WANNA BE PART OF YOUR SYMPHONYYYY.

Damn thats a lot

and last but not least

ART!!

THIS IS BY @punchesyou literally picasso reincarnated go follow her RN

I made this on picsrew (he looks 5 :( )

Ugly ahhh drawing by me :(

and that's it!

I'll be posting voicelines everyday cause I know y'all might not have time to read them all

love ya pookies! <3 )

[rjalker]

the summary for Flatland so far once again. this is the work in progress. it's not done.

feel free to list out what I missed for the section about Flatland since I know I'm forgetting stuff and unlike the translation it's a lot harder to check.

i am not taking the time to add the images in. it will say "image" because I have placeholders in the document for the image decriptions but there's no actual images in this post.

it is pretty much guarenteed that whatever I forgot is really, really obvious.

it's like 6k words long so far.

This is a summary of the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbot Abbot, published in 1884.

The goal is to summarize everything from the original novel to make it easier for people to understand, if they don’t want to read the original novel, or would like a reminder.

Part 0: About the Narrator of Flatland

The Narrator of the original book does not have any confirmed name that we know, because he chose to hide his identity with the fake name of “A. Square”, the same way that people will call themselves “J. Doe” or “M. Smith” when they don’t want to reveal their true identity.

Many fans enjoy calling him “Abbot Square”, affectionately naming him after the author, Edwin Abbot Abbot, or give him other names that start with A, and base their original characters’ last names on their shape in a similar style. Ex: “Bee Line”

But his name is not actually A. Square, so you can call him anything you want, and you won’t be wrong. The Sphere who visited him also has no confirmed name, and can again be called anything. We do not know what kind of surnames exist in Flatland.

The only character from the book whose name we know for certain was Pantocyclus, a historical dictator Circle. Another historical figure is usually called Chromatistes, but there is some debate by historians about whether or not that’s accurate. Both of them lived thousands of years before the story takes places, so the only things we know about them is what the Circles decided to tell people afterward.

The narrator himself has a wife, and they have had at least six children together: 5 Pentagons, and 1 Straight Line.

We do not know any of their names, or their personalities. We do know that one of the adult Pentagon sons died, presumably along with his wife, leaving behind two orphaned Hexagons, the narrator’s grandsons, who now live with the narrator and the rest of his sons and daughter. They live in a surprisingly rich neighborhood near a large theater. We know that the roof of their house was recently repaired, though we do not know how it was damaged.

Part 1: About Flatland, and the people and societies that the Narrator was familiar with

People in Flatland don't actually call their world “Flatland” among themselves, it's just what the narrator called his world to make what it's like more obvious for the audience. (Because you can tell from the name that Flatland...is gonna be flat.)

We do not know the names of any countries in Flatland, or what any of them call their world. We do not know how many countries there are, or how big or small they are, or where they are in relation to one another. We just know that there are multiple countries that are ruled by a council of Circles, which is then ruled by the supreme Chief Circle.

It might be helpful to think of them as structured similarly to the United States of America, but we don’t know for sure.

There are almost certainly countries outside of this arrangement, but none were spoken of.

Flatlanders refer to themselves as human beings. Nothing is told to us about any other specific species in Flatland, though the narrator does take the time to assure us that just because he doesn’t mention something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

We know that vegetables and trees exist in Flatland, but we don’t know the details, besides that tree trunks somehow aid in determining North and South.

You should imagine the inhabitants of Flatland as very thin shapes that swim through the top layer of a large ocean. They can't leave this single layer, either by going up or down, and they’re not aware of anything outside it. They’re not even aware that they’re inside a liquid at all, or aware of any movement of this liquid. They cannot look up or down. They have no inherent concept of up or down at all.

They categorize the directions as North, South, East, and West, and are able to tell where South is because there is a southern pull, like gravity, noticeable in most parts of Flatland. The strength of this pull is increased the further South you go, and weakens the further North you travel.

We do not know for sure what causes it, because the narrator did not know, but it could be some sort of magnet, or a dense core of some sort creating a kind of gravity.

Houses in Flatland are shaped like pentagons, because it was decided that the angle of a pentagon was the sharpest angle that should be allowed on a building for the sake of public safety, because running into the sharp corner of a building could be very dangerous.

The pentagonal houses face north so that rain, which always comes from the north on a predictable schedule, does not come in either of the doors, which are on lower sides that are angled inward. On the western side is a large door for men, on the east a much smaller door for women.

The only buildings allowed to have sharper corners are amunition warehouses and other military and governemnt buildings that are not meant to be approached by just any random person. It can be safely assumed that jails and asylums also have sharp corners to keep people away.

If not for the fascist society they live in, it can be assumed that Flatlanders would naturally come to theorize about other mathematical dimensions just like we have.

When seen from above or below, the internal organs of Flatlanders are clearly visible.

They are not aware that their insides are visible from another angle, because, and I cannot stress this enough, they have no idea that the directions of “up” or “down” exist at all.

They exist only in two dimensions. As far as they are concerned, they’re completely solid, just like you and me.

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What exactly their insides look like is up for you and I to speculate on, because the narrator didn’t feel like giving a lecture on anatomy. (Imagine if you were suddenly called upon by aliens to give a lesson on the anatomy of the human body. How helpful do you think you’d be?)

Flatlanders each have a single eye, which, in some way that is never explained to us, doubles as their mouth. This eye-mouth will always found on one of the Flatlander’s angles or points, where two sides meet.

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You do not have to stick to this, you can do whatever you want. But you should at least do so knowing that it’s not how they work in the book. Knowing the rules and breaking them with purpose is better than just not knowing how things are supposed to work at all.

For Isosceles triangles, we know that their eye-mouth is on one of the points of their base, rather than their longer sharp point. For Straight Lines, just pick an end. For other Irregular Figures, go wild, pick whatever angle you want. There is no such thing as a true Circle in Flatland, only Figures with many small sides, so you can just pick any part of a Circilar character to put their eye, even if you’re just simplying them as a Circle. (I doubt anyone wants to sit there and figure out how to draw a shape with 600+ perfectly equal sides)

When inside Flatland, their natural habitat, a Flatlander only ever sees anything they are looking at from its side, so that everything appears as a straight line, just at different sizes, levels of brightness, and distances.

You can see how this would work yourself, by taking a coin, or a shape cut out in cardboard or paper, and putting it on a table.

When you look down on it from above, you see the shape it really is. But if you put your eye on the level with the table it sits on, it will appear as a straight line.

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That straight line is how Flatlanders see everything when they are inside Flatland.

When someone or something is closer to them, the line appears longer from side to side, and when further away, it is smaller from side to side.

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This is why their eye-mouths are on their edges, which they refer to as “solids”, because that is the only direction they can ever look, and everything looks solid from that angle.

If they had an eye-mouth on their upper or lower side, they wouldn’t be able to see or eat anything inside Flatland, and they would only see what is above or below them.

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As above, you can break this rule for stylization purposes, or you could do a story where a character is born with their eye out of the usual place, and is considered Irregular because of it. But when speaking of the original novel, this is how it works.

We do not have any details of what above and below Flatland look like, so it is up for any interpretation.

Despite everything they look at appearing as a straight line, Flatlanders are still able to navigate and recognize one another by sight, because the edges of Flatlanders and other living things glow with automatic bioluminescence, and because in many places there is usually a dense "fog" in the air.

This means that when one Flatlander looks at another in an area with fog, the areas that are closer to them appear brighter, and the parts that are further away are darker.

Three Figures will help us demonstrate this so you can understand: Billie the Straight Line, Bob the Circle, and Joe the Hexagon.

If Bob the Circle looks at Joe the Hexagon so that one of Joe’s flat sides is facing him, Bob the Circle will see a bright line in the center of his vision, with a darker gradient on either side.

The bright line is the flat side of Joe that is closest to Bob. The gradient on either side is what is visible of Joe’s other sides from this perspective.

And if Billie the Straight Line looks at Joe from another angle, so that one of Joe’s points is facing her instead of one of his flat sides, then Billie will see a small point of light, with a slower fade to dark around it, because the closest thing to Billie is one of Joe’s points.

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By using the different levels of brightness and darkness when looking at one another, Flatlanders whose families are rich enough to send them to specialized private rich kid schools can learn to recognize different shapes from sight alone.

This is known as The Art of Sight Recognition, and it is very difficult to master, so difficult in fact that most Flatlanders rely instead upon The Art of Feeling – where Flatlanders gently and carefully feel along the angles of one another to figure out what shape they are. This is treated as a formal introduction.

This can be dangerous if you’re not careful, because some shapes have very sharp angles that can cut, stab, or even outright kill someone if hit with enough force.

The Narrator tells us that one of his ancestors, who was an Isosceles triangle, accidentally killed a man while he was being felt, by accidentally moving suddenly due to pain from arthritis, and ended up cutting the man who’d been feeling in half.

We are told that the “moral shock” of this action degraded their family’s angle for generations, but it is more likely that the people doing the measuring simply lied about their angles to punish them.

Higher class citizens look down on the art of Feeling, and instead spend a whole lot of money and time learning to use Sight Recognition alone, so they can feel special and more intelligent than the poor people.

The male children of noblemen are not allowed to learn the art of Feeling at all, and must rely on Sight Recognition forever. If, when they go to one of their fancy rich people collages, they’re caught using the art of Feeling, they will be given a warning the first time, along with some sort of punishment, and expelled completely the second time.

Any noble who fails to learn the art of Sight Recognition even after years in university being taught it is completely shunned from the society of their fellow rich people, and no longer has the right to get married, for fear that they’d pass their inability to learn Sight Recognition down to their kids. Because fascism and eugenics go hand in hand.

Since these “trash of the rich” as the narrator calls them don’t know how to use Sight Recognition or the Art of Feeling, they’re unable to interact with larger society at all, and lead miserable lives.

It can be safely assumed that those who are unable to learn Sight Recognition despite access to plenty of highly skilled teachers are failing due to some sort of disability – either vision problems, or some sort of neurodiversity.

There is another kind of recognition used to tell people’s classes apart, and it is done simply by listening to someone speak, and judging what class they’re from based on their accent.

This isn’t very helpful, though, because poor people are able to mimic the accents of rich people, while rich people, who only ever hang out with other rich people, cannot do the same for poor people, since they, presumably, have no idea what they actually sound like.

And since all the rich people hang out together, and more importantly are desperate to fit in with one another and not stand out, they all speak in the same general way, so you can’t tell from their Rich Person Accent alone whether they’re an eight-sided Octagon, or a twenty-sided Icosagon.

When A Square wrote his autobiography, Flatland's known societies accepted only specific shapes as worthy of being called human beings with basic civil rights, insisting that humans could only be "Regular" Figures, meaning that all of their angles and sides had to match.

This meant that when the Art of Feeling or Sight Recognition were used for identification, only a single angle needed to be felt or looked at to know the whole shape.

The societies of Flatland the original narrator was aware of also considered all “Straight Lines” to be female, and every Figure not a “Straight Line” to be male.

Because Joe and Bob are “shapes” with multiple angles, they would be considered Men, or Male, and Billie, being a “Straight Line”, and having “no angles” would be considered a Woman, or Female.

But despite the fact that they are referred to as “Straight Lines”, educated Flatlanders are in fact aware that so-called “Straight Lines” are actually all very thin parallelograms, a term that includes squares, rectangles, diamonds, and more.

Straight Lines are shapes too, with their own angles, just like everyone else, they just happen to be much thinner.

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This fact did nothing to alter the narrator’s society’s insistence that Straight Lines lacked angles, and therefore literally lacked brains.

Actual facts don’t actually convince bigots to change their minds, because bigotry isn’t logical, it just claims to be for a false sense of legitimacy.

Irregular Figures and the Systems of Oppression in Flatland

The lowest status members of Flatland society at the time the narrator was alive were “Irregulars”, which were shapes whose angles and sides did not all match, and, we can assume, Lines that were not straight, though the original book does not actually mention Irregular Lines.

It can be assumed that Irregular Lines existed just as much as other Irregular Figures, and they would be categorized as Lines depending on how thin they are compared to other figures.

The very obvious implication of Women being called “Straight Lines” in particular very clearly implies the existance of non-straight or Irregular Lines.

Irregular figures were not considered human at all in the countries the narrator knew of, and, in these countries, most of them were killed as soon as they were born if doctors decided that medical intervention couldn’t “fix” the Irregularity.

In the original novel, Irregularity is used as a metaphor for oppressed people of all kinds in many scenarios, including intersex people, disabled people, people of color, Queer people, and more, depending on the situation.

The act of surgically altering infants who are considered “Irregular” is a very clear parallel to the hardships intersex people face in reality, along with some disabled people.

This system of Regular-Superiority meant that Equilateral or Equal-sided Triangles were the lowest class of Figures acknowledged to be human, and because they have the lowest number of equal sides and angles possible, which is three.

These societies had a very strict caste system, where your shape determined everything about your life, including the kind of jobs you would be allowed to work, who you could marry, and where you could live.

Isosceles are triangles who have exactly two angles and sides that do match, with a third side and angle that are not matching.

These are not to be confused with Scalene triangles, who have no matching angles at all.

Neither Isosceles, or Scalene triangles were considered human, and they had no civil rights at all, though Scalene triangles were not explicitly mentioned.

Isosceles were the lowest class of Figure allowed to exist within society without being murdered on sight in most cases, because, while they were still Irregular, they were the least amount of Irregular as you could get, with only a single side/angle not being equal.

Triangles with no matching sides at all, meaning Scalene triangles, were not tolerated within any of the societies the narrator was familiar with, and would presumably be murdered on sight, or as soon as they were born, if their Irregularity could not be surgically “fixed” to make them either an Isosceles or an Equal-sided triangle.

To reiterate again, Isosceles triangles were not considered human beings, due to being Irregular.

They were considered property, and were bought and sold as such.

They were forced to perform all of the most dangerous, difficult, degrading, and tedious jobs, and also served as expendable soldiers for the military, and private armies.

They were were also used as cleaning and serving staff for middle and upper-class families, serving as butlers, errand-boys, dishwashers, and more, and would probably be inherited along with the house they were attached to.

Also known as, they were enslaved.

The measurement of an Isosceles’ unequal angle would determine their social status among other Isosceles. The closer your third angle was to 60 degrees, the higher your status, which would give you access to better and safer work assignments.

Instead of being used to clean the disease-ridden, clogged sewer for example, you might instead be washing dishes in a rich guy’s mansion.

Isosceles with very small angles were, among other things, regularly used as expendable executioners, being brought in to kill prisoners who were involved with state secrets, only to them be killed themselves to avoid being able to reveal those secrets to others, even if they hadn’t actually heard the prisoner say anything.

Isosceles were treated as completely disposable non-human things barely worthy of being considered people.

In these fascist societies, Irregularity was conflated with moral bankruptcy, meaning anyone who was born anything except perfectly Regular was considered to be inherently evil, which was the excuse given for murdering these people at every opportunity.

But even during the narrator’s lifetime, there were people trying to fight back against this idea, spreading pamphlets pointing out that if a child is born Irregular, and he has to face abuse, hatred, and bullying from his nurse, siblings, and even parents for as long as he can remember, and is constantly told that he’s inherently a bad person no matter what he does, and then is shoved out into the world where he is constantly followed by the police under the assumption that he’s going to commit a crime, and he is not allowed to have a job or get married, and has no friends to speak of.

If you deny someone literally every opportunity to do good, what other choice do you give him except to be bad?

If you will not let him honestly work for his food, where do you expect him to get it besides from stealing?

In other words, treating people like criminals and refusing to let them have any opportunities for “honest work”...literally means they have no choice but to become the criminals you’ve told them they are since they were born.

The narrator was not convinced by these pamphlets, even though he admits they are “very plausible”, because he insists that he’s never met an Irregular who wasn’t a horrible person who deserved everything he got.

He admits that the lives of Irregulars do suck, but says that’s just too bad, because their lives just have to suck to make sure everyone else’s don’t.

We do not know any details about any specific Irregular characters, because they were only ever mentioned as hypothetical.

Any shape that does not have all equal sides and angles would be considered Irregular, regardless of any other equality or symetry about the shape.

A perfectly symmetrical five-pointed star, for example, would still be considered Irregular even though it’s symmetrical, because the wider angles on the inside do not match the sharper angles on the five points.

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The same would be true of many other shapes as well. The eugenicist goals of Flatland were incredibly specific and restrictive.

If all three of your angles were measured at 60 degrees, you weren’t considered an Isosceles, but an Equal-sided triangle, and you would have basic human rights.

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Isosceles with angles approaching 60 were regularly put into arranged marriages by Circles in an attempt to “breed” children who would be born Equilateral triangles.

If an Equilateral triangle were born to any Isosceles family, whether through the explicit eugenicist program run by the Circles, or by random chance, the infant would be immediately taken away from their Isosceles family, and given to an Equilateral family that does not have any children.

The adoptive parents are then sworn to never reveal the child’s true birth parents, and never to let the child anywhere near them, with the fear that their Irregularity might be contagious and infect the child with proximity.

The birth of an Equilateral triangles from the Isosceles class is celebrated for miles around, because it is used as “proof” to the Isosceles slaves that if they just work hard enough, they can win a better future for their children. They are told that hard work, frugality, and self-control will increase their chances of having Equilateral children.

This is patently not true, but it is a helpful lie for the Circles to spread, because it means their force of free labor works harder and doesn’t complain as much when they don’t have enough to eat. It is the same myth that is spread today, of the “self-made millionaire”.

The rich will always tell you that simply working hard and being a good person is what got them where they are today. The truth is that they were just born to rich parents, and maintain that wealth through exploitation of the working classes, just like the Isosceles of Flatland are exploited for the benefit of the higher classes.

Because the angles of Isosceles were categorized in a range from 0.5 to 59.5 degrees.

This meant that their angles could be useful for learning the Art of Feeling, to learn to tell shapes apart by touch by learning how to tell angles apart.

Because of this, a huge number of Isosceles, especially those with smaller angles and thus lower status, were sold to elementary schools for middle and upper class children to learn the Art of Feeling.

The children would Feel the Isosceles, using them as a human guinea pig. Yes, this is exactly as horrifying as it sounds.

More expensive schools with higher budgets would allow the Isosceles prisoners to literally starve to death while being Felt every day by probably hundreds of children.

A Flatlander going without food or water could survive for around a month, which meant these prisoners spent their last month of life being tortured to death not only from starvation and dehydration, but constant poking, prodding, and, since kids also have sharp angles, probably also many cuts and bruises.

When they died, the rich school would simply buy a new enslaved person to replace them with.

We do not know how they disposed of the bodies, or what exactly happens when a Flatlander dies.

Schools that could not afford to keep buying new enslaved people every month would provide the ones they did have with food and water, keeping them alive for years on end, before eventually replacing them with “fresh specimens”, to quote the narrator, when they eventually died, or became too scarred from constant feeling to be “useful” anymore.

The narrator of the book originally advocated for allowing these enslaved people to starve, specifically in the hopes of “thinning their numbers”.

After being imprisoned for seven years and thinking about what the Sphere had said to him, the last we’d heard, he’d become much more progressive in regards to the treatment of Women and Isosceles, within the story’s perspective.

From an out of universe perspective, the entire point of him being such a blatant bigot in the first place is, I feel the need to remind people, specifically done to make the bigotry absolutely clear and make people think of how reprehensible it is.

You are supposed to look at the narrator casually and happily advocating to let people starve to death while being tortured and think “holy crap what is wrong with this guy and the rest of his society?”. And then you’re supposed to take that idea and look at what is going on in the world around you and see if that outrage has a target in the real world, because it probably does.

In the United States, slavery is still, literally legal, as long as it’s imposed as a punishment for a crime. That’s literally what’s written in the constitution in 2024, and has been since slavery was supposedly “abolished”.

Prisoners in the United States in 2024 are literally, by law, enslaved. They are forced to fight wildfires. They are forced to labor without pay, or for just pennies an hour doing difficult and dangerous work. And this is literally slavery as defined by the Constitution of the United States, which say it’s fine actually, because slavery as punishment for a crime is good.

Flatland was written to criticize the systems of oppression in Victorian England, but the criticisms themselves are timeless.

Back to the summary.

Isosceles triangles made up the majority of non-Straight Line population in the narrator’s country.

Next in the social order of recognized classes in Flatland would be Straight Lines, who are considered Women.

Like Isosceles, they have no civil rights, but unlike Isosceles, they are not enslaved, nor are they casually tortured to death inside elementary schools. They are not allowed have a job outside the home, or get an education, but they are still much better off than any Isosceles, who is not only denied an education, but is also, and I cannot stress this enough, literally enslaved.

Many bigoted people read Flatland and pretend that Straight Lines are the most oppressed people in it, because they’ve decided to ignore the fact that Isosceles are literally enslaved and tortured to death in elementary schools.

You, my dear reader, will not ignore this, will you?

You will not make me or anyone else suffer through essays and fan-sequels that pretend it’s good the Isosceles are literally enslaved and tortured while you pretend that they are treated better than Straight Lines, will you? Because if you do I will be absolutely ashamed that you ever read this summary and still came away with such a horrible understanding of the systems of oppression in Flatland.

Look up White Feminism and why it’s bad. Ignoring the oppression of marginalized men to pretend that women are the only oppressed people who exist will always be racist, ableist, and more.

The Flatland version, you might say, could be called Straight Line Feminism. And I do not want to have to deal with any more people pretending it’s good and true.

Do not pretend that Straight Lines are the most oppressed people in Flatland. Just don’t do it. Do not brush the treatment of Isosceles and Irregulars under the rug because you don’t think anyone besides Women can really be oppressed or has rights worth fighting for.

Straight Lines are oppressed. But you cannot pretend they’re the most oppressed people in Flatland when the other oppressed people are literally being enslaved and regularly tortured to death, or just flat out murdered on sight.

If you are writing stories where the characters are fighting back against the injustice in Flatland, they need to be fighting back for the rights of everyone, not just Straight Lines.

Now let’s get back to the summary.

Straight Lines are in some countries of Flatland required by law to constantly move their back end from side to side to make them easily visible to anyone who might be standing behind them.

This is for two reasons: 1: to let Edwin Abbot Abbot reference the bustles on dresses that were in fashion during the era the book was written.

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2: To make them easier to see.

Flatlanders are bioluminescent on their their edges their eyemouths. The level of brightness from their eyemouth is even used to indicate mood.

From the sides, a Straight Line appears as a glowing line, which is easy to see. Billie, Bob, and Joe, will demonstrate again:

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From the front, they appear as a glowing point. This is harder to see than a full line, but still visible.

But from behind, their point does not glow as brightly, and because of this it’s hard to see, because of how tiny it is compared to everything else you might be looking at.

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By moving their rear end back and forth, that dim speck becomes a little easier to notice, so you’re less likely to run into them. Something which could be very dangerous if you were moving quickly, because of how sharp they are.

They are also expected to keep up a constant “Peace-Cry”, or a humming noise, so that anyone can hear when they are near.

It should also be noted that Straight Lines are also used to represent Women as another reference to ongoing social issues at the time the book was written.

At the time, fancy hats were very fashionable for women, and to keep them in place, people would use a long sharp pin to stick through the hat and through their hair, holding everything together.

This wasn’t a problem for anyone, until women who were harassed or attacked realized they could use these hat pins to defend themselves.

And then of course everyone got all up in arms – not because these women were being attacked, but because they dared to defend themselves and their boundaries.

Instead of punishing the men who were harassing women, the women were punished for defending themselves. Laws were passed to regulate the length that hat pins could be, and anyone wearing one longer than the limit would be, in some places, fined over a thousand dollars in 2024’s money.

Straight Lines are categorized as Women in Flatland because if they weren’t treated horribly, they’d have less reason to kill people.

Which they did, a lot, especially in areas where they were forced to endure harsher restrictions, like in some countries of Flatland, where they were not allowed to leave the house at all except during religious holidays, or have to be escorted by a male relative.

Men who abused their wives were likely to end up dead at the end of their sharp stingers, and this led to many laws being passed with the goal of preventing this.

Straight Line’s apartments within their home were required to be built very narrowly, so that they couldn’t get in or out quickly. This was explicitly done to prevent them from murdering anyone who upset them while they were in their room, which other Figures took full advantage of.

There were also specific, narrow doors that Straight Lines had to use at all times.

Straight Lines were not allowed to have an education, and were lied to almost every moment of every day by the other Figures around them, who would say one thing within their earshot, and then say something completely different when they left the room.

The narrator tells us that the way things are spoken among only “Men” versus in the range of “Women” are so different that they may as well be separate languages. They lie to Straight Lines and claim to love and care for them, and pretend they think they are the most beautiful and amazing things ever created. But really they think they are nothing more than mindless creatures who hardly even deserve the label of person.

This double-language becomes a problem for younger non-Straight Line Figures, who spend their first three years of their life being raised by their mother or nurse, learning the language of emotions and kindness, only to then suddenly be ripped away and told to forget all of that and think only in terms of calculation and efficiency, and to dispose and look down upon the very person who’s shaped their whole life so far.

The narrator was worried about the strain this sudden revelation puts on the minds of young male children, and is worried that one day one of them might reveal to their mother exactly what her husband and his friends thinks of her.

This concern has, surprisingly enough, made the narrator advocate for Straight Lines to be allowed to receive an education. He isn’t thinking of their welfare, of course, he frames it as concern for the male children, who aren’t being taught as much as they should be at younger ages, and who, he thinks, shouldn’t have to struggle to keep the truth of the world secret from his mother and sisters.

The family trees of all Figures are kept careful track of for the purpose of eugenics, and this includes Straight Lines.

Lower class Figures who are really into the whole eugenics thing will carefully pick out a Straight Line to marry who has no history of Irregularity for thousands of generations in her family tree.

Higher class shapes, though, are lazier with their commitment to the eugenics thing, since they think they’re already so far ahead, so they will be less careful to pick a wife with “good genes”.

The narrator mentions that a Circle has been known to marry a Straight Line whose grandfather was Irregular, simply because he liked her, and the narrator blames this for one of the reasons that higher classes tend to have fewer children.

Straight Lines who are diagnosed with any illness that causes sudden, uncontrollable movements like seizures, chronic cold, or other diseases, are killed immediately upon diagnosis.

After Straight Lines in the social classes of Flatland, we have the Equilateral triangles, who were the middle class, and were the owners and managers of shops and stores, overseeing a workforce of Isosceles slaves.

Above the Equal-sided triangles were the Squares with four equal sides, and the Pentagons with five sides. This was the only class made up of two different Configurations. They were considered “gentlemen”, and had jobs such as lawyers (like the narrator), doctors, and other high-class, well paying jobs.

Next came the Hexagons with six equal sides, who were the lowest sections of the nobility class. After this, the narrator stopped bothering to list out specific shape names, but the level of social status increased with the number of sides. When you reached some unnamed point, you were given the title of Polygon, or many-sided, and were part of the higher nobility.

The final and most powerful class were the Circles, shapes who had so many sides that it was no longer worth the effort of counting to keep track. This was also helped along by the fact that Circles would refuse to allow themselves to be properly measured, so there was no real telling how many sides they actually had.

The Chief Circle was supposedly chosen because he had the most number of sides in the country, and was assumed to have ten thousand sides to be polite.

The Chief Circle was the supreme leader of all the allied countries in Flatland that the narrator knew of. Also known as a dictator.

The Circles created this system to give themselves all of the power. They hold all of the political offices, and control everything. The “Circularchy” (rule by circles) is similar to both the “Patriarchy” (rule by men) of our own world, along with other systems of oppression, like white supremacy, racism, ableism, intersexism, queermisia, and more.

xxxAll about circular bullshit attend to your configuration blah blah blah

xxxThe Invention of Paint and the Color Revolt

xxxHow the Narrator went to Lineland

xxxHow the Narrator met the Sphere, and was brought to the Third Dimension

xxxWhat the narrator did after being returned to Flatland

[miyamorana]

Miya's 2023 Fanfic Recs Part 4

Here are all the cool, complete fics I’ve read this year. Separated into 5 posts because there’s nearly a hundred of them.

PART 4: VIDEO GAMES, MOVIES AND BOOKS (16)

Back to the Future (3)

Baldur's Gate 3 (1)

D&D: Honor Among Thieves (1)

Dragon Age (6)

Harry Potter (2)

Percy Jackson & Related Fandoms (3)

Part 1: Boku no Hero Academia (33) Part 2: Other Anime and Cartoons (20) Part 3: Television (16) Part 5: Crossovers (11)

Fandom: Back to the Future Title: Muscle Memory Authors: irisbleufic, leaper182 Pairing: Emmett “Doc” Brown/Marty McFly Rating:��Explicit Word Count: 62,600 Summary: “Then why were we kissing, Doc?” Marty demanded. “I think I’d remember kissing you before actually kissing you!”

Fandom: Back to the Future Title: it is the dawn; time has shifted Author: Edgebug Pairing: Emmett “Doc” Brown/Marty McFly Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Word Count: 16,184 Summary: The flux capacitor shakes, screams, explodes. Marty and Doc deal with the aftermath.

Fandom: Back to the Future Title: A Matter of Time Author: breakaway71 Pairing: Emmett “Doc” Brown/Marty McFly Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 14,096 Summary: Marty is going to save Doc’s life, and if Doc won’t let him do it the easy way, if he’s so determined to stick to his damn principles and never read Marty’s note, well then, Marty’s going to do it the only other way he has left.

One day at a time.

-

(or: Marty returns to 1985 only to find that his best friend is gone and everyone in his family are strangers to him. Obviously, the only thing left for him to do is fix the time machine and go back to 1955. Easier said than done, of course.)

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Title: Devil’s Tongue Author: ushauz Pairing: Astarion/Wyll Rating: Mature Word Count: 6,554 Summary: Actor Feat: Your Charisma increases by 1, to a maximum of 20. Your Proficiency Bonus is also doubled for Deception and Performance checks.

A devil’s magic, as it turns out, involves a lot of lying to make it work. Wyll works overtime to perfect it.

Fandom: D&D: Honor Among Thieves Title: vicious mockery Author: andthentheybow Pairing: Edgin Darvis/Xenk Yendar, Simon Aumar/Doric Rating: Mature Word Count: 4195 Summary: “He doesn’t use magic,” Doric says, jutting her chin toward Edgin. Holga makes a noise that might be described as a grunt. Simon nods and takes another bite of stew. “Is it another tragic backstory thing?“

Simon looks like he’s about to speak through a mouthful of stew, then thinks better of it and swallows first. “Don’t ask me.” Doric gives him a look and turns to Holga.

“I don’t know,” Holga says. “Probably.”

Five times Edgin actually uses magic, and one time he doesn’t.

Fandom: Dragon Age (Dragon Age II) Title: Paper and Cotton Author: calligraphypenn Pairing: Anders/Fenris Rating: Teen Word Count: 14,835 Summary: Over the centuries, there developed in the Circle of Magi a tradition of showing affection, regard and intent through the giving of small, practical trinkets. It became a way to dodge any suspicion from the Circle authorities–who could object to the gift of some paper, or a single coin? In which Fenris is a practical elf, and accidentally tells Anders through tokens that he likes him VERY MUCH. But (at first) Fenris has no idea, and Anders is daily more baffled and suspicious. As seen on Tumblr, and now with lovely art by AO3 user Prudabaga.

Fandom: Dragon Age (Dragon Age II) Title: Chances Are Author: calligraphypenn Pairing: Anders/Fenris Rating: Teen Word Count: 9,065 Summary: Anders knows what it’s like, being hunted. When Fenris isolates himself in his mansion and keeps his health issues to himself, Anders puts aside their enmity to help him. As seen on Tumblr.

Fandom: Dragon Age (Dragon Age II, Dragon Age Origins: Awakening) Title: All of Me Author: Nikki66 Pairing: Anders/Fenris Rating: Explicit Word Count: 135,099 Summary: When Fenris learns he possesses magic, his life is forever changed. His friends support him, but can he cope with becoming his own greatest enemy? Salvation is just a mage away.

Fandom: Dragon Age (Dragon Agee II, Dragon Age: Inquisition) Title: Overthinking It Author: Starla-Nell (Princess_Nell) Pairing: Fenris/Dorian Pavus Rating: Explicit Word Count: 25,513 Summary: Fenris joins the Inquisition and meets Dorian. Somehow, they don’t kill each other. Wait, they’re friends? Wait they -? Oh. Oh, my.

Fandom: Dragon Age (Dragon Age II, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age Origins: Awakening) Title: Paths Cross  Author: Starla-Nell (Princess_Nell)  Pairing: Alistair/Bethany Hawke Rating: Teen Word Count: 4,149 Summary: Written for the Prompt: Alistair/Bethany Would love fics about these two adorable people crossing paths! AUs welcome, fluff and sweetness strongly preferred. No non-con, please.

Fandom: Dragon Age (Dragon Age: Inquisition) Title: A Herald Named Desire Author: ushauz Pairing: Male Adaar/Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus Rating: Unrated Word Count: 360,894 Series: Part 1 of Tales of Desire (Words: 396,552 - Works: 3) Summary: In which ‘Adaar’ is totally not a desire demon from the Fade, because Haven is a camp filled with Templars. Also morals and mortals are both confusing, and he would really just like to go home now please.

Fandom: Harry Potter Title: Left of the Line  Author: JoWithTheFlow Pairing: None Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Word Count: 18,646 Summary: It started, as many things did, with Cedric. They had been stronger when they worked together, a Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor, embodying the best traits of their house each and using them to fight and win against the spider in the maze. It had been the seed of an idea that bloomed in Harry’s fifth year—the Houses were stronger together. To survive, he needed not just bravery, but hard work, wisdom, and resourcefulness too.

It wasn’t just about him, either. They all needed each other. 

Fandom: Harry Potter Title: Forever, preferably Author: JoWithTheFlow Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Word Count: 67,690 Summary: There was another student here.

Tom recognized him vaguely—while transfer students were not necessarily uncommon due to the war, they were rare enough to at least make an impression. This particular transfer student was in his year, sorted into Ravenclaw after an impressively long hat stall. He looked like he might be descended from the Potter line, but he did not share the surname so his lineage was of no particular interest to Tom. Nothing about him was of particular interest to Tom, in fact, and yet here he stood, holding the book that Tom had come here to find.

It would be a good time to turn away. The Restricted Section was restricted for a reason—only books documenting extremely dangerous or extremely advanced magic were stored here.

Tom’s feet, however, suddenly felt as if they were made of lead. It wasn’t magic keeping him tied down, but something far more mysterious like curiosity or even fate. In any case, the delay was all it took for the Ravenclaw to lift his chin and meet Tom’s eyes.

This Ravenclaw, Tom realized, had eyes as blindingly green as the Killing Curse.

Fandom: Percy Jackson & Related Fandoms Title: Be Sure to Tip Your Waiter (For He’s On His Last Dime) Author: inkncoffee Pairing: None Rating: Teen Word Count: 4,515 Series: Part 1 of Three and a Half Stars (Words: 10,085 - Works: 2) Summary: Being a demigod doesn’t pay too well (or, you know, at all) so Percy gets a job at a local restaurant. When girls ask him to switch tables with them to escape getting hit on by creepy guys, he always agrees. He’s in for a bit of a surprise one night when he recognizes one of the creepy guys.

Fandom: Percy Jackson Title: Spare the Rod Author: GwendolynStacy Pairing: None Rating: Teen Word Count: 11,980 Summary: After the war against Kronos, Nico is cursed with obedience by Demeter. Unable to leave the camp or tell anybody about his dilemma, Nico’s only hope is for somebody to figure out what has happened. Too bad nobody at camp knows him well enough to tell that something’s wrong.

Fandom: Percy Jackson & Related Fandoms Title: if you need, come build your home in me Author: yrbeecharmer Pairing: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Word Count: 326,495 Series: Part 1 of so collect your scars and wear them well (Words: 344,991 - Works: 4) Summary: Even though the world keeps falling down around him, Will Solace can’t seem to help but keep growing up.

(A series rewrite starting with the events of Titan’s Curse)

[davidmariottecomics]

Brandifying the "Geek", or How Funko Became the Band-Aid

Hello again! 

Last week, I was talking about comics job (in)security, particularly in light of the majority of Comixology staff being let go, and also touched on the continued migration of comic creators to Substack, despite some public problems that platform's had.

Discussing both of those things had me thinking about the safety of a default, which is going to be a lot of what we're talking about today, and we're going to be talking about that through the highs and lows of association with a brand. I'm not here to specifically call out or bash anyone's interests or even any big companies, so much as using this as a chance to talk about trends in the larger sphere of "nerd culture" that effect audience expectations and, often, the thought processes of creatives and creative companies--the parts that actually matter to people trying to make and tell stories.  

Why Brands Like Being Brands Starting at the most basic level, let's talk about what makes a brand and why they're important to this conversation. 

Take a look at your stuff. Chances are there's a lot within pretty easy reach that you call by a brand name, rather than a generic name. Band-Aid (bandages), Tupperware (plastic containers), Kleenex (tissues), whatever.

Or maybe you don't always refer to it by the brand name, but you make assumptions about it related to the brand: tablets are iPads, cell phones are iPhones, simple and cheap furniture's from IKEA, plastic building blocks are LEGOs, sodas are Coke, and sports drinks are Gatorade. That sort of thing.

Brands like being brands because when their name is commonly associated with a product, it's good for business. More name recognizability, easier market penetration. The more a brand exists in the cultural consciousness, the more self-sustaining it is, allowing for longer lifespans and more money. If a business is lucky, at some point they corner the market and either really or artificially box out their competition and become a default. We'll get more into this later on how creators engage with each other and their audience, but keep that in mind. The other key to having a "default" is it sets a sort of standard that people can judge against, but it may or may not actually speak to quality or reliability. 

Ready Player One

If you've been reading through my blog for a while, you'll know I've been slowly making my way through the Blank Check Podcast back catalog. I'm finishing up Spielberg right now and was just listening to the Ready Player One episode. And part of their discussion, which at this point is 5 years old anyway, is the change in the pop cultural landscape between the release of Ready Player One the book and RPO the movie. The book released in 2011. I really enjoyed it on my first read as a young man who liked older pop culture and was looking forward to this crazy idea that there could be a good Avengers movie on the way because outside of X-Men, team superhero movies were practically not a thing and even something so mainstream to me as a comic reader felt like a major crossing-over event in the wider public consciousness. But by the time RPO the movie came out, the Avengers were about to have an Infinity War with characters from a dozen other movies. The language of Cinematic Universes was well established. Star Wars was back and doing a new trilogy! And Hot Topics around the world had walls of little toy statues making every property imaginable a uniform little big-headed guy. 

There's a lot I could talk about in terms of how nostalgia plays into all of that or Warner Bros. multiple attempts at creating a "multiversal WB brand" between RPO, Space Jam 2, MultiVersus, Etc. But why I'm actually bringing it up is in the past little over a decade--and particularly over the past few years as the state of the world has necessitated changes to both shopping and media consumption habits--the brandification of "nerd culture" or "geek culture" or "collector culture" or whatever you want to call it has exploded as businesses have really tried to expand their brands to become pillars of the pop culture landscape. And I think that has started to influence not just the audience, but creators too. 

The Brands of Geekdom

If I go into my local Target, chances are I'll stop by the "Collector's Spot" or whatever they call it. It's a little section by the books, video games, and whatever remains of their movies & music, usually within eyesight of, but not part of, the toy aisles. It makes sense. According to a recent report, "kidults" or--checks the description--anyone 12 or older who enjoys toys (rolls eyes), make up roughly 1/4th of overall toy sales.  At my local Targets, at least, it always seems like an odd selection. There are usually some of Super7's ReAction Figures, but specifically ones where there isn't a space in the toy aisles for the rest of the line. Star Trek & TMNT & horror movie figures end up here while G.I. Joe and Transformers sit with their kind a few aisles away. Also there are Sanrio crossover plushies, NECA figures for TMNT and Gargoyles and horror characters, sometimes the Godzilla toys, and of course the wall of Funko Pops (which is different from, but very similar to, the Hot Topic wall of Pops mentioned above). If you have ever liked a property and wanted to see it made into a physical commodity, there's a Funko Pop for that (okay, looks like ALF only had a Wacky Wobbler from Funko, but still...). 

The reason I focus on Pops is A. They're all over the place. They have an amazing amount of market penetration and there are still stores that exist primarily as Pop retailers. B. Because they work with so many other licenses, they're a good gauge of what's actually catching on--when a Pop is a shelf-warmer, it is a SHELF-WARMER. If people didn't want Ready Player One Pops, you knew. C. Points A and B have made Pops, whether you like them or not, a cornerstone of the general perception of "things nerds like." And it's one that overlaps with the others more than almost anything else--I'd contend that the GoodSmile Company has a pretty robust catalog too, but with a key difference.

Pops reflect a general audience--sure nerds/geeks/collectors/etc may like them, but they're also something a grandma might buy for you because it's cheap, it's of a thing you like, and your grandma's heard of a Pop before. But something like GoodSmile, be it Nendoroids or Figmas or other lines of figures/statues, are not as uniform and not as accessible, even if they have a lot of variety. They tend to be sought out by people who have that interest, rather than distributed to be easily findable for anyone and everyone. 

The other cornerstones that I think are often looked at in modern "nerd culture" understandings include the Disney Trifecta (Disney/Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars--less the latter, but how many of us have heard someone refer to an animated movie as a Disney movie, or a superhero movie as a Marvel movie, when the Disney Company had no involvement whatsoever), Pokemon, Studio Ghibli, Stranger Things, Dungeons & Dragons, and in some cases where people find themselves incapable of separating their interests from the damage done by the brands' creators, Rick & Morty and Harry Potter. While I may not cater to those last two and don't personally really like Stranger Things, I certainly enjoy stuff from the rest. I even own a few Funko Pops. So, again, I'm not trying to say these things are inherently bad or markers of a false "nerd" or whatever. I'm saying that they're common and because of that, they are getting to be viewed in that default status, which can set a very strange standard which changes how we interact with stories because of the brandification of pop culture.   

A Ranger, a Warrior, and a Bard Walk Into a Bar...

The other part of why this is on my mind is that there's been a lot of conversation about Dungeons & Dragons recently. Most recently, they've reversed their position on becoming more restrictive of their open game license, and have committed to having D&D be under a form of creative commons license. And while I think that's the right decision, and am happy to have worked on a couple of D&D things in the past, I also found the conversation really interesting because I think in some ways, D&D has become an interchangeable term for some people with both tabletop role-playing and Fantasy in general. 

It makes sense, right? D&D's 5th edition is pretty popular as a game. It's got comics from IDW. There's an upcoming D&D movie. Plus, it's central to the premise of Stranger Things and is the game that like half of all podcasts play. This sort of brand rehabilitation--from the Satanic Panic era--has really built D&D into a powerhouse. Regardless of how many other tabletop RPGS there are, the controversy around the open game license inherently revolved around how many businesses and resources have been created specifically based off of and in interaction with D&D. 

And that's one of the kind of downsides to this, right? There is so much wrapped up in the understanding of what D&D is and what is and isn't allowed within it's framework. Beyond this one issue, Wizards of the Coast has been dealing with the ways in which the tropes of D&D have been harmful and how they can minimize some of that harm going forward. But because it has built into a "default" brand, it also means there's a lot of shorthand that comes to talking about setting up fantasy worlds that still uses some of the worse D&D tropes. Or, on the flip side, there are people pitching every property in the world as having a Fantasy version, but are specifically trying to get it tied to D&D for the name-recognition, regardless of whether or not what they actually would want to do with it works within that D&D framework.

Again, this is not me saying that I haven't had fun playing and working on D&D in my time. I have. It's more to say that sometimes I see conversations speculating how much fun it would be to put whatever franchise in a D&D world (often through the characters playing the game) that spends so much time figuring out the ways in which to incorporate those characters and their attributes into D&D, it kinda ignores that it isn't a story being pitched, or that it doesn't further the understandings of the characters at all. Which is fine in casual conversation, but I'm sure myself and other people in my type of roles have also had to have these types of conversations about the other "default" brands and the things that are made within their terms. The more the Marvel movie method becomes understood as superhero storytelling, the more complicated conversations about the nature of comics storytelling, particularly with first time and non-regular comics readers becomes, right? 

When the Default is Unsafe

That all gets us back to what I was talking about last week and my larger point about keeping an eye on these trends. Comixology became the default for digital comics retailer and now is going through being killed by their parent company and that's leaving an uncertain gap in the market, uncertainty in how digital comics will continue to be fostered and grow and become more accessible, and a lot of people out of jobs. Substack brings new people in for a number of reasons, but not the least of which is enough reputable people have taken to it that it's getting name recognition. 

Or, to look at it another way, I'm sure many of us unfortunately still use Twitter. Even with all the problems and the criminal owner, by virtue of being the default social media for years, it is where the majority of creators remain and their fans remain and our conversations as a community remain. And when we tried to diversify, it split too much. Not only did audiences not follow, it was hard to just find your friends and peers again. And that is unfortunate, but one of the considerations we make to keep in touch and the never-more-unified community together, even if we're all kinda still certain it'll all fall apart any day now. 

All of which is to say, I guess, be wary of what we look to as the default--in the larger pop culture landscape and the ways in which criticism of Marvel movies gets projected onto different types of storytelling or popularity is defined by Funkos or whatever to the styles you see other artists using and getting work with and the platforms we use to promote our work and engage with each other. Because while the default might be familiar, that doesn't mean it's the best representation of what could be. 

Next week: I dunno yet. We'll talk about something else.  

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Book), 17-21 by Tatsuki Fujimoto (Manga), Nope (Movie), Black Adam (Movie--No doubt, it was kind of a mess, but I'm a sucker for the JSA, so it was nice seeing my friends, I guess), Persona 4 Golden (Video game), Poker Face (TV show), The Savior's Book Cafe Story in Another World (Manga), Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Anime), working on some wedding planning/registry stuff, bought a new mattress that should be here tomorrow (please buy stuff from Becca and me because we just spent a lot of money buying a new mattress). 

And for the sake of something fun, here's a roundup of the webcomics/comics I read digitally most weeks and when I read them: Nancy (daily), Gil Thorp (daily except Sundays), Lore Olympus (Sundays), Zatanna & the Ripper (Sundays), Batman: Wayne Family Adventures (Sundays), Vixen: NYC (Sundays), Skullgirls (Sundays), Aeonian Red (Sundays), Alfie (Wednesdays & Fridays--ADULTS ONLY), The Rock Cocks (Mondays & Fridays--ADULTS ONLY), Blissverse (Mondays--ADULTS ONLY), 1.1.23 (As I catch updates), and then my Shonen Jump block: Chainsaw Man (Tuesdays), Jujutsu Kaisen (Sundays), My Hero Academia (Sundays), Witch Watch (Sundays), Fabricant 100 (Sundays), Spy x Famiy (Sundays), and One-Punch Man (Sundays), with other stuff that updates less frequently sort of thrown in whenever I remember.     

New Releases this week (1/25/2022): Godzilla Rivals: Round One TPB (Didn't work on this, but plugging Zilla)

New releases next week (2/1/2022): Off week for my books!

Final Order Cutoff (1/30/2023): Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs. Titanosaurus (Editor)

Announcements: Arizona Comic Book Arts Festival - 2/25! Less than a month away! It's a one day comic-focused event in Phoenix, AZ. Tickets are only $10. Attending artists include me, Becca (who once again is dropping some new stuff on their Patreon, see below), Mitch Gerads, Steve Rude, John Layman, Henry Barajas, Jay Fotos, Jeff Mariotte, Marcy Rockwell, John Yurcaba, Andrew MacLean, Alexis Zirrit, Meredith McClaren, James Owen, Ryan Cody, and many more! Come and see us! Becca'll have some very cool new merch, too!

Becca contributed to Aradia Beat, a Magical Girl Anthology Magazine! It's now on Kickstarter! It's both a tribute to 90s magical girl stories and part of a larger project about the overall preservation and mutual support of magical girl stories!

Pic of the Week: Caught the cats looking really goofy! 

[readwithmiaa]

Exclusive Q/A session with the Author of the book, Running Mates - Emily Locker

Hello and Welcome everyone!

Today, we have the honour of hosting an author interview with Emily Locker. Thank you for joining us, and let's dive into this enriching author interview together!

1. Please tell us about yourself.

I recently returned to Washington D.C. where I live with my husband and two young sons. When I am not writing or chasing after my "lively" boys, I work as a psychotherapist in private practice. Running Mates is my first published novel, after many past (failed) attempts at getting a novel published in the past. I wrote Running Mates mostly late at night, fueled by chocolate and espresso.

2. Your recent book Running Mates likely touches on both political and personal dynamics. How did you balance these two aspects in your narrative?

I have seen so many cases in my psychotherapy practice of friends and families facing real strife, and at times estrangement, due to differing views on politics and current events. I think that in today’s society, especially with social media, politics can feel personal in a profound way. People’s very identities are entwined with their political beliefs and ethos. It can feel like an attack on self when a loved one disagrees with how you see the world.

3. Were any of your characters inspired by real people or experiences?

In my son’s DC nursery school we had president Obama’s old speech writer and Mike Pence’s old speech writer in the same class! It was inspiring watching, despite their obvious political differences, these two parents getting along so well by the end of the year through shared community and experiences (e.g,. kid birthday parties and parent outings).

4. What challenges did you face in balancing the political backdrop with the more personal, romantic elements?

My biggest challenge was trying to make sure Anna and Gabe remained likable and relatable while holding views that 50 percent of the country vehemently disagree with. Also, it was tricky to have such a passionate character like Anna, with her particular family background, reconcile her feelings for Gabe. That Gabe was so dreamy made this easier. It was hard to be mad at him for long!

5. Without giving away spoilers, what was the most challenging scene to write?

The ending! Writing an ending of a book is so complicated, tying up loose ends in a way that feels cinematic and satisfying can be a challenge.

6. Did you experience any writer’s block during the process? If so, how did you overcome it?

I overcame it by skipping to a scene I was really excited to write—like romantic scenes between Gabe and Anna—even if it was out of order with the story.

7. What are you most proud of about Running Mates?

I am most proud of the Anna and Gabe relationship. I really wanted a fun, flirty, passionate relationship and I think (at least I hope!) I managed that.

8. Are you working on any new projects? Can you share anything about what’s next?

Yes! I am halfway through the first draft of my next novel which takes place on a vacation island (kind of like Martha’s Vineyard) and deals with life-ling friendships changing. And of course there is plenty of romance!

9. If Running Mates were to be adapted into a film or TV series, who would you cast as the main characters?

Oh, this would be a dream come true! I’d love some young, yet-to-be discovered actors who are charming, dynamic and full of chemistry. Running Mates would launch their careers.

10. What challenges did you face while getting Running Mates published?

A lot of people were wary that a romantic comedy with politics could be palatable to an audience looking for a beach read. So convincing people that Anna and Gabe could charm anyone was the hardest part.

[soundorp]

How can a Podcast increase SEO and increase Reach

No one talks about it much but buddy you have no idea what you are missing if you are not adding this strategy in your podcast marketing checklist. Yes it’s SEO. But how can a podcast increase SEO? Screw it! What is SEO in the first place? Let’s chew over some definitions before we start pep talk.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It involves optimizing online content like web pages, blog posts, and YouTube videos to attract free organic traffic from search engines like Google and YouTube.

How to enhance SEO Rankings for Podcast Episodes

Sam has been podcasting weekly for 3 years and wants to increase his podcast’s discoverability through search. Sam is a solopreneur and tried the 5 pins, 3 reels, 3 YouTube shorts, and 7 TikToks a week route. He hated it, and it didn’t increase his weekly downloads.

Sam also tried live-streaming and using that as a podcast for 10 episodes. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze for him — being on video and entertaining that audience took away from the content he prepared for the podcast(that caused friction with his ADHD).

Currently, Sam’s podcast has its own website via Simplecast with its own domain name + he uploads transcripts for all episodes. And he is doing pretty well.

Now Let’s make a step by step plan for you-

Brainstorming Episode Topics

First, brainstorm episode topics based on your niche. Suppose you’re starting a podcast focused on freelancing. Write down all the episode ideas you have in mind, both broad and niche.

Tips for Gathering Ideas

Use Reddit: Find a couple of subreddits relevant to your podcast topic and see what people are discussing.

Check Out Other Podcasts: Look at other podcasts related to your topic and see what they’ve covered.

Google Search: Search your topic on Google and analyze the first few results. These results likely reflect solid keyword research, making the topics they cover great to explore or narrow down further.

Getting More Specific

In your episode, explore what questions people are asking. Take that keyword and insert it into a site like AnswerThePublic or Ahrefs Keyword Generator. You’ll get a list of questions people are asking about that keyword, helping you plan the content of your episode and the questions you want to answer. Look for highly searched topics, which you can identify using key indicators.

Rewrite Episode Titles for SEO

You may think that clever or catchy episode titles are the way to go and they might be for your current audience. But if you want new listeners, you need to rethink your strategy. SEO loves straightforward, keyword-rich titles.

For example: Instead of titling it “Lights, Camera, Action! The Hidden Gems of 90s Cinema,” try something more SEO-friendly like “Best 90s Movies You’ve Never Heard Of.”

It’s not as flashy, but it’s going to pull in way more people searching for “best 90s movies.”

Use Keyword Research Tools

Use keyword research tools to get started. A free tool with significant functionality is Wordstream. Search each of your episode ideas one by one. For example, if you want to create an episode on “photography freelancing,” search that term. Ensure the term has low competition but high search volume, meaning lots of people are searching for it, but there’s not much information online about it. Based on the volume and competition ratio, this could be a great keyword to use. Once you’ve found it, move on to the next step.

Conclusion

It’s easy to think that SEO is something only bloggers need to worry about, but that’s far from the truth. Podcasters have a wealth of content and with the right strategy, can boost their visibility online. Just like Sam, you can turn your passion project into something that not only reaches more people but also grows your influence in your niche.

Remember, SEO isn’t about gaming the system — it’s about making your content easier to find by the people who need it. And when done right, it’s a win-win for both you and your audience.

I have made a broaden discussion in my full blog, where I have shared some more tips on how you can boost your podcast SEO, by creating website, cross promotions and more and provided some useful links. To read my full blog Click Here.

[alyjojo]

Aries Yearly Career & Finance Reading 🪖2024

Preshuffle: You’ve got someone from the past coming back around, could be a water sign, or someone you care about deeply, love even. There’s an apology, much needed clarity and conversation, and healing of anything that happened in the past, the fog is cleared and you two can have a new beginning now.

Meditation: You were on a debate stage, you were male and the competition was female, idk if that matters. She was someone that used a lot of catchphrases and word salad, but didn’t really say anything of substance, no clear information or details, and you were trying not to roll your eyes. The audience was cheering for her, but why? She didn’t *actually* say anything! Once it was your turn, you came in with charts, graphs, spreadsheets, numbers, facts and figures. You proposed detailed solutions and had a twinkle in your eye that was almost mischievous 😏 Almost like you were challenging this person to step their game up, but they didn’t bother you. Some people clapped, but most were confused by you, and you couldn’t understand why…they liked her.

Main Energy: Queen of Pentacles

You are *that* bitch this year Aries, whether coupled up or single, you’re managing everything you need to with hardly any help. It’s a thankless job but someone has to do it. Some of you are being shown as single parents, so if no one has appreciated you today, I do, your kids do (or will). There will be struggles of course, but for the most part you’re determined to keep your life in order, handling all of your career business and domestic life like you have ten hands, and hardly breaking a sweat. Some of you may be trying to work more from home, you already do, or starting a home/side business can fall under this Queen as well. Your oracles show there’s no need to feel defeated even when struggles come, everything works in cycles, just because something doesn’t work out in this one doesn’t mean it won’t work out *ever*. Recycle nods towards a repeat of something you’ve already done, and doing it again, I’m seeing the entrepreneurs with that card. An old idea? You used to make jewelry, do it again. You used to write, do it again. That’s the sentiment ❤️

January: 3 Wands & 5 Pentacles

Oracles: Domination & Negotiation

Zodiac Signs: Sagittarius Mars, Libra Jupiter

The new year starts off with a bang 💥 There is a vibe of war & peace with the oracles, it’s likely a big argument or disagreement has occurred, separating people. The person may be a child, or perhaps it’s concerning a child. Someone may leave if there’s no apology, that’s expected, or there will be one to attempt making peace - to avoid that. It feels like someone is leaving inevitably, you could be sending children back to college after the holidays, or going to school yourself, some kind of training is being shown as costing a lot of money, but it’s expected and you know it’s coming. You could be in a financial bind with this on top of whatever holiday shopping was done, January can be a struggle kind of month if we go overboard (and we all sometimes do). You may have signed up for something big, a big monthly payment, because you do expect this, but it doesn’t make it any easier. If there’s been a rift between you and someone - you/they could feel controlled or force fed a narrative with Domination, that will be set right with Negotiation…making peace, Libra energy. You could be the one feeling forced to buy some big thing and pay for it, someone may be pushy (or you are), and there may be a way to work around whatever this is, without it having to be *exactly* as it’s presented. Going back and forth with expenses and planning could dominate your month, but it has to be done.

February: The Star & 6 Swords rev

Oracles: Adaptability

Zodiac Signs: Heavy Aquarius, Gemini Moon

There are some important discussions happening with a Gemini moon, heavy air sign energy means a lot of talking 🗣️ and it’s all related to healing. Adaptability is a curious and witty card, a jack of all trades and is extremely flexible to whatever circumstances surround it. It seems like for many of you, there was a row in January, and February is the month you fix it. You’re coming back to a situation that was probably heavily conflicted, though we don’t see 5 Swords we can assume it was there with the 6 rev. The Star is seeing your path for what it is and all of the possibilities you’d like to find, create, journey down, the things you’re meant to do. You feel deeply connected with your spiritual path, while at the same time possessing endless curiosity and a childlike wonder for new things - The Fool at the bottom. Your path may be as a single parent sure, and you’re going to make the most of it! Let’s go zip lining kids! A very fun energy coming from you, though you’re not dismissive, under The Fool you recognize difficulties everyone (or you) have been through, that’s why. It’s time to shake it off 💃 If you’re returning to an old idea or passion, this may be the month you decide to go for it (again). I just saw the girl in The Notebook saying “I don’t paint anymore, I used to paint.” 🎨 You could end up spending more on a hobby of some kind, or any sort of amusements/activities.

March: Knight of Wands & Temperance

Oracles: Egotism

Zodiac Signs: Sagittarius, Leo Mars

Oof, this one’s difficult for any fire sign, but it wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know it already. The Hermit shows you know it already, you’ve gone within and seen the light on yourself. Or, you will. This seems to be a look at your past self and there’s an endearing vibe of “what a little dick” you were 😆 It’s not mean, or even regretful, it’s like an amused admission. You didn’t see it then but you see it now, or will. This could be due to a child being eerily similar (karma), or consequences for prior actions you’ve had to deal with. You’re consciously trying to stay balanced, though your inner nature is very impatient and prefers to lead, to boss or dominate, to demand and be highly sexual. It’s Ace of Wands & Knight of Wands being tamed. A hot fiery temper, crank ass crankiness and being snippy with people, being super competitive or running your mouth, obsessing over sex, whatever the fiery thing is that’s caused issues. This could be a kid too, or someone that acts like one. Big egos, big wins, big attitude…big mouth 🤷‍♂️ With love 🧡 The Hermit recognizes this, could be why you’ve lost some people, or pushed someone away, for most it’s you - The Hermit looks at himself. You’re aiming for balance, and you want to leave behind whatever aspect in you has caused issues for you, #growth 🌸

There’s a note here if you’re trying to fix a romantic thing, and you come at them all sexual & ego driven, you’re gonna get shut down with no hesitation. That could be the thing that makes you go within initially. Separately, if some are you are trying to get a group together, you’ve decided you want to play football again and you’re calling everyone up, they all can’t do it for whatever reason, you may feel alone - but only because people won’t jump *right* when you demand them to. Maybe next week? It’s humbling to you, or it should be in some cases, and then others of you just feel alone like maybe you shouldn’t even do this thing & forget it. Don’t do that.

April: Justice rev & Ace of Wands

Oracles: Resourcefulness & Companionship

Zodiac Signs: Cancer, Libra Sun & Moon

This month repeats what I just said tbh. You want things a certain way, but other people aren’t getting on board with that. Either because they can’t, or they don’t want to. Say you have a group of friends, everyone has kinda gone their separate ways, you want to get them all back together and it’s just not happening. Not when/how you want. Having Cancer & Libra here can show major differences between you, squared/opposing energy. People have kids, relationships, maybe they don’t even like pickleball anymore but they don’t want to say that. Why pickleball idk, I don’t even know what that is 😂 Maybe that’s for you. Whatever the thing. Justice rev shows an imbalance, you want what *you* want, well they may want what they want. Or your behavior could cause them to prickle up a little bit and say no simply to humble you. Maybe you haven’t checked in all that much in 3 years but you call demanding pickleballs and they’re like “you must be joking” - their mom has been sick, they’ve been updating social media about everything they’re going through and you’re just not paying attention, but still demand attention. This is what astrologers mean by “Aries is selfish”. This could be switched! It’s just the narrative I’m getting. It could be a Libra telling you to have a seat - more or less. Or you’re doing that to them. This could also be a partner lecturing you on how much a new passion is costing, maybe you’re dumping a lot of money into something impulsive that makes you excited…in the moment, but they’re like “what about xyz”, or maybe they’re not allowed to do the same thing, something here is imbalanced or unfair and it’s being addressed directly. Some could be angry or irritated and that’s what’s unfair, Queen of Swords can be unnecessarily cutting and cold sometimes, but upright she’s fair, or she may feel you’re the one that’s unfair. Companionship may refer to a partner specifically, or someone you have to see a lot so you may as well get along with them. If there are too many purchases going on towards hobbies, excitement & extras, Queen of Swords will see this logically and swiftly remove these things from her stack of issues, but it will likely be discussed. Same for if you feel work is being unfair or imbalanced towards you, maybe favoring another person in some way. If you’re involved in anything legal, you may feel a decision that’s made is unfair & it makes you angry.

May: Page of Swords, 4 Cups rev & 5 Wands

Oracles: Eccentricity

Zodiac Signs: Heavy Gemini, Aquarius Saturn

Some of you are trying to do things in a different way when it comes to your work, presenting your ideas to those in charge, or even coworkers, but something about them are different or avant-garde - in a visionary way. Like you always do things in an abc way, how about an xyz way instead - and here’s how. It’s an intelligent energy, and you’ve probably put a lot of thought and research into it with Page of Swords, but I’m not sure others are on board with you. There’s a whole vibe of lone wolf with you, others can’t understand where you’re coming from, or they fear switching things up or going in a new direction with The Moon at the bottom. There could be too many unknown variables - bosses play it safe, it’s their ass on the line. You could take it personally though, and feel judged, when you’re only trying to improve something - Aquarius Saturn…you’re the weirdo in the room this month. It’s possible you get into an actual conflict or scuffle with others over ignorant thinking vs. long term vision - but it could just be a difference of opinion and I heard “you have no power here”. Might have to drop it, 4 Cups rev indicates missing an opportunity due to others, or others being the ones deciding. This could all be switched too. “The new way” is not that appealing, or it’s out of your hands and you’re kinda panicking because you don’t know enough about it - in this case Page of Swords is like “quit fighting it and look it up”. If you’re in school, or a child is, you/they may face what feels like bullying. Or others feel you’re that way, whoever is in a group of people, it’s showing small minds banding together, gossip may be an issue for you now.

June: 2 Swords & Ace of Swords

Oracles: Order

Zodiac Signs: Heavy Virgo Sun/Moon

You don’t know who is your friend and who isn’t anymore, and you care but you don’t show it. Queen of Wands shows you as someone confident, attractive, a fiery energy that others enjoy being around, you like to socialize very much, but not with assholes. Or this is someone else that may have stirred up all the drama at work, since you’re showing up as Pentacles. You could be friends, and I don’t see betrayal, or pain, I see hurt feelings and some drama. You don’t know what to say though, and are probably ignoring most people, or at least anyone that breeds drama. With all of this heavy Virgo energy, you’re very serious, separating personal life from work, you’re not necessarily here to make friends and that’s been illuminated for you like a lightbulb going off 💡 If others are bringing drama, you’re just here for a paycheck so keep it stepping basically. When you talk to people, it’s about work, and others may be kinda surprised about this change in you, having been super social before, now you’re this boss bitch Queen of Pentacles asking for status updates and they’re like…oh. Separately, you could be tackling projects that have laid dormant for a long time, maybe even were abandoned. Like a really old car, needs some new parts and hard work, but it’s mostly good. Work may extend to outside projects and DIY, but you’re motivated to get it done…finally? For some it’s been a long time 💯

July: The Chariot & Judgement

Oracles: Protection

Zodiac Signs: Heavy Cancer, Aries Moon

The Chariot is clarified by itself, many of you will be traveling around this time, taking a much needed vacation. Protection could show you at your wit’s end, you getting away for awhile IS protection, either regarding others or yourself & your future. There is a lot of deliberating over what you want to do now and going forward. If not travel, then you’re very seriously reevaluating your career goals and life direction. Judgement is considering the entirety of your history, what was the plan, what’s changed, can I stick this out and try to change it somehow, or is this done and I need to come up with another plan, another path altogether. Ace of Wands underneath this Chariot show you do have a passion for something (or you’re just really pissed off), but you don’t know how to start over. Is it worth it? Maybe you travel somewhere and wonder if you should just stay, start over in a new place. Don’t we all entertain the idea at least once? Whatever goals are in your head at this time, you don’t know how to communicate this, or whether you’ll have cooperation from others. You also don’t know if you have that where you are, so making a decision right now seems kinda moot, it’s a wait and see game. Not your flavor, you’re ready for action. NOW. If you do anything impulsively around this time, you could worry about pushback from others. Separately, you could have issues with a car, reoccurring ones like you’ve fixed this before, and you’re considering whether you should just buy a new one - it could be safety related, like a massive recall, and there may be an opportunity given to you with that, like trading it in, or the dealer will fix it for free/less.

August: Strength & Page of Pentacles

Oracles: Convention rev & Originality

Zodiac Signs: Taurus, Capricorn Venus rev, Aquarius Sun/Mercury

This month has a clear warning regarding any purchases, the retrograde at this time is being clearly highlighted and that’s odd because it hasn’t come out anywhere else. I do think there’s one in August though, it’s the fire signs’ year for them. Yours is entirely financial, do not sign up for anything. No contracts. 7 Cups show you as being confused, maybe disillusioned by something, all of the information is not being clearly presented and you’re liable to get in to something deeper than you even intended. That would be a no on a new car 😆 Not this month. Justice shows more time, more info, more consideration, do this the right way for the most fair outcome, you want to get the most for what you pay for. 5 Pentacles at the bottom can show you spending way more than you intended, debts, outstanding bills, fees and taxes, you won’t have enough to cover everything and if you do then you can’t buy food or pay lights this month - something like that. If this is regarding your job, you may be in an energy where you’re not getting what you want, but you won’t look for better either, because then you’d have to leave the first place and you don’t want to do that. You could be/have been a bit ungrateful, maybe this brings a new sort of gratitude for what this place/a boss/a person at work has done for you and you feel bad. You’re being warned against shunning Convention, tradition, the “right” way or at least the old fashioned way, in favor of some new shiny gadget, car, job, phone, whatever. Get clear on everything you’ve got financially, then get clear on what *you want* first. And then sleep on any decisions until retrograde is over, if possible.

September: 8 Wands & 10 Pentacles

Oracles: Enthusiasm & Romance

Zodiac Signs: Taurus, Heavy Sagittarius

Amazing energy this month! Something is working out beautifully for you, your career, possibly a new career, or even a partner’s career. 10 Cups clarifies as the best possible outcome to an already very abundant and joyful situation. You could hear news from your family that makes you feel overjoyed, or you’re telling your family some good news. Some may hear from a job they only ever dreamed of, and it’s coming true for them. Some may be getting married, proposing, or meeting the person of their dreams for the first time, romance is as involved as work, both are shown as everything you could want ❤️ There is good news, possible gifts, friends, celebrations. If you went out of town before, maybe your people are coming to see you now. Some of you are deciding to stay with your original job and are overjoyed by what follows, it’s like a blessing for your gratitude. If you have a lot of debt in prior months, family members could be helping you out, or your job could even boost your salary or offer a higher position. If this news belongs to someone else, it’s likely a partner and you will be extremely happy & supportive, even throwing a celebration or inviting others over. Someone may have a celebratory announcement at a family/business gathering 🎉

October: 7 Cups rev & The Magician rev

Oracles: Inspiration

Zodiac Signs: Scorpio & Pisces Sun/Mercury

This energy can do two ways. Either you’re feeling like you’ve gained clarity, now that you’re on top and have what you want, you can see how you’ve been manipulated by others in the past and that moved you away from what you wanted. It’s a blaming energy with “seeing the light”, which in itself can be kinda manipulative because the finger is pointed outward. Possibly towards your parents for some, it’s a feeling of “I’ve wanted this since I was little and all my life I never could because xyz.” For some it’s like playing victim and for others it’s seeing where you might have actually been victimized, feeling that way. Or someone is legitimately trying to swindle you while you’re feeling on top of the world, and you don’t have a choice. You’re not the one making decisions. They could use a woe-is-me method to get to you, and would be someone you consider close, you’ve known a long time. Sibling, childhood friend, grown kid possibly, favorite cousin, whoever. If someone’s feeling left out or needs money, you could be stepping up to help. Is it manipulation, are they a swindler…maybe, but if it’s once you’re just being nice right? You’ll see it for what it is.

Same for if this is work related, this would be an energy of like…suggestive “favors” but you don’t actually have a choice. Unless you want to be confrontational, and you might, but they like to play off of the friendly vibe, you’re “friends” but somehow you’re always the one doing things for them 🤔 Could be a boss or someone you work closely with often.

November: 7 Wands, 2 Pentacles rev & 10 Wands

Oracles: Achievement

Zodiac Signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Leo

Yaaass Queen/King 😏 You will put up with this ish for exactly one month. Last month you *wanted* to say something, but you probably didn’t, you saw something or someone for what it was and played your expected role as the nice guy/girl. This month it’s done. Your energy being shown as King of Wands shows you not afraid to take control, get supporters, call people out and let them know exactly where they can have a seat. Charmingly even. You’re not being mean in the slightest, but you are saying enough is enough, you can’t handle all of the bs work/someone is throwing at you, you’re not interested in someone’s lil games and manipulative bs. On some level you may feel used - 5 Pentacles at the bottom. Like you keep giving and giving and others will happily just keep taking and taking (of course they will), until you’re like nope we’re done here. Could be people asking you for rides, buy them lunch, can you do this or that, people having their hand out - you’re gonna *give* them a piece of your mind 💯 Could be a fire sign in particular if this isn’t you.

Achievement could be like…they treat you like a boss, you walk, talk, and act like a boss, you come in early and kiss your own ass for these people - and you’re like “where’s the title and the money”, setting a much needed boundary. If this is the case, I see you getting what you want, but you’re probably going to have to fight for it. You don’t play about your money, this is the second time this year your energy is like “nope, we ain’t friends, this is contractual, bitch better have my money”. Whether you rise to a higher level or not, you act it, and if not then it’s time for some boundaries because you’re done giving and not receiving 💯

December: 8 Pentacles, Ace of Pentacles & 6 Cups rev

Oracles: Extremism & Resistance

Zodiac Signs: Leo, Taurus Mercury, Scorpio Sun/Mercury

Yeesh 😬 The energy at work is very positive for you, you’re getting more money, a raise, a title, whatever you’re standing up for yourself and asking for basically. It will fix the problems you have, even the issues with people that you’ll have this year but…you’re kinda navigating a minefield on some level, that’s what’s shown by the opposing Mercuries here, and especially Extremism. You may have to wait for whatever you’re getting, approval, the next year, something to go through, formal something or other. Training even, “knowledge” is being shown with King of Swords at the bottom, or some legal processing. King of Swords also shows Aquarian energy, rounding out the fixed signs here, you’re dealing with stubbornness to the extreme, people’s comfort levels, several others that all have opinions and feel like they’re “right”, and you’re keeping it cool, calm and collected - navigating appropriately. Resistance 💯 If you’re receiving some flowers at work, others around you could be jealous, competitive, and throwing actual fits about it.

Some of you are getting a new job altogether to get away from people you work with. If you’re wrapped up in legal situations, you may get hit with a fine, but after that it’s over with. If you’re pulling back financially from something or someone (several) you’ve been giving to, there’s going to be conflict or even temper tantrums, but you’ll hold your ground and then you’re free. Ace of Pentacles is an opportunity to build something better, releasing the past, this year and the drama it contains being “the past” now. This could be where a side hustle/hobby comes in, and you take action. Painting 🖼️ again. Ace of Cups & Wands clarify showing a new beginning to follow that makes you very excited, happy, hopeful, it fills you up with joy and you can’t wait to get on to it. Some of you could be meeting romantic people this month, meeting the family perhaps, or love is the distraction from any drama at work, it’s what helps you bounce back and forth between these fixed extremes with a level head. Kudos to you for not acting out, all cards at the bottom suggest you’re emotionally detached from other people and their bs. *You’re* happy, and that’s all that matters. It’s like it has to be that way, you will have already tried other ways, and you will have allowed other people/situations to keep you indecisive long enough. It may seem kinda dramatic or “extreme” but whatever it is, you’re “all in” ♦️

[jupitersrising]

Survival of the Fittest Character Guide

Hi lovelies! This is a character guide for everyone mentioned in the Survival of the Fittest Universe. I've talked about the fact that there are a lot of OCs as family member since we literally have no idea who most of them are. I'll be linking this post on the ao3 series when the next chapter comes out as well. This will be updated as I add more side characters, but is made to make it easier in case anyone forgets who is who and how they're related because I know that can be difficult.

(Everything here is from my notes and is subject to change if necessary. A short description will be included with each character that may be subject to minor spoilers in the SotF universe. Some characters not yet mentioned will be included in the list, though they will not get descriptions. Any ages listed will be how old they were at the start of Camp [June 2015] OR how old they were when they passed away.)

Ben Pincus (16):

Family Relations:

Mother: Ann Pincus nee Moore (34)

Father: Colton Pincus (34/35)

Grandmother: Tracy Pincus (deceased)

Other:

Holly: Bluebird and previous "pet" (nearly a year) (deceased)

Greyson: Childhood bully (16)

(Dr) Sarah Martinez: Therapist before the start of the series (31)

Mikael Porter: Not yet mentioned (34)

(REDACTED): The girl in the car (assumed less than 10)

(REDACTED): Father of girl in the car (early thirties)

(REDACTED): Mother of girl in the car (early thirties)

The Man in the Hotel: Body found in one of the hotel's along with the note "I'm sorry, Julia" and a gun

Julia: A presumed woman the suicide note was left to.

Bessie: "Dino-daughter"

Darius Bowman (15):

Family Relations:

Brother: Brandon "Brand" Bowman (19)

Mother: Jennifer Bowman (mid forties)

Father: Fredrick Bowman (deceased) (early forties)

Other:

The San Francisco Wolves: Brand's high school swim team

Reese: Not yet mentioned

Chelsey: Not yet mentioned

Gerry: Not yet mentioned

Kenji Kon (17):

Family Relations:

Father: "Daniel" Kon

Mother: Ichika “Naomi” Kon (deceased)

Step-Mother: Candy

Other:

Kye Alabaster: "Friend" approx. 2 years older (status unknown)

Randy: "Friend" gave Kenji and Kye edibles on that day

Sydney Eston: slept with Kye

Yasmina "Yaz" Fadoula (17):

Family Relations:

Mother: Inaya Fadoula (56)

Brother: Hadi Fadoula (approx. 31)

Sister: Nima (11 almost 12)

Father: I don't have a name for him yet

Other:

N/A

Brooklynn Torres-Williams-King-Santiago (15):

Family Relations:

Father (Dad): Alexander "Ali or Alex" Williams

Father: (Nial or Pops): Nial Torres

"Mother" (Mom or Aunt): Kestley King

"Mother" (Mia or Aunt): Mia Santiago

(Yes the last name thing is something you can do, to my knowledge, its just not common to have more than 3 last names)

Other:

Brooklanders: YouTube/vlogging audience

Samanta "Sammy" Gutierrez (16): (this is a long one)

Family Relations (Gutierrez + Hernandez sides [also Wilson]):

Father: N/A Gutierrez

Mother: Rosa II Gutierrez nee Hernandez

Sister: Valentina "Val" Gutierrez (13ish)

Sister: Carmen Gutierrez (deceased) (early twenties)

Cousin: Angelina "Angie" Hernandez (20)

Cousin: Fidel Hernandez (21)

Cousin: Filipe Gutierrez (18)

Aunt: Lola Gutierrez

Uncle: Emilio Gutierrez

Aunt: Yadra Wilson nee Gutierrez

Uncle: Nelson Wilson

Uncle: Javier Hernandez (Fidel + Angie's Dad) (47)

Grandmother: Rosa Hernandez (83)

Cousin: Antonio Gutierrez (mid 20s)

Cousin: Pedro Gutierrez (late 20s)

Other:

Father John: Pastor

Alice: first "girlfriend" (16)

Bessie: emotional support cow

Daisy: Bessie's mother (deceased)

Tomás "Tommy" Cruz: Made fun of Carmen, Fidel beat him up in church services (17-18)

Daniel Nickleson: Scientist Sammy shot and killed (deceased) (27)

Patricia "Patty" Nickleson: Wife of Dan (28)

Elizabeth "Eliza" Nickleson: Daughter of Dan + Patty (Infant)

Carol Nickleson: Daughter of Dan + Patty (5)

Other Characters:

Mitch and Tiff: Antagonists (deceased) (mid-30s)

Hap: Ally (deceased) (early 40s/late 30s)

Dave: Counselor (26)

Roxie: Counselor (26)

Doctor Wu: Antagonist, not yet introduced

Torvo: (deceased) Attacked Ben

Toro: (deceased) Ben attacked her

Allosaurus: Tried to attack Ben near Toro's field

Pteranodon: Dragged Ben off monorail

Baby Pteranodon: (deceased) claws + bones turned into knives

Like a dozen other dinosaurs to add (mostly irreverent)

[thesaleswhisperer]

Glenn Twiddle 2 on The Sales Podcast

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He started this in 2008, and it’s a bit like poker in that every event is another hand…so he pushed his $12k into the next event, and that put 50 people in the room and he made about $15k…

With that money, he bought a $10k program and learned how to put 200 people into a room for two days and made $100k

Then he hired that coach for his $50k coaching

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Viral InfoGraphic Traffic

Click Here to Know More

Announcing a Brand New 9-Part Video Course 

"Finally, Discover How to Get Eyeballs Back to Your Site Using Infographics …Starting Today!"

Click Here to Know More

This 9-part video course is designed to show you how you can get eyeballs and visitors back to your site by using tried and tested techniques on how to create a successful infographic plus tools you can use to help speed up the process!

Studies show that images, illustrations, pictures, and other visual presentations are more easily recognized, understood, and remembered compared to text. This is because our brain processes images simultaneously while it processes language in a linear/sequential manner. In other words, text takes longer to process. This is why infographic is getting more and more popular, especially for online marketers. Did you know that illustrations are processed 60,000 times faster than text? Imagine this—what is easier to do, show a circle or describe it in words? Everyone knows how a circle looks like but when asked to describe it, a lot of people will have difficulty. Not only is it more easily recognized, understood and remembered—graphical illustrations also stimulate and provoke emotional reactions from its viewers. It also increases the human brain’s creative thinking and imagination. How does this concept coincide with illustrations being powerful? It’s no secret that our feelings and emotions play a big part in our decision making process. Your logical sense may tell you otherwise but most of the time, it’s your feelings or emotions that leads your decision making course. Successful marketers know this.   Over the years, advertisers and marketers have been following the concept that graphic illustrations sell goods. It has been proven over the years that presenters who use visual presentations are more successful in getting their audience to take action. 

Introducing...

Viral InfoGraphic Traffic   9 Part Video Course

Here's a breakdown of this 9 part video series in more detail.

Video #1 - Overview Before we jump in and to creating successful InfoGraphics, first I want to give you an overview of what you will find in this video course. This way, you know exactly what is in store for you, which will get you geared and prepared to start creating your very own InfoGraphics.

Video #2 - Anatomy of Successful InfoGraphics In this particular video, you will learn first and foremost what an infographic is, what it’s used for, and the important key elements that are must-have’s for an engaging and value adding InfoGraphic.

Video #3 -  Different Styles of InfoGraphics There are many different styles of InfoGraphics and you need to be aware of these to know exactly how you can apply them based on your market, the type of information you have, and the concept you want to achieve. In this video, you will learn about 8 different InfoGraphic styles that you can mix and match depending on your target.

Video #4 - Strategies to Build Curiosity: Making Infographics “Thought-Provoking" Now that you know what style you’ll use and what type of InfoGraphic you’ll apply to relate to your target audience, it’s time to inject strategies to help pique your audience’s interest. In this particular video, you will learn 13 powerful techniques to make your InfoGraphi

Video #5 - Strategies to Invoke “Call to Action" Now that you’ve gotten your viewer’s interest, the next step is to captivate them and so you can get those clicks from them.  In this particular video, you will learn tactics on how to get your audience to take action.

Video #6 - Top Tested Free and Paid Tools to Create Professional InfoGraphics There are many different tools and software out there that allow InfoGraphic creation so we have tried and tested top tools that cater to not just one niche but several different markets. In this video, we will demonstrate 5 neat InfoGraphic tools that are available for you to use.

Video #7 - How to Create InfoGraphics with Piktochart Piktochart is one of the leading InfoGraphic tools out in the market today. In this video, I will show you how to get started in creating your very own professional looking InfoGraphics with quick and easy-to-follow steps and demo.

Video #8 - Promote Your Infographics on Social Media Sites Congratulations! You now know how to create an InfoGraphic and use nifty tools to speed up the process. Now, let’s get started on getting significantly more eyeballs to your InfoGraphic. In this particular video, you will learn how to promote your InfoGraphics on social media sites so that you can widen your reach and increase your exposure.

Video #9 - Bonus Ninja Trick – Get a Flood of Visitors to Your InfoGraphic Want to learn more tricks on how to boost your visibility and get tons of visitors to your InfoGraphics? By watching this video, you will be privy to secret weapons on how to make your InfoGraphics go viral so you can really get results that you want!

Grab this video course now so you can start creating your very own professional infographics and attract visitors like crazy!

Add this product to your cart now for only.... $67 $3

Click Here to Know More

Regards

P.S. Discover How to Get Eyeballs Back to Your Site Using Infographics

P.P.S. This training course is designed to show you how you can get eyeballs and visitors back to your site by using tried and tested techniques on how to create a successful infographic plus a demonstration of tools you can use to help speed up the process.

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Maximizing ROI with Professional E Commerce Development Solutions

 Are you tired of investing in e-commerce development solutions that fail to deliver the desired results? Are you looking for ways to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and take your online business to new heights? Look no further! In this blog post, we will explore how professional e-commerce development solutions can help you optimize your ROI and boost conversions. From enhancing user experience to streamlining operations, we'll cover it all so that you can start reaping the rewards of a successful e-commerce venture. So, buckle up and let's dive into the world of maximizing ROI with professional e-commerce development solutions!

Introduction to E Commerce Development

The ever-changing landscape of eCommerce development can be a challenge to keep up with, let alone maximize ROI. But with the right professional eCommerce development solution in place, it’s possible to not only stay ahead of the curve, but also increase your earnings. 

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at what professional eCommerce development solutions are available and how they can help you boost your ROI.

First, let’s define eCommerce development. It is the process of creating an online store or platform where businesses can sell their products or services. This involves everything from designing and building the website to hosting it and promoting it online.

There are many different types of professional e Commerce development solutions available, each with its own set of features and benefits. The most important thing is to choose the right solution for your specific needs. Here are some factors to consider:

-Your budget

-The size and scope of your project

-The platform you want to use (e.g., Shopify, Magento)

-Your timeline

-Your team’s skills and experience

Benefits of Professional E Commerce Development Solutions

When it comes to eCommerce development, there are many benefits to working with a professional team. First and foremost, a professional team will have the experience and expertise needed to create a custom eCommerce solution that is tailored to your specific business needs. This means that your eCommerce site will be much more effective in terms of conversion rates and overall ROI.

Another benefit of professional eCommerce development solutions is that they can save you a lot of time and money in the long run. By working with a professional team from the start, you can avoid costly mistakes that can set your project back months or even years. In addition, a professional team will be able to provide you with ongoing support and maintenance, ensuring that your eCommerce site remains up and running smoothly.

Strategies for Increasing ROI with an E Commerce Platform

An e Commerce platform can provide a number of advantages for businesses looking to increase their ROI. A professional eCommerce development team can help you take advantage of these benefits by customizing a solution that fits your specific needs. Here are some strategies for increasing ROI with an eCommerce platform:

1. Increase online sales: An eCommerce platform can help you reach a wider audience and boost online sales.

2. Improve customer satisfaction: A well-designed eCommerce platform can make it easier for customers to find what they're looking for, resulting in higher satisfaction rates.

3. Increase efficiency: An eCommerce platform can automate many tasks related to online selling, such as inventory management, order processing, and shipping. This can free up time for you to focus on other aspects of your business.

4. Save on costs: An eCommerce platform can help you save on costs associated with traditional brick-and-mortar retail, such as rent, utilities, and staff expenses.

5. Scalability: An eCommerce platform can be easily scaled up or down to accommodate changes in your business needs. This allows you to adjust your investment in the platform as your business grows.

Analytics and Tracking for Optimized Results

As the eCommerce landscape continues to evolve, so too do the tools and technologies available to help businesses maximize their ROI. One of the most important aspects of any eCommerce development solution is analytics and tracking.

Without proper analytics and tracking in place, it can be difficult to determine which areas of your site are performing well and which could use some improvement. By understanding how your customers interact with your site, you can make informed decisions that will help boost conversion rates and ultimately increase your bottom line.

There are a number of different analytics and tracking tools available, so it's important to choose one that best fits your needs. If you're not sure where to start, our team of eCommerce experts can help you select the right solution for your business.

Integrating Social Media into Your E Commerce Platform

As a business owner, you know that social media is a powerful tool to reach new customers and grow your brand. But what you may not know is how to integrate social media into your eCommerce platform in a way that maximizes your return on investment (ROI).

Fortunately, there are professional e Commerce development solutions that can help you do just that. By integrating social media into your eCommerce platform, you can take advantage of the many benefits social media has to offer, including:

Increased traffic: Social media can drive traffic to your website and online store, which can lead to more sales and conversions.

Improved search engine optimization: By incorporating social media into your e Commerce platform, you can improve your website's ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Greater customer engagement: Social media allows you to interact directly with your customers, answer their questions, and address their concerns in real-time. This increased engagement can lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

If you're looking to maximize your ROI with professional eCommerce development solutions, be sure to ask about how they can help integrate social media into your platform. With the right solution in place, you can take your business to new heights.

The Importance of Security and Compliance

In order to maximize the return on investment (ROI) for professional eCommerce development solutions, it is important to consider both security and compliance. Security is important to consider because it helps to protect the data and assets of the business. Compliance is important to consider because it helps to ensure that the business is following all applicable laws and regulations.

When it comes to security, there are a number of things that need to be considered. First, the data that is being collected by the eCommerce site needs to be protected. This includes customer information, financial information, and any other sensitive data. Second, the site itself needs to be protected from cyber attacks. This includes ensuring that the site is properly configured and that all software is up-to-date.

When it comes to compliance, there are a few different areas that need to be considered. First, businesses need to make sure that they are compliant with all applicable laws and regulations. This includes things like privacy laws and data security laws. Second, businesses need to make sure that their eCommerce solutions are PCI compliant. PCI compliance is necessary for businesses that accept credit cards as payment method. Businesses need to ensure that their eCommerce solutions are GDPR compliant. GDPR compliance is necessary for businesses that collect or process personal data from individuals in the European Union.

By considering both security and compliance when selecting professional eCommerce development solutions, businesses can help ensure that their ROI is maximized.

Conclusion

Professional e commerce development solutions can help maximize ROI and improve the overall success of your business. By leveraging a comprehensive platform, you can create an engaging experience for customers that is sure to drive sales and increase brand loyalty. With so many options available, it’s important to find the right solution for your particular needs to ensure long-term success. Investing in a professional e commerce development solution could be just what you need to take your business to the next level!

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