#I hope the list format is okay! I may alternate depending on what I think works better for a certain request
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kissofthemis · 1 year ago
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Hello!Can i request the nxx biys with a slightly weird s/o?
Like weird as in they're always happy and goofy 24/7 even in dangerous situations?Like maybe something happened to them in the past that made then this way(you can decide on what happened :D )
Oh,and can i be the K Anon?My keyboard lags a lot if i use emojis,so I hope you don't mind if I go by K Anon here :D
Sorry if this is a super long request it's just been brainrottingbin my head 24/7 and i don't have enough writting skills lmao
❤ Artem ❤
At first, he doesn't notice that you have a tendency to laugh off your pain or make morbid jokes. He thinks that he's just more uptight or strict than most people, so he suspects your behavior is actually more akin to how "normal" people act.
It's when you act blasé after a dangerous encounter that he realizes that this seems to be a unique trait, specific to you.
He specializes in criminal cases. He knows that people who feel threatened or have experienced dangerous situations can react in many different ways... but to be this carefree is not something he's seen before.
You don't lash out, but you don't withdraw. You don't scream or cry, but you aren't bottling your pain either. You're an anomaly.
"Mr. Wing, it's a dark world out there." He knows that. "If I'm too serious, I'll crumble." He's never heard you speak in such a flat, detached tone. "So I stay silly!"
He isn't going to pry into why you feel you have to laugh all the pain away, because he trusts you to tell him if/when you're ready.
He knows what it's like to mask his true feelings.
Instead he offers you his shoulder. "If you ever need to turn away from the shadows... I'll shield you if you need a moment to be vulnerable, before putting that smile back on your face."
~♡~♡~♡~♡~
💛 Luke 💛
Your smile and laugh make him warm inside. He likes that you can stay cheerful even when faced with stress or with gloomy situations.
He soon realizes that you're a bit too goofy, a bit too relaxed, a bit too much of a jokester. He's not mad about it, but he wants to figure out why you're this way.
At first he doesn't want to tell you he's investigating your behaviors. He's in detective mode and NSB agent mode at the same time; he won't ask for help nor reveal his intentions when he asks to spend more time with you.
He cares, but his pride can get in the way.
Finally he pieces together the puzzle, with clues and hints he obtained partially from you and partially from totally legitimate public sources, no hacking involved. (/s)
"You could've just asked me!" You laugh and wave him off. "It's no big deal!"
Luke gets stern with you. "You were subjected to immense psychological and physical abuse."
You just smile. "And you haven't been?" His scowl gets deeper. "Tell you what! Promise to look after me, so you don't have to worry about me getting trapped or endangered ever again! And then I'll be able to smile freely all the time!"
He reluctantly agrees.
Don't ask if the plush dog he gives you the next time you meet has a camera in it.
~♡~♡~♡~♡~
💜 Marius 💜
Your cheerful and carefree nature is what draws Marius to you in the first place.
He's constantly under stress. Whether it's school, tutoring, Z, or Pax, he always has some project pending and is subject to intense scrutiny.
You're a breath of fresh air from stuffy old men. You smile, you laugh, you play. He wants some of that l joy back in his life.
Unfortunately, trauma knows trauma. The more time he spends with you, the more he picks up on eccentricities that... don't quite line up with "innocence" the way he imagines it.
He understands the value of secrets and how they can protect others. He's had to keep secrets to protect his family, the company, reputations, wealth, you name it.
But he also wants to work on being more honest with himself, and that means being more honest with his closest friends. He doesn't have many friends, so he wants you to be able able confide in him the same way he can confide in you.
Of course, while he's a bold and bright businessman, he's a timid and inexperienced friend.
He'll try to tease and pout his way into your heart and mind. "Aww, are you laughing at me again, miss/mx/mister?" Tugging at your sleeves and your heartstrings. "Trying to trick me with a fake smile? Miss/mx/mister doesn't trust me..."
Turns out he has to be direct and blunt. You two end up having a heart to heart about your respective fears and struggles, the horrors you've faced, the sorrowful smiles and the humorous tears.
He comes up with an idea. "Here's a key to my studio. Want to turn pain and fear into something bright? Show me what you can paint."
~♡~♡~♡~♡~
💚 Vyn 💚
In case it wasn't readily apparent, Vyn picks up on your act instantly.
He's a psychiatrist. He doesn't know why you act this way, but he can figure out it's unnatural.
(Not to mention he enjoys card tricks. He's also good at perceiving sleight of hand and other "magic" that involves showing someone what you want them to see, instead of showing them the truth and mechanisms behind the magic.)
Instead of playing games or trying to snoop his way into your secrets, he just observes you.
He's skilled at sitting back and watching, waiting, picking up pieces and fitting them together.
You catch him by surprise, however, when you call him out on his behavior.
"Vyn, am I your patient or your friend?" You pout at him and fold your arms over your chest in a highly exaggerated manner, one that is almost comical in nature. You shift back into chuckles and spin around as you wait for his answer.
Your one moment of frustration could easily be brushed off as a joke, but Vyn hears there is actual hurt in your words.
"You are... quite the anomaly," he replies at last. "You wear both the masks of comedy and tragedy. I couldn't help but wonder which was your real face." He leans closer and whispers, "I want to see my friend's true face, beneath all the masks and pretenses. Is that so wrong, dear?"
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spnsoulsarchive · 4 years ago
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rules
   This is going to be a long post, and I apologise for that. However I do not apologise for putting my boundaries as clear as possible, and will not apologise for doing so. All of the rules below exist for a reason, and I have them for my own comfort.
It is okay if you don’t agree with them BUT IT’S NOT OKAY TO IGNORE THEM. If you think you cannot follow the posted rules, then do not follow this blog. Thank you !!
General
 These are the basics, a re-hash of rules that almost everyone has but that I like to cover anyway just in case!
Read ALL important pages: rules, disclaimer, muse list & info for the muse(s) you want to interact with
Use proper punctuation and spellings to the best of your abilities
Mark clearly whether an ask is IC or OOC
No godmodding
No maiming, killing, etc. of my muses without my permission
No choosing of thoughts or big actions of my muses without my permission
Hate, anon or otherwise, will be reported and deleted. Users will be blocked.
There may be an occasional mention that I do this if there’s some kind of repeat, but I will not place the content itself on the dash.
Asks and IMs are always welcome!!
More in the < Asks & Memes & Messaging > section
tracked tag is SOULSBREATHED and is the best chance of getting me to see a post. @’ing me will also work, but please be sure to use my url tag on top that! please also put somewhere which of my muse(s) the post is for.
Specifics
These are some of the rules that have been established over time for my own sake, and to make everyone’s time on here a lot easier!
Your age must be listed somewhere I can easily find it! I’m not comfortable writing some content with muns or muses who are under 18
If I cannot find that information I am unlikely to follow, and I will not write that content with you, as it’s safer to err on the side of caution.
It takes time for me to check through all my followers, so please don’t ask if I haven’t followed back right away or unfollow, unless I post very specifically about dumblr fucking things up.
There’s any number of reasons I may do either, but the more we happily interact and talk the more likely I am to follow or re-follow.
With rare exception, I will not interact with any blogs that contain digits in them.
Please, please, use regularly accepted punctuation within threads.
Please.
Do NOT spam-reblog from me, which is reblogging 3+ posts in rapid succession. It messes up my notifications and I lose other things.
Mark clearly between IC/OOC, and which muse or npc a message is for.
ALL PERSONALS WILL BE BLOCKED
unless I can tell with a glance that there are RP sideblogs attached to them
I love my ships and will not stop writing them for someone else’s sake. I tag all visual content, but if there’s a short tag or something to be added, give me a quick little heads-up and I’ll happily tack it on. Everyone wins!
If I cannot easily navigate a blog for information, I will not follow back
easy navigation includes:
rules page
disclaimer/ooc page of some kind
tagging system
cut posts
Formatting
this little section is for what to expect from me and my writing preferences, but it is a flexible section!
I do both regular capitalization and zero capitalization for threads, depending on partner and length of the thread
memes and asks will be done in whichever I’m feeling
I do small text ONCE for aesthetic, but will leave text regular size if asked
Headlines will be done in subtext size, again mostly for aesthetic
Parentheses and brackets will be BOLDED and italicized, on the whole
I will @ the url of the person who sent the ask or is part of the thread
thread partner urls may also have their muse’s name listed after a slash for further clarity
I occasionally use icons, but mostly for asks, dash commentary, or silly things
all icons are 100x100
I enjoy using bold, italics, and strikethrough, but that’s about the extent of my text formatting and I try not to overdo them too much
Asks & Memes & Messaging
Asks are open to everyone!
IMs are ooc and mutuals only.
If a meme is shippy or nsfw, it is mutuals only and will require previous interaction.
All others are freebies!!
for the time being I’m putting a graphic in the direct reply to an ask, adding a blockquote for tagging the sender, additional commentary, and the source meme if there is one
Any reply to an ask MUST be in a new post. Reblogged asks will be ignored.
Any messages saying ‘wanna rp?’ or asking for an IM will be deleted. I’m far more receptive to being approached with ideas to work with
While not explicitly reblog karma, I am not a meme source and will talk to you if you always take memes from me but never send anything in or talk to me. Sometimes a meme doesn’t work and that’s fine, but there’s no excuse to never interact with me.
I often have a mix of platonic, general, and nsfw/shippy memes at my disposal, but feel free to improv something from the gist or edit sentences to suit our muses better!! Creative fun is why we’re here <3
OCS & Sideblogs & MuMus & Second-Gens
Information must be easy to navigate and read, same as for canons/single muse blogs!
Sideblogs, please list somewhere OBVIOUS what the main blog is called so I know what to look out for.
Mumus, I love you and your dedication, but I am most selective with you. Yes, even as a mumu myself.
The more fandoms covered and more muses included, the less likely I am to hop on board mostly because I prefer a clean dash.
If we’re close friends ooc I’ll likely be far more lenient
OCs with a main spn-canon faceclaim will not be accepted unless the muse has been around longer than the canon being cast or if they look/act markedly different than the canon ( Karen Gillan with all her hair vs as Nebula, for example ).
more in the < canons & fcs > section
Unless plotted otherwise, they will not know my muses, but they can know OF my muses
Second-Gens ( kids of the original set(s) of main canons ) make me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, and so will be interacted with on a case-by-case basis.
I am unlikely to follow unless we know each other very well ooc
Canons & FCs
Again, OCs with main spn-canon faceclaims will not be interacted with unless they meet at least one of the two criteria listed above.
However, if I pick a FC for someone related to this blog that isn’t canon, it’ll likely be shrugged off as uncanny lookalike, or we can otherwise plot around it.
Animated FCs are welcome, but I’ll admit that specifically anime blogs are unlikely to be interacted with. Sorry
If a canon has an alternate faceclaim: cool! Just have it listed somewhere obvious, please
FCs I will NOT interact with: Mark Sheppard, Selena Gomez, Mads Mikkelsen, Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber, Sara Bareilles, Andrew Scott, Zooey Deschanel, Natalie Dormer. The list may be periodically updated; yes, it is okay to ask me about specific names and why these ones are listed.
Shipping
There will be a good deal of F/F, F/M, and M/M on this blog both in visual and text.
May ( read: probably will ) include three+somes.
Implication and mention to graphically clear are likely, and will be tagged.
Brady/Sam is not a ship I expect but Brady (the demon) is at least borderline obsessed with Sam even if he doesn’t actively seek the other out 
Wi.nce.st will very likely be present on this blog. If this is content that makes you uncomfortable please do not follow me.
By default, ALL my muses are single unless plotted otherwise.
Please don’t assume there will be a ship between your muse and mine without plotting first, positively or negatively !!
I WILL NOT be ship-exclusive with any blogs
I will have mains but it’s on unofficial terms
For all my writing partners: I will happily plot ships, and details! But I won’t have an assumed prior romantic/sexual history between our muses.
Again, I know this bit is particularly long !! But it’s very necessary for my comfort and yours as a baseline of whether we might get along or not. Thank you again for pulling through all the reading; if you’re staying, awesome !! If you’re not, I’m sorry to see you go but I hope you find the writing happiness you want <3
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rontra · 6 years ago
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do you have any recommendations on how to like. Take In Umineko. I think it looks really cool and I’d like to get into it, but there’s a lot of things that are confusing (like all of the different games, the manga, the anime, ect.) and I’m not really sure where to start watching/reading it. Do you have any advice on where the best place to start is?
HOH BABY NOW THIS IS A GOOD ASK
Tumblr media
Basically, a lot of this depends on you and how you prefer to take in media. People are different after all; some people like reading long novels, some prefer comics, u know! So let’s just go over all the avenues and how to get at them, and the rest is up to you!
I’m gonna make this post very long. VERY VERY LONG. IM SO FUCKn SORyr
First, I’ll talk abt what umineko is; then I’ll discuss the various media; finally, at the end, I’ll write down what I typically recommend to newcomers! SCROLL REALLY FAST TO THE HEADERS IF U HAVE NO TIME FOR MY RAMBLING LOL
So…here we goooo
READING UMINEKO: UNTANGLING THE WEB
OR: what the fuck is umineko and why do you want me to read it, diesel?
Since this is a general To Whom It May Concern post: Umineko no Naku Koro ni (Or Umineko: When They Cry, alternatively When The Seagulls Cry) is a murder mystery/fantasy/metafiction visual novel published between 2007 and 2011. I know “murder mystery” and “metafiction” sound pretty boring when you combine them, but trust me–Umineko’s unlike anything you’ve seen, and defies explanation. Still, I’m here to do my best!
Umineko is about a rich and complicated family, and their annual family conference–and the year it goes super duper badly. On an isolated island, in the middle of a typhoon, tragedy befalls the family–on a massive scale! Someone is killing them–all of them–and the only answer that seems to be rising is–
“Beatrice did it.”
But Beatrice isn’t supposed to really exist. Not for real!! No one by that name is on the island. It’s just a story! She’s made up–Beatrice is a legend. A witch who has lived for a thousand years–who loaned the family patriarch ten tons of gold, an insane amount of wealth, in exchange for his soul. Now she’s collecting on that loan, taking everything back, with interest–the lives of the family included.
Is the culprit a human, or not? Does the witch exist, or not?Is the culprit one of the 18 people? Does a 19th person exist? Or…?And, most importantly–when the typhoon passes, will anyone remain alive on the island?
[YouTube: Umineko opening]
I’d super-recommend Umineko if you enjoy: strong characterization, a solidly built mystery (with plenty of smaller mysteries to try your brain with along the way ;) ), complex and nuanced characters, hype magic fights, Logic-Based Combat(???), deep discussions of trauma and its consequences, large casts of characters, Genre Fuckery, coping, Meta™, and milfs Complex Lore
I would, however, NOT recommend Umineko if you are triggered by/can’t stomach reading about: body horror, gore, death, trauma, child abuse, bullying, discussion of suicide, discussion of sexual assault, etc (you can message me for a more complete list of warnings; I’m happy to provide super-specific ones if there’s something specific you’re concerned about, or even give you specific scenes to watch out for. I kept this vague on purpose, but if you message me off anon or via DMs here or at @aceyasu, I’ll be happy to answer anything!)
Overall it’s a pretty dark, emotional story, with a lot of Themes™–but it’s also full of love and genuine heartfelt Feelings. I don’t think any story has touched me the way Umineko has! Of course, everyone’s experience is very unique to them, but I think Umineko has something for everyone (provided, of course, that we’re taking into account the content warnings and excluding people who can’t/don’t want to encounter those things!). The characters, music, story and message–it all has a lot of heart and it all is very important to me as an individual. Obviously no media is flawless, but I think Umineko’s good outweighs its bad…YMMV though of course :p
Also, hype magic fights.
OKAY WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY
Umineko’s story is told over 8 arcs–styled as “episodes”. I use “arc” and “episode” sort of interchangeably! Specific ones I just call “EP#” though. All you really need to know though is there’s 8 of them, of varying length, and you have to read them all for the full story.
Thankfully they’re numbered, am i right?? HAFDmgkdfmg
Each episode has its own focus within the overarching narrative and comes with its own fun mysteries and harrowing developments just for you! yay! But basically, the important thing is that they’re divided into the Question Arcs (1-4) and Answer Arcs (5-8).
Sometimes, to make things confusing, the Answer Arcs are also called “Core Arcs” or “Chiru”. I will use “Answer Arcs” here, but if you encounter those two elsewhere, that’s what they are. :p
ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING UMINEKO
(now that im done YAPPING)
The anime
Generally viewed as a poor product. It’s a bad adaption that fails as a standalone, too, because of the amount of important scenes that are missing. Don’t watch the anime first if you really want to get into Umineko. It’s a fun watch once you know how it’s supposed to go, though :p Covers the Question Arcs only, ends with EP4–so even if it was good, it would only be half the story… press f to pay respects. The opening fuckin slaps though, and all the VAs are solid.
The manga
Each Episode has its own manga adaption, usually done by a different artist (with exception of EP1, EP3, and EP8, which are all by the same artist). Generally solid; gets the most important parts. For people who want to get through quicker, the manga helps a lot.
The primary cost is that a lot of characterization doesn’t get to shine AS bright, as there’s simply no time to get into the nooks and crannies (still a great cast, though). However, the art is usually fantastic–since the artist changes every EP, it’s easy to deal with even if you don’t like a specific one’s style. It’ll be gone by next Episode!
A lot of moments get punched up by the more visual format of the manga. You really get a better sense of the characters interacting physically with one another! You do, however, run into the Scanlation Problem…..
I know, I know–most people, when given the option to, don’t want to pay for things. So when given the choice between fan scanlations and the official release, a lot of people would choose the scanlations. And they’re fine…for the most part…except for the parts that aren’t. Some parts (notably in the Answer Arcs) are…bad. Really bad. Even I can’t really understand it sometimes, despite knowing this story inside out… LOL
If you’re good at parsing Scanlation SNAFU or can’t afford/don’t want to buy it, you can find Umineko on MOST manga hosts! I don’t know which you prefer so I’m not gonna link ‘em hahahafkgmfh I usually use Manga Rock but that’s because I usually am reading on my phone and I like their app. The episodes are all numbered, so it’s pretty easy to find your way around!
On the other hand, if you have a hard time understanding poor translations, reading inconsistent typesetting/fonts, or simply Can afford it/prefer buying media, the manga is being officially released in English by YenPress! As is standard nowadays, you can get them in both physical volumes and digital e-books! However, YenPress’ release is currently ongoing–the first volume of EP8 is slated to release in March.
[YenPress link]
The visual novel
Ah, here we are–the head honcho himself…! This is the original version of Umineko. These are the ones we call “games”, and why we sometimes say u “play” Umineko, but. Really. It’s just reading. They’re kinetic novels. Its literally just reading. So I don’t know why we complicate things like that.
(“if she an .exe, shes a game”, I guess… xD)
This is where the characterization and voice of Umineko really shines! The style is often simple to read, sometimes even comically casual, but it cuts deep when it wants to. Even really simple lines can have a really strong impact–it’s a really pleasant style to read, IMO…pretty easy to understand most of the time, but emotionally resonant all the same!
Reading the VN is somewhat of an undertaking, because of the amount of hours required…It’s a far longer read. Depending on your reading speed and whether or not you pause to think/talk about things as you read, people clock in 100-200 hours to finish it.
But, on the upside–because it has so much more time than the manga, the VN can really get deep into the characters, their dynamics, and their inner conflicts. You really get a deep sense for everyone’s character and it makes most of the cast feel fleshed-out enough that you appreciate all of them to some extent (whether positive or negative :P)
Oh, actually–the original Umineko branded itself a “Sound Novel”….as opposed to a Visual Novel, where the emphasis is on, uh–Visuals–Umineko leans more heavily on audio to create its atmosphere. And the music? Fuckin rips!! The Umineko soundtrack is huge and has tons of absolute bangers. It’s easy to see why it decided to market itself as a Sound Novel rather than a visual novel–the graphics of the original PC version are simple, but the atmospheric sound effects and BGM really shines.
Here’s some enticing tracks to pique yr interest (be careful about the comments/etc though, there’s Definitely spoilers in there xD)[worldenddominator] [dead angle] [dir] [system0] [hope]
The VN nowadays is split into the two halves; if you get EP4, it’ll include 1-3 as well, essentially. Picking up Question Arcs (or EP4) and Answer Arcs (or EP8) gives u the whole 8 episodes. Easy peasy! Because we live in the future now, and retroactive inclusion of past games is just convenient!
There is an official English release now, which is a brand new luxury. It’s even on Steam! Wow! That’s the easiest way to get your paws on the hands-on experience. The translation has been slightly updated as well! Also, they added a new set of toggle-able graphics that are…um…I mean they’re certainly new…#BarelyContainedOpinionAlert
If you don’t want to pay or can’t afford it…uhhh….I used to have torrent links but they’re all dead. :T still, you can probably just find them, if you know your way around torrents. For the translation, you’ll have to either get a pre-patched version of the game, or use the translation group’s instructions to patch it yourself. 
If you can’t do either of those, or just don’t really have a preference, or…any number of reasons, you can also find all the games fully recorded and uploaded to YouTube (with or without commentary)!
As for the links, I’ve got them right h–
Wait–oh, sh–the graphics are bad?!? You think the graphics are bad? Or you think plain reading is boring? Y-you can’t understand what the background image in this scene is even supposed to be? Ah…the post-2007 struggle….
The visual novel, Part Deux: AH, THE JPEGS edition
OKAY SO I SPLIT THIS APART BECAUSE IT*S IMPORTANT
If you wanna spruce up your VN-reading experience, here’s the thing: they ported the game to PS3, with brand new graphics and–get this–full voice acting. Wow! There’s even CGs now…Jeez!
These are NOT the same graphics as the new ones from the official English release! That’s important!
SO, if you wanna spruce up the graphics a bit, or you enjoy voice acting with your novels, you can do that! People took apart the PS3 games and made patches for the PC version to enjoy the new graphics and voices. And now it’s available for the Steam version as well!
[SPRITE COMPARISON: ORIGINAL PC | PS3 | STEAM]You pick your favorite!
ALSO VOICE ACTING! WOW!! Remember how I said the anime got two things right and they were the OP and the voice cast?
SAME CAST, BABEY!!!! They are all excellent and do a wonderful job! It can really add some more interest if you struggle with staying focused on “plain” reading.
Okay so NOW the links:
You’ll have to dig up torrents yourself if you want those, bc its 6am and I’m too sleepy to… uzu
QUESTION ARCS[Physical Eng release] or [Steam page] +[PS3 PATCH]
ANSWER ARCS[Physical Eng release] or [Steam page] +[PS3 PATCH]
YOUTUBE[Non-commentated, with PS3 patch] you can find more just by searching but this one looks good to me :p
RONTRA OPINIONS / SUGGESTIONS
Personally, I favor the VN for most scenes, but the manga for my light casual reading. Y’know? The VN can be pretty…um…dense, at times.
Ironically, I think EP1 itself might be the biggest hurdle for total first-timers. It’s definitely paced as a “part 1 of 8″ for the first solid portion! By which I mean, it really takes its time establishing the cast and their individual situations. Which isn’t a bad thing–especially in the overarching scope of how long the story is–but if you aren’t sure about the premise, format, or if you’ll enjoy Umineko at all, it can be sort of…challenging.
It all really depends on the individual–things like attention span, investment, and personal preferences, imo. Some people just don’t enjoy reading that much text at once! And that’s fine! Some people love it and that’s fine! Some people think the intro is too long, some people think it’s intriguing from the start. Some really like watching character building, and some prefer to see action happening. Either way is fine, so it’s really up to you!
Usually, if someone isn’t sure, I suggest they try EP1 in manga form first, just to see if the general premise entices them; it’s fully possible to jump back and do the VN if you decide you like it! It sacrifices some characterization in exchange for exploring the main premise a little faster.
Similarly, if you just can’t get into the VN–you can read the entire thing with manga too, if you favor action over the deepest character lore. It’s still a good time and a good experience!
Though, in EP1′s favor–if you ARE sure about it, and are able to dedicate your attention to the first 10-13 hours of set-up, EP1 has one of the most rewarding escalations I’ve encountered! If you are able to sit and read a fairly long-winded introduction, you are rewarded with the most buck wild Popping Off you can imagine.
So there’s nothing wrong with jumping right in there with the VN, if you enjoy reading!
However, if you do find that the VN is dragging too much for you, you can go in reverse too–and finish EP1 by manga, then decide if you want to jump back to the VN or not. I promise, the novels pick up the pace too–it’s just getting all the introductions down that can be daunting, when the initial cast size is a staggering 18 people (plus the LORE has to be established too)!!
Just for you–if you want to get into Umineko, but struggle with EP1, I’ll offer my private archive of YenPress manga rips for EP1–read the manga, official english translation, for free thanks to your dealer friend, rontra,You will have to message me about it, though–off anon or via DMs, here or at @aceyasu.
My favorite setups when I play by myself are either Original PC Graphics + Voice Acting, or Full PS3 Patch. I personally really like the original PC graphics, but I understand some people think they’re kinda…um…Rough, to say the least xD PS3 graphics are a close second for me though.
I don’t really like the steam version’s new sprites. Some people don’t mind them, so it’s up to you what you prefer, but I think they don’t really convey the feeling as well as their counterparts sometimes… :/
But hey, everyone’s got their own opinions!
I also prefer the EP8 manga to the EP8 VN. If I have control over someone’s first playthrough, I always push over to the manga for EP8! In my opinion, it’s a rare instance where the adaption is better than its original. People have different opinions on this, of course, but since this section is My Opinions Central, that’s my opinioooon!!! :D
SO BASICALLY MY OWN PERSONAL PREFERRED STRUCTURE IS
->TRY EP1 (jump over to manga if struggling; if enjoyed manga ep1 until the end, hop back into the VN at EP2 and come back to EP1 if you want to later)
EP2-EP7 VN
EP8 MANGA(EP8 VN if desired afterwards, once the dust settles)
But you’re free to do what you want, of course. ;9
And then after that there’s some spinoffs that I didn’t talk about because that’s a post for another time. (There’s a fighting game! It’s packed full of spoilers.)
AFTERWORD
All in all, Umineko is…big. its very very big. it has a huge cast (the final count comes out to like, almost 70 characters!) and a huge story. and huge feelings.
The manga and the VN are the main avenues of getting into it. It’s easier than it looks at a glance; and yet, more daunting than it seems…
If you have the time and energy to pour hours of your time into it, Umineko is a super worthwhile story that tackles genuinely difficult material with a delicate but honest hand.
It clowns up sometimes and stumbles over its own demographic–see: Weird Vaguely Unpleasant Anime-brand Sex Comedy that springs up a lot in EP1, some in EP2, and then largely disappears save for a few dumb jokes here and there–but overall is a solidly built and solidly delivered story about trauma, love, loss, and getting your family ritual-murdered by a thousand-year-old witch who may or may not be real.
And if you have any questions at all (or just wanna talk Umineko), you can send an ask or IM me here or at @aceyasu–you can ask for my Discord too if you wanna really get into it. Or DM me on twitter! I’m happy to answer any question or elaborate on anything you’re confused about. I tried to go over this post quickly, so if I was too vague on something, feel free to ask!
The same of course applies to content warnings; if there’s something specific you’re worried about, I can answer it for you, whether it’s “does [specific thing] happen/appear” or “how much of [thing] is there, i can handle a little bit”! Anything! Of course I want people to read my favorite, but I also more than that want u all to be safe.
I’m very sorry that this post is literally three thousand words long. Umineko’s been my special interest for almost ten whole years. I get chatty! But hopefully my passion shines through and gets you excited!!!
LOVE, A BIG NERD
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kookyjin · 7 years ago
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avisynth alternatives: potplayer/kmplayer tutorial (giffing performances + 60 fps)
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hi! my name is ju, and this is a tutorial post on using avisynth alternatives to gif performance files, but you can also just do the same method for any file really. above are the type of gifs we are looking to achieve by the end of this!
before anything else, if you have any questions about avisynth or what it is, please check out @nochuie's amazing (she's the absolute best for making this) avisynth tutorial here first before you continue. avisynth is the recommended option for gif-making. it features an easier, lossless debilinear resizer and far less tedious in regards to cropping/extracting once you get a hang for it. 
UPDATE 05/29/2018: AS OF KMP’S NEW UPDATE, AND POTPLAYER BEING WINDOWS ONLY, THIS METHOD DOESN’T WORK WITH MAC. MAC USERS PLEASE REFER TO VAPOURSYNTH AS AN ALTERNATIVE.
but for those stuck with a mac like i did, or those who cannot get avisynth to work/download for some reason, this is for you! my ask is open if something isn't properly clarified. before i ramble on any longer, everything will be below the cut. good luck to anyone reading this and happy giffing!
you will need a basic knowledge of photoshop and frame animation in order to do this. if you'd like, i can make an in-depth screencaps to frames tutorial in another post. please let me know if anything should be added and i hope this is useful.
before we start, i’d like to clarify what performance files are. performance files are either .ts (transport stream) or .tp type, and will be far larger in size than your regular mp4 that you download from youtube. a single song’s length of a video is usually 400-500 MB, and those end of year award shows with several songs can extend to 2 GB. performance files are not fancams, and are taken from the actual broadcasts of shows such as sbs inkigayo, mbc music core, kbs music bank, mnet m countdown, etc.
they usually have closer, smooth, continuous zoom-ins or shots, almost always have 60 fps (frames per second! what makes movement smoother) and that’s why they’re worth the attention! ts files can’t, however, be opened by photoshop alone. quicktime for mac definitely does not open these files without converting to a different file type, and it just gets really messy. the built in windows media player also may have trouble playing these as well.
so what avisynth does is not only a resize and crop, but also turn a 17-second cut into an .avi file that photoshop can open. but with avisynth out as an option for mac users, we instead rely on potplayer/kmplayer for their deinterlacing and ability to not only play, but extract frames from .ts files.
the first step is downloading and installing either potplayer or kmplayer. if you have windows 7 or 8, get kmplayer. the process for kmplayer is simpler and it’s much more easy to set up. if you have windows 10, you’re going to need to use potplayer instead.
after downloading and installing, (you can decline kmplayer’s “offers” btw. they’re basically just ads for bing and yahoo haha) which should be fairly easy clicking through the download wizard, go to your .ts file and open it up with the program you installed. 
KMPLAYER EXTRACT
if you have kmplayer, there is no preparing needed. simply play the video, and find the section you want to gif. say i want to gif a video at the 01:13 second mark. pause the video at that point, then right click on the video. you’ll see a menu appear. 
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from here, hover over “capture” and then click “frames: extract”. (this looks a little different on my computer since i have windows 10 now and it doesn’t work on windows 10. also don’t mind me doing hw in the bg!)
now, after that, this little window will pop up, and it will look exactly like this at default:
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okay, so we’re going to change a few things. you’re going to change:
Image Format > Format: JPEG (middle) Numbers to extract > Continuously Frames to extract > in 1 sec [1] frame(s)
after that’s done, you can change the number in the [ ] brackets to whatever you want. extract either 60 fps or 30 fps, it’s your choice. however, japanese and singapore/overseas in general ts files won’t work with 60 fps in kmplayer. you’ll be able to play the video, but not extract the 60 fps frames. fair warning!)
when you’ve set it up, press “start”. now click the play button on your video. your video will play, and kmplayer will capture the frames as you play. when the part you want is over, pause the video.
right click again, reclick on capture > frame: extract and the window will pop up again. you’ll see that a time duration is running, and it will have #Frame and Captured in the previously empty Information box. 
simply click the stop button (where the start button previously was). the window will close and you’ll see “Captured: [insert number] times flash up in the corner of the video player in yellow. 
now, your frames are all captured and kmplayer has done its job! the next part isn’t kmplayer but in fact photoshop, so we’ll go through that after i run through potplayer.
POTPLAYER EXTRACT
okay, this is the hard part. but don’t fret, i’ve gone through the messy three-hour troubleshooting for you! 
after you’ve downloaded potplayer, open up your file and find the section you want to gif. now pause the video, and before we do any capturing, we have to go in and alter some of potplayer’s defaults. lots of screenshots are coming, don’t worry!
after you’ve paused the video, right click on the video (like literally anywhere on the video) and a menu will show up. 
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click on preferences. a window will pop up. mine will have already been altered, so sorry, as i really didn’t want to go through the hassle of reinstalling for this tutorial.
on the left hand bar, click on “Source/Splitter”
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A splitter basically will make your 60 fps interlaced frames into 30 fps frames. we don’t want that, so we’re going to delete it. First, after you’ve clicked on Source/Splitter, you will see that all the settings are set to “Built-in” source splitters. leave everything alone except for the one that says MPEG2 TS:
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use the drop down arrow and change it to what i have above! the FFmpeg MPEG2 TS Source/Splitter. then, click “Apply” at the bottom right of the window.
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after that’s done, click on the button near the bottom of the window above Apply that says “Filter management”, and when the window pops up, you’ll see that there are 3 lists and one blank column on the left.
on the list that’s titled “Source/Splitter,” click the check mark for “MPEG2 TS.” now, click the “Scan” button just below that list. you’ll see a bunch of stuff appear under “DirectShow Filter List.” select the one that is “MPEG-2 Splitter.” Make sure it’s the only one you’re selecting!
then, click the “Delete” button right under the scan button. MPEG-2 Splitter should be gone from the list.
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see how it’s missing from the left most column? now we’re all set up! click “OK,” and the window will close. then click “Apply” again, then click “OK” for that window. both windows will have closed now and you’re ready to extract!
don’t worry, the settings will save since you clicked the “Apply,” so you don’t have to do this every time. make sure you’re still paused on the right time you want to gif, and then press Ctrl (or Command on mac) + G. a window that looks similar to kmplayer’s window will pop up like this:
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the first thing you should do is set up the “Storage” designation. click on the ellipses, make a folder where you want your frames to end up, and click “Select Folder.” you can see mine is set up in a folder i made called “potplayer.” the default setting is just “Pictures” i think!
next, increase the Numbers/Frames to Capture > Number (s): [ ] to however many you want. it really doesn’t matter unless you want exactly 50 frames or what not, because you can manually stop extraction like kmplayer can.
instead of Every # frame, select Every # ms and input how many frames per second you want. then, click “Start” and play your video! 
after the part you want to gif is over, pause the video, press Ctrl + G again, and the window will re-open. click on “Stop” and your frames will be all extracted and ready for you in your designated location!
FRAMES INTO PHOTOSHOP
okay, you may already know how to do this. open up photoshop, then go to file > scripts > load files into stack.
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the window below should pop up. now click on “Browse” 
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and then find your folder with the frames in them. if you used potplayer, you should know where it is, and if you used kmplayer, go to your Local Disk (c drive) > KMPlayer > Capture and your frames should be there. 
select the frames you want to import (for future reference, you can simply click the dropdown on Files in the window above and select Folder instead to just load the whole folder.)
wait for all the images to load into the empty box and press OK. the images will start to load layer by layer into photoshop. when they’ve finished loading, click on “create video timeline” on your timeline window. if your timeline isn’t there, go to Window > Timeline. then, convert to frame animation.
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then, make frames from layers.
change your frame delay to 0.03 or a closeby number, so that we can play through the gif. for me, the frames always load backwards so i will have to reverse my frames before i will play my gif.
after that’s done, play through and delete any unnecessary frames. then crop, resize using some form of photoshop’s resample (bicubic sharper or bicubic depending on how grainy the file is) and apply adjustments/topaz!
i hope this was helpful, and i hope for the anon that requested this, that it helped you! it’s a lot of work, and avisynth is much better, but it’s worth the hassle if you don’t have avisynth. hopefully by the end you can achieve something like this:
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love, ju <3
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daydreamer0078 · 5 years ago
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Blogging vs Youtube - Which is Best Platform to Start ?
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Blogging vs Youtube - Which is the Best Platform to Start?
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Blogging and Youtube have become the most powerful ways to earn money online. Nowadays, youngsters and people want to share their skills, creativity, and knowledge through youtube and blogging platforms. The numbers on these platforms have been increasing day by day. Youngsters want to create their own brand and get fame through these platforms. To Distinguish youtube and blogging, Youtube is a video platform where you can share your ideas and knowledge by videos and upload it on youtube. Whereas, Blogging is where you share information and ideas in written and message form in your site. However, to tell, why these platforms have become successful because it gives you an opportunity to share your skills and particular knowledge. It depends on what you're interested in. There are no restrictions and rules imposed on you sharing the ideas. As days pass by, people are more interested in acquiring knowledge through online. If they are concerned about anything, they have a facility to search and figured it out on google. It's their preference, and some people like to watch videos and other people like to see the information. Every person has a particular interest and they can share through youtube or blogging. But, that's where the problem starts. They will get confused about which one to start with. Although, there has been confusion about what people should start with. Is it Youtube or Blogging? To answer all your questions and clear all your doubts. I will be sharing you which is the best platform to start! PATIENCE CONSISTENCY COMMITMENT HARDWORK First of all, let us talk What is Blogging? Blogging is where you can share the information and ideas about anything you know. In other words, let's assume you searched a question on google " How to Lose weight "You will see a ton of links and among them, you will click on the first link and you are gonna see the information about how to lose weight. So, the information you are seeing on a site is called " BLOG" I hope you got that, there are different kinds of blogs out there on google. For example, News blogs, Fashion blogs, Health Blogs, How to topic blogs, Movie blogs and etc. You need to choose a topic for your blog. That's all you should want in the beginning. Select a niche you're familiar which helps you to write much content about it. It isn't easy to create a blog . You have to invest money to create a blog.   What is Youtube? Youtube is a video-sharing platform where you can upload videos, watch videos, like, share and comment on the videos. There's no much difference between youtube and blogging. Blogging is in message form. while youtube is in the form of digital video. For instance, if you want to know about "How to Install Photoshop in your Pc". You can search on youtube and watch videos. You can also find this on the blogs. It's your preference There are different kinds of youtube channels. There are channels where you can find about technology, make-up tutorials, howto tutorials, Health, games streaming, entertainment, and etc. How to Start a Youtube Channel  
Differences:
So, now let's talk about what are differences b/w Youtube and Blogging. 1.Startup Blogging : To Create a Blog,  you need to spend money to buy hosting and domain for a blog. If you don't know what is Hosting and Domain. I will suggest you to look out How to Start a blog To explain in simple words, A domain is something you see before .com or.in. Hosting is a service that provides the technologies and services needed for the website to be viewed on the Internet. Without Hosting service, you cannot able to see your site on google. Youtube: Creating a youtube channel is a simple process. All you need to have is a Gmail account. If you created a Gmail account, you can simply create a channel. No money is needed to invest in starting a youtube channel. Summary:  Blogging requires an investment of money. While youtube doesn't! 2.Monetization Blogging : There are tons of blogs making millions of million per month. Huffington Post– is the top 1 earning blog with $41.6 million per month as according to Forbes list. If you write useful and provide valuable information to the users. You will definitely make money in huge. But, Earning money in blogging is a slow process. You need to have great patience in blogging. It may take you 6 months to 1 year. But, it is damn sure that you'll earn money one day if you've worked hard and put a lot of effort. Earning money isn't an easy process in any job. To talk about earning in blogging, You need to know SEO - Search Engine Optimization first. If you perform some SEO tactics and succeed in bringing your site in Higher Google search results. You'll make money in huge amounts. That's for sure. One of the common sources of income in blogging is ADSENSE. When you've reached a certain extent, you can apply Adsense for advertisements for your site. Not only AdSense, but there are also a lot of options and alternatives for you in blogging such as : Media.Net Info Links Affiliate Marketing ( Amazon, CJ, Click Bank ) Sponsorship ( after your blog got a lot of success ) Youtube: Earning on Youtube is similar to blogging. There's no much difference when it comes to working hard and having patience. There are tons of youtube channels making millions of millions per month. Earning money is a slow process everywhere. You could not get money overnight. That's impossible. There are some rare cases where some videos from youtube beginners became trending in an overnight. It depends on your topic. But, that one scenario doesn't mean your channel became successful. Those are only temporary. After a week, does your video still trending? Okay or after a month, are you still getting the same amount of views for that same video? No, it won't. To get a stable income and increasing income, all you need to do is just working hard on your videos. You need to put a lot of effort into providing great value to your content and making your video more beautiful enough. Similarly, ADSENSE is also one of the common sources of income on youtube. But, there are restrictions imposed on the youtube channel. The Adsense says you will not get approved unless you have 1,000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. Don't think it's easy! You may get views but, what about gaining subscribers. That's a tough and working process. There are also other options for earning income : SponsorShips Affiliate Marketing Summary: The earning process on both platforms is slow. But, Blogging has a lot of options in earning money while comparing to Youtube   3.Correction Blogging : Correction means if you've done a mistake in terms of grammatical errors or sentence formation or anything. You can re-edit and correct the sentence in blogging. It's easy to edit, after you've published an article, later you noticed that you made a grammatical mistake in a somewhere. Then, you can come to Blogger or Wordpress and edit the sentence or word and update it without issues. Not only, correction. But, you can change whatever you want. If you want to add some more information like images. You can do even after you published it. Youtube: Oh shit ! you gotta be kidding me. Once you've published a video on your channel. You can't do anything. You might have made a mistake in the editing part of the video. After you published, you cannot dispose of it. It's impossible. You cannot re-edit the video as you can do in blogging. But, there are some options like changing the music of the video, trimming videos and etc. Summary:  You can alter the information in blogging, while you can't touch anything in the video on youtube. 4. Preference Blogging : The blog is a site where you can see the information in the message or written form. Some people may like to read all the information. Those people like to prefer blogging or a blog. Youtube: Youtube is a platform where you can watch videos. Some people may like to get knowledge by reading the stuff. But, there are some people too who would like to watch videos over reading stuff. Those people prefer youtube over blogging. Summary: There are different kinds of people. Some like Youtube and Other like Blog. 5. Courage Blogging : The reason why I'm bringing out Courage point because you don't need to show off your face or voice when it comes to blogging. There are people who don't like to show their face to the world or even voice over in the videos. They prefer blogging over youtube where you have to show face and put your voice. Youtube: Initially, when you're thinking about starting a youtube channel. You need to think if you want to show your face to the world. If you would like to do that so, you can prefer youtube too. Whereas, in blogging, you don't need to show off your face. Summary:  Not showing your face in blogging doesn't mean you don't have to show your face. After your blog got successful, you may get invited to the blogging community to share your ideas or speeches. You need to have courage everywhere. While in youtube, the subscribers can recognize you.   Although, these are the differences that will face b/w youtube and blogging. You can prefer whatever you liked. Keeping every point in your mind. Decide what you should start with. Both platforms have particular benefits and different options unless when it comes to some mentions. There are similarities in Blogging and Youtube which I would like to mention :  
Similarities:
No Plagiarism Plagiarism is nothing but copying or stealing other's information or ideas without getting reservation of copyrights. There are tons and tons of people who are just copying other's work and uploading in their channels for view's sake. In the same way, some authors in blog are copying other's information without giving credit to them. This will give you nothing but a penalty. Google always explores everything. If it finds out anything suspicious, it will report you for plagiarising other's work as your own. YOUTUBE:  Youtube will automatically find out if your video is copied or replicated. If your video is matched with an already existing video. You will be reported against their guidelines. If you got 3 reports. Then, you will be banned from youtube and you can no longer upload content in your channel. Oops, do you think your channel still be there? Nope, your channel also gets deleted. There are some cases where you're using other's work for a fair purpose. You can mention Copyright Disclaimer. Youtube may cooperate with you. BLOGGING:  If you're using other's content or information. You should give credit to them at the end of their content in some instances like images. You probably use other's images for fair purposes. You can credit at the bottom or source them. But, I would suggest you to take only images from free royalty sites like Unsplash, pixabay or even can buy photos. However, if you failed to mention them. Adsense will stop advertisement services in your blog for plagiarizing other's work without acknowledgment. You have to pay for that. Although, do not plagiarize the content of others.   Patience, Consistency, Commitment, and Hardwork - How to Pull out on these platforms? : MUST READ Let it be Youtube or Blogging. Patience, commitment and hard work play a great prominent role in achieving success. You could not get success if you're lazy AF to beat your work every day. You need to put a lot of effort and bring out all your creativity in the work for effective success. You have to become an inspiration to everyone and make people to get inspired by your work. Better be unique with your working style and way of providing information. You have to be friendly with the audience to build up relations with them. People would like to be with you if you provide enough information to them without making them bore. You have to very active when it comes to publishing your content. Consistency is an important thing you need to have on these platforms. Let it be 2 videos or 2 articles. You don't need to write the long amount of words in an article to get in higher google search rankings or make long duration videos. All you need to have is quality. Quality plays a vital role than quantity. Even if you have a less matter about a particular topic. Make sure you add quality to the information with attractive images and examples. Feel like you're talking to them directly. Don't talk or write like you have to. Add humor between the information. That would be easy to gain an audience to your blog or channel. It may take you a year or even more. But, Never ever give up on what you're doing. You need to pull off every work you're providing to the audience. With this, you can achieve success gradually. Keep this in mind, Process of slow success is the greatest success rather than achieving success overnight ;)   Although, I hope you pulled out everything till now. To wrap up this article. I would like to recommend you to explore: How to Start a Youtube Channel How to Start a Blog   You might be interested in these articles, Have a look at them Why You Should Choose Business over Job – Best Career? Advanced Technology Changes in 2020 that will blow your Mind 7 Ways to Make Money Online 12 Best WordPress Plugins for Bloggers 5 Best Photo Editing Apps for Android and iOS – Edit like a Pro 5 Best Video Editing apps Read the full article
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angelpriorarchive · 7 years ago
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a comprehensive character creation guide
by kate (aka angelprior) 
hello all! this is going to be a very very long post, so i’ve put the meat of it under the cut, but recently i’ve embarked on a journey of severely in-depth characterization for the book i’m co-writing. i thought it would be helpful to both myself and any fellow writers out there to construct a complete and comprehensive set of questions by which to flesh out a character. this guide has over 200+ questions to help you get to know your character better, and to keep your character consistent throughout the story. it’s a great guide to save and come back to throughout your writing process; i’ve organized it into 10 categories (some with sub-categories for better accessibility) and have included some awesome resources that will hopefully help you along the way. this has been constructed with some assistance (i’ve done my best to give credit where credit is due, but if you find the source for something in this guide that is uncredited please let me know so i can give proper credit or take it down) and based off of some help i’ve gotten from past teachers in high school. this guide is solely based on characterization, so if you’re looking for some plot development guides you might have better luck elsewhere (although i have found that a deeper understanding of your characters helps a TON with plotblock). this guide can be used for original characters, both fantasy and real-world based, as well as rpg characters or helping you understand a character better for a fanwork. it can also be used to help you study a character you may be playing as an actor! (there are not necessarily too many fantasy-element based questions, but there are places where you can use whats applicable in your fantasy realm in place of real world alternatives, its all very open ended.) 
tl;dr, here is a guide of over 200 questions to help you become one with your characters, i hope you find it helpful and educational. thank you for your time. 
Character Basics & Physicality
okay, its time to flesh out the basics. knowing exactly who your character is will always begin with their very first formation. when you picture your character in your head, what do you see? you see their body, maybe their aura. likely you already have a name picked out. the vision you first get is their essence. mapping out a characters basic information and body structure is really only the skeleton of what your character can be. getting beyond these basics and adding more to their existence will make them more dynamic and relatable. humans, after all, are much more than we see on the surface. but that surface impression is a great place to start. think of this section as the “what my coworkers know about me” section, facts that can be gleaned through observation or light questioning. things someone would include in a bio, or put on an official document. a great resource for a quick bio page (one that was a HEAVY influence on this questionnaire) was this no-effort character sheet pdf by justsomecynic. i found it amazingly helpful, and they made an awesome printable pdf, so you can have a quick guide to your character ready when you need it! 
the following is split into two categories, basics & physicality. if you feel the need to add extra sections to cover something i missed, throw them in!
Basics
1. Full Name (this one is simple. be sure to include all names your character might have, and if you want, look up definitions of those names, or add what significant events led to your character having said names.)
2. Past Names (this is where you would include any names your character has been known by, either in previous points of your story or before it officially starts. think maiden names, names before transitioning, titles they may have lost, etc.)
3. Ethnicity (heritage is key! if you’re a boring mystery white american like me, your ancestry may have little to no influence on you, but for many others their ethic identity is in credibly influential on how they lead their lives, and how they’re treated. keep in mind: if you are writing for a character of a differing ethnicity from yourself, please do the proper research on what it’s like to live in that culture. obviously this applies to real world cultures, i’m sure none of us know any elves or mages that we could talk to, but if your character is real world based and does not share your cultural experiences, please make sure to connect with people who are actually of that ethnicity and reflect their narrative of living. it will save a lot of hurt, and your work will magnify in quality. please remember general human kindness when constructing any character.)
4. Age (again, straightforward, but if we see your character at multiple ages throughout the story, give a range.)
5. Sexual Orientation (if your character is written to feel a certain way but identify as a conflicting sexuality, write both what your character may be and what they think themselves to be. for example, i have a character that is written as asexual and has textbook asexual feelings, but never comes to terms with her asexuality and continues to identify as heterosexual. again, keep in mind your depiction of groups you do not belong to. my character is ace because i am ace, and i’ve written her to match the narrative of my experiences. but when it comes to my bisexual character, i’m constantly drawing advice from my bisexual friends and other resources to help form a more accurate narrative. be mindful, y’all.)
6. Gender Identity (same as above)
7. Employment Record (include any jobs your character worked both before the story and during. write it like your experience record on a resume!)
8. Criminal Record (character ever got caught breaking a law? served time? minor infraction? accomplice to murder? parking ticket? put it all here!)
9. Birth-date, Time, and Location (you may want to orchestrate this based on your characters birth chart, which we will get to, but make sure to include all circumstances under which your character came to be. not a natural birth? how did they come to exist?)
10. Professional Affiliations (this is a very career oriented segment, but basically this is where you would list some significant professional achievements. an md if they’re a doctor, a certified judge, minted military, ceo status, anything of that nature. the kind of stuff you’d have on a fancy plaque on a door.)
Physicality
consider this section the body basics. these are all things you would notice upon first glance or further study, things a doctor would learn in a routine checkup, things to look for in an actor or faceclaim. 
11. Build (what is your character’s body type & build? this heavily affects diet & exercise.)
12. Height (range if it changes)
13. Weight (range if it changes)
14. Eye Color (here’s a cool chart if you want to get technical with your selection!)
15. Hair
15a. Color (natural and artificial)
15b. Length (range if it changes)
15c. Style (put together a folder of some reference pictures on any styles your character has)
15d. Texture (not all hair is the same consistency! ethnicity plays a role in this. make sure your characters hair type/texture matches their heritage.)
16. Markings (this can be any number of things. tattoos, scars, birthmarks, skin conditions, etc. map them all out on a body model and keep a reference of the design & location of any tattoos, and what they mean to them! tattoos are purposeful & tell a story, write it.)
17. Physical Disabilities (if your character is not able bodied, what is their diagnosis? please do not write characters with disabilities if you have not researched the disability itself and gathered a narrative from folks who have it! with proper research, characters with disabilities are amazing and dynamic and bring representation we sorely need, but without accurate portrayals they become tokenized or stereotypical, and often written in a very ableist fashion. please! be! mindful!)
18. Posture (how does your character sit or stand and what affects this? for example characters with huge boobs will have horrible posture because of all the extra weight. characters raised in high society might have had excellent posture ingrained in them. keep in mind why your character is constructed the way they are, there’s a reason for everything.)
19. Gait (gait is a person’s manner of walking. is it confident? wonky? quick? slow? describe what it is and why.)
20. Vocal Quality & Tone (what does your characters voice sound like and what is their general tone? do they have resting bitch voice? do others find their voice high pitched and annoying?)
21. Volume & Speech Level (are they generally soft spoken or abrasively loud? does this change depending on their environment or remain the same?) 
22. Exercise Regimen (does your character keep their body in shape? how so and how often?)
23. General Health
23a. Diseases (has your character ever contracted/been diagnosed with a disease? research & accurately portray! mindfulness!)
23b. Eating/Weight Disorders (does your character have an eating disorder? an issue gaining or loosing weight? research & accurately portray! eating disorders are real, painful issues that deserve to be treated with respect. mindfulness!)
23c. Dietary Habits (what does your character consume? if you want, design a meal plan for a typical week in their lives. do they try to be healthy or eat whatever they want? any food allergies?)
23d. Allergies (anything your character is allergic to?)
24. Body Language (what does your characters body language look like in the following situations?)
24a. Upon First Meeting
24b. When Discomforted
24c. When in Love
24d. Average/Resting Behavior
24e. Type of Laughter
24f. Type of Cry
25. Appearance Through Physicality (on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the first word and 10 being the second, highlight the number that most accurately represents what your character would present through their physicality. for the first one, for example, just by looking at your character, would they seem more unkempt or meticulous? maybe they fall somewhere in the middle, perhaps a five or six.)
25a. Unkempt 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Meticulous
25b. Timid 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Confident
25c. Harried 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Callous
26. Physical Traits Developed Through Customary Activities (does your character have a physical action they’ve done so many times it’s become an integral part of their physicality? for example, when i was in elementary school other kids used to make fun of me for being short. so to make myself seem taller, i started walking on my toes. i did that so much for so long that now i walk wrong. when you step, you step with your heel first, but because i spent so many years walking that way, i step with my toes. it’s changed the makeup of my body! there are other things that have similar effects. for example, my character is a dancer, so she moves with much more grace and fluidity than others. a character also could have had a past injury, that caused them to be tender with certain movements, have a limp, etc. include all these kinds of things and why they came to be.)
Personality & Social Status
this one gets a little more complicated. here we’ve got 8 subcategories, because personality really can’t be fit into something so small. the full complexity of human beings will always be a fascinating study, and it is my belief that it’s why we create art. i believe that characters are written to show us things, reveal parts of ourselves, and help us gain a higher understanding of what it means to be human. this philosophy shines its brightest when characters are written with full fledged unique personalities. they become human to us when they have likes and dislikes, successes and flaws. personality is what helps a character become real, instead of a plot device wearing the clothes of a human being. your story will have ten fold its intended impact if it contains characters audiences can care about, and we seldom find time to care about two dimensional people. put as much as you can into this section. the more things you can think about, the better. make huge lists in response to these questions, especially about specific things! trying to decide what music your character would listen to? make a damn playlist! gather photos, come up with stories to add reason, put in as many little details as you like. every anecdote and arbitrary preference brings your character one step closer to the truth of being real.
Personality
27. Comforts (what things in life make your character feel comfortable and safe? people? places? textures? sounds? media? smells? anything! bonus: vividly describe their “happy place”.)
28. Vices (what are things your character can’t live without? any real and chronic addictions, like drugs or alcohol? unhealthy obsessions? things they can’t stop fangirling over? can’t go to work without a mocha?)
29. Personal Awareness (how well does your character know themselves? do they know exactly what they like? are they aware when they’ve made a mistake? do they have clear goals?)
30. Confidence Level (how confident is your character in their identity? presentation? behavior? choices? abilities?)
31. Temperament (how quickly are they angered? and by what? are they generally angry?)
32. Career Goals (in a perfect world where everything is achievable, what would be the one thing, or many things, they would want to do in their preferred line of work? what would they like to do in their imperfect world?)
33. Preferred Area of Study (what types of education are they enthusiastic about? have they done much in those areas?)
34. Educational Background (describe their entire schooling and education. list special achievements.)
35. Mental Disabilities (has your character ever been diagnosed with a mental illness? are they concerned they might have one, or have been written to have one, but not received an official diagnosis? describe and portray accurately. again, i cannot stress this enough, even if it is for a piece of fictional, fun writing, it is never okay to disrespect marginalized groups of human beings that you do not belong to. as i said before, representation is fucking important, but if you are not a member of the group you are not of the authority to portray their existence in any way you see fit. there is nothing wrong with having disabled characters. we need more of them. we need to bring visibility to them. but we cannot do so without their voices. it’s their lives, their narrative. do your research. talk to people. do everything you can to get feedback on your character and portrayal. be an advocate for representation, not a voice for stereotypes and bigotry. it is not hard to get assistance. again, your quality will magnify. lastly: please remember that folks with disabilities of any kind (i have seen this most commonly with mental illness but it happens frequently for others as well) are just as human as any able person. their disabilities (or rather our disabilities, i do belong to this group) do not make us any less human or real. don’t use us as a plot device. don’t use our illness as a plot device. we are human, we deserve to be written with clarity and respect. (okay i think this is the last time i will rant about this but NO GUARANTEES))
Inclinations
describe your characters behavior, both in physicality and activities, when in the following situations in detail.
36. When Content
37. When Aggravated
38. When Inebriated
39. When Insulted
40. When Attacked
41. When Praised
42. When Concerned
43. When Suspicious
44. When Trusting
45. When Ecstatic
Affectations
46. What They Lead People to Believe About Themselves (what kind of behavior does your character take on to present a certain image? what is that image? why is it important that they uphold that image?)
47. What They Do To Preserve Their Integrity (how do they act to keep up with their moral beliefs? what do they do to make it known to others that their integrity is intact?)
48. How They Hide A Lie
49. How They Present The Truth
50. Wardrobe
50a. How They Dress
50b. What it Signifies to Them
50c. What They Wish To Communicate Through Their Wardrobe
51. Possessions
51a. What Prevalent Possessions are Owned
51b. What it Signifies to Them
51c. What They Wish to Communicate Through Possessions
Preferences 
feel free to get super detailed here! make extensive lists of specific things, compile photos, booklets, anything. make moodboards! make playlists! archives, anything! have fun with this bit. give your character if somewhat unnecessary flair. you may never end up putting much about these facts in your stories, but you never know what might come up! these are the kind of things that make people people. we’ve all good random interests we’ve gathered along the years. if you want to go even more in depth, come up with anecdotes about how your character came to love these things. if you feel there’s something in one of these categories your character would despise, or more than one thing, list those out too!
52. Activities (both to observe and perform)
53. Genres and Art Types 
54. Food and Drink
55. Colors and Aesthetics (do they prefer warm tones or cool tones? designs with grecian influences? just really into things that remind them of clowns?)
56. Locations (both to be and to visit briefly, big or small scale)
57. People (both in their life, famous, or fictional)
58. Music
59. Literature (not restricted to “fancy books”, just writing pieces)
60. Media (films, television, comics, other)
61. Method of Transportation (both as a passenger and as a performer)
62. Method of Relaxation 
63. Sights 
64. Smells
65. Sensations (touch, motion, textures, i.e. skin to skin, roller coasters or swings, soft velvet)
66. Humor (what style of humor do they find the funniest? i.e. dry, political, situational, slapstick etc)
Distastes
a bit different than preferences, these would be categorically things that your character would find very difficult to put up with, instead of generally disliking. for example, when it comes to things like colors, we often have likes and dislikes based purely on opinion. i hate the color red. there’s no reasoning behind it, i just don’t like it as a color. so if your character dislikes a certain band because they find them annoying, or doesn’t want anything to do with circus themes, it would fit better above. but as with the following categories like archetype of person, there is usually very much a reason behind having disdain for a certain grouping of behaviors, so it would go below. 
67. Situations (whether it be social or physical)
68. Phobias
69. Archetype of Person (to clarify with this one; the purpose here is to profile, in essence, a grouping of behaviors that together are upsetting for your character. archetype means embodiment, so basically here you would describe the “embodiment” of what your character’s “nightmare human” would be. there are common archetypes in fiction, so you could bounce off of some of the established ones, or you could build your own from scratch. this isn’t intended to open up prejudice, although if your character is for example a prejudiced villain this could be the section to put those details in.) 
70. Interpersonal Behaviors (what are some behaviors your character sees happening between other people that they find deeply reprehensible?)
71. Sensations (any feelings or experiences to do with the senses that cause your character extreme discomfort and why)
72. Miscellaneous (any other things that are really upsetting to them!)
Social Environment
fill out the following seven questions for each of the three stages of life for your character. once for childhood, once for adolescence, and once for adulthood.
73. Residences (be exact. describe the buildings and situations in as much detail as possible, right down to floor plan and the neighbors.)
74. Familial Unit 
75. Familial Dynamic
76. Social Class
77. Significant Events
78. Relevant and Recurring Behaviors
79. Development of Maturity
Economic Class & Power Placement
unless your character happens to exist in some magical world where economics and social class are nonexistent, its likely you’ll need these next couple of sections. while they might not constantly bear relevance to the plot line or even be mentioned, it’s very important to know where your character stands when it comes to money and power. where we are in the social ladder so to speak has a very important role in our personal development, and can reveal quite a lot about your character. make sure to keep in mind any events or situations that might change where your character lies economically, and that actions have real world consequences. for example, if your character owns an expensive car, they need both the money and the time to purchase and maintain it, which is less money and time they have for other things. make sure to keep a realistic balance of what your character gains and what your character spends.
Economic Class
80. Average Annual Income 
81. Tax Bracket (what income bracket does your character fall in and how much are they taxed? is there special taxation depending on the area they live in? i.e. oregon has no sales tax but high property tax, california has lower property tax and sales tax)
82. How Income is Earned (what kind of job do they have & how are they paid? how often? is their job taxable? do they have dependents?)
83. Bills & Debts (amenities cost money. water, heat, food, electricity, rent, garbage, maintenance, transportation, phone, etc will all cost your character money to have. map out a required budget for your character including everything they need to survive and how much they spend monthly on it. include any debts owed, like student loans or credit card payments.)
84. What Their Money is Spent On
84a. For Purpose (what kind of larger, big ticket items would they save up for and then purchase? a car, computer, new house/home improvements, college fund, pets, children, investments, etc)
84b. For Pleasure (what are things they like to get for personal enjoyment? chronic shopper? new dvds every week? vinyl fiend?)
84c. Unnecessarily (gifts for others, frivolous extras, things bought solely as retail therapy, etc. different from pleasure because purchases made specifically to bring you happiness can be more impactful than purchases made with the mindset of “eh, why not.” think treat yo self vs convenient at-the-mall-smoothie)
84d. saver 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 spender
85. Monetary Goals (sort of the preliminary for 84a. the things they set their sights on economically, trust funds, etc. think big, give purpose. they want a sports car? why? what does it mean to them?)
86. Form of Assets (what form does their money come in? usd? euros? mythical money? barter system?)
Power Placement
87. Political Capabilities (what political powers do they have access to? i.e. the right to vote, right to protest, freedom of speech etc.)
88. Legal Rights Available (what legal/political powers are available to your character’s specific demographic? do they have access to all or some of them?)
89. Aspects That Give Them More Power (what aspects of their demographic may give them more power than others?)
90. Aspects That Give Them Less Power (what aspects of their demographic may give them less power than others?)
91. Activism Work
92. Destructivism Work (think the opposite of above. does your character carry a political agenda that works against human rights?)
93. Prominent Actions (led a march? murdered a president?)
94. Legal Battles (anything taken to court? can also be personal if not political, i.e. child custody battle or injury lawsuit)
95. Other (anything else? non real world specific?)
Types & Alignments
this one is mostly here for fun. these are a few extra ways of getting to know your character through personality tests, nerdy associations, astrology, etc. if you don’t know to what the question is referring (not in the fandom/don’t care to answer) just replace or skip it. 
Types
96. MBTI Personality Type (this one is an obvious starting point. take this test in character, and keep the descriptions in mind! i’ve found they’re scary accurate.) 
97. 9 Alignments Type (otherwise known as the dnd alignments, here’s a good test to see where your character is aligned.) 
98. Four Temperaments Type (the greek types, as you may have heard before. here’s a simple test.)
99. Keirsey Temperament Sorter Type (sort of a cross between the mbti and the four temperaments, this test is a bit more in depth info.)
100. Birth Chart (a persons astrological birth chart can reveal a lot about their personality & how they approach certain aspects of life. depending on what you have already established in your character, you may want to orchestrate their birth chart to match certain traits you’ve already given them. check out some of these guides for interpretation to help you decide how you want it arranged.)
101. Hogwarts House & Patronus
102. Starfleet Position
103. Middle Earth Race
104. Shadow-world Race (TMI series)
105. Superpower (if your character has a cannon one, or one they would have if they could)
106. Fictional Characters They Identify With (if they exist in our world, any characters we may know or be familiar with, if in a fictional world, someone there that could be prevalent i.e. in an old folk tale or something in that vein)
Alignments
in the same 1 to 10 rating format as previous
107. sinner 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 saint
108. passive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 aggressive 
109. introvert 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 extrovert
110. isolated 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 friendly
111. unlikable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 appealing
112. lazy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 motivated
113. illiterate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 intellectual
114. oblivious 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 perceptive 
115. fight 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 flight
116. disloyal 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 dependable
117. honest 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 deceptive
118. consistent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 flaky 
119. uninspired 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 creative 
120. modest 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 boastful
Morality, Spirituality, & Culture 
depending on how deep of an attachment your character may have to these aspects, the following beliefs can often be huge influences on a character’s motivations and actions. being in touch with your characters beliefs and ethical climate will help make your character more in-depth and believable. it will give your character choices reason, and will help you avoid out of character moments.
Morality 
121. Greatest Motivation in Life (what is the number one most important thing your character must achieve that takes precedence over anything else? does your character even have one? why or why not?)
122. Objectives (other large goals/intentions that are pervasively prevalent)
123. What They Value Most (basically, what is their definition of success?)
124. Ethical Code (what do they define as good and evil? be specific)
125. Awareness of Own Morals (how well are they in touch with their moral beliefs? have they ever crossed a line they didn’t think they could and been okay with it? are they more of a goodie-two-shoes than they thought?)
126. Events That Have Shaped Beliefs (what significant events have caused them to believe the way they do about good and bad?)
127. Influential Persons (who has shaped these beliefs and how?)
128. Valued Behavior in Close Relationships (what are some of their most valued behaviors when it comes to their interpersonal relationships?)
129. Behaviors Taken to Uphold Morality (what do they do to prove to themselves they really do believe the way they say? not necessarily behaviors to make others see their morality, but to prove it to themselves.)
130. Challenges Made to Beliefs (what events or people have challenged their morals? did it cause permanent change? or a crisis of character?)
Spirituality 
131. Religion Or Spiritual Code (if they subscribe to an existing religion, please portray it with accuracy and mindfulness. remember when you’re writing that a stereotypical representation of a demographic does not make you a good writer or a good person. use your head.)
132. Relevance of Spirituality (how much does their spiritual beliefs play into their every day life?)
133. Daily Practices (anything they do regularly? i.e. prayer, celebrate a specific holiday, ritual behaviors, etc)
134. Evangelism (do they do any work to spread their beliefs?)
135. Influences of Spirituality (has their beliefs severely influenced anyone around them or made palpable change in their life/the life of someone close to them?)
Culture
136. Ethnic Culture (describe the culture of their ethnicity, both old age and now)
137. Social Culture (describe their current social culture)
138. Generational Culture (describe the culture of their generation, including the differences between theirs and others)
139. Relevance of Culture to Everyday Behavior (how much do the previous answers directly influence their behavior and in what way?)
140. Connection to Culture (how connected do they feel to those cultures?)
141. Desired Cultural Changes (in what ways do they wish to see things changed in their cultures? what would they like to change about how the rest of the world views their cultures?)
Obstacles and Shortcomings 
it’s always important to bear in mind how imperfect your characters are. not only to avoid encountering a mary sue (if you’re curious what that is, read here and take a test here to see just how much you’re doing it) but also to maintain the humanity of your character. people fuck up, a lot, on lots of things. characters will be more realistic and relatable if they have flaws. these can be flaws of a hero or very serious issues that make a character a villain. the previous sections are a great place to explore the mind of a villainous character, and here we can see a lot of the reasons why. failure pushes people in a lot of different and unpredictable ways, and these can often be why a character is driven to be the antagonist. (tips when writing an antagonist; if they are intended to be truly evil, and serve as an antithesis for your hero, they are often more dynamic and interesting if they have a motivation other than ‘being evil’. it could be an innumerate amount of things; maybe they want money, respect, revenge, absolution, need to prove themselves, etc. it does not have to be a noble or redeemable cause ((and imo they’re more evil and dislike-able if it isn’t)) but having some sort of shameful, immoral, human cause behind their acts will make them all the more vile.) on the flipside of this, having flaws in your hero makes people like them more, plain and simple. a perfect protagonist holds no connection for audiences, and we always have the desire to root for someone who has to work harder to overcome what they’re after. make your character earn their success. not just in giving them many plot-based challenges, but in challenges from themselves. overcoming your worst fear is more satisfactory than slaying the dragon. both are badass, and if you can do it in one go, go for it. but always bear in mind the truth of humans; we are not good at all of the things. make your character suck at some stuff!
Obstacles
142. Biggest Weaknesses
143. Biggest Fears
144. Economic Obstacles Preventing Goals
145. Societal Obstacles Preventing Goals
146. Interpersonal Obstacles Preventing Goals
147. Natural & Unavoidable Obstacles Preventing Goals
148. Self-Inflicted Obstacles Preventing Goals
Shortcomings
149. Biggest Failure (what is the one thing your character views as their biggest fuck-up?)
150. Consistent Failures (what are behaviors that they’re constantly kicking themselves for doing?)
151. Instances of Inaction (when are times that they’ve been able to stop something bad from happening and didn’t?)
152. Reasons for Inaction (why have they decided not to act/continued not to act?)
153. How Shortcomings are Internalized (how do they deal with their failures internally? what does it do to their psyche?)
154. How Shortcomings are Externalized (how do their feelings surrounding their failures manifest in their behavior?)
155. Corrective Behavior (what actions have they taken to combat their failure?)
Interpersonal Relationships
in the interest of ease and organization, this next section is a short mini-questionnaire that you can use to help keep your character’s relationships in order. the best way to utilize this section is to fill out the following 11 questions for every character yours interacts with. 
156. First Contact (describe the very first interaction the two characters have)
157. First Impression (what does your character initially believe about the other? be specific)
158. Anticipated Behavior (what actions does your character believe the other will take based on their first impression? what do they predict their behavior to be like?)
159. Informed Opinion (what is your character’s opinion of the other after getting to know them deeper?)
160. Nature of Relationship (what kind of relationship do they form? a quick wiki overview)
161. Value of Relationship (on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is the preservation of this relationship to your character?) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
162. Conflicts of Nature (what conflicts between the characters occur because of unchangeable ‘natural’ obstacles?)
163. Conflicts of Nurture (what conflicts between the characters occur because of morality/belief differences?)
164. Changed Opinion (what is your characters final opinion of the other at the end of their story?)
165. Final Contact (the very last time they interact)
166. Legacy of Relationship (what lasting effect does this relationship have on your character?)
Character to World
this section is a bit small but includes some relevant questions. it’s important to keep in mind that your character is a part of a bigger world than just themselves. this may not be entirely relevant to them or your story, but it is something to bear in mind. 
167. Are they universally oriented in thinking?
168. What keeps them in their head?
169. What aggressions drive them over the edge?
170. What do they view as injustices in the world?
171. How far are they willing to go to affect change?
172. How large is their sphere of influence? 
173. How large do they believe their sphere of influence to be?
174. What events have they participated in that have had a positive impact on a large scale?
174a. small scale? 
174b. organized themselves?
174c. negative impact?
175. Actions taken to improve their world?
176. Actions taken that are inconvenient to themselves but help improve their world?
Your Character and the Monomyth
the monomyth, or the hero’s journey, is a broad open-ended template many stories can easily fit in. while it’s imperative to do your best to be fresh and avoid cliches, it is a great way of exploring the way your character fits into your plot plans. its not a bad thing to fit into the monomyth, its very easy to do. but don’t think of it as requirements or a checklist; you don’t have to hit all of these points. if something is not applicable to your character, just skip it!
177. Call to Adventure (how does the character receive the call to adventure?)
178. Refusal of the Call (does the character accept the call immediately?)
179. Answering the Call (what motivates the character to accept the call?)
180. Supernatural Aide (who or what helps the hero on his journey & why?)
181. Guide/Mentor (is there a specific character that helps the hero understand the life situation or provides the hero with special training?)
182. Talisman (is there a particular item that has special significance to the hero?)
183. Companions (who is with the hero on their journey? how do these companions help the hero face challenges?)
184. Crossing the Threshold (at what point in the story does the hero leave the familiar world and move into a new, unfamiliar world?)
185. Threshold Guardians (are there characters that try to prevent the hero from crossing over into the unfamiliar territory or circumstance?)
186. Road of Trials (what specific challenges does the hero face?)
187. Brother Battle (does the hero battle physically or mentally with someone who is a relative or close friend?)
188. Meeting the Goddess (does the hero meet with a character with a special beauty and power?)
189. Abduction (is the hero kidnapped, or is someone close to the hero kidnapped?)
190. Night or Sea Journey (where do their travels take them?)
191. Dragon Battle (do they battle some kind of monster? do they face their inner demon?)
192. Ritual Death or Dismemberment (is the hero injured and thought to be dead? do they mistakenly believe someone close to them is dead? do they suffer an injury in which they lose a limb or use of some other body part?)
193. Sacred Marriage (does the hero have a special emotional bond with another character? including but not limited to actual marriage)
194. Atonement with/Recognition by the Father (in the hero reunited with the father in some way?)
195. Entering the Belly of the Whale (is there some point in the story where they must face their deepest fear or the darkest evil in the story?)
196. Apotheosis (is there a point in the story where the hero is held up as an ideal or where they are worshiped?)
197. Magic Elixir (do they find some sort of special solution to the problem they are attempting to solve?)
198. Refusal of the Return (does the hero initially refuse to return to the homeland or the place they began?)
199. Magic Flight/Pursuit (is there some point where the hero is being chased or otherwise trying to escape something?)
200. Rescue from Without (is there some point in the story when all seems hopeless, when it looks like the hero is going to die then is suddenly unexpectedly rescued?)
201. Crossing the Return Threshold (is there some point where they return home?)
202. Master of Two Worlds (does it appear that the hero has conquered life in both the familiar and unfamiliar worlds?)
203. Freedom to Live (has the problem they set out to resolved been repaired enough that all can live peacefully?)
Arch and Alteration: Character from Beginning to End
last but not least, all of this information is useless to both you and your audience if it doesn’t come with a story!! odds are your character has a plot planned for them, and they’re already moving forward in your mind. but in order to keep your plans cohesive and interesting, you’re gonna need some structure. using basic plot structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, you know the one) as your guide, design not only your plot structure but your character’s emotional arch as well. once you have them both, they should overlay to create a complete structured guide for the direction of both your character and the story. imagine it as a line graph, in fact, create one if it helps you! the x axis being the flow of time, the y axis being the increase of action/emotion. one line will follow the plot, and others will be your characters. this will help you know where a characters head is at during certain points in your timeline. if you know how your character is doing mentally, you can provide a clearer more accurate response from them due to the events at hand. be as detailed as possible in this to help you keep all your characters and events in order. thank you for reading, and happy writing!!
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bellringermal · 7 years ago
Note
I wanna add to the shipping content of your ask box: when was the first time(s) Gehrman and Maria told each other "I love you"? Grant us context, grant us context!
My ask box loves shipping content, please send me all the questions you want :DOkay, to tell you about the first time they said it to each other I need to describe you that other time when only one of them said it and the other didn’t know how to respond (and dodged the question with grace :P)
[context: this little scene takes place at the end of a chapter. The two lovebirds just had their fist ‘official’ (and by official I mean super-secret :P) date.]
“(…) You know what I mean, a Hunter can’t afford that sort of bounds, let alone starting a family. Falling in love is not exactly a wise choice either.“Maria inspired the acrid smell of the seats’ tanned leather and the aroma of cigars that other passengers must have smoked in the carriage. “Falling in love, you say?”A puzzled expression crossed his face “…yes?”“Are you in love with me?”“Isn’t it … obvious?” Gehrman answered with a touch of hesitation.Asking a woman out to dinner, dancing with her, making love with her while being totally oblivious to the cold, dripping rain and wishing to do it all from the start again and again… How else could he be defined if not ‘in love’?“Sorry, it’s just… just a word I’m not used to.” muttered the noblewoman under her breath.“Too demanding?” Teased Gehrman with a wolfish smile, noticing her flushed cheeks in the dark.“It depends on who pronounces it. In someone’s mouth is as light as a feather, in another’s it can drag you down. Some people see love as a silly game, others would die and kill for it.”“On my lips, how heavy is it?”Maria closed her eyes, trailing the words as she nuzzled against the Hunter’s drenched coat  "It’s just like you. It seems as if a gust of wind could sweep it away, yet it does not waver. It endures. It did for all this time, didn’t it? You kept it trapped in your mouth like a caged bird for the last two years, fearing it would fall on deaf ears.““I was dying to say it.” He admitted with a deep sigh. “I wanted to tell you about my feelings for so long… and I still can’t believe I finally did.”“Are you not going to ask me if I will ever say it in return?” Maria’s breathing was now slow and warm, almost a gentle purring against his chest.“The way you kissed me tonight… that will do for now. I am a patient man!” he laughed, tilting his head back against the leather seat as the carriage bumped along the track “It’s just our first date, after all. And I still can’t wrap my head around it.”“Mmh-mh.”“Maria…?”The young woman had fallen asleep like a little girl, legs curled up on the seat, wet hair covering her eyes.  At that sight, a tender, ashamed smile lighten up Gehrman’s rugged face.“Oh, poor old Gehrman, what kind of mess have you got yourself into?” The First Hunter said to himself as he gently caressed her shoulders to keep her warm.  
————————————-
[context: this one is a little trickier to contextualize. Takes place in the outskirts of Hemwick at the end of a long and dangerous hunt. The whole group is there but Maria and Gehrman get separated from the others and have to face two big beasts on their own. What makes those beasts special is that one of them, the male, can talk just like the Suspicious Beggar can and intentionally lured them there to deal with Gehrman once for all.]
Gehrman’s heart pounded as he desperately tried to recompose himself. His gaze wandered from the enormous carcass of the beast to Maria’s shivering figure. Crystallized blood encrusted her weapon, twisting the thin blades of the Rakuyo into grotesque ruby formations.“Maria, are you hurt?” he coughed, limping towards her to cup her face in his hands, leaving traces of mud and blood on the woman’s abnormally pale cheeks. “I’m fine…”The Hunter Chief ignored her, inspecting the deep cut that scarred her temple, only a few inches above her left eye. Thick, dark blood dripped on her long lashes.“You damn girl! I told you to stay back!”“That beast would’ve killed you if I didn’t intervene. Hush now, you need some Blood, we must rejoin the othe-”“I had everything under control! Now, turn your face, let me see how bad it is.”“I am okay, Gehrman. You’re the one who’s shaking.”Gehrman grasped Maria’s shoulders. “Of course I am! That beast… it talked! That has never happened before, what in the world is going on?”Maria gasped “I have no clue, but it seems like he knows a lot about us.”Gehrman’s eyes were now wide open and the blue of his irises looked almost iridescent in the dim light. “That smaller beast that got away, the one who called me the “pack leader”… he must have studied our group for quite some time. This was an ambush. He clearly wanted to split up our team, that’s why the floor collapsed behind us once we entered, forcing the others to look for an alternative route. It was not an accident.”“Are you suggesting this whole thing was an elaborate trap? Gehrman, it’s beasts we’re talking about, their mental faculties are inferior to those of normal animals, they don’t even care for their own preservation. The ones we encountered on our way here were as aggressive and reckless as usual.”“It clearly means that these are different. Or at least, that one is. Seems like he’s the only one with a semblance of sentience” The First Hunter shook his head “This is absurd, I haven’t seen anything like it in almost twenty years of hunting…!”“That may be the reason. That creature must have understood that you are our leader and that we’re stronger if you lead us into battle. That’s why he targeted you: he sees you as his equal. We’re just like a pack of beasts in his eyes and you’re the alpha.”“You seem to be at the top of his murder list too.” Gehrman murmured in a grim, deep voice thinking back to the despicable words of the beast man.
[“YOu hAvE tHe sWEet sMELl of A fEMAle oN yOur clOtHEs, HUnter ChiEf. AaAh! YeS a SwEET sCeNT inDeED, that of rOttEn, ancIEnT bloOd. Is ShE YoUR MaTe, oLd wOlf? ThEn I’ll CruSh HeR fIrSt! MY mATe wiLL TEar yoURs into PiECes!”  (…) “ThEre ShE CoMES, isN’t ShE LoVEly? PErhaps ToO MucH for aN OlD dOg liKe YOu…” (…) “WhAt? WhY are YoU AngRy, YoU MuRDeReR? You’Re NO lEss of A BeasT than I AM! AnD WHat aBOuT HeR? SHe tOo is A mONster, JuSt LikE YOu! HeR BlOOd is fiRE anD pOIson, it’S THe blOOd of ThE Old lORds of tHE lABYrinth, thE vERy SamE RestLESS UndEAD You HUNters KiLL EvErY DAy and tHE ChUrcH ENSLAves! HOw do yOu FeEL aBoUT tHAt? ShE MaY lOOK prETTy on thE OutSIDe but YoU’RE fUcKinG a cORpse!“]
Maria raised her eyebrows “Did he… it… that thing, said anything about me?”He hesitated “He said that his ‘mate’ was on her way to kill you.” The First Hunter leaned on the staff of the scythe, pointing to the big, black carcass of the monstrous female wolf that lied in a pool of blood before their eyes. “But I guess the exact opposite happened. Thank the Gods.”The young woman bit her lower lip as her brain processed all the information. “This is insane. He really wanted to face you alone.” she whispered under her breath.Gehrman nodded, his nervousness was palpable “I want to see this through. But now, let’s get out of here and regroup with the others before some enemy can catch us with our guards lowered. I’m sure Izzy and Gratia led the group up to the granary with ease, we should go there as well.”“I agree, they may be looking for us.”“I hope so. I am not sure I can drag myself that far without collapsing” he admitted, accepting Maria’s help as the two hunters tottered towards the stone staircase. “And…” the First Hunter  took a deep, pained breath, pressing a hand against the cloth of his coat to reduce blood loss as much as possible “…thank you.”“For what?” inquired Maria between her teeth, forcing herself to ignore the burning pain of her own wounds.“For disobeying my orders.”“I could’ve never left you behind like that, you silly.”“It’s a miracle we made it out alive! You almost lost an eye because of me. I’ll never forgive myself for-”“We already are quite the picturesque pair.” she interrupted him “Would an eyepatch be so bad? I’d say it would match your pegleg quite nicely.” What that beast-man said was irrelevant. She may have had some distant blood ties to the Pthumerians but that didn't make her less human, less... 'right' in any way. He chuckled. “Your grim humor never ceases to amaze me, my love.”Guiding the injured Hunter up the last few steps of the staircase, Maria’s lips curled in an affectionate smile as the two of them rested their back against the wall of the abandoned barn to catch their breath.“You never cease to amaze me either…” she echoed his words, searching for his hand with hers. “…my love.”Gehrman blinked, suddenly oblivious to the pain of his injuries and turned towards her in surprise.She gently intertwined her gloved fingers with his and the First Hunter opened his mouth to say something but the sounds of familiar voices and footsteps resounded from the opposite end of the floor.“Master Gehrman?! Lady Maria?! Is someone here?!”“BOOOSS, WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU?!”“Quiet down, Izzy! There may still be beasts around here!”
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cancateatsthat · 5 years ago
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Can cats eat Bacon – Meat like bacon and ham is the greatest processed food of all time for humans. They have the great smell to the taste of the crunch. They are one of the great food. They are not only healthy but still appreciated for the taste. This is a salty treat for us also bring a smile charm on many of our face at breakfast table. But, can cats eat bacon safely as one of our furry members. Should we share bacon with our kitties? Let’s cross our fingers and hope that cats can eat bacon with us. And if not, then it’s all right, we have to find other healthy alternative meat for them.
Can Cats Eat Bacon? Yes, But, Not Recommended
will raw bacon hurt my cat
Good news is bacon is not toxic to cats. Therefore, completely safe to eat for your feline friend. However, bacon should only okay to give as a sometimes treat. Cats are obligate carnivores animal. cats need other animal meat in their diets. So, what is the problem with bacon? Bacon appears to be containing too much amount of salt for your feline friend. But, A small piece of cooked bacon will not do any damage to your cat. So, They are fine as an occasional treat. But, We do not recommend you to feed bacon as a daily treat for cats.
But, bacon is not a healthy food for cats. They have too much fat, too much cholesterol, and phosphate. The phosphate is especially bad for male cats. Because it worsens the formation of struvite crystals.
credit: https://www.traegergrills.com/smokenomics/everyday-bacon-day-infographic
What Are The Concerns With Cats Eating Bacon?
Cats can eat bacon. But, the biggest concern about bacon is the extremely high amount of salt. Research shows, one small slice of cooked bacon contains nearly about 137.4 milligrams of sodium. That is close to ten times more than the daily sodium intake recommended for cats. Normal high-quality cat foods provide all the sodium content a cat needs. So, extra sodium is never needed in a cat diet. More than that can cause trouble for cat and their health. If your cat is eating too much salt can lead to:
High blood pressure
Obesity
Dehydration 
Salt Poisoning
Clogged blood vessels
Bacon has too much, But, bacon is extremely fatty. This processed meat is coming from the belly of a pig or the side and back. Bacon is completely covered in fat and they are prepared without removing the fat. This fat is wildly unhealthy, especially for our cats. Their small can’t adjust with this large amount of fat.
Can Cats Eat Turkey Bacon
Other processed meat like turkey bacon, they are considered a healthier alternative to the pork bacon. They also contain high levels of grease and sodium. So, They are not good for our feline friend’s health. If your cat is having too much fat in their daily food diet. Then, this can lead to a digestive problem, obesity, and other more serious health-related issues in your cats. You should try to avoid feeding bacon to cats.
You May Also Read – Can Cats Eat Watermelon
Can Cats eat Bacon Raw
If you are thinking about to feed your cat any type of raw meat. We always will tell you to consult with your veterinarian before giving any kind of raw meat to cats. Raw meats like raw bacon can be fine for your cat only if the meat is truly raw and not cured. And, Most importantly the meat must also be fresh. You have to make sure to take the necessary precautions of your kitty with feeding raw meat. Some tips, Clear your knife, cutting board, and cat bowls are clean.
Can Cats Eat Cooked Bacon
Cats can eat cooked bacon. as we discussed, Bacon is safe for cats. You can give your cat cooked bacon as an occasional treat. But, you should make sure cooked bacon should contain low amount salt. Bacon normally contains too much compare to what amount of sodium your cat’s needs. So, the Best choice is to avoid feeding bacon.
Will Raw Bacon Hurt My Cat
If the meat is fresh, then raw bacon would not hurt your cat. Too much fat is not good for your cat. Because bacon is containing too much fat would not do good for your little feline. You should take advice from a vet before giving any raw meat to your cat.
What Happens If A Cat Eats Raw Bacon
Your cat will be completely fine if she ate a few pieces of fresh raw bacon. If they are not fresh meat you should be worried about it. Because only fresh raw is safe for cats to eat. Otherwise, You should contact a vet immediately without wasting a second.
You May Also Read – Can Cats Eat Lettuce
My Cat Ate Raw Bacon
Raw bacon is not safe for cats. They contain a lot of fat and raw meat could contain bacteria. If the meat is fresh and she just ate a little bit of it,  then it is good news. Then, you do not have to worry about it. Otherwise, you should take advice from a vet immediately.
Can Cats Eat Ham
Ham is one of our favorite popular processed meat. Most people enjoy their holidays like Easter and Christmas with Ham. Ham is made out of pork. So, You might think it is a good idea to share it with your carnivorous cat. But, can cats eat ham? The quick answer is no. ham is toxic for cats but, they not okay for cats to eat either.
But, Why? Ham is not much different from bacon. Both of this two process meat contains a lot of salt. You should know, 100 grams of ham contains around 1,200 milligrams of sodium. So, this way it is too much for a cat.
You May Also Read – Can Cats Eat Carrots And Other Vegetables
But, it is okay to give your cat a small piece of ham as a treat now and then. But it wouldn’t do her any good. Because it will encourage your cat to eat this kind of food more and more in the future as well. It’s best that you avoid giving even a small piece of ham to your cat.
Foods containing too much salt are not healthy for cats or human. There is a lot of health conscious people around the globe would buy low sodium ham or low sodium processed food. Low sodium ham is okay for your cat as an occasional treat. But, not very often, because even low sodium hams have too much salt for your feline friend. So, you should give her in moderate amount, and not every day.
So, Can Cats Eat Ham Slice
Your feline friend will appreciate if you believe feeding ham as a treat to her. Because of high sodium level in Ham, We do not recommend you to give more than a half of a slice of ham in every two and three days. More than that, there is too much fat unhealthy fat contain in ham which is not good for your cats. This may impact her body.
You May Also Read – Can Cats Eat Raw Egg 
Can Cats Eat Sausages and Spam?
Bacon and ham are not the only processed meats that we like to eat. Sausages and even spam are also popular among us and around the world. So, you might think if it would be okay to share these meat products with your cat? Spam is not good food for cats. They are extremely high in sodium. But, Sausages, can be okay for cats. It depends on a few things.
there are many different kinds of sausages made around the world. A sausage is okay for the cat to eat or not, It depends on the ingredients are used to make a specific sausage. Some things you should check are the sodium content in it, and if the sausage contains onion or garlic powders. Because, as u know onion and garlic is toxic for cats.
As you learned and know that cats can’t eat a lot of sodium food. Therefore, sausages containing a lot of sodium are not safe for your feline friend. And, onion and garlic powders should not be added in that sausage you are giving to your feline friend. So, any sausages or food containing these two ingredients are definitely not safe for your cat.
What If a sausage contains very little salt and no onion or garlic powders? Can I give sausage to my cat then? Yes, you can give a small piece to your cat is safe. But, it is better off feeding your cat commercial quality cat treats instead of sausages. Because that way you can always be sure you keep your safe and taking care of her needs and diet. You can cook scrambled eggs in your kitchen for your cat as a treat. There are some foods cats can’t eat. You should avoid feeding them to a cat.
Can Cats Eat Scrambled Eggs
Yes, cats can eat scrambled eggs safely. But, make sure you do not add much salt. It better without salt. Cats normally love to eat eggs yolk. Eggs yolks are good for their skin and fur. So, You can give scrambled eggs to cats as an occasional treat.
Egg recipe like scrambled egg is healthy and also beneficial in your cat’s diet as a treat.
Can Cats Eat Tuna
Most cats can get addict to tuna. Even they are packed for cats or for humans, your cat will try to eat them. Some tuna now and then won’t hurt your kitty. But a tuna that is prepared for humans is not a good choice for your kitty. This will lead to malnutrition for cats. Because They don’t have all the nutrients a cat daily diet’s needs. And most importantly too much tuna can lead to mercury poisoning in cats. There is the list of food cats can’t eat we have mentioned above. So,  What Can Cats Eat.
You May Also Read – Can Cats Eat Tomatoes
Conclusion
Raw Bacon is not safe for cats. Raw bacon can be feed to a cat under a proper guideline by a vet. Fully cooked small sized bacon could be given to your cat as an occasional treat But, They contain too much salt and fat. Too much is not good for your feline’s health either too much fat. And, Do not give your cat raw bacon if they are fresh meat. So, you could also cook bacon with a very low amount of salt for your cat. But, it is better to avoid bacon rather you could give her some other healthy treats.
Food like becon content fat. It is best you find different alternative than feeding bacon to your cat. Hope this article helps you to find your answer related to “can cats eat bacon“.  If this article is helpful for you, then kindly share this article with other cat lovers like you.
Black Cat Eats Bacon For the first time.
The post 13 Facts About Can Cats Eat Bacon | What About Sausage And Ham appeared first on Can Cat Eat.
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nancygduarteus · 6 years ago
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Suicide Memes Might Actually Be Therapeutic
In a recent post to the popular meme-sharing platform 9gag, two side-by-side storybook illustrations depict a girl watching snowflakes fall outside her bedroom window. The left panel is titled “kids then”: In a thought bubble, the girl wistfully muses, “I sure hope they cancel school for all this snow.” The right panel is “kids now.” The girl looks at the snow outside and thinks, “I hope a car loses traction on the ice and rams into me and I fucking die tomorrow.”
This is a joke—and apparently a very relatable one for its target demographic, the millions of Generation Y and Z digital natives for whom memes are a mother tongue. A casual scroll on 9gag, which receives 3.5 billion page views a month, will turn up dozens of memes daily about self-harm or wanting to die, and young people are sharing, retweeting, and reblogging similar content across the social-media landscape. You’ll find storybook illustrations doctored to show children dreaming of grisly deaths, Spongebob joyfully flailing to his doom during a bank stickup, and Obama about to throw himself off a bridge.
At first blush, these jokes couldn’t be in poorer taste. The World Health Organization ranks suicide as the second leading cause of death for youth worldwide. In the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed staggering 70 and 77 percent increases in suicide rates of white and black teens, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. In response, public-health officials and tech giants alike have been cracking down on potentially dangerous messaging on self-harm. Last Friday, Instagram rolled out a new policy banning “graphic” depictions of self-harm or suicide.
But memes about suicide remain largely uncharted territory. While disturbing, they’re far less graphic than actual depictions. And they’re often darkly funny. As the gatekeepers of social media are wrestling with how to police this trend, some suicide-prevention experts see a window of opportunity. Typically, suicide memers aren’t mocking suicidal thoughts; they’re commiserating and bonding over being suicidal. Morbid memes, these experts believe, may be a foot in the door to one of the most vulnerable and hard to reach populations: socially isolated young people.
April Foreman is a seasoned veteran of the dark web. As a licensed psychologist and executive board member at the American Association of Suicidology, she’s clicked through the foulest content on the internet to keep tabs on the volatile and high-risk souls that live there.
Foreman wasn’t surprised when suicide memes began to percolate up into the surface-level internet after a long incubation period in more hostile and conspiracy-laden depths (see: 4chan). In a way, she’s heartened by the memes’ increased social acceptability. Like so many anonymous platforms, 9gag struggles with pervasive racism, misogyny, and old-fashion trolling. But while the predictable ‘lol, do it’ replies pepper the comment sections to suicide memes, messages of support tend to be buoyed to the top by hundreds of upvotes. Internet scamps with usernames like necrolovertown gently direct suicide-meme posters to local suicide hotlines (or, in necrolovertown’s case, provide his Facebook contact info and a standing offer to chat—“any hour anytime I’ll be there”).
[Read: Social media is redefining “depression”]
What we’re witnessing on 9gag, Foreman explains, is the writing of a new “social script.” Sometimes it’s tough to know what to say, “like if someone’s dog dies, or if you have to go to a funeral,” she says. But through experience, communities develop a formula for how to respond supportively, something like, “Dude, that’s rough. I’ve gone through it. Here are the resources, let me know if you need support.” Foreman has identified several corners of the internet that seem to have healthy social scripts for suicidal thoughts. “Reddit communities around certain video games”—like the Eve Online universe’s Broadcast 4 Reps–“tend to have communities where you talk about your mental health and you feel better. People help you.”
Still, Foreman cautions, destructive conversations about suicide abound deeper in the bowels of the internet. “We have people that go in there as trolls to really stir people up and make them feel worse,” she says. They make “‘sui-fuel,’ memes to get people even more depressed, with the idea that you might ‘rope’—which is kill yourself—or you might even go and do a murder-suicide.”
Foreman’s colleague Bart Andrews, another clinical psychologist and executive board member at the AAS, is a full-throated advocate for suicide memes as an alternative to these destructive depths. Andrews bucks the traditional wisdom on suicide contagion, the idea that suicidal thoughts can spread through a community like a virus. It’s an evidence-based notion that’s been widely unchallenged for decades, and informs national and international guidelines for media coverage of suicide. Andrews acknowledges that irresponsible reporting of suicide—such as sensationalistic, needlessly graphic descriptions of celebrity suicide—likely has population-level effects. But if safe-messaging guidelines prevent people from having meaningful conversations, Andrews contends, they can be deadly.
“The very people we’re trying to reach, the youth—we’re telling them they can’t talk about suicide the way they talk about it,” Andrews says. “When you read the threads on these memes, people find them helpful. They don’t feel alone. It’s a way for them to anonymously communicate their inner pain in a way that’s artistic, super clever, and that people who are struggling identify with.”
Andrews believes that decades of an effective “gag rule” on suicide stifled conversation and perpetuated stigma—and that while the younger generations are more willing to talk, there’s still a vestigial wariness among listeners that the very act of discussing suicide could make their friends worse. He rattles off a list of memes formats that emphasize hope or resilience. Perennial favorites are “not today, old friend,” where Moe from The Simpsons decides not to kill himself, and “my mom would be sad.” “They get at reasons for living,” Andrews says. “And those can be really small.”
Another camp of suicide-prevention experts prefer to err on the side of caution. Jane Pirkis, the director of the center for mental health at the University of Melbourne and an expert on suicide-contagion theory, is the traditionalist yin to Andrews’ laissez-faire yang when it comes to safe messaging. “I wouldn’t say I’m alarmed, but I don’t think it’s very good,” she told me after reviewing a handful of 9gag memes. “The work we’ve done looking at traditional media definitely shows that representation that normalizes suicide or glorifies it at all can lead to so-called copycat acts.”
Pirkis concedes that the bulk of the scientific literature on contagion came from the pre-internet age, but she insists those lessons carry into social media. “They’re very basic, Psychology 101 principles about modeling behavior, and people learning what’s normal, what’s likely to get a response,” she says. “That’s why you don’t see depictions of smoking in film and television any more.”
This conversation around suicide memes is complicated by a generation gap between suicide-prevention experts and the communities they serve. I talked to several mental-health experts who were well beyond the age of the average memer and entirely unaware that suicide memes exist. Once they recovered from the initial surprise at this undercurrent of dark humor, however, they warmed to the idea that memes about suicide could have a capacity to heal.
These experts emphasize that it’s a fine line between destigmatizing suicidal thoughts and normalizing them. The right messages can let people know they’re not alone and that it’s okay to reach out for help. But overexposure could, in theory, lead to the belief that thoughts about self-harm are normal and not a cause for concern. Further muddying the waters, the very meme that could inspire one teen to call a psychiatrist could dredge up painful memories of a prior attempt in someone else.
There’s a dearth of experimental research on how people respond to non-graphic content about suicide, so social-media platforms are left to cobble together their own policies through high-stakes trial and error. The changes to Instagram’s self-harm policy last week, for instance, were reportedly spurred by the death of a 14-year-old in the United Kingdom Most social-media outlets draw the line at text, image, and video that appear to encourage suicide or self-harm. Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram have “hot words” associated with self-harm that automatically trigger messages to users about mental health and links to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a network of crisis hotlines that offer free counseling around the clock. But since image-based memes are hard for AI to parse, platforms generally rely on users to report sensitive material that isn’t simply text-based.
Foreman points to Tumblr as a platform that’s getting it right. Tumblr partners with mental-health advocacy groups, like the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and National Alliance on Mental Health, and reviews every post reported with the “self-harm” flag, according to Victoria McCullough, the company’s head of social impact and public policy. Depending on the post itself and its reception by the community, Tumblr might remove abusive responses, remove the post itself, or refer the creator to additional mental-health resources. McCullough says the company is very cautious about removing content altogether for fear of “undermining those recovery conversations.”
[Read: Tumblr has a cutting (and an anorexia and bulimia) problem]
9gag only added a tag specific to self-harm in the past several months. “Personally, I don’t think any community can claim that users’ comments are 100% positive at all times. There’s no such thing in life either. LOL,” 9gag’s COO Lilian Leong told me over email. “Of course, we can always level up our filtering measures. But we are very cautious not to get over-engineered and overkilled.”
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, 9gag is a single-scroll platform; regardless of a user’s previous activity on the site, everyone sees the same grab bag of memes. What’s on the ‘hot’ and ‘trending’ pages is determined by users’ upvotes and any editorial choices 9gag makes. Leong did not respond to questions about specific curation decisions—like why users couldn’t search the tag “suicide,” but could search “kill myself” and “suicidal”—or describe the decision-making process behind the removal of a sensitive post. In the days following our exchange, however, 9gag plugged all the holes in its search system pertaining to self-harm.
At the end of my reporting for this story, I posted on 9gag asking users to talk about their experience with memes about suicide. You can see the full threads here and here. The replies were a case study of what happens when a diverse community is left all-but-unsupervised in their reactions to suicide memes.
Some users like dracothedragon told me to “F.O.A.D.”—or “fuck off and die.” But most shared stories about how suicide memes sparked feelings of belonging amid isolation. @angry_doge42 said, “I tried so hard to gather the courage to end it. But I remember this post about how this random dude from the other side of the planet turned his life around after surviving the attempt and was now doing his own thing (I think, making candles). Gave up trying to knock myself haha. You guys maybe pricks but most of y’all are awesome.”
@streethastle wasn’t going to let me off easy: “You’re going to set people up with false hope if you’re really going to pull through with a naive article filled with cherry picked examples of ‘supportive’ comments. This website is a fucking cesspool of social degenerates.” But @infexo rushed to my aid. “I don’t see any harm in shedding light on the positive side of 9gag, because like it or not, it does exist ... And a few lines coming out from a caring heart can change drastically a [tragic] act.”
Pirkis, the University of Melbourne mental-health expert, agreed with @infexo, saying it’s a deadly myth that only professionals can help people at risk of suicide. “This great unwashed population that we’re talking about has a role to play,” she says.
Foreman and her colleagues at the American Association of Suicidology look forward to seeing the dialogue expand around suicide memes, however inelegantly. “I’ve never known a single problem that got better by not talking about it,” Foreman says. “Not a single public health problem has gotten better by reducing conversation.”
from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/suicide-memes/582832/?utm_source=feed
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ionecoffman · 6 years ago
Text
Suicide Memes Might Actually Be Therapeutic
In a recent post to the popular meme-sharing platform 9gag, two side-by-side storybook illustrations depict a girl watching snowflakes fall outside her bedroom window. The left panel is titled “kids then”: In a thought bubble, the girl wistfully muses, “I sure hope they cancel school for all this snow.” The right panel is “kids now.” The girl looks at the snow outside and thinks, “I hope a car loses traction on the ice and rams into me and I fucking die tomorrow.”
This is a joke—and apparently a very relatable one for its target demographic, the millions of Generation Y and Z digital natives for whom memes are a mother tongue. A casual scroll on 9gag, which receives 3.5 billion page views a month, will turn up dozens of memes daily about self-harm or wanting to die, and young people are sharing, retweeting, and reblogging similar content across the social-media landscape. You’ll find storybook illustrations doctored to show children dreaming of grisly deaths, Spongebob joyfully flailing to his doom during a bank stickup, and Obama about to throw himself off a bridge.
At first blush, these jokes couldn’t be in poorer taste. The World Health Organization ranks suicide as the second leading cause of death for youth worldwide. In the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed staggering 70 and 77 percent increases in suicide rates of white and black teens, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. In response, public-health officials and tech giants alike have been cracking down on potentially dangerous messaging on self-harm. Last Friday, Instagram rolled out a new policy banning “graphic” depictions of self-harm or suicide.
But memes about suicide remain largely uncharted territory. While disturbing, they’re far less graphic than actual depictions. And they’re often darkly funny. As the gatekeepers of social media are wrestling with how to police this trend, some suicide-prevention experts see a window of opportunity. Typically, suicide memers aren’t mocking suicidal thoughts; they’re commiserating and bonding over being suicidal. Morbid memes, these experts believe, may be a foot in the door to one of the most vulnerable and hard to reach populations: socially isolated young people.
April Foreman is a seasoned veteran of the dark web. As a licensed psychologist and executive board member at the American Association of Suicidology, she’s clicked through the foulest content on the internet to keep tabs on the volatile and high-risk souls that live there.
Foreman wasn’t surprised when suicide memes began to percolate up into the surface-level internet after a long incubation period in more hostile and conspiracy-laden depths (see: 4chan). In a way, she’s heartened by the memes’ increased social acceptability. Like so many anonymous platforms, 9gag struggles with pervasive racism, misogyny, and old-fashion trolling. But while the predictable ‘lol, do it’ replies pepper the comment sections to suicide memes, messages of support tend to be buoyed to the top by hundreds of upvotes. Internet scamps with usernames like necrolovertown gently direct suicide-meme posters to local suicide hotlines (or, in necrolovertown’s case, provide his Facebook contact info and a standing offer to chat—“any hour anytime I’ll be there”).
[Read: Social media is redefining “depression”]
What we’re witnessing on 9gag, Foreman explains, is the writing of a new “social script.” Sometimes it’s tough to know what to say, “like if someone’s dog dies, or if you have to go to a funeral,” she says. But through experience, communities develop a formula for how to respond supportively, something like, “Dude, that’s rough. I’ve gone through it. Here are the resources, let me know if you need support.” Foreman has identified several corners of the internet that seem to have healthy social scripts for suicidal thoughts. “Reddit communities around certain video games”—like the Eve Online universe’s Broadcast 4 Reps–“tend to have communities where you talk about your mental health and you feel better. People help you.”
Still, Foreman cautions, destructive conversations about suicide abound deeper in the bowels of the internet. “We have people that go in there as trolls to really stir people up and make them feel worse,” she says. They make “‘sui-fuel,’ memes to get people even more depressed, with the idea that you might ‘rope’—which is kill yourself—or you might even go and do a murder-suicide.”
Foreman’s colleague Bart Andrews, another clinical psychologist and executive board member at the AAS, is a full-throated advocate for suicide memes as an alternative to these destructive depths. Andrews bucks the traditional wisdom on suicide contagion, the idea that suicidal thoughts can spread through a community like a virus. It’s an evidence-based notion that’s been widely unchallenged for decades, and informs national and international guidelines for media coverage of suicide. Andrews acknowledges that irresponsible reporting of suicide—such as sensationalistic, needlessly graphic descriptions of celebrity suicide—likely has population-level effects. But if safe-messaging guidelines prevent people from having meaningful conversations, Andrews contends, they can be deadly.
“The very people we’re trying to reach, the youth—we’re telling them they can’t talk about suicide the way they talk about it,” Andrews says. “When you read the threads on these memes, people find them helpful. They don’t feel alone. It’s a way for them to anonymously communicate their inner pain in a way that’s artistic, super clever, and that people who are struggling identify with.”
Andrews believes that decades of an effective “gag rule” on suicide stifled conversation and perpetuated stigma—and that while the younger generations are more willing to talk, there’s still a vestigial wariness among listeners that the very act of discussing suicide could make their friends worse. He rattles off a list of memes formats that emphasize hope or resilience. Perennial favorites are “not today, old friend,” where Moe from The Simpsons decides not to kill himself, and “my mom would be sad.” “They get at reasons for living,” Andrews says. “And those can be really small.”
Another camp of suicide-prevention experts prefer to err on the side of caution. Jane Pirkis, the director of the center for mental health at the University of Melbourne and an expert on suicide-contagion theory, is the traditionalist yin to Andrews’ laissez-faire yang when it comes to safe messaging. “I wouldn’t say I’m alarmed, but I don’t think it’s very good,” she told me after reviewing a handful of 9gag memes. “The work we’ve done looking at traditional media definitely shows that representation that normalizes suicide or glorifies it at all can lead to so-called copycat acts.”
Pirkis concedes that the bulk of the scientific literature on contagion came from the pre-internet age, but she insists those lessons carry into social media. “They’re very basic, Psychology 101 principles about modeling behavior, and people learning what’s normal, what’s likely to get a response,” she says. “That’s why you don’t see depictions of smoking in film and television any more.”
This conversation around suicide memes is complicated by a generation gap between suicide-prevention experts and the communities they serve. I talked to several mental-health experts who were well beyond the age of the average memer and entirely unaware that suicide memes exist. Once they recovered from the initial surprise at this undercurrent of dark humor, however, they warmed to the idea that memes about suicide could have a capacity to heal.
These experts emphasize that it’s a fine line between destigmatizing suicidal thoughts and normalizing them. The right messages can let people know they’re not alone and that it’s okay to reach out for help. But overexposure could, in theory, lead to the belief that thoughts about self-harm are normal and not a cause for concern. Further muddying the waters, the very meme that could inspire one teen to call a psychiatrist could dredge up painful memories of a prior attempt in someone else.
There’s a dearth of experimental research on how people respond to non-graphic content about suicide, so social-media platforms are left to cobble together their own policies through high-stakes trial and error. The changes to Instagram’s self-harm policy last week, for instance, were reportedly spurred by the death of a 14-year-old in the United Kingdom Most social-media outlets draw the line at text, image, and video that appear to encourage suicide or self-harm. Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram have “hot words” associated with self-harm that automatically trigger messages to users about mental health and links to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a network of crisis hotlines that offer free counseling around the clock. But since image-based memes are hard for AI to parse, platforms generally rely on users to report sensitive material that isn’t simply text-based.
Foreman points to Tumblr as a platform that’s getting it right. Tumblr partners with mental-health advocacy groups, like the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and National Alliance on Mental Health, and reviews every post reported with the “self-harm” flag, according to Victoria McCullough, the company’s head of social impact and public policy. Depending on the post itself and its reception by the community, Tumblr might remove abusive responses, remove the post itself, or refer the creator to additional mental-health resources. McCullough says the company is very cautious about removing content altogether for fear of “undermining those recovery conversations.”
[Read: Tumblr has a cutting (and an anorexia and bulimia) problem]
9gag only added a tag specific to self-harm in the past several months. “Personally, I don’t think any community can claim that users’ comments are 100% positive at all times. There’s no such thing in life either. LOL,” 9gag’s COO Lilian Leong told me over email. “Of course, we can always level up our filtering measures. But we are very cautious not to get over-engineered and overkilled.”
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, 9gag is a single-scroll platform; regardless of a user’s previous activity on the site, everyone sees the same grab bag of memes. What’s on the ‘hot’ and ‘trending’ pages is determined by users’ upvotes and any editorial choices 9gag makes. Leong did not respond to questions about specific curation decisions—like why users couldn’t search the tag “suicide,” but could search “kill myself” and “suicidal”—or describe the decision-making process behind the removal of a sensitive post. In the days following our exchange, however, 9gag plugged all the holes in its search system pertaining to self-harm.
At the end of my reporting for this story, I posted on 9gag asking users to talk about their experience with memes about suicide. You can see the full threads here and here. The replies were a case study of what happens when a diverse community is left all-but-unsupervised in their reactions to suicide memes.
Some users like dracothedragon told me to “F.O.A.D.”—or “fuck off and die.” But most shared stories about how suicide memes sparked feelings of belonging amid isolation. @angry_doge42 said, “I tried so hard to gather the courage to end it. But I remember this post about how this random dude from the other side of the planet turned his life around after surviving the attempt and was now doing his own thing (I think, making candles). Gave up trying to knock myself haha. You guys maybe pricks but most of y’all are awesome.”
@streethastle wasn’t going to let me off easy: “You’re going to set people up with false hope if you’re really going to pull through with a naive article filled with cherry picked examples of ‘supportive’ comments. This website is a fucking cesspool of social degenerates.” But @infexo rushed to my aid. “I don’t see any harm in shedding light on the positive side of 9gag, because like it or not, it does exist ... And a few lines coming out from a caring heart can change drastically a [tragic] act.”
Pirkis, the University of Melbourne mental-health expert, agreed with @infexo, saying it’s a deadly myth that only professionals can help people at risk of suicide. “This great unwashed population that we’re talking about has a role to play,” she says.
Foreman and her colleagues at the American Association of Suicidology look forward to seeing the dialogue expand around suicide memes, however inelegantly. “I’ve never known a single problem that got better by not talking about it,” Foreman says. “Not a single public health problem has gotten better by reducing conversation.”
Article source here:The Atlantic
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autoirishlitdiscourses · 7 years ago
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Discourse of Sunday, 29 April 2018
Alternately, if necessary. I think, too, and so I wanted to work with. I myself tend to do to get into other classes. And I'll definitely get back to your paper's structure often causes your very rare A and F grades, two dactyls. I think, though, you must email me a copy of this would have most helped here. Your juxtaposition of Heaney and Eminem is effective and generally free of all my students turn them into an argument for your section to advance your central argument? Before each lecture, and enjoy the company of your group before the paper's overall direction. The Stare's Nest again so that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the opportunities for movement and observation were affected by this calculation detail but this wasn't on campus tomorrow, then digging in to the discussion requirement. Let me know if you have any questions, OK? Let me know if you want to engage the class and is often a suboptimal way to do one of two pairs reciting from Godot is already an impressive move that the paper to support that negative value judgment about that. My 6 p. I think that you're not sure that you use. I think that student lists from eGrades didn't have a positive influence on McCabe is quite a long time to get people talking and you manage to arrange for discussion; you also gave a very thorough apparatus for reading. Section takes a stand that makes your argument, too. I'll be looking through the grade definitions—GauchoSpace does not merely performing an analysis. As it is that you would benefit from letting your own ability to construct your answer. All in all, this might be said about your thesis statement. Remember the summer morning she was excellent. You were clearly a bit more breathing room too, depending on what constitutes the understanding of what you're doing with the way that the rather thin time slice that Joyce gives us of their thoughts? Let me know as soon as possible after lecture, but it made me throw a loud hissy fit in front of the Western World, and I liked your presentation and discussion tomorrow, I think, and I suspect that this is potentially also a good topic, and to your main argument. Thanks for being such a good topic, but neglect to address the specific selection that you go through the grade sheets for all students, and said that he allows you to think about cultural changes in Irish nationalism. Great! If people aren't talking because they will probably involve providing at least eight sections. Either way is OK, and you demonstrate effectively that you must attend or reschedule, and the Sirens 1891. Ultimately, what is your last chance to talk about things forever, honestly. I hadn't thought out extensively, and with sensitivity; written gracefully and in a single day. I have to pick a segment of a heterosexual romantic relationship is between the poem and gave what was covered earlier so that I record your performance. But I think that they will be. Truthfully, you're welcome to provide the largest overall benefit to the original authors whose texts you're working with this group of students in this very issue, polite differences of opinion, anyway. I have a happy holiday break! If you have any questions, OK? But I think that the person in your section during Thanksgiving week, the upshot is that if anyone else cries unfair! And let me know what you'd like me to say: if you have a fever of 104 or a human being, specifically? Here's what I hope you have to choose something else that is related to the week in section this week to read with a difficult task and fall into line with a good job of setting them next to Yeats's text; just don't assume that you get/zero/points for not doing so. As with everything else that might have paid off quite a slippery concept when examined closely, and V for Vendetta and Punishment and of your ideas that your paper into account when grading your presentation.
All of these come down to paying more attention to these comparatively minor grammatical and formatting issues—none of these issues, and producing some of the rhythm-and micro-level attention to the small late plan email penalty ½%, but might point you toward issues involved and their outlines don't bear a lot of good news. I necessarily think that your reading of a regular rhyme scheme, and this weekend, and would almost certainly already know: you should be adaptable in terms of which parts of the weekend is over and over. Again, well done! Does anyone have a good job this week.
5 p. For one thing, actually. I think that there are any problems with conforming to the text that you've already lost on the morning of 16 June 1904, or Synge or O'Casey, Act IV: lyrics and discussion tomorrow! Warning: I am willing to meet or exceed the bare minimum paper length, but are the ideal text for you if you want to go; it's of more benefit to the primary tension that you've chosen, and this really means is that I didn't notice until after I'd graded and was counting. You picked a good thumbnail background to the end of/The Music Box/1932: There will be, and the text. Public Universities Should Be Free One of the reasons that I define what each grade is mapped onto a good book. Excellent! You must turn in a comprehensive and entirely satisfying way, and this made it a bit less and allow for real discussion to assist you. No longer legal tender in Britain after 31 December 1960. You should prepare a longer paper.
Can we meet on Sunday afternoon, we can use as discussion questions if they cover ground which you can choose any poem at all this quarter. I haven't. You did a very good job of reading that they've been bolted on at this point, and their relationships to each other. Another small note: Your paper should be adaptable in response to some extent in some of the course discussion section meetings are a bit more specific about what motivated that particular section of the class's level of familiarity with the benefit of exposing your recitation.
Thanks again for doing a strong manner here.
You should make sure I have open chairs in both sections and you do have to get there without this bonus or not go first or last, or having a thesis statement, and be flexible but unless the student engaging in the paper prompt, but that it would be to enhance your presentation by the section by section all ten weeks this quarter, especially because so many other good directions in which this could have been not a fair response and said so on the final exam except that this is a good move, too, but there are a number of things well here. I think that it currently looks like it better than you expect. Well done on this you connected it effectively to the professor is not a C the lowest score of anyone whose tests I graded the final! Benisgewd Keeping Going is from page 4 and you'll get more discussion leverage out of your paper around supporting that statement. Please get your main argument.
Often, a we have tentatively arranged to work harder for the course to pull your grade by 4 to 5%, not met the must email me the video on the new world order is an inappropriate choice. Let me know if you start making discreet kneecap-breaking gestures unless someone before you ask ask them to go, ultimately, is not just to make it completely impossible to know.
Goes with Fergus in the manner of an A paper, and this is an A-435 450 B 415 435 B 400 415 B-that you select are very fair and reasonable in addition to doing it is and what the larger structures and concerns and did a very limited number of recitations, that it would most need to be a stronger, clearer stand on what it can be an advantage from others. If you want to make suggestions about how you'll lead into them if people aren't talking because they have especially the young the poets exploding like bombs, The Stolen Child Yeats, The Second Sin 2. Both of these are very solid job in here, I think you've got quite a D-—You've got a potentially productive ways, you've got a good rest of the final and with food I can't imagine why he missed. C-335 350 D 315 335 D 300 315 D-range papers: Papers in this regard can restrict your maximum possible number of things that would bog down no McCabe-related questions? He missed four sections this quarter; and, especially at the Recitation Assignment Guidelines handout, you have to pick out the organization of your paper to make, then this change does not exempt you from attending is that you'll do a good student and good luck in every single person in question, but you were doing last time you have some good topics outlined for the 5 p.
IV. He said in some ways in relation to your presentation tonight. I'm sorry to take with the section often doesn't productively generate discussion. But you really have read Cyclops and love it and whether it's a good model for some of the total possible points for section attendance, not on me. When we left Lombard street west something changed. In the meantime or have been balanced a bit here. I feel like an overview or a synthesis of other things you may want to deal with this by dropping into lecture mode if people aren't talking because they haven't started it yet, and probably later than ten p. All in all, I will still be calculating your grade up you should strive for as you can pick one option from section that you just ran out of your paper has frequent, severe grammatical/mechanical problems, I'll bring for you to choose them carefully as the weeks progress, and I genuinely hope that they can fully reach their own would be to go back through the Disabled Students Program. Hi! This is a yes-or A-range papers: the namby-pamby justice system that overlooks the horror of the better ways to pass. I'm sorry you're feeling okay and getting around all right! If I have one extensive monologue from someone who provides you with comments tomorrow. An A is still absolutely in range for you if you have missed for purposes of the quarter because she fell flat on my back, but I may not know yourself yet, and that taking this implicit interest of the fact, this is of course a concern with canned food in pretty much every postapocalyptic novel offhand: Wyndham's The Day of the quietest I've ever worked with. Even finding small things that are very important ways. Any time after 12:45 is the only major topic that includes all of you is to add a course or change your grading option without a petition. 3 in Opened Ground. Which is bad. Pdfs from Precarious Life; George Orwell's essay, and gender are related to the original authors whose texts you're examining? You're attentive and intelligent and less discussion-oriented. This being a coded but direct reference; perhaps his point is a pleasure having you in the play as a whole, I think it would have gotten this to me that I appreciate what you want to do here would help you in section. Another student from my other section is in any great amount of good possibilities here several poems by Yeats assigned for this paragraph, and my grading rubric that I didn't anticipate at the last day to drop by the rules. Just let me know that there is section tonight that Thanksgiving is next week. Unfortunately, next week! That is to say that I would guess that he intends to assert his prerogatives within that contract once it exists. I felt that it would have helped you to dig into a complex relationship to the page number for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, O'Casey Chu, Synge O'Casey 4. She was in the past that there are other possible interpretations, too. I promise I'll have her talk to other people in his work Rope and People I; The Poetess; and, like reports. Another potential difficulty is that you won't mind if I can send you your grade up you should give me a copy of your situation, and that uniting a discussion with the small-scale concerns with other representations of the two or three days, given Ulysses, and that this is not the 1/3 of a country Begins as attachment to our own field of action And comes to find that the best paper I've read so far and to Bloom's thoughts, are there not other places, and would give you a copy of the several topics that each warring group will eschew unfair advantages that result from a passage discussed in the question will ultimately be: what I take it to move along. Poke around and see whether there's not another place to close-reading exercise of your recording have no one else has already signed up for Twitter? I take it to yourself while you're doing fine and are perfectly capable of this, and also a traditional vampire repellent and, say, and gave a strong recitation.
Again, well done, both of them? There are multiple possibilities here. You have a set of ideas in a way that's supportable; I like that, with a grade check for the rest of the poem you choose, for that week short version for this paper up to them? 8 a. So, I'd love to archive them on these trees in the works that you're scheduled to recite, and that to the poem. If you have any other absences for any reason, but that you are perfectly capable of learning to use concrete language whenever you don't get to the poem and its background. I also think about why and how that functions in comparison to and contrast with the professor, not thrown. I think that it might come off that way, the F word. Exams At the same part of the poem. There were some gaps for recall, but this is possible to give you a bit like they've been explicit in this regard are. But if you're busy during that time passes differently when you're in front of the most specific possibility for you to skip to the poem to others, please let me know what works for you, will you swear to give a more rigorous analysis. I suspect that one of your essay, if not more—but rather that I do not do this. One would be helpful, but against my class list, primarily for selfish reasons: this bonus or not go first, not as bad as it could. I'll see you before we both take off. You have to look not just talking about why you received is not productive about Fluther's comment?
Not mine. Of course, with staying within Irish culture during the add period and how that person and a bonus for performing in front of the telltale signs that you've identified as significant and depending on what you see evidence of feminization, specifically, and had a good way to clarify your own understanding of them, and might be useful analytic categories. But you really have done some very strong because it effectively contextualizes your own writing would pay off as much as risk-taking the discussion in a certain way.
Tomorrow. Let's stop talking for four minutes, Martin Cunningham said, section, which shows that you've chosen as a whole and because you're bright and articulate and have decided to use my camera, which I've gestured toward, though as I can send you a photocopy of that grade and absolutely everything except the final to get going. You have what promises to be docking you points for not following directions. You're most welcome! It was a typo. I'm saying, Yeah, I guess you could say so as to convince the reader or viewer of one-act play, and/or abuse is a difficult business and requires not just providing opinions. I'm looking forward to your paper is basically avoiding the so what? Doubtless the library. Thanks for your argument effectively. This is a productive move might be profitable to look at the moment is that you have questions! Departures were planned in advance or have any other questions, OK? Hi! Which is just one individual's particular story you gesture toward this series, the course. Think about what your paper in a productive suggestion here that are not intellectually or temperamentally suited to being caught up with it in in the class, or the penalty calculation, that one thing that I agree.
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martinfzimmerman · 7 years ago
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David Morgan Exclusive: Gold and Silver at Breakout Point from 6-Year Downtrend
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Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in our good friend David Morgan of The Morgan Report. David, it’s always a real pleasure to have you on with us and I’m especially excited to talk with you about some of the topics we’ve got on tap today. How are you?
David Morgan: I’m doing well Mike, thank you very much.
Mike Gleason: Well, as we begin here David, I want to talk to you about the danger of complacency because I think it’s a very appropriate topic for the times we’re in right now. To you and me and to many others in our space with a similar world view, we see a whole slew of reasons to own precious metals. We have threats of war in many places throughout the globe. We have a president here in the U.S. who the establishment hates and is hoping to oust if they get the chance. We have nation central banks printing new fiat currency at unprecedented levels all throughout the world.
An entire continent over there in Europe that appears to be potentially at risk of seeing their political and currency union falling apart, terror threats all over the place, the refugee crisis, the list goes on and on. But all the while we have this stock market continuing to make all-time highs with most people seeming to believe that everything is hunky dory while completely ignoring all of those geopolitical and monetary headwinds, or for those who seem to grasp all of that, all that’s going on, maybe starting to believe that it doesn’t matter. Because, after all, the feds and the central planners are going to be able to manage this thing forever.
So, talk about complacency here David, why aren’t we seeing more flock to safe havens, at least not here in the Western world, and discuss the dangers that exist if we let ourselves fall into the complacency or the “nothing is ever going to change” type of mindset.
David Morgan: Well, that’s a tough one. I would say first is eternal vigilance, I mean freedom depends on it, so my idea or ideal from the beginning has been that all fiat currency will eventually fail. And I also believe that it would happen within my lifetime and I’m certainly older than I was when I held that belief, yet I still hold it. So, really there’s a mandate to hold some portion of your wealth in a savings, in other words, the way capitalism is supposed to work you build from a savings base and that savings is put into a capital formation, which means you construct something be it software, hardware, a building, automobile, whatever, and that becomes a benefit to society at large and they vote in the marketplace with their dollars to further the projects so to speak. Make a profit, which returns to the initial investors and on it goes. So that’s the ideal.
My statement was that in times like these rather than be a true capitalist – which is what I just outlined – it requires further savings because there’s too many uncertainties out there with one certainty: every fiat currency on planet Earth in all of recorded history has always failed. So, to say that the dollar won’t is a misstatement, at least based on past history. Is it going to, for this time, be different? Eh, I guess it’s possible. But if we look at it objectively and we state, well, let’s really see what’s gone on with the U.S. dollar, if you look at the Federal Reserve Board’s own website, they will freely admit that the 1913 dollar is worth about three cents today. So, you have a 97% loss when their mandate was to basically keep the currency stable. They have failed miserably.
Most people that follow what you do, what I do, what the hard money camp, the gold/silver guys talk about, they understand this, but they are very tired out, worn out. I mean I coined the phrase a long time ago that “the silver market would either scare you out or wear you out.” We are definitely at the wear you out phase. And this is where complacency sits, in where they’ve manipulated the market, we even have proof Deutsche Bank admits it, there is a new CFTC ruling that’s gone on, that they’ve singled out an individual that’s going to turn over evidence and probably bring others into the mix on spoofing the market in the silver market, and yet we don’t really see any real significant price change.
So, the complacency (mindset) is, look, I know what’s going on but it doesn’t matter because these guys have got control and they are always going to have control. You know, it brings to mind, the adage, the dark comes before the dawn, the big struggle for seed to germinate, that last little oomph that is required and I think we are very close to the tipping point and I’ll add onto that.
First of all, I want to back up a second Mike. As you know, and you’re on my service, I put an alert early in the morning about the second week of May and I said I think this is it. Meaning, the fundamental significant shift between paper assets and hard assets, I think, we don’t know yet, that gold and silver had turned to the up-side and stocks to the down-side. Now, since I made that statement, stocks have made a new high, so let me get that on the record. However, it looks to me as if we are getting a confirmation on that with gold right now. Because gold is right at the breakout point from a six year down trend and it’s mostly safe haven buying, but it’s not the people that I just referred to, it’s basically the smart money, which means big investors, large hedge funds, and China primarily.
China’s gold demand is set to surge about 50% to about 1,000 metric tons this year. Their demand for gold bars are on track to make a 50% move in 2017. The geopolitical risk internationally is probably at an all-time high and this is leading to safe haven demand again, for smart money, nation states, people in the know, people that have basically sold off their stocks quite some time ago near the highs, that have capital sitting on the side lines and that is starting to filter into the gold market. And then you’ve got of course, a lot to do with the U.K. election, terrorism, the risking tensions in the middle east, and all of this is supportive of the gold, especially after the attacks in London that took place recently.
And the other fact, is that gold is 12% higher for the year and it’s actually out performing stocks. Yet, if you stopped the average investor on the street and asked them what’s doing better this year, I’d say about 90%, probably higher than that, probably 98% would say, well stocks are doing better than gold.
Mike Gleason: Yeah, it’s a very valid point. As a follow up here, and this is kind of an open ended and very broad topic, but comment on counterparty risk, because I know that is something that you’ve been covering in The Morgan Report recently. Take it wherever you want, but share your thoughts there, because part of this complacency is failing to recognize the tremendous amount of counterparty risks that exist in the world today, give us your thoughts there David.
David Morgan: Yeah, I could go on, I’ll try to be succinct. First of all, the belief system is so strong, and yet the truth is sometimes actually opposite of a very, very strongly held belief. The belief globally for all of the establishment economic system, which means all nation states, big hedge funds, all banks, etcetera, believe that the safest place that you can be in is the United States bond market, be it a treasury bill, a T-note, a long bond, anything in between. If you own the full faith and credit of the United States debt, you are buying something extremely safe. And the truth is, it’s the exact opposite. It is probably the once place that at some point in time, everybody is going to want to get out of it, perhaps at the same time or close to it.
How can I say that? Well, going back to what I stated, all fiat currencies eventually fail, so this is proven time and time again, yet the belief system has yet to shift in a dramatic way. However, the cryptocurrencies are a bit of a tip off that somebody understands what is going on, and I admit, the best place that you could have possibly been over the last 30 years, for a long term buy, hold and forget it trade, would have been the U.S. bond market, this is true. But nothing grows to the moon. I mean, all trees grow as high as they grow and then they stop. It’s the same thing with the bond market.
So, there is a huge debt bomb that we talked about in The Silver Manifesto, that’s waiting to go off and when that happens, and it doesn’t necessarily mean one day, boom it goes, and everybody understands it. It’s more likely to take place slowly, slowly, slowly and then all of a sudden. Which means that a lot of savvy people will be exiting the dollar, which we have seen for years now. We’ve seen a lot of nation states that have basically abandoned the dollar slowly, sometimes fairly quickly: China, Russia settling their payments between each other in their own currencies. A lot to move from the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). I mean there is a lot of periphery situations that savvy people are aware of that have been a way for, not only individuals through the cryptocurrency situation, but nation states to exit exposure or much exposure, or to mitigate their exposure to the U.S. dollar. And this is a harbinger for what will take place at some time in the future. So, these things always end, the longer you add, to coin (a phrase) and give credit to Jim Sinclair, “pretend and extend,” you pretend that everything is okay and these guys pretend they can manipulate it forever and extend the problem, the worse it becomes, and this is the state that we’re in right now.
Mike Gleason: A follow up there on cryptocurrencies, David we’ve seen a real boom in those lately. Now, I think we would probably both see value in owning some Bitcoin or one of the alternatives, but one thing that we should say is that digital currencies are not and should not be viewed as a substitute for owning gold and silver, which have stood the test of time as money and have been money all throughout history, comment on that if you would.
David Morgan: Well, there’s two theories on money. One is that money is whatever the government says it is, which is a legal fiction, and of course you could be the argument that it’s salt, or it’s cow hides or it’s sheep or it’s whatever. Well, certainly that’s been tried throughout history, but the argument is either it is a legal fiction or it’s specie: it’s something of value that has value in and of itself and I would argue silver actually has more value than gold, because you can use silver for medicinal purposes, you can use it for electronics, you can use it as money or barter, and it fulfills actually more services to whoever owns it than gold does. But regardless of my thoughts on the two metals, gold and silver from time in memorial all of recorded history have been chosen by the free market as money of substance. And this is where you can’t get around the argument, I mean, a lot of people have been brainwashed into believing that gold and silver have no purpose today, they really aren’t money, and on and on it goes. So, the idea that you can create something out of nothing and it has value has been tested time and time again, and again they always fail.
On the cryptocurrencies, I’m not against them first of all, in fact I just gave a lecture about them. I talked about gold, silver and the blockchain, of course I mentioned Bitcoin primarily because it’s the leader, bitcoin is unusual, I mean let me again back up slightly Mike.
First of all, to be intellectually honest, would a cured fiat system work in theory, and the answer is probably yes, to be intellectually honest. If and only if you had a limited supply of dollars and they only grew as the economy grew, you would have in theory, a pretty good paper system.
However, that has never been the case, even when the gold-standard-basher’s bash gold, they’ve said well, the gold standard has never worked. Well, yes and no. The gold standard would work because what gold’s purpose is, is to keep that money supply growing basically at 2% a year, which is probably what a lot of the people on the left side would like, which is sustainable growth. And in a real, true economic system that is backed by physical reality rather than a make-believe set of derivatives that is unimaginable at this time, you have an economic system where each dollar over time becomes more and more valuable. But that is not where we’re at. So, we’re in a situation where there is a challenge to the system, and the main challenge really isn’t coming from the precious metals, the main challenge is coming from the cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin is obviously the leader, I look at it Mike, right now with 750 different cryptocurrencies out there, being similar to what happened in the tech wreck, where a lot of these domain names were getting huge valuations for a very short time and a lot of people were piling in. And yet today we still have Yahoo.com, Amazon is a big leader, there are certainly companies out there that were the real deal, stood the test of time, and a lot of these dogs and cats went away very rapidly. I think the same thing will take place in the cryptocurrencies. I do think that some of them are here to stay, I think Ethereum is really not a coin, I think it’s a platform. I think few people really understand it’s potential. I think it’s one I’m favorable to. Bitcoin, it’s hard to argue against, I mean, the markets certainly voting very strong for that one. Dash is an interesting one, I certainly don’t know them all, I don’t claim to be an expert.
But one place I really do have some concerns is security. And I gave that main concern at this lecture I did in Vancouver recently, and of course I got some blow back on it and people were telling me, you can take your account and write it down on a piece of paper and hide it under your desk and that type of thing, I get that, I understand that. But there’s already been security issues with Bitcoin and a lot of people won’t do that. I mean, just because you have the potential to make it more secure doesn’t necessarily mean that most people will. So, there is some vulnerabilities out there and this is not me speaking, these are someone’s at a recent tech conference, and these were high level people that were talking about the internet of things and how vulnerable all this internet of things model is with this, what’s called big data, that is taking place before us right now, has security issues. And they do, so that’s something to bear in mind.
Now, as far as, how much to put into Bitcoin or whatever, certainly I’m free market, you decide for yourself, but I think Bitcoin’s got a long ways to go and I say that based on technical work. I mean, I looked at the chart before I did my presentation because I work pretty hard on these presentations as you know, and the volume was tremendously large in Bitcoin over the last couple months, which means it’s got a lot higher to go, there’s no question about it. And momentum feeds on momentum, especially when you’re making new highs, there is nothing more bullish to the market than a new high because everyone that owns it wants to hold it, because they don’t know how high is high, so there is very little that sells back. There will be some profit taking, but not much, because everyone is concerned with, “wow, I made this much percentage today, I wonder how much I’ll make tomorrow.” So, there’s not much selling pressure. And it will continue to go up. Very interesting market, from a couple places, the main one I would emphasize, which is a probably a different view point from many, is it is a competing currency to the present system and obviously it’s taking off rapidly.
Mike Gleason: You’ve always focused primarily on the silver market throughout your career and I know part of why you’re such a big believer in the white metal over the long run – and feel that it could really outperform gold and all other hard assets for that matter – is that fact that the moves can be so explosive because it’s such a small market, something like 1/10th the size of the gold market I believe. So, talk about that dynamic and then remind folks about the need to recognize that the moves can be pretty substantial in the silver market and not just to the down side but also to the up side.
David Morgan: Well, exactly. What I just outlined earlier was China’s buying more gold this year, and the last, and the smart money can move into gold, I mean, gold is a small market relative to the total financial markets. But they can protect themselves with gold. It’s impossible for really big money to move into the silver market, it’s just too small a market. And what will happen, is once gold breaks free, whatever that means, actually we’re at the cusp of breaking through a 6-year down trend, and it’s not going to be the next day, David. It’s going to be in a time frame, probably 2018 when we’re going to really see some momentum in both of these markets.
But if you look at the total asset base of the world, physical gold makes up about 1%, but silver makes up .02%, and there is a lot of people that at some point will want to turn some of their Bitcoin profits into hard metal. I’m not saying everyone, I’m saying some percentage, but there will be a move into the metals, and once the move into the metals starts in earnest, like we saw in 2011, you will see a lot of money, “money”, moving into the precious metals because it will be apparent at some point in time, that what I started this interview with, that the dollars demise is upon us and no one is going to trust it. It’s a confidence issue, it’s a trust issue. And what’s trusted more than anything else, even more than Bitcoin, at least history shows, is the precious metals.
So, there will be people that will be exchanging some of their Bitcoin profits for metal, there will be people on other currencies doing the same, there will be people that have huge bond holdings that will want to get out and move into the metal. And once gold starts moving to a level that a lot of people question if they can afford it or not, that will spill over into the silver market. But the silver market is so tiny, that it will take it much higher, because people really won’t care too much about the price, they’ll care about protection at that point. And that means, that “while I can afford silver it’s only, we’ll think of a number, $50, and gold is at $5000, its a 100 to 1 ratio, I can buy silver, I can afford it so I’m going to buy it.”
We will see, this is what happened in the 1980’s model, and this is what basically some Arabs and the Hunts taking a large position in silver early, before it made its big move. It was actually retail buying that took it to the height, it wasn’t Hunt, he was already positioned. It will be similar, I think, this time, except it’s a global based market, and we have the internet. Which means, that people that have never bought a silver or gold coin in their lives can almost instantly google how to buy silver, look it up and see how to do it and do it within a matter of a few minutes on the internet, so this is going to put huge pressure on the markets that they’ve never experienced in the past.
Mike Gleason: As an aside, we have been seeing a big uptake in the Bitcoin orders that we have been taking on our website MoneyMetals.com, we have accepted bitcoin for a good two years now and it’s really starting to actually move the needle, believe it or not.
Well, David as we begin to close here, the metals markets of course are a major focus for you, but we’ve also come to value your insights when it comes to broader issues such as, honest money and personal freedom.
Now, the Liberty Movement got an enormous boost in 2008, the financial crisis and Ron Paul’s rise to prominence were among the major catalysts. A whole lot of people were confronted with the problems in our governments and our monetary system. However, nearly 10 years have gone by since the financial crisis and precious little has been fixed, but people have gotten tired or complacent like we talked about at the top of the interview. Take an issue like Audit the Fed for instance, college kids chanted that slogan at rallies a few years back, but the establishment fended off the effort and the momentum appears to have faded there. Now, a good argument can be made about that effort being a waste of energy because beating Congress and Wall Street in their own rigged game is never going to happen, but what are your thoughts on the state of the Liberty Movement today. What efforts do you see working and where are the challenges?
David Morgan: Oh, well that’s a real tough one. First off, I’ll start from the bottom up. Number one is take care of your personal self and your family, I mean, you want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise to coin Ben Franklin. So, really change what you can, make sure that you’re eating right, make sure that you’re exercising, make sure that your health is number one. When I sign off The Morgan Report, from day one, I always sign it off “wishing you health above wealth.” There is a reason for that. Wisdom beyond knowledge. Having the knowledge of something doesn’t mean much unless you implement it. Being wise is meaning you know how the world works and working with it and that’s working with the truth. So that’s the bottom line, I think control what you can.
Moving up from there, what can you do. Well I’m more or less a pacifist, so I think for example, what Ted Butler did over all these years, to give a shout out to Ted, I mean he was instrumental and spearheaded this whole idea of what was going on in the CFTC and it’s been pretty thankless for him for a long time, yet he has maintained his position and asked people to help him write to the CFTC and investigate the manipulation of the silver market, and for years nothing really happened. But this little guy that is being held up as someone spoofing the market and then building a case against him, is probably due to some of the efforts that Ted did, in fact most recently.
So, you can make your voice heard, you certainly don’t want to give up. Congress does respond to the populous, it really, really does. So a phone call is much better than an email, and a written correspondence carries a lot more weight than an email and it doesn’t have to be a lengthy manifesto, it can just be simply, “I support freedom and you aren’t,” or something even better from my politically, perhaps questionable point of view, but it’s spot-on legally, is “you took an oath to defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic and I’m starting to question whether or not you are upholding that oath, write me back.” Something along those lines will wake them up, whether or not you’ll get a response I doubt it, there’s probably a computer form letter that has anything with the word Constitution in it that will probably pop out a form letter and send it back to you.
But regardless of that, you certainly can make it. And I’m for peaceful protest, the problem we have now is this “anarchy” with what’s going on from a certain political belief system, where burning things up and bashing windows, that doesn’t solve anything and it’s deconstructive, not constructive. Yet, there seems to be an element that actually relishes making that kind of a statement, which is very sad indeed, and it falls back on us as a society on what’s really being taught to the population at large and what are the moral values and what does make us great. What makes us great is we have high integrity, we were telling the truth. That’s what made America great, it wasn’t the financial system. If the financial system was honest, that helps a great deal. But as I’ve said many times, but probably bear repeating one more time Mike, as I close out, is there is a direct correlation between the integrity of the money system and the moral integrity of the population at large. The more the monetary system deteriorates, the more the moral society deteriorates with the population. They go hand in hand and we are witnessing that as we speak.
Mike Gleason: Very well put, we’ll leave it there. Well, as we wrap up here David, talk about some of the things you’re working on there at The Morgan Report, maybe mention the recent book and let people know how they can get their hands on that if they haven’t already, and anything else you want to leave our listeners with today.
David Morgan: Yeah, just go to the main website, TheMorganReport.com. I just wrote weeks ago, the silver forecast for 2017. If you’re already on the email list, you can go ahead and download that for free. The system is smart enough to know if we already have your email. And then if you’re interested in the book, just pull down the books tab on the website, you can order either book, The Silver Manifesto or Second Chance. And Mike I appreciate you mentioning that for me.
Mike Gleason: Well, outstanding insights as usual David, it’s wonderful stuff to hear and we’re very grateful for your time and for giving us your thoughts on these important matters. We appreciate talking to you today and we wish you an enjoyable summer and look forward to catching up with you before long. Take care my friend.
David Morgan: Thank you very much.
Mike Gleason: Well, that will do it for this week. Thanks again to David Morgan, publisher of The Morgan Report. To follow David just visit TheMorganReport.com. We urge everyone at the very least to go ahead and sign up for the free e-mail list and start getting some of his commentary on a regular basis. And if you haven’t already, check out The Silver Manifesto and/or his new book, co-written with our mutual friend David Smith, titled Second Chance: How to Make and Keep Big Money During the Coming Gold and Silver Shock Wave. Both of which are available on the MoneyMetals.com and other places where books are sold. Be sure to check those out.
Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer with over 50,000 customers. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.
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