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lunchmeater · 7 months ago

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AUGUST HONEY: CHAPTER ONE : STRANGERS - PREVIEW

Ghost x Reader -- Firefighter/Civilian AU -- Word Count 1.8k

Description: A dead-end artist, bookstore owner, and front woman in a band, from the outside everything looks like it’s coming together for you. But within, your life feels like it’s repeating the same day over and over again. You’re sleeping with your bass guitarist, you live in the apartment above your bookstore, and your art all looks the same. You miss the danger of youth, the thrill of freedom. You miss change.

And right when that feeling hits, right when you’re grasping for straws, a couple of the new local firefighters decide to go out for drinks.

TWs for Entire Fic: Depictions of unhealthy relationships (not with Ghost), mentions and depictions of alcoholism, smut

TWs for Chapter: Very small reference to alcoholism

AN: I'm very new to Tumblr y'all please excuse the horrendous formatting

Seven in the afternoon. Time to close up. With a satisfying click of the shop's front door locking, you rubbed the back of your neck, turning your head slightly to the side to see the scenery outside.

You've owned this shop for so long that the view from the window was more familiar than the layout of the lines of your palm. Your attention traced the road first, noting the way the concrete was still wet from the early morning rain. The sidewalks were a shade darker for the same reason and covered in the muddy footprints of passersby. Windows from other shops and buildings stood tall, some of the buildings they belonged to were twice as tall as your own. Then your eyes traveled along the rolling mountains in the background behind the buildings and the still-lit houses lolling up and down its curves. This was a small city.

The sun was beginning its journey behind the distant mountains. It's beams were reaching hands across that of the thresh hold of your little bookstore, stroking the hardwood floors and illuminating them golden. Following the line of the sunlight, your eyes landed on your dog, a Rhodesian Ridge-Back named Sylvie. Despite being a big-game hunting breed, she was beyond lazy and sleeping soundly in the light of the sun.

God. You wished it was normal for humans to do that too.

It was warm in here, beginning to get quite cold out there. Your head turned back to the window and saw the clouds that were rolling in from the West. Likely more rain. Maybe there would be a nice thunderstorm tonight, or maybe even some snow.

The entire day you were waiting for this. Just being alone in the place. The place creaked with age, the floorboards despite having been replaced since the buying of the home whining as you stepped on them. You reached your record player sitting in the corner of the room on its own personal table, surrounded by shelves you built yourself. They held numerous vinyl records that you collected yourself over the course of the years, ever since you were thirteen.

The sleeves, despite their various colors, were painted with a gold glaze in the light of the evening sun. Your finger traced each individual spine, feeling the grooves in between the sleeves of the records, before you finally landed on one titled Pink Magic.

You grabbed it, slipping it out from in between Citrona and Subliming. The cover held a gradient that eased from pastel pink on the right to pastel blue on the left. In the center stood a man holding a disco ball covered in paint in front of his face. It was an album you bought on a whim and hadn't heard in a while, so you put it on. Easing the needle down onto the grooves of the record disc where you knew the specific song was nearly by muscle memory. You read the lines on the record like a language few understood.

The song started, fading into earshot before a guitar part layered over the tones. Then a drum beat and bass guitar came in afterwards, then finally the lyrics.

"Picture this, a swing and a miss."

You interlocked your fingers together and stretched upwards, slightly arching your back in the motion and leaning back before letting out a long sigh and turning to check all of the tables in the entrance area. The welcome mat was muddy and could use washing, the tables had coasters, drops of various drinks, and crumbs scattering their surfaces. A quick turn and a glance into the reading areas on the other side of the shop, connected by a large arch doorway, showed the large area was in only a small amount of disarray. Books, the order of which you had memorized, were out of place, some abandoned on the tables near the windows. The rug was wrinkled, and there was some mud tracked on the floors, but nothing major.

"Never exchanging a name."

When you turned around, you noticed your head was starting to hurt from the stress of the day. Saturdays were always crowded with not only the typical adult customers but also lovesick rowdy teenagers looking for a cup of coffee and loud conversation with one another in the large table by the window.

You opened your eyes after rubbing your temple with your fingers and jumped near six inches off of the ground when a figure was seen standing close to the window.

He laughed immediately, his hand in the pockets of his black slacks and a tux jacket slung over his shoulder. The hand removed itself from the place in your old friend's pocket to wave and you relaxed, slightly annoyed by his sudden appearance. A white dress shirt covered his torso loosely, unbuttoned far in the front showing the floral tattoo covering his collarbone. From a mixture of White and Hispanic heritage, as you knew, he had tan skin with dark, long hair that swung around in curls and waves. He had dark brown eyes with thick brows and an unshaven five o'clock shadow. Upon his face was a smile. His name was Bailey.

"Infatuated, I contemplated your lips."

You walked over to the front door and opened it, to which you discovered him standing in front of you. Your friend from high school, your ex boyfriend, and your bassist. Couldn't say you weren't expecting him, you just weren't thinking right. You wouldn't have locked the door behind him if you were.

"But my infatuation was strange."

He smiled a little wider and you frowned.

"Don't do that," you said bluntly. "Scared the shit out of me."

Bailey laughed. "Sorry."

"Black, purple and cream."

You invited him in silently by stepping aside and opening the door; he stepped inside willingly. Curt, and with the intention of both teasing and genuine thanks, he nodded his head silently. His black boots, as you saw, made muffled footsteps as his well-used footwear made contact with the welcome mat. Bailey wiped his feet, shifting the mat with the movement, and didn't need to reach far to hang his coat on the rack.

Your eyes followed the way his shoulder blades pressed against the cloth of his white dress shirt and you averted your eyes, feeling your chest swell gently knowing what was likely coming tonight.

Suddenly noticing a rising ache of stiffness in your shoulders from standing and trying to play off the staring in case Bailey noticed, you shifted, brushing aside the drifting cloth of your over-sized lavender dress shirt and placing your hands in your cream khaki pockets.

"These are the colors of your nightmares, and colors of my dreams."

"Fizzy Blood?" Bailey asked in reference to the song playing on the record player. He huffed a laugh. "I forgot about them."

"Me too," you responded, walking briskly past him to get to the counter and fetch the hand towel you used to wipe down tables. You noticed the table to your left, a table for two occupied earlier by a particularly noisy tween couple that met briskly before departing. Despite them being rather annoying upon presence, the thought of them was sweet. Reminding you of you and Bailey in high school sneaking out to see movies and get garbage gas station food.

In fact, this song played once or twice during those adventures, pushing you into a sudden state of nostalgia.

The song was moving into the chorus as Bailey leaned against the corner of the counter and watched you wipe down the table. His steady hands, painted with tattoos of vines dancing around his fingers that moved with him, was planted sternly on the side of the counter. You knew how rough his fingertips were from pressing down thick strings and how easily they drew ink freehand sketches of various animals, mostly foxes.

"So what's the set for tonight?" he asked. His voice, tainted raw and gravely with cigarette smoke, always reminded you of his hard history. He moved out of his mom's house recently, improving his mental state, but he still had yet to overcome his nasty habit of smoking and drinking.

You shrugged in response. "Haven't thought of anything yet. Busy day."

"Need suggestions?"

"Yeah."

"Well with it being Friday night and all, the bar's going to be packed," Bailey responded, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting the bulk of his weight from his hands to his waist which pressed into the corner of the counter as became more relaxed. He was always relaxed, smooth, and always wickedly smart. "I suggest Reignwolf."

Not a bad idea. Not too heavy, not too slow.

"Alright," you responded, finishing up with the table and briefly looking over all of the others. They were clean enough. You'd get whatever you missed eventually. "Your bass is still in my room. Get my guitar while you're at it; I'll get the amps."

Bailey smiled before removing himself from the counter and crossing the threshold of the counter, his strides so smooth and even his head barely bobbed from the distribution of weight as he walked. The footsteps created from the click of his shoes against the ground faded as he went further up the stairs.

You sighed as you watched him walk away and the shop faded back into quiet. You heard the sound of Bailey opening your bedroom door before the silence returned again like a wave that had faded off into sea and slammed back onto the sand. The sound of your dog Sylvie's breathing returning into the ambiance; she wasn't even affected by the entrance of Bailey.

Your eyes landed on the honey brown dog laying on the floor and you dropped briefly to stroke her flank and scratch behind her ears. She was snoring loudly, her eyes doing that gross scent-hound thing where the lids flipped and she slept with, essentially, her eyes open.

Not the weirdest dog you've ever owned, but certainly up there.

You moved back to your feet and crossed your arms, thinking. End of the day at the shop, then packing up instrument stuff, then going to the bar and performing, then back home again. Wake up and repeat. Day after day, week after week.

Until what? What was waiting for you? What was going to happen?

You leaned against the counter and stared out the window with your arms crossed, when your eyes landed on a figure on the other side of the street that stared back.

Tall, extremely tall. Easily six foot or more. Broad shoulders and a neck gaiter with a skull on it that covered his face from the nose down. Blond hair peaked out from underneath the hood of the black hoodie he had on with the fire department emblem on the breast. Jeans covered his long legs and a leash hung from his arm, connecting to a German Shepherd that seemed really intent on continuing his walk.

Your shoulders dropped when your eyes met, but it only lasted a second before he turned his head and continued walking, but you kept staring as he walked away. How long had he been standing there?

You cocked a brow, confused, before discarding the thought and turning around to see what was taking Bailey so long.

Inspired by the Firefighter!Ghost AU by @thelaisydazy

#simon ghost riley #cod mw2 #ghost cod #ghost x reader #ghost x you #cod fic #firefighter au cod #cod au #x reader #fem reader #realistic fiction #fanfic

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lich-bot · 3 years ago

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#fun w brush #love this guy #leshy #inscryption fanart #inscryption #leshy fanart #inscryption spoilers #ask to tag #lichbot art #leshy inscryption #PLEASE CLICK the preview is so..muddy

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toboldlyblahblahblah · 6 years ago

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Your gifs are beautiful and so clear! Have you ever done a tutorial on how you get them so flawless and well lit? Like esp DS9 and TNG gifsets! I love your work so much!

@maylovelies

Wow! Okay, for starters: Thank you so much! I really, REALLY appreciate the kind words and the time you took to send this! I really enjoy making gif sets and I’m always so glad to hear that people like how I edit mine.

To answer your question, yes, I have made a tutorial post in the past, but the method I used back then I’ve strayed from a bit, recently. Some of it I still use, but in reference to lighting and getting them to look a little more high quality, there are some other techniques I’ve been working with lately and really enjoying the results…

I can walk you through with a new example.

Here’s a quick gif from a scene of DS9:

and I’ll do a rundown on how I got it to look like this:

Going to put the rest of this below the cut, though, because it’s significantly longer than my last tutorial-based answer…

So! One trick is to not be afraid to stack up a few adjustment layers of the same variety, sometimes even duplicates of the exact same layer, on top of each other. The reason I do this is because wild adjustments on a single adjustment layer are a lot less controlled and will often effect the wrong parts of the scene’s lighting (by that I mostly mean shadows v highlights).

I edit for light first, personally. Here’s where I am after doing those corrections

Already looking a lot better and clearer. This was done using three adjustment layers.

The curves layer is just a basic “lighter” preset that you can find from the drop down menu once you open a new curves layer

The levels layer I start by using the preset “lighten shadows”

at that point the image looks very washed out and grainy

(still image)

so from there i just messed with the layer a bit until I liked it a little more, added some contrast and adjusted the distribution of light, etc.

which got the image looking like this

(still image)

But I still thought that looked kind of washed out and flat, so, lastly, I added a completely custom exposure adjustment layer where I pushed up the gamma correction and exposure settings (you can also push the offset into the negative to get a secondary effect similar to gamma correction, but it’s very harsh and temperamental, at times. I wouldn’t recommend it for first-time use)

that gets us back to this lightness corrected gifset, which I’ll post again now

You can actually get a similar look by using just curves adjustments and their presets. Here’s what happens if you take three (3) layers with the same curves “lighter” preset (see above) and then one (1) curves layer with the “medium contrast” preset.

and the results are pretty similar

Each technique lends itself better to different scenes. And obviously with either method (or a combination of both as tends to be the case on super dark scenes - cough, mirror-universe episodes, cough) you can customize a lot from these presets to get the desired effect. They just give you a good jumping-off point…

Now the first thing I always notice about adding brightness to these scenes is that the tones get very warm and muddy, so from there I usually like to color correct next.

I like to bump my vibrance and saturation sliders up before color correcting, but I know a lot of people do it after. That’s really just a matter of personal preference.

There are a handful of ways to color correct, and, just like with the lighting methods above, I tend to mix and match the various adjustment layers. I’ll use Color Balance (as illustrated in my previous tutorial) and I’ll also now use Hue/Saturation layers and Selective Colors layers.

Honestly, color correcting / color grading alone could be its own tutorial so I won’t go very in-depth on that here. But just play around with the settings and find a method that works for you. (If you feel like you’d want a specific run through on that, just shoot me an ask and I can cover it some other time in more detail.)

My one recommendation to help you avoid the big rookie mistake I made when I first started doing this is that with the hue/saturation layers, never use the Master slider option; instead, click the drop down menu and work on each color individually.

So here’s where we’re at once I bumped up the saturation and then did my color corrected.

You may notice how sometimes color correction darkens an image and undoes some of the work you did earlier (in my experience, this usually happens when you have to add a lot of blue in the color balance layer) You’ve got two options here. Either go back in to the previous brightness adjustment layers and lighten up some of the contrasts, or put a new layer over top of latest color edits to add brightness back in over top. Again, this comes down to personal preference. Experiment with either version and do whichever works best for you.

Here’s after I brightened it back up a little again.

Subtle difference, but it’s how I prefer it for this scene. Plenty of times scenes don’t end up needing it at all.

So the gif is looking pretty solid from there. In some cases, I’d actually stop right here and just add the quote text to the bottom and call it a day. But if you really want to make it look HQ, there’s a few additional steps…

Firstly, it helps to keep the images smaller (a retread of something I said in that other tutorial too, I believe) but after that, there’s a way to sharpen all the layers and frames at once while also reducing “noise,” both of which improve the quality of a gif.

To do that, take your frames timeline at the bottom of photoshop and click the little icon that looks sort of like a funnel going through a bar graph…

If you have history window open, it’ll say “Convert to Timeline” after you’ve done this, and instead of frames you’ll see a bunch of short purple lines instead of the gif’s individual frames. Don’t panic! That’s supposed to happen.

From this point, go to your layers window and select all of the layers that are frames of your gifs, which you can do by clicking the first layer - holding shift - then scrolling up to click the final layer - then releasing shift. They should all have the little eyeball icon on next to them, indicating that they’re all active. Then, right click the top layer and from the pop-up menu click “convert to smart object”

When you do this, all of the layers compress into one Smart Object with the name of the top layer.

Again, don’t panic!, you didn’t lose the other layers they’re just now all going to be affected by the sharpen filter instead of having to be edited one at a time.

Now, go to the top ribbon in Photoshop and in the drop down menus, go “Filter” > “Sharpen” > “Smart Sharpen…” and click that.

A little window will pop up that gives you a preview of how this filter will impact your image.

**notice that the smart sharpen preview does not show color and lighting corrections; that’s fine & because we are not applying this smart filter to any of our adjustment layers.

And what you do from here is again a matter of personal preference. Raise the sharpening amount too much and the image starts to look crinkly, have the noise reduction too high and all the detail gets smudged away.

Here’s an example of what happens if youwere to crank both the sharpness and the noise reduction all the way up:

(still image)

And I guess there’s maybe a place and time where something with this aesthetic would work for a particular scene or edit, but generally, I like to keep the settings pretty low. Sometimes, less really is more…

For a 268x200px gif of an 80′s or 90′s Trek show, I keep Reduce Noise at 10% and have the sharpening anywhere from like 85-150, depending on how much I’ve cropped in on the original camera crop. But for this gif, where I didn’t zoom in very much at all and pretty much kept it how the original videography framed her, keeping it around 95-115 works nicely.

When you’re done, click OK.

Now that Smart Object looks like this

And that’s pretty much it! Now, when you export your gif from Photoshop, it’ll look something like this:

The one thing you have to remember about this technique (and this is something that still trips me up from time to time, myself) is that when you export, it doesn’t automatically set the gif to loop forever. Instead, it’s set to “Once.” To fix that, when you click through “Export” > “Save to Web (Legacy)” and the Web window pops up, go to the bottom right corner and above the “Save” button there’s a drop down menu in the “Animation” section. Click there and switch from Once to Forever.

And there you have it! Start to finish, that’s how I make my HQ gif sets!

I know it seems like a ton of work for one lousy gif and super overwhelming at first and hard to remember, but once you get into the swing of things it all becomes very second nature.

So thanks for asking and thanks for reading. Hopefully this was helpful, please let me know if you got anything out of it.

And, of course, feel free to reach out with any other questions or requests. I’ll always try to do the best I can and answer. ♥

#gif tutorial #gif making #photoshop #photoshop tutorial #ds9 #tutorial #answer #gif making tutorial #hq gifs tutorial #maylovelies

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unme112222 · 4 years ago

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meanderings0ul · 8 years ago

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Dodio Fic Preview 1

Taking part in femslash February at the very last hour. Of course.

This is a portion of a long fic I’ve been working on off and on for about two years. As we’ve have more episodes involving our favorite Wayward ladies I’ve made changes to keep things in line with canon. It’s been a challenge and I’m glad I’ve done it. This fic is from Jody’s pov and focuses not only on the relationship she build’s with Donna, but on her careers as sheriff and part-time hunter, and the girls she’s taken in when they had no where else to go. I’d hoped to finish it this month of course, but between grad school and that fact that my outline now suggests its going to end up at around 30,000 words, yikes, it’s not finished yet.You can expect to see another preview snippet or two before it’s finally complete.

Please enjoy <3

She met Donna in the muddy parking lot of the county’s tiny morgue three hours later. Donna’d clearly been waiting out next to her car for a while, ankles crossed and blonde ponytail fluffed out from the breeze. The second Jody stood the woman sorta, well, cooed a little and hugged Jody hello, way too tight and sudden. Jody tried not to instinctively shrug her off.

“Ooo, are you a sight for sore eyes! How’ve you been? I haven’t been in to take a look yet, but we’ll just tell them we’ve worked together on something like this before right? It shouldn’t be a problem.”

It wasn’t. Donna introduced them in a flood of over energetic conversation and Jody glowered over her shoulder when it looked like the clerk was going to make a fuss. They sailed through the morgue visit and examining the guy’s files in a blur of slightly too off the record police work. Donna was never squeamish at the body or the photos, didn’t waste any time they didn’t need to spend talking to the cop that’d been first on scene and Jody played up the surliness whenever it looked like someone wasn’t going to take Donna seriously.

Damn, was it fun.

This was ridiculous. What were they going to do? Run off on badly informed hunts whenever there was something in the tri state area? They had real jobs, real identities at risk, hell Jody had a teenager at home that had probably already snuck out. This couldn’t possibly work out as a repeat thing.

But Jody already knew she’d really like it to. Donna was humming and it wasn’t even annoying her, and a crime scene only they had a hope of dealing with waiting for them.

But Sam finally called Jody back when they were in Donna’s car almost to the victim’s house.

“You said big bites, deep scratches, on a guy inside a locked house?”

“Something like that.”

“Anything go suddenly right in his life about ten years ago? Money? Miraculous health recovery?”

Jody glanced at Donna and repeated the questions but she only shrugged, pursed her lips out and shook her head.

“Doesn’t seem like there was anything major Sam, why’re you askin?”

Sam sighed. He sounded exhausted, hadn’t even so much as said hi. “Well, sometimes it isn’t obvious. Sounds like a demon deal. You usually get ten years then your times up, hellhounds come to collect the soul and there’s basically nothing you can put in their way. Locks don’t matter. Lot of people just end it when they hear them coming.”

“Hellhounds.”

Donna’s head snapped away from the road to stare at Jody, frowning.

“Yeah. They’re invisible. There won’t be any traces except the bites and scratches on the vic. And they’ll be long gone by now Jody. There’s nothing for you to do. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you faster.”

“It’s fine Sam, now we know. Wait, wait don’t hang up yet. You boys doing ok?” He sounded too flat, like he’d been up for days.

“Yeah, we’re good, just busy. Sorry Jody, I gotta go.” Sam hung up with a click.

Yeah, they weren’t good.

Shit.

Donna parked her car in the road outside the victim’s house, but left it running. There was really no reason to go in now. Police tape was still up over the door. Some flowers had been left near the doorstep.

“Apparently the victim probably made a deal with a demon. A hellhound comes to collect later.”

“Demon? An actual demon.”

Her voice was a little high, face pale when Jody glanced over. “Yeah, they’re just as real as vamps. Demons I’ve actually seen before. Sorry Donna. And now hellhounds are real too apparently.”

Donna sighed, drummed her knuckles on the steering wheel. “So there’s nothing to be done? This poor fellas dead, his family’s devastated, and the thing that did it just poofs away into nothing like a dandelion?”

A dandelion. Jody shrugged.

“Sam said a lot of people who know this is coming commit suicide when they hear the hounds, so that’s why we don’t see this as often as it happens. They just get lumped in with the rest of the unexplained suicide cases.”

Donna shook her head, turned back to look at the guy’s empty little house, little blue truck still parked out front under a yellow streetlight. “Hellhounds. Who’d a thought.”

Jody looked and wondered for a moment what could have driven the guy to this.

All the fun had gone out of their little side case, but Jody didn’t regret the drive. They made their apologies to the local department, made some excuses, ended up sitting in some late night diner before they both drove back towards home, drinking godawful black coffee and discussing demons just as seriously as any other bit of police procedure.

Jody ordered another awful coffee. She still had work tomorrow and finding a hotel at this hour for less than one night was a ridiculous hassle.

“It’s amazing how much you miss before you know, what you miss about this stuff, things you can’t believe you didn’t notice before. There must be more people like us who know, who’ve seen things. Lots even,” Donna said. “You’re telling me the Winchester boys have been hunting this stuff for years on end, so there must be more people around who know. How did I not hear anything for so long? Especially in our line of work, we come across all sorts of things. Eventually enough people will have to be in the know that it won’t all stay so unidentified, right?”

Jody took another drink of shit coffee and thought about Sioux Falls. About the hundreds of families that had a loved one return and then turn into something else. About how there were only five people Jody could think of that were willing to acknowledge the experience, all the stories in the local papers about mass hallucinations and accidental injury all due to a chemical spill. So tragic.

So very tragic.

Jody hadn’t been involved with that press release for obvious reasons, but she knew everyone who had, and they all believed in it like it was true. Bobby’d been the only thing in the aftermath that’d kept her from fucking losing it.

Donna had to be right. There were lots of people out there who knew about these things. Had to be. But it would be a long damn time before most of them were willing to know much at all. Thinking otherwise was a useless daydream at best.

“You’d be surprised what people are willing to forget,” she said.

But Donna only sighed, tapped her nails with their chipped purple polish on the slimy table. “I know what you mean.”

And Jody somehow felt like she actually, probably did.

Hey, if you wouldn’t mind, text me once you’ve

made it back to familiar territory? You had way

more of a drive to take on than I did. I’m

already stuck at a light in Sioux Falls.

No prob! I should be home in about two hours.

And I didn’t text and drive either Ms Sheriff!

Stopped for gas ;p Sorry to have taken up your

time for nothing though :/

Don’t worry about it. Really.

Hate to admit it, but stomping around

like I knew everything was kinda fun.

Felt like being in one of those fancy detective

shows, didn’t it? :D Wish we could solve all

our crimes in an hour :|

Don’t we all.

After that first phone call there were other calls.

Somebody called to bitch about paperwork. Somebody called to ask about a better cookie recipe, because the Toll House package one just wasn’t doing the trick. Somebody called because there was nothing good on TV. (When was there ever? Jody didn’t pretend to watch much other than Walking Dead or HGTV anymore.)

Donna called after getting thrown up on while dealing with a drunk and disorderly call on a particularly busy night.

Jody called after catching up on all her damn paperwork, dealing with five different road ice crashes, getting another call about Alex smoking, and was considering just driving off a bridge rather than deal with the headache one more goddamned minute.

She’d pulled over into a park lot so none of her coworkers would spot her complaining on the phone. Wasn’t good form to let your deputies see you doing that. The creeks were up with snow melt, but all the trees were still bare, roads covered in old salt and black ice.

Donna listened, then talked for an hour about last fall’s weird hunting-season incident phone calls. By the end of the call, Jody’s headache was gone. She pretended not to notice that. Or how many times she’d laughed at Donna’s stories. Especially the one about the drunken and very insistent call she’d gotten from someone about a bigfoot sighting. Or the way Jody’d just let her voice linger on the ‘e’ in bye just like Donna had.

Jody finally had to admit that it was a regular thing after she realized they talked on the phone almost three times a week.

She hadn’t talked to another human being this much in years.

So what else do you do for funsies in your spare time?

What spare time you talkin about exactly?

Oh boo :p even our line of work gets a spare minute

or two! Have to say I haven’t done much lately but

catch up on all the novels I missed these last few

years. Do you like mysteries?

I love mysteries. Especially stupid murder mysteries.

They never get old.

I’ve had that new one by Lindsey Faye by my bed for

weeks now and haven’t made it past page one.

Oh you’ve got to read this one then! By Kate

Morton? You’ll just love her, if you haven’t

read any of hers before. She’s written several.

I’ll mail this one to ya after I finish it. Two

chapters left and I’ve got to wait for tomorrow! >:(

#supernatural #dodio #femslash february #fanfic #jody mills #donna hanscum #My writing #i do hope the texts aren't too confusing here

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riichardwilson · 5 years ago

Text

How To Convince Others Not To Use Dark Patterns

About The Author

Paul is a leader in conversion rate optimisation and user experience design thinking. He has over 25 years experience working with clients such as Doctors … More about Paul …

Arguing that dark patterns are unethical is not enough on its own. We will also need to make the case to clients and colleagues that they are damaging to business.

You are a smart, well-informed person. After all, you are reading Smashing Magazine so you must be. That means you are probably already convinced that you should avoid dark patterns. Maybe you have even read the new Smashing book on Ethical Design that drives the point home.

However, just because we understand that we should avoid dark patterns, doesn’t mean our clients and colleagues do. No doubt you have been asked more than once to implement these questionable techniques by an ill-informed stakeholder.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to convince them that dark patterns are a terrible idea. Talking about ethics often isn’t enough.

The problem is that a lot of our colleagues and clients are under tremendous pressure to deliver. Business owners need to pay the bills, while many marketing agency executives in larger organizations are under immense pressure to deliver results.

In that kind of environment, people can convince themselves of anything. The ethical argument becomes muddied as people persuade themselves that they aren’t forcing anybody to do anything.

So in this post, we will put together a compelling argument you can present to stakeholders to help them understand why dark patterns are a bad idea.

However, before we do that, let’s agree on a definition of dark patterns.

How do we encourage clicks without shady tricks? Meet Click, our new practical handbook on how to increase conversion and drive sales without alienating people along the way. By Paul Boag. May 2020.

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How Do We Define A Dark Pattern

Suzanne Scacca has written an excellent post showing examples of dark patterns and you probably already have a clear idea in your mind of what they are.

However, for this article, I am going use the definition from my article on dark patterns:

“User interface elements that have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, often utilizing psychological manipulation.”

We need to be clear on our definition because increasingly, I am seeing people refer to anything that is annoying on the web as a dark pattern. For example, an overlay may be very annoying, but it does not necessarily trick users into doing something they might not otherwise do.

This page is designed to trick people into adding insurance to their order by making the button green and having it point onwards. (Large preview)

I point this out, not to say those people are wrong in their definition, but rather because the arguments I lay out here would not all apply to a broader definition of what a dark pattern is.

So what exactly is that argument?

The Business Case Against Dark Patterns

If you want to convince stakeholders that dark patterns are a terrible idea, there is little point talking about their negative impact on the user experience. That is typically too abstract for most people. Instead, we need to frame things in terms they will understand — the negative impact of dark patterns for them personally and for the entire business.

Aside from the ethical considerations of using dark patterns, three factors make them a wrong choice for any business concerned about long-term revenue, and by extension, anybody in that business considering adopting them. These are:

The fact that consumers are cynical, savvy and spoilt for choice.

That the web has empowered consumers.

The hidden costs of dark patterns.

These are the arguments that you can bring to clients and management so let’s explore them in more depth.

Consumers Are Cynical, Savvy And Spoilt For Choice

You only need to watch an episode of Mad Men to know that manipulation in sales and marketing agency has been around much longer than the web.

Brands always used to be able to get away with manipulation because consumers were mostly unaware of being manipulated. Even if they did realize, the choice was limited, and so there was very little they could do. That is no longer true. The web has changed that.

We need to help management realize the fact that consumers have changed. That in every consumer’s pocket is instant access to every other company on the planet that offers the same thing as you. It is so easy to find your competitors and so simple to swap that one small annoyance is enough to make people switch.

Of course, management might take the cynical attitude that if people are unaware that they are manipulating them, then they won’t be annoyed and so won’t swap to a competitor.

In truth, the assumption that people are unaware of manipulation is incorrect.

There is a tendency to think that because dark patterns work (and let’s be clear they do) that people are unaware of them. However, that isn’t necessarily so.

A case in point is a usability test I ran on a hotel booking site which employed dark patterns. As the user was looking at hotel rooms, he commented on how he hated all the manipulative techniques the website used. I asked him why he used the site, and he said: “I just ignore all of that stuff.”

In reality, he probably didn’t. It would still impact his buying decision on a sub-conscious level. Yes, he was unaware the manipulation was working. However, he was aware the site was employing it, and so it created that adverse reaction in him.

Users are much savvier than we give them credit for. Don’t forget they have the whole of human knowledge in their pockets, and they read articles about Facebook’s psychological manipulations or BBC stories about Government intervention over the techniques hotel booking sites were employing. They know that websites are attempting to manipulate them, and that makes it likely they will at least consider going elsewhere.

The media is ensuring that consumers are increasingly aware of dark patterns. (Large preview)

However, there is an even more significant danger in them knowing that a site is attempting to manipulate them.

The Power Of The Consumer

The web hasn’t just made consumers savvier and given them more access to choice. It has also provided them with a platform to complain, and companies continue to underestimate that.

Even one disgruntled customer can have a significant negative impact on a brand. I often talk to clients about the story of Hasan Syed, who was unhappy with British Airways. He decided to take out a promoted tweet that read:

“Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous.”

The fallout of this one action was enormous for British Airways with the story featuring on the BBC, Guardian, Fox News, the Express and Telegraph, to name just a few.

One disgruntled company can undermine a brand. (Large preview)

Things get even more dangerous when users start coming together to express their dissatisfaction, such as when Facebook was found to have carried out psychological experiments on their users.

The voice of users has become so powerful now that it motivates government into action such as with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) here in the UK. They recently announced:

“The CMA has taken enforcement action to bring to an end misleading sales tactics, hidden charges and other practices in the online hotel booking market. These have been wholly unacceptable.”

Worst of all, the web means these negative comments from users never go away. They are always only a search away and easily accessible thanks to sites like Check a Trade or Trip Advisor.

Sites like Trustpilot provide a platform for consumers to express their feelings about an online experience. (Large preview)

In business terms, this leads to lost long-term revenue, less repeat orders, and harder customer acquisition. However, these are not the only costs of manipulation.

The Hidden Cost Of Manipulation

At face value, dark patterns work. If you use them on your website, you will see an increase in users taking action. However, that does not tell the whole story because for every dollar of additional revenue earned; dark patterns could well be costing you more. The problem is that you cannot easily see the costs.

Take, for example, a company I worked with who sold kettles. They decided to automatically add their kettle filters to people’s carts when they went to buy a kettle. That is a classic dark pattern people don’t always notice that the company has added the filter.

Sure enough, the sales of filters skyrocketed, and the e-commerce team was pleased because they were one step closer to meeting their targets.

Unfortunately what they were not aware of was what was happening elsewhere in the company.

The marketing agency team who ran the companies social media channels found themselves having to spend time addressing complaints on Twitter and Facebook.

The customer support team received an increase in calls asking for refunds or complaining. Each call was costing the company £3.21, more than the profit margin on the filters.

Then there was the cost of processing the returns. Filters had to be assessed and then restocked, costing yet more money.

In short, dark patterns are rarely as profitable as they first appear and could be costing the company money, even outside of the online backlash.

Without a doubt, there is a solid business case against the use of dark patterns. However, an academic argument may not be enough to sway clients or colleagues. You might need something more tangible.

Gather Your Evidence

If your company has yet to start using dark patterns, the above argument should help. However, if they are already using them, getting people to change their minds will be tougher. You will probably need some evidence to support your case.

Gathering this evidence will need a bit of detective work on your part, but it could make all of the difference in making your case. With that in mind, where are some places to look?

Search Out Negative Comments

The first place to look is online. Search out every negative comment you can find about dark patterns and your website. If you don’t see any that doesn’t mean people are unhappy, it just means they haven’t shared it publicly yet. However, if you do find comments, they probably represent the feelings of many, many other people.

A simple search on social media will uncover lots of examples of people annoyed by dark patterns. (Large preview)

Talk To Other Teams In Your Company

Speak to those in customer services, returns, marketing agency or any other department that might have been impacted by the use of dark patterns. Ask them if they have noticed any changes since the company has implemented them. As with the kettle company, you might find some hidden costs.

Run Usability Testing

Ask some people to use your site and see how they react to the dark patterns. I would advise against leading the testers by asking directly about the dark patterns. However, you can ask whether there is anything about the website they dislike or find annoying.

Make sure you record these sessions too, as nothing is more potent than seeing just how frustrated and irritated people get with these kinds of techniques.

Run A Survey

Another approach is to run a survey asking people about their impressions of the website. Did they find it trustworthy? Do they feel the company is putting their interests first?

One particular survey I favor is one that shows on exit-intent if the user decides not to take action. The one question survey asks them why they chose not to take action and offers them a list of alternatives.

A simple survey can help assertion how dark patterns are influencing people’s attitude towards your website. (Large preview)

One of the options could be that the site felt manipulative or untrustworthy. That would give you an indication of if users are aware of the dark patterns and whether they are influencing the buying decision negatively.

That works even better if you can compare answers between users who have seen the dark patterns and those who haven’t.

Of course, the best evidence of all is where you can tie dark patterns to financial loss for the company. That is not always easy to do, but with some educated guessing, we can often estimate.

Let’s imagine one in ten people who completed the exit-intent survey said that they didn’t act because the site felt manipulative. That would mean that by dropping dark patterns, the site could see 10% more people taking action. If you know the number of visitors to the website, you can work out how many extra orders that would be. You can then also work out the average value of each order, and that provides a financial cost of dark patterns.

Would that number be 100% accurate? Absolutely not. However, it would be enough to make stakeholders stop and think. At least it will if you present it in the right way.

Pick Your Moment And Method

In my experience, one of the significant reasons that our appeals to drop dark patterns fall on deaf ears is that we approach it in a confrontational manner. We argue passionately for the removal of dark patterns in a meeting, often with the person who introduced them in the first place. That is never going to end well.

When we confront people in this way, they become defensive, especially when you are criticizing them in front of colleagues.

My recommendation is that once you have formed your argument and gathered your evidence that you speak to each of the critical stakeholders individually.

Not only does this approach avoid people feeling attacked in a public forum, but it also allows you to tailor the argument you present for whoever you are talking to.

For example, if you are talking to a marketing agency person, you could talk about the damage dark patterns have on a brand. However, if you are talking to a finance person, you can discuss the hidden costs of dark patterns.

Most of all, we need to make these arguments with sensitivity. We should not imply that stakeholders were wrong to suggest or try dark patterns. That is simply too confrontational.

You will see better results if you talk about the evidence that you have uncovered and the research into the subject that you have done online. Talk about it being a nuanced issue and a delicate balance to achieve. In short, be conciliatory, rather than confrontational.

I am not claiming that if you adopt the approach outlined in this article, you will see success every time. However, I do believe you will see more progress than lecturing colleagues about ethics and applying that they are unethical in their approach.

(ra, il)

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source http://www.scpie.org/how-to-convince-others-not-to-use-dark-patterns/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/618038189514457088

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scpie · 5 years ago