#and the post was trying to persuade general audiences

[gojinka]

Hehe may I ask about evil Callie?

(The evil/brainwashed) Callie here functions a bit differently… as I also use her to explore what exactly mud mouths are… and the octarian’s relationship with their ally, Salmonids…

Explanation under the cut. 🚧

Due to constrained relations between them and the other main dominating species— (salmonid/octarian vs inklings)— most Inklings, namely younger generations, are more desperate to fix and mend the relationship.

(There is plenty more to this! But I don’t want to make this come across as far more convoluted than it needs to be, so here have this for now:📒)

Octavio contacted Callie directly, albeit in secret, telling her that he has plans that would be a step forward in ending the tension between the Inklings and Octarian-Salmonid groups. What he had introduced was a new type of “ink” that would make their species “salmonid friendly”, and he wanted Callie to be the one to be the first public appearance with this new Ink in hopes to reach a wider audience…

Most of that isn’t true— but to Callie— who is a direct descendant of a war leader, was raised as an agent, and lives in a fairly dangerous city zone that floods, that sounded like a better step towards a better life, and she went for it.

This ink is known as MUD— and this “ink” isn’t technically ink at all, as mentioned in a previous post, most inks are a synthetic toxic poison, designed for warfare, but this ink on the contrary, wasn't designed by Inkfish, it was designed by Salmonids.

MUD is a slimy corrosive ink designed to rival Inkfish’s ink, namely in salmon runs and Ink Wasted territories, one that blends into the grounds and spreads out quickly and efficiently much like Inkfish ink, but one that corrodes Inklings by absorbing into them, and leaves salmonids completely safe from any burning effects.

The Octarian were the ones tasked with creating this new bio-weapon, as an added benefit being it would not affect their species, (they would be safe from it regardless, considering Salmon-Runs are an Inkling exclusive event, and Octolings were surprised when they learned about them.)

They tried different methods of testing it, and ultimately, the project failed— Mud uses both Salmonid and Inkling DNA in its creation, and when Mud was being developed, it melted Salmonids like Ink typically does due to its hyper-corrosive nature, but because it carried Inkling + Salmonid DNA, the salmonid’s skin would attempt to mimic the properties of inklings and constantly try to reconstruct itself into the “swim” form, which made Salmonids a walking (or rather, squirming) sludge, these monsters became known as MUDMOUTHS, and are not truly considered alive, since they run exclusively on the Running Instinct that exists in Salmonid DNA.

And in turn, when the ink was absorbed into Inklings— the previously noted “running instinct” would have an almost Kraken-Esque affect on inklings before corroding and splatting them.

The running instinct would work as intended, everything they eat immediately converts to growth in preparation for an arduous journey, they’re extremely aggressive, and they have a desire to return to the salmonid birthplace.

Mud would splat inklings upon prolonged contact, but Inklings who were test subjects for mud were slowly injected with Mud over a course of time. These subjects were disoriented and had a sort of “positive” aggressive attitude that didn’t falter even in the face of family or friends.

They are easy to persuade and it’s unclear if this is due to the pain of getting the ink-content in their bodies replaced by this synthetic fake-ink, or if the running instinct muddles their thoughts. It’s probably a healthy mix of both.

Dj Octavio, kept Callie by his side, since in her current state her mind would be too fogged up to dispute or make sense of what he’s making her do.

He planned on using Callie to stir up trouble in Inkopolis solely for the sake of rising tension. Octavio is constantly searching for reasons to make Inkling’s an enemy in the eyes of everyone who sees them, and painting Callie— a well known public figure; a known descendant of Captain Cuttlefish— as vicious would do wonders for allowing most people to view the Octarian as a force that would more desirably be backed up, it would reinforce their armies. And make them overall stronger if people felt they had reason to target Inklings.

He didn’t get this far due to Agent Four’s interference.

But, he got to accomplish many theft missions using Callie— which included robbing Inkopolis of some of the Zapfish Generators, which are giant machines that are powered thanks to the Zapfish, and thanks to the Zap-Ink— ⤵️

(Above image is from here) — Octavio was able to use said generators to restore power to many of the war-affected bio-domes that have been obsolete for decades, WITHOUT the need for a Zapfish.

But his reasoning can still be dumbed down to a petty move on Octavio’s part— who despite having a safer ground in the domes due to a good trade relationship with Salmonids and a vast space away from water— he still feels bitter about losing the remaining lands. And because of this the Octarian are plenty more war driven, and they are more likely to easily fall to the fervor of these schemes and battles.

[p-redux]

So, you always screeched about being right, well you were proven wrong today. Shippers have finally the proof of SC kissing at the Paramore part of the Taylor Swift concert. Right there in public. Like a couple.

First of all, I don't screech, I growl, like the lioness that I am. I'm a Leo, after all. 🦁 Secondly, um, you mean, this? 👇 😂🙄

Those are screencaps from a video of the Outlander cast at the Taylor Swift concert last week in Edinburgh at Murrayfield. Apparently, the few remaining Extreme Shippers, who are holding on to their barnacle-ridden, long-sunken SamCait ship, have been given a life boat and think the ship is sailing again due to this. First, let me get this out of the way. HAHAHAHAHA 🤣😂. OMG, desperation, thy name is SamCait shippers. Sadly, there is a fairly new account on Tumblr that is led by an OG shipper returned from the bottom of the ocean to galvanize new shippers into thinking Sam and Cait are actually a secret couple. Try to keep up with the times, people, that's SO ten years ago. And, the Taylor Swift concert video is now being used as "proof" that Sam and Cait decided to finally "out" their "secret love" very publicly at a Taylor Swift concert of all places. Again, HAHAHAHAHA 🤣😂. Lord. You can't make this shit up.

Here are the screencaps lightened up and defined. ����

Close ups. 👇

Um, this looks like a cheek kiss to me, or even Cait leaning in close to Sam to tell him something, since the concert is obviously very loud.

Regardless, Cait was also kissing Sophie Skelton and John Hunter Bell. Is she in a secret relationship with them as well?

Here's the actual video. 👇 Of the Outlander cast, Sam is the tallest male there, Cait is the tallest female there. It's obvious they would stand behind everyone for most of the concert so that their costars could SEE. If not, they would have been blocking them. Duh.

Sam and Cait have known each other for 10 years. They are good friends and costars. They have a bond via their shared experiences on Outlander. In addition, they've fake f*cked onscreen for 10 years, they are a wee familiar with each other. And as I've said MANY times before, most actors are not like you and me. They are a different breed, they are touch-feely, and flirty. That's just the way it is in showbiz. That DOES NOT mean they are a couple in real life. Why must I have to keep explaining the OBVIOUS over and over again?

When I watch the video, ALL I SEE, is two friends and costars having fun together. But because Extreme Shippers have been waiting for Sam and Cait to "finally reveal their relationship," like it's the Second Coming of Christ or some shit, THIS video will now be used as "proof" that Sam and Cait "came out as a couple at the Taylor Swift concert." And it will become shipper canon forever more. Along with all the other LIES Extreme Shippers leaders have sold to their unsuspecting minions. Soooo, for those who are new to Outlander and stumble into shipper blogs, and get persuaded by the blurry videos, manipulated gifs, and general bullshit, here is my REALITY CHECK for you.

Here is a very clear gif of Caitriona Mary Balfe kissing her ACTUAL, REAL HUSBAND, Anthony Gerard McGill aka Tony McGill on the lips in front of an audience and on live television at the Irish Film and Television Awards. 👇 click to watch

Here are the screencaps from the video gif. Look at that smile and those heart eyes 😍 Cait gives Tony before bending down to kiss him. 👇

Always remember and never forget, THIS is REALITY 👇Tony + Cait #tait

I hate to post a pic from Cait's father's funeral, but it's to prove the point that Cait would obviously attend her father's funeral with her HUSBAND, Tony. And she even took their son. Even Extreme Shippers should have a hard time explaining away Cait's mother and sister standing right next to her in this pic. But, of course in ES' pea-brains the mum and sister are in on the charade. Boy, TPTB's budget must be HUGE to be paying off not only Tony, but also ALL of Cait's family to hide Sam and Cait's "secret marriage." 🙄 That's sarcasm, btw. 👇

For the past TEN YEARS, I've posted SOLID PROOF showing the real relationship is Cait and Tony, not Cait and Sam, but here's an old post of mine with a summary. 👇 I get that the MAJORITY in the fandom know that Cait and Tony are married and know their marriage is real. But, clearly, given the amount of Anons I got pointing to "the video, the video!," some of you STILL need a reminder of REALITY and FACTS. 👇

So, quit sending me Asks about the video, or "how can a married woman cozy up to her costar that way?!" Easy, she's an actress and he's an actor, and they're friends for ten years, and are comfortable together. Simple as that. Nothing to see here, folks.

Go back to the shipper corner of Tumblr to live in delusionland. On this side, we like to bask in the glow of REAL LOVE. And that's TAIT, not SamCait. Now, shoo...

[that-left-turn]

I might be missing something, but why do amc think a new male audience is the best target audience for dd/caryl?

I know norman, nicotero, and zabel are all leaning to a simple american hero toxic masculine version of daryl, so maybe they think that will attract men who never watched twd before, but twd has been a big enough show for over a decade, how many really have never seen it who would want to start now?

As for existing twd viewers, from where I've been looking the past 13 or so years, the largest fanbase for daryl was women and queer folk. It seems to me that Rick and Negan are the more attractive characters for a cis male audience (yet both of those spinoffs treated their female lead better - maybe dd is over-compensating). And more than half the current male audience for dd keep begging for a rick and daryl reunion. It seems like they only care about daryl in the context of rick, and I don't think norman or andy have any intention on delivering that, as much as amc will keep baiting them as much as they bait carylers with caryl.

I just can't really for the life of me think what persuaded them that daryl dixon was the character to try to pull in a new male audience. His biggest appeal was always his sensitive side and his relationship with carol. Going the way of other shows, like tlou, and leaning into women's interests and queerness, seems to me like it would have been a far more successful move for a spinoff with daryl (and carol) at the helm. I think plenty of men would have followed that too, as they did for daryl and carol's 'badass-ness' in the main show.

But I will say that lots of misogyny came out in public when tboc aired. Male internet users were leaving horrible comments on fans who were speaking up about wanting women to be treated better on the show. "It's daryl's show, so why should melissa be treated better" was a common attitude to fans asking for equal treatment. Others were saying that feminism, diverse representation etc. are not popular anymore. And when fans asked for better, it felt like amc would respond by making increasingly offensive posts (offensive to women, to non-americans, to long-time fans of carol & daryl). In fact, I see a lot more men replying to amc's official posts uplifting women of twd with annoyance at amc's "feminist bs." Do you think those are the type of men amc is trying to appeal to?

All right, it’s a big topic, so this answer is somewhat abridged while still hitting the main points.

Daryl is AMC’s original IP

Daryl doesn’t exist in the comics, which means AMC doesn’t have to pay Kirkman for using the character. They can keep all the profit to themselves. This is also the real reason why Daryl was the most marketed character of the flagship show and why Norman went from support cast to main credits so quickly.

Doing the spinoff with only Daryl would net AMC a larger profit, or so they thought. As evidenced by social media, Norman gets mobbed when he shows up somewhere and AMC made a crucial mistake in thinking that’s because of emotional investment in Daryl or the popularity of the show. In reality, it’s more to do with celebrity culture—people just want to get pictures with someone famous. As such, it’s not an indication of sustainable viewership.

Male audiences are seen as more ‘serious’ fans, committed and invested in lore and story, while female identifying audiences show up for shippy moments and other ‘mushy stuff’

It used to be that genre shows in general had a more male skewing audience and if you look at the earliest seasons, you can clearly see that TWD was intended for the comic book fans and men who are horror or zombie fans. Female characters were entirely relegated to the sidelines, informing the male story arcs but not having much agency of their own. Look at how hated/misunderstood Lori still is. She never had a chance because the audience is meant to see her entire arc through Rick and Shane’s eyes.

There was a time when TWD was must-see TV, so the show has had a very diverse audience for a long time. AMC is just using some seriously outdated marketing models. In the days of syndication, TV execs wanted standalone episodes because networks who licensed the shows needed viewers to be able to watch out of order without getting lost in the plot. This was the time when you could advertise on billboards and at sports events, and people would tune in. Streaming and more cinematic video games, along with COVID, changed how people consume and engage with media.

A segment of male viewers want the immersive experience of feeling like they’re fighting zombies, so they like the cool weapons, special effects and lore—they want TV shows to be more like a gaming experience. Female identifying viewers, on the other hand, are more likely to watch for the story and its characters because representation in visual media is relatively new to them. Women also tend to be more community oriented, so they find strength/comfort in seeing someone else going through experiences similar to their own.

The media strategy from the start has been to foster a pro-Rick environment

One of the mistakes the show made right from the start was that it focused too exclusively on Rick. A TV show is different from something you consume off a page and TWD had an ensemble cast. AMC wanted the built-in audience of the comic book fans to ensure the success of the adaptation, but once the show took on a life of its own (and particularly when they started to aggressively market Daryl), they should have nurtured interest in the cast as a whole by offering more balanced screentime for the characters and less implausible plot armor for the Grimeses.

The Gimple era, when social media really took off, offered a very Greco-Roman view of men looking to each other for companionship and women are largely irrelevant. Rick and Daryl become brothers, there’s the homoerotic antagonism between Rick and Negan. Maggie—the tomboy who transgressed against gender roles—is brought in line with the intended function and purpose of women: having a baby. It became open season on Carol because Rick, who was pushed as the character with whom the audience is supposed to identify and sympathize, condemned her for the deaths of Karen and David. Female friendships turned largely invisible, which fed into the misogyny on the screen, BTS and in AMC's marketing tactics.

It was fair game to pit women against each other and to tear down any character in order to promote the show, as long as Rick was framed as the undisputed and righteous hero.

I might be missing something, but why do amc think a new male audience is the best target audience for dd/caryl?

The ‘break narrative’ fractured the Caryl fandom. Not every Caryler was willing to watch a solo Daryl show. Carol has a dedicated fanbase too and they weren’t impressed with the PR spin that was offered as an explanation for removing Melissa from the project. AMC lost more viewers by that move than they had anticipated.

Because female fans started speaking up against watching and why they made that choice, a certain online demographic (who derive their satisfaction from telling women to shut up) has become very vocal in official online spaces. AMC is mistaking that attention for viewers who care for Daryl or the show. They do not. They care about the instant gratification of putting women in their place.

Many male fans see Daryl as an extension to Rick, which is why AMC has people clamoring for a Rickyl reunion. They want more Rick and might see Daryl as a self-insert because they want that brotherly connection with the ‘real’ protagonist of TWDU. Voices asking for a reunion are primarily interested in and fans of Rick. They’re not going to invest in a 56-year old Peter Pan who gallivants across Europe, so the band aid solution is to bait them into watching by dangling possible Rick hints. Norman has also made it clear, on any number of occasions, that he’s not interested in going back to being the sidekick, so it's just a ploy.

Do you think those are the type of men amc is trying to appeal to?

Bottom line is that AMC doesn’t care if their audience is toxic. The official SM accounts are looking to maximize the engagement on their posts and because X’s algorithm amplifies male alt-right voices, anything that’s hostile towards women and human rights gets a lot of attention. That doesn’t mean these people even watch DarDix and any data derived from the official accounts is too muddled to draw any meaningful conclusions. Comments don’t reflect who’s watching or any kind of accurate interests in the show’s content.

The same basic principle of the toxic dudebros is true for the anti-Carol element. They’re loud because they don’t want the show to do well out of some misguided notion that it somehow builds authority for other shows. (It doesn’t. It just furthers AMC’s impression that female identifying fans are volatile shippers.) They’re not an option for a long-term audience, but they too feel validated by the misogynist marketing for DarDix. Unfortunately, AMC’s marketing department doesn’t seem to grasp that tracking their official accounts is useless in gauging audience behavior insights because they’ve corrupted the data.

The people who are invested in the characters and who’d like to enjoy the show have been made to feel unwelcome both by AMC’s marketing efforts and the stooges’ promotion. The show needs to bring in an independent marketing strategist to repair the damage the studio has caused their own IP. Someone who understands the space and how to nurture and grow a loyal audience is the only way forward.

[mareastrorum]

This took a while to write up. Here’s something about Dune and Villanueve’s adaptation. I felt I really needed to chew on it before posting.

This is by no means a full thesis, just putting down some thoughts on Chani and Paul. I’m trying to minimize my use of story-specific terminology so that people who aren’t as familiar with that can still follow along.

Of course, massive spoilers below.

For those that have only seen Villanueve’s films, they are an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the first book in a series. You’ll find an incredible number of critiques and reviews of them online, as well as other adaptations. All of the adaptations have cut at least one part of the main plot, for varying reasons. Note that I said main plot. Cutting side plots is absolutely expected given that the first book is a behemoth, but each adaptation also cut part of the actual main plot line. That isn’t something unique to Villanueve’s films.

Some book background: Dune is a very thoughtful exploration of imperialism and ecology, particularly how certain patterns are reflections of each other. Most of the story takes place on Arrakis, a desert planet and sole source of melange, colloquially called “spice.” Spice is a mind-enhancing drug that is necessary for navigators to manage intergalactic travel at high speed—so it is the backbone of the intergalactic empire that plants aristocratic families on the desert planet of Arrakis to harvest the spice, which of course involves the oppression of the native Fremen that see the worms as religiously sacred. The atrisocrats use varying combinations of violence, diplomacy, and religion to oppose the Fremen at the same time that they appropriate Fremen knowledge of how to survive the incredibly harsh clime of Arrakis.

The key problem is that Arrakis as a habitat cannot change without endangering the sand worms that provide the spice. Terraforming to shrink the deserts where they live puts them in danger because water (the rarest resource on Arrakis) is fatal to the worms. Liet-Kynes (an ecologist from the Empire and half-blooded Fremen) persuaded Fremen leaders that it would be possible to terraform the planet gradually over dozens of generations and eventually create pockets of safe and habitable land for the Fremen without taking too much from the sand worms. The Atreides family learned this from Liet-Kynes before he died, and Paul eventually sets this plan in motion when he becomes Emperor. That plan was what won over the Fremen to his side. He had an actual plot to get them what they wanted, a path to become Emperor so he would have the power needed to make it happen, and intent to do this in a way to safeguard Fremen culture in the face of imperial exploitation by making the Fremen the dominant culture of the Empire. At least, that’s the story he sold them and himself.

Dune Part 1 did not have that facet. Liet-Kynes did not teach that to Paul and Jessica before dying. In fact, Liet-Kynes’s most lampshading scene of dying in the desert while despondently hoping that the Fremen would “beware of heroes” was cut entirely from the film. Now, that is a small deviation, and I can understand that Villanueve would have cut it for his style anyway. He doesn’t like telling—he favors showing in film. That is perfectly fair. Having a character lay out “this is my plan” and telling the audience blatantly “Paul is a hero and that is not a good thing” just wasn’t going to happen anyway, regardless of whether it was part of the plot. So when Part 1 came out, I didn’t take that as a decision to deviate from the actual plot of the book. I figured Villanueve would introduce these things otherwise, and it would make sense to come from Stilgar or another Fremen leader. Not that big a deal.

(Note: I’m not getting into a lot of the other omissions, such as the missing scenes, Gurney’s paranoia that Jessica had betrayed the Atreides, Paul’s mentat training, Jamis’s funeral, etc. I could literally write a book about everything that was left out, and honestly, it’s just more reason to read Dune.)

For Part 2, the biggest difference in is that Chani is a true believer in the prophecies that Paul is the Lisan al-Gaib, the messiah that would lead the Fremen to paradise. In the film, Chani is not merely a skeptic—she is a nonbeliever. As a result of this change, rather than support Paul, bear his first child, and agree to become his concubine (eventually bearing the twins that feature in the next two books), Chani of the films instead does not have his first son, disputes Paul’s claims, and leaves on her own rather than support his war. Additionally, although it’s not facially relevant, Chani is also the daughter of Liet-Kynes, the Imperial ecologist, and so is a mixed blood Fremen (though she is accepted without issue by the Fremen). Instead, in the film, Chani has no connection to Liet-Kynes.

This is a drastic change in plot. I genuinely do not know how that will be remedied so that Chani will bear the twins that eventually rule the universe and lead the empire down the prophecied Golden Path in later books.

Why is that a big deal?

To start, there is a significant change in symbols used between the book and film in this respect. I cannot overstate the importance of Chani as a symbol in Dune. In the books, Chani is a stand in for the Fremen and their culture, particularly that culture in current day. She is the daughter of Liet-Kynes because the current Fremen cultural goal is to bring about that dream of a terraformed Arrakis where they do not need to live so desperately. That is inseparable from the effects of the Empire; her father is an ecologist because that is the Imperial influence that the Fremen were willing to accept and integrate into their own lives. Paul genuinely loves Chani, is protective of her, wants her to thrive, and eventually wants to become the person of the prophecy she believes in. He wants to be the hero she expects of him, without losing his identity as her partner.

However, Chani does not represent all Fremen. Stilgar, Chani’s uncle, represented the old guard of Fremen that rigidly held to their old laws and ways of living. Paul and Jessica were not given any leniency; they had to prove themselves to become Fremen, and his support was clearly conditional upon that. As a result, to gain the Fremen’s respect and move them towards their common goals, Paul and Jessica assimilated into the Fremen culture, and then Paul systematically destroyed his rivals—which is the Freman way—taking the remainder under his banner to fight the Harkonnen. Paul finally broke from that tradition when he chose to let Stilgar live, convincing the old guard that it was better to cut down their enemies rather than each other for deviating from tradition. Chani stood by Paul the entire way, learning how fight Harkonnen from both Paul and Jessica, learned to use the Voice from Jessica, and became Paul’s most staunch supporter and connection to all other Fremen. Every aspect of Chani’s identity and her choices feed into the narrative that the Fremen had expectations of Paul, he willingly rose to the challenge, and they loved each other fiercely.

But near the end of the first book, Paul sent Chani and their firstborn son to a hopefully safe location that was then attacked by the Harkonnen. Paul did not know if either had survived at the time it was reported. Rather than rush to find them, Paul struggled with the decision and ultimately continued the fight against the Harkonnen. This was to tell the reader that Paul’s love didn’t save them, that he was not going to save the Fremen, and he was going to continue his bloodshed. This had already happened, and was going to happen again. Luckily, Chani survived, they mourn their son, and she agrees to be his concubine so that he could marry Princess Irulan and become Emperor. Everyone knew at that moment that Paul had no love for the princess and the marriage was purely political. Princess Irulan resented this until the end of the next book, when she reveals that she also came to love Paul, and she was jealous of Chani. But Paul did not love Irulan the way he loved Chani. It’s again a reflection that Paul truly loved the Fremen culture and saw the Empire only as a means to an end: achieving the Fremen’s goal of creating paradise on Arrakis. Dune ends with that affirmation.

In the film, that is no longer the case. Chani was not a symbol of Fremen support because she set out alone. Most of the Fremen supported Paul. She didn’t believe in Paul or the prophecies when most did. She didn’t have his firstborn and it remains to be seen if the twins will exist. Rather than Paul making a decision that shows he will destroy the Fremen culture, Chani makes a decision to reject him. This changes the dynamics involved in the story, and I genuinely don’t know if it will be handled well.

The next books continue the story years after Paul becomes Emperor. In Dune: Messiah, Paul wrestles with the duties of Emperor while attempting to preserve the Fremen culture (to keep Chani and their unborn children alive) and fulfilling his roles as prophet and leader. At the same time, he is beset by assassination, rebellion, and usurpation attempts. At the end of Messiah, Chani dies while birthing twins, the worms are beginning to die off, Paul loses hope in his plan, and then he walks off into the desert expecting to die because he does not want to become the Emperor he foresees necessary to continue this plan. He realized he has changed the Fremen forever, not for the better, and he thinks the best thing he can do is exile himself. Paul didn’t save anyone he cared about, and when faced with the decision to try to salvage the future in front of him, he walked away. Paul is a failure. The point is that he fails in the book titled Messiah.

The books were an ongoing warning that no matter your good intentions, no matter the support and love and resources involved, to introduce an outsider whose power depends upon a limited resource into the place of origin will eventually destroy any other aspects of it, even if that power was intended to preserve. Whether it’s imperialistic appropriation of a culture and its religion, or terraforming to change land optimal for a religiously and economically significant animal into something comfortable for another species, the thing you love will die.

You cannot save a habitat by introducing an invasive species. You cannot save a unique species by destroying its habitat. You cannot save a culture by using it to conquer others. You cannot appropriate a culture and keep it just like it was before you commandeered it. You will wind up with something else, and eventually the only remnants of the thing you loved will be memories reenacted by people so separated from the original that they won’t even know or care why they’re doing it (as shown in Messiah and God Emperor).

The entire point of the Dune series is that “white saviors” don’t actually exist. They’re “heroes” until time reveals that they’re not. They are merely conquerors with the delusion that they are saving the thing they sacrificed in order to attain power.

Chani’s rejection in Dune Part 2 erodes that. Someone who didn’t read the book is going to wonder, “what if she had stayed and persuaded him?” “What if Chani was the Lisan al-Gaib?” “What if an actual Freman had taken over the Empire instead of Paul?” Then the audience thinks, ah, of course, Paul made mistakes and that’s why he’s going to fail. If only he hadn’t been so blinded by ambition, everything would have been fine. If only he hadn’t needed to be the leader, if he had let Stilgar do it, if he had let Chani do it, etc. In other words, if the white savior had just done it the right way, it would have worked.

But that isn’t the point of Dune. To become the leader of an Empire requires that level of ambition. Stilgar submitted to Paul because he saw that Paul’s ability to engage with both the common folk and the extremists among the Fremen was absolutely necessary to defeat the Harkonnen, and Stilgar chose that over any other priority. Chani supported Paul because she loved him and genuinely believed he would lead her people to better times, because all she knew was desperation and oppression. There was ruthless calculation and devotional love in equal measure, but the cost of success as a hero seeking to lead an empire is that the thing you loved will die. The Fremen had already changed into the bloodthirsty, fanatical army before Paul ever saw the Emperor face to face. Paul’s son died and Chani went missing because Herbert was telling us that the future Paul and Chani both wanted was already dead before he laid siege to Arrakeen, before he became Emperor, before he started a war to solidify the Freman’s domination of humankind. The reason that everything in Dune eventually works in Paul’s favor is because even with perfect conditions, he failed. There is no world in which he would have succeeded.

You can’t eat a cake and have it too. Empires eat. Heroes, no matter how much love they have in their hearts, no matter who they fight for, no matter how much their supporters/victims wanted it too, cannot use an empire to save anything. The very nature of imperial power is to consume. Love doesn’t make a “white savior” any less imperialistic than a tyrant bent on conquest.

Is the next film going to get us to that point? I don’t think it will. I think it’s going to be yet another adaptation trying to tell a different message because Herbert’s message isn’t very palatable to a mass audience. We don’t want to hear that love doesn’t win in this circumstance. It’s a horrifying message, but it’s one that’s true when telling the story of imperial and ecological exploitation of cultures and rare resources.

That isn’t to say that the films wouldn’t be a good story on their own. It’s just not the story of the books, and I’m one of those people that actually likes the books.

There’s a lot of ways Chani’s new story could go, and I’m watching it like I’m observing someone setting up a dare devil leap. Villanueve is an incredibly skilled storyteller, but this is something no one’s done before, a lot of things can go wrong, and if he doesn’t stick the landing, it’s gonna be pretty gross no matter how the crash happens. I want him to succeed. I’m still gonna watch the next film. I’m just well aware that this is probably going to end in a watered down, generic “Paul failed because he wasn’t Fremen” sentiment rather than “Empires rely upon exploitation and destruction, at the expense of everything else.”

It’s still fucking amazing eye candy, and I’ll probably watch it again.

[mmmmalo]

this might be a stupid question, sorry in advance. when you perform analysis on a work like homestuck and excavate these levels of, like, racial and social meaning from it, how does it affect your opinion of the work? do you come to like or dislike it more, or have your feelings toward it grown past that over the years into more nebulous things?

i love your blog and your posts, even though i only started homestuck last year and never made it past act 4; when i read your stuff i always learn new things about how one can interact with texts. just got curious about the above after reading your post on caliborn and disability and such. hope you have a good day.

I continue to like the work, in new ways. The feelings evade summary, so here's a few examples:

I lost my initial fervor for classpect ages ago, when it became clear to me that the categories weren't mutually exclusive (depriving the system of majestic power) and that they were not the ultimate key to Homestuck (meaning a new paradigm would be needed to solve the story's remaining mysteries). But I still admire how classpect induces the audience to engage in symbolic reading, proposing this object or that color has an associated abstract significance.

The manifestation system started out just giving me digestible bits of characterization like Egbert being scared of heights, but within a few months it began giving me weirder shit like racist sex dreams. That was difficult to integrate into my impression of what exactly Homestuck was -- for the time, I was satisfied to conclude that Equius was not as much of an anomaly as he was made out to be, and that the comic might be in some measure a commentary on racism. That the racist thoughts seemed to emanate from particular characters, in a game whose modus operandi is making thoughts real, struck me as a distancing maneuver of sufficient strength to rebuff gentle (and not so gentle) suggestions that maybe this all just meant Hussie was racist. Thus when the ARG got posted, instead of joining the outcry against the abundant bigotry I was laser focused on how the alternate-dimension Obama was a surrealist confirmation of racist birther conspiracies. The psychological framing of Sburb had persuaded me to accept the story as a scare quote around "racism" that could be observed at a remove.

I was excited that the manifestation system meant more characterization for Jade, then shocked when it implied she had been raped, then apprehensive of the apparent perpetrator Grandpa's every move, then supremely confused by the revelation that Homestuck's deployment of pejorative tropes meant that all the above had coaxed me into a simulation of satanic panic. Reconciling my sympathy for Jade's suffering with the knowledge that Jake is by some measure an effigy sending out de-fused signals of DANGEROUS HOMOSEXUAL THREATENS THE CHILDREN, it all gives me a headache. The story's ironic scaremongering demands your disengagement, to view the story as artifice, but the suffering of the victim within the bad-faith narrative is nonetheless visceral. Conflicting demands like that make up much of the story for me now: pathos that I once felt and continue to feel, side by side with the need to question the foundations of the sympathy.

It is very rare that anything holds my attention as long as Homestuck has and that in itself is something I'm grateful for. Trying to get a rhetorical foothold on its weird ass games has been my primary motivation for reading new things -- psychoanalytic film criticism, existential philosophy, and academic theorization of assorted bigotries are probably not things I would have delved into were they not connected to the puzzle box. It became my lesson plan for self-study, and it has (slash I have) made me into a better reader in general... or something, idk.

I like the story. That's it for feelings for now

[mariacallous]

Less than an hour before JD Vance and Tim Walz took the debate stage on Tuesday, Elon Musk hit pause on his usual shitposting of pro-Trump memes to send a more serious message to his nearly 200 million X followers.

“If you live in Pennsylvania and haven’t registered to vote, you only have 20 days left to do so!” he posted.

“Arizona’s voter registration deadline is only a week away!” he said in a second post a few minutes later.

Musk also included voter registration links for residents. By Wednesday morning, X’s metrics showed that those posts were viewed more than 30 million times, and the links received 1 million views each. Basically: A lot of people saw them. A lot.

It might not be 2008, Obama-style ground game, but it sure is something.

At the beginning of this election cycle, the Ronna McDaniel–led Republican National Committee was planning on building out a vast network of canvassers across the country, but plans changed suddenly when the Trump campaign took over the committee this spring. Instead of putting out the ground game themselves, they’ve dedicated their resources to combating whatever voter fraud they expect to encounter next month. Lately, the RNC’s been holding what they call “Election Integrity Zoom Seminars” instructing supporters on how to spot issues while poll watching.

And the Trump campaign’s been happy to outsource its get-out-the-vote efforts. The Musk-backed America PAC has taken the lead, hiring a few hundred canvassers in battleground states. Turning Point’s political operation is doing work in Arizona and Georgia.

Still, many GOP strategists fear it’s not enough, according to recent Politico reporting, and say they’re worried that Trump’s “paltry” ground game and get-out-the-vote efforts could cost him the election.

In the Politico report, Trump’s political director, James Blair, defended the campaign’s decision to invest less in IRL voter registration, saying that suburban voters, which have often been the focus of canvassing, are already more likely to vote. They just need, Blair says, to be convinced to vote for Trump.

As of this year, 42 US states allow online voter registration—including every contentious battleground state. Digital ads with easy call-to-action buttons linking out to any of these registration sites is definitely cheaper, and easier for the campaign and voters alike. Between Musk’s calls to action, Trump’s own missives online, and all of the campaign’s online initiatives with right-wing creators and influencers, voter registration is quite literally only a click away.

Perhaps even as a gift to Musk, Trump has effectively returned to X over the past few weeks, leveraging the largest online megaphone he’s ever had. On Tuesday evening, Trump posted a link to his campaign’s page asking for volunteers. As of Wednesday afternoon, it’s pinned at the top of his account. This could be the mark of a desperate candidate, but it could still prove to be very effective.

If the polls are correct, this election will be incredibly close. Trump’s base will likely turn out like they did in 2016 and 2020. The challenge is convincing nonvoters to turn out and boost the former president’s numbers. Many of these unlikely voters are young men; men aged 18-24 vote in far fewer numbers than older generations. To find and persuade them, Trump has worked with tough-guy and dude-bro podcasters and influencers whose audiences tend to be the exact people the campaign is trying to reach. Instead of one volunteer with a clipboard getting maybe a few dozen or even a hundred people to register in a day, these guys precisely reach millions of the voters the campaign needs.

In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign transformed how elections are fought and won with its massive field operation across the country. At the time, traditional methods like phone banking were revolutionary. Now, no one answers their phones. If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know the Kamala Harris campaign has done plenty of similar work online to what we’re seeing from the Trump team and Obama’s ‘08 campaign. The main difference, really, is that they’ve also invested in relational organizing, and are betting on the fact that a combination of random volunteers speaking with strangers, influencers posting to millions, and friends and family members reaching out with talking points will win November. Basically, Harris is casting a wide net while Trump goes all in.

Rather than hanging out at college campuses and grocery stores, it looks like the Trump campaign is betting on the internet to help them reach low-propensity voters. With millions of followers, and that sweet algorithmic luck, the Musk and Paul brothers could very well be Trump’s ace.

[thoughtportal]

Ted Danson was 34 when Cheers debuted in the fall of 1982, on the younger side for a TV star at the time. That season’s top 10 highest-rated shows included a few other thirtysomething leads in Tom Selleck on Magnum, P.I. and John Ritter in Three’s Company, but for the most part, the hits of the small screen were built around actors in their fifties (Larry Hagman on Dallas, George Peppard on The A-Team) or sixties (John Forsythe in Dynasty, Jane Wyman in Falcon Crest). By the time Cheers ended a dozen years later, Danson was well into middle age, at a moment when the faces on television were about to get much, much fresher. As advertisers came to believe that the most valuable (and persuadable) audiences to reach were below the age of 35, and as shows with younger, conventionally attractive casts like Friends and Melrose Place became huge hits, the business went full Ponce de León, convinced that an on-camera Fountain of Youth would bring with it a flood of new money. Danson didn’t stop working during this era, but his two post-Cheers sitcoms, Ink and Becker, were made for CBS, a network with an older audience that kept trying to convince advertisers that people with gray hair had money to spend, too — and even there, Danson was dyeing his own increasingly white locks the brown color he naturally sported in his earlier career. 

When his latest series, A Man on the Inside, debuted on Netflix, Danson was a few weeks away from turning 77. Where once he had been asked to minimize the signs of his aging, now he was starring in a show where aging is the whole subject matter. Danson plays Charles Nieuwendyk, a former college professor whose life feels completely empty following the death of his wife and his retirement from teaching. He is running out the string, getting up in the morning only because it seems like the thing to do. It’s only the prodding of his daughter, plus a job offer from a private detective who needs help investigating a jewel theft at a retirement community, that gets him out into the world again. He makes new friends at the retirement home, discovers that lots of people his own age are leading full and complicated lives, and realizes there are more adventures he’d like to have while he still can. 

It’s fun, lovely show, and one that feels like a culmination of a trend that’s been building up over the last decade, where TV has once again learned to embrace and even celebrate older people and the stories they have to tell. 

Our great senior citizen actors didn’t exactly vanish from the small screen during the great Adults 18-34 demographic gold rush. They just generally wound up being supporting players in shows led by less seasoned performers. We still have plenty of those of late, including 82-year-old Harrison Ford in support of Jason Segel on Shrinking. But there’s been an ever-so-gradual welcoming of older players back to center stage, often at more advanced ages than was the norm even in a less age-conscious era(*).  

(*) It doesn’t always seem that way, because people — famous people, especially — age differently now than they did in mid-to-late 20th century America. Buddy Ebsen was only 65 when he first played Seventies private detective Barnaby Jones, and Jimmy Stewart was only 63 when he got a short-lived, self-titled NBC sitcom around the same time, but both men looked substantially older than Danson and many of the septuagenarian actors we’ll be talking about in a moment.    

This gradual re-graying started out, ironically, in an area of the business generally held up as forward-thinking and youthful: streaming. In 2015, Netflix debuted Grace and Frankie, in which former co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, then in their mid- to late-seventies, played retirees who become close after their husbands leave them to have an affair with each other. It ran for seven seasons — among the longest runs ever for a straight-to-streaming series — and served as a strong reminder that Fonda and Tomlin were just as good a team as they’d been decades earlier in the feminist film comedy 9 to 5. A few years later, Netflix debuted a male counterpart of sorts in The Kominsky Method, starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin as, respectively, a famous acting teacher and his longtime agent and friend; it only ran three seasons, in part because Arkin (who was 84 before the series began) didn’t return after the second. Still, the existence of both shows, and the longevity of Grace and Frankie, spoke to an unexpected side effect of the streaming revolution: With no advertisers to appease (at least not in the 2010s), demographics became meaningless. All that mattered were eyeballs, and what drove subscriptions. If someone who had loved Fonda since Barefoot in the Park and Arkin since Catch-22 wanted to sign up for Netflix to watch them, they were a data point, and dollar amount, equivalent to a Stranger Things-obsessed teen.

Soon, other streamers followed. Hacks,on what was then called HBO Max, gave Jean Smart the best role of her career in legendary stand-up comedian Deborah Vance, struggling to stay relevant in her twilight years. Hulu had an acclaimed hit with Only Murders in the Building, a comedy mystery built around the contrast between millennial pop star Selena Gomez and very old pros Steve Martin and Martin Short. 

The traditional broadcast networks and basic cable channels have also had notable shows with retirement-age leads in that span. Danson’s Eighties peer Selleck just wrapped up 14 seasons at the helm of CBS’ Blue Bloods. Kathy Bates is starring in a Matlock remake (that isn’t exactly a remake), more spry at 76 than Andy Griffith seemed when he first played the role at 59. (Again, we age differently now.) While Succession was an ensemble that often focused on the Roy siblings, the action all spun around what Brian Cox was doing as Logan, a senior whose refusal to cede power to the next generation echoed for plenty of viewers who are not heirs to a media empire. And Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow spent two seasons playing former spies pressed back into active duty in an FX drama literally called The Old Man. The trend has even extended to the world of unscripted TV: Where The Bachelor franchise was designed around watching young hot people look for eternal love, ABC has recently had success with a senior-citizen edition, The Golden Bachelor, while Netflix has its own senior dating show, Later Daters.

And now we have A Man on the Inside, which debuted shortly before Thanksgiving. An absolute gem, it illustrates what fertile ground there is in this phase of life, which can alternately feel precarious and full of possibility. The series, from The Good Place creator Michael Schur, has a lot of fun with how old-fashioned Danson’s Charles is, and with how some of the other residents have embraced the lack of responsibility of life in a retirement community. But it also finds enormous pathos in the various problems specific to their age, as we see residents dealing with dementia, cancer, or just plain loneliness and a sense of disconnection from a more active life spent elsewhere(*). It gives Danson some of the best and most varied material of his career, and it also takes advantage of the large and underserved collection of actors of a certain age — Sally Struthers from All in the Family, Susan Ruttan from L.A. Law, character actors Stephen McKinley Henderson and John Goetz — who are all clearly eager to show that they’ve still got it. 

(*) The one area that the series — and these shows about older characters in general — seems wary of is mobility issues. The retirement community not having any prominent residents who use a wheelchair, scooter, walker, or even cane is the elder comedy equivalent of the Friends being able to afford palatial Manhattan apartments while working subsistence jobs in their mid-twenties. 

That eagerness to prove that advancing years haven’t slowed anyone’s comic timing, nor curbed their ability to make you cry — and that, in fact, some of them have only gotten better at their craft with age — is palpable throughout all of these shows, and many of the others spotlighting older actors in some way. At 82, Ford seems livelier, funnier, and more vulnerable on Shrinking than he has in any film role in a terribly long time. On Matlock, Bates is playing a woman who takes advantage of everyone underestimating her as a non-threatening granny type. Anyone who has seen Bates play Annie Wilkes in Misery would never make the same mistake, but there’s nonetheless a sly joy to her performance, as she takes pleasure in getting over on the younger people around her. (She has also said this will be her final acting role before retirement, and she’s clearly giving it her all.) Steve Martin and the other Only Murders writers try to give him at least one big slapstick set piece a season, just as a reminder that the guy who once wrestled with Tomlin for control of the same body in the 1984 comedy All of Me still has some looseness in his joints.  

Even as streamers have introduced ad-supported tiers, the business hasn’t fled back to the safety of stars who don’t yet need a daily cholesterol pill. Some of this comes from recent studies that have shown that older Americans have a good amount of disposable income, an eagerness to spend it, and a greater willingness to switch brands than was previously believed. Some is that for viewers below a certain age, television is no longer the automatic default entertainment option; if older viewers are more likely to be the ones watching TV, there’s some security to giving them stars they already know and love. But many of these shows, like Hacks and Only Murders, also have robust, vocal support from audiences far younger than the main characters. Between prestige-TV fatigue, and the general crumminess of the world at the moment, is it surprising that some viewers who aren’t yet of a certain age are gravitating towards comfort-food stories featuring the stars of yesteryear?(*)

(*) Also? Before TV became so demo-conscious, series about older characters often did just fine with younger viewers. In the Eighties, The Golden Girls was worshipped by many kids and teens for whom the idea of retiring to Florida wasn’t even a dot on the horizon.

It helps, of course, that these shows are often great. Jean Smart has won a comedy actress Emmy for all three seasons of Hacks so far, and may have a stranglehold on the award until that series ends. Bates has a not-insignificant chance of adding a third Emmy to her mantel for Matlock, and if anyone’s going to dethrone Jeremy Allen White for comedy lead actor — no less for doing genuinely comedic work (along with some dramatic) — maybe it will be Danson, going to the podium for the first time since the end of Cheers? 

A Man on the Inside has been renewed for a second season, and the first ended with Charles agreeing to help the detective on a new case, presumably one that will involve going undercover with a new group of fellow seniors. The gleam in Danson’s eye in that final moment suggested a show, and an actor, with many exciting years left. There’s a sense of possibility for him, and for this unlikely but deeply satisfying TV subgenre. Hopefully, we get lots more like it.  

[bluebunnysart]

(Chimera Teto x Android Miku WIP, another one, yeah, another one lol)

I may not finish WIPs but I can definitely start new drawings!! 😂Hahahaha ! I always try to make them chibis (for simplicity) but I also want to draw details/the full body, so of course it turns into a double full-body drawing that takes forever.... This isn't even the final lineart obviously but it's almost 5 AM again and I know I'm gonna fuss with this some more, so I guess here's a WIP so I can show off what I did at least tonight xD In case I decide to do other things in the meantime...

Tell me why I literally spent like 2 hours (fr) trying to draw Miku 'cuz Miku is hard asf to draw and challenges me to draw better 😂😂😂😂 Anyway (a long-ish) explanation of stuff under the read more 'cuz I don't want to take up people's dashboards. When I finally finish this drawing or the other one, I won't have to yap as much in the post too. xD

A series of things happened today that led to me creating this drawing. (Miku's prefinal lineart is done too btw, I'm just not showing her to you 'cuz no point spoiling the whole drawing lol, plus I might make changes.)

I went to the store for a brief moment 'cuz all my pens kept running out of ink and I was annoyed I didn't have any reliable pens and I wanted a pen to write a continuation to this AU, right.

When I went to the store, there was a song playing and I thought it sounded nice, what little I heard of it before I had to return to work. So once I left the store and was able to look at my phone again, I looked up this song through the lyrics I heard and I found it. And the whole song was even better than I thought: the lyrics and music are INCREDIBLY sweet and now I really like it. xD

Besides liking it in general as a song (this genre of song), I was ALSO super into it because I thought, "This is super End of the World AU-coded (Android Miku x Chimera Teto)" and it made me so happy, excited, and giddy lol.

Like, listen to this...

"When the cloud's above your head / And the sun's not breaking through / You know I'll be there to sing this song for you. / And it goes: / La la la / la la la la la~..."

This is absolutely something the Miku in my AU would sing. This is absolutely a song she and Teto would listen to together-- like, I could draw them listening to it together and that's actually practically what my drawing is lol. I could draw an animatic or make an MV to this song about them... I could make a comic where Miku is singing this directly to Teto and persuades her to sing it with her, especially the chorus (la la la) parts. I smile because in the first fic, Miku also goes "lalala~" (idk the number of la's lol), and it's not like what she sings is this or anything, but it's a small connection that I like. xD I literally discovered this song only today but this is absolutely a song Teto would have in either one of the cassette players or in the MP3 player. This song matches them and the AU too so Miku would absolutely sing it and like it a lot too. This song made me think of my AU and I was already excited/trying to keep writing more so I could get to the good parts, so finding this song made me really excited, ok. xD

Also I'm not sure how you WOULDN'T adore Miku if she sang something like this, especially directly to Teto (her only audience).

All the sweet lines and stuff made me super soft, so I put this song on loop and literally played it for hours. The whole time I was drawing too. It's just so cute and fitting and it's what made me create art for this AU again instead of making Turing Love fanart or one of the other dozens of ideas I have and whatnot. xD

That was a lot of words to explain what prompted this drawing in the first place when it wasn't planned in the slightest, but now I'll talk more about the drawing itself.

I was inspired by all the fanart I've received so far! It'll show in the final drawing. c: But when drawing this, I was looking at Slyvasta's art since I wanted to draw Slyvasta's version of Teto too. Teto is easiest to draw imo, so we've got the scarf, horn, wings, and tail. The pupils were actually added at the very end 'cuz Slyvasta's has sharp pupils and I thought that was cool and a good idea lol: this Teto's eyes can have sharp pupils (dragon/reptile-like) while Miku's eyes are more round yet robotic.

I was thinking about the flavor of tsundere that Teto is (in my AU) and this drawing was partially inspired by me wanting to clarify stuff about that. xD I did call her "cool, gruff, indifferent, etc." which is all true and does apply, but she's still playful and can be lively, even if she's been beaten down by exhaustion and gloominess, as I've mentioned. In other words, she never was a complete downer or anything (I know I said that before), but I wanted to clarify that she's not, like, the cold type who's ONLY frowning or who's grumpy either.

If I think about it, the "trying to act cool/indifferent" thing is mostly an act I think, yeah. xD Like, of course she'll frown or have a neutral uninterested expression if she's bored or she's been through annoying experiences (like starving or encountering various issues), but she's still kicking, if that makes sense. Like, the enthusiasm and zest for life isn't exactly there, but she's doing what she can to get by. I guess she's more of the type to distract herself and focus on other stuff so she doesn't get too existential? So it's not like she isn't lowkey depressed-- she's just the type to make jokes about it. She's basically original mischievous Teto but with some baggage she's carrying.

This might seem like a weird post now based on the stuff I'm writing LOL but I really did think about it, ok. xD The way to characterize her. And she has really valid reasons to be sad and everything, but she's not as harsh and edgy as her appearance implies. That's something that I really like about her: the gap moe lol.

So what does this mean in relation to Miku? Well, Teto is a pretty normal girl who's cool and nonchalant. She's probably arrogant in a cute way too, judging from her catchphrase and how she likes acting like a know-it-all and being praised/appreciated. But basically, the tsundere mainly comes out whenever she gets embarrassed.

The Teto in my AU can smile and has a couple of times, and she's nice because she helps Miku out before she even knows Miku that well. So....

She's probably the type to send Miku soft smiles without even realizing it. Like, she relaxes a lot and is happy or something and then her expression will turn so warm or gentle, I'm pretty sure. 🥰 Her tail and body language already gives her away, so I love the idea of her expression changing into a really affectionate one before she even notices or realizes it. She realizes she's been smiling the whole time after 5 whole minutes pass or Miku points it out and then she's like, "I-I wasn't smiling or anything?! (unsure why she's immediately denying it)" lol.

Anyway, THAT'S when the tsundere comes out. She isn't tsundere towards Miku unprompted, and even though Teto doesn't know how to deal with Miku YET, that doesn't mean Teto walks on eggshells around her or is curt/cold to her. Teto acts very naturally and herself-- she only gets tsundere whenever she's NOT acting like herself, aka being really weak or soft for Miku at different moments.

Her tsundere is a weak kind of tsundere too (unlike Neru, who isn't in this AU anyway), so she'll just get embarrassed or lie or act kinda awkward or prickly to hide her embarrassment (maybe a sharp word or two, along the lines of "Shush" and "Shuddup"), but in the end, she's a very cute and kind girl. 🥰 They both are 🥰🥰🥰

It might take me one or two more iterations before I'm finally satisfied with the final lineart, but this time, I made the time lapse longer, so you'll be able to see how I struggled to draw Miku for like 2 whole hours. xD

This, too, I want to color. I actually wanted to color my first drawing first, but then I discovered the song I mentioned earlier and it made me so hyped up that I wanted to create a whole new piece about it. Along with the other two songs that I associate with this AU, I was really happy to find yet another one. This song is cute in general too, so it was immediately added to my Motivation playlist. xD

With how hard Miku is to draw and how long drawing takes in general, it makes me even more impressed with Miku artists lol. Like, Miku is so demanding but I love her so of course I'll push through until I do her justice... I'm slow because I care a lot and want to do these two right, ok... xD Lineart and the like is more in my comfort zone, but I'll definitely tackle coloring soon; tonight's session only proves that it'll take longer than I expected/5 hours lol.

I'm not only planning to create stuff for my AU only-- I want to make all kinds of Mktt stuff. But I was really inspired by other people's art and this time, I even drew with their art in mind lol.

I have no idea how long it'll take, but I'll continue to make more art! To me, it's the clearest way I show/understand my love lol. I've been inspired seeing other people's art too, so I definitely wanted to draw my own....

Anyway, time to go tf to sleep. (it's 6 AM 😅)

[scotianostra]

James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was born on October *25th 1612.

*The usual disclaimers apply here, we don’t actually know his date of birth, it is thought to have been mid to late October, but a couple of sources give the 25th, so today it is!

Graham was brought up at Kincardine Castle and succeeded his father as 5th earl of Montrose, November 14, 1626. His mother was Margaret, eldest daughter of William Ruthven, 1st earl of Gowrie, who was up to his eyeballs in the intrigue that surrounded Mary Queen of Scots, and her son James I, but this post is not about him, let’s get back to our main subject.

The young Montrose was educated at the college of Glasgow from age 12 and continued at St. Andrews University, the oldest in Scotland, where records paint a vivid picture of his time there. At St Salvator’s College he studied classics — Caesar and Seneca – but he was happiest when involved in outdoor pursuits, golf, archery, riding, hawking and hunting among his many activities.

Marriage followed university, in 1629 at only 17 he married Magdalene the youngest daughter of Lord Carnegie a near neighbour from Kinnaird Castle. It was there the newly weds set up home.

Montrose at the age of twenty- four, left for London to offer his services to King Charles I who had come to the throne in 1625. Appearing at the royal court he asked the Marquis of Hamilton, said to have the ‘ear’ of the king on Scottish matters, to be his sponsor.

Hamilton tried to persuade Montrose not go ahead with the audience, portraying the king as anti-Scottish. Noting Montrose’s wish to carry on Hamilton promptly told the king that Montrose was a danger to royal interests.

It’s little wonder that the meeting with the king was a decidedly short and chilly affair; it was enough to discourage the most fervent royalist. The Scottish Reformation of four decades before had swept across the country turning its people away from many years of strict adherence to Catholicism to a new Protestant Scottish Kirk.

The king was now threatening the status quo by trying to introduce the English Episcopalian prayer book into a staunchly Calvinist Presbyterian Scotland. The vast majority of Scots were having none of it and mobs rioted in towns across the country. There could be no doubt in the king’s mind of the strength of feeling north of the border. For more on this look up Jenny Geddes

By early 1638 the juggernaut that was the Presbyterian unrest could not be stopped. Moderators of the General Assembly drew up the National Covenant, a document of protest against the actions of the king. In February that year Scottish nobles, including Montrose, gathered at Greyfriars to sign the document, thousands of ordinary Scots followed in Edinburgh and across Scotland as copies were dispatched throughout the country culminating in hundreds of thousands putting their marker on it.

Not all were happy with it though, In 1639, following instructions from Covenanter leaders for Scottish shires to prepare for war, Montrose, in his first military experience, led an army against the Royalist Marquis of Huntly in Aberdeen, forcing the citizens to sign the Covenant.

The authority of the Parliament continued to grow, its driving force Moderator Henderson and Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll. By this point Montrose, suspecting that Argyll was trying to seize power in Scotland for himself, enlisted fellow trusted Covenanters in an attempt to put a stop to his scheming, but word got out and Montrose was jailed in Edinburgh Castle for a time.

The English Civil war began in 1642 and soon spread all over the British Isles and has now become known as The War of the Four Kingdoms. The following year Scottish Covenanters, led by Argyll, joined English Parliamentarians to sign the Solemn League and Covenant in St Margaret’s Chapel in Westminster London. In essence it was an agreement by the Scots to fight on the parliamentary side if the English embraced Presbyterianism. It was possibly the last straw for Montrose.

Charles was now desperate, with civil war consuming parts of England and Covenanting forces in Scotland holding the upper hand he needed a miracle.

By this stage Montrose had a change of heart and was now determined to keep Charles on the throne. He joined forces with Alisdair MacColla who landed on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula with 1600 troops to support the Royalist cause.

MacColla and Montrose formed a spectacular military partnership and throughout 1644 and 1645 inflicted six crushing defeats on Covenanting armies from Aberdeen to Kilsyth, you have seen me post about these battles many times over the years.

After Kilsyth, MacColla and his Irish followers left Montrose’s army and returned home. Many of Montrose’s Highland troops also packed up and returned to their families. With his army severely depleted James Graham turned south and headed for the Borders after promises of support from Lords Hume and Roxburgh.

The South of Scotland was an unlikely place to find supporters, being in the main staunch Covenanters but none the less he pressed on. Unknown to Montrose, as he marched south, a Covenanters army was heading north from England under the leadership of General David Leslie, who captured Hume and Roxburgh before they could meet with Montrose’s Highlanders.

Ever the optimist Graham took his army into battle at Philiphaugh, but was soundly beaten by the battle hardened Covenanters, he spent another year in Scotland before making his escape to the continent where he spent three years trying to muster support.

In his absence Charles, accused of making war against his own subjects was brought to London and charged with treason. He was executed on the 30th January 1649.

Within a few weeks the English parliament had abolished the monarchy. Scotland, still an independent nation, now recognised Charles II, in exile in Holland, as king, the true successor to his father.

Montrose was dismayed at the news from Holland that Scotland’s king was in talks with the Covenanters.

However, despite this dialogue Charles urged Montrose to enlist support for an invasion of Scotland. He returned from his exile and fought a final battle at Carbisdale, near Bonar Bridge in April 1650 but he was again defeated by a Covenanting army, resulting in the death or capture of nearly 1000 of his men.

Forced to run he took refuge in Ardvreck Castle, where he was betrayed, taken south and executed at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh on the 21st May 1650. Charles II could have stepped in and saved him, but did nothing.

It was a traitors execution, he was ‘headed and quartered’ his head was fixed to a spike at the tollbooth; his arms and legs were fixed to the gates of Stirling, Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen. After the demise of Cromwell’s English Commonwealth, Charles II was restored to the English throne in May 1660. Montrose’s body was, then, after 11 long years, taken from public display, embalmed and buried with honours.

As well as being a soldier, James Graham was an accomplished poet. Great leaders have over the years used the words of Montrose to encourage and inspire their followers and even General Montgomery, on the eve of D-Day, roused his troops with the following words from his verse My Dear and Only Love:

‘He either fears his fate too much

Or his deserts are small

That puts it not unto the touch

To win or lose it all'.

Lines Written on the Eve of His Execution.

Let them bestow on every airth a limb,

Then open all my veins, that I may swim

To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake,

Then place my par boiled head upon a stake;

Scatter my ashes, strow them in the air.

Lord, since thou knowest where all these atoms are,

I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust,

And confident thou'lt raise me with the just.

[tonydaddingham]

how in the world do you do it? i sent that ask yesterday and i'm still making my way through your masterpost kind of reeling- almost every moment i paused the show (s2 especially) and thought, that's weird, but couldn't put my finger on why, you've talked about, and expanded on, and it's all so well put. you're slowly curing the countless little ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️ bouncing around in my head. it's so satisfying, too, to see all those asks with LWA disagreeing with popular fanon. i'd been thinking it was only me.

i'm curious about your interpretation of the bullet catch, specifically aziraphale's motives. i scrolled through a few of your tags and didn't find much about it, but i might have missed something.

i've seen people say it was retaliation for the holy water request (ooc?), or some deliberate test of crowley's willingness to go through with it (and so go through with their relationship, in spite of the danger, or something). then, of course, there's the generally accepted afaik "elaborate trust fall, general aziraphalean ridiculousness" version, but convincing somebody to nearly shoot you seems like a lot (understatement), even then.

it comes across to me as a bit cruel, if that makes sense. this isn't reliant on crowley not wanting to shoot him, or just doing well under pressure. if he's never even shot a gun before, this is almost entirely luck, and i don't buy that the only thing at stake is paperwork, however much they repeat it to themselves. crowley's hands wouldn't have been shaking so badly. if he messes up, he's gonna hurt aziraphale, or have to watch his human body die. it's so fucked.

maybe it could be said that, without their miracles working, they knew they were being watched, and had to continue, but i don't buy that either. aziraphale didn't act like he felt threatened afterwards until furfur showed up- was doing the complete opposite.

that's all i've got for now, but yeah. this blog is awesome and i'm so here for your sideburn theories. have a nice day pls

oh anon✨ you're so sweet!!! i really dk about all that, i just like chatting shit and trying to spot patterns/contradictory stuff/things that don't make sense beyond the script (if that makes sense), so whilst you all might not get Smart out of me you will at least get Passionate🤌

(also YES for LWA appreciation, they deserve it 💕 - still dont know why they do it but im just happy to be involved)

ooooh okay bullet catch. couple of thoughts from me:

aziraphale was happy to go on stage and try to ameliorate the situation between crowley and mrs h (my beloved), but reticent to scope out any Showy-Offy tricks from goldstones shop

crowley hyped aziraphale up enough to go into the shop and find a new trick to perform; hes the angel who fooled nefertiti and is performing on the West End Stage, after all!!!

aziraphale is taken in by the bullet catch trick upon seeing it, but was previously happy to consider another trick. he also, presumably, wasnt aware of the element of trusting a stooge until it was told to him

aziraphale persuades crowley to perform it, even when crowley is obviously uncomfortable, and crowley isn't truthful with him re: firearms experience

crowley agreed, providing that they make use of their miracles if it goes tits up

aziraphale doesnt inform crowley on any of the plan; crowley is notably caught unawares when called out in the audience

miracles don't work, neither of them stop the performance. crowley once again still very uncomfortable, literally shaking on stage, and yet seems to calm at aziraphale ploughing on ahead.

so okay, yeah, ive basically just recited the scene - but a few conclusions:

aziraphale doesn't want to let crowley down or embarrass him by backing out of the act, or indeed by messing it up

i think there's probably some element of aziraphale doing it for himself (self-esteem), but in a way that, post-Realisation, he is showing off a bit... it strikes me that crowley wasn't fully cognizant of this little hobby of his, and aziraphale is taking a moment to do something that (bless him, he thinks) he's good at, and wow crowley as a result

i don't think the holy water request came into his motivations at all, for the same reasons you said. however, it is an appropriate mirror to the holy water request narratively; i think it will come back up in s3, and i think the bullet catch will at least emotionally inform aziraphale on whether to give crowley the water or not

as for crowley's motivations in going along with it; i think to some extent he's paying back the favour, but mainly that it's truly just to make aziraphale happy. a step beyond that; to him, aziraphale is in need of something, and that is something aziraphale is only trusting crowley to deliver. crowley of course assumes miracles will be their safety net, so agrees to be aziraphale's knight in shining armour (*cough* playing hero)

when the miracles fail, aziraphale still has trust in crowley to do it properly. crowley however is left to trust in aziraphale's trust in kind. he still wants to do this for him, but the stakes are a bit higher in that he could shoot his best friend (?) in the face and not see him again on earth for any number of years (imo, it's never, ever been about the paperwork). but aziraphale isn't backing down; is crowley about to disappoint him? of course not.

tl;dr: they're both arseholes for their respective lacks of transparency with each other, deliberately put themselves in harm's way, and it was by sheer luck that they pulled it off. but it is a huge seismic shift in how they see each other, and i don't think we've been shown/suggested the full implications of the whole thing just yet.

thank you so much for your kind words, they honestly make my day!!! hope you have a lovely day too!!!✨💕

[lucianowrites]

Why Do I Like Jumpchains?

I have been creating jumpchain content for a bit now. It has begun to color what I'm known for in some spaces. In the Reddit community over jumpchain enjoyers, I'm actually not unknown, due to my passion for this community and the contributions I've made to forcibly expanding and growing our audience and community. But why do I like jumpchains? That's a good question.

For me, jumpchains remind me of the wonder I felt when I first started playing video games. They allow me to feel what it is like to live in another world, another time, sometimes even another country. In doing a jumpchain I don't just think of the powers I/my jumper get or their cool gear, I think of the sights they get to see.

As a child, one of the things that I loved the most about video games were the sights I got to see. Getting to see even things as simple as Kanto region in the original Pokemon games was incredibly exciting to me. Getting to see Yoshi's Island was exciting to me. Nowdays seeing things like the eerie pool rooms and liminal spaces in Anemoiapolis and seeing the dragon filled skies above Skyrim in TES:V excites me. For me, creating a jumper is, in a sense, giving someone else the chance to feel that wonder. I actually like creating jumpers who don't have meta-knowledge or genre-awareness so they can experience the wonders of these places for themselves for the first time.

Another thing that I really like is the freedom jumpchains offer. Video games are inherently limited by the fact that they are programmed and thus have limits (though ones that are being stretched and improved every day) that imagination and imaginary games like jumpchains do not. If you ever wanted to wander Hyrule as a dragon but knew that no Legend of Zelda game would let you do that, well... Jumpchain. If you ever wanted to ride through the Mushroom Kingdom on a F-Zero machine... Jumpchain. If you have *thoughts* about how someone in a Metroid powersuit would do in Castlevania... Jumpchain, baby!

On a more personal level, I also strongly enjoy jumpchains as a sort of escape. I don't mean that in a way that is super depressing or anything, but I'm physically disabled and I'm also chronically ill. My health will... never be good. For the rest of my life. But with a jumpchain I can allow myself to become someone who can do cool stuff that I can't do. As a kid I was a martial artist with formal training in Taekwondo and Karate and less formal training in Muay Thai and Silat, and I LOVED martial arts. I may not ever be able to do the same kind of martial arts shenanigans I could once do, but I can with jumpchains. Between basic perks in jumps like Generic First Jump and full jumps like Generic Fist, I can envision myself doing cool stuff that is beyond my real-life capabilities. I don't often do self-inserts in real, sketched out, chains but I sometimes daydream about self-inserts doing a few jumps. I like to imagine getting the parkour skills of the mario brothers from the Super Mario 64 jump, and spending time on Isle Delfino in the Super Mario Sunshine jump, or spending a decade honing my skills as a martial artist in the Generic Fist jump.

Why do you like jumpchains? If you see this post, and you feel like engaging with it but aren't a jumper yourself, what do you think it'd take for someone to persuade you to try? I'd love to know what could convince you to try out a chain yourself.

[poondragoon]

Genuine question, OP: do you think there's a better way to take the wind out of that kind of rhetoric than to laugh at it?

If you treat BS hate speech like "Haitians are eating your pets right off the scratching post" like a real threat worth combatting, you give it legitimacy. The entire right-wing bigotry machine is engineered around the premise that it will generate moral outrage, and that - in turn - is what will cause the intended audience to take it seriously.

You can't fight this kind of hate with rational arguments. That sends the message that there's something true in there that needs to be argued against, and makes people dig their heels in.

Refuse to validate that shit as a threat and treat the people espousing it like the clowns they are, and the people they're trying to persuade will stop listening out of embarrassment.

The language of hate feeds on being confronted. Laugh at it, and it dies.

i genuinely don’t think the haitians eating pets lie is something that should be laughed off bc the rhetoric literally rooted in some of the worst acts of colonial violence known to man but i just know liberals are going to try and meme it away. this isn’t a funny haha republicans are so stupid thing this is a hey they are trying to justify a resurgence of specific atrocities against this specific group of people

[bllsbailey]

Musk: Upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Is A Vote For 'Which Party Controls' The House

(L) Elon Musk speaks during a town hall meeting at the KI Convention Center on March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) / (R) Campaign signs for Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Special Government Employee (SGE) Elon Musk declared on Sunday that Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election could have a major effect on humanity’s “entire destiny.”

At an event in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Musk made the remarks while urging voters to turn out and support conservative judicial candidate Brad Schimel.

The competing left-wing judge in the election, Judge Susan Crawford, was endorsed by former Democrat President Barack Obama last week.

She has also been funded by left-wing megadonors like George Soros. Crawford previously sentenced a child rapist to only four years in prison after he repeatedly assaulted a five-year-old girl.

Crawford, a judge on the Dane County Circuit Court, was questioned prior by a moderator regarding the contentious child sexual assault case she ruled on — during a debate segment where candidates were asked about the multi-million dollar advertisements they had broadcast disparaging each other’s judicial records.

Moderator to Crawford: “In 2020, you did sentence a child sex offender to four years in prison after prosecutors requested 10. Do you regret that sentence?” Crawford: “I don’t regret that sentence, because I followed the law in that case, as I always do,” Crawford responded. “I applied the law, which says that judges have to consider every relevant factor in sentencing, you have to consider both the aggravating and mitigating factors, and the Supreme Court has said you have to order the minimum amount of prison time you believe is necessary to protect the public. That’s what I did in that case and every other case.”

Additionally, Trump made remarks about Crawford in a post on Truth Social last Sunday.

“In the Great State of Wisconsin, a Radical Left Democrat, one who is insistent on bringing hardened CRIMINALS, that we removed to far away places, back into our Country, allowing men into women’s sports, Open Borders, and more, is running against a strong, Common Sense Republican, JUST CALL HIM BRAD, for the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Trump wrote.

The election will determine the ideological leaning of the court, which is currently 4-3, in favor of the liberal wing of judges.

“What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. That is why it is so significant. And whichever party controls the House, to a significant degree controls the country, which then steers the course of Western Civilization,” Musk stated on Sunday, noting that he thought the “entire destiny of humanity” could be affected by the election. 

If Crawford prevails on Tuesday, political analysts have argued that Democrats will try to remove two Republican seats and persuade the Supreme Court to impose redistricting that is more in their party’s favor.

Musk argued further that a Republican loss in the House would significantly impede the GOP administration’s efforts to overhaul the government. Additionally, conservative pundits have warned that her election to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court would undoubtedly lead to more unfavorable rulings in general — in relation to Trump administration policies.

According to Musk, the odds still seem “stacked” against Schimel at the moment, who announced to a roaring audience, while wearing a “cheesehead” hat, that conservatives would need to stand together now — more than ever.

— George (@BehizyTweets) March 31, 2025

— America (@america) March 31, 2025

“The single biggest challenge, I think, is actually just making people aware that there is this very important election. And its both very important election for Judge Schimel as well as deciding on adding voter ID to the Wisconsin constitution, which is very, very important,” Musk continued.

Additionally, Musk announced that his PAC’s giveaway winners, Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler, both residents of Wisconsin, would receive $1 million for signing a petition to prevent activists from serving as judges.

Soon after, Josh Kaul, the Democrat state attorney general (AG), filed a case to stop the payouts — but the Supreme Court on Sunday declined to rule.

During the rally, Musk also revealed a new project that will pay $20 for each photo of a Wisconsin citizen holding a thumbs up and an image of Judge Schimel.

— America (@america) March 31, 2025

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Republican Senator Ron Johnson joined Musk at the event.

“We need to return our Supreme Court to one that has justices and judges. And by that I mean people who will apply the law, not alter it,” Johnson said. “We’re not looking for super legislators.”

According to Johnson, many have begun to worry that Crawford could vote to redistrict Republican congressional districts and repeal Act 10, a Republican-backed law that drastically changed government labor unions.

The election, which pits Musk, whose “America” PAC has been particularly engaged in the race, against left-wing megadonors like Soros and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker — has reportedly received a record-breaking $90 million.

When Democrats initially took over the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023, the expenditure amount shattered the previous record for the most costly state judicial contest.

— Team Schimel (@TeamSchimel) March 25, 2025

— Team Schimel (@TeamSchimel) March 26, 2025

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

[transparentphilosophergalaxy]

“Engaging Content Ideas That Attract Tree Service Leads”

Introduction: The Importance of Engaging Content for Tree Service Leads

In today's fast-paced digital world, attracting potential clients for tree service businesses can often feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You might be wondering, "What’s the secret sauce that will help me generate leads?" Well, it all boils down to one fundamental element: engaging content. With the right strategies and excavation contractor inquiries creative ideas, you can effectively pull in those valuable tree service leads.

Whether you're offering land clearing jobs, excavation job leads, or mulching services, your content needs to resonate with your target audience. It should not only inform but also engage and persuade them to choose your services over competitors. This article dives into various content ideas tailored specifically for the tree service industry that can enhance your marketing efforts and ultimately boost client acquisition.

Engaging Content Ideas That Attract Tree Service Leads

Creating engaging content is essential when it comes to acquiring tree service leads. You need to think outside the box and develop ideas that grab attention while providing value. Here are some innovative approaches you can take:

1. Blog Posts on Tree Care Tips

One effective way to attract potential clients is by writing blog posts focused on tree care tips. By offering practical advice on how to maintain trees or landscapes, you position yourself as an authority in the field.

Examples of Topics: Seasonal tree care Signs of a diseased tree Benefits of regular tree trimming

These posts can incorporate keywords like "land clearing marketing" and "mulching leads," which will help enhance SEO and attract organic traffic.

2. Video Tutorials on Tree Services

Video content has exploded in popularity, making it an excellent medium for showcasing your expertise in land clearing jobs or forestry mulching.

Ideas for Video Content: Step-by-step guides on how to prune trees Time-lapse videos of land clearing projects Informative clips discussing different types of mulch

Videos not only engage viewers better than text alone but also allow potential customers to see your work firsthand, building trust.

3. Infographics About Tree Species

Infographics are visually appealing and easy-to-digest formats for conveying complex information quickly. Create infographics that educate readers about various tree species, their benefits, and how they contribute to the environment.

Content Ideas: A comparison chart of native vs. non-native species An infographic detailing the growth cycle of popular trees

Including links back to your services within these infographics can help drive traffic toward lead generation avenues.

4. Case Studies from Previous Projects

Highlighting successful projects through detailed case studies allows prospective clients to see real-world applications of your services.

Elements to Include: Project overview Problem-solving approach Results achieved (e.g., increased land usability after clearing

[aakhil658]

How to Make Money by Writing Articles – A Simple Guide

Do you want to earn money online and enjoy writing or want to give it a try? Article writing can be a great way to earn money, even if you're just starting out. With some effort and learning, you can turn this into a rewarding opportunity and target your audience. This guide will show you the basics of earning money by writing articles, step by step.

1. Basics of Article Writing

Before jumping into it, it's important  to understand that  what actually  article requires. Articles are written and designed to inform, educate, entertain, or persuade an audience. They can range from blog posts and magazine features to technical guides and product reviews.

To succeed, follow on these key elements:

Clarity and simplicity: Write in a way that's easy for your audience to understand.

Engagement: Use a soft and  approachable tone to  keep your readers interested and aligned.

Purpose: Always, focus to know the motive of the article whether are you informing, selling, or entertaining?

2. Develop Your Writing Skills

Strong writing skills are the foundation of success in this field. If you’re a beginner, don’t worry—skills improve with practice. Here are some tips to enhance your writing:

Read regularly: Read blogs, articles, and books to familiarize yourself with various styles and tones.

Practice daily: Develop a habit of writing every day, even if it’s just journaling or drafting ideas.

Learn SEO basics: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ensures that your articles are easily found online. Learn to use keywords naturally, structure content for readability, and add engaging headlines.

3. Choose a Opportunity

To write  in a specific function helps establish expertise and attract clients. Popular niches include:

Technology

Health and wellness

Personal finance

Travel

Lifestyle

Digital marketing

Start with topics you’re passionate about or have some knowledge of. As you grow, you can explore other areas to expand your repertoire.

4. Create a Portfolio

Clients and platforms often require samples of your work. Even as a beginner, you can create a simple portfolio by:

Writing sample articles on topics you’re interested in.

Publishing on free platforms like Medium, LinkedIn, or your blog.

Offering guest posts to blogs or websites in your niche.

A professional portfolio showcases your skills and builds credibility.

5. Find Writing Opportunities

There are number of platforms to find paid writing gigs. Here are from where you should start:

Freelance Platforms: Websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer connect writers with clients. Create a profile highlighting your skills and niche expertise.

Content Mills: Platforms like iWriter and Textbroker pay writers for creating articles. While the pay may be low initially, these sites are good for gaining experience.

Job Boards: Check websites like ProBlogger, BloggingPro, and WritersWork for freelance writing job postings.

Pitching: Reach out directly to blogs, magazines, or businesses. Craft a compelling pitch explaining why your article ideas would benefit their audience.

6. Understand Payment Models

Writers are paid in various ways depending on the platform or client for which they are working. Common payment modes include:

Per word: A set rate for each word written (e.g., $0.05/word).

Per article: A fixed price for each article, regardless of length.

Hourly: Payment for the time spent on a project.

Revenue sharing: Earning a percentage of the ad revenue generated by your articles.

7. Set Realistic Expectations

As a beginner, you might not earn high  immediately. Keep focus on building your portfolio and gain experience. Over the  time, as you refine your skills and establish a repport, you can command higher fees.

8. Building Relationships with Clients

Repeat clients can provide a steady income stream. To build strong client relationships:

Deliver high-quality work on time.

Be open to  receive feedback and work on it.

Communicate in professional way  and response promptly.

Satisfied clients are more likely to offer long-term projects and recommend you to others.

9. Keep Learning and Growing

The writing industry has bee evolving  continuously, so staying updated is essential. So to Invest in online courses, attend webinars, or join writing communities to enhance your knowledge. Networking with other writers can also open doors to new opportunities.

10. Start Your Own Blog

Freelancing is one of the great ways to earn, starting your blog can be another stream of income. Earning your blog through ads, affiliate marketing, or sponsored content helps to brand awareness. This also gives you creative freedom to write about topics you’re passionate about.

Conclusion

To earn money by writing articles is an achievable goal for beginners who are willing to put their time and efforts. By learning this  skill, and choosing it as a job option, and  seek opportunity actively, One can build a rewarding career as a writer. Remember, persistence is key. Start small, stay constant, and watch your efforts will  pay off.

[arosimmons]

Okay, I want to say this as nonconfrontationally as possible because I think the advice behind this post is generally very good and was written with compassion which often isn't the case on this topic and I appreciate that. However, it is not going to be effective because it, like most posts I've seen trying to persuade or browbeat people into dropping Harry Potter, is misunderstanding some fundamental things regarding the persistence of the fandom.

Nobody is continuing to engage with the content because of how well the story was told. Frankly, it wasn't told that well. It is not about JKR's abilities as a writer, which are mediocre at best. It is not even about her influence on a generation's moral foundations, which certainly did not happen in a vacuum and can be attributed to many sources, not her alone. No one I've encountered is clinging onto JKR because they learned things from her writing or because she taught them about courage.

There are two different populations continuing to engage with the content. One of them - the more General Audience types - simply doesn't seem to care. Whether it's the issue itself they aren't concerned with or the system of boycotting as political action, there's a lack of buy-in that's a different conversation. But if it's the fandom people you are trying to reach, if it's shutting down not just direct revenue streams such as buying merch and streaming the show, but the mere discussion of the characters, the creation of fandom content. That is a much more intimate subject.

I'll speak to my experience, which is by no means universal, I'm sure, but which I've gathered is relatively common within Fandom. I first read the books in elementary school, and reread them dozens of times throughout adolescence. They were not only my favorite entertainment while I was becoming a person, but more fundamentally a source of emotional comfort and coping during turbulent times in my life, not just in middle school but all the way through college, several bouts with mental illness, my mother's long illness and passing in my 20's, and the horrendous grief that still lingers years later.

When I was socially isolated, I had The Characters and their relationships to fantasize about and thereby experience vicariously social support and stability. When depression was sucking the emotions out of me, I could feel through reading fic about these characters, and I could project my own problems onto them and process those problems through writing. When anxiety, uncertainty, and lack of control rocked my world, I could retreat to a safe and stable place within this world.

It's also a medium through which I connected with other people. Because it was such a global phenomenon, this was the easiest way to facilitate a quick and strong social bond for a very socially awkward teenager. Some of my most intimate friendships today were made that way through bonding over Harry Potter. Discussing, sharing fic, play-acting, going to midnight releases etc. Obviously we have other things holding us together now and we don't need Harry Potter to continue being close, but just to add to the depth with which this fandom shaped my personal and emotional life.

So it isn't a book I read twenty years ago that I'm nostalgic for and just can't give up. It isn't even a book that was important to me when I was young and left 'fingerprints on my brain' (excellent phrase). It's a sprawling and deeply-rooted system of emotional comfort, escapism, and coping strategy. It's a relationship that sustained me for decades as I read and wrote new fic, interacted with other writers, reimagined characters, identities, philosophies etc. It's not a hammer, it's my childhood home, my oxygen mask, my xanax.

I don't buy merch. I don't engage with new media. There will be no more money coming from me. I avoid saying her name when at all possible, and I don't bring up the books/franchise to people IRL except to condemn her actions and reinforce the idea that we do not give people like that money. I read criticism of the original text and reflect on the ways in which it is problematic.

But I still read fic. I still think about The Characters. I still write, mostly on my own personal computer. I still talk to other writers and to my friends about The Characters. I still enjoy parts of the story and the world that are meaningful to me.

"Just find another story" so many posts say. I have. I have read many other, better books since I was nine years old. I have watched movies and TV shows that have wholly captivated me. I've entered other fandoms and used other characters to the same ends. The trouble is, they lack longevity. Their effectiveness fades with time. For some reason, maybe because it was the fandom I originally developed these strategies with, maybe it has to do with just the sheer length and force of the original obsession or the age when it happened, or something specific about the characters I identify with, but for some reason, Harry, Ron, and Hermione have yet to lose their vice-like grip over my mind and emotions, and can provide escape when nothing else can.

What you're asking people to do when you ask them to shut down all activity, all thought, all interaction with this fandom is to remove community, emotional supports, and coping mechanisms. if you really feel the need to shut down fandom entirely, I would focus on thinking of Harry Potter in those terms rather than a tool or a nostalgic phase.

But I would also ask how worth your effort is it to insist that people who are not contributing financially to Rowling stop talking to each other or thinking about the story at all. Why do you want to police other people's minds? Police their actions, sure. Put a hard line on contributing financially. But taking Jegulus away from people is not going to stop anyone from watching the new tv show. Those groups are almost entirely separate entities. Killing fandom will not actually kill the franchise because fandom =/= franchise, franchise = fandom. It seems much more effective and important to focus on the money side of things, on protesting the stores, movies, theme parks, show, etc. Anything that's actually making her money rather than trying to convince people who are already not supporting her to hack out a vital part of themselves.

In Which the Wizard School Books Are a Hammer

Okay. I'm gonna tell this story once, and only once, because I think it might help people who are struggling to finally, FINALLY boot J.K. Rowling from their lives.

I can't precisely say I sympathize, but I definitely know how you feel, because I have already had to do this dance with someone I guarantee you've never heard of. I've had all the feelings you've had. I had to find a way through all by myself, and now I'm going to help you so you have an easier time. Okay? Okay.

Content warning: discussion of child sexual abuse (mentioned but not described in detail).

So there's this writer. I refuse to speak or write his name these days, so we'll call him Evil Bob. ("Bob" is my default placeholder name, and this Bob is evil.) Evil Bob was a damn good writer and, frankly, an underappreciated one in his time. I picked up a few of his projects out of the bargain bin on impulse when I was about 12, and after that he was one of my names to conjure with. If Evil Bob had written it, I wanted to read it. He had a kind of perfect workman's style--he did a lot of things pretty well, and he did them in such a way that a bright 12-year-old could see how the trick was done. I learned a lot of basic writerly technique from Evil Bob--things about dialogue and pacing and how to convey character through action and lots of other stuff. Evil Bob unlocked something in my brain, and I really blossomed as a young writer by applying the lessons of his work.

Evil Bob's fiction started to fall off in popularity eventually, so he switched to nonfiction and wrote a damn good history book that won a lot of awards. I read it in college. The man could really interview, I tell you what.

I even got to interview Evil Bob myself, eventually. I was working for a small magazine that wanted to publish an article about a certain minority group's representation in a certain fiction genre, and Evil Bob had written one of the seminal works in that niche, so I tracked down his contact info, called him up, and we had a lovely hourlong chat. He was kind and gracious and funny and --

Yeah, this is where you learn why I named him Evil Bob.

A few years ago, people in Evil Bob's old fiction genre started circulating a list of, shall we say, disgraced writers in the field. Think of it like a MeToo list. The list got passed around every time a new name was added, and at a certain point, after a much more famous name had just been added to it, the list crossed my feed for the first time in a while. I dutifully scanned down it in case there was anyone on it I'd missed; after all, I attended conventions for this genre, and some of these fuckers were on the list for assaulting fans like me, so I wanted to know who to watch out for.

And there, in the middle of the list, was Evil Bob.

Weird, I thought. Evil Bob had seemed chill when I spoke to him, and usually, being 22 with big boobs (as I was when I interviewed him) brought out the perv in these guys if there was any perv to bring out. Well, maybe this was something else--maybe he used a slur on an old tape or something. I googled.

It was something else, all right.

As I sat there googling, Evil Bob was sitting in a federal prison a thousand miles away. He was there because, according to his Wikipedia page, he had been convicted of having so many CSA images on his hard drive that the judge in his case became physically ill. Honestly, I want to know where he got a hard drive that big in the year he was arrested, but I absolutely will not be asking him.

Evil Bob was EVIL. Fuck the carceral state, but also never let that particular dude near kids or a computer again.

So now I had a problem. I was going to stop buying Evil Bob's stuff, obviously--I would drop the man like a hot potato--but I couldn't so easily remove his influence on me. I'll never be 12 years old and digging through the quarter bin at the used bookshop again. There's no way to re-learn the foundations of my artform without Evil Bob. The bastard is part of me, whether I like it or not. He's left his fingerprints on my brain. And while I have negative interest in creating my own criminal hard drive, it's a little hard to shake the irrational guilt (especially since I had been raised in a high-control religious environment where any contact with sin could permanently stain one's soul, and Evil Bob's writing was part of how I escaped, and--you get the idea). I couldn't shed the stink of Evil Bob. I'd written that article. I was covered in the fuckin' ooze.

I'll spare you the six months of angst and self-flagellation. I've been to therapy since this happened. Here's what I eventually decided:

Evil Bob is like a hammer.

My dad gave me an old hammer when I moved out, along with some other miscellaneous hand tools in a paper bag. I bought a toolbox, I put the tools in it, and I use them when I need tools. My dad is an asshole who abused his children, but a hammer is a hammer. Scratch the previous owner's name off the handle, and you can build a pretty fine house with it.

What I learned from Evil Bob are the tools of a trade, and tools are not inherently evil. He taught me how to put sentences together--but I decide what my sentences say. He showed me how to convey character--but I choose what I'm conveying. He made me a writer--but I'm the one writing now.

So I still use Evil Bob's tools, with his name scoured off. I still teach some of those lessons, but he's the one source I don't cite. Oh, that dialogue hack? I picked it up in grad school, pinky swear. Here, let me share it with you for free, with no credit or compensation to the bastard who taught it to me.

I won't pretend Evil Bob wasn't an influence on my younger self, but you'll never hear me speak his legal name. I was one of the few people who really counted themselves fans of his work ... and he'll never get a whisper of a hint of that support from me again. I guarantee you won't be able to track him down from this post, and that's just the way I like it. There's a reason I haven't identified what genre he wrote in, or what his seminal fiction work was about, or whom he interviewed for that prizewinning book.

Damnatio memoriae, motherfucker. This is my hammer now, and it always has been.

So how do we give JKR the Evil Bob treatment?

Unfortunately, the Terf Queen has a larger media presence than Evil Bob ever did. One sad ex-Potterhead won't be able to erase her from culture. But there's a lot more than one of you, isn't there?

The thing is, cultural trends fade faster than you expect. Plenty of celebrities and famous artists of your parents' generation are nobodies now, and it's usually because their work spoke to your parents but not to you. I once witnessed my brother trying to read his sons a 1912 book about Spanish naval history as a bedtime story, and let me tell you, it did not go over well. Some art burns hot and bright and then it burns OUT.

The Potterheads are the parents now. Imagine how easy it would be to just ... stop talking about her. Stop buying the merch. Don't watch the new TV show or play the new game. Don't tell people you used to be a fan--not because you ought to be ashamed, but because you're not going to give her the satisfaction of saying her name. And when your kids ask about your tattoo, just tell them not to get blackout drunk in college.

Damnatio memoriae, motherfucker.

And if you feel the need to explain where you learned your kindness and courage, your unshakable loyalty to your friends (especially the trans ones), your hope in the face of overwhelming darkness ...

... why, that's your hammer. And it always has been.