#brandification

[davidmariottecomics]

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

Hello again! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ready Player One

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

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

The Brands of Geekdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the Default is Unsafe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[stinkybrowndogs]

Made myself a tshirt design bc I can

[softwaluigi]

I think anyone who creates or writes for a show focused entirely on teenagers having sex with each other should kill themselves

[ougougougoug]

i find the Brandification of flavours unsettling

[queenhawke]

what i will say about the new dr who is that i hate that Whoniverse ident before the ep starts. hate the Brandification of doctor who. get that marvel crap out of my silly little scifi show

[knights-unwelcommentary]

Funnily enough, Karkat's anti past self and anti future self campaign could prove to be an effective countermeasure to the Brandification of our individual lives

[banghwa]

i saw 'hybe respect jimin' trending and i was ready to roll my eyes bc you know how armies arez but apparently in the seom has a new storyline where jimin's character is upset that he's not good enough and that he's bringing the group down. mind you, i think it's shitty to monetize someone's insecurities from two american presidents ago, especially when that period also had that person struggling with an ed and fainting because of how hard they pushed themselves. but also, suga's character tells him that if he has time to mope, he has time to practice, and that if he doesn't improve they'll leave him behind??? what??? suga has been nothing but supportive to his members, especially jimin, always said how much he loved jimin's voice and jimin himself said suga's encouragement sparked his ambition and desire to be a bts member.

i hate to speculate because we truly don't know anything but it's bizarre how these low-key hostile situations keep happening to jimin. from the face rollout, hybe not doing anything to support the first korean soloist to debut at #1 of the hot 100, scolding him for wanting two more music videos... i know he's a grown man and even has stocks in this company but there's def something weird going on behind the scenes. i'm flabbergasted that they would approve something so tactless about two bts members.

oh now thats just. sorry that in the seom thing is insanely gross and exploitative. thats not something that belongs in a fucking mobile app game idc. this is what i mean when i talk annoyingly and endlessly about BTS The Brand (tm) bcs like. atp they are not fucking people to hybe/bighit at all everything theyve done and felt and talked about becomes part of the brand . and i dont think ppl realize that they dont need bts' permission to do this shit either. i dont even know what to say thats so fucking gross. i cant say anything abt jimins' specific treatment especially since honestly the more i think about it these weird management issues these days seems to come back to the bizarre brandification of bts . on one hand im not surprised bcs hybe's MO these days seems just to be "make bts into characters -> sell the cliche -> use this to encourage dangerous fan behaviour -> profit" and like. this in the seom thing seems part of that. hybe dont care at all about protecting bts/any of their idols. neither do most entertainment companies but you'd think the people who built this company would get a little leniency.....i get why they would do this. because its juicy and it victimizes bts (and specifically one of the most popular members) in a way that is profitable, that feeds a narrative that is profitable, that can be used to justify certain fan behaviour that hybe encourages, etc. but its so gross that it honestly makes me feel sick. they better get rid of that shit so fast on god i need jimin to draft that lawsuit NOW

[baddingtonbitch]

the like. commodification and brandification of autism is so bone chillingly bleak to me like the very idea of an "autism influencer" with an "autism aesthetic" makes me want to drink bleach. the fact that anyone anywhere is acting like a brand ambassador for any kind of neurodivergence is a nightmare on its own but the neurosparkly uwu bean persona that's being perpetuated is like. almost worse than sheldon. if a neurotypical person likened me to either i'd catch a nEurOsPiCy assault charge. people are acting like autism is a character in inside out because nothing is allowed to exist without being a brand or a product i hate it here

[morlock-holmes]

I mean fundamentally I don't know that it's possible to address this exactly, because there is an important sense in which Barbie has been imposed on us by Mattel, there's an equally important way in which it hasn't.

The post-Reagan brandification of childhood certainly isn't *good*, but it also represents in memory and actuality certain kinds of choices made by children and their parents.

Transformers didn't trick me into liking violence and robots and vehicles as a little boy; any kind of analysis that claims it did is going to feel fundamentally hollow and propagandistic, *particularly* to people who have had a glimpse of the pro-social television of the 70s.

But of course all decision making about Transformers (Or Barbie, or Lego, or any other brand) at the top involves brand management and monetization, and particularly a fear of diluting the brand, which means that it certainly isn't folk art either.

Any attempt to address this dichotomy by the owners of IP is not going to come out in favor of the destruction of their IP.

The cynical part of my brain left Barbie thinking, wow, what an incredible brand move. Not only has Mattel placed their product back into the front of the public’s mind, reminding their now-aging fans of what a great toy Barbie could be for their own young daughters, but they’ve also gotten out ahead of all of the criticism they’ve faced. Barbie has long been (correctly!) attacked by feminists for enforcing stereotypes of femininity, physically impossible body standards, etc. The movie directly acknowledges these criticisms without ever resolving them, instead just turning around to say, actually, there’s a lot of liberatory value in Barbie, in choosing your own fate despite the stereotypes applied to you. Now any attempt at (correctly!) criticizing the brand can be met with a perfunctory “don’t you know they already addressed this!” even though they didn’t really, it just seems like they did because one character mentioned it once in the licensed film

[dazzydeer]

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[davidmariottecomics]

The Staying Power of the Simpsons

Hey there! 

This week we're talking about longevity. If you've been reading my "What I enjoyed this week" bit for a while, you know two things I've recently been consuming a lot of are the Blank Check Podcast and The Simpsons. Blank Check, if you're unfamiliar though I do think I've mentioned it before, is a podcast about directors' filmographies--how they go from their early hits to being given free reign to make the sort of movies they want to make, and loosely, how the movies "clear or bounce". I've been more-or-less bouncing back and forth between the newest episodes and listening to the back catalog from the beginning, so I've most recently finished Spielberg (the Dreamworks years) and Henry Selick. 

One of the show's hosts, Griffin Newman (Arthur from The Tick), has a theory that I've been very drawn to. He talks about actors and how interesting to trace how many decades they've been relevant relative to their creative evolution.

Just because I think he's a good example (and he's been on The Simpsons), let's use Woody Harrelson as an example. In the 80s, he is essentially Woody from Cheers. He's in a few other things, but he's a TV actor from one huge show, to the point that even into the 90s, his most frequent role is Woody from Cheers. In the 90s, at the end of/post-Cheers, he becomes a movie star. Like an actual movie star, where the poster is his face, it's his name above the title, etc. The 2000s, he becomes a character actor. He's still working at a good clip, he sometimes ends up on the poster, but now he's back as part of ensembles. And in the 2010s, like so many former-movie-star-character-actors, he becomes a franchise guy: He's a big part of the Hunger Games. He's in a Marvel movie. He's in a Star Wars movie. He's so good in True Detective, that even though he's only in one season, he gets the show renewed. And while we're still fairly new into the 2020s, his 5th (technically 6th) decade as a working actor, the prestige-y films he did between his franchise movies have earned him elder statesman status and he's on posters again. For a guy whose most famous role is also a guy named Woody, he's really stuck around and managed to find a way to stay relevant. 

Okay, but The Simpsons? 

Tracking of creative evolution over the decades works for all sorts of creators and endeavors. That same framework, that same way of thinking, can be applied to something like say, The Simpsons. If you're a fan of The Simpsons, there's a distinct chance that either A. you believe it stopped being good at the end of the 90s or B. you've heard people it stopped being good at the end of the 90s. I like a lot of The Simpsons, so I wanna talk about that a bit. 

In the 90s, The Simpsons was a family sitcom. That's rightfully what appealed to people about it. It's right there in line with Newhart and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a show about family dynamics that're usually silly and sometimes serious, with the only real dividing factor being that The Simpsons is animated.

But by the 2000s, the Simpsons exists in a really strange place. It's no longer the only primetime animated sitcom or adult animated sitcom. You have King of the Hill and the Mike Judge properties, you have South Park, you have Family Guy and Adult Swim and Futurama. And at the same time, while family sitcoms never go away, there starts to be a shift to occupational sitcoms being the power players--Scrubs, The Office, etc. So the show's in a place where it's competitors are shifting genres and moving to absurdist humor and they have to find a new identity within that. And what they find is they keep it a family sitcom, but heighten the absurdity and start to really play into The Simpsons as a pop culture object that can be aware of other pop culture.

In the 2010s, things have shifted even further--I'd say actually in some ways tied to what I was talking about a few weeks back in the brandification of geekdom. And The Simpsons, in growing and changing their relevance 20 years in, change from a pop culture object that is aware of other pop culture to almost a self-referential pop culture staple. The show, in some ways, is about how long "The Simpsons" can last and the what "The Simpsons" means. It's common knowledge that the Simpsons "predicts the future", but interestingly enough, the future episodes of the show used to be a lot more spaced out. It was roughly one every five years, until 2011 when they became much more regular--from full episodes to end of episode flash-forward tags to "life of" episodes. 

Now, in the Season 30-somethings, The Simpsons has truly become such an institution that it can be a bit of everything it's been before. Some episodes lean more heavily on traditional family sitcom "drama". Some are unexpected and bizarre (Lisa the Boy Scout is a personal favorite from the current season). Some are straight up pop culture pastiches. I think to their benefit, it's what the writers find funny because all aspects are true of what The Simpsons is and it's not a surprise to hear they've been renewed for a few more seasons. 

Each decade has charms because they're responding to what was needed at the time for the show's longevity. 

I Thought this was a Comics Blog?

It is! And here's what that has to do with comics. On the one hand, you can apply this "changes over decades" theory to a lot of comics creators. You look at someone like the much missed George Perez and can track how he maintained a career for so long and how his art and storytelling and even the functions of his job evolved, right? He's a creator whose style is so specific and recognizable that two pieces from different decades can both immediately be identified as his own, even when they might look very different from each other. Part of what I'm getting at is if you are looking at comics as a long-term goal, the thing you want to do with your life, it's worth it to study the people who have managed to do that and the sorts of changes they've made along the way to do so. 

On the other hand, and this is one of the things I find really fascinating about comics--generally speaking, it's a lot harder to apply that same thinking to specific titles. Not to say you can't do it entirely, but it tends to be easier when the comic is the work of one or a one group of people--Usagi Yojimbo or Dragon Ball or I'd say even to some extent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles given how much of it's history has had some combination of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird involved. But when you look at something like Batman, because of the nature of comics--between multiple titles for a single character, runs of incredibly varying lengths, a constant influx of new creators who bring in a diversity of storytelling (but not always a diversity of creators...) it is harder to take these evolutions by decade. Which, in some ways I think is a good thing. Because it means the things that last are not static and are changing to encompass multiple ideas of what it is and what it could be. 

Anyway, food for thought and mostly I wanted to talk about how actually The Simpsons has been pretty funny for the majority of their 30+ years. 

Coming up: Next week, since it's been about a year since I did a full one of these, I'm probably going to do another "Stuff That Sucks" and talk about the many massively disappointing and frustrating and downright awful things happening right now that we should all be keeping an eye on. The week after that, I think we're going to do another "Ask Me (Almost) Anything"! My inbox is open here (and it's incentive to answer a couple emails in there...) and I'll get a post up with next week's blog on Twitter for people to submit their questions! 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Book), Persona 4 Golden (Video game), Poker Face (TV show), Romantic Killer (Anime), Warioware & the other Gameboy/GBA games now on Switch, Snack vs. Chef (TV show), finally got my hands on a Minerva so that's one more Wrecker! And I got the new Big the Cat figure! Admiring good comics lettering. Seeing The Fablemans tomorrow and very much looking forward to it, and the Kaguya-Sama movie on Valentine's Day with my valentine! 

New Releases this week (2/8/2023): Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors - All Hail the King #5 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog #57 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog, Vol. 13: Battle for the Empire (Editor, collecting Sonic #50, 51, the 2022 Annual, and the 2022 Free Comic Book Day short)

New releases next week (2/15/2023): Off week for my books

Final Order Cutoff (2/13/2023): Godzilla: Best of King Ghidorah (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog #59 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog #1 5th Anniversary Edition (Editor)

Announcements: Arizona Comic Book Arts Festival - 2/25! This is like 2 weeks from now! They've got a heckuva guest list including me, Becca, Elizabeth Brei, Danny Djeljosevic, Mitch Gerads, Steve Rude, John Layman, Henry Barajas, Jay Fotos, Jeff Mariotte, Marcy Rockwell, John Yurcaba, Andrew MacLean, Alexis Zirrit, Meredith McClaren, James Owen, Ryan Cody, and many more! Come and see us! Becca'll have some very cool new merch, too! And tickets are only $10! I'll be bringing a mess of stuff that I've written and edited from Transformers, Sonic, Godzilla, and more! (Promo by Becca)

Speaking of Becca, did you know they have a Patreon? They're doing weekly drawing prompts that're uploading Sundays, so lots of new stuff up there as well as a pretty impressive backcatalog from the past few years. This month, if you sign-up at any level, your support's actually going to a really amazing local organization, The Brown Building.

And final Becca news, they contributed to Aradia Beat, a Magical Girl Anthology Magazine! It's now on Kickstarter! It's both a tribute to 90s magical girl stories and part of a larger project about the overall preservation and mutual support of magical girl stories! We're in the final week and they're about $1K away from their goal. They can definitely make it, but it'd be cool if you could help out by backing or by sharing! Speaking of Magical Girl Kickstarters, it's still early in the life cycle of Sweet Little Resistance, which is by fellow AZ Comic Book Arts Fest tablers,  Elizabeth Brei and Danny Djeljosevic as well as a host of cool artists! They're only about $500 away from their goal, and would make for a very nice complimentary piece! (More Promo by Becca)

Pic of the Week:  So the actual Pic of the Week is Tiansheng who decided to sleep under the pillows in Becca's office chair, rather than on top of them!

[stinkybrowndogs]

In the "Domestication is a hell of a drug." post Gravy looks like she's wearing pants

Oh that is my sweet Brandy Dog! She is perfect and soft and full of love.

Gravy is my evil cat who lives to make my life more difficult

She almost has pants

[hinge]

Not-So FAQ for LGBTQIA+ daters

A growing resource addressing LGBTQIA+ daters' most pressing questions

Hear more about #HingeNFAQ from Roxane and Debbie at https://hinge.nfaq.co

[thehenrythomas]

As a mid-to-large-sized enterprise company, your company website is incredibly essential for your business to succeed.

A staggering 75% of your business’s credibility comes from your website design, and as an enterprise company, your credibility, faith, and authority represent everything.

An enterprise website design will:-

Build a strong online presence that makes credibility, trust, and authority for your company

Make strong calls to action that draw visitors to take the next step in the buyer journey

Ensure to offer of a mobile-friendly website for users on all devices

Make sure your website navigation is easy for users to find what they require

Ensure to offer of easy-to-submit forms to facilitate users to share their details

Offer a seamless check-out procedure

For reaping these amazing advantages from your enterprise website design, you should think of working with an experienced website development agency in Mohali that knows everything about your niche and has experience handling companies like yours!

Your enterprise website template

So, what should your enterprise website design have? What are the most essential factors of your enterprise website design?

Here is my recommended enterprise website design template to assist you to make sure success with your website.

A robust brand

If you consider some of the most prominent companies in the world, they evolve successfully by having a strong brand. They choose the right color scheme from the beginning, selected their brand tone and aesthetic, and adhered to it.

When you have a powerful brand, you should do the following to make sure your website design is branded well:-

Ensure to follow a color scheme

Utilize the same logo in every location on the website

Write with the exact tone and style

These small aspects will assist you to build a cohesive brand that you can always utilize throughout the life of your enterprise.

Clear navigation

The next important factor on the checklist is website navigation. It is one of the most essential factors as without easy-to-use navigation it can be quite confusing for users to know where to know and which pages to visit or how to get what they looking for.

Clear and easy-to-use website navigation will assist in keeping visitors on your company website longer, which is a positive sign for Google. Because users can easily discover what they’re looking for, you’ll lower the bounce rate since users will probably visit numerous pages on your website.

Mobile-friendly design

Every website on Google should be developed with mobile in mind — especially because of Google’s mobile-first index.

Google peeks at the mobile version of your company website before anything else, so your website must be made both for mobile and desktop users. Owning a mobile-friendly website signifies that no matter what device a user experiences on your website, they’ll have the same positive experience.

Buttons should be as easy to click on a mobile screen as they are to click on a desktop computer. Pictures should have the same grade.

Conversion conscious

Without a conversion-conscious enterprise website design, you’ll see fewer sales and lower income year over year.

A conversion-conscious website design contains design factors or elements that assist users to navigate down the marketing funnel. A few of these design elements are listed below:-

Calls-to-action (CTAs): Your CTAs should be precise and clear, and make visible what you like users to do next. Ensure you use CTAs on every page of your website.

Contact forms: Contact forms take visitors to another level of the marketing funnel. After they feed their contact information, they’re now believed to be an interested buyer — and you have their contact details to persist in marketing to them.

Add Phone numbers with one-click calling: Making sure that you have your firm’s phone number in plain sight is necessary. Make it easy for visitors to find your phone number, and effortless for them to click to call.

[misterjt]

Sports, Fashion, and The Brandification of Everyone

[meyhew]

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[mjalti]

the Brandification, if you will and you will, of a person once they’ve learned to make money off their image/body/content is very interesting to me bc it locks a person into a certain “way of being” that might have started off organic but then begins to suffocate because once a Brand is Known for something.. the Brand must deliver. Instead of this person growing up, growing period, they’re trapped in these time capsules where they’re not necessarily allowed to progress into the next phase of their life— all for the sake of money. A YouTuber who has over the top clothes and glittery hair isn’t allowed to go minimalist— she has a Brand to protect. An Instagrammer who wants to share something personal that’s not a part of their curated feed has to stop themselves from doing so— because the Brand has an image to project and protect. All for the sake of sponsorships, for views, for money. For money. The person becomes a husk for the Brand, the Brand eats the host. The Brand must survive, at the expense of the host.