#but the writers get so lazy with own in universe rules and keeping tension

[themthistles]

watching kairos can't stop thinking about that star wars post it would be so good if it was good

[chroniclerdl]

Seven Fundamentals to Writing Better Yu-Gi-Oh Duelfics

Ever wanted to write a duelfic just as good or better than canon?

Done right, duels are memorable action scenes.

Done wrong, duels shatter the suspension of disbelief. It’s already a big ask to imagine the world revolving around a card game.

You don’t want the tragedy where your readers yank the scrollbar past your duel, or worse, close your tab. Even the small pool of duelfic readers/writers like me will skip huge chunks of your chapters when the duels sag.

By implementing basic storytelling techniques tailored to dueling, you can hook your readers into following the play-by-play.

High Stakes

Consistent Rules

Sneaks Checked

“Balanced” Gameplay

Foreshadowing Victory

Engaging Description

Dramatic Tension

1. High Stakes

When you advertise your story as a duelfic, your first duel tells readers whether or not what you wrote is worth their time.

If your characters duel without a concrete reason to rip the opponent’s throat, readers already know the outcome:

You lose.

Why? The game is pointless. Who’s dropping whatever they’re doing just to read the equivalent of your characters sipping afternoon tea? If you’re introducing the setting and characters, why can’t you introduce exciting threats?

No reader expects your first duel to decide the fate of the world, but your characters still need to bet.

Characters wager life chips.

If your character loses, they suffer death or suicide-inducing despair.

Is it too much to start with life-and-death? No. Think of the life chip as the culmination of hopes and dreams.

As the story progresses, the stakes will rise, must rise. How? Others will entrust the main characters with their own life chips, and/or the life chips acquire additional meaning. Consider this loose analogy: at the end of a poker tournament, gamblers sit at the final table with stacks built from the chips of others.

Life chips mean different things to different characters. Let’s take the Duelist Kingdom arc.

Yugi’s life chip is the hope to save his grandfather (and later, his own soul)

Joey’s life chip is the hope to win the prize money to fund his sister’s medical operation

Kaiba’s life chip is the hope to save his little brother (and later, his own soul)

You don’t even need your final showdown to revolve around the fate of world; it just has to be one or more things that matter to your characters.

Also, make sure to communicate the stakes, or why the characters accept uneven bets.

If you have the chops, you can also play around with disguising the stakes. As in, your character thinks they’re wagering something small, but it’s actually their life chip. However, your readers still need a vague reason to believe that a defeat will devour the character.

Always make sure the characters stake one or more life chips!

2. Consistent Rules

If you watched the Duelist Kingdom arc and tried to understand the moves everyone made, your head exploded.

Ask yourself: will the clever scheme that your hero invented drive readers crazy?

If I write a magic system that requires a wand, this applies to all. I cannot become a genius and suddenly wave my hands to cast magic.

Demonstrate the rules early, preferably in the first duel, and keep them sacred.

If you must make an exception, establish it early. In that case, the exception becomes a well-defined branch of the rules that the readers can anticipate.

Can the players magically draw the card they need, whenever they want?

If you can establish the when and why, by all means. The readers proceed with the understanding that the players can reach into their deck like a glorified toolbox.

For example, Duel Links has a concept called “skills” that function like a player’s special ability. At the time I wrote this, Yami Yugi’s “Destiny Draw” skill lets the player take any card from their deck once per duel after losing 2000LP (and even if they stacked the top of the deck earlier!).

Card should also have the same, predictable effect. If the card prevents attacks, I doubt the text discusses physical properties or mentions holding things in the air. But you knew that, right?

The rules are the laws of the universe.

3. Sneaks Checked

I love duels. I also love getting what I want.

Why does getting what I want have to be through a duel?

If we talk, maybe we can come to an agreement. If I blackmail you, maybe you’ll give in to my demands. If I shoot you, I can loot your corpse. Give the readers a good reason as to why your characters would bother with the hassle of honest dueling and can’t wiggle from the consequences of losing.

Often, the duel takes place in the context of a tournament. Hopefully, the tournament officials are keeping a good eye on the players and cracking down on cheaters.

However, even that’s not a guarantee. What’s the key concept?

Power.

The competitors have equivalent capacity for coercion (usually violence) or have a neutral referee presiding over the match with the most capacity for coercion (shoutout to gambling manga Usogui).

Anyone who enters a game otherwise has lost before the first move.

In Yu-Gi-Oh, magical and sci-fi enforcement are common. The Shadow Realm can trap the loser in a desolate hell. In a digital world, the loser suffers deletion. Or just have good tournament officials.

Be vigilant when your duel doesn’t call upon these tropes.

Your amoral characters won’t mind blindsiding your other characters, and they won’t mind blindsiding you with a plot hole.

If you’re not careful, the readers will ask you why they played uncharacteristically fair.

4. “Balanced” Gameplay

Duels should be fair and fun…for the villain.

Ostensibly, everyone plays a balanced game, designed to give both sides a sporting chance. In reality, the villain tilts the field to their favor with one or more tricks up their sleeves. Why would your villain ever fight fair?

But that’s fine. We love rooting for the underdog and watching the villain get their comeuppance.

Overpowered ability to let the villain read minds? Deck full of unbalanced cards that makes the villain’s monsters invincible with no drawback? Creator who knows every strategy in the game? Readers will turn the page as they wonder how the hero will prevail.

The more obstacles you can throw in the hero’s way, the better.

Got custom cards? No problem, just follow a couple guidelines. After all, some duelists are more equal than others.

The hero’s deck is full of regular cards that have a cost to use. For every play they want to make, their cards insist that they give up their attack, discard to play, etc.

The villain’s deck is full of rare cards that power up their game for free. So long as you can justify why the card made it to print, the villain can play whatever they want.

For every step your hero takes, the villain gets two.

5. Foreshadowing Victory

How many times have you watched a duel where the protagonist comes up with this never-before-seen card that does exactly what the protagonist needs to clinch the win? In the final showdown, no less? It’s like the writers begged to be called amateurs and idiots.

No other genre tolerates such laziness.

However, readers don’t want an infodump of the characters’ decks. Show the cards in action. To cover the deck, you'll probably need multiple duels.

This also implies you have more freedom in how your character defeats their early opponents in the duelfic.

Does that previous statement contradict what I said about never-before-seen cards clinching the win as the mark of laziness? No, because here’s the rule:

Tolerance for the hero’s new cards decreases as the story progresses.

(Notice that I specify the hero’s new cards; your villains exist to make life harder by inventing unfair tricks.)

When you must include new cards for the hero late in the duelfic, at least find a way to make them first backfire.

Now, some writers have lots of knowledge about the card pool and metagame. Can they assume the readers a priori know the hero has access to any of the available cards in a given archetype?

I’d err on the side of caution and properly foreshadow the cards before they appear late in the duelfic. Not every reader is a walking card database. They have no reason to assume something exists unless you show the card.

Take the tolerance rule into consideration when planning your duels. If you know the awesome combo you want to use for the final turn in the duelfic climax, that’s your cue to scatter the cards into the earlier duels.

Plan the last duel first and your early duels last.

6. Description

Every reader wants a front-row seat to the action.

They’re paying you their time, so make it worth the admission: sleek combatants & budget-busting fights. Kaiba invented Solid Vision technology for a reason, so help readers envision your duels.

Who’s fighting? Describe the point-of-view’s impression of the monsters’ appearances. Red-Eyes Black Dragon should be self-explanatory.

What about a decorated monster like Time Wizard?

You could go into detail about how the red clock humanoid has yellow gears that form epaulets and purple, pointy boots and a green mustache made from clock hands and so on, but such a level of minutiae bogs pacing and invites skimming.

Readers just need to hear about a purple-caped, red clock humanoid with a wand to form an image. Their imaginations can handle the little details.

Paint appearances in broad strokes and one or two brief sentences.

How are the monsters fighting? Duel Monsters is a game where the target takes the aggressor’s attack like a champ. That doesn’t mean you can’t spice it up.

For example, my opponent’s dragon attacks my weaker knight with a fireball. My knight, interested in not dying, raises his shield. Unfortunately, he screams as the flames engulf him.

You wouldn’t just stand still with a straight face if someone armed with a knife lunged for your gut.

A fight scene is a string of action and reaction.

Most people also experience life in more senses than just sight.

A dragon’s fireball is a bright reddish-orange, hot, dries the air, smoky, and explodes with a boom on impact. I never tasted a fireball, and I hope I never do, but that’s still four senses: sight, touch, smell, and sound.

Include multiple sensory details.

Let’s spare a moment to talk about the heads-up display (HUD).

In Yu-Gi-Oh, cards have multiple stats and abilities. You’re free to mention whatever you deem necessary. No set formula exists. On one extreme, you can mention nothing to keep the narrative clean at the risk of confusing the readers. At the other extreme, infodumps about the monster’s abilities provide great detail but wreck the pacing. But there’s a cozy middle.

State only what you need from the card.

If your duels occurred before the era of Synchro, you don’t need details about levels. You can just display the basic stats to determine the stronger monster. If a deck has Pendulum monsters, just mention the scale numbers when they're played as scales. And so on.

You can also make an index of new cards at the end of a chapter.

BONUS TIP! Understanding show, don’t tell.

What is show, don’t tell? At its core, this concept refers to immersing your readers in the senses and feelings instead of exposition. Unfortunately, that definition is a bit vague to execute. After writing for a while, I had my lightbulb moment.

Don’t TELL the readers how to think or force-feed them a conclusion.

SHOW your readers the evidence.

Here’s a written example from Joey vs. Rex in Duelist Kingdom. See if you can spot what makes this prose telling instead of showing.

“Joey watched nervously as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!”

You can see two failures: “nervously” and the second sentence.

Adverbs like “nervously” and other “-ly” friends get a bad rep because rookies tend to use them as telling crutches (especially beware adverbs after dialogue tags!). “Nervously” tells me how Joey reacts. But what does “nervously” look like? One character might bite their thumb. Another might fidget in their seat. The adverb in this context lacks nuance.

We also have the second sentence: “He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!” When you’re explaining the “why” to something, you’re telling. It’s like talking down to your readers.

Contrast with the next example.

“A bead of sweat rolled off Joey’s face as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.”

The first sentence shows me Joey’s physical reaction. I see him sweating, so I think he’s nervous.

We also see a second physical reaction: “He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.” This comes on the heels of the first sentence, and I also have knowledge of when Joey used the Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo in a prior duel. Combined, I think Joey is ruminating about a missed chance.

Readers are smart; they’ll catch your intention if you show the proof.

7. Dramatic Tension

I bet you know what it's like to draw a bad hand.

Imagine: The hero staggers into the arena, and the villain just needs to win one duel to take over the world. The villain draws a bunch of powerups with no monster, but the hero draws a one-turn-kill combo.

Anticlimactic. The readers throw that duelfic straight into the trash.

Don’t just write real-life duels. “It really happened” doesn’t mean it’s emotionally satisfying.

That’s why we have literary structure.

Success and setback pace together with progressive intensity to maximize dramatic tension and emotional payoff.

I’ll spare the nitty-gritty theory detail, but your duels should look like this on a basic level:

Part 1: Villain’s basic threats. Introduces the villain’s deck and style.

Part 2: Villain’s minor strategy. The villain’s first serious attempt to defeat the hero.

Part 3: Villain’s major strategy. The hero’s reversal! But the villain has worse in store.

Part 4: Hero’s imminent defeat. The hero must break through, or else will instantly lose!

Ideally, you’re also integrating the story itself into the duel; themes and duels synergize to create a stronger effect.

You may notice how the format resembles the three-act structure.

Act I is Part 1

Act II until the Act II midpoint is Part 2

Act II midpoint until Act III is Part 3

Act III is part 4.

I’ll use Yugi/Pharaoh vs. Pegasus in Duelist Kingdom as an example.

Part 1: Mind scan. Pegasus can read minds to counter combos.

Part 2: Toon World. Indestructible, cartoonified monsters attack.

Part 3: Shadow game. Toons destroyed! But playing a shadow game weakens Yugi.

Part 4: Yugi passes out. The Pharaoh must find a new way to stop Pegasus’s mind scan!

Figure out each part of the structure for your duels before writing the turn-by-turn plays.

By the way, modern real-life Yu-Gi-Oh duels don’t suit drama because the rules provide weak constraints to creating strong boards. A good modern deck usually establishes a scary turn one board and jumps straight into Part 4, whereas other card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone force the powerhouse cards to wait several turns until the player builds the mana to pay costs.

You can still write a good modern duel. Here’s a basic outline of Arc-V’s duel between Sora and Shay. Technically, “tragedy” is the structure of this duel, so I’ll make Shay the “hero” to flip it and keep matters simplified.

Part 1: Basic monsters. These clash before a monster appears from the Extra Deck.

Part 2: Frightfurs. They come one after another to crush Shay’s Raidraptors.

Part 3: Sora’s wrath. Rise Falcon survives! But Sora’s malevolent nature comes to light.

Part 4: Frightfur Chimera. Sora chomps candy and summons his biggest fusion horror!

If following the four parts is too difficult for you, that’s okay. They're just logical extensions of one basic concept. Keep the following in mind, and you’ll never go wrong:

The villain’s subsequent threats become increasingly overwhelming.

Conclusion

Much of writing a duel boils down to storytelling technique.

Let’s tl;dr the main takeaways.

High Stakes: Minimum ante is the life chip, worth a character’s hopes and dreams.

Consistent Rules: Everyone plays by the same logic.

Sneaks Checked: Characters can’t skip the duels with violence and coercion.

“Balanced” Gameplay: Villains enjoy advantages.

Foreshadowing Victory: Readers have a chance to predict the winning combo.

Engaging Description: Immerse senses and invite reactions.

Dramatic Tension: The villain makes progressively stronger threats.

As a duelfic reader/writer, I can gauge a writer's ability by measuring their duels with the fundamentals. Many fan writers struggle; even the canon writers struggle.

But writing a duelfic isn’t rocket science. With practice, minding the fundamentals will become second nature.

And don't forget to tag your story as a duelfic. It's a whole genre in fanfic, so sort it properly and help readers from the future find you.

May the heart of the cards be with you.

…

Want to see in-depth examples of my advice? I rewrote the Orichalcos arc to reimagine its untapped potential without the failures of the canon presentation. You can find it on FFnet and AO3.

[mittensmorgul]

Do you have any least favorite fic tropes that you just won't read? Like I can deal with things being reasonably OOC if it's well written, honestly, but if I read the words "Lisa" and "bitch" in a sentence together, I exit out immediately. Life is too short to deal with low grade misogyny.

Hi hi! I know this has been sitting in my inbox for a while, but now I’m back from gishland and I’m not completely mentally fried, so I’m gonna try my best to start replying to everything folks have left in my inbox in the last week… with apologies to folks who left me messages before gish week that I still haven’t replied to… someday I will catch up with everything (i’m lying, this day will never come… but I will keep trying) :P

I’m gonna start out here by suggesting your question is actually asking several different things, and attempting to conflate them together. I wasn’t initially gonna reply to this, just make a “to the anon asking about fic tropes…” kind of message suggesting you ask me off anon or in the chat, because this is really potentially inflammatory, and I wasn’t (during gish) up to writing a potentially long explanation in reply, while still actually addressing the (several distinct) questions in your message there ^^

I feel the need to start by clarifying that “low grade misogyny” is NOT a trope.

Tropes are narrative shorthands, recognizable patterns or themes or plot devices that are widely used in storytelling, whether it be literature, tv, film, etc. Twist a trope too far so that it overpowers the story instead of just cluing the reader or viewer into the subtext or an upcoming plot twist or character development, and the trope itself takes center stage, and it becomes a cliche.

“Low grade misogyny” is just… a character flaw of the author.

In fic, tropes are things like, “there was only one bed!” because heck, we all know how that story goes, right? That’s what makes it a trope. We all (who are familiar with fic) see that phrase and essentially know exactly what’s gonna happen. Or, for example, in Supernatural canon, we all understand the Cold Open Unknown Character is essentially the episode’s red shirt (or else unwitting witness to the red shirt’s demise). For a while years ago there was a meme circulating around here to the effect of “like a character in the cold open of Supernatural.” We all know they’re gonna die (or be traumatized for life). Those are tropes.

Writing women as being “bitchy” isn’t. Even if it’s just to create plot tension between the main characters. It’s just… bad. Ugh.

So that said, yeah, I really don’t like reading fic that frames the female characters (especially previous love interests) as terrible human beings. (And one of my bigger regrets is using Lisa in Project Beyonce instead of Lydia… since she left Dean, and had never really been all that attached to him… I still don’t know why I picked Lisa for that… To be fair, it was one of the first things I wrote for this fandom, even though that’s not really an excuse. I should probably just go edit all the instances of Lisa into Lydia and I’d feel a lot better about it.).

I mean, a recurring comment I get on The Exception to Every Rule is something to the effect of, “omg I kept waiting for Bela/Becky/Lisa/any female character to turn evil,” and that’s part of the reason I wrote all of them exactly the way I did. I took the baggage of the Supernatural universe off them and wrote them how I thought they could be. :)

So, since we’re not talking about actual tropes here, but characterizations that negatively interpret women, minorities, LGBT+… yeah, I tend to nope out of those too.

I’m also pretty much past the whole “Dean’s gay panic” (which yes, this is a trope). I’ll still read older fic set in past canon or an AU set in the past or when he was much younger where he has this sort of self-awareness moment, but current canon? Or an au where he’s a nearly-40-year-old? Nah, sorry. Not interested. Dean’s a ball of emotional issues, but this isn’t really one of them anymore.

Internalized homophobia doesn’t fly anymore either for me. I mean, he’s no longer the s1 Macho Posing Hunter Dudebro he tried to project when complaining about the suit in 1.04, for example. He’s now quite comfortable with his own tastes, you know? So it feels massively out of character for him to suddenly reject “girly” things in fic. He admitted to loving chick flicks and TSwift. There’s no putting that genie back into the bottle for me.

But fic is there for anyone and everyone. Writers write the stories they feel compelled to write, not necessarily the stories I personally want to read, you know? I don’t have to enjoy every single take on the characters from every writer ever. That’s one major benefit to being in a fandom as prolific as this one. There’s plenty of stories I DO enjoy, and if I’m reading something that doesn’t work for me, I can back out and find one that will.

But I’m with you on being very, very tired of all female characters being used as canon fodder (spelling intentional there) just to progress a relationship or the fic’s plot. It’s not a trope, it’s a cliche. And a sad, tired, lazy one, at that.

[paranoidsbible]

Uncle-Daddy’s Big Book of Deception

Uncle-Daddy’s Big Book of Deception Non-profit and free for redistribution Written on September 13th | 2016 Published on September 13th | 2016 For entertainment and research purposes only

================================================= DISCLAIMER The Paranoid's Bible and its writers hold no responsibility for the acts of others. The Paranoid’s Bible is for research and entertainment purposes only. Please visit our blog for more PDFs and information: https://www.paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/ ================================================= Contents DISCLAIMER    2 Preface    4 Clone Wars    5 Dirty SEO Tactics    6 Get a Friend Involved    7 Midwestern Theory    8 Be a Good Person, Share    9 Don’t Neglect Reality    10 Afterword    11 ================================================= Preface When I shot the PB team a PM on their blog I didn’t expect my critique to become a quick gig of helping them hammer out a PDF on deception. After much consideration and a few shots of cheap tequila, I agreed to help them out. Because why not? They have a decent idea and are trying to help the pitiful users of today’s internet. So here you guys & gals go: a guide on being a deceptive bastard on the internet and preventing people from getting a good grasp on your information. ================================================= Clone Wars If you’re reading this, then I’ll assume you’ve read The Paranoid’s Bible PDF and the PDF on OPSEC. You should have a grasp on the DOs and DON’Ts of the internet. However this will break those rules just a teensy bit in order to help you create garbage data and digital noise to obscure your real identity and information.  The PB tells you that you should always use a unique username for each account and never repeat this username elsewhere, yet there is an exception to this rule: Cloning. While cloning has several names, I’m partial to the term cloning because it gets the message across—make multiple accounts across the internet using the same username but with different information concerning the basic image of its creator. When you create an account you always end up adding just a tiny bit of yourself to it. Using the ‘About Me’ or ‘Description’ or those pesky bios… you’re going to use these and differentiate each account by giving it its own persona. So while you’re following the advice of the PB team and their various guides, these cloned accounts will be vastly different. Go nuts and use your imagination but remember some simple facts. Globally, European names aren’t all that common. Look at the current global makeup of the Earth’s population. Islamic-like names of Muhammad are quite popular, as are Asian names and East Indian names. While the majority of Western sites are heavily European and Americentric, it doesn’t hurt to mix it up with a Vash or Aiko. Of course, you can then flesh it out a bit more by giving them a European or American-sounding last name and background. You want these accounts to be completely different from your own. Everything about the personas being made for these accounts are not to be related to you or your ‘main account’. You don’t want them to ever communicate with each other or touch in any way. You must keep them completely separated, which is why you’ll be making them on various forums, social media sites and chats. The more ground you cover, and the more varied the accounts are the less likely people can make a cohesive argument as why this piece of information or that data is supposed to be related to you. For example, you make an account on deviantART. They’ve a little bio app that you can adhere to your profile. So, if you made yourself a Tumblr account, then the deviantART account is to not only be different in description but also look. If you hate Undertale, then the deviantART persona loves it. You like yellow, they love blue. So on and so forth until you’ve suddenly a teenage female artist with an Asian background who moved to the U.S. and knows very little about their own Asian heritage, ergo they cling to their last name which sounds Japnese-ish. By doing this, if someone were to ever look for information to use against you or to grab your dox, they end up on a wild goose chase where they’re looking for someone who doesn’t exist. Dirty SEO Tactics There are numerous ways to pollute a search engine’s results with “dirty pages”. Their page rank might not be all that existent, however they do tend to clutter around specific search terms like a username or a piece of common information laced into profiles or bios in order to throw someone off a trail. Now, to do this you need to have clean and organic looking back links. However one good way to populate an account with seemingly organic back links is to use one of the numerous “generators” that usually end up hurting your SEO in the long run. We don’t care about the long run, though. This is a short game tactic that translates into, in the long run, a small, albeit affective little trail duster meant to help cover some of your tracks. These three links are a good start; however there exist numerous “generators” that can be used. Using these three for all of your clone accounts should help you spark a little bit of a boost in their appearance on Google and Bing. With enough accounts under a similar or the same username, you can basically pollute the search results to help cover your main account with the clone accounts. https://www.freebacklinkbuilder.net/ https://sitowebinfo.com/back/ https://www.indexkings.com/ Ensure you read the PB’s “Internet Primer” to help you reduce Ads and pop-ups when using these websites. While not intentionally malicious, numerous sites, like these, can have malicious Ads or pop-ups. ================================================= Get a Friend Involved Let’s say you’ve a friend that you really trust and they’re interested in privacy and security just like you. Here’s a suggestion: Get them involved. Have your friend help you by using one of their own persona/clone accounts to accuse one of yours of being something that currently upsets the moral majority. From there, work in some fake dox and a handful of other pieces of information. Work those bits and pieces into a believable “dox” and have your clone/persona take it a bit too personally and start acting like you’re panicked. Delete the blog after a few days of the drama, let your friend’s persona/clone do some victory posting and move on. People will believe that that information belongs to you and follow that trail instead of looking for your real information. And, if you followed the PB’s namesake you should have very little information out there. You can even be lazy and just make your own callout blog to attack your own persona/clones. In the end, though, you just want to create enough tension and static to misdirect people. ================================================= Midwestern Theory The PB team had a guide for this one however you don’t need an entire guide for what can fit in a chapter. I won’t bore you with the excessive details but some time ago when Newgrounds was the in-thing, someone got upset at people for making the claim that there were a lot of Californians online. This led to the Midwestern netizen forced meme that quickly died out. The claim of being Midwestern is actually a good ploy when covering up your tracks. The Midwestern accent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_accent) is easy to mimic and if you watch some Youtube videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DlxCDlIfh0), you should find yourself being able to pick it up and force it when need be. Ideally you should never let anyone see your face or hear your voice, yet it does come in handy just in case. Mix the various “Midwestern quirks” with setting all your accounts’ time zones to “Central” and keeping tabs of the time (https://www.worldtimezone.com/time/wtzresult.php?CiID=32119) (Always pick a random city or state in the Midwest) and mix in some research on “College towns” (https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/best-colleges-in-the-midwest/)… you should be able to spice up your bios and descriptions with something akin to a specific college team or name dropping a college or university that you go to and study at. So when you log off or leave your account, stating something like “OMFG! It’s 12:30 am! I have to go and sleep! I have a compsci class @ 9!” Keep this up with several accounts, adding in the oddball California town or Florida town, and you’ll have created enough static to keep people scoping out the wrong area for information. Though keep in mind that a lot of plant life in the Midwest tends to spread out into non-Midwestern areas. Take a picture or two of common plants around the US that appear in the Midwest, too. Figure out what’s a common park or nature preserve in the area of your false town/city and look at the common trees or plants in the area. Take a picture of something that is in your area that is in that area, too, and tag it with #Yellowstone park or whatever is popular in that area. And suddenly… you’re a Midwestern grilling in sub-zero temperatures because you want your burger. Don’t forget to show your almost zealous obsession and support for that area’s sports teams and no one is going to suspect a thing. Maybe spice in some local news from the area and make a comment on the weather (It isn’t that hard to look up a weather report through Google) and you’re good as Gold. You’re a real Midwesterner now, bro. ================================================= Be a Good Person, Share The PB team has in their namesake PDF a guide on opting out of Google maps, among others. Take the information for getting out of Google maps (and others) and make a flyer. Print it out, take it to Kinkos or some other print shop, or go to your local library and print some copies there. Make some wheat paste (shown below) and paste them all over your town (Put paste on wall and smooth, then put your poster up and slather on paste and smooth it on it too.). Soon a whole mess of people will be blurring out their houses on the online maps, and this in turn messes with the real estate sites to the point of anyone trying to look up your information finds a mass of blurred out houses. This causes a mix of the “Streisand effect” and reasonable deniability. WHEAT PASTE HOW-TO Flour (wheat works best) Sugar 1 Cup of Water Container with a lid • Boil a cup of water. • Put 3 tablespoons of flour into a bowl • Add 10 teaspoons of cool water until it forms a runny mix • Once the water has boiled, add the runny mix to the boiling water. Stir well! • Keep stirring. The mixture will foam up while it boils, so the constant stirring is essential to keep it from bubbling over and to keep it from getting chunky. • Keep the mixture boiling for 2 minutes. • Take the boiled mix off the heat. Add 2 tablespoons or more of sugar (added strength) • Let it cool. Pour into an appropriate container for carrying with you. It will keep well for about a week. • Learn more @ https://destructables.org/destructable/wheatpaste-recipe-putting-postersbillboard-alterations • Spray with a clear sealant or hairspray to help weatherize and make the poster last longer. Police, military members, and their families can opt-out of a wealth of databases. Some take it to the extreme and have their houses blurred out. If enough people in your area begin to blur out their houses and look into other means of removing their information, you’ll soon see a bit of a trend that can affect several blocks when it comes to viewing houses on any online map. This means that you can not only safely blur out yours but it’d be near impossible to guess whose house is whose. It’s only defeated if they have an address, and that’s if it’s actually your address to begin with. Let these people rant and rave as they knock or send a malicious package to the wrong house. If anything happens, since it broke into the realm of reality, they’ll end up being arrested and charged with several crimes. Fun fact: Not many places care about doxing, especially the police. Most modern “dox” is openly available information. This is why you must work toward suppressing it through opting out of websites and databases. If someone takes it from the internet to the realm of reality, lawsuits and arrests can happen. ================================================= Don’t Neglect Reality No one’s denying the PB’s effectiveness when it comes to lessening the overall data of yours online, however until they discuss ways to limit information bleeding offline you’ll need to take a few extra precautions outside of creating noise and lessening your data. They do have a PDF on how your privacy’s invaded, yet that only covers so much. Be a little bit nihilistic and apathetic. Don’t care as much and don’t react if you are doxed or some gets a bit too close. Ignore them; work on lessening your information. In the offline realm however you should work on creating some good for yourself. This means work on cleaning up your neighborhood, keeping your property clean and being nice to your neighbors. Look into doing some volunteering and charity work. Create some good will toward yourself and lessen the general impact in case anything comes toward you and your life. By doing this you can create a large support focus toward you and what good you’ve done. People will be in disbelief and outright call the claims made against you false. Ever wonder why politicians and famous people, even the internet famous, never get much crap and have an unusually large support behind them? What they do is quite simple: Act like a good person. With bit of charity under your belt and by observing social protocols enough by simply greeting people and saying your “Please” and “Thank yous” you’ll create an air of being someone half way decent. People will see this and any accusations made against you will result in either demand for blood or death of someone who dares attack you. Now you shouldn’t encourage the bloodlust or wanting of death, however simply using your time wisely and helping your community can act as a good cover. Someone comes around and harasses you; someone who might have power will come to your aide possibly. It also doesn’t hurt to remove your information and have it replace with falsified information. Checkout https://reddit.com/r/freebies and keep an eye out for free magazine subscriptions. Fill out a few, regardless what they are, with your home address and a burner cell’s number. The name can be made up, possibly made to match the cultural and ethnic makeup of your area. Think about it. What are the most common people in your immediate area? White? Black? Hispanic? It doesn’t matter as long as you pick the majority and follow suit with their name. It’ll help further push that static to help cover your tracks. So if you’ve a large number of Hispanic families in your area, using a Hispanic sounding first and last name on your free magazine subscriptions can help you replace all your removed database records with falsified ones. Go the extra step, load up on other freebies. Anything you don’t need or want can be donated to a number of homeless shelters or shelters for women and/or children. Gives you an extra push in being a good person too! ================================================= Afterword Outside of following the PB’s advice, using a VPN, a non-propriety OS and not touching social media there’s not much else you can do. While being deceptive and sprinkling lies and half truths into your conversations and online shenanigans helps, most of us who were born in the 80s and 90s have screwed up royally and will never trulybe un-doxable or secure. Work toward anonymity and spread the PB’s information to as many people as you can. I should note however that your text and how you type can give you away too. Look into using a text editor and use Basic English spelling and grammar. Mix in some chat speak and some texting quirks and you should be able to keep the personas even more separated and unique.