#how to make a mostly story driven ask blog actually popular

[retiredcultistredux]

((i've got a rough draft of the chapter ending post but i'm tired and like i reminded myself in the tags (showing this because i can) i might make edits later. haven't done the art yet but decided that i can just post it without an ask because i know what i wanna have happen. expect it later today (most likely) but for now i'm going to bed))

[rainbowsandwhumperflies]

Re: analysing Ryan: he's the "love to hate" character in the best possible way (for me, at least). So far he comes across as the most competent in his family and it makes him such a great antagonist; like, his mother is fixated on superficial details(whether Onyx acts graceful or not) over matter(whether he completes tasks or not) and his brother is basically a rich kid bully: the moment he realises he's on equal footing with someone or that confrontation may not end in his favour, Cadran folds like a wet newspaper(at least that's the vibe I'm getting so far). So far, Ryan feels like someone who would be just as functional out of the lap of luxury as he is in one; he can work(or quickly learn to work) his way if not back into lap of luxury, then to being seen as(mostly) a reasonable authority figure position and resources that come with this - and this is what makes him terrifying in a very grounded way (unlike his brother or mother, who seem more set in their ways as rich assholes). Also, we already have indirect proof of Ryan's competence as a whumper - Onyx's behaviour. He's the guy who conditioned him to behave as the perfect servant and supressed Onyx's memories of whatever life he had before serving the royal family. Ryan is ruthless and competent, and this is a very scary combo when established through his actions (as opposed to establishing it through narration - "show, don't tell" at its best). He's not unlikable just because its a genre convention, you written him as a genuinely scary antagonist, and I love this so much i struggle to put it into words. I want to hit him with a chair but I also want to see what schemes he's up to😈😈 also, I love the "every time I write Ryan, he thinks its okay to monologue" tags - he is the antagonist who earned his right to monologue. He's very pragmatic in his vileness(at least so far; based on your tags, he has some major trouble coming his way), and I really like the way it plays out in the story so far.

Tl;dr: I love the way you edit and write those characters so freaking much :3 :3

OH MY GOD. HI. OKAY. THIS ASK HAS MADE MY WHOLE WEEK. I HAVE REREAD THIS ASK LIKE FOUR TIMES JUST GIGGLING AND KICKING MY FEET.

I feel like you know these characters even better than I do, which is maybe a sign that I've done well writing them but also kind of intimidating?? but yeah. let's talk about Ryan.

The first time I tried to write this story was about a year and a half ago. I stopped for a few different reasons, but I still wanted to rewrite it on my new blog. And when I was rereading my old work, one of the things I got frustrated with was that I was excited to write multiple whumpers, but all of the whumpers sort of blended together. They didn't have any personality, if that makes sense? They were just a bunch of people who wanted to torture a guy. Which is fine but I really wanted them to be more individual, so that's when I started assigning them actual motivations.

And yeah, you pretty much nailed their main motivations. Lucia (the queen—I don't think I've ever mentioned her name but it's Lucia) is very superficial because she is very driven by how she thinks other people see her (she thinks that holding onto the title of royalty is more about popularity than anything else) and it reflects in the way she sees other people, especially the ones who work for her. Cardan is driven by entertainment because he thinks he can get away with anything (hence the surprised folding like a wet newspaper anytime something doesn't go his way). Ryan, on the other hand, is driven by something like productivity? He also sees himself as the most competent person in the family.

I've honestly never considered how well Ryan would do in, like, a job that didn't already come with authority. But he is very... put together, in a way that intimidates everyone around him. He is the type of guy who people praise by saying "They can make the hard but necessary decisions" the way people say about historical figures. Ryan can be super ruthless whenever he thinks he needs to be, whereas if we see Cardan being cruel, it's out of boredom or curiosity.

(On a somewhat separate note, the twins are more or less supposed to be literary foils. Foils are two characters designed to contrast each other, usually to highlight good qualities in the protag of a story, and the twins are meant to highlight how horrible the other one is. cuz they're both horrible.)

Also, it means SO much to me that you included the part about show vs tell because Onyx is not a reliable narrator whatsoever when it comes to the morality of the royal family, due to this conditioning. And I've been kinda nervous about the way it's written because I was worried that the narrator saying "oh yeah this is normal :) they're the royal family they can do whatever they want" might make people think that it's not as bad as it is or something? Especially in spots like chapter three where Onyx is like "oh yeah Ryan hates his brother more than he hates me." But like. I'm glad we can all agree that Ryan is a dick anyway

[seijorhi]

15 & 33❤️❤️

Ty for asking bby!

15. What is the fanfic you’ve written that you’re most proud of? 

Final Girl, just because it was my first time writing a proper ‘horror’ fic and it was a challenging fic to write but i’m really happy with how it turned out :)

33. Have you ever stopped yourself from writing something? Why?

there are plenty of fics i’ve abandoned midway through writing them because they just weren’t working for me, but i don’t necessarily think i’ve ever deliberately stopped myself from writing something

(more fic asks below the cut)

23. 33... and 39. Chu.

23. How much do you stick to canon? 

outside of the whole ‘yandere’ thing, i like writing semi-canon for haikyuu because volleyball players are super fun to write - though au’s have always been a soft spot of mine. with bnha though, i think i find it easier to stick to a quirkless au, or if i do set it in the canon universe then to use it more as a backdrop and only refer to it vaguely - idk writing canon-ish bnha makes me nervous for some reason

33. Have you ever stopped yourself from writing something? Why?

see above :)

39. What area of writing do you feel strongest in?

um... idk i like to think i can write perspectives well? and like the more emotional side of the characters and what they’re experiencing? 

38, 39 and 40 plz🌝 and 31 for home because that’s my favourite fic of yours 👁👄👁

38. What story of yours are you surprised that people liked as much as they did? 

oh this one’s easy - Blindsided and Outrunning Fate - both i was almost 100% were gonna flop big time and i would have to delete this blog out of shame but they ended up being the most popular fics i have? idk why

39. What area of writing do you feel strongest in?

see above :)

40. What area of writing do you want to improve in?

smut. it takes me ages, i always feel self conscious about it and every time i leave a fic just on the verge of sex happening y’all come and yell at me for more so... that’s 2021′s pet project :)

31. What was the development process of [Fanfic Name] like? 

Home is one of my most underrated fics i think (am i allowed to say that? sdfghjkl) but it’s actually one of my faves. i’d been wanting to write timeskip pro oikawa for a long, long time and i also wanted to write a stockholm-ish fic for a while as well. it initially evolved from me wanting to write about oikawa railing the reader while he was high off of coke (which is still sort of implied in the fic) to something with a bit more turmoil and feelings - i love the idea of oikawa as a yandere who still wants to parade his trophy wife around - you’re not chained to the bed, he doesn’t abuse you at every chance, you still have the tiniest amount of freedoms, but you’re trapped all the same and you know he won’t ever let you go. and it didn’t necessarily start as a kidnapping, but a toxic relationship you couldn’t leave, and it’s about the isolation that’s forced upon you, the dependency you have (the initial love that never quite went away) and i wanted to add in the storm and the sex to kind of highlight the reader’s own angst and warring emotions and ugh... i just love that fic. 

Hiii rhi❤️👄❤️ So with the question thingy can you maybe answer 2, 11, 12 and 16? Sorry if that’s too much ahdjsjsk

2. What character(s) do you find the most difficult to write for? Why?

for bnha it’s most of them lol - but bakugou and shiggy were particularly tough to write because i didn’t want to make them too one-dimensional

for haikyuu - sakusa and ushijima mostly because again i worry about making them flat and weird i guess?

11. How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)

i think a lot of my fics are emotionally driven? or at least that’s how i try to write them? i’m not great with action scenes or smut, but i like getting into the characters (and the reader’s i guess too) headspace, it’s always fun - especially when i’m writing from the pov of the yandere

12. Who is your favorite author? 

answered here :)

16. What fanfic tropes do you avoid writing for?

i don’t really do fluffy (or in a healthy, consensual way at least) - i know it’s not so much a trope as a genre. as far as other tropes go, i avoid omegaverse (not that i’m against reading it) and anything snuff related because that is just not my cup of tea tbh

[domreaderrecs]

Oh boy do I have some kink discourse for you. Here’s a wholeass list:

1. A female dominant does not need to be a sadist who is always torturing and abusing their sub. They can be soft and kind and caring.

2. Findom is a valid form of domination and is really a kink, it is not just women faking it to get money.

3. Online domination is possible, although there are more risks involved, it is still a valid form of domination.

4. Submissive black men are allowed to refuse to be called slave and their dom shouldnt be annoyed they can’t used their preferred honorific.

5. Kink and fetishes can be incorporated without the use of the power dynamic found in BDSM.

6. BDSM is still BDSM if the rope is pink and the outfit is white lace instead of red and leather.

7. It should be standard practice for there to be a safe word that means everything is fine so that the Dom can check in on the sub easily without breaking the scene.

8. It is only BDSM when both parties have discussed before hand, otherwise it’s sexual assault (yes that includes Chad who brought out the rope without warning and now Bethany is just going along because she likes him)

9. BDSM has always and will always be driven by the LGBT community.

10. Under 18 year olds do not have a place in the BDSM community. If they wish to learn, then they should do so by finding articles and books, not by asking people involved in the scene.

Yeah that’s about it for now. I’m realizing you probably didn’t want this much but oh well. We’re here now. Let me know what you think!

whewww so much to unpack here lets go its essay time

1. !!!! this is probably one of the most fundamentally misunderstood parts of femdom. it don’t gotta be ball crushing and whipping and calling him a worm all the time, or even at all. this is probably what turns so many women off from trying it or thinking they might be into a more dominant role. gentle femdom is way more palatable for beginners and for me personally, just way more enjoyable (even tho i definitely would wanna make a boy cry from time to time)

2. I used to be one of those people who looked down on findom. I still don’t understand why anyone would be into it tbh but findoms get a lot of shit for no reason... being a sugar baby is so glamorized but if you’re a findom you’re cold, or a bitch, or taking advantage. even though they’re both just people who get money from men who have money to throw at them for sexual favors... but one’s demonized and one’s all the rage... hm i wonder why

3. I have no real/successful experience with this... more on that in number 10

4. 100000%!! the stories i’ve seen from black subs in kink (mostly black women but still) are horrendous. a lot of doms will try to enforce a master/slave relationship, and try to exercise their authority to make subs agree to it. i know it’s a common dynamic, but that shit is wayyyy different to black people... any dom should know that. forcing your sub to do anything is wrong, but especially something so racially, historically, and culturally insensitive. and don’t get me started on the surprise “race play” stories i’ve heard... like i said doing anything without your sub’s consent is wrong but THAT kind of thing requires double consent with a cherry on top. this is part of the reason I’m so scared to enter the kink scene... this shit scares me. thats why the title mistress and master/slave dynamics in general just isn’t for me. it makes me think of my ancestors :/

5. again, 1000% agree. i’ve said this on my blog before, but i’ll say it again. not everything has to be dom/sub stuff. if you wanna peg your bf you don’t have to tie him up and call him names or boss him around, you can just peg him. i feel like ever since FSOG this whole dom/sub thing has grown way out of proportion, but that’s a whole other essay for another day

6. yessss I hate the stereotype of dom outfits as black, latex, leather, way too high to walk in boots... like does it look fire?? yes of course but pink and lace and knee high socks would make a fit that’s just as fire. 

7. this is non-negotiable to me. whenever I hear someone say “I don’t like safe words” or “I/We don’t need a safe word” it’s just a red flag to me. idc what anyone says safe words are mandatory.

8. Yes. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this but with the rise of the popularity of “rough sex” (again, thanks FSOG) there’s seems to be a rise in people who just assume their partner may be into something, or who just try to experiment on their partner without asking them first. I’ve heard a lot of friends and other girls talk about guys just going straight into choking them, spanking them, and pulling their hair without even asking if they like it (another reason I’m scared to get out there and do stuff, as a person who is very much not a sub or into being treated roughly or tossed around, it’s a big fear of mine). I’ve also seen a lot about girls just randomly trying to finger their boyfriends. If it’s not vanilla, and y’all haven’t discussed it, do not assume it’s on the table. We’ve gotten to a point that kinky stuff is so talked about and normalized (especially with young adults) that people forget it’s actually kinky. 

9. period.

10. okay so story time, around the age of 15/16 is when I started to realize I was into kinky stuff. The preference had kinda always been there, but I couldn’t really place a name to it. I had always felt like an outcast among my peers when it came to the way they would talk about romantic and sexual relationships (I was a year ahead, so all my friends were 1-2 years older than me, so they started to do that stuff earlier than I did) because the things they talked about and liked were way different from the stuff I would think/fantasize about, so I always stayed quiet (teenage girls are very vocal about having choking/daddy kinks but that’s definitely indicative of a much larger problem that i will not get into bc that’s a whole other very very long essay that I will definitely write on here one day but not now). So when I found out what gentle femdom was I felt like I had a community that understood me, and everything just clicked. I would lurk on online communities and I lived for the discourse on there but I could never actively participate because every community had a strict “no minors” policy. They would say exactly what you said, “If minors wish to learn, then they should do so by finding articles and books, not by asking people involved in the scene.” I didn’t want to make anyone catch a case and I didn’t want to get targeted by predators so I tried to follow their advice. i found nothing. There honestly just isn’t that much educational stuff for “kinky teenagers”, or at least none that fit me. There was no femdom oriented stuff. I mean sure there was the standard “consent is important especially in bdsm relationships” but like that didn’t really help me. I had so many questions, that I could never feel comfortable asking my mom or a therapist, and especially not my friends. I didn’t know how to express this part of myself. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it and I couldn’t even watch porn like a normal teenager (we all know the state of femdom porn. its bad) so I was this ball incredible frustration and confusion and i didn’t know what to do with it. So I unfortunately turned to twitter. There I made a little like minded friend. he was also 16 so i thought “this is good, a non adult also kinky teenager who I can relate too. what could go wrong :)”(I’m sure you see where this is going) I was so excited to have a new friend, but ofc, our convos soon took a turn. However, since he was the first person to ever show interest in me, and the only person my age who i could talk to who understood me, i started to catch feelings. But he was a teen just like me, just as horny and confused and sooo immature. He started to pressure me into domming him/becoming his domme, but I refused because I wasn’t ready (i saw on one of those online communities I used to lurk in that its not healthy for your first sexual experience to be bdsm and I took that to heart). he ghosted me. needless to say that “friendship” was toxic. i realized too late that he only saw me as a kink dispenser, and didn’t care about me on a personal level. it also made me realize how not “mature for my age” I was. i say all this to say, NO, teenagers should not be participating in kink. they are not mature enough. however education and resources for them are not where they should be. if we want to discourage them from putting themselves in these situations, we need to better provide them with education and healthy ways to relieve these urges/feelings (i eventually took up writing, it helped me a lot). i feel like had i found a healthier and safer way to express/explore that side of myself, I would’ve never gotten in that situation to begin with. That experience has kinda put me off from dipping my toe into the actual community (well that and the lack of diversity but we’ve already talked about that)

ALSO the amount of very young children i’ve seen in the kink “community” on twitter is alarming... you’re not a little you’re 12

anyways, thanks so much for this essay of an ask and sorry i wrote an essay in response to each one lol but like I said I could discuss kink all day

[kintsugi-sheep]

Orchard, 21.03.21: Vitamin Z

Vitamin Z

This week I was reminded of why I started this course of changes. I don’t know how appropriate it is to refer to someone as your muse today, but I knew regardless. It’s like an adrenaline shot to the heart, one of those cinematic, dramatic ones that snaps you out of the in-and-out, humdrum, mundane world around you and pulls you, heart-first, back into why you started what you were doing.

I probably won’t meet her again. I’m sure that ship is at a nicer dock perched on a virtuous coastline and carved out of six-pack abs. But, I’m grateful.

It’s easy to find the flaws in someone who rejected you. In her case, I couldn’t find any. She was just right to turn me down.

I missed her. I miss her. But there’s wonderful women everywhere. And I’ll take to heart the changes I need to make so that I don’t miss the next her that crosses my path.

 Budget

In the spirit of that, I sat down to figure out my budget for the next year. And it’s looking surprisingly optimistic.

My goal is to move up to Syracuse. With my financials figured out, I just need to not lose my job and I should be able to make it my next June.

Needless to say, I was happy to learn that.

 Facebook Writers

What I wasn’t so happy about is the series of Facebook groups I’ve joined. As you can tell, writing personal things isn’t really my strong suit. Certainly not in situations like this, where I’m making myself do it. But, considering that I am one writer out of hundreds of millions in the world, I imagined it be nice to acquaint myself with some people. Marketing for writers isn’t easy, after all. Especially when you’re not named.

But the communities are all pretty…vitriolic.

A man asked which of two covers worked better for his book. Being a group of writers, he received dozens of detailed responses. Answers wherein the speaker was more interested in showing off their understanding of literary and publishing nuances than actually answering the questions.

My response: “Number 1.”

A woman made a detailed list of the stereotypes applied when male writers write sexually active males against how they write sexually active females. Of course, the problem was these were stereotypes in writing. “Men who sleep around are great! But women who sleep around are sluts!” “Men who aren’t interested in sex are focused, driven by success in life! Women who aren’t interested in sex are lesbians!”

She applied this long list of writing faux pas on the shoulders of male writers. And this led to more arguing.

People post clips of their book as they’re writing it. A commenter tells them to use more commas and write shorter sentences. A poster volunteers themselves to give out their opinion, making sure to note that they’ve run a blog for the last ten years, so you know their word has value.

A Facebook certified “Conversation Starter” describes The Face by Dean Koontz as “tiresome, tedious, ostentatious” with “florid prose and so many extended metaphors”. This followed by a flood of comments about how much Dean Koontz sucks and questions of how he got so popular.

I’ve never read Dean Koontz, but I’ve heard of him. I don’t recognize any of these people by face or name.

Crabs in a barrel. There’s no success too small for these people to put down. There’s no templar too noble for them to not shit on. There’s a million complex, pretentious, “it depends”, pseudointellectual answers to simple questions like, “Does the blue cover or black cover look better?”

I’m happy I didn’t go to college to write. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to some out this exhausting.

It feels like people don’t understand that there’s success to be had for everybody when it comes to writing. There’s not always fame and critical success. Or an interview tour or a movie deal. Or a place in a high school text book or pop mythology. Or billions of dollars in the bank and vacations to hunt sharks with a shotgun.

But success is available to everyone. Appearance may vary.

I don’t know if I’ll stay in these groups. Or if a non-collegiate writer like me would be expunged. But I take peace in the knowledge that if I ever want to know what type of writer I don’t want to be I can just open up Facebook, click on the group, scroll half a page down, and find some example of how not to pursue this career.

 In the Name of Love for Shaman King

I should also make it clear that I’m going to forego the Shaman King breakdown I intended to write. I have enough distractions from what it is I need to do.

I’m disappointed twice over. First, I don’t have the ability to pick up a new discipline and edit a video together. Maybe if I were more patient or observant, but I’m just not there yet. Secondly, I let the new viewers, the ones who get legitimately excited to experience something I used to love, who craft theories and breakdown themes, get to me.

My love of Shaman King inspired me as an artist and a writer. And while I put down my colored pencils nearly a decade ago now, I still write. And I still carry those themes of spirituality and optimism into the stories I craft.

And that’s the best way for me to present my love. Through my actual work. Through what actually inspires me. Through patience. And not a six-hour list of things I love about the series.

And that wasn’t a jab at legitimate reviewers. That was the plan.

 Mom

Also, I was given a mattress by my mom this week.

Family’s a weird point for me. I don’t know if I’m ready to get into that, but I feel that I need to do a better job as someone who owes his existence to other people. I forgot who it was, but someone once said that there are two types of parents. You can be a role model or you can be a cautionary tale.

 Coworkers

I’m in a good place with my coworkers, too.

The front-of-house is mostly college-aged—closer to my age than most of back-of-house—and their optimistic look on life keeps me grounded in positivity as well.

I didn’t work in too many kitchens after culinary school, but they could definitely get rough. It’s nice to be able to enjoy your work.

 Commitment to Making Flash Fiction as Flash Fiction

I needed to reassure myself in my commitment to writing flash fiction.

I made an assurance to edit one of the stories when I posted it to Reddit a few days ago. It didn’t take me long to realize I shouldn’t have done that. Flash fiction is the nice decompressing poop that you take in the morning before you begin the stuff you legitimately work on. And if it’s nice enough you may even be compelled to mold that poop into a decent short.

I got myself caught up. I was afraid that, having posted many of these low-quality poops online, people would begin to judge me as nothing more than a poop writer. And when it came time to actually try to get people to read my web serial, they’d be like, “I don’t care if it’s free. You’re a poop writer. I can’t waste my time with you.”

Yahtzee Croshaw does a series called “Dev Diary” on YouTube, where he breaks down the process of making indie video games. In one of them he talked about how perfectionism sinks in. How it’s tempting to keep your work to yourself, to keep it from being judged so that others may not, by extension, judge you. He said he had to remember that he was not his work.

And I suppose I have to do the same. I’m not a hobbyist with a single story that I’m convinced will put my name on the map. I’m a writer with dozens of different ideas and could get excited about a dozen new ones in the next week.

Boxing matches are won by throwing many small punches, not throwing one with all of your bodyweight and hoping it’s a hit.

 A Non-Racist Uber Driver

I had a race-related discussion with an Uber driver.

It was nice.

 Pre-College Memories

I reflected on my lackadaisical approach when it came to applying for college. I was short tempered and impatient and ignorant.

It’s thanks to Vitamin Z that I realized I don’t have to actually go back to school to do what I need to do.

But the effort I need to put forward will be monumental nonetheless.

I told you I’d come back more positive.

[hostgalli19]

The Cannibal’s Book Collection -  Chapter 4: The Red Dragon’s Angel Shot

Chapter Summary: Clarice didn't think asking the red-eyed Bartender at The Red Dragon would lead to her getting to know the two owners, the lovely dark-haired waitress and the Bartender's grumpy husband and them becoming something like a second family. Note: Good afternoon everyone. This chapter was inspired by the story Shots by whatanauthorsgottado on FFN, where Clarice orders an Angel Shot while on a date. 

I thought it was an interesting idea and decided to write a story about it. I have borrowed some dialogue from whatanauthorsgottado's story, though its mostly the description of what an Angel Shot is and a little towards the end. 

Hope you like this chapter.

Length: 2,434 words (4 pages) Taglist: @maskveilshroud​, @beccalovesbooksstuff​, @wilfordwarfstacheisbae​, @matt10nt​, @yourfavoritebrowngirl-blog​, @hxnnigrxms​, @kaoribriefs​, @lamb-and-knife​ Link: Ao3 and FFN

Date: 21/05/20 - 24/05/20 Time: 10:01 pm - 4:12 pm

Clarice shifted uncomfortably in her seat as she looked around the dimly lit bar and did her best to try and look interested in what her 'date' Paul Krendler was telling. She very much wished she had told him she had other plans but somehow knew that wouldn't have worked for very long and she was still be stuck on a date with the man.

The Red Dragon had been around for 20 years and was fairly popular with the college crowd though there were a few rules the patrons had to abide by. Most of the rules were in regard to driving while drunk. The patrons had to give their address and who they had come up (if they had come with someone) when they entered.

It made it easier to call a cab for someone when they were drunk, unable to stand or were in an unsafe situation. To ensure no left the bar drunk the Patrons had to give their keys to the doorman when they entered. It had taken their patrons a while to get used to the new rules. They were clear and easy to understand.

There were some unwritten rules, mostly the dos and don't of being in the bar that no one talked about but everyone knew. The Bartender *always* knew what was going on, there was no point lying to him. He would find out eventually. Unlike in most bars around Baltimore, the bartender here didn't take BS from anyone and would be more than happy to tell them what he thought.

He also made it clear that they had best use their manners or they would be escorted out of the bar, drunk or no.

"I need to go to the bathroom," Clarice muttered, getting up and going to the bathroom, she wanted to get out there but didn't know-how. She knew Krendler would come up with some sort of excuse to get her in trouble at work which was something Clarice very much wanted to avoid. She was confused when a girl and her friend seemly appeared out of nowhere and pulled her aside before she could go back Krendler.

"Your date doesn't look like it's going so well. You may want to order an Angel Shot. The Bartender'll know what you mean," the red-haired girl commented, sharing a look with her friend before they walked out of the bar, picking up their keys from the doorman. Clarice stared after them wondering what they had been walking about.

Her drink was half-finished when she got up to order another one for herself and for her 'date'. She was having a little trouble standing, everything was a little blurry, she blinked a few times and blurriness disappeared, her headache, however, didn't. One of the bartenders smiled at her briefly as he finished with another customer.

Clarice watched as he deftly made the customers drinks before walking over. His greying hair was slicked back, his maroon eyes seemed to shine in the bar light. Clarice opened her mouth to say something but had to lean against the bar. She suddenly felt dizzy. The red-eyed Bartender looked at her, what he was seeing she didn't know.

"Are you alright? You don't look so good" The Bartender questioned, a concerned look on his face. Clarice smiled slightly and rubbed her temple’s, her head hurt. She wanted to go home and go to bed and sleep for the best of the weekend. Clarice nodded and opened her mouth to order before pausing and looking down at the menu. Unsure of what to order.

"Could I have a pint of Heineken and... an Angel Shot, two girls mentioned I might want to get one. I don't know what that is though," Clarice decided, looking up when she heard a faint *clink* as he set the glass he had been cleaning down behind the bar and stared at her, his eyes seemed to glow faintly in the dim light.

"Well, my dear there are three ways to order an Angel Shot: neat, on the rock or with lime, which would you prefer?" The Bartender questioned, Clarice, chewed on her lip a little, trying to decide as the Bartender got Krendler his drink.

"um, neat please," Clarice answered, a little unsure

"Of course, let me grab my coat. The Angel Shot is an inconspicuous way of asking for help when someone is on a bad or dangerous date and want to get out... it would appear those girls were correct in telling you to ask for an angel shot, you... date is drugging the remainder of your drink," The Bartender explained, Clarice paled and leaned more against the bar.

"He's going what?" Clarice demanded, unable to believe Krendler would do something like that. She knew there might be a possibility of someone drugging her drink while she was on a date, she had heard about it happening to other girls and friends in her year but had never thought it would happen to her. Particularly by someone, she was working with.

"I think I'll take that Angel Shot now," Clarice stated, sliding into a seat when leaning against the bar no longer seemed to help her stay standing. The Bartender nodded, looking her over, unlike when other man did that to her, Clarice didn't feel uncomfortable, she knew the Bartender was just worried. He went to get his coat, leaving Clarice some sweet lemon water.

She hoped Krendler wouldn't come over and ask unwanted questions, she wasn't sure what she would say if he did.

"What's taking so long babe? Where's the bartender, the service here is terrible. What are you drinking" Krendler questioned walked up to Clarice with her glass, setting it next to her? Clarice stiffened when Krendler wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She didn't want him touching her but couldn't move away. She was defiantly taking a shower when she got home.

"He had to get something from the back for another customer. Just some flavoured water the bartender gave me," Clarice lied smoothly. It was shocking how easily she could lie. She found it easier to lie about certain things or to certain people. She had gotten very good at it over the years. It had often meant the difference between eating and not some days.

"Like I said, the service here is terrible. Why don't you finish your drink and we can go back to my place and watch a movie," Krendler stated, pushing her almost-empty rum and coke towards her, winking. Clarice shivered, she wasn't leaving the bar with him tonight. It didn't matter that he was her ride home. She could get a cab home.

"I'm afraid this lady won't be going anywhere with you. I was just about to walk her to her car," the Bartender stated, walking around from the bartender slipping his old style black coat. Despite the fact the Bartender was shorter then Krendler he was somehow intimidating, making Krendler take a step back, pulling Clarice back, his arm slipping his off her shoulder and tightening around her upper arm.

"You can't walk her to her car. I'm her ride home. She's not going anywhere with a freak like you," Krendler snapped glaring at the Bartender, Krendler assumed he was her ride home because he had driven her to the bar, she hadn't asked him to take him home, she had just asked him to pick her up. She had made sure to meet him two blocks from her house, that way he didn't actually know where she lived.

"That's more than rude. I don't much like rude people. Why didn't you give your keys to the doorman? The rules are there for a reason," the Bartender stated, a strange look in his eyes, she pulled her arm from Krendler tight hold. It was going to leave a bruise. Clarice was about to take the Bartender's arm when she stumbled, the Bartender wrapped his arm around her waist. Putting her half-empty drink behind the bar.

The girl looked incredibly pale. He had noticed how unsteady she had been when she walked over to the bar. The fact she had been leaning against the bar so much in order to stay standing. Finding out the lady's date was her ride home was... unsettling to say the least.

He checked in with the Doormen if she had left her address, and frowned when he was told the man she was with said she was living with him. The Bartender knew that wasn't true. If they had been living together then she wouldn't have asked for The Angel Shot. Even if they had been living together and she had asked for the Angel Shot it wouldn't have changed anything.

He knew just because the person who asked for the Angel Shot lived with the person didn't mean they weren't in danger. He made it look like he was going to the parking lot but he went around back and put her on the couch in the staff room so she could rest until he was done with his shift, he had one of the other staff sit with her.

The girl surprisingly stayed asleep for the rest of his shift and for the trip to his home. He put her in the first-floor guest room that was usually used for bar patrons. Making sure to get a glass of water and some Advil and writing a note before leaving her to rest.

THE NEXT MORNING

Clarice groaned, sitting up when she heard her alarm go off, it was way too early and her head hurt, she froze when she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there. The last thing she remembered was stepping towards the Bartender and everything going blurry. She frowned when she saw a note on her phone, telling her that there was water and Advil for her headache.

She grabbed her jacket from the chair and took the Advil before exiting the room and following her nose to the kitchen, she could hear the sound of someone moving around. It was only after she had gotten closer did she realise there was more than one person in the kitchen. She was surprised to see the Bartender from the night before along with another man and a girl who looked a little older than her.

"Ah good, you're awake. I didn't get to introduce myself last night, my name is Hannibal Lector, this is my husband Will and surrogate daughter Abigail. Sit down and I'll get you something to eat. Abigail could you get the milk from the fridge," Hannibal state when he looked up and saw Clarice standing in the doorway, she nodded and went to sit down. Whatever he was cooking smelled delicious.

"Thank you for last night. I'm Clarice Starling," Clarice replied, happily taking the coffee Abigail handed to her. It smelled amazing and tasted even better, she was used to the store-bought stuff that didn't taste all that good unless you were willing to pay a little extra for the better brands that never seemed to last as long.

"You're more than welcome Miss Starling. Your...date told the doorman that you were living together. Which is very much against the rules. Each person has to give their address when they enter in case something like this happens," Hannibal replied, placing some food in front of the young women she grinned and him and started to eat.

"This is amazing. I'm certainly not living with that creep. I didn't even want to be there but Krendler wouldn't leave me alone until I said yes to going on a date with him, I think he may have also threatened me but I'm not sure," Clarice replied as she slowly ate her breakfast, she looked up when she heard a soft growl and saw it was coming from Will.

He had curly dark brown hair and blue eyes and was wearing a plaid shirt and pair of slightly worn jeans. He did *not* look pleased at what she was saying. Hannibal ran a hand over his shoulder as he walked over to the stove to get the second lot of eggs out of the pan. It was clear they loved each other a great deal.

"I'm not surprised he's up to his old tricks again. Hopefully this time it'll be enough to at least get him kicked from the FBI. I used to work for them part-time as a consultant. This isn't the first time he's tried something like this but no one's ever been able to prove it. Thankfully the bar has cameras," Will explained when he saw the confused look on Clarice's face.

"I told you installing the camera system was a good idea," Abigail commented, she looked rather smug, Clarice guessed she had been the one to convince them it was a good idea, she was more than thankful that there were cameras that way Krendler couldn't claim anything, and couldn't make up any story either as she hadn't gone home with him.

Clarice spent the rest of the weekend getting to know Hannibal, Will and Abigail. She was surprised to learn that Hannibal ran The Red Dragon with his brother Anthony. Hannibal usually helped out on weekends due to running his own psychology practice during the rest of the week. Will was usually the Bartender most nights but he had an Open Night at the university and couldn't go.

Abigail was usually a waitress and sometimes helped Hannibal and Anthony in the kitchen. The brothers traded off who was in the kitchen and who was out the front every other weekend. Clarice very quickly became a regular at the bar which had wonderful food and a good atmosphere and was so much different than other bars in the area.

She had been beyond irritated when she had gone into work one week only to be dragged into Jack's office and told that she could no longer to the Red Dragon as it was unsafe according to some intelligence they had gotten from another agent. Clarice had just stared at him and laughed, The Red Dragon was far safer than any other bar in the area.

She informed Anthony the night time she went to The Red Dragon. To say he was...displeased would have been an understatement. She was more than shocked when she went in the following only to be called into Jack's office and be met with Anthony, Hannibal, and Will. They did not look pleased and Jack looked incredibly uncomfortable.

Note: Thank you for reading, this chapter was fun to write though did take longer than I wanted because the 'enter' key on my keyboard is broken so I'm having to relearn how to type without using it. 

If you have any ideas for what I could write next please let me know. 

[ask-the-guiding-light-cast]

Guiding Light turns two years old today!

It’s crazy to think this all began only a couple of years back... and also hilarious it falls on the same day as “International Mystery Dungeon Day” over on Twitter. More after the cut. This is gonna be a long one, so I appreciate anyone willing to read this. ^^

For a long time, I had been a casual consumer of fan fics. It started in the late 2000s when I was in a Spyro craze thanks to the more story-driven Legend of Spyro trilogy. I had an itch that I needed scratched and FFN fulfilled that to some extent. I also looked at some Mario fics, including Paper Mario: The Temple of the Sun, which I greatly enjoyed and thought did a good job adapting the formula that made Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door so beloved and putting a unique spin on things.

But it was until the early 2010s that I actually started getting back into Pokémon games with Gen V. After Emerald, I fell out of touch with Pokémon for a time. When Gen VI came around, I dipped my toe into the fandom through Twitch livestreams, but also through reading a few anime-based fics that are very long and still going, even now. 

At the same time, I ended up buying PMD: Explorers of Sky... and damaged my cartridge before I could properly finish the game with my Vulpix/Riolu team. So, I watched cutscenes for what I missed on YouTube, then got Gates to Infinity and, later, Super Mystery Dungeon and had fun with both of them... though more for the stories and characters than the actual gameplay. Truth be told, I don’t care much for roguelikes at all.

It was during the gap in time between Super’s release and the first official footage of Sun & Moon in mid-2016 that I found myself hit with a recurring thought: “What if someone made a PMD story where the hero and the partner are forced to fight one another with the fate of the world at stake?” I wound up (loosely) brainstorming an idea for a PMD story revolving around an antagonistic Hoopa character who would use its ring portals to collect entire communities, including the Pokémon living in them... all so that he would never be bored. This would lead him to “collect” the partner to add to his “toys,” so when the hero shows up, he’d sic the partner on them.

But that was as far as I got with the idea. I ended up graduating college and took a job with late evening hours. It left me pretty tired and exhausted and unmotivated to do much of anything. I withdrew from the parts of the Pokémon community I was involved in.

Then the Generation VII games came out and, while divisive in the fandom, I found myself really liking some of the concepts. There were so many times when I thought, “Gee, I wonder what this would be like if it were in a PMD game?” For example, one of the ideas I had was a sort of edgy rival rescue team akin to Gladion, which would have a Midnight Lycanroc, a Zoroark, and a Type: Null character in it.

So, toward the end of 2016 and early 2017, I started creating an idea for a Choose Your Own Adventure story with the intent of putting it on this really small forum I was a part of. It would be a Gen VII-themed PMD story, but because I didn’t think that sounded interesting enough, I decided that, not only would the human keep their memories, but they would be from the real world and be a major Pokémon nerd. The idea was that the choices the readers made would affect the relationship between the human and partner. I even came up with a point system. The more points the readers earned for their choices, the “closer” the relationship the hero and partner would have and the happier an ending the story would get. If the hero and partner couldn’t stand each other, one of them would likely end up working with the bad guy and winning. If they became steadfast friends, they’d work together to save the world.

Unfortunately, the forum shut down before I got too far into planning it, so I shelved the idea and continued focusing on my job. And things stayed that way for several months, until I ended up getting into med school and scrambling to move.

During the downtime I had when I wasn’t doing moving related stuff, I decided to look at FFN again and found Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Defenders of Warmth. I wound up reading through the entirety of the story quite quickly. I guess you could say it sparked something in my head. The fic itself focuses on what, at the time, was the newest Gen (Gen V). It also has multiple humans and is set on a continent separate from the canon locations (which were just the Air and Grass Continents, since Gates and Super didn’t exist when the fic was written). In short, it renewed my desire to pursue my idea of a Gen VII-flavored PMD story.

So, I set about creating my story outline. It is so... so much different from the actual story, though I’ve gone into that in previous posts (search for #amby answers). Originally, I used Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as the framework for the fic: an alien invasion in a colorful, comedic world. I took more specific cues, too. Zero was meant to be a (mostly) silent antagonist a la Princess Shroob, for example.

The problem was, I really didn’t have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I’d like to say I was writing for myself, but I really did want validation, too. I think any author is lying to themselves if they say they don’t feel this way at some point. Because of this, I figured if I put the fic on FFN, it would get ignored. The site’s huge! There were, at the time, around 85k fics in the Pokémon section alone. (That number’s since gone up to over 90k!)

Given I had experience with forums, I decided to post it to Serebii, because the fic community seemed much smaller and more open to giving feedback to one another. In an effort to try and, y’know, establish some connections, I actually read other pieces and reviewed them before posting any stories. This also helped me build up a backlog of chapters and prove to myself I enjoyed writing this enough to keep going.

When I finally did post the fic, it was a bumpy start, for sure. I do think I made a lot of mistakes out of the gate, including uploading chapters way too quickly for readers on Serebii to (reasonably) try to keep pace. That probably cost me a few potential readers... or made them silent readers who I never ended up hearing from. Which is why I’m especially thankful to @girl-like-substance (who I can seem to tag, drat) for all of the well-thought-out feedback given throughout the fic’s run. I don’t think I would’ve made such significant strides in my writing otherwise... and there are plenty of long-running fics where the quality tends to stagnate.

In any case... it was thanks to a request from @deliriousabsol to put the fic somewhere more mobile-friendly that I chose to mirror Guiding Light on FFN starting in October 2017. I would’ve kept going on Serebii had she not asked so nicely, so she’s the one you can thank for it showing up there! (She’s a fellow author who does cyberpunk-themed fics and art and her characters have cameoed in the fic.)

And, honestly, I’m just... beyond shocked at what wound up happening to the fic once it hit FFN. Well, actually, for the first several months I was lucky if I even got a comment when I put up a chapter. I’m not sure any of the people who first commented on FFN still follow the fic anymore. I haven’t seen/heard from them at all, so I assumed they moved on with their lives.

In any case, around March of 2018, the word count on FFN passed 300k and... somehow, the fic starting getting more attention. Like, a lot more attention. This was... not really something I was even remotely prepared for.

(Yes, this means there’s gonna be a giveaway. More on that later.) I never would’ve thought I’d reach a number like this. I never imagined I’d meet another PMD author who’d be willing to do a fun collab (thanks @virgil134, Spiteful Murkrow, and Namohysip). I really did not imagine that I’d ever get fanart of characters that I wrote (huge thanks @thebreak-ofdawn, @ask-nicky-and-others, and @cresselia92). I mean, above everything, I not expect the fic or characters to resonate with anybody the way it wound up.

A part of me feels like I don’t really deserve it. I’ve made a lot of serious gaffes with writing this. When initial Serebii feedback had people intrigued by Shane’s jerkass attitude (when I didn’t actually intend for him to come off as a jerk), I dialed things up in the hopes I’d keep their attention. It probably cost me readers. Then there’s the slow pacing of the early episodes and the mistake of making Special Episode 3 as long as it was... which my speaks to my (bad) tendency to give into some of my strongest impulses even though I had an outline I was trying to stick to.

And, I mean, there’s also some of the “shamlessly shameful” stuff I’ve done with the fic. I’m not fooling myself. Guiding Light has grown progressively more furry and, uh, probably fanservicey, too. All the big furbait (and some scalebait) ‘mons are accounted for. There’s a lot more sexual humor when I initially promised myself I would stay away from romance and keep everything platonic. I practically turned Xerneas into waifu bait, if some of these asks are anything to go by. This blog certainly didn’t help in that regard. Maybe I’m just being my usual nervous self? 

I am worried that this fic’s performance has, somehow, affected my thoughts and behavior. There are very popular fic authors who let their popularity get to their head... or chose to open up Patreons (something that makes me uncomfortable) or start doing things like taking commissions for written pieces, which is understandable... though I think it’s an easy way to lose your passion for writing. I guess some of that worry stems from a debacle I learned about on a Discord server I’m in, but that’s not something I’m comfortable discussing publicly. 

And I haven’t even talked much about the blog itself. Like, it somehow passed 100 followers? Where? When? How? I don’t actually draw stuff like many other Pokéasks. And, like, for a lot of folks, I have no idea if they’ve actually read the fic or just check in on the blog. It’s the same with the fic, I suppose. If you’re a silent reader/follower, I would really love to hear from you! I promise... I don’t bite or anything. I’d love to know what (if anything) you’re thinking. And if you’re a blog that’s following this one and we haven’t interacted, please feel free to reach out! It’s honestly hard to tell if people like what I’m doing, so any feedback is always appreciated.

In any case, if I haven’t lost you by now, I guess all I can say is... thank you. Thank you all so much for all of the support... whether it’s on the fic, the blog, or both of them. I really do hope this final episode can meet your expectations. I’ll try my very best to make this an ending to remember. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you guys enjoy it and feel it does justice to the PMD series.

Sorry for all the rambling. The inbox is open again if you’d like to send any messages for the ficaversary. Again, thank you all so much! You’re the best!

[cowardsanctuary]

Into the Object Hole:

Why is Nearly Every Object Show Flash-Animated?

(warning: a big, gigantic ramble generated by the mind of a comic artist)

I’m asking this question because I was bitten by the “Object Show” bug myself! It’s become a niche but easily replicated genre of its own within the animation community. Starting with the eponymous Battle For Dream Island (a show I think we’re all familiar with), we’ve seen many creators follow suit in the seemingly simple formula of having a bunch of inanimate objects participate in a game show-esque competition.

This is not to claim that Object Shows are unoriginal or overdone at this point: on the contrary. With the advent of resources for learning writing, animation, et cetera, I feel there’s a massive amount of potential that this community has, until now, mostly neglected. Battle for BFDI is, from what I can tell, reveling in its own, unique premise in the way it wants to. Inanimate Insanity’s second season has, as of late, recognized its potential to communicate a story about change and growth within individuals and the world around it. Unfortunately, I haven’t watched many shows, but I feel I’ve gotten my point across.

In another post, I asked about shows that didn’t use Flash, so i’m going to be responding to those before I embark on my tangent.

@apcwoc said:                                                                                                                            djshjksjhhdj most of the shows are probably done on flash because a lot of them were started when the og creators where much younger and flash is the easiest and most reliable to use when people start out animating            

that’s a common thread i’ve been finding!! one of the earliest object shows, Animation Island by legotd61, was created a year after BFDI—and at the time, legotd61 was 7 years old. granted the animation & visuals aren’t the most jaw-dropping thing in the world, but they were a kid so it’s automatically charming. in like, a kid sense.

@demi-gray suggested Modern Objects as a non-asset-using show!

Unfortunately, it still relies on assets for arguably the most important visuals: the characters! They do use the capabilities of Flash more extensively than other shows (that I know of), which makes watching the characters do their thing a lot more fun and engaging. The unique style compared to other shows definitely helps out a lot as well!

@payjayisgod said:                                                                                                                            i mean, i do frame-by-frame all the time, but for the sake of saving time i’ll be using assets for the bodies (gonna try doing everything else with frame-by-frame) in my own series i’ll be making with some friends ^^“ if you wanna see my animations my youtube is Icedog McMuffin :0c                            

PLEASE show me your show when you do it, because your animations are!!! really cute!!! also i’d LOVE to see stuff that takes the path of Modern Objects: with asset bodies, yes, but everything else is done according to the needs of the visuals. Use your medium to the best of its ability!

@dottival said:                                                                                                                            I once saw someone who Wanted to do frame-by-frame, but they never got their show off the ground. Mostly because they never really started??

you can’t just. tell me this. and not say who this person is (unless they want their identity under wraps, which i’ll respect)!!!! I’d love to ask them about their thought process towards their show, unless they didn’t actually plan much. I want to do some... ReSearch....

Speaking of planning, the thing that enchants and haunts me most about object shows is how much is going on behind the scenes. This is for any animated show, really, because as a bitty comic artist, I had no clue where to begin. I’ve started to draft and worldbuild for my own show, but I can’t help but wonder how much of it is done for other object shows.

(this is a thumbnail for a setting on my show!)

The medium, by default, demands attention on the characters at the forefront. The premise generates interest, the aesthetics (aren’t necessary but) lead viewers in, and the subject(s) of the show is what keeps audiences engaged. No matter what the creator(s) choose as the subject, they must make sure it’s polished to their best abilities, while ensuring other elements of their medium is properly balanced.

If you’re creating a character-driven narrative, for example, you’ll want to focus on the development of your characters. And, since it’s easiest to relate to concrete characters, that’s what novice content creators focus on developing as their content’s primary subject (and what professional content creators master).

However, the development of, say, a character is more often than not put into the hands of the viewers. How? Viewer participation: having the audience vote off who leaves a competition.

An interesting concept as, typically, animated shows require oodles of planning in order to convey the story it wants to the best of its ability. This makes the typical object show a challenge (forgive the word-play) to pull off properly, despite being deceptively simple enough of a feat on the surface. Character development can be volatile, as any character can be booted off (depending on how well you can predict a character getting eliminated).

Following this, the difficulty of creating a cohesive and well-written story through the Object Show format is very, very high. After all, you need to place time in your resources as wisely as possible, in order to avoid taking too much time on an end product you may not even like a little while later. The elimination of one character may upset a part or the entirety of the show’s plotline, if a creator is not careful.

Inanimate Insanity’s writing was able to excel at its greatest the moment viewer voting was dropped. One of the best shows in this genre (in my opinion), Modern Objects, isn’t even an object show: it’s formatted like a sitcom, and focuses primarily on characters and comedy. The one object show I was able to find that was primarily frame-by-frame animation (thank you, @bfb-basard!), Race to the Mansion of Tomorrow, is 100% script-driven; meaning, no viewer participation. This is the same for a few other shows as well, though I am not aware of them at this point of time.

(a snapshot of my animation process: this is for an animation of my OCs Milt and Malt, put to the audio of Big Bill Hell’s Cars.)

So why Flash? The answer is because it’s just easier. Not in the sense that the animators of these shows are lazier, but because animating in Flash saves time. Unless you’re putting all your stops into your show, or the contestants will always be present / aren’t quite as important to the narrative, you absolutely cannot afford to waste time and energy on things that can get thrown away later. Either that, or you don’t know where a character or a plotline or what have you will build up to, so you want to make sure whatever you do make isn’t wasted.

(Granted, I always feel there’s always time for weird plots to be resolved until it’s the very end, but retcons are also an option?)

You see this video? It’s a pretty simple animation of just a little softball walking around.

It took me 2 or 3 hours, give or take, to finish. Nearly every frame is unique, and I drew them all with my hands and my tablet, nothing else. All moving parts are either animated in 2′s or 1′s—the latter of which being 1/24th of a second. There are 35 drawn frames overall, stretched out onto 127 individual frames that constitute the entirety of the animation.

In other words, this clip is 5 seconds long.

If you want to finish an object show within your lifetime, let alone within 5 years, then Flash will be your best friend. It’s good, revolutionary technology that will make your life easier. With Flash, you don’t have to draw things over and over and focus instead on the motion, not the artwork.

Not only that, but being able to finish in a timely manner will help smaller content creators as, since we’re small and have small audiences, not everyone has a long enough attention span to hang onto you for decades. Certain shows like BFB and Inanimate Insanity have the advantage of popularity, so they can take their time with both the show and life (but they’re still rushed by their audience anyways so it’s a double-edged sword).

If you want to tell a story, consider what medium you tell it through wisely. Animation isn’t the only way, but I know for a fact that, if I get there, my show will be frame-by-frame. Why? Because I consider the artwork and the motion in my story just as important as my characters, if not moreso. You might not.

You can make it 3-d animated, claymation, traditionally animated, digitally animated, Flash, frame-by-frame, what have you. You can write your show as a novel, a script, a screenplay, a radio play, what have you. You can illustrate it as a children’s book, a comic, a graphic novel, or even an illustrated novel.

One of my favorite shows, up there with Modern Objects, is a comic by @swabsbloo​ called Escape From Abject Reality (which you can read on it’s own blog at @efarwebcomic​! Please read it! PLEASE READ IT! PLEASE!!! PL). Swabsbloo takes the premise of object shows and simultaneously puts it on its head while playing it straight: a bunch of objects wake up in an oddly absent field, only to figure out they’ve been trapped in a game show-themed death trap controlled (...?) by a(n apparent) sociopath named Snake Oil. You should read it. You should read their comic.

Hell, does your object show even need to be an object show? You can create stories that are beyond inanimate objects, or stories beyond competitions. Again, Modern Objects isn’t a competition show. You can base your characters off of objects as well, without needing to make them explicitly an object. The show I mentioned earlier, Race to the Mansion of Tomorrow, takes this latter approach for the most part!

As a storyteller, what I obsess about the most is storytelling. I love seeing all forms of it, and the potential that this community’s genre has astounds and fascinates me. The way in which we view the story doesn’t have to be important, but I find the ones I enjoy the most are the ones that utilize its medium to the best of its ability. It doesn’t have to be the best, it just needs to try.

So what do you want to try?

[superchartisland]

Trivial Pursuit (Domark, Spectrum, 1986)

Gallup all formats chart, Your Computer Vol. 7 No. 1, January 1987

Trivial Pursuit the board game divides the world of knowledge into six categories; six wedges of cheese for six spaces in a wheel with six spokes. In pursuit of rounded knowledge from Trivial Pursuit the computer game of the board game, there seems no better framework to adopt than its own.

By the time 1986 turned into 1987, electronic games had become well established as a leisure pursuit in their own right. For the teenagers of the time, they had been popular in some form for their entire lives. The ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 had been out for five years, and increasing numbers of parents were being persuaded of their educational and fun value. That would carry on -- I got my own Commodore 64 several Christmases later. As discussed a few entries back, computer games were sold in the biggest high street shops. Meanwhile, sports are a familiar subject for AAA. Making games about subjects people already know well is an easy route in for an audience. Taking an already popular activity like football with its own set of defined rules and turning it into computerised form is an even more obvious thing to go for, on both the developers’ side and the players’. With that background, it is no surprise at all to find other existing leisure activities being successfully translated into computer games. The board game Trivial Pursuit was of a similar age to the Spectrum and C64, still in an initial swing of popularity which meant that an electronic version of it wasn’t trying to replace a well-established favourite like Monopoly, but offering an alternative or addition to the fun thing you’d recently come across. The computer game’s manual explicitly calls it a game that “the whole family (Mum and Dad included!) enjoy enormously.” On Christmas Day 1986, many British families must have gathered round the Spectrum after dinner for a game of Trivial Pursuit.

Computer science, particularly at the kind of price that was able to reach large numbers of game-playing households, had only advanced so far. This presented some technological barriers to recreating the Trivial Pursuit experience. Representing the colour brown, for instance, was apparently an unachievable task, and so the art & literature wedge becomes black. Still, Trivial Pursuit is a very viable candidate for transfer to computer form, comprising as it does of a series of trivia questions with a limited appendage of choosing movement and collecting tokens. So the dice also go, replaced by a random dart-throwing animation which captures a miniscule fraction of the tactile sense of ceremony, but mostly the game is intact. Expanded on, even, since the board game couldn’t offer musical rounds where listening to “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” is an essential part of the experience, or easily offer picture rounds. The one remaining issue is that of the mechanics of answering questions. I assumed going in that there would be some kind of multiple choice arrangement, but the actual solution is much more simple and elegant. The game just poses each question and then asks whether you got it right, Y/N? Players of the board game similarly get an answer written down and have to determine among themselves whether the player asked it answered satisfactorily, so why should a computer recreation of the experience be any different? The psychology of presenting an irreversible button-press and relying on players’ honesty in this way is nonetheless a fascinating sideshow all of its own.

I’ve talked previously about the strength of games as ways of presenting spaces. Trivial Pursuit has several spaces to present. One is the board, a recreation of a physical object with functionality retained and resemblance to the original object at the forefront. Another of its spaces is the more completely imagined room in which the question master paces backwards and forwards, surrounded by items to represent the different question categories. Sometimes it goes dark, giving the idea of an image being cast by a projector, the game turning into both test and lecture at the same time. Among the items in the room is a world map up on the wall. And what is a chart but a map of territory, of tangible or intangible space? The Gallup charts by which we are finding our way through the AAA journey are maps of their own territory, suspended between imaginary and real. SalesSpace, we could call it. In SalesSpace, the things that count are time and format and sales, and that’s what’s reflected in the picture of relationships between games that charts of SalesSpace show. In SalesSpace, board game recreation Trivial Pursuit and World War II shoot-em-up 1942 sit together in the same top ten. In SalesSpace, Trivial Pursuit goes between well-remembered arcade games Paperboy and Gauntlet along the route through the UK’s #1 games. Look along the right axes and what you might have thought of as very separate places turn out to be right next to each other.

One of the first things that’s obvious on playing Trivial Pursuit the computer game is its commitment to being as accessible as it can. It’s notable that it uses the keyboard’s arrow keys for directional controls, rather than QAOP or one of the other arcane combinations other Spectrum games tended to go for. Anyone was clearly meant to be able to turn up and figure out what was happening as quickly as possible, and that holds up. Admittedly if I didn’t already know the rules of Trivial Pursuit I would need the manual at hand, but that goes for the board game too. Past that, the basic action of answering trivia questions is fun, its questions are pretty well-pitched as easy but not too much so, and the attention to detail seems reasonable (I haven’t encountered any Hugh Jackilometresans so far). The choice of questions goes for timelessness, even more than the board version since the music question choices are backwards looking, presumably to keep the sound samples copyright-free. Where it doesn’t achieve that timelessness, the perspective on what has changed in three decades makes for intriguing wrinkles -- you could probably still ask “What was Mrs. Fawlty’s Christian name?” but not in those words. Trivial Pursuit is one of the most straightforwardly entertaining games I’ve played for AAA so far.

But is it art? It’s not a question that I’ve engaged with on this blog elsewhere, because it’s not very interesting, but it’s one that somehow doesn’t go away. An inferiority-complex-driven need to justify video games to outsiders as being art seems to have infinite lives. Worse, within some very loud pockets of game culture, that need sits alongside a vicious refusal to tolerate the kind of cultural criticism that art tends to get. Sometimes the same people are the ones saying both, and more. There’s no place for politics in games, apparently. Narrative events only ever happen inside the context of the narrative and not a wider context of authorial choice. Games should just be fun, OK? But, of course, the right kind of fun. The wrong kind of fun means a non-game, a phrase I became familiar with as I re-engaged with video games in the Wii and DS era and read NeoGAF, a gaming forum which was relatively open and welcoming (i.e. it was merely toxic rather than a seething hellscape). Wii Sports was a non-game. Non-games are successful games which are too popular and do too many things which games don’t do to count as games. In a weird inversion of the ‘how is this art?’ Turner Prize winner phenomenon, the mainstream audience sees non-games as a perfectly fine type of game and the enthusiasts proclaiming themselves at the centre of the culture completely deny non-games a place in the category. Not in the sense of them being too lowbrow, but of trying to define them out completely. Trivial Pursuit would surely have counted as a non-game. Which is nonsense, obviously. It provides an experience of a virtual space that’s dependent on the player’s actions, producing an emerging narrative within its bounds. I can’t work out a plausible game definition which wouldn’t include it without going absurdly narrow. Its selection of questions is a meaningful creative decision, illustrating and reinforcing what knowledge is seen as worth knowing. As for the wider art question, let’s just say that I have an equally tough time with any argument that identifies Frank Bruno’s Boxing as art and doesn’t do the same for Trivial Pursuit.

One of the more successful tactics of the kind of gatekeepers who talk about non-games is an appeal to history. They were here first. People who want something different than monolithic hardcore games are trying to change the rightful way of things proven by time. The whole idea of non-games has that idea of definition-by-precedent built in. Yet find the right maps and this appeal to history is revealed as not only bogus, but bogus even within the boundaries of its own arguments. Casual games and casual players have been here thriving all along. As 1986 turned in 1987, more people were going to their local high street WHSmith and buying Trivial Pursuit the computer game than were buying anything that has outlasted it as an emblem of retro gaming. The world mapped out by the games charts has always been a big one with room for many perspectives and interests. It’s not surprising, because it’s the same story for other media. And yes, other media have their own purer-in-the-old-days crews, too. Music discussions are crowded with talk of how things were better in the past when real music ruled. But significantly, it’s almost as common to see the response that there has always been music of different types in every era, even if it’s likely to be phrased as ‘there has always been disposable pop’ or something more derogatory. The narrative of aberration can’t stand when enthusiasts are engaged with the reality that refutes it. It’s much tougher for ahistorical nonsense to gain any credence when reality is a matter of public record, the charts that map history still accessible. But what if your medium has failed to keep its history up so well? What if the only history most get to see is filtered through the nostalgia and commercial goals of a specific set of winning viewpoints? What if Gauntlet is commemorated but Trivial Pursuit isn’t? Then the gatekeepers can just keep on pretending that the current version of what they don’t approve of is a new aberration, restarting their game to fight the same fights over and over again from a position of illusory strength. The selective retention of knowledge is anything but trivial.

Q: What was the UK’s best-selling computer game at the turn of 1987?

A: Trivial Pursuit.

[jcmorgenstern]

please rant about the second half of COLS and COHF

this ask opened pandora’s box, consume at your own peril

Basically…my biggest problems with the second half of COLS and COHF as a whole is really just…Jonathan as a character really, truly, utterly, and absolutely makes no sense on a very fundamental level. Like I really don’t say this lightly, I spent almost all of last summer trying to piece together a coherent characterization and eventually came to the conclusion that…there wasn’t one, at least that I could see.

(Readmore for length, heavy criticism of the work (obviously), and mention of canonical attempted rape).

So before I jump right in to providing evidence for that uhh slightly bold claim, I do want to acknowledge that Jonathan in COG totally makes sense, even if certain uhh incestuous aspects of his character do make my eyes roll back into my skull. To me, it always seemed a bit evident that the series was meant to end at COG, and the second half of the trilogy was sort of an ad hoc thing that happened after the series kept building popularity and there was demand from the fandom (and the publisher) for content. If taken alone, Jonathan’s character in COG is relatively self-consistent, and I’ve posted before (also at length….lol) about how Jonathan’s character in COG alone is actually a bit tragic, and it’s not until COLS that he truly makes a villainous turn off a cliff. Though the incest is, from the start, #a bit much, we all know that that’s just how CC novels go and, to some extent, ya just gotta roll with it.

The first half of COLS continues to be pretty exciting from a Sebastian Enthusiast perspective–in fact, for me, it’s really what made me fall in love/hate with the character and his portrayal to begin with. And some of the character work in the first half of COLS is actually pretty good!! We have the moral ambiguity of the Jace/Seb bond, Clary being unable to tell to what degree Sebastian in lying, the slightly random, wild, and jumbled snips of his character coming through (vampire threesome, vampire fetish, wearing Jace’s cologne??, fashion whore, messy bitch, shitty poetry writer?? it’s all free real estate) and then he lays out what could have been such an interesting plot!!

All the mentions of the increasing number of demons coming through to Earth is finally being used after being mentioned ad nausea for three whole books!! We’re set up for an interesting, shades of grey antagonist who thinks the ends justify the means and that sometimes a Wee Murder is needed to end an unjust regime (the Clave) without realizing that removing the Clave violently without any real and just alternative will create a power vacuum that invites even worse outcomes!! And the protagonists have to navigate slightly more complex moral issues than “genocide is bad, really!!”

And then…er, no. Like, really no. The entire book does a complete 180 and says no, all that (questionable) character development was a complete lie, all the human motivations you could possibly ascribe to the villain are bunk, he just wants to destroy the world. And not only that, he tries to rape Clary and….yeah no. (I’ll talk more about that later…I have a lot to say).

And for me that was really a massive disappointment. Like, to be clear: it wasn’t that I wanted Jonathan to be a pure uwu soft boi who did nothing wrong ™, or that he would be anything other than an antagonist. But like….a) rape. no. and b) I did sort of want his motivations OR his goal to sort of make sense and follow any sort of reason but honestly…they don’t.

The rationale CC tries to offer is that Jonathan doesn’t understand the meaning of love and wants to bend the world to his will so that it will love him instead. And like….that works to an extent, but then she also very clumsily attempts to make him a psychopath and…

Look.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you know my feelings on poorly-written psychopath characters but…I’m gonna be real honest with ya here….a true psychopath is, with a very few fine exceptions like the entire population of high-security prisons, super fucking boring. They’re emotionally shallow, both internally and externally, and are usually driven by very grounded and unemotional goals. Winning a promotion. Attaining a position of power. Becoming a neurosurgeon. Having the best lawn in the zip code. “The psychopath next door” isn’t Hannibal Lecter, it’s your shitty boss or that one prick who calls the HOA on you for having your lawn one (1) millimeter over regulation.

And you know what? I’d take a story about Hannibal Lecter, lawn fascist. I’d maybe even take a story about Jonathan Morgenstern, shitty CEO, though honestly that sounds dangerously close to 50SOG so maybe not. Because if written well, the sensational serial-killer psychopath can be genuinely thrilling in fiction.

But honestly in this case?? It doesn’t work. Not even getting into the issue of “are signs and symptoms of psychopathy diagnostic in a child soldier” issue (pro tip: almost definitely not), why does he want to burn down the world? Why does he want to kill downworlders if he is basically one? How does he react to his father’s ideology? Does he even have a consistent ideology? Why doesn’t he stay at home playing Mario Kart?? If you can’t answer any of these questions, psychopath or no, anything he does is literally just not convincing and falls flat.

And now I’m going to segue into my “demon blood as a metaphor for child abuse” rant, which will hopefully segue into my “the demon army and ending of COHF is bullshit” rant, and maybe round it all up with my “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant.

So! Demon blood. So full disclosure, the scene in question is probably my actual favorite scene in COLS and the series at large, god knows why really, but it was actually pretty well-written as a hook for a thread that was totally dropped and never ever ever mentioned again. I’m talking about the scene where Jonathan asks Clary for a strength rune, and he tells her Valentine whipped him as a child with demon metal. His wounds will never heal, and serve as a reminder of the “perils of obedience” which is, quite possibly, the most chilling and interesting turn of phrase in the entire series.

And if you think about it, “wounds that will never heal but hurt constantly” are a pretty canny metaphor for the emotional abuse that shapes Jonathan and his ability (or lack thereof) to relate to others. Valentine never particularly loved or even cared for Jonathan, and used him as a child solider (drop me another ask if you want to know the rationale behind that one, kind of not a lot of space for that here) in his genocidal crusade, complete with brainwashing and pretty obvious physical and emotional abuse. That stays with him, twists the way he views love and truth, and leaves him with a permanently negative view of self and worldview that he doesn’t seem to put much effort into overcoming. To be clear: being abused doesn’t make you evil. But in the absence of love and support and positive role models to help you unlearn things, anger and pain can twist even good motives into bad actions, and lbr, Jonathan doesn’t have an over-abundance of good motives. The real peril of obedience is never questioning what you’re told.

But of course it’s never mentioned again, so like, fuck me or whatever.

The show does a better job of it, and almost directly links Jonathan being Like That to what Valentine, Jocelyn, and Lilith did to him and…does a pretty good job of not woobifying him or dismissing his pain. Him having demon blood is almost completely uncoupled from him being “evil” (or, more accurately, doing evil or cruel things) and is instead his responsibility. What makes him “incapable of love” is that he was never shown love, and what makes him violent and cruel is that he was only ever taught violence and cruelty.

But in the books demon blood is definitely intended a metaphor for psychopathy. “He had the humanity burned out of him because of his demon blood” “he’s incapable of love because of his demon blood”…you get the picture. But considering she honestly doesn’t really hit psychopathy and (to me) pings in more at ASPD (antisocial personality disorder, the DSM-V approved version of psychopathy, with some MAJOR and important differences in diagnostic criteria) or NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), I sort of…don’t like how demon blood is directly used as a metaphor for mental illness. And once the demon blood is gone…poof! so is his “evil” so uhh yall read between the lines with me on that one.

(If you want a rant on why I think book Jonathan fits better with ASPD or NPD than psychopathy, drop me an ask, but god please consider the consequences. Also, I generally don’t feel comfortable “”diagnosing”” villains for the hell of it, but in this case since the canon itself has already Gone There and I’d be operating mostly off the DSM, I’d feel slightly less shitty about it).

Anyway. So what I deeply, passionately, truly hate about COHF is the ending, when the demon blood is burned out of Poor Green-Eyed Jonathan and There Is Not Enough Good In Him So He McFucking Dies. What fucking enrages me about this is like…the ENTIRE series is about how “blood doesn’t equal morality” EXCEPT in the case of this one guy apparently because fuck him and fuck consistency!! Also on a slightly different tack it completely erases all culpability of him as a person and like….what, “the demon blood made me do it” is now a viable excuse?? what the fuck. no. what the fuck. also what does “not enough good in him” even MEAN in the context of someone who LITERALLY DESCENDED HIS MOTHER’S BIRTH CANAL THAT WAY oh my god its??? so fucking stupid and the philosophical implications ENRaGE me especially like.,,,as a geneticist….we kind of had a wee run-in with that kind of thinking….it was called “eugenics” you may have heard of it….G OD !!!

Also that doesn’t even get into the contradictory nature of Jonathan’s actual characterization (I use the term loosely) itself like…sometimes his dialogue reads almost like Jace’s, but by the end of COHF he literally quotes Jesus Christ (render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s), says “FOOLS!!11!!1!” like….literally once a page, I think at some point dips into vaguely Shakespearean English while violently whiplashing into whatever “ ‘You’re insane,’ said Simon. ‘You’re dead,’ said Sebastian” is?? and is overall an editor’s literal worst nightmare. There is NOTHING driving this character other than pure, unrestrained literary chaos, and absolutely nothing he does or says seems to make a hell of a lot of sense and is designed purely #4 the evulz. It’s just so painfully cartoonish that it physically pains me to read it and yet, here I am, holding the physical (hardback) copy that I own, reading it, and physically shuddering jesus CHRIST

(You did uh, definitely ask for a rant, right?)

OH yeah uhh and to round it all off…the “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant:

Look my friends there’s nothing wrong with Clebastian but there is definitely something wrong with rape and lbr: there’s a lot of it written into this character and his relationship with his SISTER and fuckign thanks!! I absolutely hate it. Apparently, when asked why she chose to include the graphic attempted rape scene in COLS, CC apparently said she “wanted to make sure the audience knew he was beyond saving.”

Look.

Look.

When a guy builds a demon army to obliterate the world and everyone in it, I generally get bad vibes. Worse vibes, in fact, than from a guy who tried to rape his sister, though that’s pretty fuCKING bad. The point is, there is absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Seriously, there’s not. And when your entire NYT bestselling fanfic series is based on the incest fetish HP fanfiction, it’s?? proBABly not the best idea to like…include an attempted rape scene between two siblings in a work that already has a lot of UST between presumed or actual siblings because people WILL talk and.,,,can u blame them lol

On a more serious note…female protagonists are so often forced to undergo rape or sexual humiliation as part of a narrative (or worse, for titillation of the viewers–looking at you, GOT and also yeah lbr COLS). Even in the show, which has definitely improved on some weaknesses in the original narrative, Clary is nearly raped by a demon in order to awaken her rune powers. That’s disgusting, honestly, and unnecessary, and you know what? Luke Skywalker didn’t have to face a rape threat to get his powers, and neither should a female counterpart. The show didn’t even ADDRESS this later, or even bring it up at all, and that’s even more upsetting, and part of why I don’t have faith in the WR to bring the concept of a Jonathan-Clary bond in 3b to life in a way that doesn’t make me want to curl up into my epidermis like a chrysalis and never emerge again. (See also: Lilith’s unaddressed sexual assault of Jace, and Camille’s equally unaddressed assault of Simon).

And what bothers me almost more than all this is…it’s not like Jonathan’s creepiness is subtle. He constantly invades Clary’s personal space, makes comments she’s uncomfortable with, puts her in situations she doesn’t like. You could leave it there and I guarantee most of your readership (especially your female/female-aligned readers) will INSTANTLY pick up on the fact that this guy is Bad News and you know what?? Clary isn’t subjected to that bs for….the heck of it?? Not that subtlety is ever the strong point of this series but like…that’s a huge glaring issue and one I can never overlook, and why I’ve honestly chosen to basically Ignore Canon And Do Whatever The Fuck I Want.

In summary: Jonathan was basically shoed in as a) a half-assed foil to Jace and b) a plot device/fix and c) fodder for more incest after Jace and Clary were no longer brother and sister and tbh?? Not entirely here for it.

tldr: jonathan morgenstern is a dumb bitch and no one is valid, more at 9.

[devontroxell]

Use Brand Storytelling to Develop a Personal Connection With Your Audience

What is a brand? When we are introduced to someone in real life, we seek to learn more about them. We ask questions that give us a brief overview of their lives and the type of person they are. We listen to their stories, ideas, and opinions. It’s a part of getting to know someone and becoming a part of their personal brand as we perceive it in our personal lives and business.

Brands go through the same steps when customers evaluate and get to know them. A prospect might find your website and become intrigued. Maybe your messaging really hit home with them. They check out your product, verify that it covers their most pressing needs, and then they begin the process of getting to know your brand- just like they would a person. The goal is to get to know the brand, its promise, value, and benefits on a deeper level.

We try to unearth the story of a brand. We prefer to shop with brands that share our values, beliefs, and concerns. We check out what people say on social media about those brands, their products, and maybe even their employees. We read reviews that other customers have left about a product or service. We read the brand’s blog posts and learn about its founders and executives. When you’re looking for a B2B partner, it pays to really do your homework before committing to an expensive solution, and individuals, as well as businesses, want to make sure they’re in good company and don’t end up with questionable acquaintances.

The secret weapon for building a brand that your customers relate to is brand storytelling. By sharing stories and anecdotes about your business, industry, product, and employees, you give your customers a window into your operations, your inner workings, and what makes you unique. By giving them a peek behind the ‘green curtain,’ customers and prospects get to know your business more intimately and get to understand the “why” behind what you do.

Your brand isn’t just what you tell people. It’s what everyone believes about your brand based on the signals that you send, both negative and positive. Brand storytelling is our tool for taking hold of these narratives and helping our customers see through the noise to see the qualities that make us love a company. We are all hard-wired to love stories.

What is Brand Storytelling?

Brand storytelling is any piece of content that shares a story about your brand in the broadest sense. Any story that you tell that relates to your brand in some way is brand storytelling. It gives your customers and followers insights into your company and creates more opportunities for them to connect with your brand personally.

Brand storytelling comes in many different forms. It could be a video case study that details how you helped a prominent client. When you describe your interactions with that client, you are telling a story about your brand. Sharing a story about your company’s early days, doing an interview with one of your employees, or giving your followers a video walk-through of your office — all examples of powerful brand storytelling.

Too many people try to put brand storytelling in a box, where you are expected to tell stories about actual events, without examining how they can creatively make those stories more impactful by packaging them in different ways. In the examples at the end of this post, you’ll see some high-level examples of brand storytelling that are a bit more creative.

Brand storytelling is channel-neutral. You can tell your stories through a blog post, social media updates, video, podcast, live speech – or even a comic strip. The medium you use to tell your story is less important than the story itself. Ensuring that you tell stories your core customers will connect with is important for building brand awareness and loyalty. Effective brand storytelling can turn happy customers into true advocates and promoters.

IMAGE: BuzzBoard

How to Make Your Audience Love Your Brand StoriesWhile, you can use no formula to create your brand stories. That said, reading up on proper narrative structures in your chosen medium helps you improve the effectiveness of your stories. In particular, I’m a huge fan of The Hero’s Journey. And once you start recognizing the various stages, it becomes addictive to discover them. Especially in Movies. In the meantime, here are a few tips you can follow to ensure that your content connects with your audience and hits all of the beats of a good story.

Say Something Unique

Think about the movies you love. A big part of why you love them is that they do something that you like that helps them stand out from the competition. Maybe it’s an unexpected plot twist, a quirk that they give the character, or how the relationships play out throughout the story. While most movies follow similar narrative formulas, no one wants to watch a movie that is a complete copy of another popular movie. The same is true for the content and stories that brands share.

Make sure your brand story has something unique to say in each campaign. If you are talking personally about something that happened to you, your company, or your employees, filling in the details should be enough to make your story unique. Nobody else can tell these stories, and you should lean on those personal anecdotes as a resource to make your content personally unique to you.

Design Stories for Your Audience

It may seem like common sense, but a quick look at the types of stories many brands tell might leave you asking — who is this for? If you aren’t designing stories for a specific customer persona, you are missing the mark. Don’t tell stories for your own benefit or the benefit of your employees. Ensure that you are telling stories your audience actually wants to hear because the story conveys some insight or guidance. Or maybe it’s just entertainment value. Either way – know your audience.

Mostly this means that your audience should be able to relate to your stories. Maybe your story centers around a particular business problem your key customers can relate to. Maybe it touches on a personal story on the sacrifices that you make as a dedicated professional. Your story can take any shape. But take a moment to consider what your audience and you have in common and try to touch on those points throughout your story.

Show, Don’t Tell

This is perhaps the most common advice given in creative writing classes across the world. In some ways, it’s over-recommended. Sometimes we do want to tell. Still, as it applies to brand storytelling, far too many creators get caught up in telling when they should be doing more showing.

If you were telling a story about how your brand helped a client, you wouldn’t end the story simply saying that your recommendations “performed well.” Instead, you’d want to provide data and statistics that back up your assertions. How did specific changes result in measurable outcomes for your client? Don’t just talk about your work. Show the results of the work you did in an illustrative and practical way whenever possible.

Consistency in Storytelling

Stories themselves should be self-contained and tell a complete story for your audience. But that doesn’t mean that each story shouldn’t be building toward a larger narrative. Before creating your first brand storytelling campaign, you should outline some of the main points that you would like your stories to make when taken together.

For instance, if you are running a company that offered several lines of all-natural and green skincare products and you really wanted to push the green angle — some brand themes that you might want to push in your stories might include:

Responsibility

Transparency

Mindfulness

Low environmental impact

Sustainability

These could be the overarching themes you could leverage to represent your brand. Then, you convey these themes with the actual stories you tell. For instance, responsibility and transparency would be well-conveyed in a story about how your founder traveled to the locations where your ingredients are sourced to ensure they meet your very stringent standards.

Character-Driven & Personal

You wouldn’t want to read a story that was a bulleted list of the events that took place. That’s not even a story. That’s just a laundry list. Effective stories are character-driven. They draw on our emotions and help us relate to those characters. Brand stories should contain the same ingredients any great story does — a protagonist that overcomes challenges on their way to success (or failure), an antagonist (business problem), and secondary characters. Make sure that when you tell brand stories, you are telling them in full.

Tell your stories from the perspective of a single person to improve their impact. Speaking from the first person can help make stories seem more personal. First-person stories are generally easier to write, making them a good introduction to brand storytelling for first-time storytellers.

2 Real-World Examples of Effective Brand Storytelling

In this section, I want to share some high-level examples of brand storytelling. One of the aspects you will notice throughout these examples is that effective brand storytellers don’t just view the stories they tell as individual articles. Instead, they are chapters in a book – part of a larger strategy that helps dictate the way consumers perceive their brand. Ultimately, brand storytelling helps define their target market and position their brand within that market. Dannijo Uses Personal Storytelling to Drive Their Lifestyle BrandLifestyle brands are, more than most, in a position to benefit from brand storytelling. Customers want to see themselves living a specific idealistic life when they use products from lifestyle brands. Telling stories of how other customers have integrated their products into their lives can help show customers what their life could be like with those same products.

This fact isn’t lost on Dannijo, a brand founded by sisters Danielle and Jodie Snyder in 2008. From the very beginning, they embraced storytelling as part of their broader marketing strategy. In an interview with Fast Company, Danielle Snyder explained their focus on “creating narratives that are so compelling to consumers, they want to build your products into their lives.” That’s a perfect representation of the power of storytelling. Amazing stories make your customers want to make your company and products a part of their lives.

Dannijo’s brand storytelling has been immensely successful for the company. Today they have more than 176,000 followers on Instagram. That social platform plays a key role in their strategy. Here, Dannijo showcases snapshots of their team, their business, the lives of the people that wear their product, and the brand draws attention to its products by highlighting when celebrities use them.

They also take things a bit further as far as follower engagement goes. They often hold inspirational #ConversationPieces.Great hashtag. On that topic, check out our article on hashtag marketing for more examples. In these #ConversationPieces, one of the sisters interviews another influential person. Danielle and Jodie (and the other guests) use these chats often to share personal anecdotes and tell stories about their rise to business success as much as hardships in their personal lives. This content isn’t directly connected to their products, but it doesn’t need to be. It speaks directly to their target audience.

Zillow Uses Their Internal Data to Create Narratives

For the second example, we want to call out Zillow, a U.S.-based online real estate marketplace. In recent years, the company has become the frontrunner in online home sales. Today, their database contains data for more than 110 million homes, including data for value estimations, the square footage of each home, nearby attractions and amenities, location data, and aerial photographs. Zillow doesn’t let that data go to waste. The company has made it a priority to leverage the data it collects to help customers better understand their brand, the housing market and develop personal connections. Take a look at this post that shows where millennials can find affordable homes. Here, Zillow combined publicly available data about average millennial- wages with their own internal data on home prices in cities across the U.S.

Check out their findings:

In another example, Zillow used their data to determine the 20 Best cities for Halloween Trick or Treating leading up to the 2017 Halloween holiday. They determined these cities based on home values, how close the houses are located to one another, the city’s crime rate, and the size of the population under 10 years old. They then created an infographic that illustrated their results.

These are both great examples of Zillow taking what would otherwise be extremely dry user data and turning it into something interesting that still points back to their main product — a comprehensive real estate database. Zillow does an excellent job bringing data to life through real-world examples, featuring millennials, parents with trick-and-treating kids (and many more), and combining boring data and making it relatable, relevant, and interesting.

Brand Storytelling Drives Awareness, Interest, and Loyalty

Brand storytelling will help your business throughout all phases of the customer life cycle. Showing your customers that you are a brand that can solve their problems and share their beliefs can help facilitate your company’s initial awareness and products. As they learn more, that awareness develops into a genuine interest. Later, after they’ve become satisfied customers, those same traits that made them interested in you in the first place will also make them some of your most loyal customers.

Have you ever done any brand storytelling? How’d that work out for your business? Comment below!

This article was previously published on SocialSellinator’s Blog.

Use Brand Storytelling to Develop a Personal Connection With Your Audience published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/

[johnboothus]

Malt the Unsung Hero of Beer Needs a Modern Rebrand

Everyone from beer-drinking novices to Cicerones can articulate the basic composition of a beer: water, malt, hops, and yeast. Yet one of these four basic ingredients is lauded far more than the others: hops.

Hops and their varieties tend to be praised with a “more-is-better” attitude, despite the fact that it’s the malt profile, not hops’ flavoring, that ultimately creates the backbone of a beer.

Barley has long been the primary source of fermentable sugar and the catalyst for beer’s bready, roasty, and toasty flavors, and the malting process has been integral to brewing for centuries. Hops, a preservative herb and bittering agent, entered the equation much later, and more recently became the “it” ingredient of craft beer.

But brewers, maltsters, and researchers are making a case for paying more attention to malt selection, varieties, and growing patterns, which will ultimately, hopefully, inch this integral ingredient into the spotlight.

Making a Case for Malt

According to “Tasting Beer” by Randy Mosher, the malting process used for beer making was well established by 3000 B.C.E, and chemical evidence places the advent of hopped beer around 550 B.C.E. While barley has long been the primary source of fermentable sugar and the catalyst for the bread, roast, and toast flavors in beer, prior to 1000 C.E. most of the spiced aromas in beer were imparted using herbs and spices, including a particular blend called gruit.

Christian Holbrook, the brewmaster at New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colo., believes that malt plays a more important role in brewing than hops. “Out of the four ingredients, hops are easily fourth on that list,” says Holbrook. In addition to contributing to a beer’s flavor, he points out that malt is critical for yeast health, explaining that its concentration of free amino nitrogen (a.k.a. FAN) and minerals like zinc, magnesium, and manganese help promote yeast growth, benefit fermentation, and aid in beer maturation. He also adds that there is a lack of balance in beers with little residual malt extract. “The bottom falls out of them,” says Holbrook, “because they’ve been fermented so far down that there is no malt left.”

Chris Schooley of Troubadour Maltings, also in Fort Collins, emphasizes that even in hop-forward beers, malt contributes more than just sugar and color. “In hazy-style beers,” he says, “the malt is integral to the mouthfeel as well as to promoting those juicier flavors from the aromatic hops. By playing around with temperature and moisture content during the kilning process, a maltster engages in Maillard reactions.” This non-enzymatic browning process adds color and flavor to beer. The beer, says Schooley, “can develop deeply fruited flavors with complex sweetness. In more yeast-driven styles, such as sours and spontaneous fermentations, the malt is the food for those bugs that helps to build all of those nuances.”

While malt may play a significant role in both the brewing process and finished product, beer-related malted barley research lags behind the efforts and resources the brewing industry is putting toward performing hop studies, Holbrook says. “Research development among malting barley varieties isn’t there yet,” he says. “It’s 15 to 20 years behind where hop research is now.” It’s that research that has led to the shift in focus from the level of bitterness that hops can provide to the more complex aromas and flavors that get touted today.

Schooley adds that much of the research for brewing malt is geared toward variety studies and comparisons, but he suggests that there is a need for more research on malt quality. “I’d personally like to see a continued push toward better understanding of all the impacts on malt quality,” he says, “especially within the actual process of malting. Specifically, there is painfully little out there about the impact of malt freshness.” That’s because research in this area typically reflects large-scale operations, Schooley says, but his own experience has yielded different results from the bulk of research available.

“What is out there about freshness mostly says that malt is supposed to rest after its process for a good long while before use in brewing, or it will negatively affect loitering times,” Schooley says. “But this research mostly reflects both malts and beers produced on extremely large scales — and does not reflect small-batch malting and brewing. Using malts within less than a month of roasting has, in our experience, led to incredible nuance and complexity with a discernible reduction in the harsh and bitter flavors generally associated with darker roasts.”

How Hops Got the Jump on Barley

According to the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in London, the primary use of hops is in the brewing process, whereas most barley is used for animal feed. Since hops are specifically created for the beer industry, large hop farms are focused on meeting the needs of brewers. This often leads to collaborations with brewers on hops research and selection. With only a small percentage of barley production going toward beer, the relationship between brewers and the barley and malting industries isn’t as interdependent.

But again, this isn’t to say that barley is less important than hops. Though only a relatively small percentage of barley is used for brewing, there are strict specifications for barley variety, total nitrogen, and kernel size in the malting process. Brewers are also in competition with distillers and makers of food products to obtain the best malted barley, so while barley may not elicit the same fervor that hops do, it’s still an important consideration for brewers. “Craft maltsters,” Holbrook points out, are also “starting to offer custom malt specs, unlike larger malt providers.” In this sense, they’re taking a page out of the hop farmers’ playbook and using these stringent specifications to help distinguish and promote their products.

Another reason that hops are eclipsing malt in popularity these days is that brewers have more creative freedom to use them in a variety of ways throughout many different parts of the brewing process; whereas, aside from combining different barley varieties in the grain bill (or decoction mashing for malt that is not well modified), most of the variation for malt occurs during the malting process, not brewing operations.

And as Holbrook points out, the old, tired names associated with barley varieties aren’t helping barley compete with hops. The promotional strategy connecting hops to their distinctive aromas and flavors has been highly successful. “Even if you’re not a beer expert,” says Holbrook, “you can smell that a beer brewed with Galaxy hops has that ‘noticeable difference,’ and then the brewer can say, ‘Oh, that’s Galaxy!’ Who doesn’t want to put Galaxy in their mouth?” He goes on to explain that the connection is so exciting that brewers even go on to name their beers after certain hops. “With malts,” he says, “the names are not as evocative, and there hasn’t been very much [in the malting industry] that’s been new for the brewers to get excited about and build recipes around.”

Does this mean that hops will forever outpace malt? Schooley doesn’t think so. He thinks maltsters can take up the charge to change people’s perception of malt by “offering something new and different either through different barley varieties or through freshness and creativity in the malting process,” and by “giving them interesting, memorable names that people can associate with these new exciting flavors.” Craft malting is a story, he says, that must have “compelling characters.”

Schooley also thinks that consumers can play a role in giving malt the spotlight by expressing interest in all the core ingredients in craft beer. “If you’re paying a premium craft price for a premium craft product,” says Schooley, “I believe that the craftsperson should be able to articulate where their raw materials come from, why they chose them, and what they bring to the beer.”

All you have to do is ask.

The article Malt, the Unsung Hero of Beer, Needs a Modern Rebrand appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/malt-barley-needs-rebrand/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/malt-the-unsung-hero-of-beer-needs-a-modern-rebrand

[7goodangel]

I'm new here, sorry to bother, but why won't answer any paperfresh questions?

Warning: Long post so yeah... hence why the read more o-o

(From Blog Description)

(From FAQ)

But... I’m gonna add slightly more detail to this - cause then I can just link this exact ask/answer to my description for more detail. 

So yeah... It’s not really the full ‘ship’ that I dislike. I am... just... meh with this ship if we are just talking about it in general. 

However - what I don’t like was/is how people were so obsessed over it, so focused onto that specific ship that it caused these things (in this order):

Mischaracterization of Fresh and PJ - So yeah - first was this whole thing. At the beginning - it seemed like a fun, yet harmless ship. Both CQ and I saw few things on it, added our two cents, and just continued to observe the fun (at least for me - it just seemed like CQ was doing that too and she’s really chill). It even got to a point where I was trying to see how this ship would actually work. However - this ship kinda brought in a wave of misunderstanding. Which - I don’t know - I was okay with that for PJ since I knew/know that I’m not a popular blog or anyone important so it’s my own fault for not getting all of the info on PJ out there straight away. But for Fresh? I honestly felt like it was my own fault that people were not seeing him as the complex character he is. Gosh have you guys read MommaCQ By Alania? That, at this time, is the closest Fresh that is to the actual Fresh (ya know... without that whole parasite thing). I just felt horrible that Fresh was getting mischaracterized due to my character (who was also getting super misinterpreted). It felt like it was my fault for that whole thing - so I started to not like FreshPaper starting at the peak of all of that mess. Moving from an OTP to a ‘eh it’s okay!’. I am still dealing with this aftermath today. People are seriously getting shocked that Paper isn’t in a canon ship with Fresh. (Examples come from the Undertale AU Amino on quizzes others made on canon PJ [you guys rock for making those quizzes!]):

(still continuing from above)Yeah - these are actual responses to stuff in the quizzes. I also made a quiz in that Amino and majority of the people who have done it (8 at this time cause it’s brand new) did not have a score over 20 (top score is 124... by a user named Paperfresh which gosh that was funny to me! Kudos to you though!) 7 out of 8 couldn’t do it. People outside of Tumblr still think that Canon PJ is a nice, shy, and innocent little 17 year old. Which is far from the truth. Again - people need to understand the difference between AUs and Canon stories for OCs. And that plays a part into this whole thing. 

Tossing any other ships that are not ‘just for fun’ under the bus/Tossing other users under the bus due to shipsNow this was the second wave of stuff that happened, and this happened right after Christmas of last year. Ever since I said “Oh yeah - This character named Omni (by Cereusblue)? PJ likes them. They are in a canon ship.” And gosh... you know what? Those Freshpaper shippers started to slowly ramp up their headcanons on their ship and tried to make it fact. Try to hide that PJ is in a different relationship with Omni than being in a ‘relationship with Fresh’. Let me first say that at first - it seemed like people who followed me were cool with this. From people who hate FreshPaper to loving FreshPaper. They were all cool with the idea that PJ wasn’t going to be with Fresh. OK! Awesomesauce!But then, I saw people complaining to Cereusblue and Askinfresh (an amazing Fresh RPer) about this - even calling them out (which by the way - Askinfresh had nothing to do with this so...?) and tossing them under a metaphorical bus for why their ship now cannot be canon. (which by the way - at this point CQ and I have stressed out enough times that it just won’t happen!)And eventually - there was one user that I have now blocked due to this - but I am going to go into detail about this, that made me just shut down on the whole topic of FreshPaper together. They were the straw on the camel’s back. And it hit right during the time I was trying to finish up my Masters. (fabulous timing there.)But gosh ok this story is long so just a warning:~~~So - I don’t know how it exactly started - but someone mentioned to me that this user (who honestly I loved and respected their work even though it was mostly FreshPaper stuff [and let me go ahead and say no - it’s not the first person you thought of]) was talking about me not only behind my back, but in a different language entirely. And they just kept saying on occasion on how I was the one who ruined FreshPaper, how I didn’t had the “kindness of being a multishipper” and that I was too blinded by this new ship OmniPJ to even notice how amazing Freshpaper is!And just... while this was translated by Google Translate for me - someone later on confirmed that the translation was pretty close to what they said...I just... I guess I snapped? But I took my time to respond to this, had others read it so then I had less of a chance to offend anyone - cause I HATE HATE HATE making other’s feel bad. And I just wanted to explain my side of the story - especially since this wasn’t the first time they tossed me under like that. And after that? What did they do?Cut PJ out of their story, blamed me for their action on that, and just - continued to draw without seeming like it hurt them even though they kept stating ‘how much they were hurt to even think about PJ’. ...DudeI broke down.I extended my hiatus at that time to “TBD”IT HURT me so MUCH to know that someone was SAD, or ANGRY, or just... so frustrated that they go to my face and say “well then I’m removing your character from my story” and then proceeding to put the blame on me when in fact that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I even replied to that comment and after that - I broke down and cried. And I hate to sound like I was exaggerating on this but - any of my close friends would be able to verify that this happened. I went to a table that I haven’t crawled under within a year - and laid there with a blanket, crying, until I just felt numb. It... kinda showed me that I wasn’t ready for any form of hate on the internet - where you kinda need to have a think skin in order to brush off hate. And while generic hate I was able to brush off until that moment - that.. THAT to me was like this:For a whole month, I panicked. I talked to friends on what I should do. Even after soft blocking and fully blocking their blog - I kept going back. Translating questions with the number 7 in them or with PJ in them to make sure they were not still angry about it... which then spiraled me down. I was afraid... afraid that a whole section of people who could only read and speak that language would see me as the devil’s advocate. Yep - I took the bait. And honestly that whole part of me feeling bad for a month was on me. That was entirely my fault. But... I guess this was the first personal attack I had received in my life - so I didn’t know how to handle it.~~~But now? I know better. I have taken that experience and will use what I had learned from it in a similar situation in the future (if that ever happens). Just... know that you will not please everyone even if you try your dang hardest at that. That was me learning that fully in action. However - due to knowing that discussing FreshPaper was behind all of that - and I didn’t want anyone to feel like that EVER - That’s why I took a stand and just said “nope. I am not going to discuss this ship anymore. I will not like any art of this ship (but know I still do appreciate it  and some I bookmark cause it’s so good) but I just need to take this side and stand - not let any more confusion or miscommunication happen.”

And...well... that is the full story of how it became to be a topic I will not discuss again. It’s just do to all of these things piling up on one another until one thing just shattered me.

I honestly thought about deactivating back during that break down. I thought about keeping my blog up for archive reasons, and starting from scratch with a brand new username and not ever bring PJ back again. I thought about possibly only using Tumblr to stay connected with friends I made but never ever do another social media blog again. 

But eh - I decided to keep going! I’m kinda persistent! Or Determined!

Anyway - this was the LONG LONG L O N G explanation of why I don’t answer any FreshPaper Questions. Just... it was due to bad situations and circumstances that just piled up on me until I just couldn’t look at the word “FreshPaper’ in any positive light. 

BUT LET ME JUST SAY:

I am completely fine if you ship FreshPaper. 

It’s 100% ok! 

YOU ship what you WISH to ship! And being a multishipper - I see those Freshpaper ships as alternate timelines! All coexisting at the same time as the canon timeline. 

Just - I wanted you all to know where I am coming from with this ship... and know why I don’t really like it. And sadly - it’s not even about the characters - it’s about the bad experiences within the fandom for me. 

In the end, respect the canon stories that people made for their OCs - whether it’s for OTPs, NOTPs, and BROTPs,. Respect that people can see certain ships work and others not be able to work. 

Let that whole ‘ship war’ thing die already and let’s create an area where people can discuss ships without the fear to be ridiculed, to be driven to insanity, to be harmed physically or mentally about what they ship or not ship. 

And this has gone on long enough! ^^

If you read this far - thank you. And I hope that with seeing things from my perspective, it brought a new angle to this whole shipping thing. At least with the Freshpaper stuff o-oAgain - you can still ship Freshpaper! Go for it! You like it - draw it! Write it! Sing it! Just... make sure you respect those who don’t like it or can’t see why you ship it. And apply that mentality to any ship you have in any fandom! ^^

Hope you all have a fantastic day!

[evilwickedme]

Jews in Modern Media: A Discussion - Repost

Aight so this is a really old post I made in like? 2015? on a blog that is now private, and I recently was asked to repost it so a few notes:

A. Don’t take everything here in face value. It’s a bit more complicated than this. It’s still pretty accurate as an overview, but do your own research, if it’s a topic that interests you.

B. A lot of issues that should be explored in this post aren’t, and that includes: Jewish poc, in general the fact that Jewish people don’t fit in to the poc/white people dynamic, and the whole Jewish actors not playing outright Jewish characters and the other way around. Also, Jewish coding isn’t outright mentioned. In general, as I said, it’s a very general overview.

C. There isn’t any mention of Fantastic Beasts or Wonder Woman and I beg of you, please keep it this way.

D. I also edited it, so if you’ve seen this post before, there’s no new content, but hopefully it’s a little more coherent and accessible to gentiles.

Alright?

This all started when a friend complained to me about the representation of Jews in American media. He linked me to an Idea Channel video and said:

…every minority is getting their time in the spotlight, but Jews are still off to the side. It’s like the world is saying “The world is diverse! But Jews are still all white and assimilated” or only defined by the Holocaust (i.e. Magneto) and/or by Israel. But that’s totally untrue! If Ms. Marvel is awesome for being the first Muslim character to headline a comic (which she is), why not so with an openly Jewish Jew?

He complained to me that a lot of what’s discussed in the video hasn’t been applied to Jews yet, saying: “I want Menorah Man! (Actually I don’t, cause that would suck.) But you know what I mean!” and that all you could see were Jews who were “Very Borscht Belty or Super Charedi.”

I did know what he meant. The very idea of Menorah Man sucks because it stills pigeonholes Jews. We’re defined only by the most Christian holiday (more on that below). But that would still be infinitely better than the situation we have currently: Jews who aren’t actually allowed to be Jewish.

Let’s start with the actual portrayal of Jews in media. At the time I couldn’t remember a single non Ashkenazi Jew. I’m sure that I heard of a case but I couldn’t actually remember what it was. He was right about the two extremes, except that there’s one clear preference for one side (which would be non-Jewish Jews). Charedi are almost never main characters (I remember one movie with Jessie Eisenberg, but that’s it). The truth is, in American media, Jews aren’t supposed to be religious.

I’d actually talked about this all in a really old thread on a shared facebook group, where this same friend had asked:

 How do you guys feel about the portrayal of Jewish Characters (especially religious Jews) in media? I also find it interesting that being openly Christian or Muslim in media is becoming more favorable, and those types of characters are becoming more complex, while Jews are still stuck in stereotypes, for the most part. Thoughts?

My answer:

“Oh man, you’re talking to the right girl here. I’m going to focus on television because that’s my expertise but most of these are transferable to all kinds of plot driven media. Ok. So. Here’s the thing: television as a whole doesn’t know what to DO with Jews. There’s a trope called You Have to Have Jews -the basics of which are that everything has to have Jews because there are so many Jews in Hollywood. However, most prominent Jews in Hollywood are only allowed to be Jews in so far as the comedy aspect of it - you know what I mean. The Big Bang Theory is an excellent popular example of it. Crooked nose, Brooklyn accent, overbearing, fat mothers who are all, somehow, Ashkenazi. The reason for this is actually partly our own fault - as a method of survival, Jews have taken self depreciating humor to a whole new level, which has simply caught on. You know the rule of the n word - only black people are allowed to call themselves that? In Hollywood, that separation simply never happened. That rule was never set in place, because the Jews had been making fun of themselves for so long, and then when the white people came along they thought “we can too”. And once a race becomes a joke in Hollywood, it stays a joke. And the thing is unlike with LGBTQA and Black/Asian/Latinx communities, there is simply no awareness of the problem. Antisemitism stops plenty of people from listening to the few who try to change things. I have seen very few convincing Jews on television. Mostly, Judaism is treated in the “You’ve Got To Have Jews” throwaway line sense. For example, Willow Rosenberg. Her name sounds Jewish, she mentions she’s Jewish once or twice in the second season, and she puts a rock on a grave. In seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (more, if you count the comics, and I do) that is every reference to her Jew-ness, and I just did a rewatch. Anyway, what I meant with not knowing what to DO with Jews is more complicated than that. Basically, despite the abundance of Jews in Hollywood, the antisemitism pushes any of them who are actually practicing to never admit it. This means that Jews never do anything, well, Jewish. (I can think of very few instances where Jewish customs are shown and they all link to either funerals or Hannukah, which are, apparently, the only holidays Jews celebrate, ever.) This means that Jews in television generally a. celebrate Christmas, b. adhere to some stereotype or another, and/or c. have no Jewish identity besides parentage. Most of the time they’ll have typically Jewish names (but not always!). I know for a fact that there ARE practicing Jews in Hollywood - and yet, no Jewish character is ever seen in Synagogue or wearing a Kippah. Appearances of main characters as Jews that fit in to this are: The aforementioned Willow Rosenberg from Buffy, Howard Wollowtz from the Big Bang Theory, Zoe Hart (who is said to be half Jewish and yet manages to fit in to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE CRITERIA) from Hart of Dixie, Felicity Smoak from Arrow, Annie Edison from Community, Rachel Berry from Glee. Jewish characters who appear in one episode and whose jobs are to Be Jewish are excluded from this, as are Ultra Urthodox. But I’ve only seen the first once and the second twice. As for why there are only Ashkenazi Jews, it’s because there are only Ashkenazi Jews. It’s actually very much circular.”

(Note from present me: here I could’ve easily discussed Jewish-coding, but since this is already long enough, another time.)

The wide variety of Jews that exist in Real Life aren’t portrayed on TV. And while those variety of other minorities are coming out slowly, Jews are lagging behind. Jews are allowed to be Jewish either as long as they eat pork or as long as they have no contact with other, non Jewish people.

The friend responded, saying that was the problem in the first place: there’s no middle ground. No Sephardi Jews, no Modern Orthodox. He blamed it on the “Jewish Media Conspiracy”, but I said it’s a little more complicated than that.

I then gave a little historical background. I assumed that my friend knew that Hollywood was built by Ashkenazi Jews, but I asked him if he knows why.

See, back then there were tons and tons of Ashkenazi Jews coming in from all over Europe. A lot of them were coming to Israel in waves called the Aliyot but most of the Jews leaving Europe were heading towards the INCREDIBLY RACIST US of A. So, once again finding themselves in a country where they had no place that wanted them, Jews headed towards the as of yet incredibly undeveloped Hollywood and LA and built it. They took an unfilled niche and made it their own, mostly because they couldn’t do much of anything else.

My friend compared it to money lending, which was a very, very good comparison. For those of you who don’t know what the whole money lending issue is: in old Europe Jews were pigeon-holed into money lending because Christians weren’t allowed to do it. Jews pretty much weren’t allowed to do anything else vis a vis earning a living, and eventually money-lender and Jew became synonymous. That is the source of the common stereotype of Jews being greedy: because of something they couldn’t help in the first place.

The fact that they created Hollywood, of course, is the source of  both You’ve gotta have Jews and the idea that Jews Control the Media (well, at least in its American form - the idea already existed in many ways). Now, most of these Jews weren’t religious, often because they viewed religion as the thing that was killing them by the millions in Europe. This was before the Holocaust, just to be clear - what we’re talking about is a reaction to the Eastern European Pogroms and the rise of a new type of racial Antisemitism in the west, which at the time seemed to be about religion. Of course the new Antisemitism is more complicated, and so are the reasons they distanced themselves from religion, but still. So the Jews who were building the foundations of Hollywood did the two things they did best: Made good movies, and made fun of Jews. There’s a long tradition of Jews making fun of themselves, as a coping mechanism. But! Suddenly all of these vaguely Christian white men realized that OMG, Hollywood is becoming a thing. And when they took control, Jews were still being made fun of, but now, instead of being in on the joke, they were made the butt of the joke. Stereotypes, which had at first been introduced by Jews as a sort of “in joke”, were made to be and portrayed as the rule. So Hollywood continued of course, and you probably know much of the next part of the story: the civil rights movement and second wave feminism in the sixties and early seventies changing the amount of women and black people seen on TV and to a certain extent on the big screen. Again, in the late eighties/early nineties, with the beginning of third wave feminism, more (mostly white, probably all cis-het) women on TV and movies alike, slowly many more black people and slowly, other minorities such as asians and hispanics. But during this entire time, JEWS WERE STILL BEING THE BUTT OF JOKES. There has never been a time in which there weren’t Jews in popular media and THIS, THIS, is the root of the problem. Antisemitic jokes are so ingrained into popular culture that they’re literally older than sliced bread. Jews weren’t ever slowly introduced to popular culture, and so there doesn’t seem to be anything to fix.

But of course, he said, there is something to fix.

And there is.

“Me: As for specifically that video, except for the problem that he mentioned pretty much every minority but Judaism, it’s not his fault.

Friend: Because of all of what you just mentioned.

Me: Yep. I should also say that anytime any voice speaks out against antisemitism they are often shot down with the same “Jews control the media” arguments, which is why so few people speak out, which is why the same arguments can be recycled.”

[ramblesandmumblesofanerd]

Rambling Reviews: Netflix’s Death Note

Welp, the day has come. As you can see, the Netflix version of the popular anime Death Note has just been released. And, as I said I would, I saw it. What are my initial opinions on the subject? Well, through the filter of professionalism I have put upon myself for this blog, I can certainly say that the film is dull, boring, ignores all of the rules of the source material and leaves you questioning as to why this film exists. If I were to remove this filter, all you could hear would be the incoherent screaming of a nerd who has been thoroughly wronged by whoever thought making this movie would be a good idea. For a better understanding of why this is the case, allow me to both make a few comparisons between the film and the anime/manga and also briefly talk about the film as a whole.

So, what is the plot of this particular version of Death Note? Well, one day at high school, Light Turner (ugh, that feels so wrong) comes across an old notebook which can kill people according to the onslaught of rules held within and the Death God Ryuk who practically forces the young man to try it out on a two-dimensional school bully. After he discovers the power he holds, Light and his high school sweetheart Mia Sutton decide to take it upon themselves to become KIRA, a God who will “never disappoint” and kill as many criminals as they possibly can. Eventually, the detective known as L gets involved and declares that he will capture and execute KIRA. And thus the story focuses on the struggle between Light being KIRA and also being a high school student all while trying not to be caught by L.

Firstly, things in this film just happen. The film never takes a moment to take a breath and calm down, every moment just races by at the speed of sound and smacks you in the face. Not even a full minute and thirty seconds pass until Light gets the notebook. No build up, no establishing characters, just: BOOM, Death Note. Also, the Death Note’s appearance comes with a lot of horror movie fanfare, as it comes on the breeze of a storm and causes all of the lights to flicker whenever it is being used. The same goes for Ryuk, especially in his initial appearance when he just messes around and scares the excrement out of Light. You expect big things to happen in this film, dramatic reenactments of iconic scenes lifted from the source material, but they fly by so fast that you're left wondering “...was that it?”. You wouldn’t have even known this was Death Note at the beginning of the film until you saw the title sequence.

So, I guess I should start talking about the characters at some point, shouldn’t I?

Well, Light was absolutely boring and was the complete antithesis to his predecessor. Light TURNER is just a punk high school student who helps other kids cheat on their tests for cash because his mom was killed. Oh, yeah, they go that route. One of Light’s first targets of the notebook was his mom’s killer, but I just couldn’t give a care. At all. Light Yagami was never driven by revenge (at least not until L started messing with his vision, and even then not by much), he just saw injustice in the world and his seventeen year old mind decided that if he uses  his Death Note to eliminate all of the evils of the world, he will assume the mantle of a godlike being. He does not care about anything else so long as it doesn’t benefit his vision. Granted, Light Turner eventually came to the same conclusion, but only after he got revenge and his girlfriend told him to keep going from there.

Meanwhile, there is Mia Sutton. “Who?” You may be asking? Well, she is Netflix’s version of Misa Amane, the Second Kira from the source material. She was a Japanese Pop Star who wanted to personally thank Kira after he killed the man who murdered her parents. By sheer coincidence, she came to possess her own Death Note and even more power than Light, thus how she was able to find him and become his girlfriend. Many people complain how she was not entirely necessary for most of the story, and I am willing to agree. Her character in the source material never seemed to go beyond “Love me, Senpai” and thus her intelligence in the later seasons suffered greatly. In the film, ironically, Mia is more like Light Yagami than Light Turner was for most of the film. She was the Id to Light’s Ego, as she constantly strived to eliminate all opposing forces, going so far as to plan ahead for certain scenarios. She was manipulative towards Light and vindictive to all who opposed KIRA. This would have made for an interesting twist, but by the time the climax was happening and everyone was going all in, I just couldn’t bother to care anymore.

Speaking of not caring, that is exactly how I believe the writers felt about the original, true version of L; they didn’t care, so they just made their own version. L in the source material was an orphan with a brilliant mind, one very similar to Sherlock Holmes. His soon to be butler and father figure Watari raised him at an orphanage where other children would soon be raised to succeed him should the need ever arise. This was due to the fact that L soon became a detective of then unparalleled genius and determination, solving all sorts of previously difficult or unsolved cases left and right until the day when KIRA became a looming threat. He is seen as secretive, emotionless, analytical, and deceptive in spite of his disheveled appearance. He is the perfect man to take on a mysterious psychopath like KIRA, be it from the shadows to keep his identity a secret, or face to face under a slew of fake names and aliases. Now, take all of that, and completely ignore it in this film. Netflix L is an overemotional child who openly mocks and taunts KIRA in the open without any form of protection other than a mask. He just comes out and says “HI, I will be your L for the evening!” And don’t get me started on him emotionally freaking out about losing control over the case to the point of actually holding a gun to Light’s head.

But what about Ryuk, the one character I was actually looking forward to seeing on the screen? Well, he is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I do actually like the way he looks, the effects are mostly practical and you do believe he is in the room...from the neck down. From the neck up, in spite of some moments, you can tell that the CGI isn’t registering as realistic to your eyes, so all you’re thinking is that Ryuk is just a man with either a green face mask or motion capture dots on his head. As for his character, Ryuk has apparently been a traitorous backstabber who has been passing down the Death Note for generations who constantly taunts Light for not just simply killing everyone who opposes him. All he’s really meant to do in this version is exposit rules about the notebook (most of which don’t even exist in the source material), laugh a bit and look scary. And yes, while the original Ryuk did that, he never came off as a threat rather than an interested bystander. Ryuk was a shinigami who just got bored in his world one day, as all you can really do in a world full of immortal death gods is gamble and sleep so long as you write enough names in your notebook to keep yourself alive. He sees how Light uses the Death Note and basically hangs around to watch the show and laugh at the funny humans until Light either gives up the notebook or dies. That’s what I like about the original Ryuk, he’s just a spectator and is thus an odd reflection of the audience.Netflix Ryuk is just a spiteful spirit who is more interested in Mia than Light.

So, you have failure across the board for all of the iconic characters, Not even the secondary characters like Light’s Dad or Watari get a pass, as they either have no character at all or the character we are given is so poorly written or overdone that we just do not care about them. Every character just felt so two-dimensional that I felt like I was watching a film starring a cast of cardboard cutouts. The only one who gave somewhat of a good performance was the tag team of Willem Dafoe as Ryuk’s voice and the poor shlub who had to physically be Ryuk.

And the effects...lordy the effects. When it comes to the deaths in this film, they are somewhat gruesome if not ridiculous. The first two deaths are reminiscent of Final Destination, as they are executed through what I can only describe as a Rube Goldberg Machine of Coincidence, and when the payoff comes watch out! There’s so much blood and gore, I’m surprised the town wasn’t painted red by the end of the movie. While death is kind of a big deal in this franchise, the way the film executed it was quite silly if not sickening.

So, in the end, Netflix’s Death Note was not a good film. It’s not even good in the “so bad, it’s good kind of way.” Fans will hate it because of how much it gets wrong and casual observers will just be bored and confused by it. I understand that when it comes to making an adaptation, some things need to be changed or erased, but when die hard fans of the source material leave your film feeling so much agitation that they want to make an entry in their sub-par blog(s) to talk about why it doesn’t work by repeatedly comparing it to the source material, perhaps it would have been better not to make your film in the first place. So, unless you like torture, avoid this film.

In the meantime, never stop rambling, TM

[yingqilin]

Where Do I Even Begin?

Well, first of all, I’ve LOVED LOVED LOVED Qilin ALMOST as much as I loved Unicorns, and Dragon. I say ALMOST because I first saw a unicorn on TV when I was 4 years old in the EARLY 1980s! But, I’d never even heard of a so-called “Chinese Unicorn” since about the mid-late 1980s when I saw a children’s magazine called “Cricket” which had a WHOLE SPREAD about UNICORNS, including the Chinese & Japanese versions.

(I don’t believe this was the actual cover. I can’t remember what year the Cricket Magazine issue was, just that it was in the 1980s. This issue was cited in many books written about Unicorns as well, following its syndication. It had a full on spread including many kinds of unicorns from many cultures... if I recall correctly, there might even have been an French Unicorn story as well.)

When I was a little kid, I actually didn’t like to read (which was an issue by the late 1900s, and even the government would talk about it, the trouble was they’d demonized comic books in the 1960s-1970s, which resulted in that problem, because even tho’ “correlation doesn’t equal causation” they didn’t know that and thought that the act of reading comics made you into a criminal. My experience was the exact opposite, because I read super hero comics a lot and was more interested in THAT than things like doing hard drugs, vandalism, and shoplifting which was rampant in NJ where I grew up.) So, by the late 1980s-early 1990s children were encouraged to read, read, read. Well, I liked pictures, and I LOVED: unicorns, dragons, and dinosaurs, ANYTHING FANTASY, but also Sci-Fi. (I also loved Marvel Comics/X-MEN, and Disney Adventures Magazine, and nearly all the Jeffrey Katzenberg hit Disney Films)

So, whenever it was something of interest to me, I would read a lot, and I had stacks of books, which I also used to practice learning art, and I was self taught. (I have A.D.D.)

I graduated in May 2001 from the Art Institute of Philadelphia (Majored in Computer Animation AKA CAM). And, by the GW Bush Era, I had already been active online since 1994, and had been blogging, and using many various art websites.

By late 2001, and most of the early 2000s (2001-2007) I spent months and even years sketching and drawing Qilin, interacting in the Furry/Anthro Fandom, and published a lot of my works to GeoCites/Yahoo, and had even created my own message boards, and so on. I even had one called “Qilin Savanna” Altho’ much of these sites are gone, my original works still remain on DeviantArt in my gallery HERE. (I also LIVED IN CHINA many times in the GWB Era often.)

Since that time I’d also written a lot of things, multiple times over, about my research into Qilin (which are not all unicorns, just some).

If you were to type in “qilin cartoon” into Google you can actually see the many many photo images that come up since the time I’d first started publishing my work ONLINE, FOR FREE, you can actually see how my works have influenced people. Back then, there was a MAJOR mix-up with the term, because MOST information available in ENGLISH regarding CHINESE EVERYTHING was often inaccurate, used the dead Wade-Giles Chinese language, or were often confused with JAPANESE. Another issue was that I actually could speak standard Mandarin Chinese, but many people wrote the Cantonese names, or FREQUENTLY confused them with Japanese name for the exact same character (AKA kanji, AKA Hanzi), which is “kirin” in Japanese. Also, the majority of NON-Chinese speaking persons don’t know how to pronounce Mandarin pinyin. (Example: Can you pronounce?: chi, qi, shi, xi, zhi, zi, qu, chu, er, ri, ren, si, ran, yu, you, bo, po, zhou, zhu, cao, zui - Most Non-Chinese speakers CANNOT pronounce these correctly at all. “Chi” sounds like “Tcher” and “Qi” sounds like “Tchee”, “Shi” sounds like “scher” and “xi” sounds like “schee”. There are also variations on pronunciation.)

But, I still stuck to the facts. my father-in-law in China,The late Wang Zimin, actually had special access to a restricted library, and wrote letters to me about Qilin, and the 4 major Chinese magical deities: Qilin, Long/Dragon, Fenghuang/Phoenix, Bixi/Dragon-Heard Tortoise.

Back then, mostly you needed to search “kirin” especially because M. Peña called her artwork “Kirin” but still also called them “Chinese Unicorns”. Her gorgeous sculpture works were sold everywhere for years, nation wide, from the boardwalk to Spencer Gifts, to Flea Markets, and Christmas season mall kiosks.

But, as you scroll through all the works produced since that time, not only the ones titled or tagged as "kirin” but over time “Qilin” starts to replace this as more and more people growing up actually start to study Chinese, especially artists and customers, and many of these young artists are either my fans or students, but fans or students of my students... after a while, people forgot who I was... but my work BECAME PART OF THE CULTURE.

You can SEE that many people emulated my poses, my styles of doing hair, and many other details. Over the years, a number of my fans, and friends would send me private messages FREAKING OUT that either someone stole my work, stile my style, or ripped me off...

That’s actually NOT TRUE. No one ripped me off. THOSE ARE MY STUDENTS.

You guys ASKED ME things like: How do you draw _____? so I made countless cheat-sheet style tutorials (because paid classes don’t ACTUALLY TEACH). Also, if someone wants to learn, (like myself) they try to draw from WHAT THEY LOVE. That means ME. MY ARTWORK. How else will they learn if they don’t copy, ask questions, etc.?

I have many many open source materials in my DeviantART gallery (which are STILL MY MOST POPULAR WORKS OF ALL TIME despite the hours of work I’ve produced artistically.) I have also licensed much of my line art works FOR FREE for people to practice coloring with wither digitally, or to print them out and color with real media like markers, color pencils, pastels, or whatever because people kept asking me.

Actually, I would like to credit a number of artists whom are my biggest influences as well:

Susan Dawe

Glen Keane

Alan Davis

Those are my biggest ones, but I also loved artworks by Burne Hogarth,  Auguste Rodin,  Edward Degas (I especially love his ROUGH sketch work), Frank Frazzetta, Boris Vallejo & Julie Belle, Fred Moore, Vladimir “Bill” Tytla,   AND the film The Last Unicorn was especially the #1 thing that got me actually DRAWING when I was 4 years old.

SO much of my work, especially ANYTHING with unicorns, has been tattooed onto people bodies. Many people personally asked my permission, but I honestly DO NOT MIND. I have found over the years more examples of my artwork tattooed onto people than I can count. It’s LOVE.

However, I’ve also many many times been the victim of theft FOR REAL. Many people have tried to rob my sketchbooks, and many companies have illegally robbed my artwork online. It was the cause of MUCH online fights, wars, and battles. There’s also impersonators: People pretending to be ME, or claiming THEY did my work: also the cause of much much online fights and flame wars.

-Then, of course, there’s LOTS & LOTS of kids online that “rob” my work for RPGs, and fan pages... Honestly, I’m NOT going after children, or fans, for harmless things like that... I’m NOT Metallica.

So, where am I going with THIS?

Well, for one, there’s both ART and PHILOSOPHY which are BOTH a MAJOR part of my life.

I had a number of setbacks, delays, and many other strings of very unfortunate events in my life. Needless to say, I was very depressed. However, I did find myself back in college, first for Philosophy, and then for Art, especially Video... which somehow saw me thrust forward into Animation HEAD-FIRST. Suffice it to say, I’ve worked through, blew threw, and past, all of my blocks, and have been doing animation again. (lots more long stories, but not writing them here)

Many many times, you can’t always reach, yet, what you want. Other times, other persons, or groups want to change you, or make you something else.... and not you. But, it kills you inside...

At some point, you need STOP listening to everyone, and everything else, ESPECIALLY if that’s not FLOWING in the direction are are INSIDE.

I’d already WANTED to produce at least 2 series/films of my own. (”Eyewitness” and “Zenith Beyond The Dragon’s Rue”) Well, THIS is a branch off that tree. This stems from my concepts for “Eyewitness” but sort-of... I had ALWAYS wanted to produce my own small animated shorts, especially with music, like the old 20th Century animated works such as “Silly Symphonies”, “Merry Melodies”, and even Disney's “Fantasia”, but also a number of influences from Far East Asia including PR China, and Japan.

I’ve been multiple times inspired by Socrates, Plato, Laozi, Bruce Lee (Li Xiaolong), and many fusion artists/dancers on the American West Coat including my teachers: Zoe Jakes, and Alyssum Pole, as well as Rachel Brice, Carolena Nericcio, Jamlila & Suhaila Salimpour, but also Matahari, and Kerli Kõiv. People that think differently, question things, or create their own ideas, or even fusion artists.

Well, this project has been on my mind since at least 2001.

In fact, my actual name (Ming Zi) in Chinese is: 任思麒 (Ren SiQi)

It literally means: Duty/Task [to] Think/Contemplate/Dream of Qi[lin]!

Also, as an artist, there are a number of things I believe in, whereas other things I’ve shed like a snake molting its skin. I’m a fusion artist, an eclectic artist, but I still firmly believe in art fundamentals like life drawing, practicing one’s skills, and I use bot digital and real media. I LOVE TO DRAW. I firmly believe in Quality OVER Quantity, yet, in some instances I also think too much detail is overdo, and somethings look better less refined. I like realism, stylization, cartoons, and beautiful things.

I want to create content that is LESS about “being a big success” or ego driven ideas of “stardom”, and lavish money making, but more about THE LOVE OF IT.

I do NOT want to be part of any establishment groups, crowds, clubs, or institutions, and DON’T want to be mainstream, NOR corporate. I have found all of those things to be negative and destructive to my life and therefore regret pursuing those avenues. I’m NOT interested in walking those paths, nor dunking helplessly into those turbulent or stagnant flows, but RATHER Flow my own way, because I have my OWN PATHS. I don’t need to buy their metaphorical light bulbs, because I have my own light that I can shine inside of me.

And, if I am being completely frank & honest, another MAJOR influence on me WAY BEFORE HE WAS EVEN POPULAR was Bernie Sanders. I am a Berner. Sanders actually GAVE OF HIS HEART & HIS TIME FOR FREE. He crowd funded for what he believed in with SMALL MONEY because he was against BIG MONEY.

I have no care for being in exclusive film festivals or galleries. People whom already LOVE my work find their way to it. People HAVE found value in my efforts and work.

Therefore, I wish to begin producing this animated short. It is not cheap tho’. But, I will gladly share my process, my concept work, my practice work, and everything FOR FREE. Free to ALL ARTISTS, and people whom just live beautiful things, art, and QILIN.

I wish to pursue an independent direction in my art. But, I would very much like to include people, if not the world or those in it that care about these things, to interact with me. A long time ago I’d created my “Qilin Savanna” site to interact with people whom also loved Qilin, Unicorns, Dragons, and other things, but also a love for art, or learning art.

This year (2017) while interacting with MANY MANY young people, and young artists, I often found that people WANTED to learn to DRAW, to improve their techniques and practice them, but despite having paid money to attend art classed (including “drawing classes”) they did not actually get what they paid for, did not actually get instruction for what they wanted to learn, but either had to fend for themselves, try independently, or got resources online for free... so, why then were they paying for it?

I have many many times, spent just a short moment with frustrated peers, students, classmates, friends, and fellow artists whom couldn’t draw what they wanted to, and teased me for being some kind of special person... when in fact, whatever I do, others can too. I sat with them, explained, and demonstrated (AKA Using The Feynman Technique) and after that moment of AHA THEY COULD DO IT. And, they didn’t need to come back. 

I did THAT FOR FREE.

I did THAT FOR LOVE.

And, NO, I DON’T HAVE A MASTER’S DEGREE. Honestly, at this point, I don’t feel I actually want one. I DON’T want to be a part of that club, nor establishment either. In this way, I’m somewhat like Socrates, Diogenes, or Bruce Lee... only NOT. I’m ME. 

I have a lot more to say, but I think I will leave it here for now.