#i have a backlog of art to post but. this is what i finished today so.

[sunnys-side-upside-down]

Pride 2023!!!

[edelblau]

rendezvous

[allylikethecat]

I need gatty with gentle forehead kisses it is so important to me I’m so glad you’re doing more prompts I literally only check tumblr to see if you’ve posted 😭😭😭

Hello there kind anon who sent me this prompt in literally August but I am the WORST and just now filling it. I hope you're still here and I am so very grateful for your patience and also extremely sorry for the extremely long wait. I hope this isn't an epic disappointment. Working on it today made me smile amongst all of the sadness of this era being over. If anyone else wants to send a prompt from the kiss me with your eyes closed list and doesn't mind waiting apparently months, the list can be found HERE. Thank you so much for sending this in, and I apologize again for being the absolute worst and taking so long to finish it! I hope you have a great weekend and that you have a great week!

❤️Ally

Gentle. Forehead. Kisses. 

“Hey,” said George softly, slipping easily into Matty’s space with the ease and confidence of someone who had been doing so for years. He wrapped his arms around Matty’s narrow waist, and hooked his chin over Matty’s shoulder, the fabric of his well loved tee shirt wash-soft against the underside of George’s jaw. 

“Hey,” said Matty, not even looking away from the easel he had set up in the courtyard, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he stared at the canvas in concentration, an eruption of color marring the surface.

Following the final show of their tour, George had very quickly found himself back in the studio the next week, working through the backlog of production projects he had been procrastinating on. Meanwhile, Matty had moved through their home like a ghost, sleeping all day, and awake half the night, limping aimlessly from room to room, unsure what to do with himself without the rigid structure, the routine and accountability of tour. 

His therapist had recommended he find a hobby, one fully separated from work because as much as Matty loved music, lived and breathed it, at the end of the day, it was still his job. 

Reading just made him want to write, and every time he sat down to work on his novel he ended up scrawling lyrics on a napkin instead. His knee couldn’t currently handle the physicality of running or even jiu jitsu at the moment which left him restless. George is the one that had suggested he try painting, sheepishly holding out a bag of acrylic paints and brushes. 

Matty had taken to it quickly, swirls of color smeared across the canvas that now covered their dining room table as Matty lay them out to dry. 

“It looks good,” said George, tilting his head slightly as he took in the orange and yellows that covered the surface. He didn’t always understand Matty’s art, but he liked that it put the light back in his eyes, that he got excited bringing each finished piece inside and resting it on the dining room table. He kept making jokes about starting an Etsy shop, about donating the proceeds to charity. George wasn’t sure if he was actually joking. 

“Thanks,” said Matty, adding another stroke of yellow, blending it with the orange. 

He wouldn’t say it, he couldn’t find the words, but he hoped that George realized the painting was him. Not him the tangible sense, but how he made Matty feel, his insides all twisted up with love and desire, and yearning and the ever present disbelief, even after all these years, that George still wanted him back. Unlike the dark grays and blacks and whites with violent splashes of red that had made up Matty’s earlier works, this one was different, it was happy. Looking at it made Matty feel happy the same way George did. He would be keeping this one. This painting was for them.

“You’re back early,” said Matty, twisting in George’s arms. George snorted. Matty had a smudge of orange paint on his nose, a streak of yellow in his hair. 

“I’m actually late,” George said, and Matty frowned. 

“What time is it?” he asked, dipping his brush in the pint glass of water he had commandeered from the kitchen and leaving it to soak.

“Little after six,” said George, bemused, it wasn’t the first time that Matty had lost track of time while absorbed in a project, and he doubted it would be the last.

“Oh,” said Matty, his cheeks flushing, “I didn’t realize I had been out here so long.” 

George couldn’t help it, he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss against Matty’s forehead, his sun warmed curls tickling his lips as they brushed against his face.

“You’re really fucking cute,” said George, “you know that right?” 

Matty pretended to scoff, “I’m not cute,” he said with faux indignation. “I am a very manly, masculine, adult man, I am not cute.” 

“Fucking adorable,” said George, pressing another kiss to Matty’s forehead, “like a little woodland creature, all small and fluffy and cute.” 

Matty just made a huffing noise, standing up on his tiptoes to capture George’s mouth with his own, slipping his tongue between George’s eager lips. When he pulled away they were both breathing heavily, and George now had some of the orange paint on his face as well. 

“Now tell me,” said Matty, his voice thick with arousal, “was that cute.” 

George just chuckled,  “cute as fuck.” 

[sege-h]

Oh my god

I just realized that with that Silver and Storm comic I am

Done with my art backlog

I've been unable to catch up to it for like 3 years

In 2020 I drew so much-- I think it was my way of dealing with. Everything. I didn't have to think about much if I just focused on drawing and god I needed the distraction

So I'd churn out at least 5 pictures each day

And I didnt wanna just spam them all, and between that and just not having the energy to get on the computer some days, the amount drawings I hadn't posted kept growing. And over the next 3 years whenever I'd make a dent in the backlog I'd get struck with the drawing bug and add like 10 more drawings to it

It was happening till the end too-- when I was posting this years art fight pieces, I had just those to post, and then like 3 other pictures. That was in September. But then I drew more so even though I was like 'Im about to catch up' it didn't happen until NOW

This wasnt stressful to me ftr, I just found it funny that I was like an art hydra. I post one drawing, and end up making 2 more

But. As of today I'm caught up. I have couple sketches done for the OTP challenge but they arent finished.

But what this all means that from now on I'll be posting my art as I finish it, as opposed to posting art I'd finished a month or a week ago

🎉

[chaoshaven]

Chaotic Card 1-Arias

Hello everyone, and welcome...to Chaotic!

I’m going to try and make one post a day, and considering that I'm only going to talk about books once I’ve finished reading them, and games as they come up, a lot of the posts will be about Chaotic, as filler, but also, there’s a lot of backlog and I need to infodump somewhere. Each chaotic post will talk about one of the cards, as well as a bit of the franchise; be it the card game, online game, tv show, or the world it takes place in. 

Today I will be talking about how to read a creature card, the base of this game as well as the first printed card from the Dawn of Perim set. With that being said our card today is:

Arias! (Art By: Khary Randolph, John Rauch)

Wait, but a lot of this is...blank?

That’s a feature not a bug!!

The 4 squares on the left side are his Disciplines; top to bottom, his Courage, Power, Wisdom, and Speed. These 4 Disciplines are what was primarily used in the card games for the first two series, then when the expansion Secret of the Lost City came out it transitioned to be more focused on elemental based attacks. Depending on the Discipline values that you had it would let you play certain attacks, or you win initiative in combat, meaning you attack first. I can cover how the Disciplines work more in depth when those Attack and Location cards come up. To add extra value/collectability/uniqueness to the creature cards though, they printed the same creature with different and varying Disciplines. So my Arias could have a higher Speed stat, but yours is more Powerful. I’ll explain deck building another day, but ideally, when you make an Attack deck with a lot of Power based cards, you want your creatures to all have high Power, so they can all use the majority of your deck. All about Synergy.

The bottom right is also blank because that is the hit points, which like the Disciplines, different copies of the same card can have different Energy. Both Energy and Disciplines have intervals of five, meaning that all Discipline and Energy stats will be a multiple of 5 within a certain range. If the Energy range of a creature is 35-45, then his cards will either say he has 35, 40, or 45 Energy.

The bottom left has the Mugic counter, which thankfully, are the same between all copies of the same creature. Mugic is this games term for spells, and it’s nit a typo, its a fused word of Music and Magic. I can explain more later but simply put, Arias does not cast spells.

The right hand side is Elements. Fire, Water, Earth, Air. Long ago, the elements lived in-Sorry wrong franchise.

Elements don’t differ between Creatures, so all Arias have the same element; Earth. Like Disciplines, having these Elements mean that some Attacks or Locations for combat give you an advantage. Attacks with Earth will deal extra damage if you have Earth.

The Blue Background denotes that he is from the Overworld Tribe, one of the 5 tribes in Perim. The icon in the top right says that he is from the Dawn of Perim set and his rarity is Common. Name centered at the top.

That’s it for explaining general card stuff, so, now lets get into specifics with this creature specifically!

Stat Spread:

Courage:45-65

Power:55-75

Wisdom:20-40

Speed:45-65

Energy:45-55

Mugic Counters:0

Elements:

Fire

Air

Earth

Water

Ability:

Support Power 5-This creature gains 5 power for each adjacent Overworld Creature you control.

Playstyle:

Put Arias in a Overworld exclusive team. I actually wouldn’t recommend having him fight aggressively, because him moving forward prevents him getting buffed by his ability. He gets more powerful the more friends he has around him. Either put him in the middle row to protect the backline, or have him in front, but move him forward after another front liner has gone. Arias can be aggressive but is better when supporting his friends. With all of this being said...he is outclassed by better creatures. not a bad card but he did come out in the first set, and power creep is an issue.

Biography:

He lives in Kiru CIty, Capitol of the Overworlders. A warrior who loves to fight, and both in the world of Perim, in the TV show, and in the TCG he is an iconic image, I’d say because of his simplicity? He’s a minotaur with anger issues, what's not to love?

[beowulf22121]

I went with the marketing post but am explaining in a comment anyway.

If nobody can take half a page of text and explain the story in a compelling way, I'm not sure the people involved with the story even know what's going on.

I'll give a few examples.

Order of the stick

A dungeons and dragons inspired tale about a group of heroes questing to stop a plot to end the world. It began as a joke a page comic when 3rd edition updated to 3.5 and grew into the almost finished tale it is today. Updates are coming in slowly, but with the backlog of over 1000 pages, it will take a while to catch up anyway.

Grrl Power

A superhero tale about a girl with ADHD who managed to find a powerful artifact, and is recruited by a new government organization trying to get ahead of super law enforcement. Aliens, lycanthropy, vampires, magic, and all kinds of superpowers can be found within the pages of this story. After a slow start (the first big fight took 5 years to draw) the author has sped up progression, and has been updating twice a week for most of the comics lifespan.

Dominic Deegan

Dominic, a seer, looks to the future for profit. Where will you find your keys, who will you marry, and what will lift the curse that makes a fish teleport over his head every time he tries to smoke? Pay him and he'll tell you. Once a larger plot comes into play and the story takes off this tale crosses a diverse world full of interesting characters, diverse environments, and compelling moral points of view. A sequel 200 years in the future is updating now.

Dresden Codak

What if politics got in the way of everything? A thief can't steal your bag without filing an application for the theft with the department of larceny, a scientific discovery can't be doccumented without peer review from a committee that once voted to identify a woman as a weather balloon, and the department of opposition... Opposes. What if the new scientist in town didn't care, and just wanted to do science? What if the forces in charge didn't want her to?

How to be a Werewolf

A young girl bitten by a werewolf has grown into an adult. Thinking she would need to live with her parents forever, she finds a local pack of werewolves who have befriended a mage, and discovers that she's not as unique as her family thought. Now that she has friends she doesn't need to worry about hurting, she can open up and learn more about her condition.

See that's all it takes. Sure, fans should joke about it, authors should post art, I need to become aware of a story before I can read it. That being said, if it's not catchy in the first 3 pages, I need some kind of description to tell me that it does get good.

Random question because I'm discussing webcomic marketing (especially in this current... climate...) with friends:

[rainyraisin]

OKAY I HAVE SUCH A BACKLOG OF ART BUT I KEEP FORGETTING TO POST HERE SO HERE'S WHAT WE'RE GONNA DO

Im gonna post an art dump a day till I run out of art!!!! It'll be one to ten pics per posts, idk depends if I'm feeling like giving you a piece of art as a treat or drowning you guys in that shit (also depending on what pieces fit in a post together!!!)

See yall when i finish tagging today's post in 12 years (tumblr tagging is both the best and worst chhgzkggx)

[bbeelzemon]

why did i just get the urge to draw humanizations for my TLH characters. Why

[ectogeo-rebubbles]

Thanks for the tag, @sapphosewrites (back in like May or something but I didn’t finish replying to it then) and @misty-feathers (today)! <3 Also, wow I haven’t done this particular ask game in like 3 years???? It feels like it was more recent than that lmao.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

93 (+ 8 that are anonymous bc no one really needs to look at my extremely old homestuck fic/art/whatever, lmao)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

212,675. Hell yeahhhh, I can’t believe I’ve passed 200k!!!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

DS9.

4. Top 5 Fics By Kudos

the spy who married me

latent attraction

vicarious

the spy who came in from the cold

save tonight (tomorrow I’ll be gone)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! I’ve gotten worse at that lately, though. Like, I get in a cycle sometimes where I feel bad for not replying to every comment, and then that makes replying to the backlog of comments even more daunting. I love getting comments, though, and I love replying to comments too, it’s so much fun interacting with my readers, and mutually inspiring each other (and so I really don’t get why it also can feel so hard to do sometimes lol).

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

This question was hard last time I answered it because I didn’t have many fics with angsty enough endings to qualify, but now I’ve been on a whumpier kick and I have too many to choose from. XD

Like… Hmm. A Professional Interest and nightmare are both very much hurt/no comfort, but they are told from the POV of the one doing the hurting, so maybe not those bc that feels like a different category?

I think my answer has to be the world will never take my heart. That fic is about “heroic” self-sacrificing behaviors being functionally no different from self-destructive ones, and showing the capacity for this kind of self-destructive selflessness in both Garak and Bashir. And then, instead of either of them improving at all in this regard, the fic ends with them each doubling down on their self-sacrificial tendencies. <3 To me that makes for a very deliciously bleak ending (even though the circumstances they’re in are temporary).

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

the next thirty, because it’s set 30 years after Garak and Julian’s first meeting, and it’s about how they are still just as in love (and in lust) with each other as ever. Old, married Garashir, my beloved!!! <3

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope! (Well, not since the dark days of well-meaning - but nevertheless devastating - “concrit” on ff.net.)

9. Do you write smut?

HELL YEAH!!!! ^_^ <3 Over 50% of my fics now are E- or M-rated, hehehehe. I feel like this is a big change from the last time I answered this question, which was BEFORE I’d specifically worked on developing my smut writing skills because I NEEDED so, I lied, I cheated to contain sex scenes that I personally would actually want to reread. XD

10. Craziest crossover

I don’t have any crossover fics on ao3 and tbh I’m unwilling to talk about the cringe that’s on my teenaged ff.net account (as in the account itself is old enough to be a teenager, AND as in I was a teen back when I was posting there lmao). But I did have one crossover fic there (under a different username. this was so long ago). You’ll just have to imagine it, I guess.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope. People are welcome to translate or podfic my fics! :)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Hmmm. Sort of? I have sort of co-written two fics (The Inherent Homoeroticism of Citizenship Paperwork and Whisper a Dangerous Secret) where sapphose threw out a small snippet on tumblr and then, with permission, I took it and ran with it because I felt compelled to expand upon the idea. I also wrote a follow up (Honesty Cums Easy) to one of @cemetrygatess' fics (You Make My Dreams (Cum True)), and I'm working on a fic set within the universe of one of dreamerdrop's series (Abscess 'Verse).... But does any of that count as co-writing? XD

I also wrote an installment in a round robin one time. (I’ve also done a round robin in DMs with some friends for funsies, but then I was the one who accidentally killed that by never writing the next part of it. 😭) Again, is that co-writing?

I’ve also made specific plans to co-author some fics before, but that’s never quite worked out. I think I agree to these collabs easily and enthusiastically, but then when it comes down to working on them I get too self-critical of my own writing (or of my own writing SCHEDULE, which is chaos and nonsense bc I am fully beholden to the whims of adhd lol), and I don’t want to let my potential co-authors down, and then it fizzles. So yeah, seems like I am more successful with ambushing other people’s fics with continuations than with co-writing in other ways??? XD Maybe/hopefully that will change someday?

14. All time favorite ship?

Garashir. <3

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I really don’t like this question. I started drafting a reply to this set of questions back in May this year, and my response to this question was about how I felt despair that I will likely never ever finish my soulmate wip..... which is currently, in December, the WIP that I am feeling the most excited about and closest to posting. So like what the fuck ever, I refuse to take part in predicting my own failure!!!! Things just take time! lol

16. What are your writing strengths?

Exploring interesting character dynamics. Plotting a fic out. Creating tension. Writing weird alien smut, maybe? Writing utterly ridiculous premises with juuuust enough nods to canon that people are like “ohhhh this is insane but you somehow made it believable???” ^_^ Or maybe these are just all the things I want to be good at.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue (I have def been improving at it, but making conversations flow well and seem realistic and actually sound like the characters is still def the hardest part of writing for me). Coming up with titles. Also, maintaining a consistent writing schedule/staying focused on a single WIP until it is done, hahahahahaha.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

My answer from last time (3 years ago) was “No thoughts, head empty, star trek brand Universal Translator on…” and yeah that still applies. TBH I mostly feel like this is an out of the blue question among the rest of this list??? My thoughts are it’s usually not necessary, but like obviously It Depends???????

19. Favorite fic you've written?

my answer from May: This changes on a frequent basis but right now I’m really feeling nothing to hide. The structure of interleaving flashbacks and a conversation about the events of the flashbacks worked just soooo well, it made the pacing so snappy. And also while writing it I felt like I’d unlocked a secret cheat code to writing dialogue because I didn’t need to connect all the dialogue up into one coherent block, I could just put a flashback whenever I couldn’t think what one of them would say next lmaoooooo, and it somehow worked SO WELL.

my answer from right now: you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine. Look, I just think Garak and Sisko should messily hook up in the early seasons, that’s all. ^_^ <3 I also really like thinking about what kinds of things Sisko asks of Garak and what Garak is willing to do for him and how early that all starts (like, Second Skin as a very distant precursor to ITPM).

20. What's something you want to write someday?

This is hard bc if I WANT to write it then I almost certainly have already made a wip document for it and STARTED writing it. XD I guess I really want to COMPLETE a multichapter garashir fic in the horror genre someday. (Come through for me, Sub Rosa sloanshir+garashir wip, aka “I Will Possess Your Heart” 🥰💕💖)

~

No pressure tagging @dreamerdrop , @hellostuffedtiger, and literally anyone who wants to do this!

20 fanfic questions

originally tagged by @el-dritchknight! Thanks for the tag!

No pressure tagging: @misty-feathers, @elemental-queen-writes, anyone else who wants to.

How many works do you have on ao3? 16

2. What's your total ao3 word count?  38,490

3. What fandoms do you write for? Deep Space 9 and Sun Haven

4. Top five fics by kudos: 

Best Face Forward

I’m Glad it’s You

Zipped up

It’s a… Deal

Awake

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? The Perek Flower & The Meya Lily It’s not finished because I’m still working on things in the middle. But I have the ending planned.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Over the Moon and Back Series Same deal as above. Not finished but the ending’s planned

8. Do you get hate on fics? no(t yet)

9. Do you write smut? Yes >:)

10. Craziest crossover? I haven’t done any yet :(

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? No(t that I know of)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but I’d be down to. It sounds fun.

14. All-time favorite ship? Garak x my oc (Mara)

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I am committed to finishing TPF&TML and Over the Moon and Back, but the Kinktober series I started last year looks like it’s going to go unfinished unfortunately. 

16. What are your writing strengths? Dialogue

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Transitions and expanding on my ideas. I always struggled to meet the page count in college.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language? I always say you can do whatever you want forever. *lowers glasses* is there discourse on this? I’m not in the loop. 

19. Favorite fic you've written? The Perek Flower & The Meya Lily It’s my baby

20. What's something you want to write someday? Hmm… I’d like to write an original fiction work, but I fear I wouldn’t do any of my ideas justice.

[aimai-ronri]

Reworking the Fuzzy Gaming Quest

This is the first time I've ever blogged publicly about something like this. I usually talk to friends about it, but I just as often don't say anything, because when I talk about video-games I get hyperfocused and sometimes the conversation takes a long time, so I often feel like it's a bit rude to get people wrapped up in it. But I remembered I have a tumblr now and people actually blog on here sometimes, so: prepare to suffer.

To set up why I'm so weird about games allow me to explain: first of all, I'm obviously not neurotypical in some way I don't know but one day would like to figure out. SECOND, I've been playing video-games literally since I can remember. My first real memories of cognition are watching my dad put cartridges in the NES, and climbing on the bed to put our Thai bootleg cart in there myself so I could play weird sprite hacks of Super Mario Bros. So anyway, gaming has factored heavily in my life since the beginning.

Anyway long story short, this has led to, for a long time, me wanting to leave some kind of legacy behind me in the form of a trail of beaten-up old video-games. Often this takes the form of just wanting to curate out a collection (physical or unholy--I mean digital) that I can leave behind in some state of completion, but on top of that it comes as me wanting to sit down and truly spend time with the games that are most important to my history over the course of my lifetime.

This has led to me making innumerable 'systems' for approaching the task of having a humongous backlog of video-games (some might say longer than is completable than anyone in a life time, and I recognize this) and often these systems get replaced or revised for being inadequate in some way. The latest no-thought system on my part was the Fuzzy Gaming Quest, in which the goal was basically to play through games starting from the beginning of time and blasting through at hyper-speed, with the intention of covering as much ground in order to induce familiarity as fast as possible with arcade games from an era I've rarely played (but longed for in my old man's soul).

This was working but I quickly ran into a snag (after recording about 250 videos 😥): I wasn't spending as much time with individual games as I'd like by any means. On one hand, I was backlogging games I was enjoying just to get them out of the way and continue the progress. On the other, sometimes I wasn't sure how much time you'd even spend with a game to consider yourself familiarized enough to rank it in some way, without necessarily having to beat everything (who has the time?). Not to mention arcade games that have no viable ending for the regular player (Pac-Man, Galaga, etc).

So anyway all this is leading up to me explaining the next iteration of the Fuzzy Gaming Quest. Here's a picture!

What you're looking at is essentially a 7 day scoreboard for various games that I selected out as important during my previous pass through the 70s and most of the 80s. These are all games I wanted to play more of or possibly log in a list.

7 days is my naive answer to how long I think would be good to spend on a game, in order to get competent enough at it to get a decent score and/or feel you've experienced your average game enough to go ahead and put it somewhere in a list. It might seem like overkill for a simple arcade game (though I'd argue you need to play repeatedly and give your brain time to absorb it to get the true experience), and it may seem like underkill for an RPG (though I'd argue that most RPGs probably aren't changing much more if you've been playing for 7 days already, but this doesn't forbid from continuing to play if I choose to), but this is my naive and probably flawed answer, anyway.

This is meant to serve the purpose of: - Progressing reasonably fast (notice this is a list of basically banger games everyone has heard of, I will probably only include a few games here or there that are lesser known that I just happen to like--I'll also be avoiding some consoles intentionally that I don't particularly like (like the Odyssey 2, sorry, it's my list though--convince me otherwise if you like)) - Filtering into some kind of "best of" list (if I don't even want to play it for 7 days (in brief sessions), it must not be very good after all and doesn't deserve to be on any best of list I would leave behind me--games that I do get through the 7 days I should understand enough to rank competently enough to make myself happy) - Giving me an excuse to spend more time on the games that really matter to me, today, in case I get hit by a bus tomorrow - Giving me a target for when I'm able to comfortably say I've experienced a game enough and don't need to feel bad about moving on if I want to but still haven't "beat it," and also leaving room for playing more if I like (I can sort it, take it off the board, but finish it anyway on the DL) (Also, if I do beat it, I can stop there with the board) - Satisfying whatever kind of ADHD thing I have going on by allowing me to keep a variety of games on rotation for some amount of time and not just getting stuck behind one game at a time - Breaking game experiences down over multiple days to allow a longer time to think about them and grow accustomed to them, also to allow me to fit them into my busy schedule by playing Space Invaders on the toilet for ~10 minutes - To leave behind a journal of high scores or information about how far I got in various games as I plod on

So, you may (rightly) ask: What's the point of all this? Why can't I just play games that I like and call it a day?

Well my first answer would be, "shut up I know you're right I just can't, my brain is broken," but my second answer, the one I would say aloud, might be that I really have always wanted to take a targeted approach to going through all of game history and that's what this is in service of.

I have no false expectations about getting all the way through game history up to now in one lifetime, at least not without sacrificing a lot of games in the process. I definitely won't ever get to the point where I'm always keeping up with contemporary games. It's lucky for me that I mostly fell out of favor with games around 2011 for various reasons, but really it had been a steady decline of interest since about 2005 or so. I have a shorter-hand target, but if I were to ever reach it, I'd like to keep going on, even if it means playing PS4 games in 2061 when I'm almost as old as my dad is now.

Anyway, your second question (and wow, if you made it this far) might be: "so what does this mean for your tumblr, which I care about intimately after seeing 20 posts, and was gutted when you temporarily took a break, and have been looking for meaning in my life ever since?"

Well, true believer, if you want I might post my 7 day high-score for various arcade games or something along with some pictures or videos of high points of the game (when I get to games complicated enough to have cool art). I haven't decided yet. I'm open to suggestions! I'd love to see people try to (and succeed!) at beating my scores (I'd feel like I influenced someone into maybe playing some old, great game they wouldn't have before deciding to just then).

If nothing else I hope it was interesting to see my thought process about this stuff.

If that's not true, I hope you were entertained by a write up of someone's journey ever deeper into video-game delirium.

And yes, I will get frustrated with the system and change it again in approximately a month.

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Touhou Makukasai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival

Just four posts ago I played the sequel to today’s title and was absolutely bowled away by it. Afterwards, I rushed out and bought the first title in this series and, with a little bit of cheating and luck manipulation, expedited its turn in the backlog list.

So, why did I start with Part 2? FDF is a series that reimagines the earlier touhou games into a more modern perspective- HD textures and sprites, more involved danmaku, and so on. Part 2 is a reimagining of Touhou 7, my personal favourite, and I’d rather try out a fave than a remake of one I’m less fond of.

It’s a decision I’m glad I made, since much of what amazed me about Part 2 is absent from Part 1. It’s perhaps unfair to compare the first effort of a group of fans to their second, especially since Part 1 is still a fine game; but where Part 2 was one amazing thing after another, the surprises of Part 1 are far more spread apart. Part 2 had sublime art direction, excellent attention to detail (it’s the little things- the spellcard declarations in FDF2 are a treat), and unique exciting danmaku patterns, showcasing unexpected ideas and tricks that set each battle apart.

Part 1 doesn’t really have any of that. It’s a good danmaku game, but it doesn’t really get past Good. There’s definite flashes of brilliance but it feels like a warmup for Part 2.

Fin or Bin:

I got a 1cc on my first try, during the stream, which then unlocked Extra. I dipped my toes into that, but hoo boy that’s a difficulty spike. I never managed to beat Flandre in the original Touhou 6, I wonder if I can Finish her off in the remake?

Video coming up just as soon as I can get it to export in a watchable fashion! It always comes out too choppy to watch, which in a touhou video is motion sickness city. EDIT: Here!

(Steam)

BBLC on: YouTube - Discord - Twitch - Patreon

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, August 19, 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late July report, although some may be older than that.

Please note I am taking the next week off, starting tomorrow (Aug. 19), so I might be a little slow in replying to any comments. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

USPS has become the focus of investigations due to reported mail slowdowns. Some small businesses who rely on USPS to deliver are suffering. “The longer the policy has been in effect, the worse the backlog gets.” As of today (August 18), the postmaster says they will rollback the changes until after the election in November. This is a rapidly-moving story in part due to the push for voting by mail, and should concern anyone who ships to US customers using regular mail (as opposed to couriers). Meanwhile, they plan to temporarily raise commercial rates during the holiday shopping season, but retail rates will not change. 

Ecommerce sales are still up year over year. "Before Covid-19 hit the US in March, e-commerce made up roughly 12% of retail sales in the country. That figure grew as states issued shelter-in-place orders that shut stores and kept shoppers at home, creating tailwinds for a company like Amazon. But even as states have begun to reopen, e-commerce has remained elevated, according to Bank of America data."..."The Economist used Google search traffic for hints of how lifestyles are changing and found users are still searching terms related to cooking, crafts, and exercise above pre-pandemic rates. There has been a noticeable spike in interest around such products as gardening supplies, baking flour, and Crocs." The UK is still seeing a good increase despite the ease in reduction in lockdown restrictions. The growth is slowing a bit in the US, though. 

Half of US small businesses fail in the first year (and other stats on small business). 

It’s been second quarter report season, covering company performance from April to June 2020.  Here are results for major companies involved in ecommerce in some way (comparisons are year-over-year):

Amazon US: sales up 40%

eBay: sales up 26%

Etsy: sales up $146% [click the link to read my summary]

Facebook: revenue up 11%

Google: revenue down 2%

PayPal: revenue up 22%

Pinterest: revenue up 4%; active users up 39%

Shopify: revenue up 97%

Walmart [2nd quarter ran May to July]: ecommerce sales up 97%, same-store sales up 9.3%

ETSY NEWS 

Admin are now posting a monthly update thread, in case you fear you have missed anything. This is how they chose to announce that non-seller accounts can no longer post in the forum. Since those account owners can still read the forum, that doesn’t mean you can call out your customers now. 

Sadly, there wasn’t much media coverage of Etsy’s nearly-annual billing screw up, but this one did get some attention. 

Etsy continues to get good media coverage for masks, including masks for your dolls. They also apparently got a decent slice of Google ranking for various pandemic-related searches in May [scroll down to the “Protection and Prevention” section]. 

However, Etsy is getting some bad press (along with Amazon), for allowing QAnon merchandise, because “the FBI has warned of the movement's potential to incite domestic terrorism.” Etsy replied to a request for comment saying that “that product listings associated with certain movements are allowed as long as they don't violate the company's seller or prohibited items policies, which ban items that promote hate or that could incite violence. The company said it is continually reviewing items on the site and could remove items in the future if they're found to violate Etsy's policies.”

More search trends on Etsy, this time kids’ items. I love how they think tie-dye was a ‘90s thing and not a ‘60-70s thing LOL. “a 318% increase in searches for kids tie-dye items...71% increase in searches for dinosaur wall art or decor*, and a 37% increase in searches for school of fish items….we’ve seen kid-friendly crafts spike in popularity, with searches for DIY kits for kids up 336%.”

Also, the holiday trends guide is out. “With the holidays approaching, and most shopping happening online, more shoppers will be looking for your help to make the season feel special.” The report is lengthy, covering Halloween to New Year’s, and most listing categories, while pointing out the possible pandemic changes to the usual trends. There is also an accompanying podcast with transcript. 

Speaking of the holiday season, here are Etsy’s tips for shops. Note that it is a bit late, as businesses need to have their holiday items posted no later than July if they want to be eligible for most fall media coverage. Almost every point refers to an Etsy tool or feature, some of them costing you money, so use this as a very broad guideline & be careful to read between the lines. 

They are still rolling out Etsy Payments to more countries: Morocco & Israel are the most recent. Note that Etsy Payments is not yet compulsory in these new countries. 

Etsy Ads once again has graphs. Do you find them useful? (I haven’t run ads at all this year, so I can’t check.)

Sendle is the latest shipping company to have a label integration with Etsy shops. 

Etsy asked US sellers to lobby their reps for more support for small business and other initiatives in the pandemic aid package.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google has stated that content on tabs is indexed and contributes to ranking as if it were on the page instead, but yet another test demonstrates that tabs may limit you. 

Due to the pandemic, Google has delayed finalizing mobile-first indexing until March 2021. (They originally announced it would be finished this September.) That means you have more time to update your website’s mobile version, ideally with responsive design. 

Site speed does matter to SEO, and Google is now asking some searchers how fast certain sites loaded for them. 

User comments on your products, blog posts and website can help you improve your SEO. The article suggests ways of getting that feedback, and ways to use it. [I’ve even had buyers give me new keywords to describe my items, in their messages and reviews.]

Getting links back to your site is important to SEO, but don’t annoy people while doing it. [sort of humour & sort of a rant, but does give some useful background on why backlinks matter.] Internal links also matter. 

There are some special tricks for food/recipe SEO, including structured data and even a WordPress plugin. 

Another WordPress plugin: submit any new or updated pages to Bing to be automatically re/indexed.

Do your keyword research before setting up your website’s sections and sub-sections, as they should serve the buyer experience, not your perception of it. Same with choosing which pages link to each other. 

SEOs are still trying to work out what happened with recent Google algorithm changes. Search Engine Journal claims that the May update was at least in part about demoting sites that had out-of-date or inaccurate information, so they suggest getting rid of the bad content on your site, or at least updating it. “Content pruning” has some advocates, but I wouldn’t worry about investing tons of time in this unless you have tons of time to spend. Just get rid of the blog posts that were wildly wrong, and the out-of-date filler. If you have a lot of sold out products, redirect those to relevant active pages. 

Meanwhile, a “glitch” on August 10 led people to think there was a massive Google algorithm update happening, but it all got fixed in less than a day. 

If you are behind on Google search news, here is a 7 minute video [with time stamped subtopics & resources links listed below], direct from Google. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

It’s tough to get started in social media if you don’t know the terminology, so here’s a list of the basic definitions you can consult if you get lost when reading.  

Don’t know how to blog? There are formulas you can use; here are eight options, nicely laid out, with downloadable templates. Don’t forget to figure out what your audience wants to read. And make sure you avoid these common blogging mistakes. 

If you have an email list but do not know how to take advantage of all the bells & whistles the companies (MailChimp, Constant Contact etc.) offer you, here are 4 ways to segment your lists. You can then send different offers or newsletters to different segments. 

You can optimize your social posts for people with visual impairments; excellent tips here. 

By the time you read this, the TikTok mess will likely have changed again, but here is an article on Trump’s order to prohibit US companies from doing business with TikTok owner ByteDance if the platform is not sold by September 15. 

Instagram has released its TikTok challenger, Reels, in more countries. 

Instagram is now offering a fundraising option, although it is a slow launch with some beta testing in the US, UK & Ireland to start. 

Here are step-by-step instructions on setting up your “Shop on Instagram.”

Pinterest says that searches around self-care & wellness have spiked during the pandemic lockdowns. “Pinterest has recently seen the highest searches ever around mental wellness ideas including meditation (+44%), gratitude (+60%) and positivity (+42%) that jumped from February to May….Pinterest says that searches for ‘starting a new business’ are up 35% on average, as are searches for ‘future life goals’ (2x), ‘life bucket list’ (+65%), ‘family goals future’ (+30%) and ‘future house goals’ (+78%).” There were also some searches clearly about spending more time at home: “Productive morning routine (up 6x), Exercise routine at home (up 12x), Self care night routine (up 7x)”

LinkedIn has a new algorithm; here’s how to make it work for you. [Many of these tips also apply to social media in general.]

Spotify is now doing “video podcasts”. Apparently a lot of their podcasters already did a video version of the Spotify podcasts, but had to publish it elsewhere up until now. 

Twitter now admits it is considering offering subscriptions to shore up its revenue numbers. “Shares of Twitter rose 4% in early trading Thursday following the earnings results....Twitter's growth plans are under close scrutiny as many advertisers pull back due to the pandemic. On Thursday, Twitter reported second-quarter ad revenues of $562 million, a 23% decrease compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has also been hit by advertisers participating in an ad boycott of social media, linked to the nationwide racial justice protests.” Also, the recent hack is not helping them. 

That said, it is still possible to market using Twitter, and here are some of the basics. 

YouTube is no longer sending email updates when a channel you follow posts new content. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Ad spend has increased again as lockdowns end, in some cases beating last year by a decent margin. 

The Buy on Google program is ending its commission fees. Participants will also be able to integrate their PayPal and/or Shopify payment options. As often is the case, they are starting with the US first, but plan on rolling it out to more countries in the future. There are more details here, and a review here (with some of the drawbacks). 

Google Product Ads are now showing the item’s “material” on the listing card (before you click). If you are doing your own feed for your website, you may have the ability to add the attributes needed for the details to show up.  

If you find Google Ads too expensive, consider buying search ads on Bing. 

eBay is experimenting with showing ads mixed in with unpaid listings; placement would depend on the same algorithm. 

Here’s a new guide to Facebook Ads [videos & text]

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

Bing has launched a new version of Webmaster Tools. 

There are ways to reduce the amount of traffic that Google Analytics designates as “direct traffic”; here are 15 of them. 

Currently in closed beta testing, the Google Search Console now has an “Insights” function, just like Google Analytics. I’ve found the GA one useful for telling me things I don’t always look at, so crossing my fingers that they release this to everyone soon. 

 ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Shopify helped many businesses stay open during pandemic lockdowns, giving it the boost to start competing with the likes of Amazon in ecommerce. “Shopify merchants that had previously or entirely relied on brick-and-mortar sales would later report they were able revive nearly 95% of that revenue online.”

eBay started rolling out its Managed Payments system to more sellers worldwide on July 20th. Things seem to be going slowly, with some confusion. 

But eBay is also having a 25th anniversary party for sellers on September 25th; don’t forget to register. 

Walmart is still delaying its new subscription model to challenge Amazon Prime, Walmart+. 

Amazon in the UK has launched a “Face mask store” part of the website. I haven’t seen this on other versions of Amazon. They’ve also increased some fees for some UK sellers, based on the new UK digital tax. And they are launching a site & presence in Sweden. 

The Competition Bureau of Canada has launched an investigation of Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers. “The bureau is asking any person or business that has conducted sales via Amazon.ca to contact them if they have any insights into the issues it is investigating.“

Amazon Prime Day has been postponed to later dates this year, starting with India on August 6-7. The remaining countries will apparently be announced soon. 

If you use WooCommerce, here are a bunch of free plugins, with brief descriptions. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

Buyers do not all make purchase decisions the same way; Google uses its massive collection of data and some new studies to provide some examples. “Worldwide, search interest for “best” has far outpaced search interest for “cheap.”

It’s cheaper to keep repeat buyers than it is to find new ones; here are 16 ways to do that. One of my favourites is ““proactively providing information on how to avoid problems or get more out of your product” creates a 32% average lift to repurchase or recommend.”

It seems that researchers can never produce enough marketing guides on Gen Z and millennials. 

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 

I see a lot of new sellers, and some older sellers, confused about the idea of a business plan. HubSpot not only explains them, but also provides a downloadable template. 

If you are thinking of changing careers, or just want to add skills to better run your current business, Google has many different courses, some of which they offer for free. 

There are ways you can increase your productivity without (usually) working more hours. “A study published by John Pencavel of Standford University found that how much employees get done takes a sharp drop after 50 hours of work in a week, and even more drastically after 55 hours. The study found that employees working 70 hours per week actually produce nothing more in those extra 15 hours...taking a power nap in the middle of the day can help you process new information and even learn new skills.”

[daleisgreat]

Hell Comes to Frogtown, Grunt: The Wrestling Movie, I Like to Hurt People

It has been a spell since I logged an ‘intentionally bad gifted movie’ entry. For newer readers here, my buddy Matt and I have a long tradition of gifting each other bad movies for Christmas and birthdays, and it least gives me something to rag on here about. Past entries here meeting this bad gift criteria consist of my coverage for Bounty Hunters, Hercules: Reborn and The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2. We have eased up on it this past year or two, but I still have a few sitting in the backlog box and will be covering a video today that is a three-for-one on a disc special titled ‘Wrestling Superstars Triple Feature’. Now we all may be familiar with WWE pushing wrestlers in its movie division going back 16 years, but wrestlers have been in bad straight-to-video films long before that and this disc features 1988’s Hell Comes to Frogtown (trailer), 1985’s I Like to Hurt People (trailer), and 1985’s Grunt: The Wrestling Movie (trailer). I originally watched Hell Comes to Frogtown with Matt on one of our ritual bad movie nights several years ago. It stars Roddy Piper as Sam Hell, fresh off his success in John Carpenter’s They Live. This is a cracked out post-apocalyptic movie where nuclear fallout radiation makes Hell one of the last few non-sterile males. The government discovers him and makes him a deal against his will to contract him to…..traverse the nuclear wastes and impregnate as many women as possible in order to restore the dwindling human population….seriously. The movie tries to not make Hell come off as a creepy serial rapist by having Piper deliver some meek attempts at sympathy and breaking prisoners out of a gang’s Road Warrior-esque facility. This is ridiculously bad, but in a 80s campy-fun sort of way so if you are into so-bad-they-are-good movies, especially two brew-skis in, then Hell Comes to Frogtown will not disappoint.

I Like to Hurt People is a unique beast. It barely comes off as a motion picture and feels more like something I would make if I was a young proactive filmmaker in my teens and decided to make a movie about wrestling and had no idea about assembling a cohesive plot whatsoever. That is essentially I Like to Hurt People which shows several condensed matches interspersed with backstage interviews, TV production staff losing it while trying to keep the wrestlers in check and fans being interviewed outside the ring who are all hyped up for a night at the wrasslin’ matches. I love the geriatric 80s rock soundtrack that plays nearly nonstop throughout the film that brought back fond memories of Miami Connection’s mesmerizing score. 80s NWA/Crockett fans will get a thrill with the nonstop cameos featuring stars like Terry Funk, Dusty Rhodes, The Sheik, Dick the Bruiser, Abdullah the Butcher and Andre the Giant. A controversial non-finish in the main event between Dick the Bruiser and The Sheik is followed up with an interview in the car with Sheik and his manager the Grand Wizard, where Wizard promises revenge in a cage match....and then I Like to Hurt People promptly ends. Again, this does not feel like a complete movie and is difficult to properly judge as a whole, but that aside it was fun to take in and get a dose of the fervor of southern mid-80s wrestling fandom that I Like to Hurt People encapsulates to a T.

While I Like to Hurt People feels like what my first wrestling movie would be like with barely any filmmaking under my belt, Grunt: The Wrestling Movie feels like what my third or fourth wrestling-adjacent film would be like if I got full of myself and would conjure up a silly Disaster Artist-esque plot over a weekend I thought would be a masterpiece, but instead was nonstop bonkers. There is a crazy 1979 flashback backstory in the opening minutes explaining why controversial wrestler ‘Mad Dog Joe’ was thought to have committed suicide after decapitating an opponent in a title defense. Fast forward six years later when the promotion’s management finally decide to vacate Joe’s title and hold a battle royal to crown a new champion. The film then follows a documentary crew who are obsessed that Joe is still alive and will return at the battle royal. Lots of shenanigans ensue as the documentary crew interviews multiple people who harass them and turn them away, with a standout scene transpiring at a hot-button, public access political talk show. Eventually everything culminates at the battle royal, but nothing can save this train wreck. Grunt: The Wrestling Movie takes itself way too seriously, and is not even campy-cheesy-bad, but instead the undesirable straight-up-bad. Avoid this one in the DVD bargain bin at all costs. As a whole, Wrestling Superstars Triple Feature is a semi-decent package, which is glowing praise when compared to this DVD’s cover art! Hell Comes to Frogtown is prime cheesy bad movie night material and I Like to Hurt People is something I would throw in to have on in the background with fellow wrestling fans. Grunt is a complete waste, but as the old adage goes, two out of three isn’t bad! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hercules: Reborn Hitman Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Not for Resale Pulp Fiction The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

[sciencespies]

This Climate Detective Reconstructs What the Ocean Was Like Millions of Years Ago

https://sciencespies.com/nature/this-climate-detective-reconstructs-what-the-ocean-was-like-millions-of-years-ago/

This Climate Detective Reconstructs What the Ocean Was Like Millions of Years Ago

Smithsonian Voices National Museum of Natural History

Get to Know the Scientist Reconstructing Past Ocean Temperatures

June 8th, 2020, 6:00AM / BY

Juliana Olsson

As the ocean continues to warm, scientists look to the past for answers on how to manage today’s environmental problems. (Sophie McCoy/NOAA)

Brian Huber has always been curious about the past. As a child finding arrowheads on his family’s farm, he’d wonder who made the arrowhead, what the landscape looked like at the time, and what the arrow’s target was. So, when a college a professor introduced him to paleontology, he was hooked.

Now a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Dr. Huber uses fossils to discover clues about past environments and how organisms lived. As part of the Meet a SI-entist series, Huber tells us more about his “climate detective” work reconstructing past ocean temperatures, and what makes him optimistic for the future.

What do you do at the Smithsonian?

I study microscopic fossils called foraminifera, which are single-celled organisms with distinctive shells. Their fossil record goes back at least 540 million years ago to the early Cambrian period, but they still live in the ocean today. Most of my research focuses on foraminifera that lived during the Cretaceous (145–66 million years ago). I look at the evolution and extinction of different species of foraminifera and analyze the chemistry of their shells to reconstruct ocean temperatures throughout Earth’s history.

Foraminifera are great “thermometers” for the ocean. The chemical makeup of their shells relates directly to the water temperature. Different species float near the surface and live on the ocean bottom, so you can get the whole range of the ocean’s temperature. These are three views of the same 91-million-year-old specimen, Marginotruncana sigali. (Brian Huber, Smithsonian)

How has your work changed since COVID?

Usually, I’m busy participating in committees, mentoring interns and post-docs and involved with lots of projects—all of which take time away from research. But right now, my calendar has really cleared! Working from home has allowed me to focus on finishing up projects that have been on the back burner, like getting through a backlog of data that I haven’t had time to write up for publication. I’m currently writing a paper revising a lot of different species of foraminifera in a group that’s been poorly defined for decades. We’re naming several new species and genera.

What excites you about working at the Smithsonian?

I love the opportunity to pursue research questions using the museum’s collections and specimens I collected through my own field work. I also like helping build exhibits like the Ocean Hall and Fossil Hall and educating the public. And I really enjoy working with my colleagues, they’re a great group of very talented, enthusiastic and motivated people.

The team behind the National Museum of Natural History’s Sant Ocean Hall reunited for lunch 10 years after the exhibition’s opening. Left to right: Jill Johnson (Exhibit Developer), Brian Huber (Curator of Foraminifera), Carole Baldwin (Curator of Fishes) and Mike Vecchione (NOAA cephalopod biologist). (Brian Huber, Smithsonian)

Today is World Ocean Day and the first anniversary of the opening of the National Fossil Hall. How does knowing about the ocean’s past change the way you think about its current state and its future?

The past is a framework for understanding how the natural system works today. The ocean sediment cores I’ve studied show that temperatures were very warm during the Cretaceous because of major volcanic activity that produced a lot of carbon dioxide.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It’s a blanket that’s kept the Earth warm for millions of years. But the rate that we are burning and releasing it into the atmosphere now is much faster than anything that’s happened before. We’ve burned 370 billion tons of CO2 since the 1850s, and half of that just since the 1970s.

We know from the past that the Earth and life are resilient. So, something will survive; the question is what. The biggest concern is how rapidly the ocean has changed, especially in the past few decades. People used to think of the ocean as too vast to be affected by what we do on land—that it would always be a reliable food source. Now, we realize that coral reefs worldwide are in peril, many fish species have been over-harvested and even accidental bycatch has caused drastic reductions among some marine life.

How do you find optimism for the future in all this adversity?

What’s amazing about humans is we seem to get ourselves out of many of the fixes that we put ourselves into. We engineer things to solve problems. The hope is that we can use technology to find a way to put the genie back in the bottle and to live lives comfortably but in a way that’s more environmentally sound.

I’m optimistic because technology and engineering keep improving the tools we use to solve questions from the past. As we learn more about the past, we better understand how Earth’s climate-ocean system worked and why some extinctions occurred, which can show us how to manage our current global environmental problems.

Another thing that gives me hope is the increasing amount of international collaboration in science. When we work together, we get multiple perspectives which helps us understand the world better. There’s a lot of exciting science going on, and the hope is that the public finds out about it and realizes how important science is in our lives—that you can’t ignore science.

Huber (left) with international colleagues from the 2009 Tanzania Drilling Project. (Brian Huber, Smithsonian)

What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your career?

At a pretty early stage of my career, I found evidence for extremely warm temperatures around Antarctica during the Cretaceous. My argument was dismissed as too unlikely to have been real, but over my career, more fossil and chemical evidence have shown that there actually was a time when Antarctica was covered by forests and temperatures remained above freezing even during months of polar darkness.

So, it’s been my quest to build out the ocean’s temperature history further and further back into the Cretaceous. Answering that question has taken me to all kinds of places, including an ocean drill ship to get sediment cores to help construct ocean temperature records. In 2017, I was Co-Chief Scientist on a two-month-long ocean drilling expedition with 30 scientists from 15 different countries, and I’m excited to continue working on deep-sea samples that will reveal previously unknown details of Earth’s past. The amount of really incredible science that has come out of that International Ocean Discovery Program is just amazing, and I have especially enjoyed the collaborations and friendships that last long after people sail together. It’s like my experience being one of the lead curators on the museum’s Sant Ocean Hall—our core exhibit team still gets together once or twice a year.

Huber aboard the research ship JOIDES Resolution discussing drilling results at the core sample table during an International Ocean Discovery Program expedition in 2017. (Brian Huber, Smithsonian)

What advice would you give to the next generation of scientists?

Find something that excites you. What makes you curious? Maybe you’re more analytical or you like solving puzzles, using statistics or math. Just find something you’re interested in to motivate you.

Be open to asking questions and following up. Talk to the professor after class and say, “I wasn’t sure about this, can you explain more?” or “I’ve been wondering about this, I’m really excited about this, what can I do to find out more?” These days there’s so much online, there are all kinds of ways to dive in.

Finally, getting your research out there is really important—not just publishing, but also going to meetings and interacting with people in and outside your field. One of the most gratifying things in my career has been seeing how paleontology went from a pretty narrowly focused science to one that is really collaborative. Be open to collaboration because you’re not going to solve problems by yourself, there’s a lot of different angles that these things need to be tackled from.

Meet a SI-entist: The Smithsonian is so much more than its world-renowned exhibits and artifacts. It is a hub of scientific exploration for hundreds of researchers from around the world. Once a month, we’ll introduce you to a Smithsonian Institution scientist (or SI-entist) and the fascinating work they do behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural History.

Related stories: Meet the Scientist Studying How Organisms Become Fossils Get to Know the Scientist Studying Ancient Pathogens at the Smithsonian Leading Scientists Convene to Chart 500M Years of Global Climate Change Here’s How Scientists Reconstruct Earth’s Past Climates

Juliana Olsson is an exhibit writer and editor at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Her favorite aspect of the job is getting to share her passion for the natural world with museum visitors (and occasionally getting to go on fossil digs and try out virtual reality headsets). Her least favorite part of the job is battling writer’s block. Before joining the Office of Exhibits, she received her Master of Arts in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University.

More From This Author »

#Nature

[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!

[illogicalhusbands]

So that fic you started with them at the coffee shop, I am sooo hoping you finish. I understand life is busy, you have other projects but I am hoping you finish it and I am wondering if this is strictly going to stay on tumblr or if you'll be adding it to FF or Ao3? You don't have to add it, I follow this blog closely I was just wondering because I like to download fics I love to save for later. Also, is there 2 people working on this blog? Okay thanks, bye :)

Hi! Thanks so much for sending this over. I’ve just posted part 2 and I hope you enjoy it.I’m glad to hear that you liked the story so much and it really helped to motivate me to continue it today. I don’t plan on making it into a full-blown multichapter, so you needn’t worry about it not being finished. Sometimes the posting/responses to asks just come a bit slow as we’re both swamped with work in real life and also we’re working through our backlog of content for this blog which never seems to run out now that there’s so many of you sending over your GLORIOUS prompts. By all means, keep the coming!  But we do apologize if it takes us a while to get them to fruition.And I’m not sure if I’ll be posting this on my AO3 account since I’m not sure how to tag it? I find the tagging system for crossover fics in AO3 very confusing (or maybe that’s just my inner Aziraphale speaking), also for now I’m quite content with just having these fics on this little sideblog. Maybe later on I’ll consider adding to AO3 when the fics become more expansive and serious.Yes, there are indeed 2 mods for this blog! I (mod Leann) write the fics while mod Celi creates ALL the amazing Bill/Alec art that you see. We are equally responsible for the shitposts. We’re really happy this blog has grown to be what it is now and we hope that it’ll continue to grow so that more Bill/Alec content will be available for all of us to consume!! (And maybe Celi and I can lie low for a little bit haha)