#if you post them for free after a while some people will cancel their subscriptions and just wait for stuff to be put on the yt channel

[lenteur]

one thing that doesn’t make sense to me is how wwe makes people pay money in order to watch ppvs (or ples as they’re now called) but then they post said events for free on yt several months/years later... or even worse, they just put highlights (aka everything you need to know) of matches on the raw/smackdown episode after said ppvs... i’m not sure how their marketing strategy works but i don’t think it’s a great way to do business

[awakefor48hours]

As I'm rewatching TADC, I'm beginning to realize that in the near future, we're probably going to see more indie projects and I actually think that it has the potential to be good for the entertainment industry as a whole.

As time goes on, more people are pretty much only using streaming services but streaming services have a lot of problems with their platforms. The subscriptions are getting more expensive, there's so many of them, and a lot of the shows are getting cancelled in their infancy (some after being greenlit for more) despite their popularity.

Since 2019, Netflix alone has cancelled dozens of shows such as Dead End Paranormal Park, Julie and the Phantoms, Inside Job, Lockwood and Co, Warrior Nun, The Baby-Sitters Club, Raising Dion, Shadow and Bone, The Oa, I Am Not Okay With, A Typical, Anne with E, and much more.

This list doesn't even touch on other streaming platforms but I'm choosing to focus on these shows from Netflix (probably the most well respected streaming service) because I feel like it gets to the root of the problem. A lot of these shows were cancelled in their infancy despite having had high ratings (once again, some of them were even greenlit for more seasons). I almost never hear about shows ending anymore, I only hear about how they get cancelled after a season or two.

With both streaming services and cable not really giving creators the most certain platform, doing indie projects seems like the best bet and it works really well for both the creator and the audience.

To go back to streaming services, the amount of streaming services in the world are only growing and not everyone has the ability to pay for all of them but even the people that do pay for a lot of streaming services can't watch everything. I've mentioned this once but my parents are subscribed to 5 different streaming services, that's so many but they still ask me for help to pirate about once a month because they want to watch a show that isn't available on the streaming platform they use. That is ridiculous and I fully believe my parents should be allowed to watch whatever they want. (Just like my parents, I'll gladly share the piracy sites I use but it's through DMs only, I promise I'm not scary I cry watching kids cartoons).

But when it comes to shows on YouTube, it's available to basically everyone with a Wi-Fi connection and I fully believe it's the main reason why shows like TADC, Lackadaisy, Helluva Boss, RWBY, RvB, and more were able to get their level of popularity. They're on a free to use platform and can be shared to other people just as easily. Also when creators post their show on YouTube, it's much easier for people to make gifs and edits (which, let's be honest, are the real advertisers of a show) because YouTube lets people take screenshots/screen record without any hassle.

*If you want to know how to screenshot/screen record DRM content (things like Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, etc), I do have a post about here.

Along with the fact that it's more available to the public, it's also more available to the crew and creators. A few years ago, Dana Terrace (creator of The Owl House) made a tweet introducing a new character to the show but the tweet got popular because admitted that she had to pirate The Owl House in order to watch it.

(Since it's cropped in this screenshot, in the top right corner is a watermark of a well-known piracy site for The Owl House).

Imagine working for a company like Disney and not have the ability to watch your own show. They couldn't even give her complimentary mp4 files or even a subscription to Disney+ despite the fact that without her the show wouldn't exist. It's really annoying to see this but when it comes to shows like TADC, that problem doesn't really exist. You can just watch the episodes for free on YouTube.

Also, the fact that the episodes take a while to come out really makes the fandom feel a lot more united. The wait time between episode really kills the binging aspect of TV and I'm in full support of that. Ever since streaming services started to become the default way to watch TV, binging culture has gotten really bad and it can be pretty isolating to people who have busy lives.

Take me for an example. Someone like me, a single adult who has no kids and a terrible sleep schedule (ignore username), can stay up until 3 in the morning binging shows without too many negative consequences. But I have friends who are married/getting married and have kids/planning on having kids, meaning that they don't have the same amount of time as me. I can finish binging shows in a day or two which isn't a pleasure my friends have and it also mean I can't talk to them about it because they're only on episode 2.

I also feel a lot more comfortable donating to these indie projects because the money goes directly towards the creators and crew. When the WGA strike happened, creators explained how they got paid (you can watch the whole video here), and the quick version of it is, they only get paid the amount of times someone watches and episode, they get paid thee residuals from the subscriptions which is so little that it almost feels criminal. When you really put it into perspective, donating to 2 dollars to a GoFundMe and watching the show three times on YouTube is going to do more for a show then paying for a 15 dollar subscription and watching it 10 times.

YouTube definitely has it's problems, I've been subjected to whole ass adults saying "seggy" for nearly a decade, but when you compare it to the current state of streaming and cable, it seems like the best option for both the creators and fans.

[stardusted-queerness]

Writing Resources

I've been writing all my life, and I've been saving resources I use over the past couple of years. I'm gonna post them all here, so that others can use them because some of these are rather obscure.

Resource: Character Profile Desc: a 20 page PDF file that helps you better flesh out your character. PDF is editable directly. Very useful for any type of character.

Resource: Character Sheet Desc: a very long character sheet hosted on DeviantArt. I'm not sure if it's still being updated, but it is VERY extensive and covers everything from the basics to pet peeves. Best used for the main cast.

Resource: Name Generator Desc: a site that hosts a number of name generators. You add a few variables, and it gives you a list of names. Has everything from a "quick name" generator to a "plot generator". Very useful for a variety of things (not just writing).

Resource: Worldbuilding Prompts Desc: a site with writing prompts. Pretty good for getting the basis of your world

Resource: World Anvil Desc: a site to house all of your worldbuilding. Basically acts like a wiki, but for worlds. Has a premium version, but the free version works just fine (but you're limited to 2 worlds and ~175 articles for each world). Can be used for any type of writing: creative, screenplay, even ttrpgs like DnD.

Resource: Inkarnate Desc: Map-making site. Pretty cool, and has assets that allow creation of dungeon maps, world maps, and even scene maps. The free version is a bit meh on the assets, while the pro version ($5/month or $25/year) is a lot better. Additionally, the free version limits you to 10 maps, while with the pro version, you can create ~1,500 maps. If you use pro and then cancel your subscription, any maps that you created while using pro will be locked. You will not be able to edit them. I learned this the hard way.

Resource: Gallery of Faces Desc: pretty much like the "thispersondoesnotexist" site, just under a different name. AI-generated human photos. Can edit the settings to include a specific age group, a specific sex, etc. Really good for people who aren't good artists and need/like having a visual of their character.

Resource: Fantasy Calendars Desc: Allows you to make a completely new calendar. You can choose the names of the months, weekdays, everything. It's an absolutely wonderful tool and really helps if you don't want to use a modern calendar. This is the calendar I made myself. It's just an example of what you can do.

Resource: Word Combiner Desc: a tool to combine up to 4 words together. Shows just about any and every possibility. Found this useful when trying to make a name or a language.

Resource: Fantasy Language Generator Desc: another generator, but for languages instead. There's a few variables you can mess with, and it'll generate counterparts to the 30,000 most commonly used words in English. You can save the language as a file and load it on the site at a later time. Completely free.

Resource: Word Counter Desc: Just a word-counting site. Useful if you frequent Discord & use bots like WriterBot or Sprinto (writing sprint bots), as you only have 2 minutes after the sprint ends to submit word count.

Resource: Worldbuilding Checklist :) Desc: a very extensive worldbuilding checklist. Covers everything from races to the economy to the current fashion trends. Really awesome resource.

All of these have proven to be really useful to me, so I wanted to share these. I just hope these are useful to others ^_^

[sasquapossum]

The Trust Thermocline

I reached 1000 activities on Strava today. And that seems like a good time to cancel my subscription. Wait, what? It has to do with the “trust thermocline” described here.

https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904

Yeah, sorry, it’s Twitter, so I’ll summarize. The idea is that there’s a “tipping point” where small annoyances or breaches of trust - importantly, each one tolerable by itself - accumulate until some threshold is reached and nobody wants to do business with you or your company any more. I think “thermocline” is actually a bad metaphor because that’s a point where the temperature actually does change suddenly, but the alliterative term sure is catchy. “Straw that broke the camel’s back” is really more apropos, and has been around just about forever. It’s the opposite of an “overnight success” in music or acting, who has actually been practicing their craft for years and might even have been better before That One Thing that gets them the exposure they deserve.

For me and Strava, these small breaches mostly have to do with leaderboards, because those are really the one value-add Strava has relative to Garmin Connect which I already have for free with my watch (and likewise for the Polar or Suunto equivalents). While I won’t deny that I’m competitive and enjoy that aspect, mostly I use them to track my own progress on ten “mandatory” segments that I’ve been doing at least once a month for eight years. I like to compare to my own recent performance, or that from past years, but I’m also at an age where my performance is expected to decline over time so I compare to others within my age group too. And that’s where the problems start.

First, the running leaderboards are always full of bogus times, mostly from cyclists posting their times as running. (BTW this is behind much of my general antipathy toward cyclists, which I know is unfair to most of them but I can’t help it.) No, Strava, “Richard R” wasn’t routinely breaking age-group world records this past summer. He was on a bike. I know this because I was in the same places at the same times, and there were no runners anywhere near that pace. Often there were no runners at all, because of the hot and humid weather. There was, however, one guy on a bike who repeatedly matched both time and pace, and demographics too. Even a photo wasn’t enough to convince Strava. Those times, and so many others, remain there to pollute the leaderboard for all time.

Second, even as they improperly include cheaters’ efforts, they effectively exclude many legitimate ones. I often do there-and-back runs, with a break in between. Strava routinely counts the break as part of the “there” segment, which is insanely stupid. Why would anyone writing software to detect segment traversals set the end time based on leaving the target area (after a period when I had explicitly stopped timing on my watcch) instead of arriving at it? I know enough about the data formats to know that they have the information to do the right thing, and what they’re actually doing is insane. Today, for example, Strava did this for what was really my third-best-ever effort on one segment (out of ~130), turning it into a below-average effort instead. The whole reason they have this feature is as a motivator for people to train harder - it’s even implied by their name - but they blow that up with shenanigans such as these.

Lastly, there’s the pricing SNAFU. TBH this probably affects/bothers me the least, but it’s That One Thing that tipped me over the edge. I’ve been putting up with the leaderboard problems for years, and would probably continue to do so, but any price change at all makes me reconsider whether I’m getting my money’s worth. That’s a question Strava is likely to regret making me (and probably many others) ask.

It’s not one thing; it’s an accumulation of things. If the leaderboards - remember, their only real distinguishing feature - are getting worse, and the price is increasing, it’s too much. 1000 seems like a good place to stop, but this isn’t just about Strava. The same thing is happening for many people and businesses (including advertisers) at Twitter. It could happen here. Naming aside, the “trust thermocline” is a good complement to enshittification as an explanation for why online services fail and die.

[eroticcannibal]

Common myths and misconceptions about home education

So in case anyone has somehow missed it, I have recently become a Big supporter of home education in a very lefty way, which has meant I have had to challenge a lot of views I have previously held about home education and that I know a lot of other lefties hold too. I am of the opinion that embracing home education, not as a last resort, but as the primary form of education for as many children as possible, is a vital part of achieving the required shifts in society needed to meet the goals of most leftists. So I am taking it on myself to convince you all that it is a very good thing, and also to clear up some misconceptions people have about home education that may make them feel they are unable to do it.

(A note, I am from the UK and shall be using UK terminology and specifics regarding law, policy and other such things will be from a UK perspective. I shall be using the term home education, as that is the legal term in the UK and is distinct from home schooling, which is the term for what school children have been doing during the pandemic.)

And I would also like to extend a quick thanks to Education Otherwise and the mods at Home education and your local authority for teaching me A LOT.

Have any questions about anything I’ve not covered here? Just let me know!

1. “Home education is illegal.”

- Sadly, home education is illegal or restricted to the point of inaccessibility in most of the world. From the research I have done, it seems that only the US and the UK have reasonable laws around home education (if I am using a very broad definition of reasonable, it is still not great). I do hope I can change this section soon, and I would *heavily* encourage people to campaign for the right to home educate post pandemic, perhaps cite any benefits learning at home has provided to children, perhaps???

2. “Home education is a tool used by religious fundamentalists to brainwash children!”

- This is a view many hold, and for good reason. For many of us, when we think of home education, we think of christian fundamentalists in the deep south of America, pulling their children out of school to avoid the liberal agenda. The truth is, anything can be used as a tool of indoctrination. This can happen in home education, and it can happen and has happened in schools too. In my own communities we have had instances of schools being a site of religious radicalization of children. The reality is this is far too complex and deep an issue to be solved by deeming any particular form of education as “bad”. I am not an expert on how best to deal with such issues, but I do feel that things like outreach and building a healthy community with otherwise more isolated religious groups would be a better way to address these issues.

3. “You need to have x qualification to home educate.”

- Again, a reasonable view to hold, given that state run and private education does require educators to hold certain qualifications, but in practice it quickly becomes evident the same does not necessarily have to apply with home education. Educational qualifications are very much focused on delivering an education in a classroom, which is a far cry from home education. During our home education of our child, my partner, who is a qualified SEN TA, has struggled far more than I have with educating our SEN child, despite the fact I hold no qualifications.

We live in amazing times when it comes to education. There are many things that parents and communities have to teach a child, and there are many things a child can teach to themself if given the tools to do so. You can even learn together! Their are endless resources available, books and games and documentaries, and even home education groups and private tutors if you feel that is the right fit for your child. You don’t need a piece of paper for your child to spend a day with their nose buried in a book, or to help the neighbor with his vegetable patch, or to cuddle up on the sofa while watching Planet Earth.

4. “You are required to follow the national curriculum.”

- This does vary by country (that allows home education). As a general rule, the stricter a country is about who can home educate, the stricter they are about what must be taught. In the UK, you are not required to follow the national curriculum. Education must be “efficient” and suited to the child’s “age, aptitude and ability”, and LAs do require that english and maths are covered. Other than that, you are allowed to tailor the content of education to the child and their interests. We have recently dropped geography for now and are only just picking up history again. It has also given us the freedom to focus on areas our child needs that would not be covered in mainstream education, such as anxiety management, trauma processing, self care and hygiene.

5. “Home education looks like school/is just filling out workbooks/etc”

- The thing you will always hear from experienced home educators when you begin home education is “home education doesn’t need to be school at home”. Much like you can tailor the content of the learning to the child, you can also tailor the delivery to the child. Some child need structure, timetable, instructions. Some need freedom and to bounce between topics. Some need to have an hour learning maths and only maths, some need to go dig up your garden “for science”. Some want to learn every day, some will need extended breaks.

Learning happens all the time, from the moment they wake to the moment they sleep. As an example, at home we have some workbooks, as both me and my child have ADHD and need someone to go “ok learn this” rather than us having to work out for ourselves what we need to cover for core subjects like english and maths. For the rest of most days my child is left to their own devices to binge youtube and netflix and work on their art. We try and go for a woodland walk every few days, where we have Deep Discussions about all kinds of topics, and we are also working on growing edible plants and baking cakes from around the world. We are more hands-off at the moment, due to the current bout of anxiety, but when that settles again we will get back to history themed crafts and STEM activities. Post-pandemic, we will be signing our kid up for swimming classes and “after school” clubs, and looking at sending them down to my mum for the home ed groups where she lives, like the forest school. A lot of home education outside of a pandemic is in groups and community based, or will make use of libraries and museums and other public learning opportunities. Frequently very little will happen at home.

In fact many home educators will advise new families to “deschool” for a while before jumping in to learning. This is a period where you “get school out of your system”, and just exist. Learning does not have to be intentional, you will be surprised how much you can achieve by just having fun.

6. “Home education is expensive.”

- It can be, ask my bank account. However, it is perfectly possible to deliver a quality education with little to no money. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s doable. Their are many online resources for free (check out oak academy), and libraries have plenty available too. Even paid resources can be very cheap if you know where to look. (psst, if your kid thrives with worksheets and powerpoints, get yourself a twinkl subscription, download everything you need for a year then cancel it.)

(This does not apply to exams. Get saving!)

7. “Home educated children are not properly socialised.”

- This is only really true during the pandemic. The rest of the time, home educated children are free to socialise whenever they want, with whoever they want, in whatever setting they choose. Socialisation while home educating is in the opinions of many of a higher quality, as they are not limited to groups of a similar age and background. Many home educating families form groups for their children to socialise together too. For ND children especially, socialising while home educated can be far less stressful and far more fulfilling than in school.

8. “Home educated children won’t get qualifications.”

- Just plain not true. Arranging qualifications can be costly and time consuming, but it is possible and regularly done. Some children may return to school or college to access exams for free, and I have heard of a handful of cases where individuals were able to secure prestigious university places without any qualifications. Home education also allows for more freedom with how exams and qualifications are approached, for example, many home educated children will pick one GCSE to focus on at a time, rather than covering numerous topics over 2 years and having exams for all of them at once like children in school will.

9. “Home education is a safeguarding risk/is used to cover up abuse/home educated children are not seen.”

- In the UK at least, home education is not considered a safeguarding risk, no matter what authorities may tell you, nor are home educated “not seen”. They still visit medical professionals, they still engage with their communities.

Now I shall add the relevant paper here should I find it again, but the idea that home education is used to cover up abuse to a statistically significant degree, or that home educated children are at more risk of abuse, is false. Home educating families do face a significantly higher risk of social services involvement than other families, but far less abuse is found in comparison to other families. It is also worth considering, when talking about social services involvement, that many families pursue home education due to failures by schools regarding a child’s vulnerabilities. In most cases, especially the Big Ones, where a home educated child is abused, the child was already known to authorities as a victim of abuse, therefore home educating did nothing to hide said abuse.

Children are also routinely abused in schools, which is another common reason for home educating.

10. “Home education has to be monitored or approved.”

- Depends on the country, I know in Japan home education is monitored by schools, however in the UK, monitoring is not lawful. Local authorities may make informal enquiries to ensure a suitable education is being facilitated (keep EVERYTHING in writing and please go straight to “home education and your local authority” group on FB for advice, you WILL need it!). In England, if your child is in mainstream education, you can deregister at will, from a special school will require LA approval. In Scotland deregistering requires LA approval. (Again, head to the aforementioned group for advice).

11. “You can’t work/get an education while home educating”

- It is hard to balance work, education and educating your child, but it is possible, people do it every day. Obviously, having at least one parent free to educate unhindered at all times is an ideal situation, but in the real world it often does not work that way. Parents may have to home educate regardless of their other commitments if a child truly needs to escape the school system. Many parents work or learn from home, and sometimes it is even possible to combine these activities with home education. Professional artists and crafters can pass down their skills while working, distance learners can invite their children to sit in on lectures. The really great thing about home education is it is flexible. Do you have a whole day of meetings? Let the kid play minecraft all day! Going to be in the office all day? Drop the kid off at the local forest school or something else they can do all day. Drop them with the grandparents to help with the gardening!

12. “Home educated are behind/achieve less than school children.”

- Their is no evidence that home education is of a lower quality than school education. Many children are home educated specifically because the school environment was detrimental to their education, and thrive with home education. Plenty of children are able to learn more simply by having 1-to-1 attention, without the distraction of an entire class. And others may well be “behind”, and are educated at home because of their specific needs that mean they will never thrive in an academic setting, so they are allowed to focus on learning skills that will allow them to live independently.

[trafficlightchild]

So you want to buy a copy of Unlocked

This post is made as a educational guide to the current situation with Keeper of the Lost Cities newest book, Unlocked.

Over the past few days, many people have suggested boycotting the hardcover editions of Unlocked due to one VERY IMPORTANT read: this is that the main artist featured, L*ura H*ll*ngsw*rth, is homophobic and we do not want to support her. As a queer person, it really hurts to see a series that I’ve loved for almost 7 years now. However, many of us still want to read the book and support other people behind this project. For me personally, I especially want to support my local book store and the US postal service during this time. So, what are alternatives?

1. EMAIL SHANNON’S PUBLISHER

Shannon just finished unlock TODAY - this means that the book had yet to be printed and that there is still time to get L*ura’s art out of the book. The book still also has to be edited so we have time. Even if the art isn’t taken out due to payments already being made, this could end the arrangement between the series and her AND we could possibly get a new official artist. Even if we sadly don’t get that either, showing S&S we don’t want to buy books with her art in them will hopefully make them not want to work with her in the future.

2. BUY THE AUDIOBOOK

The main reason that this is my suggestion is that it’s the only version where you can guarantee L*ura will not make any profits because there are no physical or digital pages. Through the research I’ve been doing, I can’t find anything that indicates that official KOTLC narrator, Caitlin Kelly, is homophobic. Audiobooks can be expensive, especially since all KOTLC are Audible exclusives, but Audible does offer a free trial that comes with 1 free audiobook and you can keep the book after you cancel your subscription. Also, if any of you do know if Caitlin is homophobic please reblog with that information and I’ll edit this.

3. BUY THE NOOK VERSION

This is probably seem like what a lot of people are going to do. As of right now, the Nook app does not support/load art that goes along with books such as KOTLC. This would also be cheaper than getting the audiobook version. However, there are two things that concern me about this; first being that  while we know most artists are paid in advance, we can’t say that Laura will make no profit from sales with her art in it. There are many unknowns in this field and many of us are trying to do more research about this. I’ve been looking at two accounts in particular on Instagram (I don’t know if they have tumblrs so I’m tagging there instagram handles) and I suggest you check both @/ahsokatano13 and @/dexs.mother out. the second reason is that the Nook app has been having a lot of updates recently and by the time Unlocked comes out, they could have found a way to load/support the art in the book.

4. WAIT OR BORROW THE BOOK

Use your library or your local KOTLC friends - it may take longer for you to read it but this way you won’t be supporting L*ura. You can also wait even longer and purchase the paperback version.

and lastly

5. DONATE THE SAME AMOUNT TO LGBTQIPAA+ INDIVUALS/GROUPS

Many people preorder months in advance and it’s fine if you did, since this art portion information was only revealed recently. So, treat buying this book like shopping at a place like Ch*ck F*l A. Is every single individual behind this purposes homophobic? No. There are no many people that are behind that KOTLC books other than Shannon - the people who print, who box, who ship, who sell, etc. So rather than purchasing this book and then feeling guilty about it, find out the exact price you spent on the book itself and donate, if you can, that exact amount to a queer foundation or individual. If you can donate double, that's great! If you can only spare a few dollars right now, that’s great too. As long as you give some money back to the people that are being affect by the decision to use a homophobic artist in this book, that sort-of evens out things in my eyes.

At the end of the day, every KOTLC fan is an individual. Some fans aren’t even aware of this situation, some fans don’t know how to handle it, etc. I made this post to be educational and provide options for other KOTLC fans.

[ninja-muse]

SUPPORT INDIE BOOKSTORES!!

Hi all! Your friendly neighbourhood book-slinger here! As you know, the Covid-19 pandemic is hitting the economy hard, small businesses especially. As you may not know, bookstores have one of the largest overheads and one of the smallest profit margins of any business ever. Many rely on foot traffic and neighbourhood support, which means if they haven’t already shut their doors due to public health measures, they’re still seeing a major drop in the number of customers and books sold—often while still needing to buy new stock and pay rent. It’s not completely dire, we’re not looking at a world without bookshops, but a lot of booksellers are genuinely worried all the same.

This is where you guys come in! If you need books right now (and I’m talking to Booklr here so there are decent odds you do), and you’ve got the money to spend, please consider hitting up an indie for them rather than a chain or exclusively online bookstore. A lot of them took online and phone orders before this year, and many are now offering curbside pick-up, lower shipping costs, and local delivery, and all of them could use your support right now. (They’re also, by and large, some of the most delightfully bookish people you’ll ever meet.)

Don’t know who your indies are? That’s what this post is for! It’s kind of skewed to my area right now because that’s what I know, but it will be updated as I get more recommendations. So please, rec your local indies to me! Add them to this post, slide into my asks, whatever’s most comfortable.

And please note that even if a store is closed and in lockdown, that does not mean you can’t place an order for when the crisis is over.

Let’s share the bookstore love!

There is now also Bookshop.org and the Save Your Bookstore app, for anyone who is interested.

Last edit: May 15, 8:50 am PST.

AUSTRALIA

Abbey’s Bookstore - Sydney. Closing on March 30. Taking online, phone, and email orders, delivering.

Crow Books - Perth. Taking phone orders, shipping.

Q’s Books - Newcastle. Window display where you can request by pointing.

Secret Bookstuff - Newcastle. Closed, taking online orders and offering phone recommendations. 15% off until end of March.

White Dwarf Books - Perth. Open to the public, Paywave preferred, taking orders for shipping

Melbourne

Alice’s Bookshop - Closed. No info about orders or shipping.

Books For Cooks - Open to public. Free next day delivery for people in isolation in local area

City Basement Books - No information.

Coventry Bookstore - No information.

Hill of Content Bookshop - Open online. Free delivery to the CBD, and shipping.

Metropolis Books - Open to the public. Offering free freight via Australia Post for online orders over $50

North Melbourne Books - Open but limited to 3 customers, offering free home delivery to North and West Melbourne.

Paperback Books - Open but closing early, taking phone, email, and online orders and shipping.

Readings - No longer accepting cash payments. Free delivery on online orders $150 and over — anywhere in Australia. 

Robinson’s Bookshop - Some stores may close early, taking online orders.

Syber’s Books - No information.

AUSTRIA

Shakespeare and Company - Vienna. Taking email orders.

CANADA

A Google Map of all indies who deliver

Alberta

The Edmonton Bookstore - Edmonton. Closed. Taking phone, online, and email orders. Updating webstore daily. Accepts Paypal.

Fair's Fair - Calgary. Closed,  taking email orders and doing curbside pick-up, credit and debit only

The Next Page - Calgary. Closed, taking online orders and delivering for free within Calgary

Pages On Kensington - Calgary. Taking phone and online orders, doing deliveries and curbside pick-up

The Wee Book Inn - Edmonton. No information.                       

British Columbia

Lower Mainland

Black Bond Books/Book Warehouse - Services and openness vary depending on location, but currently offering $5 shipping within the Lower Mainland

The Book Man - Chilliwack and Abbotsford. Closed. 

Carson Books - Vancouver. No information.

Golden Age Collectables - Vancouver. Open.

Hager Books - Vancouver. Closed. Has a webstore.

Kidsbooks - Vancouver. Closed to browsing. Online and phone orders. Curbside pickup, shipping, delivery.

Lucky’s Comics - Vancouver. No information.

MacLeod’s Books - Vancouver. No web presence

Massy Books - Vancouver. Currently open online with free delivery within Metro Vancouver and discounted rates across Canada

The Paper Hound - Vancouver. Open to the public, taking phone and email orders, offering free bike delivery

Pulp Fiction Books - Vancouver. Open to the public, taking orders online, by phone, and by Twitter, shipping daily (more details)

Tanglewood Books - Vancouver. No information.

White Dwarf Books/Dead Write Books - Vancouver. Open to the public, offers some free delivery

Y’s Books - - Vancouver. No information.

Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands

Beacon Books - Sidney. Closed, taking orders via AbeBooks, ships.

Bolen Books - Victoria. Taking phone and online orders, small window for in-store pickups, $5 shipping within BC for orders for $40

The Children’s Bookshop - Sidney. No web presence.

Coho Books - Campbell River. Taking phone, email, and online orders. Will deliver locally once a week

Galiano Island Books - Galiano Island. Closed but taking online orders. Delivery on the island free, BC shipping $5.

Galleon Books & Antiques - Sidney. No web presence.

The Haunted Bookshop - Sidney. No web presence.

Laughing Oyster Books - Courtney. Taking phone and online orders and will deliver within the Comox Valley.

The Military and History Bookshop - Sidney. No web presence.

Munro’s Books - Victoria. Closed till end of March, taking phone and online orders, $5 shipping within BC

Russell Books - Victoria. Closed, has pick-up window, offers free North American shipping with $50+ purchase with some limitations

Tanner’s Books - Sidney. Closed, taking phone and online orders, storefront pickup, $5 shipping within Capital regional district, free delivery to locals in a senior’s residence or self-isolating.

Interior

Mosaic Books - Kelowna. Closed, taking phone, email, Facebook, and online orders, free local shipping over $75, curbside pickup.

Nuthatch Books - 100 Mile House. No information.

The Open Book - Williams Lake. Phone and online orders. In-store and curbside pickup, free local delivery.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba

Bison Books - Winnepeg. Taking phone, online, email, and DM orders. Free local delivery or curbside pickup, with delivery available at cost everywhere else in the world. Accepts Paypal and e-transfer.

McNally Robinson - Winnepeg and Saskatoon. Closed but open by appointment. Taking phone and online orders, offering curbside pickup, next day Winnipeg delivery as low as $5, shipping across Canada

Ontario

Attic Books - London. Closed to at least April 13. Taking phone, email, DM, and online orders. Processing phone payments. Curbside pickup.

Bakka-Phoenix Books - Toronto. Closed to public until April 5. Online orders.

Brown and Dickson - London. Closed. Taking online and social media orders, considering free delivery within London. Seels gift cards.

Quebec

Argo Bookshop - Montreal. Open. Phone and online orders, curbside pickup, shipping. Selling gift certificates. Events have moved online and are starting a discussion series. Partnered with Libro.fm.

Babar Books - Montreal. Closed, taking online orders. Free shipping for West Island. $7.00 flat rate for Greater Montreal.

Librairie Drawn & Quarterly - Montreal. Closed, taking online orders, shipping, curbside pickup. Partnered with Libro.fm. Has launched an online storytime, runs an online book club.

Northwest Territories

Yellowknife Books - Currently taking online and phone orders with curb-side drop-off, also ships

FRANCE

Shakespeare and Company - Paris. Closed. Taking online orders but shipping later. Sells vouches and subscriptions.

IRELAND

Gutter Bookshop - Dublin. Closed at least to March 31. Online and email orders, shipping worldwide. Free postage within Ireland over €30. Sells vouchers.

ISRAEL

Holzer Books - Jerusalem. Appears to have updates in Hebrew.

Danny Books - Jerusalem. No information.

THE NETHERLANDS

The American Book Center - Amsterdam and the Hague. Closed for browsing today. Still taking web orders, handling emails and answering the phone. Free shipping in Netherlands over €20.

THE UNITED KINGDOM

Blackwells - Chain, but a good one.

Book-Ish - Crickhowell, Wales. Closed. Taking online orders. Has an outside donation box for toiletries for NHS staff. Recommending books on Twitter.

Ryde Bookshop - Isle of Wight. No information.

Topping & Company - Closed. Taking online, email, and phone orders, and shipping.

England

Chicken and Frog - Brentwood, Essex. Closed. Email orders. Online events. Home deliveries.

Daunt Books - London. Closed. Not currently taking orders.

Five Leaves Bookshop - Nottingham. Closed. Onlne and email orders, free postage and direct delivery from suppliers. Building a webstore and planning online events. Accepts PayPal and National Book Tokens.

Foyles - London. Closed. Online orders. Free UK standard delivery. Has subscription packages. Events cancelled until the end of May.

Gay’s The Word - London. Closed. Not currently taking orders.

Mostly Books - Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Closed.Taking phone, email, online, and social media orders. £3 postage except for large orders. Accepts PayPal and BACS.

Mr B’s Emporium - Bath. “Non-contact open.” Email and phone orders. Has sections on their website for recommendations and suggestions. Has gift vouches and reading subscriptions. Until March 31, £2 postage for 1st class, £1.50 for 2nd class. After that, free shipping over £30. Launching a Youtube channel.

Persephone Books - London. Closed. Online orders, but cannot ship due to lockdown.

Sevenoaks Bookshop - Sevenoaks, Kent. Closed. Online and email orders. Very limited hand-delivery. Shipping from suppliers.

Tales on Moon Lane - London. Closed. Email orders. Delivering. Giving recommendations.

Warwick Books - Warwick. Closed. Phone, email, and social media orders. Shipping from warehouse. Accepts bank transfer and PayPal. Has gift subscriptions and vouchers.

Scotland

Edinburgh Bookshop - Edinburgh. Closed. Taking online, email, and phone orders. Deliveries paused, but still shipping.

Golden Hare Books- Edinburgh. Closed. Taking online, email, and phone orders. Free local delivery, UK shipping for £2.50.

Lighthouse Bookshop - Edinburgh. Closed. Taking online, email, and phone orders, shipping as low as £2. Starting an online newsletter for bookstore vibes. Setting up a system where people in danger from domestic violence can ‘order a book’ and they will then alert the relevant local services to provide help.

Transreal Fiction - Closed. Not currently taking orders.

THE UNITED STATES

California

Alley Cat Bookshop and Gallery - San Francisco. Closed. Taking orders on Bookshop.org for direct home shipping. Sells gift certificates. Has a Patreon and a GoFundMe.

Books Inc./Compass Books - Bay Area. Closed. Online orders, free shipping.

Booksmart - Morgan Hill. Open, taking orders, curbside pickup. Home delivery within 3 miles, shipping $3.99 or free over $25. Providing gloves to browsers.

Borderlands Books - San Francisco. Closed, filling mail orders.

City Lights - San Francisco. Closed. Unable to directly fill online orders but lists with Bookshop.org.

Dog Eared Books - San Francisco. Valencia location in store to take your calls between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. every weekday. Taking orders on Bookshop.org for direct home shipping, and online orders in store. Sells gift certificates. Has a GoFundMe.

Green Apple Books - San Francisco. Closed. Taking online orders. Free shipping on orders over $25. Partnered with Libro.fm. Is selling “Stay Home Read Books” shirts and gift cards.

The Last Bookstore - Los Angeles. Open by appointment, taking online and emails orders, offering curated gift bags, still accepting donations and buying used books

Leigh’s Favorite Books - Sunnyvale. Closed. Online reservations. Contactless local delivery. Accepting direct donations.

Omnivore Books - San Francisco. Closed. Phone and online orders. Limited pick-up hours. Shipping.

Recycle Bookstore - Campbell and San Jose. No information.

A Shop Called Quest - Phone orders, curbside pick up, shipping options. Also selling gift cards

Skylight Books - Los Angeles. Taking online orders and shipping with limitations.

Vroman's Bookstore - Pasadena. Online orders under $75 for shipping only. Partnered with Libro.fm, MyMustRead, and Corkcicle. Selling gift cards and taking financial donations.

Connecticut

That Book Store - Wethersfield. Open. Curbside pickup, free delivery available. Partnered with Libro.fm. Has a GoFundMe.

Florida

Vero Beach Book Center - Vero Beach. Open for curbside pickup. Still giving recommendations and retrieving in-store stock.

Georgia

Book Nook - Decatur. Open.

Eagle Eye Books - Decatur. Closed to browsing. Taking online and phone orders, curbside pickup.

Little Shop Of Stories - Decatur. Closed to customers until April 8, but allowing store pickup. Online and phone orders. Free home delivery in 30030 and neighboring zip codes. Partnered with Libro.fm.

Tall Tales - Decatur. Open.

Illinois

57th Street Books - Closed. Taking online orders.

Anderson’s Bookshop - Naperville, Downers Grove, and LaGrange. Online orders temporarily suspected due to volume. Downers Grove taking phone orders and has curbside pickup. Sells gift cards. Has a GoFundMe and is partnered with Libro.fm.

The Book Table - Oak Park. Closed. Direct shipping from distributor. Selling gift cards. Answering emails.

Bookie's New and Used Books - Chicago. Closed for in-store browsing. Taking online orders. Delivery within five-mile radius, curbside pickup. Also sells through Bookshop.org and is partnered with Libro.fm. Sells gift cards and ebooks.

Myopic Bookstore - Chicago. Closed.

Quimby’s - Closed at least to end of March. March and April events cancelled. Taking online, email, and phone orders, shipping, curbside pickup. Offering recommendations on Zoom.

Powell’s Books - Chicago. No information but takes online orders.

Sandmeyer’s - Chicago. Closed. Taking phone and email orders.

The Scarlet Page - Oregon. Closed. Doing curbside delivery. Selling book bundles at flat prices. Has a GoFundMe.

Unabridged Bookstore - Chicago. Closed to the public. Taking online orders, shipping. Sells gift cards.

Women & Children First - Chicago. Closed until May 1. Taking online orders and shipping. Preorders available. Partnered with Libro.fm. Doing poetry events on Instagram and other virtual events elsewhere.    

Iowa

Prairie Lights - Iowa City. Closed to the public. Taking phone and online orders. Free local delivery, curbside pickup, shipping free over $50 within the continental US.

Kansas

Book-a-Holic Bookstore - Wichita. Open, offering curbside pickup.

Eighth Day Books - Wichita. Taking orders and shipping.

Rainy Day Books - Fairway. Open. Taking phone and online orders. $5 priority mail under $75, free shipping over $75. Offering phone recommendations.

Raven Book Store - Lawrence. Taking email and online orders. Free local delivery. $1 shipping across the US. Has book subscriptions.

Watermark Books and Cafe - Wichita. Open. Taking online orders, $3 shipping within continental US, curbside delivery of books and food. Sells eBooks and audiobooks.

Kentucky

Nanny Goat Books - Louisville. No information.

Maryland

The Book Escape - Baltimore. Closed. Taking orders, shipping daily, offering free delivery.

 The Book Thing of Baltimore - Baltimore. Closed. Soliciting ideas for safely giving away books during social distancing and looking for satellite bookshelves. Accepting financial donations.

The Ivy Bookshop - Towson. Closed. Taking phone and online orders, shipping, offering phone recommendations.

Massachusetts

Brookline Booksmith - Boston. Closed. Taking phone and online orders, shipping. Recommendations on social media.

Harvard Book Store - Boston. Closed until April 7. Online orders. Shipping. Offers print-on-demand services. Events cancelled.

More Than Words - Boston and Waltham. Stores and events currently closed. Still accepting book donations.

Trident Booksellers and Cafe - Boston. Store and cafe closed to public. Events cancelled. Shipping within US. Food delivery and pick-up. Sells gift cards and partnered with Libro.fm.

Wellesley Books - Wellesley. Taking online orders, direct shipping from distributor. Partnered with Libro.fm. Sells gift cards.

Michegan

Bookbug and This Is A Bookstore - Kalamazoo. Closed, taking orders, providing reading lists. Has launched a book subscription service and is accepting donations.

Kazoo Books - Kalamazoo. No information.

Literati Bookstore - Ann Arbor. Closed until April 13. Processing current orders and sending incoming orders through a distributor that ships. Has a GoFundMe.

Minnesota

Dreamhaven Books - Minneapolis. Open, taking phone and email orders, $10 care package within the US.

Excelsior Bay Books - Twin Cities. Closed for browsing. Taking online and phone orders, giving phone recommendations, curb-side pickup, shipping. Selling audiobooks and gift certificates.

Red Balloon Bookstore - Twin Cities. Closed. Giving recommendations by phone. Parking lot pick-up, free shipping, orders $20 free delivery in neighbourhood.

Wild Rumpus Bookstore - Twin Cities. Closed. Taking online orders, offering curbside pickup, free shipping or delivery on orders over $10.

Mississippi

Lemuria Books - Jackson. Taking online and phone orders, offering curbside pick-up and shipping. 

Montana

Vargo’s Jazz City and Books - Bozeman. No information.

Country Bookshelf - Bozeman. Closed to browsing. Open for pick-up orders, prefers curb delivery, local delivery, or shipping. $1 shipping nationwide. Taking online and phone orders, acting as personal shoppers.

Isle of Books AKA Used Book Emporium - Bozeman. Open. Taking phone and online orders. Curbside pickup and shipping. Doing short readings on Facebook.

New Jersey

Words Bookstore - Maplewood. Events postponed to April 25. No other information. Has webstore.

The Book House - Millburn. Online orders. Selling subscriptions, gift cards, and gift baskets. Offering email recommendations. Partnered with Libro.fm.

New York

Bluestockings - NYC. No information, has webstore.

The Book House of Stuyvestant Plaza/Market Block Books - Albany. Closed. Events to be rescheduled. Online orders, direct shipping from distributors. Partnered with Libro.fm.

Book Culture - NYC. Some locations closed, all closed to browsing. Taking online orders, shipping. Pickups uncertain. International shipping. Buyback suspecting but accepting book donations.

Books of Wonder - NYC. Offering digital storytime.

The Corner Bookstore - NYC. Events cancelled through April. Phone and email orders, free local delivery. Customizes gift baskets. Allows customers to open an account. Sells gift certificates.

Dashwood Books - NYC. No information

Greenlight Bookstore - Brooklyn. Closed to the public. Online orders shipping from supplier, free over $100.

Housing Works - NYC. Bookstore and cafe closed. Clinics still open. Taking financial donations for the organization as a whole. Sells gift cards.

Kitchen Arts and Letters - NYC. Closed. Filling phone and mail orders.

The Lit Bar - NYC. Online orders, shipping, curbside pickup by appointment. Partnered with Libro.fm.

Midtown Comics - NYC - Open, taking online orders, currently running a 20% off everything sale until March 31st

The Mysterious Bookshop - NYC. Closed. Shipping all orders when business ban lifted.

Revolution Books - NYC. Closed to public. Still providing information and analysis, and online programming.

Shakespeare & Co. - NYC. No information, but webstore and free shipping.

Spoonbill and Sugartown - NYC. Taking email orders and shipping.

The Strand - NYC. Closed, taking online orders.

Three Lives and Company - NYC. Closed and not currently processing orders.

North Carolina

The Book Lady - Munroe. No information.

Bookmarks - Winston-Salem. Taking phone and online orders including preorders, curbside pickup, free shipping over $25. Offers memberships, gift cards, and subscriptions. Partnered with Libro.fm, sells ebooks. Taking donations.

The Captain’s Bookshelf - Asheville. No information.

Epilogue Book Cafe - Chapel Hill. Closed. Online orders, $3 shipping. Partnered with Libro.fm

Firestorm Co-op - Asheville. Open. Taking online orders. Events cancelled till end of March. $1 shipping.

Flyleaf Books - Chapel Hill. Closed. Online and phone orders, curbside pickup and $1 shipping through April.

Island Books - Kitty Hawk. No specific information but does online orders.

Malaprops Bookstore/Cafe - Asheville. Online and phone orders. Events and book clubs suspended to May 15. Home delivery throughout Buncombe Country with two book minimum, free shipping over $50 and free delivery downtown, curbside pickup. Exploring subscription services and digital content. Directing donations to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC)

Quail Ridge Books - Raleigh. Closed to the public Weds and Thurs. Taking online orders. All March events cancelled. Free media mail shipping to continental US.

The Regulator - Durham. Closed to customers. Phone and online orders. Curbside pickup, reduced shipping nationwide. Sells gift certificates.

Ohio

The Book Loft - Columbus. Closed till April 6. Taking online orders, shipping for $4.99.  

Oregon

Black Sun Books - Eugene. No information but putting their stock online.   

The Book Bin - Corvallis and Albany. Open. Phone orders. Free home delivery and curbside pickup.

Browser’s Books - Corvallis and Albany. Closed to public, open by appointment. Taking phone, email, and messaging orders, and posting shelfies for online browsing. Free shipping in Oregon over $15. Curbside pick-up.

Dudley's Bookshop Cafe - Bend. Closed. Taking email and Facebook orders, doing deliveries. Partnered with Libro.fm.

Grass Roots Books - Corvallis. Faking phone and online orders. Free shipping, curbside pickup. Launching an “Irregular” newsletter.

J Micheal's Books - Eugene. Closed, curbside and local home delivery.

Powell’s Books - Portland. Closed through April. Free shipping for over $25

Smith Family Bookstore - Eugene. Closed. Taking phone and online orders, allows pickup, also shipping.

Tsunami Books - Eugene. Taking phone, email, website, online, and Facebook orders. Curbside pickup. Accepts checks and cash. Free shipping anywhere in the US.              

Pennsylvania

Towne Book Center & Wine Bar - Collegeville.  Closed. Online orders. Free standard shipping in the US. Sells gift cards. Partnered with Libro.fm and MyMustReads. Some book clubs meeting digitally.

Tennessee

Parnassus Books - Nashville. Closed to public. Taking and shipping orders. Events cancelled until April 10.

Vermont

Star Cat Books - Bradford. No information. Takes donations.

Washington

Brick and Mortar Books - Redmond. Closed. Taking online orders.

The Elliott Bay Book Company - Seattle. Closed until March 31, taking phone and online orders, taking curbside pickup, limited home delivery, free delivery for over $50, free shipping within US.

Imprint Books - Port Townsend. Closed to browsers until March 31. Taking phone and email orders. Direct-to-home shipping for $2, free over $30. Giving recommendations. Partnered with Libro.fm. April writing workshops now on Zoom.

Left Bank Books - Seattle. Closed to the public. Taking phone and online orders (including for store credit), shipping daily.

Lion Heart Books  - Seattle. No information.

Magus Books - Seattle. Closed as of March 26. Taking phone and email orders, shipping

Main Street Books - Monroe. Closed to browsing. Stock listed on spreadsheet, Amazon. and Bookshop.org. Free shipping. 20% off gift cards.

Mercer Street Books - Seattle. No information.

Ophelia's Books - Seattle. Closed to the public. Available for phone or email orders that can be shipped or picked up during limited hours.

Secret Garden Books - Seattle. Closed until at least April 7 and not processing orders until then.

Third Place Books - Seattle. Taking orders, free shipping to March 31.

Twice Sold Tales - Seattle. Open weekends, selling gift certificates, has a GoFundMe

Uppercase Bookshop - Snohomish. Closed to browsing. Taking online orders. Shipping and delivery. Sells gift cards. Partnered with Libro.fm and MyMustReads.

William James Bookseller  - Port Townsend. Closed.         

ONLINE-ONLY

Absinthe Books

[pebblysand]

[writing rant - on the monetisation of fanfiction]

a couple of months ago, when i updated my long fic, one of the people on the comments wrote to me the nicest possible review (one of the ones that you keep in your feel-good 'saved' emails - you know the ones), which, amongst other things also said: 'If I could pay you for this...believe me, I would.'

in the moment, i kind of smiled and laughed, and thanked the person for their kind words before moving on with my life. yet, since then, i have to admit that this sentence has kind of been living rent-free in my head. i think it is also because since diving back into fandom a few months ago, i've noticed something that kind of shocked me at first: more and more fanfiction writers seem to be monetising (or attempting to monetise) their craft.

now, back when i started writing fanfic, we wrote fanfic on ffnet and livejournal. it was accepted that thou shalt never (ever) charge money for your writing or else the author and their mean, angry lawyers will come after you for damages and you will die a slow and painful death. we wrote disclaimers at the start of all of our posts and thanked the gods every day when we did not get sued.

i have seen this change gradually over the years. first, in the mid 2010s, the disclaimers went. then, i noticed that people were getting 'tipped' for fanart, sometimes even charging commission. from what i understand (though, don't quote me on this, i'm not an ip lawyer and this post is not intended as legal advice), this is because the way the concept of fair use is framed under us law makes it easier to monetise fanart than it does fanfiction. maybe this is why visual artists came first on this trend. later still (and more recently) i've noticed fanfic writers, doing the same thing.

to be fully honest, the first thought i had when i saw this trend, considering the fear of god (and his lawyers) that was instilled in me in the past, was: how on earth is this even possible? (i'll come back to that in a bit). the second, though, was: fuck, i wish i had the guts to do that, lol.

because, yeah, i will admit, the idea of getting paid for writing what i love to write does appeal, to a certain extent. i won't lie. dear fanfiction writers who've tried to do that recently: i one hundred per cent get it.

looking back at the last fifteen years, i would say that for me, writing fanfiction has been (in terms of time commitment and energy consumed) the equivalent of having an on-and-off part time job. a job that i have held for one or two years at a time, then quit for a while, before coming back to it when i needed (wanted) it again. i obviously can't realistically give you a number re:the actual total of hours i have spent at this since i started out, but i can give you an idea. recently, i started clocking my hours out of interest and calculated that a chapter of my current long fic takes roughly between one hundred to two hundred hours to produce (and they're around 10,000 words). at that rate, i'm probably working 20 hours a week-ish? sometimes more, sometimes less? something as small as a three-sentence fic (like this for instance), takes roughly two/three hours. i'll be honest, i have cancelled plans to write fic. when i'm working on a long project, i do tend to organise my life to give myself the time to write, so i opt for socialising after work during the week rather than on weekends, as i've found this is when i write best. i won't lie: it is - for me (i know some people write quicker, bless them) - a huge time suck.

so, yeah, i understand, in the capitalist society we live in, wanting to make that time count. our world has unfortunately, repeatedly taught us that time is money and getting more does seem like a nice bonus (as long as you have an audience for your art that's willing to pay, obviously). after all, year after year, i've seen a lot of my friends try and monetise their passions as side hustles, with varying success. at first, glance, i look at the time i spend on writing fanfiction and think: man, i wish i could get a bit back from that too. i couldn't even draw a stick figure to save my life but i assume that the time commitment and energy put into that kind of work is roughly similar for visual fanartists as well. i thus very much understand the sentiment, both with fanart and fanfiction.

additionally, though i appreciate this is a bit tangential, the fact that fanfiction is free, i would argue, hinders its potential to be as representative as it could be. it's a bit sad because on the one hand, the fact that it is free makes it completely accessible to the masses but on the other, it makes fanfiction quite exclusive to rich, privileged people who can afford to spend the time and energy putting content out for free. if i spend this much time writing fanfiction, just because i like it and it makes me happy, it's because my full time job pays me enough to cover my bills. if it didn't, i probably would have to forgo writing and get a proper side gig. if you look at my periods of inactivity on ao3, those also kind of coincide with the times in my life when i had to have more things going on to put food on the table.

so, now, assuming that monetisation is a thing that, as a fic writer, one might want to look at, the next question is: how do you go about monetising it? obviously, the law hasn't changed since the days where we were all terrified of getting sued (although enforcement has been quite lax over the years) so it's more about finding workarounds around the law as it is, rather than actively seeking payment for fanart.

from what i've seen: two main solutions seem to exist.

first, there's the tipping/buy-me-coffee technique. as i understand it, this involves either setting up a page on one of the dedicated websites or just putting up your paypal account link on your tumblr posts. with these links, people can then send you however much money they want (however much money they can afford/think you deserve?) on a one-off basis. they're not actually paying for fanfic because there is no actual exchange of services, it's basically like them giving money to charity, except that charity is a fanfic writer/ fan artist whose work they enjoy.

there are two main issues i see with this: one, legally, i'm not sure how much ground this actually holds. assuming you're quite prolific/successful, if every time you're producing new content, you receive dozens of tips, although you're not actively charging for your fanart, making the argument that your content isn't what these people are actively paying for seems hard. imo, the fact that this method sort of holds is that realistically, you're going to make very little out of this. even if you're really good, you might make what? a couple hundred dollars. now, sure, that's a lot of money for a lot of people but in the grand scheme of things, no one sues anyone for such a low amount. as long as you're not making 'proper' money from it, it is highly unlikely that anyone would come after you.

this being said, the second issue, from my perspective, is that this is not in any way, shape or form, a reliable income. it also does not represent, at all, the cost of the time and investment actually put into said fanfiction (or fanart, i assume). for example: if you're going to tip someone who's worked on something for, say, fifty hours, ten dollars, that's very good of you, but that isn't going to be 'worth' their time. it is only worth their time if tipping is done at as scale, which imo is quite unlikely considering you're putting your content out for free anyway. there are kind souls who will tip you, but not that many, meaning that ultimately, you're not working for free anymore, but you're still working at a huge loss.

additionally, because this income is not even reliable on a monthly/weekly basis, it isn't something that anyone can actually rely on, even if only to fund their coffee habit. it's nice to have, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective, is the legal risk outlined above worth the trouble for the $20/30 tips i'd get every once in a while - not really. such low amounts also don't help diminish the class issue that i talked about earlier. again, if you're going to spend fifty hours on something, you might as well work a minimum wage job - even that will pay you more and will be dependable.

second, there's patreon (and patreon-like sites). here, the income is monthly, people pledge on a subscription basis, which does solve the last point above. it might not be much, but at least it's regular.

the main issue i see with patreon is that it is contingent on the author providing more services on top of what they already provide. in most cases, the author will keep putting their usual content out for free + provide their patreons (depending on tiers) with more content, specifically for them. this, to me, makes this scheme even less appealing than the previous one because a) if i can't provide fanfic to potential patreons (again, you can't sell fanfic), i'm not sure what on earth i could give them (original content? that's not really the same market) and b) that's even more work on my plate. honestly, considering the amount of time i already spend writing fanfic, i have neither the energy nor the willpower to provide extra content for an amount that, regardless, will probably pay me less than a part-time job would. again, you'd have to scale this (i.e. have enough patreons) to make it all worth your while, and even in very big fandoms, even for someone waaaaay more successful than me, i doubt it would be likely.

lastly, as a side note, both of these "methods" are solely accepted if they occur on tumblr/writer's own website, rather than on the writer's ao3 page/fic. there was a post going around explaining why that is (nutshell: it endangers ao3's status as a non-profit archive) but as with all things, i seem to have lost it. [if you do have the link to that post/know what i'm talking about, hit me up and i'll rectify this]. this, regardless, supposes driving traffic from wherever you post your fics towards tumblr/your own website which, again, decreases your chances of scaling this.

so, in the end, where does that leave us?

i think, at this point, we've kind of reached a crossroad. ultimately, i see two ways to look at this:

option one: if you believe that fanfiction writers should be paid for their art, you also probably agree that the methods outlined above, while they do offer some sort of solution, are less than ideal. the ideal solution (for this option) would obviously be to allow fanfiction authors to be properly paid for the publication of their work through 'normal' publishing/self-publishing deals, without the need for a licence from the author (bar - perhaps - the payment of royalties). that would create a proper 'market' for fanfiction, treating it as any other form of writing/art form. it would mean a complete overhaul of the laws currently in place, but why not? ultimately, in a democracy, laws are meant to be changeable.

this being said, though, while my personal knee jerk reaction would be to shout 'hurray!' at this solution, i do not actually think i want this. or, maybe, only part of me does. the part of me who has been writing fanfiction for free for fifteen years is like 'hey, yay, maybe i could get paid!'. but then, there is another part of me that would like, maybe, one day, to write more original fiction (i already do a bit, but not much). that part of me is feels frankly a bit icky about giving up her ip rights.

would i be comfortable with people writing fanfiction of my original work? hell yes. that would be the dream. imagine having your own ao3 fandom, omg. however, would i be comfortable with people profiting from writing fanfiction of my work? honestly, i'm not sure. to me, the answer to that is: it depends (how much time investment was put in? how original the concept is? etc.) which, in fact, kind of brings us back to the current concept of licensing. and yes, maybe the current frame imposed by copyright law has also shaped the way i view the concept of property, and maybe i should be more of a communist, free-for-all kind of person, but unfortunately, i'm not that revolutionary.

also, and slightly tangentially, i find it interesting how profiting from fanficition/fanart is seen as more acceptable i certain fandoms rather than in others. taking the hp fandom for instance, even prior to jkr expressing her views on transgender rights, i often read things like: 'ah, she's so rich anyway, she doesn't need the money.' now, that argument has not only gained traction but is also reinforced by: 'ah, she's the devil and i don't want to fund her. it'd rather give my money to fanfic authors/buy things on etsy.'

while i completely understand the sentiment and do not, in any way, shape or form, support jkr's views, i do find that argument quite problematic. if you set the precedent that because someone is too rich, or because they've expressed views you disagree with, you don't believe that they should be entitled to their own intellectual property rights, i do wonder: where does this stop? this being justified for jkr could lead to all sorts of small artists seeing other people stealing/profiting from their original work without authorisation. 'i don't pay you 'cause i disagree with you,' would then act as a justification, with i find highly unfair. the fact of the matter is: jkr created hp. knowing that, the choice of buying hp products, regardless of her opinions is completely and entirely yours, but buying the same stuff unlicensed, from people who are infringing on her copyrights seems, to me, very problematic as this could potentially be scaled to all artists. either we overhaul the entire copyright system or we don't, but making special cases is dangerous, in my humble opinion.

option two: we choose to preserve copyright law as it is, for the reasons outlined above. this means that most people will not get paid for the content they put out and that the few that do will operate on a very tight, legal rope, and work for tips that are a 'nice bonus' but not a proper pay. this sort of perpetuates the idea that fanfiction is 'less than' other art forms, because in our capitalist society, things that don't generate money (things often made by women, may i add) are not seen as being as valuable as things that do.

for me, personally, while getting paid to write fanfiction sounds lovely (and makes my bank account purr) in theory, i think i side to preserve the current system. as an artist, i think that intellectual property protects us and our concepts from being ripped off by others, including by big companies who might find it handy to steal a design, a quote, anything, without proper remuneration. this is even more important for smaller artists who wouldn't necessarily have the means to defend their craft otherwise.

this being said, i do appreciate that it depends on why you're writing fanfiction. i think that topic probably deserves a whole different post in its own right but ultimately, most people write fanfic because it's fun. we know it's for fun, and not for profit. and if that's the case, then we're okay to receive compliments, reblogs and sometimes, for some people a little bit of an awkward tip for our work. for me, fanfic has been a space to make friends, to get feedback, to learn and to experiment without the pressure of money being involved. that's why i don't particularly mind doing it for free, and wouldn't even bother setting up a patreon or tip-me jar. i love being able to do it just for the enjoyment of myself and my five followers (lol), without worrying about scaling it, or making it profitable. not every part of our lives, not every passion has to be profitable. as we say in ireland, you do it 'for the craic' and nothing else.

this, though, as i already said, also depends on your means and level of privilege. to me, writing for free is fantastic and a bloody relief - it means being able to do exactly what i want. original fiction writing is full of rules, and editors, and publishers. in fanfic, i can write whatever i feel like, and i'm willing to forgo a salary in exchange of that freedom. again, i have a full time job that covers my bills. this does mean, though, that i don't have as much time to dedicate to writing as i would like to.

and also, the thing is: i'm a small author. i happily write in my own little niche. bar that one comment, it is highly unlikely that anyone would actually want to pay me (or even tip me) for my content. but when you look at very successful people, like the author of all the young dudes, i could see how they'd want to get paid for their art, and why they'd feel differently.

bottom line for me is: the flaws of the current systems of remuneration combined with my strong belief in copyright law as a means to protect small, original creators, means that i don't really think it would be right for me to get paid for fanfic, even if i was the kind of person who had the market for it. whilst it would be nice, this very long rant has, hopefully, explained why.

[notjusthespongenextdoor]

listen. yall. pirating is so easy. this post is only so long because i’m explaining exactly what’s going on in every step and how things work.

here’s what you do:

download microtorrent (colloquially called ‘U-torrent) https://www.utorrent.com/desktop. The free version is fine it just has some annoying ads.

go to thepiratebay.org in your browser. if you don’t have an ad blocker (why don’t you have an ad blocker?) there will be sexy ads, so watch out.

Type in what you want. let’s say, mulan 2020 for a random example

look down the list and pick which resolution you want, and choose the one with the most seeders (SE)

in this instance,

the first result is great, it’s a 1080p (around Blu-ray quality) resolution file with 15,000 seeders (and 4,500 leechers), that means this download will go super fast

also notice these little icons, for the wary of you: 

the magnet means there’s a magnet link (don’t worry about this it’s just a technical detail), and the green skull is a level of trust!

“The Pirate Bay employs a three-tier grading system consisting of colored skulls which indicate the level of trustworthiness of a torrent. Green is the highest level of trust, called "VIP," pink is the next highest level or "Trusted," and blue is the third level of trust, called "Helper." Green and pink torrents are generally considered to have little to no safety risk, while those designated with blue are considered safe but are slightly more questionable.“

This means this user uploads files all the time and they’re checked for malware and they’re clean! There’s no danger from the file you’re downloading.

So, click on the torrent. It will bring you to the download page.

click on get torrent

this should open up uTorrent, or your browser will ask if it’s okay to open up uTorrent. Give it permission.

it will open up a dialog that is hopefully self-explanatory

This is all you really need to worry about, this is where the file will be downloaded.

You can also look at this panel if you want:

this shows what’s being downloaded. here we have the mp4 file (the movie) and a jpg, which is probably credit to whoever first made the torrent file. this is really common, it’s sometimes an image or a text file. I guess you can choose not to download this but it’s only 50 kb so I usually don’t bother unchecking it.

sometimes, this will include small minute-long clips of the movie/show/whatever, or images from it. if you want to make sure the media looks good before you download the whole thing, you can uncheck all of the files except the examples. this will just download the files you want, and you can look at those before going back and downloading the whole thing.

in this case, we’re fine, so click “ok”

it will start downloading!

First, it needs to connect to peers. Torrents are a peer-to-peer (p2p) process, which means instead of connecting to one central database that distributes data to everyone connecting to it, you connect to other people who have uTorrent open and have some part of the file downloaded, and get the download information from them.

Sometimes it can take a little bit for the download to ‘warm up’ as it finds people to connect to, but when there are 15,000 seeders you’re definitely going to get up to a really fast download speed, assuming your internet can handle it.

So, now just wait for it to download. Mine took just a little over 10 minutes.

Once it’s done, it will start seeding:

Now, seeding a file is the philanthropic thing to do. This allows other people downloading the file to get the download information off of your file. It’s a way of giving back to the community -- that download only went so fast because 15,000 people were seeing this torrent!

However, if you’re not using a VPN (which you’ll notice I didn’t include instructions for), you’re going to want to be very careful about seeding. Disney and Warner Brothers are two infamous companies for jumping on torrents of their movies--especially their new releases--and collecting the service provider information of people who are seeding their files, thus ending up in you getting a nasty letter from your service provider.

So, if you’re downloading a legal torrent (they exist, mostly for very big downloads of online games) or a really old or not-well-known thing, please leave the torrent up for at least a day or so just to be nice. But this is a just-released Disney property with 15,000 seeders, so we’re going to be selfish.

Just right-click the entry in uTorrent and click “remove,” then click “ok” on the dialog. This won’t remove the movie you just downloaded, it will just remove the torrent file, so you’re no longer sharing your data.

And there you go! You didn’t shell out a gross amount of money to a mega-corporation! And as long as you stick to downloading from safe sources (the pirate bay is famous for a reason, almost all of the downloads are checked for viruses and the community is well moderated) and remove the torrent after downloading, you’re going to be fine. I haven’t had a letter from my service provider in about a decade, and I only got one in the first place because I was a silly child who was seeding things I shouldn’t have been.

Go forth and cancel your subscriptions to Disney+ my friends. You’re free.

[alightwhendarknessfell]

Let’s Talk

I’ve thought a lot about the situation concerning Ashley/Black Veil and the greater issues at hand here over the past few days. I’ve also spoken with a lot of people about things. 

Personally, this situation has turned into something that is causing myself to lose sleep and become very anxious. The likelihood that Ashley actually gets formally reprimanded for his actions is low just based on how cases like this typically go, and it’s quite clear that while people now know the type of person he is and that his career in music is over, those who still support him will continue no matter what. He will more than likely dwindle into irrelevancy and probably end up in jail for drinking and driving eventually. 

I have personally witnessed how this has affected the people involved, some of which are even close friends of mine. I believe that Twitter is great for some things, and catching people’s attention and spreading information is one of those things, but it can also be an incredibly toxic place. As a victim of sexual assault myself I feel for every one of the victims and fighting with people every day on Twitter who are willing to go to disgusting lengths to defend monsters like Ashley is exhausting. In my personal opinion at this point I believe people’s mental health is being harmed by the back and forth (not speaking for everyone, but I have personally seen how this is affecting people’s lives). And I don’t know how much more good can come from more Twitter arguments. 

With my MCAT approaching I need to get myself in the right head space and jumping every time my phone goes off because is it someone attacking me? Is it another victim? Is it someone in pain? That’s not a good head space. I also see the conversation at times going in a direction that I am not comfortable with or that I do not have enough information to put myself in. 

I do not want to out victims or people that do not want to have their story out there. I do not want to hunt down people and make them relive their trauma or pressure them to speak when doing so could cause a significant disruption to their lives. I’m not saying that is what is happening but I just don’t want it to A) come off that way or B) become that. In addition to that, it is very clear from a legal standpoint that Black Veil cannot say what people want them to say without breaking the NDA (at the benefit of Ashley). Ashley has retreated to his subscription only accounts and so that kind of leaves everyone at a stand still. This situation is incredibly complicated and perhaps in time there can be a conversation had but I just don’t think that time is right now. 

Speaking broadly, I will say that I am not for the cancellation of entire groups of people based of the actions of one person. I believe doing so can bring down innocent people or even potentially other victims. Should there be some punishment for succumbing to the bystander effect? I think that is fair, I think you can’t make blanket one size fits all statements but inaction can hurt too. And I think you should try and gather as many facts before deciding on any form of punishment for actions or inaction. Should you give people the chance to own up to their shortcomings and change for the better? I think so. Should inaction receive the same punishment as actions? I don’t think so, I think doing so allows the truly evil to fade into the background and minimizes their actions. 

I want to see significant change in the music industry with not only more protection for fans but for musicians as well. I see young kids, sometimes not even 18 thrown into an industry that has a habit of making monsters and addicts. The amount of leeches that feed and prey on these young musicians and don’t give a second thought to if that harms them is a big issue. Stop normalizing alcoholism and addiction. Stop watching your bandmate drink themself into a blackout every night.  Don’t create situations where a power dynamic allows people to get away with criminal actions. Check your bandmate when they say or do problematic things. I think there’s been a culture of ‘everyone looks after themselves’ but that’s clearly not working. I think if you are a band and you want to continue into the future that attitude has to change. The past can’t be changed, but the future sure as hell can. 

Beyond that, fan safety needs to be a priority. COVID-19 will change concerts and live music. And honestly, good. There should be more sanitation precautions when you have thousands of people packed together. The Route 91 mass shooting changed security at shows, and good, people should be searched for weapons. 

I think there are ideas that could prevent or reduce the situations in which sexual assault happens to fans. I think these should include things like ID scanners operated by individuals not employed by the band. No one under the age of 21 (unless they are direct family, significant other or a member of the band) be allowed on the buses. Venues need to do better ID-ing every single person that enters the venue. Tour managers and tour organizers need to do more to ensure that there are strict rules enforced as far as conduct. There needs to be a zero tolerance policy for giving alcohol/drugs to people underage and sexual misconduct. That will not prevent everything but it will make it safer and hopefully start to change the culture. 

I do not believe that every single musician is a pedophile. I think there is a disturbing number of them and I think there is another group that gets off on the power dynamic of 16-18 year old girls who worship them and that ability to control. I think there are decent people who have failed to speak out and protect their fans due to fear of their job/reputation/etc and this should serve as a notice that that’s got to change. 

This conversation tends to be very female centric but men can also be sexually abused. That’s not okay either. Band members can be sexually harassed and abused as well. It’s not okay to grab at them on stage or yell obscene disgusting things. It’s not okay for your bandmates to pressure you into drugs, sex or drinking. I will also say that physical violence is not okay. Not towards fans and not towards fellow bandmates. There’s a lot of toxicity and it’s all gotta stop. 

I will leave it up to people to make their own choices as to who they want to support or not support, I won’t tell anyone what to think. I will say that I believe it is best for this discussion to change on my blog as far as answering asks assigning blame or innocence to certain people. I stand by my accusation that Ashley Purdy is not only a sexual predator but a predator in general. But going forward I will be very selective in my answering of or posting of this topic. 

I am more than willing to continue the conversation of the issues in the alt-rock scene at large. I would love to hear people’s ideas on what can be done or just your thoughts. But for my own legal protection and sanity I would prefer that it not become specific to certain people/bands. I am open to private discussions about that and you can send in asks for only me to read but know I think this is the best move going forward. Obviously, other topics are all open and you can comment about anything else but it’s just... been a lot these past few days. 

Obviously, if something new comes out or if future incidents occur (not necessarily concerning Black Veil/Ashley but any band/person/etc) there could be more specific discussions but while I might personally believe or think certain things if I don’t have physical evidence that I am free to share (without harming the source) I don’t think it’s fair for me to open up a free for all. 

I hope that is okay with everyone. After my test and things in my life are back to a more ‘normal’ state I have further things I would like to discuss and post in regards to making my blog a more positive environment while of course still having conversations about ‘hot button’ issues, and a place where people can have discussions/comments and still speaking out when shit is fucked up. But perhaps in a way that doesn’t make me appear so hateful, because that is not who I am as a person. 

That all being said, if you are at all struggling because of the discussions being had right now. Please reach out to someone. That could be a therapist, doctor, friend, family member, counselor, etc. If you are dealing with trauma please consider seeking counseling to help you process and deal with what happened. If you feel you have evidence of criminal activity I encourage you to make a police statement or at least document it the best you can. 

I will end with this. I turn 25 this year and the past year of my life I have grown up and matured more so than I have ever before. I have learned a few things that I would like people to at least give thought to...

Please are a contradiction. Every single person has something for which they hypocritical about. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. There is no pure person, there is no one who is free of mistakes there is no one perfectly pure and consistent in ideology. It’s okay to get new information and change your opinion. No one person can change the world and evil will always exist. You will drive yourself crazy trying to eliminate all the bad out there. At the end of the day all you can do is try and help more people than you hurt. 

There are very few black and white things in life and you can’t always classify people as purely good or purely bad. People can change and that can be for better or worse. People have free will but they are also the product of their environments. It is easy to point a finger and say YOU/THIS is responsible and destroying this will right the wrong. It doesn’t. I think cancel culture can do good but it can also be toxic. Not just for the people ‘cancelled’ but also for the people doing the canceling. 

Don’t over analyze any of this or try and read between the lines, just think about it. 

[deebormzone]

Return of Blog

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything on here. Just for fun, here’s a snapshot of the video games I’ve been playing recently.

Smash Bros.

Remember my old prediction for Fighter Pass 2? Well, I’m already wrong.

That’s okay, though! Min Min is pretty good. I do prefer third-party characters for the wow factor, but Arms didn’t have a rep yet, so this is kind of like adding a new franchise.

Special mention to the Vault Boy costume. Despite everything, I still love Fallout.

Still, I might have underestimated how many first-party characters would be in the second pass. This time around, I’m buying them individually, so I can dodge lamers like Pokemon and New Paper Mario.

The punchline here is that I’m not actually playing the game, because if I fight someone I know, I only win, and if I fight online, I only lose. Neither is fun and life is suffering.

World of Warcraft

These being Covid Times, I thought it would be a good idea to use videogame to provide some social interaction, so I re-subscribed and made ten new characters. The following two months were spent grinding. I stopped once I realized that the game is not actually fun, and cancelled my subscription again.

Note: No social interaction occurred in-game during this time. I anticipate paying sixty dollars plus tax for the expansion.

Evil Genius

I guess this has been my main game lately! Out of nowhere, it’s an old PC game from 2004.

The concept is: A James Bond film, but you are the antagonist. Hollow out a mountain and build an evil underground lair. Recruit minions and execute them when they disappoint you. Embark on evil missions around the globe to increase notoriety. It’s all very silly, and the theme is excellent.

Unfortunately there are a few racial caricatures. Most prominently: my favorite playable genius Shen Yu. It hurts a little whenever he says “this is vitar to my pran”, but his ability helps keep agents off my island, so I have to play as him because I hate those fucking agents goddamn it.

He also starts with my favorite henchman, Lord Kane, a morose gentleman in a top hat who is, according to his biography, “responsible for pretty much every major crime or disaster this century.” His special power is to glare at the enemy, causing them to flee in terror. The enemy’s allies also flee in terror. Even if they are in a completely different room.

Another notable henchman is Dr. Neurocide, a fearsome scientist whose backstory is that she invented Evil Juice and then rubbed it on herself by mistake. I like her because, when you command her to eliminate an intruder in your lair, she replies “right away, sugar,” in a country girl accent.

I like the game a lot, but it can get pretty tough. My first campaign ended in failure because, since I was playing as a Bond villain, James Bond appeared and killed me. I wasn’t too mad about it because I got to see the special failure movie.

Incredibly, this old game is getting a sequel this year! Shen Yu isn’t playable this time, so the devs have probably cleaned up their act a little. Also, one of the unrevealed playable characters looks a little like Dr. Neurocide. Fingers crossed!

The Binding of Isaac

Have I even mentioned this on my blog before? Isaac is one of my favorite games of all time. Top ten for sure. It’s disgusting and vile, but the cute art style takes the edge off, leaving only intense dungeon fight and shoot. I have trouble playing some games lately- my thumb hurts if i have to press too many buttons- but Isaac is a twin-stick shooter. No buttons required!

I’d been avoiding it because I wanted to wait for the game’s fifth(?) free expansion, which has been in the works for at least a year. Then I remembered that instead of waiting, I could instead play the game with only four free expansions. So I did.

Recently, though, the dev posted with an update: the expansion is definitely coming next year probably. With that assured, I’m back to waiting. I’ll play some other roguelikes instead, such as

Hades

Some kind of historical-action-roguelike-dating sim. It’s very good. Still in Early Access, which i usually avoid, but this one’s worth it. They’re close to release, too: next update is 1.0.

Somehow the plot is the most substantial part of this roguelike. Every update, they add another 400 lines of voiced dialogue. You don’t even have to be good at the game to advance the plot, since you hear more after each death!

Still, I wish I wasn’t so bad at it. Any time I see someone playing it on stream, or in person in the case of @thewrongexecution, they’re playing somewhere between heat level six and eight. Meanwhile I can’t win on heat level one. Truly, this is... hell... the Greek hell... Hades... because the game is called that.........

Torchlight 3

Speaking of Early Access games I usually avoid, I got this one on “release” day because I really wanted to play Diablo, and the five existing Diablo clones just weren’t good enough.

It’s okay. The classes are great, especially Robot and Train Summoner, but the game needs polish. No surprises there, since I got it Early Access day one, but it can be tough to play sometimes. Last update added a whole new section to the game, but it also made all the UI elements very small.

Still, I’m pretty sure it’s going to turn out well in the end. If it doesn’t, I’ll just have to hope Diablo 4 isn’t terrible when it comes out three years from now.

World of Horror

I got this game thinking it was a roguelike.

It is, but it is also a horror game! There was a jumpscare! How could this happen?

I look forward to the next time I am bold enough to play it. Soon, I swear.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!

Yeah that’s the game’s full, unaltered title.

I’m not actually playing this game at the moment. I had to dial it back because it got too hard, and also because my thumb hurts if I play anything too intensely button-mash heavy.

Even though I’m a poor typist, I’m seriously considering switching over to keyboard controls so I can keep playing, because as hard as it is, this game is incredible. The whole series has been good and the third is the best of all. It’s the world’s most hardcore cooking simulator. A hard sell, I know, so I’ll just leave you with this, one of my favorite “you have seven seconds to prepare for the final stop, at which fifty-three customers will each order a personalized sandwich, and your sliced meats are about to spoil all at once” theme songs.

in closing...

It’s tough times. I can’t go without saying one more thing.

I’ve been watching the nationwide protests on twitch for a while now. I’ve been struck by two main things: the strength and courage of the protesters, and the cowardly violence of the police.

I know my audience is practically nil, but please take a look at the peaceful protests if you haven’t. Take a look at their opposition, the officers who launch gas bombs into crowds and fire rubber bullets at people’s faces.

And holy shit, this is during a pandemic! All the protesters out there are risking their lives on multiple fronts, and they have been for months.

Please support the protesters.

Please support Black communities.

Please wear face masks.

And please be kind to yourselves.

[kob131]

https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/625278536172879872/done-dirty-shipping

Maybe it’s because I’m still not over how the writers just up and offed Clover and are trying to use the ship he had with Qrow for marketing purposes, but still.- If they hadn’t done that, maybe there wouldn’t be as much backlash for what they did?

*looks behind Dudeblade to see all the Arkos shippers still trying to burn RT to the ground for sinking their ship.*

I highly doubt that.

They promoted Qrover (And that’s the name I’ll be using to avoid getting into the proper ship tags) for the sake of merchandise. They do the same with Blang (The name I’ll be using for the Blake x Yang ship to avoid getting into their tags as well), it simply seems as if these ships are just there to keep an audience invested in the show for the hope that their ship will become canon before the final episode of the series.

Ah huh-

Let’s check RT’s merch store shall we?

https://store.roosterteeth.com/collections/rwby

This is the store showcasing RWBY merch by the ‘Featured’ selection. Notice something...unusual?

Yeah, the front page of their ‘featured’ section (which would tell you how they market the show) has three pieces of possible shipping merch...and it’s Renora and White Rose. NOT Bumbleby OR Fair Game. And I do mean ‘possible’ because one could debate that since Ren and Nora are always paired together and considering White Rose is so ignored by the fandom equally ‘shippy’ moments are widely ignored- it’s not inherently romantic.

In fact, none of the three given pages have Bumbleby merch. The closest is the Yang Vs. Adam hoodie...which excludes BLAKE. SO it’s closer to Yang X Adam merch.

But maybe that’s not enough for you. Let’s switch to the ‘Best Selling’ selection. Of that we have...one shippy piece of merch. The same Renora piece from before. Odd, considering if they’re using shipping to sell the show: Why isn’t the merch, the open support of the show, flooded with shipping merch? Why is both the stuff they are pushing people to buy AND the stuff people are buying NOT showing up?

Seems rather counter intuitive ...unless they AREN’T doing that.

This post was made about a month after the finale. If miles pulls the same thing that LoK did with the LGBT+ characters in his show, not only is that hypocritical (As he would be doing the exact same thing that LoK did), but it would also be significantly worse.

Actually he fundamentally can’t. Because Miles wrote in at least three LGBT characters already into the show. So he’s being better by your standards.

Not only was LoK screwed by the network numerous times in regards to their budget, but they were also forced to not make the relationship between Korra and Asami as overt as they would have liked.

And so was RWBY screwed with budget AND resources by Gray. Andd yet no word from you on that...

And again- Already showed at least three characters being lesbians, if not five since Scarlet and Nolan are gay in Before The Dawn, a book written under Miles and Kerry’s supervision.

What network is keeping the writers from doing the same thing with stuff like Blang, Qrover, or whatever the ship name is for Terra and Saphron? Why do they only get hand holding, soft looks™, and confirmation outside of the canon show?

Bumbleby- Canonical status unconfirmed.

Fair Game- Never intended to be a ship. It was just a reference to the waitress back in Volume 4 along with the usual shipping exaggeration.

Terra X Saphron- They literally have a fucking child together.

Other shows like She-Ra, Steven Universe, and Black Lightning managed to have LGBT+ Representation in their shows despite the networks trying to reign them in. So a show that has no such restrictions can’t do it because…?

They have. You’re choosing to ignore it.

To say nothing of the quality of these since Steven Universe is the only respected one and is rather unique in comparison.

Nora and Pyrrha can forcibly kiss Ren and Jaune respectively, but Same-Sex couples have to settle for elementary-school crush stuff?

Terra and Saphron have a fucking kid. And two of your examples are bullshit.

Meanwhile, how are those ships fairing again? ... One is permenantly sunk and wasn’t even confirmed considering Jaune’s feelings for Pyrrha are not confirmed to be romantic and the other is having massive issues that could sink any romantic connections?

And how do people like you react to any kind of strife regarding same sex stuff? ... Called Illa a psycho lesbian despite being significantly more stable, regretful and safer than her straight counterpart Adam?

Yeah, why don’t YOU tell me why a fanbase known for being abusive towards the creators and hounded them for YEARS about this shit isn’t being fed?

Also, this is a dick move. $16.00 for a sunk ship? Not only that, it’s a sunk mlm ship. A kind of representation that hasn’t gotten any real representation outside of Scarlet? And even then, that was confirmed in a different book.

More like a set of pins that can be used for cosplay.

TBH, mlm shippers have every right to be upset about this.

Straight shippers have had the biggest ship sunk and permanently in limbo (Arkos) and the second one is going through a massive rough patch (Renora) while the third and fourth are regularly decried as pedophilia (Lancaster and Rose Garden) if not outright abuse (Tauradonna).

The others get confirmed ships but not the ones they wanted. Boo fucking hoo.

Whether the writers intended to or not, Qrover was coded, and they queerbaited.

Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment[6] in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.[7] They do so to attract ("bait") a queer or straight ally audience with the suggestion of relationships or characters that appeal to them,[8] while at the same time attempting to avoid alienating other consumers.[6][9]

They literally CANNOT do that by definition. There are same sex relationships AND characters to connect to. If you try promoting this vague and broad definition of queerbaiting-

Well, what’s to stop the Snowbird shippers from claiming they were straight baited with Winter and Qrow or Blake and Sun?

Do you REALLY want to cross that threshold?

P.S. ‘Coding’ effectively means ‘I see stereotypes’ so you’re kind of being a douchebag here.

Let’s also remember that Pyrrha’s entire existence literally revolved around Jaune and she was meant to die to further his development. Jaune x Pyrrha was literally made to develop Jaune and pretty much only Jaune, with the other characters’ reaction to her death being an afterthought.

*cough* Ruby has gotten more development from Pyrrha’s death than Jaune *cough* 

Then there was also that one Blang bag that cost like… $60.00. The writers are using these popular ships for merchandising usage and to try and reel in fans who are wlw or mlm with these ships.

Which is why they...don’t...show...up on...the...merch store...

Fun Fact: Dudeblade never shows the so called 60 dollar bag despite CLEARLY being able to screen shot images. So we’re expected to take his word for it despite not being honest in this very video.

They didn’t even have enough self-awareness to feel bad about it.

So how exactly are we supposed to trust them when they don’t realize what they did to the community?

He says as he ignores aspects of LGBT rep in RWBY, outright called a lesbian a psycho for daring to be an antagonist despite a much more unstable person to compare to and ignores the LGBT rep in other RT shows, including Camp Camp which has two heroic gay married men in the show.

Whether you ship Qrover or not, this was a massively dick move to pull. And these idiots have a lot of things to make up for it. If they choose to do it at all.

You know, that dick move you forced onto them.

And yet you doing worse (’Hey when is Miles gonna die so he can be replaced?’) deserves no making up?

Where were the guys who said that revealing that Pilot Boi was gay before offing him was a bad idea? Why did the writers not realize that this sort of stuff was going to come off as queerbaiting?

Probably because Eddy did it himself and didn’t know about this.

But really… Way to go RT. Your dumbass decision has now turned off members of the LGBT Community and caused some of them to cancel their subscriptions.

Hope that shock value was worth it.

Just like with Pyrrha, something you yourself even said before.

I fail to see how this is RT’s fault outside ‘you dared to exercise free will!’ considering that your logic would dictate changing the show the minute an LGBT ship becomes popular.

Even as you’ve spoken out against this kind of thing with Death Battle (accusations of sexism).

Way to go with the hypocrisy Dudeblade.

[perfectirishgifts]

Best And Worst Brands Of 2020: From TikTok, The NBA, The Home Depot And Chick-fil-A...To Quibi, Facebook And The CDC

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/best-and-worst-brands-of-2020-from-tiktok-the-nba-the-home-depot-and-chick-fil-a-to-quibi-facebook-and-the-cdc/

Best And Worst Brands Of 2020: From TikTok, The NBA, The Home Depot And Chick-fil-A...To Quibi, Facebook And The CDC

This year was unprecedented for so many reasons. For most of us, our heads haven’t stopped spinning since March. For brands, this was a year when many discovered if they really had a purpose that anchored their place in the world and if their actions and experiences backed up their words and promises.

Deciding on brand winners and losers is always a challenge, but this year, I had some of the fiercest debates yet with my 450 Prophet colleagues, as brand performance took on so many more dimensions in 2020.

A number of brands were debated. We discussed the impact that Kobe and LeBron had on the world, while also talking about the Tiger King as the first COVID-19 bingeable show. The team gave a lot of love to the early COVID-19 responders, including Unilever, 3M, P&G, KFC, Chipotle and Ford, while giving equal props to those that took an authentic, purpose-based stand on social justice, such as Nike, The North Face, REI, Ben & Jerry’s, Glossier and J&J. The brands that helped us get through lockdown and changed the way we think of delivered meals and goods, including DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, Instacart and, “newcomers” Target and Walmart all received a lot of votes. Similarly, the streamers got a lot of mentions, from Netflix to Hulu to Peacock and Apple TV, as did the connectors in Zoom, WebEx, Teams and the slowly dying Skype. 

Our team engaged in some serious conversations about the differences in responses that Uncle Ben’s (now Ben’s Original) versus Aunt Jemima (we are still waiting) took or about how we will collectively sustain the incredible Black Lives Matter momentum. Finally, others wondered what shape Brand USA will take in 2021 and how we will be talking about Pfizer and Moderna a year from now.

So, while dozens stood out, these seven received our highest marks:

Chick-fil-A

Florida, Brooksville, Chick-fil-A, fast food chicken restaurant, drive thru line due to Pandemic.

While COVID-19 crushed the restaurant industry, Chick-fil-A’s immediate response and quick innovations explain why it’s become the world’s third largest and most beloved quick-service restaurant. It endeared itself to its growing number of fans by doubling down on drive-thru speed, including expanded lanes, “face-to-face ordering” and “order ahead pick up.” It is crushing it with their Chick-fil-A One app and enhanced delivery options, accelerating new innovations such as meal kits and their famous sauces in grocery stores…all while still bringing “my pleasure” southern hospitality to life every day to millions.

Clorox

Hand sanitizer and Clorox sanitizing wipes sit on a table at a polling station in Miami, Florida, … [] U.S., on Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Photographer: Jayme Gershen/Bloomberg

While this brand has long soared in our Prophet Brand Relevance Index® it took on an entirely new meaning in the virus-dominated universe of 2020. As consumers clamored for reliable ways to protect their families, the brand gracefully acknowledged supply-chain problems and shortages while becoming indispensable in our lives. With smart partnerships, like United Airlines and the Cleveland Clinic, it’s using its trustworthiness to increase sales and market share.

The Home Depot

TORONTO, April 3, 2020 — People line up with a social distance to enter a Home Depot store in … [] Toronto, Canada, April 3, 2020. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/Zou Zheng via Getty Images)

This year’s WFH trends helped propel the Home Depot’s business as “Doers Got More Done.” What helped drive and accelerate this is its investment, commitment and leadership. The Home Depot continues to lead the industry in inter-connected digital experiences and e-commerce, customer service, products and pricing. Its commitment to customer and employee safety (and giving back to the community) has been second to none in the retail industry, as has its commitment to professional customers.

TikTok 

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

While TikTok was in the news for various reasons in 2020, its incredible timing met a moment when many needed ten seconds of relief from the real world. With over 100 million users in the U.S., TikTok has rapidly become part of our cultural lexicon. TikTok’s short-form viral videos, including its dance challenges and Ocean Spray “Dreams” video, took our minds off all things serious. From a niche player to mainstream media, this renegade has become so relevant that other platforms, like Instagram with its “Reels,” are racing to catch up.

The National Basketball Association

LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA – AUGUST 27: The Black Lives Matter logo is seen on an empty court as all … [] NBA playoff games. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

In a year of so many sports disappointments, the league, individual teams and countless players have demonstrated the best reactions to both COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. With its bubble, the NBA showed a thoughtful, empathic balance between athletic safety and happy fans. With its unapologetic embrace of racial-justice efforts, as expressed on each player’s jersey, it’s using its stage to change the hearts and minds of its strong fanbase.

Zoom

President Barack Obama “crashes” Zoom board meeting for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Love it. Hate it. It doesn’t matter. Triple-digit gains prove Zoom found new relevance in wildly diverse audiences, from COVID-19 stranded senior citizens to energetic preschoolers. If you didn’t know what a virtual background was or used the words “you’re on mute, Scott,” you certainly do now. With a ridiculous stock price and valuation, continuous new features and updates through Zapps (a suite of apps integrated into Zoom), as well as fun innovations like video filters, Zoom will continue to be an integral part of our lives for years to come.

Peloton

This workout-from-home brand started the year by offending an entire gender with its tone-deaf holiday ad. (Note to husbands: It’s inadvisable to tell your wife to work out more.) But as gyms around the world shut down, it understood that it had a unique opportunity to make family-room workouts an integral part of people’s health and wellness. With bikes, treadmills and increasingly appealing subscription offers (90 days free for all), Peloton hit on all cylinders in 2020.

And the brands that disappointed us the most:

Uncle Ben’s, Aunt Jemima and Land O’Lakes

LONDON: A customer’s hand taking a packet of Uncle Ben’s rice. The brand is to change the image of a … [] black farmer and could also be forced to change its name, as a reaction to a backlash over racial injustice.

While all of these storied brands announced they were making changes, it took a full-on social uprising for Mars Foods, PepsiCo and Land O’Lakes to address their decades-old history of racist brand imagery. All have done the right things in starting to address the issue. Uncle Ben has given way to Ben’s Original Rice, for example, and Land O’ Lakes has removed the Native American woman from its logo. But none have explained why it took them so long.

Boeing

The Boeing 737 MAX will take another key step in its comeback to commercial travel on December 2, … [] 2020 by attempting to reassure the public with a test flight by American Airlines conducted for the news media.

Even as the nearly two-year grounding of Boeing 737 Max comes to an end and the company moves to again sells its planes, we saw plenty to disappoint us. Not only did the safety oversights and mismanagement result in tragedies in 2018 and 2019, but it also cost as much as $25 billion. And now, it has to sell the canceled planes to airlines at steep discounts, a blow to shareholders and what was once one of the most admired names in U.S. manufacturing. COVID-19 is continuing Boeing’s misery, with global air travel falling 66 percent.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control

CDC Logo

In what should have been the least controversial voice in American public health, CDC leadership allowed politics to drag it away from its central aim. It bumbled COVID-19 testing. Early on, it offered vague and contradictory guidance on masks. And while it certainly isn’t entirely to blame for the epidemic of misinformation sweeping the U.S., it didn’t do enough to stop it.

Facebook

(Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Even in an industry rife with possible villains, Facebook still manages to wind up on the wrong side of history in just about everything. As a repeat offender from our 2018 list, Facebook’s role in misinformation regarding the pandemic, vaccinations and elections continued to make it harder and harder to trust the brand. Adding insult to injury, after dealing with a much deserved summer boycott, Facebook now faces a major lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission (and 40 states) arguing it’s time to break this company up.

Quibi

People wearing masks walk past an advertisement for Quibi in a subway Station on October 22, 2020 in … [] New York City. On October 21st, Quibi’s founders announced it was shutting down its service after only six months of operation.

It could have sparked a content revolution. But Quibi, specializing in short-form content “chapters” of less than 10 minutes, failed spectacularly. In a world with fewer commuters, the idea just wasn’t compelling. Of the $1.75 billion it raised, it is returning just $350 million to investors. But we do think chief executive Meg Whitman deserves praise for pulling the plug at six months, instead of torturing both investors and the few viewers leveraging its platform.

What do you think of our list? Who would you add? Add your thoughts to the comments below.

Keep your eye out for Prophet‘s Brand Relevance Index – launching early 2021.

From CMO Network in Perfectirishgifts

[shittylifeprotips]

SLPT: How to self isolate - Neck beard edition

As more and more places go into lock down and more people discover a new way of life I thought I'd give some tips on isolation, as someone who has been training for this since as long as I can remember. So, without further ado. 1. Choose a room, Ideally the basement but if that's not available then any dark and awkward room or crawlspace will suffice. Ensure that no sunlight gets in, glare is a serious problem and can cause eye strain, we're going to be needing our eyes to see all the 1440p @ 144Htz goodness once we have our battle-station online. Don't bother cleaning, just get a PC set up however you can. If you have a desk then great, if not then bodge whatever you can together or even just chuck everything on the floor in a corner and lay a couple of sheets and blankets down. 2. Choose your five favourite takeaways, get them on speed dial. These are now your primary food source. Buy the family sized fizzy drinks every time you order. This should be enough to last until the next day and the next order. To supplement this you'll want to set up an online shop. Key items are cereals (milk not required, just eat out of the box), crates of your favourite fizzy pop, a multi-pack of Mountain Dew is required for the intense gaming/fapping sessions, Doritos in as big a pack as possible, any food that is ready to eat is also fine to buy, we don't need to cook, the takeaways do that for us. Designate a corner, this is where you chuck the trash, once it's in that corner then as far as you're concerned it's not a problem anymore. ON the talk of trash, you can reuse your old drinks bottles for pissing in and you can get a bucket for shitting. If you haven't got a bucket then reuse the bags and packaging from your takeaways. Once full these can go back into the trash corner. 3. Exercise is not important, though there a few things that you'll be doing that will count towards it. Firstly fapping, luckily Reddit has you covered for some of the fapping material in the NSFW subs. Did you know you can create custom feeds? These are perfect for a portion of your fapping needs, remember to leave a comment on your favourite posts. Anyone reading these comments should be able to hear your heavy breathing and extreme thirst in every sentence. For the rest of your fapping goodness it's important, no it's vital that you understand that 2D > 3D. In time you'll have a waifu and you must be loyal to your waifu. She will become your main fapping material but it is acceptable to fap to other waifus as well, you just need to defend her when someone trash talks about her. I'll come back to waifus but I must leave them behind to discuss more forms of exercise. The main other is practising the blade. You'll need Amazon for this as malls will all be shut. A Katana is a must, though it's only going to be the first in your collection. Butterfly knifes, karambit's Machete's etc are also things you should be looking to add to your collection. There's a lot of different designs you should be looking out for, anything tacti-cool is fine, same with things in unique colours or designs, anything goes as long as it's cheap and nasty. Also more pointy things = a better blade. If you've got the room then swing that baby until your arms feel heavy. 4. Steam marketplace should be the single most common thing that pops up on your credit card statement. Buy as many games as you can then only ever play CS:GO or LoL. you'll want to invest in some decent skins for whichever game you chose to play. The better your skin the bigger your dick in these kinds of games so the more sway you have in choosing the teams tactics. On tactics, the only viable one is rush B. Any other tactic is stupid so don't ever recommend it. This will be also be a good time to become more of a cultured person as you'll be learning Russian whether you want to or not. Refer to all Russian's you meet as Ruski and for any other languages you encounter you must reply with "sorry, I don't speak foreign". If you lose it is your teams fault, this is absolute and you must never question your own ability. 5. Human interaction. you'll not be getting much now whether you want to or not, but the thing is, you don't need any. Substitute all human interaction with anime. Dating sims will have you covered for the female interaction and shounen anime is like the boys going on mad adventures, if that's not your thing then there's loads of genres to chose from. Sports because that's all cancelled, Slice of Life to pretend you have deep and meaningful relationships with people, Rom-Coms for a laugh while you pretend to fall in love, the list is massive. Romance shows will be a good place to start on your hunt for a waifu but remember that any girl from any show is fine as long as she is not a loli, then we must protecc her from being lewded. Failure to do so will mean the lolice will hunt you down. Also Komi-san is never to be lewded, this is not negotiable. If anyone asks then you tell them that you pay for all the relevant subscriptions (Crunchyroll, Funimation, HiDive etc) but really you stream it for free like the rest of us degenerates. 6. Read more, start with 177013 and work from there. 7. Time to learn another new language! Russian should come naturally from CS:GO so this time we'll tackle Japanese. Download duoLingo and do the first 7 lessons on Japanese. Combine this with your anime and you can tell za warudo that you speak nippon. Easy as that. 8. Hygiene is no longer important, no need to shave, have your hair cut or even shower. Soon you'll have the long, greasy locks to die for. If you start putting weight on then roll with it, this will also compliment the ideal look that you should be going for. 9. Need to go outside? Well, by now you should have purchased a dakimakura, also known as a body pillow. These typically come in sizes of 160cm or 180cm so take this with you when you're out, this will be your main weapon against everyone else outside. It should have your chosen waifu on it and for added poison damage coated in varying levels of dried semen. If someone comes close enough to you that you can hit them with your body pillow then you know they are breaking the social distancing rules so you should scream REEEEEEEEE at them until they are a safe distance away. You can take your Katana with you (wear it on your back) but a typical blade is 60-80cm so they will be way too close if you can actually reach the other person with it. You should have plenty of other tools to enforce social distancing anyway including your looks and smell so the Katana will be mainly for show. 10. This last tip is about keeping a healthy routine and schedule. Morning refers to the time period between midnight and 5am. The rest of the morning should be spent sleeping. You should wake up no earlier than 1pm but the ideal time is closer to 4pm. Once awake you want to jump straight onto your PC. Start with YouTube, then once you've properly woke up you can fire up you're game of choice. After 8 hours or so it's time to watch anime until you fall to sleep. This is your ideal day, anything that breaks this should cause you intense stress and you should let everyone around you know how bad your day has been. Feel free to break things as long as it's not your own stuff. I hope these tips help you to keep safe and sane in these times of hardship. We're all in this together so taking on the moniker of Neckbeard, Filthy weeb or Otaku should be celebrated.

[anneapocalypse]

Matt Hullum made the announcement in a journal entry today that Rooster Teeth is laying off 13% of its staff.

Variety has an article up about the downsizing, mostly the same info that's in Matt's journal, with a few other facts—notably to me, a mention of the fact that WarnerMedia (RT's parent company, all under the AT&T umbrella) also swallowed up and effectively killed the Machinima brand. In fact, it turns out a few Machinima properties were shuffled under the Rooster Teeth umbrella when that happened.

I was unfamiliar with Machinima the YouTube Channel and Machinima.com (as opposed to machinima, the medium) until Quinton Reviews did a Fallen Titans episode on it recently, and I'll admit I was kind of hoping he'd have more to say about Red vs. Blue as it's... really the only machinima work I care about, but his video was mainly about the Machinima brand. Still, it is informative if you, like me, know nothing about Machinima!

Anyway, from the second Variety article above, there's also this:

Warner Bros. acquired full control of Machinima in November 2016, and put Machinima under its Warner Bros. Digital Networks group. AT&T closed its $85 billion deal for Time Warner in June 2018 and since then has consolidated or killed off several digital businesses. Under AT&T’s ownership, WarnerMedia shut down FilmStruck, from Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks, and WBDN’s DramaFever. In addition, Turner shuttered its Super Deluxe studio.

Mm....hm.

Yeah, so AT&T seems to have an unsurprising pattern of acquiring and quietly destroying small web-based companies, particular those centering around streaming content for a somewhat niche audience.

I don't want to be a doomsayer, and it's not like I think Rooster Teeth is going to be shut down tomorrow. I do feel like this doesn't exactly bode well for the AT&T conglomerate's investment in this relatively small studio.

There are certainly other factors to be considered. Only a couple months ago Matt was responding to criticisms of Rooster Teeth related to crunch and their animation pipeline, and announcing that Gray Haddock would be stepping down as head of animation. Of course, downsizing the studio by more than 10% seems... not a strong step toward reducing crunch, unless they're drastically reducing or delaying content in kind.

In terms of content itself... this is purely speculation, but I do have some concern that gen:LOCK was not the hot property Rooster Teeth hoped it would be. I like gen:LOCK. I like it a lot, and hope we see many more seasons. But I don't exactly think it's taken off as the kind of viral hit RWBY has been for the company. gen:LOCK is a subscribers-only show. If you don't have a FIRST membership, you can't watch past the first episode... and that just might not be enough to get people hooked enough to subscribe.

Going back a little further, one of my personal favorite RT shows is the live-action apocalyptic drama Day 5. It's got high production value and some really excellent acting talent, both from Rooster Teeth regulars and outside names. It has a compelling story and great characters. And it barely has a fandom. The last post on /r/dayfive is two years old. The tumblr tags are barren. And good luck even finding a twitter hashtag. Day 5 has seven works on AO3. The show debuted three years ago.

Production was put on hold after season 2, while the show was syndicated on the El Rey network, and the episodes were temporarily removed from the Rooster Teeth site while it aired on El Rey (they're back now). But even while the show was airing, as a fan I found it was tough to find other people actively watching the show and talking about it, even among fellow Rooster Teeth fans. I didn't see gifsets pouring down my tumblr dash; I didn't see meta, or episode reaction posts.

I suppose I should've seen the writing on the wall, even then. Day 5 has not been cancelled as of now and I really hope we get a season 3, because I love the show. But I'll admit I am nervous for its future.

I bring up these examples because I think the subscribers-only content model is demonstrably not working for Rooster Teeth. And to be clear, this is not me saying that people shouldn't have to pay for things. I've had a Rooster Teeth subscription since it was called a "sponsorship" and being a sponsor meant getting episodes of Red vs. Blue a thrilling two hours ahead of the general public! And I've been lucky, because for all these years Rooster Teeth has had a policy of letting longtime subscribers be grandfathered in at their original price, which means I've been paying about a third of what an annual subscription now costs. Recently it was also announced that the grandfather policy would be coming to an end. I'm in no way surprised or angry; I figured this would happen eventually, and I sure enjoyed this gravy train while it lasted! What I will probably do, once my current pay period runs out, is subscribe month-to-month only when there's something airing that I really care about. I'm not even sure if that's going to be RvB when season 18 rolls around. (But if they announce season 3 of Day 5 I will be there with bells on.)

Anyway the upshot of all of this is:

A Rooster Teeth FIRST membership ain't as cheap as it once was.

One free episode tends not to be enough to get people hooked on a new property unless it's kickflip bananas amazing.

With fewer people watching a new property as it airs, and short seasonal runs (Day 5 had six episodes per season; gen:LOCK premiered with eight), there just isn't enough buzz to create a hit on the level of RWBY.

Without that buzz, you don't get the kind of FOMO atmosphere that the FIRST delay creates. When RT first went to the one week gap between subscribers and the public, fans were largely upset, on the grounds that this would divide the fandom and make it difficult for non-subscribers to interact with the fandom on the same level, cutting them off from discussions and general hype around each new episode. And they were right—that was the point. That's why it worked.

Day 5 and gen:LOCK are good shows. There are valid criticisms of both, of course, and both are niche genres that won't be for everyone, but they're by no means bad products. RWBY's first volume, by contrast, was messy, poorly-paced, and looked unfinished. It had charm, absolutely, but it was objectively a bad product and the show still managed to draw a huge audience in its first three volumes—because anyone could watch it. But if you subscribed, you could watch it first, and you could be one of the first to comment on it, make gifsets, theorize and speculate. You wouldn't miss out.

I mean I fully understand why Rooster Teeth didn't want to make an expensive live-action show and give it away for free. I do get that. Same with an expensive polished animated series featuring big-name voice actors. And I'm as sad as anyone to see that those shows haven't grabbed the kind of audience RWBY has.

But something's not working here, and I think the modest reception of their two most-hyped subscribers-only shows plus this layoff makes that clear. I don't know what the answer is. I wish there were an easy answer. There probably isn't.

I really do hope Rooster Teeth survives as a studio and is able to keep making cool, creative stuff. I've had plenty of criticisms of RT and their properties over the years, but at the end of the day I'm still a fan who's pulling for them. The pattern of global media conglomerates swallowing up and disappearing small, independent, web-based content makers doesn't exactly bode well, and that's... well, that's late capitalism for you. Still, I do hope they hold out for a while.

At least long enough to get us a third season of Day 5.

[mycove01]

Grade.us Alternative

Grade.us gets some good press, which shouldn’t be surprising, given that they’re in the business of review management. That proves they can be effective, but it can also make it difficult for consumers to make an educated decision. This guide will cover the benefits and drawbacks of Grade.us, and introduce you to an alternative service so that you can make the most informed decision possible.

What is Grade.us?

Grade.us markets itself as “everything you need to generate, monitor, and market your customer reviews.” Regardless of whether it’s “everything you need,” it is a tool that can help business owners foster positive reviews and help them try to remove or prevent negative reviews from cropping up. That’s the aspect of Grade.us that we’ll be focusing on here.

Grade.us uses a pretty simple strategy. It gives clients a set of tools to reach out to reach out directly to their customers without much hassle, and helps to target certain kinds of customers. Clients can send emails to prompt customers to leave good reviews for their services, and they can get in contact with customers who have left negative reviews in order to try and make peace with them to mitigate the fallout.

Grade.us’ strategy isn’t flawless, though, especially in the way that it addresses negative reviews. Any small business owner will know that a dissatisfied customer can be a powerful force, and not all of them be calmed by an apologetic email, especially if that process is obviously automated. Because angry customers are much more motivated to leave a review than happy ones, businesses trying to improve their review scores are fighting an uphill battle.

Grade.us Pros and Cons

Pros

It does what it says on the tin. They provide the service they say they do, and it can be effective.

Grade.us offers a free trial.

It has multiple plans so you’re not stuck paying more than you need.

Cons

It focuses on addressing and preventing negative reviews, which isn’t effective against savvy reviewers.

The price of Grade.us has seen sudden increases in the past, with only one month’s notice beforehand, and they don’t offer refunds. There’s no guarantee it will happen again, but it’s a risk.

Since the price increase, prices have been fairly high, with their flagship package costing $400 per month, and the most expensive option costing $2500.

Why Choose a Grade.us Alternative?

Grade.us offers a way to address bad reviews, but even if it were 100% effective, that strategy would be best suited for businesses that receive a large volume of negative reviews. Grade.us could be characterized as a review vetting tool, designed to prevent negative reviews from reaching the public, or staying there for very long.

If your business does good work and mostly receives positive reviews, then by having more reviews as opposed to fewer, potential customers will be able to see natural positive trends emerging in the data. Grade.us has a complicated process, even for leaving positive reviews, which can reduce the number of total reviews that your business gets. For an honest business, more reviews are always better.

Grade.us, along with much of its competition, charges a high price for its software and services. Birdeye won’t even allow potential users to browse its pricing option until they’ve provided their phone number and email. (Its lowest priced plan is $3000 per year.) Given the services that these companies have on offer, they could probably stay afloat charging much, much less. For larger businesses and resellers, the cost might be manageable, but new startups and small businesses usually don’t have that kind of capital rattling around from the jump.

Finally, the review management business tends to have bad optics for customers. It’s not always easy for a customer or client to distinguish between black hat reputation management techniques like fake reviews or deletion of reviews and ethical methods like requesting reviews from satisfied customers.

If a business’ customers discover that it’s making use of a reputation management software, or outsourcing review management to professionals, and their methods look even a little bit shady, it could seriously hurt the same reputation that business is trying to protect. Pair that with the high price of Grade.us and the likelihood that it won’t be able to effectively prevent bad reviews, and it might be tempting to avoid review management entirely.

All the same, reputation management is a must-have for any business, especially small businesses where a single review can cause a lot of trouble. This makes it incredibly important that the methods used are transparent, and that the marketing rhetoric surrounding them doesn’t send up any red flags. Grade.us is a mixed bag in that regard. In the words of their founder emeritus, they provide “the best review management software on the planet.” He immediately follows that they’re “free of the bloat and hubris of other reputation management solutions…” The irony there would be hard not to notice.

What is the Best Grade.us Alternative?

There’s a lot of demand for review management software and services, and a lot of companies have formed to fill that void. Many of the most popular services offer solutions for very specific circumstances, from preventing bots from writing fake reviews of your business, to specializing in reputation management for healthcare services. A simple Google search for reputation management services will give you pages and pages of results to sort through, and at the time of writing, nearly all of the first page is occupied by sponsored listings.

Taking into account pricing, simplicity, ease of use, and effectiveness, we think that one of the best options for review management is SmartEngage’s Smart Review Autopilot. It’s something of a hidden gem, and it can be hard to find with a simple search, but it has a few advantages over Grade.us and its other competition. Here’s how it does things differently.

Instead of trying to control how customers review a business, Smart Review Autopilot works to get the maximum of genuine positive reviews quickly. It taps into small business owners’ own expertise and knowledge of their community customer base to figure out which customers have been most satisfied with their experience, then creates an automated pipeline that guides those customers into posting a positive review.

Smart Review Autopilot doesn’t use any strategies that could be considered immoral or dishonest, and by accessing pre-existing goodwill in customers, it can help to create positive reviews that are unique, honest, and convincing. It’s easy to assume that people reading reviews online will trust them blindly, but most folks have a sense of whether a review was written in good faith, so honesty is always the best policy.

One of Smart Review Autopilot’s biggest advantages over the competition is its ease of use. All you need to get started with it is a customer list, and with a minimal amount of setup, that list can be fed into a completely automated process which will contact customers and help them make high quality reviews. If you’re too busy to micromanage reviews, then Smart Review Autopilot can do it for you.

The SmartEngage platform markets itself as “the world’s smartest autoresponder,” and offers a slew of tools to streamline customer engagement without direct input from business owners or employees. It specializes in automation, and allows its users to build pathways for customers to follow, helping them post reviews, sign up for subscriptions, and otherwise engage positively with a website. Smart Review Autopilot is part of SmartEngage, but not the only part, and access to the whole package can help with more than just reputation management.

Finally, the pricing. It’s completely free to start with SmartEngage. The free plan has most of the same features as the higher tiers, but it will display SmartEngage branding. The basic tier costs $47 per month, which is significantly less than most of the other options, and within the realm of possibility for a small business or a startup.

Making the Switch to SmartEngage’s Smart Review Autopilot

If you’re already using Grade.us, now is the time to cancel your subscription. (You could wait until just before the next monthly payment if you wanted to get the most out of it, but you should account for the time it will take to switch.)

The first step is to cancel your Grade.us subscription. Then, all you need to do is sign up for SmartEngage and start automating customer engagement. Their website has a video that runs through the setup process for the Smart Review Autopilot from beginning to end, and you can contact their customer service if you have any trouble getting set up. After that, the only thing to do is watch positive reviews roll in.

SmartEngage Pros and Cons

Pros

Completely automated. It can work while you’re asleep.

Comes with additional SmartEngage customer experience services.

Provides ethical reputation management.

It’s a good option for small businesses.

Offers low prices, and a free option.

Cons

Can be hard to find via search, depending on the terms used.

Doesn’t directly address negative reviews.

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