#internet services class 6

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[morganbritton132]

The kids have a running series across all their Tiktok accounts called “Eddie Munson Doing His Best To Get Divorced.” It includes:

Part 3: Mike’s filming. Steve, halfway through putting together a bookshelf, asks Eddie for some help. Eddie says, “Stevie, I’m gay. The internet says I’m allowed to be useless.” Steve is just ????

Part 4: Filmed by El. Eddie hugs Steve from behind and then bites him. She captioned it: Cute!

Part 6: a video filmed by Will of Eddie returning home after taking Steve’s service dog Ozzy to the groomers. Ozzy is pink now. Eddie’s got a smile a mile wide and Steve is just like, “Babe, why?”

Part: 8: a video by Lucas of Eddie changing out the letters on the letter board in the kitchen that used to have a quote about teaching from when Steve did online classes but now says LET’S HAVE SEX.

Part 8.5: a video by Max of Steve noticing what the letter board says fifteen minutes into a zoom study session with his sixth period algebra class four months after Eddie changed it.

Part 13: Dustin is zooming in and out on Steve’s face as he insist that he is not falling asleep. It’s a losing battle because Steve is already laying down on the couch. He shifts the camera up when he sees Eddie so you can see the thought forming in Eddie’s mind right before he throws himself over the back of the couch and directly onto Steve. It obviously startled Steve and wakes him up, but Eddie says as if he did not just scare the life out of him, very casually, “Let’s cuddle, babe.”

Eddie, while Steve is still trying to process what the hell even happened, “You’re watching Lord of the Rings? Without me, Henderson?”

Part 24: Jimmy Fallon asking how Eddie is friends with well-respected, hard hitting journalist Nancy Wheeler and Eddie saying that they actually have a lot in common. His husband has been inside both of them. Erica films her tv. The caption says ‘Boy, he’s going to kill you.’

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[hystericalgynophobia]

i'm no longer fearful. men are all seemingly rapidly becoming like this. if they can go full radical (extremist term) why can’t we go full radical (root term) too? check this blog for updates over the next coming day/weeks/month. a big change is coming. we are stronger together, by the way. let them be distracted by tearing each other down over race/class/sexuality etc and other minor differences. the old “die heretic!” joke has never been so accurate. let’s focus on our commonality for now. that’s how resistance works, it cannot work in isolation. it needs community and solidarity. i’m considering a book, for free, online, drm free, no profit motive. donate if you want, it’ll go straight to the resistance. i’m making huge lists of recommendations (books, documentaries, etc. anything that isn’t PURELY fiction for the fiction website to read something else for a change). i’m making lists of links of terms and people to look up. if you don’t want to look, fine, it will still be there if/when you do. i’m turning off my privacy blockers and re-enabling search. i’m purging my blocklist, all 11 years of it. i’m making a community, maybe communities. join if you want. there will only be limited moderation to prevent predation and sadistic cruelty. it will be 18+, not for nsfw content, but because <18 need to socialize with their own. if they want to lie and sneak in like i used to, fine, but that’s up to and on them. maybe i’ll blaze them when it’s ready. 11 years with an account on here and 2 more before that and i still can’t pony up any money besides the monthly ad free fee? it’s given so much, why not? it’s under attack too, like the internet archive. why not?

in the meantime, i’ve switched to ecosia (both search engine and browser). go check it out. there’s an invite link at the bottom. it doesn’t do anything other than say how many people have signed up using it. it doesn’t cost or confer anything. all ad revenue supports the trees they plant after every whatever number of searches. your ad blockers don’t fully work anymore anyway. the privacy toggles are equivalent to duckduckgo and much better than chrome.

the link below will take you to the android or ios app or pc. whatever.

Check this out: Ecosia plants trees when you search the web! 🌳

Join me and 20M+ others and start planting today.

https://ecosia.co/app?referrer=friends-93lihr

If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, tap here to confirm you’ve joined:

ecosia://invite/friends-93lihr

/e/os is an os running on the android open source kit. no google, no apple, all functionality.

go get it on a freephone, the completely modular and right-to-repair smartphone made of ethically and sustainably sourced recycled materials.

all of this is the same functionality you already have but free, except for the fairphone obviously. think of the discontinued amazon smile program. speaking of. this third one (raiseright) even lets you buy an amazon giftcard and use between 6-20% of the money for the nonprofit of your choice with 100% same value, if you absolutely must purchase from amazon.

of course, bookshop is always better for books.

don’t see it there? older title? go check thriftbooks.

but first check your library. this extension will automatically check any and all libraries you choose for physical, ebook, and audiobook copies.

there are always alternatives. ���no ethical consumption under capitalism” is true, but you still have a choice. you always do. a new world is possible. i hope to see you there. i’m pinning this, btw, because it is 4:30 am and i doubt many people will see this. maybe blaze it later without the top screenshot portion.

[livsworld-ndstyle]

destigmatizing mental illness

i mention some laws that may not be the same in other regions but i’ll provide a link to other disability laws in regional areas.

p.s. before i begin tysm @wonkybrain-disorder for being the only vote:)

and no, im not gonna present super well-known responses., but the opposite.

1. choose your words wisely and carefully.

recently i’ve seen the “acoustic” and “restarted” joke flood across social media and if i’m being superbly honest it’s insane how neurodivergent people came up with it and the neurotypical population took it.

a lot of people in my school causally throw out the r-word, which is insane, because when i do hear it, i know they’re joking but that word isn’t a joke and i always feel like im in such proximity every time i hear it.

2. besides public education and teaching people about the meaning of mental illness, which doesn’t work, because either we don’t want to tell people about it because we’re scared of a reaction in the wrong way or any other rational fears, i’m not going to mention that.

what you should do is try and increase any form of accessibility services. if a person is in a wheelchair and paralyzed and all the building has is stairs, you are not being accommodating. the same thing has to do with if you’re an educator denying a student’s accommodations and treating them like crap in the education setting. well one, if the student has a disability under IDEA or ADA, IDEA being the individuals w disabilities education act and ADA being the americans w disabilities act.

here is the link i mentioned in the subtext under the title.

3. besides the education community, also spread awareness in the workplace!

a lot of people even with disabilities and mental health issues are presently seen in the workplace and it’s great to see the uptick in that statistic, but to continue that, we must keep pushing for equitable access to awareness in the workplace!

4. this may be a bit of a personal one for me and maybe some others- but i wish teachers wouldn’t make it instantly obvious that something is wrong with you - they’ll do anything to treat you differently and it turns a light on in the neurotypical brain that makes them think that everything they’re seeing is concrete evidence.

here’s a great video we watched in my health education class, if you’re willing to see a short video.

we watched this during our mental health unit and i loved that unit, its always a great one seeing attempts to make the world a better place!

5. also neurotypical people LOVE to say “everyone’s just a little bit + some random disorder��

it’s annoying to those who have whatever the disorder is.

like saying i’m autistic isn’t an adjective in the way that it’s a personality trait, because it’s not.

saying everyone’s a little bit autistic kills us all.

6. unsupportive parents.

there are parents out in the world who don’t believe in mental health for what it is and just think its an internet craze. if it was an internet craze, why are more and more people still getting diagnosed to this day?

[ i might add to this post later on if ideas come to mind, but that’s it for now! ]

i guess if you have more tips that i didn’t mention- feel free to comment or reblog this post!

also once again tysm @wonkybrain-disorder for suggesting this through the poll :)

[studentofetherium]

@previous anon: FUCK YOU

Serial Experiments Lain (stylized as serial experiments lain) is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda, written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. Animated by Triangle Staff and featuring original character designs by Yoshitoshi ABe, the series was broadcast for 13 episodes on TV Tokyo and its affiliates from July to September 1998. The series follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet.

Lain features surreal and avant-garde imagery and explores philosophical topics such as reality, identity, and communication.[3] The series incorporates creative influences from computer history, cyberpunk, and conspiracy theory. Critics and fans have praised Lain for its originality, visuals, atmosphere, themes, and its dark depiction of a world fraught with paranoia, social alienation, and reliance on technology considered insightful of 21st century life. It received the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 1998. Contents1 Plot 2 Characters 3 Production 3.1 Writing 3.2 Character design 3.3 Themes 3.4 Apple computers 4 Broadcast and release history 4.1 Episode list 5 Reception 6 Related media 6.1 Art books 6.2 Soundtracks 6.3 Video game 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

Plot

Lain Iwakura, a junior high school girl, lives in suburban Japan with her middle-class family, consisting of her inexpressive older sister Mika, her emotionally distant mother, and her computer-obsessed father; Lain herself is somewhat awkward, introverted, and socially isolated from most of her school peers. The status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that start to take place after she learns that girls from her school have received an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her via email that she is not dead but has merely "abandoned her physical self" and is alive deep within the virtual realm of the Wired itself, where she claims she has found "God" there. From this point, Lain is caught up in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality.

"The Wired" is a virtual realm that contains and supports the very sum of all human communication and networks, created with the telegraph, televisions, and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet, cyberspace, and subsequent networks. The series assumes that the Wired could be linked to a system that enables unconscious communication between people and machines without physical interface. The storyline introduces such a system with the Schumann resonances, a property of the Earth's magnetic field that theoretically allows for unhindered long-distance communications. If such a link were created, the network would become equivalent to Reality as the general consensus of all perceptions and knowledge. The increasingly thin invisible line between what is real and what is virtual/digital begins to slowly shatter.

Masami Eiri is introduced as the project director on Protocol Seven (the next-generation Internet protocol in the series' time-frame) for major computer company Tachibana General Laboratories. He had secretly included code of his very own creation to give himself absolute control of the Wired through the wireless system described above. He then "uploaded" his own consciousness into the Wired and "died" a few days after, leaving only his physical self behind. These details are unveiled around the middle of the series, but this is the point where the story begins. Masami later explains that Lain is the artifact by which the wall between the virtual and material worlds is to fall, and that he needs her to go into the Wired and "abandon the flesh", as he did, to achieve his plan. The series sees him trying to convince her through interventions, using the promise of unconditional love, romantic seduction and charm, and even, when all else fails, threats and force.

In the meantime, the anime follows a complex game of hide-and-seek between the "Knights of the Eastern Calculus" (based on the Knights of the Lambda Calculus), hackers whom Masami claims are "believers that enable him to be a God in the Wired", and Tachibana General Laboratories, who try to regain control of Protocol Seven. In the end, the viewer sees Lain realizing, after much introspection, that she has absolute control over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself shows how she feels shunned from the material world, and how she is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of an almighty goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone else's memories of her and everything else that has happened since the premiere. She is last seen, unchanged, encountering her oldest and closest friend Alice once again, who is now married. Lain promises herself that she and Alice will surely meet again anytime as Lain can literally go and be anywhere she desires between both worlds. Characters

Lain Iwakura (岩倉 玲音, Iwakura Rein) Voiced by: Kaori Shimizu (Japanese); Bridget Hoffman4 The titular character of the series. Lain is a fourteen-year-old girl who uncovers her true nature through the series. She is first depicted as a shy junior high school student with few friends or interests. She later grows multiple bolder personalities, both in the physical world and the Wired, and starts making more friends. As the series progresses, she eventually comes to discover that she is, in reality, merely an autonomous, sentient computer program in the physical and corporeal form of a human being, designed to sever the invisible barrier between the Wired and the real world. In the end, Lain is challenged to accept herself as a de facto goddess for the Wired, having become an omnipotent and omnipresent virtual being with worshippers of her own, as well as an ability to exist beyond the borders of devices, time, or space.

Masami Eiri (英利 政美, Eiri Masami) Voiced by: Shō Hayami (Japanese); Kirk Thornton4 The key designer of Protocol Seven. While working for Tachibana General Laboratories, he illicitly included codes enabling him to control the whole protocol at will and embedded his own mind and will into the seventh protocol. Because of this, he was fired by Tachibana General Laboratories, and was found dead not long after. He believes that the only way for humans to evolve even further and develop even greater abilities is to absolve themselves of their physical and human limitations, and to live as virtual entities—or avatars—in the Wired for eternity. He claims to have been Lain's creator all along, but was in truth standing in for another as an acting god, who was waiting for the Wired to reach its more evolved current state: Lain herself. According to another Lain, however, he has never truly existed all along and would not have had any self-obsessed ideas about being God if he had.

Yasuo Iwakura (岩倉 康男, Iwakura Yasuo) Voiced by: Ryūsuke Ōbayashi (Japanese); Barry Stigler4 Lain's father. Passionate about computers and electronic communication, he works with Masami Eiri at Tachibana General Laboratories. He subtly pushes Lain, his "youngest daughter", towards the Wired and monitors her development until she becomes more and more aware of herself and of her raison d'être. He eventually leaves Lain, telling her that although he did not enjoy playing house, he genuinely loved and cared for her as a real father would. Despite Yasuo's eagerness to lure Lain into the Wired, he warns her not to get overly involved in it or to confuse it with the real world. Miho Iwakura (岩倉 美穂, Iwakura Miho)

Voiced by: Rei Igarashi (Japanese); Dari Lallou Mackenzie4 Lain's mother. Although she dotes on her husband, she is indifferent towards both her kids. Like her husband, she ends up leaving Lain. She is a computer scientist. Alice Mizuki (瑞城 ありす, Mizuki Arisu) Voiced by: Yōko Asada (Japanese); Emily Brown4 Lain's classmate and only true friend throughout the series. She is very sincere and has no discernable quirks. She is the first to attempt to help Lain socialize; she takes her out to a nightclub. From then on, she tries her best to look after Lain. Alice, along with her two best friends Julie and Reika, were taken by Chiaki Konaka from his previous work, Alice in Cyberland. Mika Iwakura (岩倉 美香, Iwakura Mika)

Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese); Patricia Ja Lee4 Lain's older sister, an apathetic sixteen-year-old high school student. She seems to enjoy mocking Lain's behavior and interests. Mika is considered by Anime Revolution to be the only normal member of Lain's family:[5] she sees her boyfriend in love hotels, is on a diet, and shops in Shibuya. At a certain point in the series, she becomes heavily traumatized by violent hallucinations; while Lain begins freely delving into the Wired, Mika is taken there by her proximity to Lain, and she gets stuck between the real world and the Wired.[6] Taro (タロウ, Tarō)

Voiced by: Keito Takimoto (Japanese); Brianne Siddall4 A young boy of about Lain's age. He occasionally works for the Knights to bring forth "the one truth". Despite this, he has not yet been made a member, and knows nothing of their true intentions. Taro loves VR games and hangs out all day at Cyberia with his friends, Myu-Myu and Masayuki. He uses special technology, such as custom Handi Navi and video goggles. Taro takes pride in his internet anonymity, and he asks Lain for a date with her Wired self in exchange for information. Office Worker Voiced by: Shigeru Chiba A top executive from Tachibana General Laboratories. He has a personal agenda, which he carries out with the help of the Men in Black. He looks forward to the arrival of a real God through the Wired, and is the man behind the Knights' mass assassination. There are many things he does not know about Lain, but he would rather ask questions about her than disclose his agenda. Men in Black Karl Haushoffer (カール・ハウスホッファ, Kāru Hausuhoffa), Voiced by: Jouji Nakata Lin Suixi (Chinese: 林随錫; pinyin: Lín Suíxī), Voiced by: Takumi Yamazaki The Men in Black work for the above "Office Worker" in tracking down and murdering all of the members of the Knights. They are not told the true plan, but they know that Masami Eiri is somehow involved, despite having been "killed." They see no need for an almighty, all-powerful God—let alone Lain—in the Wired. Chisa Yomoda (四方田 千砂, Yomoda Chisa)

Voiced by: Sumi Mutoh (Japanese); Lia Sargent4 A teenage girl who committed suicide at the beginning of the series. After her death, she e-mails Lain, Julie, and a few other kids, saying that she is still alive in the Wired, leading to the series events. Reika Yamamoto (山本 麗華, Yamamoto Reika) Voiced by: Chiharu Tezuka (Japanese); Lenore Zann4 One of Alice's friends from school. She does not seem to care for Lain, since she harasses her quite a lot. She is more serious than Julie, and also somewhat meaner. Julie Kato (加藤 樹莉, Katō Juri)

Voiced by: Manabi Mizuno (Japanese); Gracie Moore4 Another friend of Alice. She also harasses Lain, but not as severely as Reika does. She is sometimes insensitive to other people's feelings. Masayuki (マサユキ) Voiced by: Sora Fujima (Japanese); Dorothy Elias-Fahn (English) Taro's best friend. He is usually seen hanging out with Taro and Myu-Myu. Myu-Myu (ミューミュウ, Myūmyuu)

Voiced by: Yuki Yamamoto (Japanese); Sandy Fox (English) A young girl who hangs out with Taro and Masayuki at Cyberia Café. She has feelings for Taro, so she gets jealous when he flirts with Lain. Narrator Voiced by: Takashi Taniguchi (Japanese); Paul St. Peter (English)

Production

Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda.[7]

Producer Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement made in an Animerica interview.[6][8][9] The controversial statement said Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II".[10] He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. When he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed.[9]

The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi ABe and released in Japanese in the artbook An Omnipresence in Wired. Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain, and the way they are exposed.[11]

Writing

The authors were asked in interviews if they had been influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion, in the themes and graphic design. This was strictly denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka in an interview, arguing that he had not even seen Evangelion until he finished the fourth episode of Lain. Being primarily a horror movie writer, his stated influences are Godard (especially for using typography on screen), The Exorcist, Hell House, and Dan Curtis's House of Dark Shadows. Alice's name, like the names of her two friends Julie and Reika, came from a previous production from Konaka, Alice in Cyberland, which in turn was largely influenced by Alice in Wonderland. As the series developed, Konaka was "surprised" by how close Alice's character became to the original Wonderland character.[12] A young girl in a white shift sits with her back to us in the dark, focusing her attention on many glowing computer screens which surround her. Lain's custom computer features holographic displays and liquid carbon dioxide cooling.

Vannevar Bush (and memex), John C. Lilly, Timothy Leary and his eight-circuit model of consciousness, Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu are cited as precursors to the Wired.[11] Douglas Rushkoff and his book Cyberia were originally to be cited as such,[6] and in Lain Cyberia became the name of a nightclub populated with hackers and techno-punk teenagers. Likewise, the series' deus ex machina lies in the conjunction of the Schumann resonances and Jung's collective unconscious (the authors chose this term over Kabbalah and Akashic Record).[10] Majestic 12 and the Roswell UFO incident are used as examples of how a hoax might still affect history, even after having been exposed as such, by creating sub-cultures.[10] This links again to Vannevar Bush, the alleged "brains" of MJ12. Two of the literary references in Lain are quoted through Lain's father: he first logs onto a website with the password "Think Bule Count One Tow" [sic] ("Think Blue, Count Two" is an Instrumentality of Man story featuring virtual persons projected as real ones in people's minds);[13] and his saying that "madeleines would be good with the tea" in the last episode makes Lain "perhaps the only cartoon to allude to Proust".

[14][15] Character design

A young girl in a white shift kneels facing us with scissors in her hand, and hanks of her own hair on the ground, leaving one forelock uncut. The background is blue. ABe came up with Lain's hair by imagining Lain cutting it herself and making a ponytail of what was left.[8] This was later included in his An Omnipresence in Wired artbook.[16]

Yoshitoshi ABe confesses to have never read manga as a child, as it was "off-limits" in his household.[17] His major influences are "nature and everything around him".[6] Specifically speaking about Lain's character, ABe was inspired by Kenji Tsuruta, Akihiro Yamada, Range Murata and Yukinobu Hoshino.[8] In a broader view, he has been influenced in his style and technique by Japanese artists Kyosuke Chinai and Toshio Tabuchi.[6]

The character design of Lain was not ABe's sole responsibility. Her distinctive left forelock for instance was a demand from Yasuyuki Ueda. The goal was to produce asymmetry to reflect Lain's unstable and disconcerting nature.[18] It was designed as a mystical symbol, as it is supposed to prevent voices and spirits from being heard by the left ear.[8] The bear pajamas she wears were a demand from character animation director Takahiro Kishida. Though bears are a trademark of the Konaka brothers, Chiaki Konaka first opposed the idea.[12] Director Nakamura then explained how the bear motif could be used as a shield for confrontations with her family. It is a key element of the design of the shy "real world" Lain (see "mental illness" under Themes).[12] When she first goes to the Cyberia nightclub, she wears a bear hat for similar reasons.[18] Retrospectively, Konaka said that Lain's pajamas became a major factor in drawing fans of moe characterization to the series, and remarked that "such items may also be important when making anime".[12]

ABe's original design was generally more complicated than what finally appeared on screen. As an example, the X-shaped hairclip was to be an interlocking pattern of gold links. The links would open with a snap, or rotate around an axis until the moment the " X " became a " = ". This was not used as there is no scene where Lain takes her hairclip off.[19] Themes

Serial Experiments Lain is not a conventionally linear story, being described as "an alternative anime, with modern themes and realization".[20] Themes range from theological to psychological and are dealt with in a number of ways: from classical dialogue to image-only introspection, passing by direct interrogation of imaginary characters.

Communication, in its wider sense, is one of the main themes of the series,[21] not only as opposed to loneliness, but also as a subject in itself. Writer Konaka said he wanted to directly "communicate human feelings". Director Nakamura wanted to show the audience — and particularly viewers between 14 and 15—"the multidimensional wavelength of the existential self: the relationship between self and the world".[11]

Loneliness, if only as representing a lack of communication, is recurrent through Lain.[22] Lain herself (according to Anime Jump) is "almost painfully introverted with no friends to speak of at school, a snotty, condescending sister, a strangely apathetic mother, and a father who seems to want to care but is just too damn busy to give her much of his time".[23] Friendships turn on the first rumor;[22][24] and the only insert song of the series is named Kodoku no shigunaru, literally "signal of loneliness".[25] A series of drawings depicting the different personalities of Lain—the first shows shy body language, the second shows bolder body language, and the third grins in an unhinged fashion. The different personalities of Lain have their names written using different scripts.

Mental illness, especially dissociative identity disorder, is a significant theme in Lain:[19] the main character is constantly confronted with alter-egos, to the point where writer Chiaki Konaka and Lain's voice actress Kaori Shimizu had to agree on subdividing the character's dialogues between three different orthographs.[19] The three names designate distinct "versions" of Lain: the real-world, "childish" Lain has a shy attitude and bear pajamas. The "advanced" Lain, her Wired personality, is bold and questioning. Finally, the "evil" Lain is sly and devious, and does everything she can to harm Lain or the ones close to her.[12] As a writing convention, the authors spelled their respective names in kanji, katakana, and roman characters (see picture).[26]

Reality never has the pretense of objectivity in Lain.[27] Acceptations of the term are battling throughout the series, such as the "natural" reality, defined through normal dialogue between individuals; the material reality; and the tyrannic reality, enforced by one person onto the minds of others.[22] A key debate to all interpretations of the series is to decide whether matter flows from thought, or the opposite.[22][28] The production staff carefully avoided "the so-called God's Eye Viewpoint" to make clear the "limited field of vision" of the world of Lain.[27]

Theology plays its part in the development of the story too. Lain has been viewed as a questioning of the possibility of an infinite spirit in a finite body.[29] From self-realization as a goddess to deicide,[14] religion (the title of a layer) is an inherent part of Lain's background.[29] Apple computers

Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as the brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff, such as writers, producers, and the graphical team.[12] As an example, the title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computer speech synthesis program PlainTalk, using the voice "Whisper", e.g. say -v Whisper "Weird: Layer zero one". Tachibana Industries, the company that creates the NAVI computers, is a reference to Apple computers: the tachibana orange is a Japanese variety of mandarin orange. NAVI is the abbreviation of Knowledge Navigator, and the HandiNAVI is based on the Apple Newton, one of the world's first PDAs. The NAVIs are seen to run "Copland OS Enterprise" (this reference to Copland was an initiative of Konaka, a declared Apple fan),[12] and Lain's and Alice's NAVIs closely resembles the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the iMac respectively. The HandiNAVI programming language, as seen on the seventh episode, is a dialect of Lisp; the Newton also used a Lisp dialect (NewtonScript). The program being typed by Lain can be found in the CMU AI repository;[30] it is a simple implementation of Conway's Game of Life in Common Lisp.

During a series of disconnected images, an iMac and the Think Different advertising slogan appears for a short time, while the Whisper voice says it.[31] This was an unsolicited insertion from the graphic team, also Mac-enthusiasts.[12] Other subtle allusions can be found: "Close the world, Open the nExt" is the slogan for the Serial Experiments Lain video game. NeXT was the company that produced NeXTSTEP, which later evolved into Mac OS X after Apple bought NeXT. Another example is "To Be Continued." at the end of episodes 1–12, with a blue "B" and a red "e" on "Be"; this matches the original logo of Be Inc., a company founded by ex-Apple employees and NeXT's main competitor in its time.[32] Broadcast and release history

Serial Experiments Lain was first aired on TV Tokyo and its affiliates on July 6, 1998, and concluded on September 28, 1998, with the thirteenth and final episode. The series consists of 13 episodes (referred to in the series as "Layers") of 24 minutes each, except for the sixth episode, Kids (23 minutes 14 seconds). In Japan, the episodes were released in LD, VHS, and DVD with a total of five volumes. A DVD compilation named "Serial Experiments Lain DVD-BOX Яesurrection" was released along with a promo DVD called "LPR-309" in 2000.[33] As this box set is now discontinued, a rerelease was made in 2005 called "Serial Experiments Lain TV-BOX". A 4-volume DVD box set was released in the US by Pioneer/Geneon. A Blu-ray release of the anime was made in December 2009 called "Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box| RESTORE".[34][35][36][37] The anime series returned to US television on October 15, 2012, on the Funimation Channel.[38] The series' opening theme, "Duvet", was written and performed by Jasmine Rodgers and the British band Bôa. The ending theme, "Distant Scream" (遠い叫び, Tōi Sakebi), was written and composed by Reichi Nakaido.

The anime series was licensed in North America by Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon USA) on VHS and DVD in 1999. However, the company closed its USA division in December 2007 and the series went out-of-print as a result.[39] However, at Anime Expo 2010, North American distributor Funimation announced that it had obtained the license to the series and re-released it in 2012.[40]

Episode list

No. Title Directed by Original air date

1 "Weird" Ryūtarō Nakamura July 6, 1998 A high school girl commits suicide by jumping off a rooftop late at night. A week later, students are getting emails from the girl, named Chisa Yomoda, which claim that she only gave up her body, but is actually still alive inside the virtual world known as the Wired, saying that there is a God that exists there. After getting one of these emails, introverted fourteen-year-old Lain Iwakura becomes much more interested in computers and asks her techie father, Yasuo Iwakura, for a new NAVI computer system. When she returns to school the following day, the blackboard writes a subliminal message, inviting her to come to the Wired as soon as she can, revealed to be written by Chisa herself.

2 "Girls" Ryūtarō Nakamura July 13, 1998 At Cyberia, a hardcore techno club, a man buys a nanomachine drug called Accela. On the way to school the next day, Alice Mizuki, along with her friends Julie and Reika, tell Lain they saw her during their first visit to Cyberia, but with a far more vigorous and forceful personality. Lain has her father set up her NAVI computer system at home later that evening. After some persuasion, Lain decides to join Alice at Cyberia that night to prove that she was not there before. However, Lain becomes involved with a shooting in the club by the same man under the influence of Accela. She approaches the man, saying that everyone is connected in the Wired no matter where they are. This leads the man to shoot himself out of psychological shock and trauma.

3 "Psyche" Jōhei Matsuura July 20, 1998 The following day, Lain is scolded by her cold mother, Miho Iwakura, for waking up too late. When she leaves the house, she believes she is being spied on when she sees a black car parked near her house. Furthermore, she hears a voice calling out to her when she enters the train, telling her that she is not alone. Her life is thrown into further disarray when she is anonymously sent a mysterious computer chip. She asks her father what it is, but he says he does not know. When she goes to see Taro, with his friends Myu-Myu and Masayuki, at Cyberia, he recalls seeing Lain on the Wired once, noting her Wired personality being the complete opposite of her restrained real world personality. Mika Iwakura, Lain's older sister, comes home the next day, only to see Lain not acting herself as she starts to modify and upgrade her NAVI computer system.

4 "Religion" Akihiko Nishiyama July 27, 1998 Rumors are flying around school and on the Wired in regards to numerous senior students of various high schools committing suicide, with each of the deceased being addicted to the online action game known as PHANTOMa. Interested, Lain investigates only to discover that the game was glitched with a tag game for kids, in which a little girl scares the students to their deaths. Moreover, she finds out that the deaths were most likely caused by the elite secretive hacker group known as the Knights of the Eastern Calculus. Later at night, she senses the Men in Black, who had been spying on her earlier. When she tells the two to go away, a sound wave penetrates through her window, causing the two to fall back and drive away in their black car.

5 "Distortion" Masahiko Murata August 3, 1998 Amidst the events surrounding Tokyo having its traffic information transmission system hacked to cause deliberate accidents, Lain experiences a series of hallucinations that teach her the nature of the Wired in relation to the real world, by means of inanimate objects in her room and eventually her parents. In the meantime, Mika is driven to terror from the Knights repeatedly communicating in unusual ways for her to "fulfill the prophecy."

6 "KIDS" Ryūtarō Nakamura August 10, 1998 At night, when Yasuo checks on Lain, he sees a dramatic change in her room arrangement and the upgrades on her NAVI computer system, which worries him. As Lain hangs out with Alice, along with Julie and Reika, in the district, she notices that children are looking up into the sky and raising their arms, only to realize that they are looking at an image of herself that appears in the sky. Lain searches for the reason behind the strange happenings and finds Professor Hodgeson, the creator of KIDS, an experiment that started fifteen years ago that tried to gather psi energy from children and store it, though the result of the project destroyed the children. Now it seems that the Knights have gotten hold of the project's schematics. When the Men in Black return, Lain goes outside to see them. The coolant system in her room bursts, leading the Men in Black to confirm that the Knights planted a parasite bomb there.

7 "SOCIETY" Jōhei Matsuura August 17, 1998 As Lain gets more and more involved in the Wired world, albeit at home and at school, Alice starts to worry about her closing up again. It is reported that the Knights cracked the firewall of the information control center of the Wired. As the activity of the Knights begins to surface, the network is in search for Lain. The Men in Black ask Lain to follow them to an office in the Tachibana General Laboratories, where the Office Worker in charge of the Men in Black, after her help of fixing his computer, shows Lain a projection of herself in the Wired taking out one of the members of the Knights. After the Office Worker deduces that Lain in the real world and in the Wired are one and the same, he questions her about her origins. However, she breaks down for not knowing, altering her timid personality to that of a more serious one before she shoves her way out of the room. 8 "RUMORS" Shigeru Ueda August 24, 1998 Lain's family has been acting weird lately, much to her surprise. Upon further investigation, Lain disbelieves that she is omnipresent in the Wired, while she is merely a body, more or less a projection of herself, in the real world. A rumor is spread in the Wired about Alice having sexual fantasies about a male teacher, and a second one says that Lain has spread the first. To cope with the distress of rejection, Lain acts directly on reality for the first time, finding out that she can "delete" the event of the rumors. A lookalike duplicate of herself with its own distinct personality starts appearing more frequently, which leads her to question her own existence.

9 "PROTOCOL" Akihiko Nishiyama August 31, 1998 Throughout the episode, background information is being shown from "archives". Information regarding the Roswell UFO incident, the Majestic 12, which was formed by President Harry S. Truman, engineer Vannevar Bush, who developed what is called memex, physician John C. Lilly, who conducted experiments with dolphin communication, pioneer Ted Nelson, who founded Project Xanadu, and the Schumann resonances are all mentioned, explaining how the human consciousness can be communicated through a network without the use of a device. It is also noted that a man named Masami Eiri has suddenly committed suicide. During that time, Lain gets a computer microchip from J.J., the disc jockey from Cyberia. She then asks Taro on a "date" and takes him to her home, where she asks him about the microchip. After becoming frightened, he admits it is a computer code made to disrupt human memory, and it was made by the Knights. Although he defends them, he admits not knowing much about them. He later kisses Lain before leaving. 10 "LOVE" Masahiko Murata September 7, 1998 As both are seen to have switched bodies, Eiri introduces himself to Lain as the creator of Protocol Seven, saying that Lain no longer needs to have a body in order to be alive. As she, back in her own body, comes home, Yasuo says his farewell after realizing she knows the truth behind her existence. Eiri is considered the God of the Wired because he explained that he is worshiped by the Knights. Knowing this, Lain deals with the Knights once and for all by leaking a list of all of its members onto the Wired, leaving a trail of murder by the Men in Black and suicide in its wake. Even with the Knights gone, Eiri still claims he is the God of the Wired, since he says that the real Lain exists in the Wired, not the real world.

11 "Infornography" Jōhei Matsuura September 14, 1998 Lain lies exhausted in her room, and wakes up to find herself all wrapped in electrical cords. After a really long and complicated memory flashback, seen throughout the series, Eiri appears in her room and congratulates her, for having succeeded in downloading her NAVI into her own brain to see and hear all that is happening. However, he warns her about her "hardware capacity," and that she is merely a sentient and autonomous software computer program with a physical body in the form of a teenage human girl. Lain later appears to Alice in her room to make things right with her again concerning the false rumors. Lain declares that anything is possible now, as devices are no longer needed anymore to enter the Wired freely. The next day, nobody seems to remember the rumored incidents and Lain smiles at Alice's complicity.

12 "Landscape" Ryūtarō Nakamura September 21, 1998 Lain witnesses the frontier between the physical and the Wired worlds finally beginning to collapse. The Men in Black are approached by their Officer Worker, who gives them a final "payment" for their services, telling them to leave town away from any power lines or satellite coverage. After he leaves, both Men in Black suffer death from an image of Lain etched in their retinas. Alice enters Lain's eerie house and goes inside her room. Lain explains that she is actually a computerized program designed to destroy the barrier between the two worlds. Lain is still affixed on the fact that humans no longer need a physical body to stay alive, but Alice shows that her heartbeat proves otherwise. Suddenly, Eiri, first unseen to Alice, appears behind Lain, assuming she needs to be "debugged". Lain argues that Eiri was just an "acting god", for she is the true Goddess of the Wired. Eiri retaliates by transforming into a monstrous form to attain the vastly limitless power and strength that she possesses, but Lain manages to crush Eiri with her electrical equipment, wiping him out for good.

13 "Ego" Ryūtarō Nakamura September 28, 1998

Lain's attempts to protect her from Eiri's attack result in traumatizing Alice, Lain's only true friend; in order to fix this, Lain decides to do a "factory reset" on her life, deleting herself from everyone's memory. Distraught from doing so, Lain is determined to discover her true form and identity and takes radical action. She is confronted by her separate bolder self of the Wired, who reminds her that the Wired is not an upper layer of the real world. Her bolder Wired self then assures her that she is the true Goddess of the Wired, saying she is an omnipotent and omnipresent virtual being that can go and be anywhere she desires and merely watch the real world from afar. After causing her bolder self to disappear, Lain sees her father. Alice, now older with a spouse, spots Lain standing on an overpass, having some déjà vu about Lain but not recognizing who she is. Alice says goodbye and that she may run into Lain again someday. Lain asserts that this is true, since she is everywhere at once. Reception A suburban scene on a sunny day, showing houses and telegraph poles, but the shadows contain unnatural red splotches. Lain's neighborhood. The "blood pools" represent the Wired's presence "beneath the surface" of reality.[6]

Serial Experiments Lain was first broadcast in Tokyo at 1:15 a.m. JST. The word "weird" appears almost systematically in English language reviews of the series,[23][41][42][43][44] or the alternatives "bizarre",[45] and "atypical",[46] due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction themes, and due to its philosophical and psychological context. Critics responded positively to these thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions" it asks.[47]

According to Christian Nutt from Newtype USA, the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series, saying that "Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime."[48] Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5,[23] and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on all criteria for volume 1 and 2, and a mix of A and A+ for volume 3 and 4.[42] Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet".[49] It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools (see picture). It notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo.

The Anime Essentials anthology by Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s, alongside the much better known Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop.[50] Professor Susan J. Napier, in her 2003 reading to the American Philosophical Society called The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation (published 2005), compared Serial Experiments Lain to Ghost in the Shell and Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.[51] According to her, the main characters of the two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain cannot. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'".[52] Mike Toole of Anime News Network named Serial Experiments Lain as one of the most important anime of the 1990s.[53]

Despite the positive feedback the television series had received, Anime Academy gave the series a 75%, partly due to the "lifeless" setting it had.[54] Michael Poirier of EX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes.[55] Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered.[56] Related media

Art booksAn Omnipresence In Wired: Hardbound, 128 pages in 96 colors with Japanese text. It features a chapter for each layer (episode) and concept sketches. It also features a short color manga titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication". It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/SR-12W/Pioneer LDC. (ISBN&nbsp;4-7897-1343-1) Yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations ab# rebuild an omnipresence in Wired: Hardbound, 148 pages. A remake of "An Omnipresence In Wired" with new art, added text by Chiaki J. Konaka, and a section entitled "ABe's EYE in color of things" (a compilation of his photos of the world). It was published in Japan on October 1, 2005, by Wanimagazine (ISBN&nbsp;4-89829-487-1), and in America as a softcover version translated into English on June 27, 2006, by Digital Manga Publishing (ISBN&nbsp;1-56970-899-1). Visual Experiments Lain: Paperback, 80 full-color pages with Japanese text. It has details on the creation, design, and storyline of the series. It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC. (ISBN&nbsp;4-7897-1342-3) Scenario Experiments Lain: Paperback, 335 pages. By "chiaki j. konaka" (uncapitalized in original). It contains collected scripts with notes and small excerpted storyboards. It was published in 1998 in Japan.(ISBN&nbsp;4-7897-1320-2)

Soundtracks

The first original soundtrack, Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack, features music by Reichi Nakaido: the ending theme and part of the television series' score, alongside other songs inspired by the series. The second, Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix, features electronica songs inspired by the television series, including a remix of the opening theme "Duvet" by DJ Wasei. The third, lain BOOTLEG, consists of the ambient score of the series across forty-five tracks. BOOTLEG also contains a second mixed-mode data and audio disc, containing a clock program and a game, as well as an extended version of the first disc – nearly double the length – across 57 tracks in 128 kbit/s MP3 format, and sound effects from the series in WAV format. Because the word bootleg appears in its title, it is easily confused with the Sonmay counterfeit edition of itself, which only contains the first disc in an edited format. All three soundtrack albums were released by Pioneer Records.

The series' opening theme, "Duvet", was written and performed in English by the British rock band Bôa. The band released the song as a single and as part of the EP Tall Snake, which features both an acoustic version and DJ Wasei's remix from Cyberia Mix. Video game Main article: Serial Experiments Lain (video game)

On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released a video game with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation.[57] It was designed by Konaka and Yasuyuki, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story.[12] The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware",[12] and it has been described as being a kind of graphic novel: the gameplay is limited to unlocking pieces of information, and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock.[58] Lain distances itself even more from classical games by the random order in which information is collected.[12] The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of informations that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand.[12] As with the anime, the creative team's main goal was to let the player "feel" Lain, and "to understand her problems, and to love her".[11] A guidebook to the game called Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide (ISBN 4-07-310083-1) was released the same month by MediaWorks.[59] See alsoNoosphere

References

"Serial Experiments Lain BD/DVD Box Delayed 4 Months". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on June 28, 2018. Retrieved June 26, 2018. "FRUiTS October (No.15_1st/Oct./1998)". Cornell Japanese Animation Society. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved October 27, 2019.

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Manga Max magazine, September 1999, p. 22, "Unreal to Real" Benkyo! Magazine, March 1999, p.16, "In My Humble Opinion" "T.H.E.M.Anime Review of Serial Experiments Lain". Archived from the original on October 11, 2006. Retrieved November 24, 2006. "DVDoutsider Review of Serial Experiments Lain". Archived from the original on March 5, 2012. Retrieved November 24, 2006. Toole, Mike (October 16, 2003). "Anime Jump!: Serial Experiments Lain Review". Archived from the original on June 10, 2008. Serial Experiments Lain, Layer 08: RUMORS "List of Serial Experiments Lain songs". Archived from the original on January 13, 2007. Retrieved December 7, 2006. ABe, Yoshitoshi (1998). Visual Experiments Lain. Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC. ISBN 978-4-7897-1342-9., page 42 Manga Max Magazine, September 1999, p. 21, "God's Eye View" Serial Experiments Lain, Layer 06: KIDS: "your physical body exists only to confirm your existence".

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Beveridge, Chris (July 13, 1999). "Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #1". Mania.com. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved September 16, 2006. Southworth, Wayne. "The Spinning Image: "Serial Experiments Lain Volume 4: Reset" Review". Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 16, 2006. Silver, Aaron. "Anime News Network: Serial Experiments Lain DVD Vol. 1–4 Review". Archived from the original on March 25, 2006. Retrieved September 16, 2006. Lai, Tony. "DVD.net: "Lain: Volume 1 – Navi" Review". Archived from the original on September 20, 2006. Retrieved September 16, 2006. Japan Media Arts Plaza (1998). "1998 (2nd) Japan Media Arts Festival: Excellence Prize – serial experiments lain". Archived from the original on April 26, 2007. Retrieved September 16, 2006.From the Internet Archive. Nutt, Christian (January 2005). "Serial Experiments Lain DVD Box Set: Lost in the Wired". Newtype USA. 4 (1): 179. Bush, Laurence C. (October 2001). Asian Horror Encyclopedia. Writers Club Press. ISBN 978-0-595-20181-5., page 162. Poitras, Gilles (December 2001). Anime Essentials. Stone Bridge Press, LLC. ISBN 978-1-880656-53-2., page 28.

Napier, Susan J., Dr. (March 2005). "The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 149 (1): 72–79. JSTOR 4598910. Napier 2005, p. 78 Toole, Mike (June 5, 2011). "Evangel-a-like – The Mike Toole Show". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on October 10, 2015. Retrieved November 20, 2015. "Serial Experiments: Lain". March 16, 2002. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2015. "Serial Experiments Lain – Buried Treasure". May 11, 2000. Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2015. "Serial Experiments Lain – Buried Treasure". November 20, 2008. Archived from the original on April 3, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2015. "Serial Experiments Lain". Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved September 25, 2010. "Games Are Fun: "Review – Serial Experiments Lain – Japan"". April 25, 2003. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved November 10, 2006.シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン公式ガイド [Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide] (in Japanese). ASIN&nbsp;4073100831.

Further readingBitel, Anton. "Movie Gazette: 'Serial Experiments Lain Volume 3: Deus' Review". Movie Gazette. Archived from the original on May 21, 2006. Retrieved October 11, 2006. Horn, Carl Gustav. "Serial Experiments Lain". Viz Communications. Archived from the original on February 19, 2001. Retrieved September 25, 2010. Moure, Dani. "Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #2". Mania.com. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved September 25, 2010. Moure, Dani. "Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #3". Mania.com. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved September 25, 2010. Napier, Susan J. (2005) Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation ISBN&nbsp;978-1-4039-7052-7 Prévost, Adèle-Elise; Musebasement (2008)

"Manga: The Signal of Noise" Mechademia 3 pp.&nbsp;173–188 ISSN&nbsp;1934-2489 Prindle, Tamae Kobayashi (2015). "Nakamura Ryûtarô's Anime, Serial Experiments, Lain (1998)". Asian Studies. 3 (1): 53–81. doi:10.4312/as.2015.3.1.53-81. ISSN&nbsp;2350-4226. Sevakis, Justin (November 20, 2008). "Buried Treasure: Serial Experiments Lain". Anime News Network. Retrieved September 25, 2010. Jackson, C. (2012). "Topologies of Identity in Serial Experiments Lain". Mechademia. 7: 191–201. doi:10.1353/mec.2012.0013. S2CID&nbsp;119423011.

External links Wikiquote has quotations related to Serial Experiments Lain. Look up Appendix:Serial Experiments Lain in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

this is definitely the new weirdest anon ive gotten

[teaziecups]

TRIGGER WARNING: All forms of abuse, grooming, mental illness, stalking, paranoia/delusions/etc., self harm, eating disorders and overall saddening topics.

Read this with an open mind.

Summary of Elliot's and (somewhat) Rett's history/lore:

• Early life:

Elliot and Rett was born to an anomaly father and human mother further corrupting both of them and the rest of their siblings(6 including Elliot & Rett). Sadly both have faced all forms of abuse mainly from their father and reactive abuse from their mother. Pushing Elliot to develop amnesia as a way of coping(Elliot doesn't remember this unless therapy intervenes). Rett, however, suprising remembers a great deal of this.

Furthermore, at the age of 13 the family moved to America. It was quickly changed when CPS(or some other form of this) split the family up and deported the parents back to Greece. (Kept the children because they were "Exotic")

● Tween/Early teenage years:

Elliot starts to struggle even more with mental health issues. Falling into self harm/slight drug abuse. At around 14 years old Elliot starts to heavily pick up on the behavior. Elliot's abusive foster parents/group house doesn't help with this and in return Elliot tends to run away and stay outside more often to cope with this issue. Elliot aswell got moved around a lot and sent to multiple mental hospitals. School became a huge issue and Elliot suffered greatly with anxiety. Elliot was heavily troubled and his bizarre behavior made him a massive target for bullying. At a young age Elliot starts to develop more suicidal thinking and attempting it. (Staying with him up until 16-17)

Elliot sadly developed a heavy addiction to the internet and found many flings that ended up taking advantage of him. Once they discarded him, Elliot would find something else to fill in a void within himself. By late 14 going into 15, Elliot meets someone that goes by "Lu-Lu" online and develops a fascination with them. Later turning obsessive and protective of Lu. Lu ended returning the favor. They later on started dating and Lu shows more mentally ill characteristics. Then started to take advantage of Elliot, Lu revealed his real age, putting a worse dent into Elliot's mental health. Lu had ended up being a groomer towards Elliot. After a year of this Elliot broke things off and Lu caused an outrage. During all of this, Elliot develops anorexia as a way to cope/have control in life.

Rett struggled mentally with severe social anxiety and anxiety in general. School was a huge burden and he wanted out of it. Later on he developed severe panic attacks and would get sent to the nurse often until he got meds to help him. Rett sadly self harmed but quickly cut the issue out because of shame and regret. Rett's foster parents never helped with his issues until the school nurses got involved. After this he got helped and got put into different classes to help with this issue. Along with all of this, Rett let's on bizarre behavior and struggles with no filter on his mouth. Saying random and paranoia inducing things.

● Later teen years/Recent times:

Heads up: Both twins end up moving to Canada at different times. Rett ends up going first and sooner later Elliot. Due to the service they both went through to get adoptive parents, they were aware of the twins history. Contacted the adoptive parents and brought the twins together.

Elliot goes through intense therapy to cope with everything. Discovers Ms. Hamilton (therapist) a trusting adult in their life. (Elliot later on gets diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder Bi polar type 2) Adoptive parents are extremely kind, overly kind. Elliot's paranoia gets increasingly worse by the minute due to this. He develops a paranoid delusion that they want something out of him. While this is the total opposite of what's going on, Elliot develops a more stiffer/stubborn personality by late 15 leading to 16. Elliot gets increasingly angry and hostile. Building up a terrible reputation for himself. Elliot cuts off most of his online internet usage as he sees the online word useless, until school stars up again with him. Even then it's still incredibly limited. During this (a more happier time in his life) Elliot starts to eat a normal amount, then overeating out of pure boredom. Elliot is overweight now.

Elliots reputation carried into school with him, luckily not many or at all many people knew of him. As he is a new student, in a new country, in a place with less than 400 in population. He saw school as a breeze now, he passed most things with ease. Then, he met one of his peers named "Draw", Draw showed an interest in Elliot, but Elliot didn't return the favor. Until Draws behavior shined onto Elliot more and more as the days grew. Elliot decided to take it upon himself to develop a new friendship, it ended up going extremely well. Draw showed such interaction with Elliots interests and was engaged with him. Later on tensions grew within the friendship.

Elliots new aquaried friend turned bitter sweet when Draws enthusiasm towards Elliot started to die out. He finds out that Draw has been engaging in high school gossip/rumors about Elliot, that he didn't like. Draw only wanted to engage with Elliot through an online app called "Frizzbee", this upsets Elliot. As Elliot sees this as a way to talk to him without talking to him at school. As his new girlfriend "Ava" puts it out that she doesn't like Elliot. Ava believes in the rumors. However, through all of this Elliot only stores the inner turmoil and releases it when Draw sends Elliot spiteful messages. Messages that show the deranged and ill side of Draw. Draws facade breaks through messages but Elliot cuts him out of his life when faced with this. Angering Draw and causing a stalker for life, Lu ends up stalking Elliot aswell when he finds his newer accounts.

Rett gets an amazing adoptive family and starts his healing journey once in Canada. Happily living life and aquaring new special interests. Later on attending school, Rett is faced with little to no challenges. People seem to be a lot nicer to him, seeing him as the "quiet kid" and someone to overlook in a not so harmful way.

Both the twins face each other and reunite after many years of seperation. Elliots intense paranoia flares up because he doesn't remember Rett. Amnesia consumes Elliot. Despite this Elliot makes an effort into helping and bonding with his newly gained best friend.

● Future/Later events:

- Elliot gains Blair as a stalker when Elliot doesn't return any of the favors Blair gives

- Peppermint/Basil become his partners. Basil being first than Peppermint

- Draw ends up stalker Elliot up into adulthood

- Lu stalks Elliot more heavily. Sicko.

- Elliot and Rett move in together for College

[possiblyunhinged]

Being autistic, mentally ill and poor is very not ideal right now when lefties on the internet turn into raging dickheads during an election campaign... And I am a lefty.

I don't think I've ever felt this negative about everything... and I was diagnosed with clinical depression when I was 6.

I AM A FUN LITTLE GUY, OKAY?!

I've been in a four-day funk where I literally can't cope with external stimuli. I'm a boring person. I spend far too much of my life reading up on stuff, and usually, I'd be all over the election coverage, but I'm just done with everything...

Not in a 2008 emo way, in an I'm autistic, and my brain feels like it's on fire right now kind of way.

There are many threads of injustice weaving through everything right now, that my silly little ND can't cope anymore. Which I know sounds deeply petulant. I am a BABY... but I think for me, if a problem isn't solvable in my brain, then it just kind of sets fire to it on the way out.

It's been in England right now when you're working class, especially over the past three or four years. I'm not talking about losing your annual holiday, the last time I went abroad was when I was 10 years old. I have never been able to justify a holiday nor save because just keeping my head above water financially has been a fucking ballache.

Knowing that over 4 million families are living in poverty right now and having the lived experience of how that experience obliterated my childhood and indoctrinated my brain with a shame that has never left me absolutely breaks my heart.

I don't even have a quip to follow that.

I can't cope with those in power's complete lack of regard for what they have done. And when these children need help, whether that's psychological or otherwise, the likelihood is they'll just be stuck on a fucking waiting list.

I don't have space for rhetoric that generally only exists in University lectures for a reason... because it doesn't translate into real life with all of its complexities.

Unless it's a tactical vote, you can shove your Green Party where the sun doesn't shine. A blessing is that Labour will push for proportional voting and before the LaBoUr HaVe BaCkPeDaLlEd On EvErYtHiNg... wait and see, hey?

Let people feel a modicum of fucking hope for one second, because guess what... being someone who deals with suicidal ideation in a world so desperate to destroy people's hope is sehr stressig.

Beyond being a wretched bitch, I've pretty much been sick most of my life. And I have never found it more difficult to live with my brain.

I've existed in poverty since the age of 8. I'm 28 now. I don't have savings. I haven't worked for years because I had a nervous breakdown when I was 24 after being sexually assaulted. I tried CBT, beta-blockers, and a myriad of anti-depressants, guzzling on mushroom powders, but ultimately, I very much became a homebound agoraphobic once more.

I was diagnosed first with agoraphobia when I was 14.

I swear, I'm not an absolutely miserable cunt...

Well, not fully anyway.

Being reliant on the NHS for help my whole life has been nothing but a fucking nightmare. CAHMS was a joke, and it's only in recent years I started looking into the amount of people who were abused in that system. People didn't know what to do with a hyper anxious girl who could not simply slot in to a system of which worked for the majority. I next exceeded 20% attendance in a school year, despite the very helpful threats from social services.

I struggle to see how things have changed, frankly.

And I mention all of that to say that I've never felt more shame about my situation. I've never felt more scared about my future, especially when I am so reliant on my Mum, who is ageing like milk that's been left out on a patio in Portugal, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to help her as she gets older. My friend's lives are all falling into place, and mine has never felt so glum.

I was just curious to see if anything had indeed changed from when I was a child, and I saw a statistic of how more children are being submitted to A&E with self-harm injuries. And I can't help but ponder how shoving them on a waiting list for years and offering 6 sessions of CBT is going to help. I mean, two people I love attempted to take their own life and were just told to go back to their GP.

I don't feel all that positive right now.

I don't know why the fuck I think writing this on the internet is a good idea. However, people who play politics for a personality don't get that they make people who are struggling feel like debate fodder.

People are really fucking struggling, and if they get fucking 2% better, I'm sure most would take it. This incessant need to shit on anything that resembles some kind of hope is actually gross. And in fact, I think it's cruel.

Is 2% better the dream? No, obviously fucking not.

But am I going to fucking bite at the next middle-class person who goes on the internet or pops up on a TV panel and tells people who are struggling what to think? Yes.

I'm sharpening my teeth with an emery board as we speak.

Now, while we all sit on NHS waiting lists trying to convince ourselves that life just might one day get better, it'd be nice if more lefties on the internet would stop being such insufferable cunts.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Austin Lake's Twitch Stream

by Sparky441 It all started when Buzzfeed Unsolved made a video about Delphi Strawberry Services. . Or did it start with that one tweet? . Well… maybe it all started when a kid from Gotham Academy went missing a little over a year ago. A kid who just so happened to be in Damian’s Third Grade Class. . Actually, how it really all started, was that Austin Lake created a Social Media Platform to promote his music online. And it all snowballed from there. (can be read as a stand alone fic, or as an AU of Sunlit Gotham) Words: 7103, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 6 of Sunlit Gotham Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Austin Lake, Tim Drake (DCU), Kon-El | Conner Kent, Cassie Sandsmark, Bart Allen, Lee Fletcher, Shane Madej, Ryan Bergara, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown, Roy Harper, Kayla Knowles, Julia Feingold, Valentina Diaz, Connor Stoll, Malcolm Pace, Original Characters, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: does this count as crack?, I feel like it counts - I'm gonna count it, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack Crossover, Alternate Universe - Crack, does it count as an AU if it's of my own fanfic?, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Demigods, Demigods are missing persons cases and you can't take that away from me, that wasn't a tag? wild, Tim Drake Needs a Nap, Tim Drake is Red Robin, young just us, Delphi Strawberry Services, Buzzfeed Unsolved References, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily Shenanigans (DCU), Conspiracy Theorist Tim Drake, Mentioned Damian Wayne, Mentioned Jonathan Samuel Kent, Mentioned Bernard Dowd, Mentioned Koriand'r (DCU), Mentioned Kara Danvers, Hijinks & Shenanigans, The internet has questions - they will not get their answers via https://ift.tt/n1hXQy0

[antylope]

How I became a top 0.1%, made money from it and then started hating it

Hi everyone, this will be a story about how transforming your hobby into a "dream job" does not turn out so good in reality. About 3 years ago, I got insanely good at an infamous game - League of Legends. I managed to earn a living from it but I eventually quit.

Before I start, I just want to state that this is NOT some form of bragging that I managed to do what many teenagers consider their dream. The truth to the story is there were many disadvantages that noone really hears about.

I got introduced to this game at the age of about 10 or 11 by my older brother. It looked fun to me, even though I was horrendous at it. I played it on and off since the age of 11 to the age of 15, not thinking much about it and often taking months, or even years off, when I got bored of it. Totally understandable, normal stuff.

I was 16 when COVID hit. I was stuck in my house, not having to go physically to school, with lots of time on my hands, so I thought to myself I'd give this game one more chance. I still was awful at it, but slowly I became a bit better. I started really liking it. I started thinking what I did wrong in the games I've played, what can I improve, what are my weaknesses. I started looking at guides on the internet, I watched countless hours of coaches talking how to play better. After a few months I hit Diamond (for those who do not know anything about this game - it is about top 5-10% of playerbase).

I knew I still had much room for improvement so I kept going. The better I got at the game the more drawn I was to it. Eventually, it became something I would consider my passion. It was not mindless playing to kill the time, I did EVERYTHING I could to be better at this game. I did not play when I was tired, I made sure to get quality sleep to perform better. I avoided foods that made my brainfog worse. I recorded all of my matches I have had played and reviewed them every day for one hour before going to sleep. I even set my alarm clock and woke up at 6 am, 2 full hours to play a few matches before having to listen to online classes.

I had one thing in mind - to become the best. I was very ambitious, I lived for this game and I LOVED IT. Eventually, at the age of 17 achieved Master rank, which was top 1-0.5%. This still was not enough to make money from it, so I kept going. I knew I could achieve more. I was very emotional about every match I played, I knew I had to put 100% of my effort to perform as best as I could.

Getting to the plot, at the point of my 18th birthday I became so good I was in the top 2000 players in the whole Europe. Out of millions of people who play it everyday, I was one of the best. I was so proud of myself. This was the point in which I thought to myself, "I am ready to make a carrier out of it".

To explain how you can earn money from this game, there are 3 options: 1) Become a professional player, play for a team and conquer the world 2) Be a coach and sell your services to help other people get better 3) Boosting, which in simple terms can be explained by: logging onto someone's account (or playing with them) and winning a lot of games to boost their rank and get paid for it.

I chose the third option, since it paid the most for an average person who tried to earn money from playing this game. I applied to many sites which offered such services, not as a customer but as an "employee". After a few weeks I finally got in. The procedure was complicated and it was insanely difficult to get in, but somehow I have made it.

At first, I loved it. Playing my favourite game and get paid for it? That's amazing! I broke the code to becoming rich! 3 months have passed and this is when the realisation started to hit me. This "job" (if I can even call it such) had many downsides, which were obviousely not talked about. I will try to name as many as I can:

1) You most often had to """work""" (play) a minimum of 12 hours a day to earn any significant money - being on the top of the game and keeping focus and energy throughout all this time is IMMENSELY difficult. Near impossible I'd argue. 2) You often had to wait hours to be able to start playing, because there simple were no customers that wanted the service. 3) The sites that offered such service took a minimum of 40% cut from the work you did, meaning if you'd earn 100€, you would have to give 40€ to the site. 4) Some customers were awful people - they paid as little as it was possible, while simultaneously demanding the highest quality and the quickest service to be provided. Many of them also had weird specific requirements, such as playing only during certain hours, playing certain role, champions, configuration, etc, which was extremely annyoing since you couldn't just do your "job", but instead you'd have to deal with their oddities. 5) You have to play even if you don't want to. You don't like certain changes in the game on the newest update? That's a shame, you still have to perform at your best. You wanted to take a break? Nope, you are obligated to finish your order. There was no such thing as weekend. You wanted to go on holidays? One month of not being active and you'd get kicked from the site. 6) The competition was cutthroat. New orders from customers were picked up by boosters (people doing the "job") in a matter of SECONDS, making you sit in front of the screen sitting there with impatience. 7) Absolutely no time for any other hobbies, cooking healthy, nutritious meals or even school. I would do the bare minimum to pass all the exams just to have more time to grind this game.

As you can see, there was a lot that could, and went wrong with playing this game as a source of income. But most of the time I just clenched my teeth and pushed through it. If you dealth with all of the unconformities your income was pretty nice. In my opinion you could easily make a living out of it, especially in my country. The salary was paid in Euro, which is much more valuable than our local currency, and 500€ of income a month would be enough to keep you going without a real job. Add to that the fact that I lived with my parents, went to school, so this money was amazing for me, especially when I did my "dream job".

This allowed me to live like a king compared to my peers this age. Can you even imagine, still being in highschool and making as much money as an adult with a real job, while you're just sitting in front of a computer and play games? This was something which many of my friends were jealous of, hah, even my parents were. My dad was very supportive of it and my mother said it is "unfair for me to earn as much as she does when she is more than 20 years older than me and she works a REAL JOB". Noone knew the reality, the dark side of it, how it drained you from all of your energy. It was extremely stressful, it drained you emotionally aswell, which caused me to perform worse each month.

Deep down inside of me I knew I needed a break, but I always said to myself: "Come on, THIS is what you wanted all your life! You are playing games for a living! Stop being an entitled, ungrateful kid and appreciate where you got in life!".

Slowly, I started despising this game. I hated every bit of it, I hated the changes, I hated the stress, I hated how much time I have to put in, I hated the customers, my "coworkers", I hated the whole atmosphere. I wanted to escape from it. I wanted to break away from the chains that I have put myself in. This was also about the time where I started to change my life for the better. I lost a bit of weight, I took mental health seriousely. I started going for walks. You have no idea how amazing they felt - I just felt at peace. I felt like I could take a deep breath and finally take some rest.

This made me understand one thing - I don't like this game and it is restraining me from becoming a better person, from improving my life. All of the people who play it are losers like I was, they hate their pathetic lifes and they live without any real social connections. This realisation helped me decide to cut this game out of my life once for good.

When I uninstalled this game, I felt a void in my heart. Previousely, it was all my life. I was what I was thinking about while waking up, when going to sleep, while in school, while on the toilet. I LIVED FOR IT. I just did not know what to do with myself. All of a sudden I had so much free time on my hands. You can compare it to an animal which spent all its' life in a cage. Then people decided to release it to the wild. The animal just sits there, stares at the trees, not knowing he is finally free. It's because he never experienced other life than the one it had in the cage. I felt very similar to this animal. On one hand, I finally did not have to stress. On the other hand, all that I worked for? Destroyed. My passion? Gone.

Right now, about 2 years later, I still am confused what to exactly do with my life. This might sound depressing, but I have no reason to get out of my bed. I have nothing I can put my best efforts in. I don't know what path to choose. I am wasting countless hours doing things which I don't care about, like scrolling social media. Even though I know I made the right choice, my life got better in almost every aspect, I still am lost. My life now is constantly seeking such another thing which will make me trully live again.

The conclusion of this story is that the world on other side of the bridge might look completely different that you'd imagined. You might reconsider seriousely if you really want to transform your hobby into your work, since this is when you start to most often hate it. That is why I also believe your job should not be something you love. It will suck the life out of you.

Thank you for taking your time to read it. As always, if you have any questions, if you want me to explain anything, or even if you want to throw a hate comment out there, go for it. I will be more than happy to read it and respond to you.

[future-sign]

Fulfill Your Dreams: How to Earn from Home Successfully

In 2024, the internet has opened up numerous opportunities for individuals to earn a substantial income from the comfort of their homes. With a wide range of online jobs available, it is now possible to pursue a lucrative career by mastering a job that aligns with your interests and expertise. The flexibility and convenience of working remotely enable you to earn a significant income while enjoying the comfort and convenience of your home.

It is essential to recognize that most methods of earning money online necessitate dedication, perseverance, and a patient approach. While the internet offers numerous opportunities to generate income, it typically takes time and effort to achieve meaningful results. Building a successful online venture or establishing a steady stream of online income often requires consistent work, learning, and adapting to the evolving digital landscape.

However, here are some ways you can make money online relatively quickly:

1. Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is promoting other people's products and earning a commission on each sale. You can start by creating a blog or a YouTube channel, and promote products related to your niche.

2. Freelance Work: If you have skills like writing, graphic designing, web development, or any other skill that can be offered as a service, then you can start freelancing on various online platforms. You can create a profile on websites like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and start getting clients from all around the world.

3. Online Teaching: If you have expertise in any subject, you can teach it online. You can offer classes on websites like Udemy, Skillshare, or Teachable. You can also offer personalized coaching or tutoring services.

4. Sell digital products: If you have skills like graphic design, programming, or writing, you can create and sell digital products like e-books, stock photos, or website templates on websites like Gumroad or Creative Market.

5. Dropshipping: Dropshipping is an e-commerce model where you don't have to maintain an inventory. You can create an online store, and when someone orders a product, you purchase it from a supplier who ships the product directly to the customer.

6. Online transcription: Some companies pay people to transcribe audio or video files into written documents. You can find transcription opportunities on websites like Rev or TranscribeMe.

7. Online Surveys: There are many websites that pay for completing online surveys. Though the pay is not very high, it can be a good source of side income. Some popular survey sites are Swagbucks, Survey Junkie, and Vindale Research.

Also, you can start your work in the freelance sector. If you learn any high-demand skill like Graphic Design- Digital Marketing-Video Editing so, you can earn huge money from that type of work.

Here you will find one of your most choice-full platforms where you can start your online Job from home.

Top 5 freelancing platforms:

1. Upwork

2. Freelancer

3. Fiverr

4. Guru

5. PeoplePerHour

Note that these are some ideas to start now, and your success in making money from home depends on various factors such as your skills, experience, dedication, and market demand. Hope you understand all and it will be helpful for you. Have a Nice journey.

[bktrashcat]

20 Questions for fic writers

Thank you @yerbamansa for tagging me in this!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

9 

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

213,812

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Our Flag Means Death

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Laundry Service (91,893 words) Modern AU, Ed/Stede long-distance relationship

Hey Good Lookin’ (32,533 words) Modern AU, Ed/Stede cooking class meet cute 

Exchanging Glances (26,093 words) Modern AU, Ed/Stede security cam voyeur 

work that, work that, pop back, hurt that (3,416 words) Modern AU, Ed/Stede charity car wash

Sunlight in the Midnight (47,992 words) Modern AU, Ed/Stede nursing home romance

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I respond to every comment, unless it’s a binge read, then usually just the last comment. I’m a fairly shy person, even shyer on the internet for some reason, so when people comment, I just assume it takes a lot of effort. I love the different conclusions drawn, parallels or details pulled (intended or not), and I like to engage with that. 

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

I don’t think I write angsty endings, even though I love reading them. I would say maybe Mutually Fulfilling, since it’s Oluwande trying to process Jim leaving while he’s having a nice threesome with Frenchie and Wee John? Or, maybe The Fish and The Bird, since it’s end of season one Roach and the gang marooned on the island? 

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I think they all have happy endings, except the more nebulous ones mentioned above! Happiest? Maybe Hey Good Lookin’ or Pearly Like the Whites of Your Eyes, which are just pretty fluffy bits all around.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope! People have been very cool.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeah! It’s been MLM so far, but I’d like to expand if I keep writing fic.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Nope.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

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

I feel like I co-write all of my fics with my wonderful beta. He’s got great story and plot instincts, and we build off of each other really well. 

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I’ve only written Ed/Stede really, but I do love their weirdness and their matching puzzle pieces of insecurity and self-loathing. Maybe they’re my favorite! I’ve surely never saved and bought so much fanart for any other ship.

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

Oh, I took one down–sorry–because the guilt ate at me knowing I was never going to finish it. Plus, I hated it. I have some that I haven’t posted, and I doubt they’ll ever make it that far, as much as I want them to be written. I guess the three that nag at me the most are a “Coming to America” Oluwande/Jim (…..?) fic, a QVC Ed/Stede fic and a private eye Steddyhands-ish mystery. 

16. What are your writing strengths?

Hm. I like writing comfortable, but slightly left-field premises and stories. I also love research, so writing Ed in Vietnam in Laundry Service was very fun to build, even though I haven’t been to Vietnam yet. I like when things are very grounded, which can also be to my detriment, I think. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Yeah, keeping things too grounded, maybe? Plot holes. Timelines. Emotional depth is something I really have to focus on and slow down to write, and even then it’s not always where I want it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

That could be very cool and challenging to do as a longer piece. I’ve done bits with Jim in Spanish, Oluwande in Igbo, Roach in Arabic, and the Swede in Swedish. Some French gets thrown around. I would love love love to write more of Oluwande speaking a language native to West Africa, where Prince Azi’s accent nods to, which is why that “Coming to America” fic screams at me so much. 

19. First fandom you wrote for?

This is the first fandom I’ve posted online for, and what a nice entry point. The last time I wrote fic was in high school twenty years ago, and that was just me and my bestie writing Saturday Night Live rpf in our notebook. 

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Hands down, my current fic, Sunlight in the Midnight is my favorite fic that I’ve written so far. Forty-five year old Ed is a nurse at 81 year old Stede’s retirement community. I love that we call these middle-agers ‘old men,’ so I just made one of them actually old. I want to explore what it’s like to find love very late in life, emotionally and (of course) physically. I want to see some elderly queer love and sex. I think about these two all of the time. They’re still working through their bullshit and neuroses, and they have these histories that I love to dig into, and I just love them so much. A hyperfixation in a hyperfixation. I also feel like I’m watching myself grow in my writing in real time. I’m playing with some different things that I never thought I’d try (mainly with Stede’s journal entries), and it feels like a writing journal with different writing and story goals each chapter. I’m writing with all of the elements that I love from the show and my own life. I’m slowing things down. It’s a fic that makes me wish I was years ahead in my writing skills to catch up with how much I love these characters and want to properly tell their love story.

[ourincrediblejourney]

February 2024:

We are excited to share that Skiff is joining Notion. Skiff's mission is to bring freedom to the internet by helping people collaborate and communicate with freedom and privacy. … We’re extremely excited to accelerate our mission by joining forces with Notion’s world-class team. We sincerely hope that the Skiff community will join us for this next stage of our journey. We’re pursuing big plans for making all of our online lives freer and more empowered, and these plans will carry forward directly the ambitions we’ve strived for alongside the Skiff community. As we begin to shift focus to our shared efforts with Notion, we will be closing down Skiff's product suite after a 6-month sunset period … For the next 6 months, Skiff services will continue to operate without disruption, and users can freely duplicate, migrate, or export data. You can now also set up a forwarding address to redirect mail to any other provider. … The Skiff community has lifted, inspired, and energized us at every step. We are humbled by your support and we apologize for any disappointment or inconvenience this change may cause you. We remain as committed as ever to bringing about the vision for a better internet that brought us together. Thank you for being part of the Skiff family, and we look forward to continuing to serve you with our future efforts.

(Thanks, Zephi)

[babygirlspurgeon]

15 People 15 Questions

thank you @giveemgreef and @girlfriendline for the tag!!! 💖

1. are you named after anyone?

no but the line “Remember, like, a few years ago, every other boy was named Jason, and the girls were all named Brittany?” from the seminal classic animated movie Hercules is about me

2. when was the last time you cried?

i cry…… very easily to music when i’m feeling it so a few days ago with that. real crying? sometime in the last week over something very stupid (favorite tv show being stupid)

3. do you have kids?

no and the older i get the less i want any (i did help a lot my sister so i kinda already did it a bit ya know)

4. what sports do you play/have you played?

i played rec soccer from 8-15, tried gymnastics, ice skating, and volleyball as a kid too but dropped them after the first season bc I thought they were boring/was the oldest kid in the class and didn’t like that. also did a summer session of softball with people from work a decade ago (also didn’t like that)

5. do you use sarcasm?

i never use sarcasm i would never do that!!!! (said incredibly sarcastically!!! because no one can stop me!!!!)

6. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

idk height maybe?

7. what’s your eye color?

hazel

8. scary movies or happy endings?

i am a baby and refuse to watch anything remotely thrillery, let alone scary, so very happy endings

9. any talents?

uhhhhhh i can clap with each hand individually which is dumb but always hilarious to watch other people try to do

10. where were you born?

here in (not currently) minnesnowta

11. what are your hobbies?

photography, baking (when not exhausted from bakery job lmao), spending too much time on the internet, watching my hockey team emotionally devastate me, I do enjoy going for walks and I need to do that more for my brain, oh also can't forget them bracelets <3

12. do you have any pets?

not currently but i will share a random photo of my dog who i miss with my whole heart <3

13. how tall are you?

5’4ish

14. favorite subject in school?

math (not stats tho fuck stats) and biology!

15. dream job.

i do not dream of labor <3 my dream for my current job is to lose the customer service aspect of it so i can just make beautiful baked goods and pastries and then go home <3

i’ll tag anyone who hasn’t been tagged yet who hasn’t yet and also @amandaleveille @wildaboutmnhockey @emmowned @ninoniederreiter @letkirillfight

[dzthenerd490]

File: The Babadook

SCP#: AFK

Code Name: The Anxiety Demon/ The Gay Freedom Cry.

Object Class: Keter Joke/Archon

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-AFK is contained a within a book at the [data expunged] library within a private selection. Due to SCP-AFK's anomalous abilities this area is the idea place to keep SCP-AFK in a single contained area. To further ensure containment, the book SCP-AFK is in has magical scriptures provided by the Department of Technology, Alchemy, Science, Magic and Warfare. The purpose of the scriptures is to further ensure that SCP-AFK does not move the book it currently possesses. SCP-AFK is to be left alone despite its surge through the internet. Because of its transition from a literature-based anomaly to a meme-based anomaly it has become impossible to contain. Though Mobile Task Force Kappa-10 is to monitor its movement through the web they are not to interfere with its growing influence.

Description: SCP-AFK was originally a demonic entity that found victims in people under depression, stress, and anxiety. SCP-AFK typically takes the form of a large man dressed in a large black coat, with a black top hat, and has a pale white face, extremely light blue eyes to the point that they appear white, and disgusting black teeth with black lips. SCP-AFK normally appears first as a pop-up book that seems child friendly to trick whoever sees it to read it to the whole family. It's because of this that it was theorized that SCP-AFK prefers to attack families of at minimum one parent and one child. Once the sinister true nature of the book is revealed and a reader of the book starts to get scared, they will immediately become infected with SCP-AFK's influence.

SCP-AFK will then proceed to torment its victims and slowly spread to everyone within the same household. SCP-AFK will continue to break down the victims filling them with paranoia, constant anxiety, utter despair, and agony until the mentally break. SCP-AFK will then possess the individual that is the most mentally broken of the family. They will then proceed to kill everyone in the family and then themselves, feeding SCP-AFK in the process. Once SCP-AFK has finished killing everyone and feeding on their despair, it will transform back into a popup book and attempt to find a new family. How exactly SCP-AFK finds new victims are unknown.

SCP-AFK was discovered in 2014 at [data expunged], Australia where it was found in the house of a widow and her seven-year-old son. A string of murders and family suicides lead to the house as well as witness reports of the widow, [data expunged], and her son, [data expunged], acting strangely. SCP-AFK was found in the basement, apparently it was unable to possess the widow anymore but refused to leave thus a sort of truce was made. The truce being that SCP-AFK would remain in the basement and never leave to hurt the widow or anyone else so long as she fed him bugs and worms every day. Foundation agents disguised as Child Serivces's agents went to the house and when going to the basement found the book form of SCP-AFK. The widow begged them to leave the book in the basement, but the child told them about SCP-AFK and therefore they kept the book in exchange for not reporting the widow to the real Child Services. After SCP-AFK was recovered Foundation forces snuck back into the house and gave the Widow and her child Class G Amnestic's to make them believe they imagined the anomaly.

SCP-AFK was transported to Site-AA for testing. After SCP-AFK's properties were discovered through extensive experiments by the Department of Technology, Alchemy, Science, Magic and Warfare SCP-AFK's true nature was finally discovered. SCP-AFK was sent to a library in [data expunged] to trick it into believing that at any time it could get a new victim.

Update: 6/23/2017 - SCP-AFK has somehow mutated into meme on the internet allowing it to travel anywhere. However rather than continuing to seek anxiety filled and depressed victims it seems to now take a liking to an entirely new food source.

SCP-AFK now spreads through meme's relating to LGBT+ such as topics, jokes, and inspirational quotes. SCP-AFK no longer feeds on the anxiety and depression of its victims nor does it possess them after breaking their minds. Instead, SCP-AFK now fills its intended victims with bravery; they become overwhelmed with the desire to express themselves, their identity, and sexuality. SCP-AFK ends up feeding on the resulting joy and ecstasy that comes from the host. SCP-AFK has grown stronger and as a result is able to possess more people at once and therefore feed more than ever before.

"It seems that most in the Foundation are willing to blame SCP-AFK for the sudden surge of memes as well as support for the LGBT+ Movement as a whole. I mean sure it might have pushed them in the right direction, but I think it's mainly just humans finally realizing that love is better than hate. The Foundation really doesn't give humanity enough credit to take care of itself, but I do agree that it took them longer than expected." -Dr. Zeek

"I find it hilarious but also extremely interesting that SCP-AFK turned from a Keter class demonic parasite to a Joke class gay meme. I only wish it was possible to turn other Keter class or dangerous class anomalies into Joke class anomalies like SCP-682, SCP-106, and SCP-079. But then again, I hate joke anomalies so maybe we stick to neutralizing them or just keep them rotting in their cells." -Site Director James.

.

SCP: Horror Movie Files Hub

[the3das]

Top 1st 3D Interior Rendering Services in the USA

3D Architect studio is the development of interpreting a waiter's answer into the photograph the browser “paints” as soon as a person visits an internet site. A bad translation overall performance can decode into a moderately high certain fee. There are distinctive server answers which decide whether or no longer a bit of paper is focused. High-quality scenery options on the interpretation dialog consent you to lay down the favoured class for the focused photograph. To present-day a plan to customers, you stereotypically want a high eminence rendered spitting picture. But, excessive-eminence purified images can be slow to engender. 3D Interior Rendering Services within the United States can use an extract with an adjective that publicizes a person's country to mention that a person or to some degree is changed into that government. As an instance, if a large shot or something makes a thing meaningless, you can say that they pay attention it innocent. The handiest impact translation has in your improvement is making it informal for audiences to load and view the content on their processor.

Select out a price between 300 to 600ppi will spring more than an adequate quantity of statistics for standard fashion condenses. In case you want to do any lifestyles-threatening near-united states on the realistic, you might prerequisite to do check extracts to see if it is essential, and if no longer, deliver throughout at a tough PPI. 3D Interior Rendering Services within the USA is an entertainer's clarification of a scene. The main varieties of equipment for a meltdown are epoxy resin, sand, lime, and marine. A commonplace mix ratio used for translation is 6 components sand, 1 part epoxy resin, and 1 element bottle green. Any widespread dedication cement can be solid-off, even though the sand should be quality and smooth of layers. An amazing quality exterior translation will make your draughty home a whole lot greater strength-green. External house translation is idyllic to feature lagging to the property having strong wall building. The upkeep of current condenses is regularly informal and does not have to be completed on a regular basis as conventional ways and methods. they are low repairs due to the fact they may be water nauseating - as an instance, the silicone render will only require an irregular strain shampoo.

[make-money-2023]

7 Ways Make Money Online

1. Convert your passion into money

A tool to help support the creator economy and the gig economy, Festi is an easy, fast and free way to earn money. Using Festi’s payment platform, creators can charge for online classes from anywhere at any time. “For example, if you are a fitness instructor and realize you have an hour to work out at the end of the day (or the next morning), you can post a pop-up workout (in person or on Zoom) and charge people to join you,” says founder Rita Ting-Hopper. Two of the top users are Bolivian sisters Jaz and Gabriela, who post high-intensity dance fitness classes. “With Festi, you can turn any idea into a business by posting your offer in literally minutes,” says Ting-Hopper. “There is no need to create a website, figure out a payment system or chase down Venmos to get paid.”

2. Make music

Have some musical talent? Check out Songfinch, which makes it possible for anyone to earn money by writing and producing music. Founded in 2016, Songfinch is backed by big industry names including The Weeknd, Quincy Jones and Doja Cat. Here’s how it works: People can order a personalized one-of-a-kind song from a Songfinch artist, from birthday jingles to holiday tunes to anniversary odes. The songwriters work on their own timeline and retain the full rights to everything they create. Some Songfinch artists have been able to earn up to $80,000 in one year.

3. Become a virtual assistant

As a virtual assistant, you can offer administrative, technical or creative services to clients from the comfort of your own home. And guess what—it pays well. You can find virtual assistant job opportunities through websites like Flexjobs, 24/7 Virtual Assistants and Fancy Hands.

4. Write a book

Whether you’re burning to pen the next great American novel or just have an idea for an e-book that will teach someone how to do something, it’s easier to write a book than you think. Gone are the days of agents and book publishers. These days, self-publishing has become simple and profitable, thanks to sites like Barnes & Noble Press (a free service that lets you sell print or ebooks to millions of readers), Blurb (which helps you create, print and sell professional-quality photo books) and Lulu (a print-on-demand platform with free tools to help create, publish and sell your story).

5. Offer freelance services

Writing, editing, graphic design, coding, digital marketing, admin work—whatever skill you have, the options are endless when it comes to freelancing. But how to get the word out there? You can easily offer services to clients around the world via a number of websites that allow users to enjoy the freedom and flexibility of finding freelance work from anywhere across the globe to grow your brand—and your dreams. Some of the best online talent solutions for connecting businesses with freelancers include Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer and Working Not Working.

6. Market your skills

Or perhaps your skills are more hands-on, from handyman work to cleaning to moving to home remodeling to something as simple as waiting in line. TaskRabbit is a platform that connects people with skilled professionals who can complete various tasks, while Airtasker is a company that acts as a marketplace for services providers. Unlike the traditional gig economy, Airtasker uses a flex economy model, with its “Taskers” working wherever and whenever they want and determining how much they want to get paid.

7. Share your internet bandwidth

Here’s an interesting way to earn passive income: Honeygain, an app that allows you to make money online by sharing your Internet connection. How does it work? Install the application and make sure that it’s running in the background; the app will do the work for you. The shared connection is used for various business cases, including ad verification, price comparison and brand protection. According to Honeygain, the company takes privacy seriously and uses various encryption technologies to ensure that the data being transmitted through the platform is safe and protected. Users can increase their earnings by adding more devices and connecting them to different IP addresses, adding referrals, opening a “lucky pot” every day and participating in social media contests.