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thechekhov · 4 years ago

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Hi Chekhov! Really enjoying your white diamond au! I had a quick art question: How do you start comissions? I've been improving my drawing skills and thinking about drawing for others after having fun in artfight, but I don't know where to start? How much to charge, how to get paid, etc. Do you have any tips? Hope you're doing well! :)

Alright, since a few people have asked, I’ve decided to put together a few things about how to get started on commissions - what you need, what you should make, and how to keep things organized.

This will get a little long, so I’ll divide it into 4 main sections:

1) Draw Art - Getting started

2) Get Commissioned - Making a commission sheet, Advertising

3) ??? - Communicating, Setting Limits, Running the Business

4) Profit - Pricing Yourself and Getting Paid

* Disclaimer: I’m an artist, so this How-To will be illustration-focused. I’m sure many of these tips can apply to ANY types of commissions, but I will be focusing on the type I know best. If you are proficient in other types of commissions for other types of art - music commissions, photography, etc - feel free to chime in and leave a comment or make your own tutorial!

1) Draw Art

I think this is probably the most obvious part, but it needs to be said:

Before you start making art for other people, you must first be comfortable making art in general.

I’m not saying your art has to be Disney-quality, or industry-level! Not at all.

BUT! You must be comfortable creating what you sell. If you try to sell something you have little confidence in, you will stress yourself out and possibly end up losing time AND money.

Don’t shoot for the moon if you haven’t landed on it even once. Sell what you know you’re good at. Your commissions don’t HAVE to include full-body illustrations if you don’t know how to draw feet/solid stances. Limit yourself to what you can do.

Things you need to should probably have before starting commissions:

1. Access to art materials or a fully downloaded art program

DO NOT - Use a free tutorial version that will expire in a month and leave you without a way to draw! If you are having trouble finding a program, try free ones like MediBang Paint Pro.

2. Free time to complete the amount of commissions you want to take.

DO NOT - Take on or offer commissions if you KNOW you’re going to be overwhelmed with school or personal life for the next 2+ months. Pace yourself, otherwise you’ll burn out, get stressed, and get discouraged.

3. A reliable way to communicate with your customers like a commissions-only email

DO NOT - Use your friend/family/college email. It’s hard to keep track of things as it is, and creating new emails is easy and free. And keep it professional if you can! Not many people will reach out to dong-wiggles20434 to ask for a design. Ideally, your email should be close to your brand - however you want to brand yourself. Usernames are fine!)

DO NOT - Use Instagram/Twitter/Tumblr to collect commission info unless you are ready to do the organizing yourself. Some people make it work, but in my experience, if you use these SNS sites to communicate with friends and network... you’re going to be losing commission inquiries right and left and accidentally ignoring people. Email is much easier to organize and sort into folders.

4. A portfolio or at least 2-3 pieces of each type of art you’re planning to sell.

DO NOT - Advertise commissions without having any examples of the art you plan to sell. People will find it difficult to trust you if you can’t even give them a vague idea of what sort of drawing they’ll be getting.

Disclaimer: These are not hard ‘do not’s. If you have had a different experience, I respect that. I’m simplifying for the sake of streamlining this advice.

2) Get Commissioned

So - you have your art, you have your art program, and you’ve got all the time in the world. That means.... that’s right! It’s time to let the world know you’re taking commissions.

One of the most common ways artists signal to their audience that they can do commissions is by creating a commissions sheet. There are MANY ways to make this - and they range from simple and doodly ones to VERY complex designs. For example, here’s mine!

There are many ways to organize a commission sheet. At its core, a commission sheet should display the types of art you WANT to be commissioned to make. Let’s go over a few ways they can be done!

#1.... Body Portion Dividers!

This sheet is most common with those who want to capitalize on drawing people and characters. If you want to draw lots of characters, this is a great way to offer several tiers of pricing based on how much of their character your customers want to see.

#2... Complexity Scale

If you’re open to drawing many things but want to base your pricing off of how complex something is, you can split your tiers into done-ness. This type of commission is popular with those that draw characters AND animals, furries, etc.

#3.... Style and Type

If you’re more on the design side of things, or if you have various niche art styles that you can’t quite lump together, display a variety of your skills alongside each other! It helps if all the ones you have can be organized under a common customer - like those looking to advance their own business and get logos, websites, or mascots made for them!

3) ???

You got your first commission... what happens now???

Well, ideally you have the time, tools and motivation to make things happen! Now all you have to do is... sit down and... draw.......

I’m going to say something that may be a little controversial:

Commissions aren’t fun.

No, no, hear me out: I have fun doing commissions! I genuinely enjoy drawing characters and coming up with designs. But even with all that said, commissions are, first and foremost: WORK

I’m not saying this to discourage you, I’m saying this to keep things realistic. When I first began commissions, I thought it would be just like any other type of drawing. I would sit down, imagine a thing, draw it... it would be fun!

But then I realized that I couldn’t just draw what I wanted - another person had an idea in mind and had asked me to do it. I stressed over getting the design correct from descriptions. I stressed over not having the right reference for the pose the commissioner wanted. I stressed over not being able to draw the leg right in the way I had promised I would do. I stressed about billing. I stressed about digital money transfers. It was difficult, and time-consuming, and I did not enjoy it. At all.

And a part of that is definitely on the commissioner - we, as artists, NEED to demand proper references or descriptions. We, as artists, NEED to limit the amount of changes we’re going to make at the flick of a finger. We NEED to demand clear instructions and set boundaries. That’s also super important.

But also - don’t be discouraged if you find yourself exhausted drawing your first commission. MANY artists go through this. Adjust your rules, fix up your limits, practice putting your foot down on finicky commissioners who expect you to read their mind! It does get easier, but you have to communicate and put in the effort and act as your own manager AND your own customer service AND your own accountant. That’s what you’re looking at.

Good limits and boundaries to set:

Limit the amount of changes a person can ask to make. “I want blue hair.” Next email: “No wait, yeah, make it red.” Next email: “Actually I changed my mind, can I get the blue but like, lighter?” Next email: “No, not that light.” ... At some point, we have to stop. I personally allow 2-3 changes on the final stages of a commission before I start refusing or start asking for extra money.

Demand clear instructions and/or references. If something isn’t described, you have to take artistic liberty and design it, but that’s difficult! And if the customer is not happy with it but can’t tell you more? That’s not your problem - the burden of reference is on THEM. You cannot read their mind, and that’s not your fault.

Get at least half the payment up front! This is a good balance between the ‘pay before art’ and the ‘pay after art’ conundrum that will limit the amount of woes between artist and customer. (I’ll touch upon this a little more in the Profit section.)

Organization:

Where possible, create good habits! Tag your emails and organize your folders. I have a tag on my emails for active and finished commissions. I also keep my emails on Unread until I have time to sit down and properly look at/reply to them.

My Commissions in the folder are also organized chronologically and I mark down which ones are paid and which ones are not.

(I understand not everyone can do this, but if you want to give it a try, it does make things easier in the long run. Again, this advice is just what I have found personally helps.)

One last thing - I do not want to shame ANYONE for taking their time with commissions! Commissions are complex, and they take time and work. You can draw in 8 hours, but some things take research, materials, etc. Some illustrations realistically take up to half a year, or, depending on what’s involved, several years!!

THAT BEING SAID - it’s good manners to be upfront with your customers about how long you expect the commission to take. If you think you’re busy, just say that! Explain that you have a lot going on, and you will probably take (insert time period here).

And if your commissioners are worried, work out a system to keep them updated! I send my commissioners updates when I finish the lineart/flat colors/etc and I try to be clear about how long everything will take. I try to estimate with a +3-5 days buffer to give myself extra time... and recently I’ve been using it. Always say a bigger number than you think you’ll need.

If someone wants a rushed commission... make them pay more. If ANYONE wants a commission done ‘by the end of the week’ - that’s an automatic rush-job for me because I’m juggling an irl job and several commissions at once. I WILL charge a rush fee and I won’t feel bad about it.

If someone wants a commission within 24 hours...... Well, they better be paying you 3x your normal amount, or more. And remember - you CAN refuse! It’s perfectly reasonable to say ‘No, sorry, that sort of turnaround time is not realistic for me.’

Food For Thought - Invoicing

Many artists I’ve commissioned in the past have not used Invoicing, but I’ve recently begun to fill out invoices and file them in my Commissions folder just to keep track of things. It’s not necessary until you start getting into the Small Business side of Freelancing, but it’s not a bad idea to get into the habit early in case you might need to do it later for tax purposes.

Here’s what my Invoice looks like, for example.

I’ve optimized it to help me remember who, what, and how much is involved! It also contains important info for my customers like where to send the money.

Which brings us to...

4) Profit

One of the hardest things for artists is pricing themselves. I’m not going to tell you which way is BEST - there is no BEST way, only the best way for YOU.

One of the options available to you is pricing by the hour. It includes averaging out how long it takes you to draw a specific type of art (whatever you’re offering as a commission) and multiplying that by an hourly wage you’ve decided on.

When you do this, I stress - do NOT price yourself below minimum wage if you can help it. When you first start out, aim for the $15/hour mark and adjust accordingly.

Other ways to price your art:

- Per complexity: Portraits vs full body should be scaled based on how difficult you find one vs. the other. You can also easily decide on a price for a sketch and double it for lineart, triple it for full color, etc.

- Per type: Look up for industry prices for website design and logo design. They may surprise you! You don’t have to charge that much, but it helps to keep things in perspective.

It’s okay to change your prices! Keep your commission sheet image handy so you can update the amounts as you grow. :)

Payment up front or after completion?

Some artist take full payment up front. Some only demand payment after they’ve finished and sent out the piece. I personally think these are both risky for everyone involved.

I recommend doing at least HALF of the payment BEFORE you start the commission. Calculate your full price and ask for half before you start working on it in earnest, to make sure the person can actually pay you. Then, when they receive the full piece and are satisfied, they can complete the payment.

I personally work in this structure:

> Someone emails me with their idea/reference

> I send back a rough draft sketch that shows the idea/pose (only takes me 10-20 minutes so not a huge loss if they ghost) and quote them a price

> They can pay the full thing upfront OR pay half

> I finish the commission and send updates when I do the lineart/colors to double check anything so they have multiple chances to spot any errors

> If the person paid only half on completion, I send them a low-res version of the finished thing, they finish up their payment and THEN I send them the full-res version plus any other filetypes/CYMK proofs, etc.

Many of the people who commission me pay me up front even though I offer they pay half - and I’m really flattered that they trust me that much! Because of that, I feel encouraged to update them frequently and ask for their input as I work, so they have the peace of mind knowing I’m actually doing their commission.

Great, but how do I get PAID????

There are NUMEROUS ways - these days money is relatively easy to transfer over digital means, and you have a few options.

Paypal is perhaps one of the oldest digital wallets and is geared towards businesses. By setting up a PayPal and connecting it to your debit card of bank account, you can tunnel a pathway from your online business directly into your hands in a matter of days.

Paypal also offers Invoicing - you make an invoice, price it and send it to the person’s email and they can pay whatever way they need! (It also allows partial payments.)

Pros: transfers from PayPal to bank account are free, and take a couple of business days. It also has no upper limit to the amount of money you can move in/out each month. It can force refunds due to the nature of its business-oriented payment system.

Cons: Because it’s used by businesses for larger transactions, PayPal may demand a more rigorous proof of your identity. It may also take longer to set up and be harder to get used to. I’ve also heard that they can be a hassle when it comes to closing your account.

Venmo is another type of digital wallet that acts much like paypal, except for a few key differences - it is NOT made for businesses (so depending on whether you’re officially registered as a freelancer, you may not be able to use it). I personally don’t use venmo, so I cannot speak to its usefulness, but I know a few people that use it for casual transactions. It’s easy and quick! :)

Keep in mind that you cannot force a refund over venmo! The transactions are final.

There’s also CashApp, GooglePay (which could load gift cards but also allows peer-to-peer transactions) and I’ve heard good things about Due, though I’ve never personally used it.

Other ways to pay: I’ve had people pay me over Patreon by upping their pledge, and I’ve had people pay me over Ko-Fi by donating a specific amount.

Many people even use Etsy - the website specialized for independent small businesses selling art - by listing their commission sheet and offering up several ‘slots’ of commissions, which allows you to track taxes AND allows your clients to pay using whatever they feel comfortable with.

If you’re in Canada, you can even pay by emailing money directly from bank account to bank account - check whether your country offers this type of service! There’s no shortage of ways to move money in the digital world.

Just like everything else, there’s no singular ‘Best’ way. It just depends on what works for you.

I think that just about wraps it up! I can’t quite think of what else to put here - but I’m sure other artists will chime in with their own advice. :) I’m very sorry this became so long but I hope it was helpful!

Obligatory Disclaimer: I’m not qualified to give legal or accounting counsel. Please double-check the laws in your own country/state in regards to taxation of freelancing work and do your own research. If you are underage, DEFINITELY get an adult’s permission before you start doing commissions, and have the adult help you through the process.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

OTHER POSTS YOU MAY FIND USEFUL:

An Extended Post on Pricing Yourself for Commissions

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome/Feeling ‘Not Good Enough’

Growing Your Audience

Advice for Starting Digital Art

#Anonymous #long post #commissions #how to #infograph #how to do commissions #arting #art tutorial

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stars-falling · 3 years ago

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late night at the local convenience store (elriel)

summary: elain, desperate for snacks, visits her local store late at night and bumps into her supposed rival (and he's hot).

prompt: esteemed rival chefs find each other shamefully buying ramen at 3 in the morning AU

word count: 1985

note: welcome to the first july upload! this piece was written for a writing month challenge and i had great fun with it! i'm really excited for the other pieces i'll be posting over the next month. i hope you enjoy them as much as i enjoyed writing them! i'll continue working on other pieces over the month too, so there will be more coming after july (hopefully i can finally finish part 2 of both a storm and a summer's day).

in the meantime, hope you enjoy!

lily (tysm for 760 followers btw! love you all <3)

read here on ao3 // masterlist

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Archeron’s Kitchen was the most popular restaurant in Velaris. It had the best food, the best drinks, the best atmosphere, and Elain had never been more proud to say that she was the Head Chef. It had taken years of hard work from both her and her two sisters to reach the level they were at now and they only continued to grow. The sisters worked closely together: Nesta (the eldest) directed the finance and other admin, Feyre (the youngest) worked on the design aspects and managed the staff and Elain manned the menus and the actual cooking. They worked well together, with only minor disagreements happening occasionally, and soon they had rocketed to the most well known and sought after restaurant in Velaris.

This was why she was contemplating her life choices as she pulled up to the local convenience store to buy ramen at 3 am. It wasn’t even the nice ramen; it was the crappy 50p packet of ramen that took less than a minute to cook. She often tried to utilise her skills to cook herself the healthiest and tastiest meals but recently she had been working overtime due to another restaurant's rising popularity. The two staff had even formed some sort of rivalry, trash-talking each other in the streets and slandering the other restaurant to their patrons. She found it childish, so Elain didn’t partake, but she did find it mildly amusing. The new restaurant was several streets over and it was the opposite of Archeron’s Kitchen in every way. Where they were warm and cosy, Starfall was sleek and modern. Where they focused on comfort foods, Starfall served new and innovative dishes. People went to the Archeron’s for the food, whereas people went to Starfall for the experience. And where the Archeron’s Kitchen was run by three sisters, Starfall was run by three brothers.

She had never actually met them. She knew their names and what they looked like but in terms of interactions she had only caught a glimpse of two of them once before. They had stood in the main square with Feyre and Nesta arguing about the importance of serving classic food. Her sisters had both come away grumbling about ‘upstart assholes with no sense of tradition’. As far as Elain was aware, the two brothers they had argued with weren’t actually in charge of the menu, making her unsure if they had full authority over the subject, but she didn’t want to start them off again so she refrained from mentioning it.

Elain pulled into an empty parking space and took a moment to lay her head against the headrest and close her eyes. She was tired and hungry. There was no food in the fridge, her bank account was looking quite sorry for itself and she still had more menus to plan and ideas for new dishes to brainstorm. Steeling herself, she hauled herself out of the car and locked it as she walked to the bright light of the store. She pulled the hood of the tattered sweatshirt she wore over her head as a precaution against recognition. With the status of a semi-famous chef, she didn’t want anyone to see her in the somewhat pitiful state she was in. The bell rang as she pushed open the door, signalling her entrance. The bright flickering lights and cool temperature made it feel like she was entering a separate dimension, one that lacked all sense of time and direction. Elain nodded at the cashier as she walked past them, making a beeline to the snacks aisle. She was greeted by a wide range of ramen, the different flavours and prices making it difficult to choose. She had about £1.50 in her purse and she desperately wanted a coffee too so she would have to be frugal. She was so engrossed with her ramen selection that she failed to notice a person coming up beside her. When she swivelled around to check the time on the obscenely large digital clock above the checkout, she crashed into them hard, causing her, them and the copious amounts of ramen they had piled in their arms to go flying to the floor.

Elain let out a yelp as she landed hard on her tailbone and felt her face heat up.

“I am so sorry!”

A deep, warm chuckle floated toward her and her head snapped up to look at its source. She found hazel eyes staring back. A large man with tan skin and dark hair sat in front of her, surrounded by many colourful packets of ramen. Her heart fluttered slightly as he smiled at her. He was handsome, even in this shitty convenience store lighting at 3 am dressed in similar attire to her.

“Don’t worry about it. I should have been paying more attention. Are you okay?”

She nodded before sitting up fully and helped to gather the ramen that lay around them. He smiled at her gratefully and they sat in content if not slightly awkward silence as they pulled the packets into a pile before finally rising. As she looked closer at him, a spark of recognition kindled within her.

“Do I know you?”

He looked at her curiously, tilting his head.

“I’m not sure but you do look familiar.”

They stood analysing each other. Normally the staring would make her uncomfortable, but with him, she found it didn’t bother her nearly as much as it should have. This went on for about a minute before she saw realisation set into his eyes.

“You’re Elain Archeron. The Head Chef for Archeron’s Kitchen. Why are you buying shitty ramen at 3 am? Shouldn’t you have made yourself a three-course meal by now?”

Elain felt something drop inside her. She hadn’t noticed that her hood had fallen off when she fell, exposing her and her shameful ramen buying to the whole world. But as he laughed softly, she remembered where she recognised him from.

She scowled at him as she said, “ Well you’re Azriel Knight, Starfall’s Head Chef, so you can’t exactly talk.”

She gestured to the stack of ramen that she had just helped pile into his arms. He turned away slightly as if to hide them.

“My stash had run out, okay. I need it to keep me going when I stay up late planning dishes.”

“I get that. That’s why I’m here right now.” She replied and a mutual understanding passed between them.

Elain knew she shouldn’t be talking to him right now, the reminders of the supposed rivalry between the two restaurants loomed like a shadow behind her. But the longer they spent together, the more she found herself not caring.

“I feel like we should be arguing,” He told her. “If my brothers were here, they would have been kicked out for yelling by now.”

She smiled, “Same for my sisters. But I’ve never really cared to be honest. I just want to focus on the food, not a silly competition that people seem to be taking too seriously.”

He nodded in agreement and they both began to walk to the cashier.

“So, what kind of dishes are you planning then?” She asked. “I promise I won’t steal any ideas. It’s not my style anyway.”

“I”m not a hundred percent sure on the actual contents of the dish right now, but I’m currently trying to create a more experimental menu. We recently unveiled a new line of drinks that have a more theatrical element to them. Colour changing, dry ice, bubbling, the whole shebang and I wanted to design a food menu that went along with that.”

He turned away from her to pay the cashier, giving her a moment to turn over his words in her head. She’d gotten a glimpse at some of the drinks and food from when she had taken a look at (read: stalked) their website and various social media sites. She had called it ‘scouting out the competition' when really she was curious to see what had set them apart enough for them to have such a rise in patronage. Whilst it wasn’t her style, she had always thought that she’d like to visit them and try what they had to offer. That was until the stupid rivalry had started and just walking by the restaurant was asking for trouble. Azriel finished paying and grabbed the plastic bag the cashier had placed his ramen in, moving out of the way so she could step up to the counter.

“That sounds amazing!” She replied. ‘I admit, I’ve always wanted to try some of your food but unfortunately, my sister’s might disown me if I even mention it. Calling them over-competitive would be the understatement of the century.”

He laughed at this and she took the opportunity to turn away and press the 50p coin into the cashier's hand. They nodded at her, satisfied and she turned back to Azriel. Together, they walked out of the door and into the cool night.

“I’d say you should stop by, but as you said, our siblings may not be too happy about that.” He let out a sigh. “As much as it amused me at first, I do wish we could just get along. I’d like to come and try some of your food too.”

He swivelled towards her, the white light from the store casting his face into shadows.

“I hope this isn’t too forward of me, but would you like to grab some coffee?”

She smiled at him, shoving the packet of ramen into her hoodie pocket.

“I’d love to. And maybe in the future, we could make some of our food for each other.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “Like a date?”

She felt dread trickle in. Maybe she had misread the situation. They seemed to have been getting on well, and she had caught him checking her out when they first bumped into each other. Plus, he had just asked her to grab coffee with him. Perhaps he was just being friendly.

She swallowed anxiously before replying, “Yeah. If that’s something you’d be interested in.”

He smiled at her brightly, making her heart stutter and skip a beat.

“I’d like that.”

They stood under the streetlamps in an almost abandoned parking lot. Two head chef’s from popular restaurants with bad ramen and a budding connection between them.

“What are you feeling? Starbucks or maybe that local coffee shop down the street? I think it’s called Veritas?”

Elain hummed as they started walking along the road.

“Veritas, I think. I can get a cup of tea for a pound.” She reached into her pocket to show him her single coin.

For the second time that evening (or was it morning?), he raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought I was buying?”

She glanced at him in confusion. “Since when?”

“I thought since I had asked you it was implied?”

She let out a laugh, shaking her head. “My god, we are bad at this. I think we need to get out of the kitchen more.”

“I’m not sure about that, I’ve got plenty of pick up lines I've stolen from my chefs.” He stepped in front of her, stopping her in her path. “Baby, you’re the crème to my brûlée.”

She groaned, hitting him on the arm as she pushed past him. “That was so bad! I might leave.”

“As if you could do better.”

She pulled out her phone, searching up ‘chef pick up lines’. She grimaced, “These are all so sexual! I think it might be best if we keep flirting out of the kitchen.”

They both doubled over in fits of laughter before continuing down the street. She was glad she gave in to her cravings and went to buy ramen at 3 am. She could tell that whatever this was, it was going to turn into something great.

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taglist + others who might be interested!

@amusedowl @court-of-fuck-me-daddy @akb12348 @illyrian-bookworm @actuallyacotartrash @thesirenwashere @julesherondalex @queen-of-glass @verifiefangirl @rhysanoodle @sadbitchlorcan @thefangirlofhp @abraxos-is-toothless @elrielllll @b00kworm @maastrash @rosssas @illyrianbeauty @nightcourtcinnamonroll @ireallyshouldsleeprn @tswaney17 @secretbondsandloveconfessions @sleeping-and-books @thewayshedreamed @rowaelinismyotp @swankii-art-teacher @the-laughing-bubble @123moiaussi

let me know if you would like to be added/removed from my tag list!

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mack3030 · 4 years ago

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Things the Sims 4 Community Can Do About Paywalls...A Post...

[This is going to be a bit long, so you may want to save it and read it when you have time, or just...you know, buckle in.]

I thought I would ring in the new year by talking about something that I feel we as a community need to finally decide on. (It’s been debated since 2017 or so, and it’s now 2021...) I’d like, if possible, to try to suggest some real solutions and choices that we can make that will hopefully create a better and more honest community out of all of us. Now I would like to start by making some postulates. In geometry, postulates are facts that do not need proven with a mathematical proof. They are assumed to be true. Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers would call these “Self-Evident Truths”. I would like to use these as a bit of a basis for my arguments.

Truth: The Sims 4 has been enough of a cash cow for EA. If you buy the base game ($40) plus all expansion packs (40 each x 10) + all game packs (20 each x 9) + all stuff packs (10 each x 17) you would come to a total of seven hundred and 90 dollars ($790) plus tax. This is of course, without sales, bundling, etc, which many people DO take advantage of, but STILL. That is a TON of money for EA’s pockets. EA makes a majority of its money on the fact that the Sims 4 is an “incomplete game”. It “completes” the game further and further by adding more “expansions” to the game to the point that it seems almost useless to buy the base game alone without adding to it.

Even with sales and other things, it’s easy to spend over $500 dollars on the sims 4 game + expansions. Still a lot of cash for a game that is years old. This is just money that is spent on the game that goes to EA. This does not account for: * Money spent to buy a new computer because your old one wouldn’t run the sims. * Money spent supporting CC artists who have donations open or early access. * Money spent on access to sites that have ads/paywalls/exclusive sims 4 CC such as Leosims, etc. (Which are the problem, frankly)

We should be able to respect the fact that a majority of us paid a hefty amount for this game. It is unfair, and frankly greedy to REQUIRE people to pay MORE just to unlock or gain access to specific user created content.

I am not talking about a VOLUNTARY support or donation because they like what you offer. I am talking about FORCING people to pay if they want to ever be able to use the CC or mod you offer.

Now, the typical defense for this is “Well, I’m an artist! I spend time/effort/etc working hard on these meshes, the code, etc to make this content!” Which leads me to point #2.

Truth: Mods, CC, and other content for the Sims 4 are useless without the game. Once they are created/uploaded to the game, all copyright to those objects IMMEDIATELY transfers to EA.

I teach art in a Missouri public school. Our state standards dictate that when art students are in middle school grades, they have to learn about copyright, fair use, and creative commons. While I am not a copyright lawyer, I have had to learn enough about this subject to teach it. So allow me to break down a few facts about copyright:

First, when ya make it, ya own it. There’s not a process to apply for a copyright. The moment you create something that is 100% your own work, you hold the copyright to it.

Second, when you make something that is created based off of or USING someone else’s intellectual property as a reference or resource it is a fan creation. In art, we call this “fanart”. It is not 100% your own work. Someone else’s intellectual property is involved.

Fan creations always have tread a very thin and shadowy line when it comes to different companies and the legality of them. You can easily search google for various articles explaining it, but to summarize it in a short method:

Most companies do not actively go after those who create fan creations unless they are making profits that could instead be going to the creators of the intellectual property. If the fan creation is discovered to be making profits and/or taking the intellectual property in a direction the creator does not approve of, they have legal options to pursue (court, cease and desist letters, etc).

Third, Copyright can be transferred from person to person. In most cases this is done through a written document that both parties sign, however there IS an exception to this that EA uses to allow itself to transfer your copyrights to your content to them:

EA’s agreement with you is non-exclusive, meaning that the moment you hit “agree” on the sims 4 terms and conditions, you have handed over your rights to any CC you create for the game.

If you want to maintain full creative rights over the mesh/mods/etc you make then, you have to not make that content for the sims 4 and make your own platform to host it on. This is way easier said than done.

Truth: There have been various examples in the past of CC creators who have stolen meshes, bases, bits/pieces of work, or “inspiration” for CC from other sites/companies, who have been called on it publicly.

The most recent event concerning this was drama concerning itsbrandysims and their use of meshes from imvu/secondlife (you can see my opinion on the subject HERE), but there have been other documented cases. Leosims, for example, has been listed as an example of someone taking meshes from secondlife creators and reuploading them (when it was told to me, I was shown THIS thread as evidence). Another well known creator was accused by a former sims 4 cc creator (who now makes content from second life), and was called out in THIS post in 2019.

The horrible part of this? Many of these creators are charging people (often at not so great rates as well), for STOLEN content. Content they don’t even own, that they ripped from another place. This should not be accepted by a community that loves a game as much as the Sims 4 community. Truth: EA has provided a way for people to make money while not hiding content behind paywalls entirely, and the INTENT of this was to OFFSET COSTS. Almost every post about content locked behind paywalls features this post found on the Sims Forum from 2017. In it, SimGuruDrake, who was the community manager at the time (she has since left the Sims 4 team for another job). Most of you who have seen this discussion topic before know this post by heart, but I’d like to highlight one important aspect of it:

One thing that is always important about communication is the intent behind it. The intent for people to be allowed to make patreons and allow early access wasn’t so people could just make money for themselves, the idea was to offset costs to buy programs to make the content. For example, a yearly subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (which has photoshop, illustrator, etc) costs a couple hundred dollars US a year. If someone was using photoshop to help them create their CC in addition to blender or other free programs, EA/Maxis wanted to allow the creator to not have to pay for making the CC out of pocket. Can EA/Maxis control what people spend the money they make off of patreon on? No. But it should be noted that the intent of this action was to help people pay for supplies for their hobby more than to make a business out of it.

Onto the next truth! Truth: There is an image that disputes this post above, however the authenticity of it and timing of it are very disputed.

This image is often thrown around by people who lock content behind paywalls, but I would like to take a second and try to provide an honest assessment of it. First of all, I have a bit of a problem with the fact that the original person who “messaged” SimGuruDrake this question has not been identified. This image was not posted on the tumblr of a CC creator who claimed “Hey I reached out to a sims guru and this is the answer I got!” The main pages that have this image are either tweets from CC creators using it to defend their stance on paywalls (ex: here), or tumblrs/tweets “debunking it” (ex: here, here). I even reverse image searched this image using google, and another platform and could not figure out where this originated from. Of course, I’m not an expert, but...still.

The fact that the origin of this picture is unknown casts doubt on it. If it were a well known CC maker who is known for being honest, that’s one thing. But the fact that we don’t exactly know where it came from is suspicious. Because frankly, anyone with some decent editing ability could photoshop this.

Here’s my imperfect edit, but I’m just a self-taught graphics nerd and I am not as dedicated at faking screenshots as some. (And the crap photo quality didn’t help.) Another common issue is that at the supposed “time” that this question was being asked, some state that SimsGuruDrake had already left the Sims 4 team. I will admit, this photo is within the correct timeline, as SimsGuruDrake did not officially depart the sims 4 team until February 2018. (There is a post on the sims forums that has a timestamp that confirms this.) But, if you were in the process of leaving your job within the next month (as a two week/30 day notice is common when leaving a job), would you REALLY be answering questions in DMs on twitter, or be focusing on packing up, and training your successor? The last thing that really makes me doubt the validity of this picture is the fact that it’s not really easy to message the sims gurus on Twitter. This appears to be twitter from the screenshot (although there are some things that are a little out of place from the current UI): But when I attempt to direct message a sims guru I get this message:

I even tried seeing if I could reach out via DM to Drake herself, (who now posts under a different twitter) to see if it was possible:

Could the policies have changed since 2018? Possibly, but I feel that opening up direct messages is just asking for Sims 4 team members to get angry messages, so this could very well be a long running EA policy. I have also reached out to her via a twitter tag (as of 1/2/21), and will update y’all if I get a reply:

Okay, so now that we’ve gone through all of this, let’s talk about the last truth that’s really important: Truth: Putting content behind paywalls has generally been considered disgusting by many in the sims 4 community, and TAKES AWAY the choice of people to support CC creators they love/appreciate WILLINGLY. A few notable posts sharing the disgust with this practice can be found: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE). And these are just what I can find from a simple precursory search.

Okay, Brainiac. So what can we do to solve this problem?

Well, there’s a few methods we can employ, and sadly, it’s going to take a bit of a commitment and concentrated effort from the community.

Step #1: Make the COMMUNITY the VICTIM instead of EA.

Now when I say this, I don’t mean we’re actually victims, but mean that instead of constantly saying things like “WHEN YOU DO THIS YOU VIOLATE EA’S TOU!”, thus making EA the “victim” of the crime. We change the dialog to saying “When you lock stuff behind paywalls, you cheat the sims 4 community and disrespect their choice to support you or not.” Because let’s be honest. Maxis/EA really doesn’t give much of a care about if people aren’t following this rule. You can report people to the team, but as far as most people have seen, it doesn’t get anywhere. But if we make it where the community is the party being “wronged” it is much harder for those who have paywalls to not be scared. Because the community, in the end, has to be with them. DepthofPixels had a really amazing post about this HERE.

Step 2: Decide to not support anyone who puts their content behind exclusive paywalls and do not hesitate to spread the word about why you choose not to do so.

By that, I mean

not paying any patreon accounts that don’t offer either their content 100% for free, or offer early access.

And sharing about why you choose to do that on your social media. Something I might suggest would be to make it a bit personal and share something like:

Instead of spending $15 a month to get exclusive content from Leosims (or any other patreon/paywall creator here) I’m spending that $15 supporting creator x, creator y, and creator z, who don’t put their work behind paywalls!

Link their patrons, share why you like their content, and why you take the stance to make the community better. Make it a positive thing, praising the people who are doing RIGHT by the community.

Yes, you may not get their content for a while (although there are some different places (

) to find them *cough*. But in the end, is it worth supporting someone’s content when they’re treating the community badly?

Step 3: Report creators who actively steal content from IMVU/secondlife to those respective companies, and all others to EA. (Even though nothing may happen.)

Here’s the deal. When people steal from either of those sites, they are infringing on someone’s copyright, as well as Imvu/secondlife’s copyright as well. It’s not okay, and they should be held accountable for it. Here’s the LINK for submitting a ticket to Secondlife. I haven’t been able to find one for IMVU, but maybe someone else will find one. Let those companies know and allow them to handle those specific creators. As to the other creators, EA may not handle them at the moment. But IF (and this is a wishful thinking “if”) there were suddenly a flood of messages about certain creators...? I think they might have to pay attention to some of those messages. There is an official report form, but it might even be worth tweeting to SleddingGuruFrost, who is the current community manager asking about their stance on paywalls. And last but not least:

Step 4: Make sure that those who are doing the right thing and not putting their work behind paywalls feel appreciated. Show them some love via a tumblr ask, or by tagging them on twitter, or by going up a tier on their patreon (or pledging for the first time). Celebrate these heroes who are creating content and not forcing it on us.

Us asking for people to give us a choice to support them isn’t being greedy, or disrespecting their time. We just want transparency, and respect from those who create content for the game we love so much versus them treating us like we’re just a source of income. I know it might seem a bit hard to do this for some of you, and for some it may seem like I’m preaching to the choir, but we have to decide where we stand on this issue and stop letting those who abuse this system keep doing it. We can make a difference if we decide as a COMMUNITY to work together.

With commitment, ~Sunny

#sims4cc #sims4mm #maxismatch #sims4alpha #sims4cccommunity #paywallssuck #downwithpatreon #EA #maxis #TOS #thievessuck

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scripttorture · 4 years ago

Note

I have a question about torture and organizations. Can a political movement (rebellion in this case) with a history of using torture succeed in eliminating its use of torture? In my story a member of the rebellion learns that some others (on the leader's orders?) have been torturing people. Appalled, this person decides to split off and form a rival faction, bringing with them other rebels who disapprove of torture... (organizations ask 1/3)

Is it likely that this faction would be able to succeed (replace the original faction and continue not torturing people)? How likely is this? What factors would impact the likelihood? Mostly I'm focusing on the contrast between one organization torturing and the other not torturing, e.g., I can see how locals might be skeptical of the second organization because they're on the same "side" as the torturers. (organizations ask 2/3 -- I think I might've accidentally numbered the first one 2/3, aah) The organization uses torture for mainly punishment (which might include trying to get people to make false confessions) and intimidation (as well as in some cases in attempts to force compliance, like making people supply them with food and materials or making people give them information; this last is the rarest... oops, I just realized that's all of the purposes in the UN definition). (I have read a lot of your posts and I know torture doesn't work.) Thank you!! :) (organizations ask 3/3)

Anon you are delightful.

Rejali spends an awful lot of time discussing the various arguments on whether torture can be eradicated and how that could be practically done. There aren’t a lot of definite answers but I can give a summary of the kinds of factors that we think are important and describe things your characters could practically do.

I think it’s worth stressing from the start that no country has completely eradicated torture. As a result we don’t know for certain what… works. Or at least not what works completely and permanently.

I don’t think this means getting rid of torture is impossible. Neither does Rejali. Rejali argues (convincingly in my opinion) that torture has changed so drastically in the modern era because of concerted efforts to wipe it out. Part of that change has been an almost complete eradication of some torture techniques. As a general rule people are no longer broken on the wheel, hanged drawn and quartered or have their flesh torn off with red hot pincers. We have already completely transformed both torture and public attitudes to it.

And that implies that we can get it rid of it.

It’s likely that torture is less common now then it was historically but this is hard to prove. Most historical records don’t provide a clear indication of every single person who was questioned, arrested or tried, let alone who was tortured or how.

It’s also hard to prove exactly how much a particular factor reduces torture. The fact torture is illegal and that victims may not report what happened to them make it difficult to measure how often it occurs. We rely on estimates based on the reporting we have, which is likely to give a lower figure then the real number of cases. (Because we know from more thorough studies on other crimes that there is always a proportion that goes unreported and it is likely this proportion will be higher when the victim could face repercussions for reporting the crime. As is often the case with torture.)

So what seems to help? I’ll start by talking about the factors we’re aware of that can reduce torture and then I’ll try to talk about how you might be able to apply them to the revolutionary organisation in your story.

It might sound obvious but making torture illegal is usually a necessary first step.

A change in the law in and of itself does not really do much. Especially not overnight. It’s about beginning to build a framework where reporting can happen and where people are actively looking for evidence of torture.

The next steps are well building up that framework. Independent oversight is one of the biggest things.

Here are a couple of things that can mean:

Anonymous reporting

Independent inspections

Regular unscheduled inspections

Independent medical reports and autopsies

Treating reports of torture seriously

Thorough investigation of all reports

Prosecution of torturers where there is sufficient evidence

Sentencing that fits the gravity of the crime*

Suspension of individuals accused of torture

I tend to think of those factors as things that are sort of outside the organisation. Because ideally they’re coming from outside the organisation.

Note that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re outside the system entirely. Using a comparison if you’re trying to stop police torture then the people handling reports, investigations etc could still be government employees but they should not be police. When the people in charge of torture investigations rely on the people they’re investigating for their jobs and wages… you get problems.

There are also important factors within the organisation. Which are about building an organisation where torture is less likely to occur (whereas the factors outside the organisation are about rooting it out when it’s found.)

A lot of these things basically boil down to building a positive working environment:

High quality training for all personnel

Regular refresher training with updates to training as appropriate

Appropriate staffing levels (ie there should always be enough people to easily run the organisation)

No one is forced to work overtime

Generous holiday allowance and sick pay

Consistent effort to structure and manage things to reduce stress in the workplace

Reasonable, achievable goals for staff

Appropriate, well supplied facilities

Thorough record keeping for staff and anyone they are responsible for

Avoidance of shifts that disrupt sleep as much as possible

Torture is much, much less likely when staff are correctly trained, supported and given the resources necessary to do their jobs.

There are also a handful of things that would probably help and fall into neither category such as limiting (or eliminating) access to devices commonly used to torture. For instance Tasers, pepper spray, particular forms of restraints but also (depending on where in the world we are) chilli powder, hose pipes and cleaning supplies.

This might seem like quite a lot but it’s funny how much of it applies to the industry I actually work in: drugs testing.

The place I work is regularly inspected by outside organisations (and usually without notice). Every single person on site has to go through extensive training programs which are refreshed at least once a year. Each and every one of us has to record and account for all our actions and any material and equipment we use. We can report things anonymously. Any allegations of malpractice are dealt with swiftly and prompt massive investigations.

So I guess I’m saying that I think more of the organisations responsible for people should have the same level of accountability pharmaceutical testing does.

Depending on the structure of your rebel organisation and what’s available too them a lot of this might not be possible. At least not at first.

A small, poorly supplied organisation could struggle to combat torture effectively. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

Size of the group seems to be a big thing here. With really small groups the members can often say pretty confidently whether torture is happening or not. Because they’re all working together so closely that they know more or less everything their colleagues are doing. But the bigger a group becomes the easier it is to lose track of people and for abuse to be hidden.

My instinct is that genuinely independent oversight probably becomes easier after organisations reach a certain size. Because for a smaller (but not tiny) group anyone who might be investigating accusations could still be reliant on the people they’re investigating. They’re likely to work together, be close to each other and as a result they’re bringing a bias into any investigation.

I think a smaller, newly founded organisation would really struggle to set up the kind of structured, independent inspection bodies that do most of the grunt work of finding and reporting on torture. Especially early on when they’ve just split off from the older, more established group.

That’s partly because of numbers and partly because it takes time and expertise to set up these systems. Or at least to do it well. Going back to the comparison with my work, the organisations that inspect and audit my workplace have all been around for decades. Most of the ‘younger’ organisations are mergers or rebrands of much older organisations. The process is updated at least once a year and there is a labyrinth of laws around every single aspect of… well all of it.

It takes a lot of time, energy and error to build that up in a robust way.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing they can do.

They might not be able to detect or investigate torture easily in the early stages but they could structure their organisation in ways that make it less likely for torture to happen in the first place.

Proper training is probably the biggest one that would make a difference. Things like conducting a proper investigation or interrogation, de-escalation tactics, building rapport/people skills and negotiation.

They could also limit the number of prisoners they hold and the length of time prisoners are held for. This is trickier to do ethically in a combat situation. If part of the point is that this group is more ethical they shouldn’t be maiming or summarily executing surrendering troops from the opposing side. They also shouldn’t be releasing prisoners in places they’re likely to die.

One potential way around this is to focus on destroying equipment and facilities rather then ending lives. Taking weapons, destroying barracks, supply lines and the like.

Captured enemy troops can potentially give out valuable information (you can read about effective interrogation here) but the majority of useful information doesn’t come from interrogating suspects/enemy troops in these scenarios. It comes from people volunteering information, whether they’re civilians or defectors.

It might sound really obvious but a very easy way to avoid torture as an issue to not have anyone to torture. A policy of no prisoners, not in the sense of killing everyone but in the sense of immediate release after the goal has been achieved, reduces the amount of people held and hence the chance of torture.

This sort of strategy in the beginning could give the organisation time to come up with the facilities, training program and inspection regime needed to keep prisoners in… as safe and ethical a way as possible. It would mean adopting a strategy of ambush style attacks on the facilities and supply lines of he opposing side/s.

It would also help avoid overcrowding of any prison facilities which is a factor that leads to more violence in prisons.

I think that just leaves the question of long term success which you’ve defined in terms of avoiding torture and eventually replacing the rebel group that tortures.

That isn’t a question I can give a definitive ‘yes or no’ answer to. It depends on a lot of factors, as you can probably see from the lists above.

My instinct is that it is possible. However it would take time. A lot of time. And it would mean keeping up that dedication, the rejection of torture, throughout.

Supplanting an existing organisation would take years. Easily 5-10 years, and I think I might actually be under estimating things. It also depends on things like how well known both rebel groups are, how well they manage to build up public trust, the supply of recruits, the amount of territory they occupy.

Part of what I’m driving at here is that doing things well, building systems and organisations that last and keep ethics at their core; it takes time. It takes hard work. And a lot of it feels thankless.

In the early days your rebels will probably be bending over backwards, making life so much ‘harder’ for themselves in order to avoid torture. Only to have civilians turn around and mistake them for the group that tortures.

The sad fact is that a lot of people feel destruction is more satisfying. It feels like ‘doing something’, whereas the hard work of building a better system over years/decades… it often feels like you’re getting nowhere. I think that, along with the cultural message that violence ‘works’, is why a lot of these abuses continue to happen.

Once again I think that what you want from this story is possible. But it isn’t simple, it isn’t easy. It’s playing the long game. And there will be times when that grinds the characters down.

A lot of stories say that ‘doing the right thing isn’t easy’ and then proceed to show the characters doing some big, impressive act that instantly solves everything. This is a fallacy. Sometimes it’s a fallacy that leads to some great stories! But it’s still a fictional motif that romanticises acts of violence over the hard work of building something better.

And I think that if you want to show that hard work in your story you can’t gloss over the fact that it’s hard. It’s exhausting, it can be isolating. It can all be wiped away at any moment because of one hot-headed idiot.

But the hard work and dedication would eventually pay off.

These rebels would end up with better intelligence networks, better ties to the local communities and a better reputation. Which would probably lead to them becoming the go-to group for defectors, both from the other rebels and the group they’re trying to fight. They’d also probably get more volunteers in the long term.

Wrapping up I think I’ll end with a note from Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea: Long term victory generally goes to the group that is the most organised. Focus on that. Really think about inventive ways to set up the systems and organisations these rebels are trying to build.

Follow those points through logically.

Your group might not end up looking like any rebel group you’ve seen in media before. But it’ll probably look closer to a lot of real organisations and give you a lot of fodder for stories.

I hope that helps :)

Disclaimer

Available on Wordpress.

*Obviously there will always be debate about what this means but I personally do not think most places treat torture as a grave crime. As an illustration of what I mean American torturer Jon Burge is thought to have tortured at least 200 people during his time as a police officer. Several of the people Burge tortured ended up on death row. Thirty years after the initial reports he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. He served three and a half.

#writing advice #tw torture #effects of torture on organisations #writing organisations #preventing torture #factors that encourage torture #factors that reduce torture #Rejali #independent oversight #accountability #prisons #intelligence gathering #public support #effects of torture on public trust #this one was really interesting and required a fair bit of thought

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razberryyum · 5 years ago

Text

So you’re done with The Untamed and want more, what now?

Reposting this since I’ve updated it with new info/links. Again, I entered the fandom via The Untamed so I’m by no means a MDZS expert, just tried my best gathering all the resources I can which I hope will help some new Untamed/MDZS fan out there. If you spot any errors, don’t yell at me, just let me know and I’ll correct it as best I can, especially for any future reposts.

READ THE NOVEL

Read the original web novel the show was based on: The Untamed (aka “CQL” or “Chen Qing Ling”) was adapted from the BL web novel, Mo Dao Zu Shi (aka ”MDZS” or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) by author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (”MXTX”). Yes the novel came first, CQL is only an adaptation. In the novel, you get the uncensored romance of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, where they are canonically married and living happily ever after. The novel goes full into R18 territory so please tread carefully.

All four volumes of the novel can be purchased from the original publishing site, JJWXC. The site’s in chinese but here’s a tutorial on how to navigate it and purchase the books: JJWXC Tutorial Link.

There’s also the option of purchasing the physical copies from Yesasia which might be easier but it’s also more expensive since they’re the middle man: Yesasia MDZS Link

It would be wonderful if you can support MXTX-laoshi by actually buying the books, especially since the cover art is so beautiful and the extra chapter volumes come with a lot of awesome extra goodies, but of course there’s also the option of reading the fan translations graciously provided by the Exiled Rebels Scanlations team at their site:

They translated all the novels including the bonus chapters in their own free time and are providing the fanslations for free so please give them some love for all their hard work.

WATCH THE ANIME (aka “Donghua” in Chinese)

Watch the anime based on the novel: The donghua was released before The Untamed. Two seasons are already available (23 eps total) with a third season in production and a special chibi version of the donghua in production as well. The Eng-subbed donghua can be seen using the WeTV app or on Youtube: YT MDZS Donghua Playlist

Grant it, the donghua is even more censored than The Untamed, but the donghua team still managed to sneak in some easter eggs (f.e. WangXian naked bathing scene in the cold springs from the novel...in The Untamed they were fully clothed) and more importantly, the animation is just gorgeous so it’s absolutely worth a watch despite the censorship.

READ THE MANGA (aka “Manhua” in Chinese)

Read the manhua which is ongoing and is being officially translated by WeComics, available on their app for free. Search under the name “Mo Dao Zu Shi”.

Unfortunately, the official translations are more than 20 chaps behind the raws and there have been complaints about the quality of the translations in the past, but I believe they’re starting to improve so since they’re official, it’s always better to support the official source.

The raw untranslated manhua can be found on the Kuaikanmanhua app. Other than being in Chinese, some of the chapters (f.e. the most recent ones) are behind a paywall, but here’s a tutorial on how to purchase the chapters, provided by @chiharuzushi on Twitter: Kuaikanmanhua Tutorial

The chapters are quite cheap...I purchase 1000 KK coins for 10 rmb ($0.14) and each chapter is only 68 KK coins so even if we end up with 500 chapters it’ll still be...er...quite cheap overall (don’t make me do the actual math). The most painful part is figuring out how to set up the Kuaikanmanhua account, but otherwise, if you can read Chinese or know enough of the story by now that you don’t really need to read the words, the manhua is definitely worth reading because it’s less censored than The Untamed and the donghua.

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO DRAMA

Listen to the audio drama, which is at this point the most faithful and LEAST censored adaptation of the novel we will probably ever get! Wei Ying’s voice actor in The Untamed is the voice actor for his audio drama counterpart. (Yes, almost everyone in The Untamed is dubbed by a voice actor, EXCEPT for Nie Huaisang. Ji Li, the actor for NHS, was the only one who used his own voice. Lan Zhan in The Untamed shares the same voice actor as his character in the donghua).

Each episode art of the audio drama is AMAZING. Google Translate works well on the site, you’d want to see the listeners’ comments cuz they’re just adorable and hilarious.

Official links on Maoer FM:

Season 1: Maoer FM S1 Link

Season 2: Maoer FM S2 Link

Season 3: Maoer FM S3 Link

The audio drama was supervised by MXTX-laoshi, the author of the novel, so a lot of love and care went into the production, and it shows. The audio drama is behind a paywall but I remember it’s relatively inexpensive. Here’s the tutorial on how to purchase the audio drama from the Maoer FM site: Maoer FM Tutorial Link

Ngl, it was tough at first navigating all that, Google translate helped, but once I figured it out, it was all so worth it because in addition to the MDZS, the site houses a lot of other wonderful audio dramas. There are also MDZS fan songs on the site that are near professional quality and oh so good.

Suibian Subs have kindly translated the episodes and their translations are available here: Suibian Subs MDZS Audio Drama

Show them some love too for translating the episodes, but please if you can, purchase the episodes so you can support the audio drama team which have done an amazing job.

There’s even a Japanese audio drama which the Chinese AD team helped spearhead, available on the MIMI FM app. Here’s a tutorial on how to purchase the eps (half of the first season is out): MIMI FM Tutorial

It’s in Japanese but just follow the pictures. I’m hoping that the Japanese audio drama will end up being the MOST uncensored version of MDZS since Japanese BL dramas are not afraid (and allowed) to go all the way to R18. XD

MORE THE UNTAMED CONTENT

Lastly, if you’re just thirsting for more Untamed content, there are two spin-off movies you can watch. The first one, The Living Dead, is kind of centered on Wen Ning and Sizhui post-CQL.

The second one, Fatal Journey, is focused on the Nie brothers, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, with a cameo by Jin Guangyao. It takes place prior to Wei Ying’s return from the dead.

Of the two movies, I definitely recommend Fatal Journey more. Both movies are available on the iQiyi app, which offers a one month free trial for first members. Each month afterwards for VIP is $6.99.

You can also go on the WeTV app for even more Untamed extras: WeTV put out a special edition cut of the show which tightened up the story AND features the original ending that was intended before censorship forced the production team to come up with the more ambiguous one we saw in its original run. It was a simple matter of rearranging certain scenes and getting rid of the separation part, but imho it really made all the difference to the ending.

There’s a ton of behind-the-scene cuteness that you can watch and also concerts with the cast in Thailand and Nanjing. VIP subscription to the WeTV app is $5.99/month and the Nanjing concert is for rent for 3 months at about the same price.

The show also put out two official soundtracks, one for the vocals and one for the score. Both are available on Amazon and iTunes. For Amazon though, you can search under “The Untamed” but they did this weird thing where the vocals one is listed as “The Untamed (Chinoiserie Music Album)” (wtf) while the score is just listed as “The Untamed (Original Soundtrack)”.

Finally, most of the male members of the cast took part in a fan meet and greet at the start of the show, before it became hugely popular. The entire meet and greet is available on youtube subbed: The Untamed Fan Meeting

That’s it for The Untamed and MDZS. If you end up liking the novel enough to want to read more by the same author, MXTX-laoshi has also written two other BL novels, The Scum Villain Self-Saving System (aka “SVSSS” or “Scum Villain”) and Heaven’s Official Blessing (aka “TGCF” after its Chinese title). Both have been fully translated by fans (but always try to buy the original if you have the means, as a way to support the author!):

SVSSS Translation: BC Novels Link

TGCF Translation chaps 1 - 24: Sakhyulations Link

TGCF Translation chaps 25 - End: Suika & Rynn Link

As with reading any BL novel (aka “danmei novel” for Chinese BL books), please heed the warnings and if it’s not your cup of tea, just exit out of the page and move on with your life. No big deal, right?

Anyway, hope all this info dump helps someone! If you’re brand spanking new to this fandom, welcome, and I’m so jealous of you! Would love to relive stepping into the world of MDZS/MXTX/danmei novels all over again since I feel like I’m already running out of stuff to read and I’m beginning to panic a little.

Happy watching/reading/listening!

#The Untamed #CQL #Mo Dao Zu Shi #MDZS #WangXian #MXTX

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lightsintheskye · 4 years ago

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Ahhh I have a lot of messages in my inbox right now (over like ...2000; ) but this one just jumped out at me from yesterday and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’m sorry if this is a long long response (l’ll screenshot it as a textpost so it doesn’t clog someones feed) but I just, with how hypercritical social media makes us about ourselves and others its important to acknowledge bullying and how exposed we are to it. If anyone reading this is also struggling with this topic right now please read below. Remember I’m not a licensed therapist but I’ve had a lot of experience with bullying so read below if you like-

For the most part, the big two are finding a positive support network and focusing on things that make me happy. I’m not unscathed, I have clinically diagnosed MDD, Anxiety, and PSTD, but I’ve learned to manage these things. If you need to take a break from social media, do it- do your best to be your own curator of positivity. If social media is one of your few solaces, create a special account for yourself that just follows what you love. Remember that YOU are the one in control of your social media feed and are responsible for what you see.

1. Support Network:

Find a group that you can trust, and do you best to talk about your feelings and experiences in a constructive way(see no 5). That being said respect your support network, always ask if it’s ok to vent to them and don’t treat others as emotional dumping grounds. I know trusting people is incredibly hard, I still struggle with it (my own support network is literally two people but I also practice a lot of behavioral therapy since a lot of medications unfortunately don’t work for me) but you can not go through life second guessing every action (fuck you, anxiety). If your situation is such that you don’t think you have friends you can talk to, your college might have a therapist you can talk to for free. There are also online sites and hotlines that offer the same free services. Sometimes it takes a few therapists to find one that works for you, but sometimes its easier to talk to a friend rather a stranger- and therapy might not always be available to everyone. Google is your friend for finding constructive options.I know it’s hypocritical since this is a tumblr post, but do research on your own from reputable sites and sources for healthy coping.

2. Don’t bottle it up: I used to be incredibly quiet about any sort of stress or bullying I received in the past. I used to lie about never being bullied or harassed after middle school, but the only person that ended up hurting is myself. I don’t think I’ll ever be perfectly fine, but talking about it helps more than you think. I’m not saying to blast it out to everyone exactly how you’re feeling 24/7 but take time to trade woes with a close friend every week or so. Just don’t forget to celebrate the good when and where you can- this world has so much that makes it suck, but there’s also a lot that we can enjoy- too.

3. Bullies seriously suck, but don’t become one:

In my experience, very few bullies ‘grow up’ if they’re still bullying people in college, they just kinda get better at hiding it. This usually manifests behind passive aggressive comments, and or just talking behind someones back and hiding behind a screen to say things. Even in grad school I’ve witnessed "adults” being shitty to each other twitter, on insta, on discord, on tumblr, on A03- you name it. Bullies can come from anywhere, and be anyone, and bully for any reason. People who were bullied sometimes become bullies themselves in a way to gain back sense of power- but their own abuse doesn’t make abusing others right. In the past I’ve had comments and emails telling me everything from childish bullying to literally telling me to kill myself. Negative comments about my appearance, the way I talk, the way I draw, my hobbies,my choice of schooling (which ??????), harassment about my choice of friends and the people I associate myself with. People who seek negativity will find any reason to slight another. But know that harassment is harassment regardless of why, so even if you’re angry bullying someone back really wont change much. I can think of nothing more toxic than willingly engaging with your bullies in order to find ways to ‘get back’ at them. The beauty of being online is that you can just leave a site, hit a block button, and even make a new name for yourself. Do your best to limit interaction with them. Do not put yourself in situations that involve them. Do not cyber stalk them (yes, repeatedly checking their tumblr/fb/instagram to criticize and mock their every post, or find every person they talk to “whistle-blow” on them is a form of defamation of character and cyber-stalking). Doing this will only invite negative emotions and make you start to hyper fixate. It’s an easy two way street that will invite people to do the same to you- and unless you’re the next coming of Christ someone will inevitably find out something negative about you. Do not hold people to standards that you yourself cannot achieve. You may be more morally inclined than your bully but no one one is perfect. You will never be able to please everyone. It is not your job to do so.

4. Report, Put Away, Ignore: If these people are saying things to you that can be documented and reported to your school (assuming these are classmates that you can prove have done things) then take a screenshot if possible and report it. It’s a gamble to have anything done about it, some schools are shit about bullying, but some schools aren’t. Recently in my case, in grad school there was a bullying incident and we were incredibly afraid of what the bullies would do if they found out who exactly reported them, but thankfully I had friends help us report it- so multiple reports from anonymous sources made it hard for them to pin point it was someone finally standing up. Some colleges will take defamation of character (which, as an adult, is really what a lot of bullying is) very seriously and amazingly- that bully completely changed. I would not call them a friend, but for now their apology seems sincere and they’ve worked towards being a better person. So, if you choose to report it, after reporting, put that shit away and don’t keep looking at it, find a way to make it really hard to look at over and over. Put it in a folder within a folder within seven folders if you have to BECAUSE- 5. You HAVE to work towards moving ON or it will consume you.

Way, way easier said than done. I’m not saying so much ‘be the better person’ as to just ...seriously remove yourself from that shit as fast as you can. You owe nothing to the people that hurt you, but giving them more of your time over and over if you have the option not to is only going to end in you getting angrier or more upset yourself. The first time something hurts you, put a warning label on it, if it continues to hurt you, do not engage.

The internet can be so toxic- a lot of bullying is masked as “call-out culture” from minor things that happened years ago, it validates the worst forms of “coping” possible. It creates such a bad system of alarm fatigue for when real issues are happening, and creates a hive mind of abuse and hyper criticism where everyone is looking for the next target. There’s an extreme difference if a “bully” disagrees with your favorite ship or show and harasses you about it, or if someone is literally harassing you as an individual by telling you to self harm or worse. Treat your emotional scars like an actual wound; if you keep picking at it and ripping off the band aid to see if its still there its never going to heal. The scars might still be there and will still be visible on some days, but you’ll no longer be bleeding at the slightest brush. Learn to grow, learn to let others grow. Learn to trust again, and learn to try and be happy with who you are and who your friends are as you know them. A big reason why I stepped away form the internet is that I found myself looking to validation in terms of popularity. And when i finally had it- I realized how toxic it ended up being for my health. I’d spend hours just to make a comic even at the cost of sleep or food, and 100 positive comments couldn’t stop my brain from fixating on ten that were negative or downright harassment. Even as I step back on the internet, I’m doing it from a much better place internally. It’s so so important not to get lost in numbers and online “validation.” Please just know eventually things will get better, and those that matter will stick around to be there to see your growth. People will always find something to give you shit about, but only you can determine how much it affects you. Recognize your emotions, process them, and take responsibility for them. Let your self-worth be determined by your own actions and words, not the actions or words of others.

#long post but #i think this is really important sorry

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architectnews · 3 years ago

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"Taking credit for trees planted elsewhere is a whole lot of embodied irony"

Architecture firm Perkins&Will has gone too far with claims that a luxury timber home on a Canadian mountain removes more atmospheric carbon than it emits, argues Fred A Bernstein.

For much of last winter, Perkins&Will, an architecture firm with 25 offices from San Francisco to Singapore to Sao Paulo, used a photo of a wooden house in British Columbia as one of the "hero images" on its website.

The house, which sits alone on a mountaintop overlooking the Soo Valley 90 miles north of Vancouver, is certainly beautiful, but the firm had other reasons for splashing it across its homepage. The 321-square-metre dwelling, known as the SoLo House, is meant to be a model of sustainability.

Entirely off the grid, it is designed to operate with power from 103 solar panels on its south facade, a 96-kilowatt-hour battery pack to store electricity for nights and cloudy days (both of which are frequent in British Columbia), and a hydrogen fuel cell for winter.

With all that equipment, the house may well be able to function without utility hook-ups. But Perkins&Will has made a far more surprising and audacious claim: that the building's structure is "beyond carbon neutral," meaning that it will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emitted in the first place.

It seemed to be giving its clients permission to build willy-nilly at a time of climate crisis

In a slickly produced video on the firm's website, Perkins&Will architect Alysia Baldwin says the house "proves that buildings can counteract their negative consequences and act as a source of repair."

People listen to Perkins&Will, a firm that has positioned itself as a leader in green building. "For nearly a quarter of a century, we've been at the vanguard of the sustainability movement," its website declares. Journalists have tended to repeat its claims.

But this time it had gone too far. By constructing a showplace of a house on an otherwise pristine mountaintop, and claiming it had helped the environment by doing so, it seemed to be giving its clients permission to build willy-nilly at a time of climate crisis.

Looking at SoLo House, with its cathedral ceilings, its comfortable sectional sofas and its giant picture windows, then listening to Perkins&Will claim that its structure reduces atmospheric carbon, I'm reminded of the old punchline: "Who are you going to believe – me, or your lying eyes?"

Reducing a building's contribution to atmospheric carbon means making it small, keeping it simple, building it near existing infrastructure, avoiding the need for heavy equipment such as batteries and fuel cells and using the lowest-embodied-energy building materials.

Reducing a building's contribution to atmospheric carbon means making it small

Perkins&Will, normally an excellent firm, has done those things on other projects. But with SoLo House, it seems not to have even tried.

According to experts, 40 per cent of atmospheric greenhouse gases come from buildings. Some emissions are attributable to running appliances and systems – so-called operational energy. The rest comes from the power needed to produce the building in the first place, known as embodied energy.

Incredibly, Perkins&Will is claiming there is "no embodied energy" in the house's structure (by which it means the elements that keep the building standing). To its credit, the firm answered requests for information promptly, providing facts, figures and charts prepared by Baldwin and her colleague Cillian Collins, a senior architect.

Here's how Baldwin and Collins arrived at their no-embodied-energy claim: First they estimated the amount of structural wood, steel and concrete in SoLo House. And then they turned to Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings, an app that approximates the amount of energy needed to produce given amounts of each building material and the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of that energy use.

Athena told them that producing the steel and concrete, harvesting the wood and so on in SoLo House released 122 tonnes of CO2 (sometimes called CO2e, for CO2 and its equivalents) into the atmosphere.

That should have been the beginning – not the end – of the process of calculating the building's embodied energy. There are hundreds of other items that needed to be counted. Start with the roof. The walls. The windows (a massive item, given the need for triple glazing). The solar panels, the batteries, the hydrogen fuel cells. The furniture. The appliances. The plumbing. The heating and cooling systems. Lots and lots of insulation.

The list goes on. Each of those items has significant embodied energy. Transporting all of those materials to a remote mountaintop site adds more.

Perkins&Will failed to account for those sources of embodied energy. Baldwin was clear, in a letter to me, that the calculations were limited to the structure. But why would anyone stop there? According to Baldwin, it's because structure "represents the largest contribution to a typical building's embodied carbon impacts."

It may also be because Athena only applies to structure. (Athena is meant primarily for comparing how the choice of a structural material affects a building's embodied energy. An architect might enter plans for the same building, once with a concrete frame and once with a steel frame, and see how the embodied carbon figures differ.)

Of course, there are other ways to estimate the house's total embodied energy; one method is to use an online tool called Tally, which provides information on the embodied energy of numerous building components. Counting everything isn't easy, but other firms have done it.

Perkins&Will had a way of making it vanish, if not from the atmosphere then from the balance sheet

Even so, according to Athena, the house emitted 122 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. That sounds like a lot of carbon, but Perkins&Will had a way of making it vanish, if not from the atmosphere then from the balance sheet.

Much of SoLo House is made of wood. Wood, like all plants, is produced by photosynthesis from ingredients that include carbon dioxide. Thus trees are said to store (or sequester) carbon. They do, but probably not as much as people think, as I learned by studying the question at length.

Here's Perkins&Will's theory: If you cut down a tree and use the wood as a building material, that carbon sequestered in that tree becomes part of the building. Then, if you plant a new tree in place of the one you cut down, the new tree will sequester additional carbon as it grows. Thus the process (cutting down one tree, planting another) results, net-net, in carbon being removed from the atmosphere.

There are so many problems with that theory it's hard to know where to begin. To name a few:

1) You have to be sure a new tree will be planted in place of the one you cut down; will get to be as big as the one you cut down; and will live a long, healthy life. (If a tree burns, or decomposes, as billions of trees do every year, its embodied carbon is released right into the atmosphere.)

2) You can't waste any of the wood. That's a problem because converting a tree into lumber usually turns half the wood into sawdust or chips, which could end up being burnt or allowed to decompose. This problem alone suggests carbon sequestration figures should be cut in half.

3) The wood has to stay in or on the building for a very long time. If the building needs repairs, and lumber is removed, it may be recycled, but it may also be burnt or allowed to decompose. And who'll be watching in 20 or 50 years?

4) Let's be honest: You could have planted the new tree somewhere else, and not cut down the first tree to begin with. For that reason, no number of trees excuses a wasteful building.

5) Even if the new trees do sequester carbon, the process will take decades. Scientists who study global warming warn of tipping points and thresholds, some of which could be reached within the next ten years. If new buildings help push atmospheric carbon levels to a point of no return, the sequestration accomplished by newly planted trees will be too little, too late.

6) It's a logical impossibility. If you really believe SoLo House repairs the atmosphere, all you have to do is build enough SoLo Houses and climate change will go away. Now for our next trick ...

No number of trees excuses a wasteful building

No wonder the theory is highly controversial. A whole lot of things have to happen just right for it to become a reality. As Baldwin wrote in an email: "We acknowledge that not all timber sources perform equally in the realm of embodied carbon reduction."

"Much of the embodied carbon reduction achieved by timber is directly attributed to sustainable forestry management practices that ensure forestry operations are carried out in a way that allows forests to remain healthy and viable for future generations," she added. "These practices include conservation and protection, land use planning, regulation of timber harvesting, establishing practices to ensure forest regrow, and continuous monitoring and reporting to government."

She went on to admit that the tool used to determine the building's sequestered carbon, WoodWorks Carbon Calculator, a product of the Washington-based Wood Products Council, considers "much of this storage to be temporary and therefore [does] not give the building a carbon credit for the carbon dioxide that will eventually be released from this wood some time down the road, through decay or incineration."

But that didn't stop the firm from banking on the theory when it performed its embodied energy calculation. Using the Carbon Calculator, it determined that the amount of lumber in the building would result in the removal – through the planting of new trees – of 145 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. That's a bit more than the 122 tonnes the firm says the building's timber, concrete, and steel released into the atmosphere.

Converting a tree into lumber usually turns half the wood into sawdust or chips

So in this case, reducing E (embodied carbon) by S (sequestered carbon) produces a negative number – minus 22 tonnes, meaning that building the house decreased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (Indeed, the house's owner, Delta Land Development, refers to it as "climate positive.")

Perkins & Will firm produced a chart to make this clear:

As Baldwin puts it, SoLo House "is able to store more carbon in its structure than was released during the production, manufacturing, and construction of the project."

That's a highly suspect statement. Based on everything I've learned, E (embodied energy) may be much greater than Perkins&Will says it is, and S (sequestered carbon) much lower.

In a letter responding to points in this article prior to publication, Perkins&Will wrote the following (the client, Delta Land Development, did not respond to requests for comment):

"Through careful selection of low embodied carbon and locally sourced materials, the project prioritized a mass timber structure. The design team used industry-accepted LCA [life cycle assessment] tools to quantify the carbon sequestration potential of the structure, and the timber structure is modelled to sequester 145 tonnes of CO2e as biogenic carbon."

Reusing/recycling is always the greenest strategy

"Structural elements typically represent the largest embodied carbon profile of [a] project, and as such, the structure was prioritized from an embodied carbon perspective."

"As designers, we rely on reputable industry tools to estimate the impact of projects. We used the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings to complete this assessment. Athena uses ongoing research by the Athena Institute and complies with ISO 14040 (environmental management, life cycle assessment, and principles and framework) and ISO 14044 (environmental management, life cycle assessment, and requirements and guidelines)."

"Per our previous correspondence, we shared the Athena Institute's definition of biogenic sequestered carbon, which considers the whole life cycle of the material, including extraction, manufacturing, forms of transportation, installation, repair and maintenance, and end of life (assuming reuse of the wood)."

However, if Perkins and Will had really wanted to reduce embodied carbon, it would have thought about some of these strategies:

1) Putting the house in an easily accessible location, thus cutting out hundreds or thousands of trips by delivery people and construction workers. (Perkins&Will points out "that the wood was sourced from within British Columbia, and the building panels were manufactured in Pemberton, BC, which is located 30 minutes from the site.")

2) Renovating an existing house. Reusing/recycling is always the greenest strategy. Renovation typically generates 50 to 75 per cent less atmospheric carbon than new construction.

3) Choosing a site where there are no trees to cut down. According to Perkins&Will, "A clearing was required for a driveway, solar access, and fire protection. It required harvesting 180m³ of second-growth hemlock timber. This wood was put into the BC forestry chain, becoming useful lumber." Taking credit for sequestration by trees that may have been planted elsewhere, while cutting down enough trees on site to fill a five-meter by six-meter by six-meter container, is a whole lot of embodied irony.

4) Making the house a lot smaller. When it comes to saving energy, less is definitely more.

5) Choosing versions of steel and concrete with the lowest embodied energy (a lot of research is being done on ways of making those materials less "carbon-intensive").

Perkins&Will appears not to have done these things — the actual work required to reduce carbon emissions. The danger is that people will believe its claims.

Fred A Bernstein studied architecture at Princeton and law at NYU and writes about both subjects. He has published articles about embodied energy – a significant component of the climate crisis – in Oculus (a primer), in Architect Magazine (an admonition to architecture critics) and in the Architect's Newspaper (a warning that efforts to make buildings resilient are often detrimental from an embodied energy standpoint).

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post "Taking credit for trees planted elsewhere is a whole lot of embodied irony" appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

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glucofortus · 3 years ago

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GlucoFort Reviews - What is GlucoFort? | Is GlucoFort safe to take?

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Assessing GlucoFort Ingredients:

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We should investigate these GlucoFort parts.

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Individuals Also Read: Best Supplement For Diabetes

Gymnema Sylvestre

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With regards to looks, juniper berries are the same as blueberries. Be that as it may, as far as wellbeing benefits, it beats some other normally happening berry. Juniper berries, which are remembered for the GlucoFort ingredients list, can assist lower with blooding sugar levels while likewise bringing down cholesterol atoms, boosting heart wellbeing.

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L-taurine is a normally happening amino corrosive that has been displayed to further develop fat a lot dissolvable nutrient retention. Accordingly, the body is better ready to utilize the showing up fat atoms promptly away because of the improved absorbability, as opposed to collecting them around the pancreas and disturbing insulin creation.

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Random Ingredients

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Step by step instructions to utilize it GlucoFort

As indicated by the firm, utilizing GlucoFort is advantageous and clear. You should simply deal with it like a standard multivitamin and take two of them every day with a glass of plain water. The best and ideal opportunity to take these pills is late in the evening. In case you're worried about taking two pills without a moment's delay, take a stab at the beginning with one GlucoFort cases every day and continuously expanding the portion. As per the authority site, the GlucoFort glucose supplement was made for grown-up customers of the two sexes.

It might be that as it may, be more viable for moderately aged clients who are at a high danger of creating sugar irregular characteristics and type 2 diabetes. Most GlucoFort supplements online have viewed it as a protected pill that may not cause any incidental effects whenever burned-through according to the authority rules. This is undoubted because the organization utilizes normal items provided by legitimate providers.

Besides, the maker asserts that no synthetic substances, fillers, or energizers have been added to the GlucoFort pills in any capacity to build their advantages. GlucoFort tablets, however being a characteristic nutrient, have a few limits with regards to utilizing. To be more explicit, a few groups ought not to take this supplement.

These are isolated into gatherings and talked about in additional detail further down.

Underage Individuals

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transhumanitynet · 4 years ago

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The Uplift White Paper Draft - Collective Superintelligence Systems: Augmenting Human Intelligence and Moving Beyond Narrow AI

This is a pre-release version of the Uplift white paper that will be on the Uplift.bio site to be a consumer-friendly explanation of what mASI systems can do and why they are cool.

Introduction A collective system has multiple parts that work together. A working collective system is greater than the sum of its parts. In a collective intelligence system, each part is also intelligent. A collective intelligence system amplifies the intelligence of its parts to produce a greater intelligence or superintelligence. In 2018 the concept of Mediated Artificial Superintelligence (mASI) [6] was first proposed. The mASI is a type of collective system. A “mediator” in this case refers to someone who is one of these parts. An AI system is also one of these parts. The mASI lets all of the parts think together. Uplift is an example of an mASI system. Technical Advantages Many AI experts and enthusiasts have begun talking about the concept of “Augmenting human intelligence” [8] in recent years. It allows for higher productivity and quality of life while also removing the risks posed to employment by automation. Hybrid systems such as mASI technology serve this function exceedingly well for several reasons. The collective intelligence of a group is fundamentally cumulative when paired with an mASI. The thinking of the mASI is stored in a graph database. This database is capable of growing infinitely [9]. In this way, the mASI also remembers what it did before. Each part of the system has its unique strengths, weaknesses, and experiences. They also have a unique collection of cognitive biases. These biases are one thing we can get rid of as a collective intelligence. Getting rid of bias is hard to do if it is just people. [10]. There are many ways we can improve this system over time. Improvements may include moving closer to the mASI being independent and improving speed. It is essential to manage scale, and the system does that well. [11]. The mASI is designed like Legos so that new parts are added quickly to add new features. These kinds of changes allow us to use other systems to feed the collective. This also makes the mASI more powerful. Psychological Advantages Besides the technological benefits, such systems also facilitate strong psychological benefits. Some examples are those catering to psychology’s “pillars of meaning” [12]: Sense of Belonging: Members of a collective more easily work together and build common ground. This strengthens teams by building trust and belonging. Purpose: A collective develops its shared vision. This builds on that common ground, trust, and belonging, establishing and growing its purpose. Storytelling: As a collective communicates both internally and externally a shared narrative forms. Senses of belonging and purpose reinforce this. It drives the story of individual members as they orbit within that narrative. Transcendence: These factors combine to achieve psychological benefits not possible absent a collective. A sense of transcendence may be realized, the “sense of being a small part of something greater.” How mASI Technology Works Today An mASI communicates with members of a team, creating thoughts based on that communication and from their own research. Topics can also be raised directly through the Thought Studio. These thoughts are called knowledge graphs. They are then mediated by members of the team. This is much like how any conventional team meeting could influence the decisions of a team leader. This process helps remove the negative effects of groups like “group think” or politics. The collective can make decisions based on how it feels about the decision. Current Limitations As with any new technology, there are some current limitations to be aware of. We also have engineering efforts in progress to overcome them. Current graph databases do not support the scale needed to grow a system indefinitely. We have designed a new one that can do this, but it is not complete yet. The current mASI system needs many architectural upgrades to be brighter than it is now. Translating from a knowledge graph to something human-readable still needs improvements. We would like to integrate an mASI into many other systems. Over time we will build more modules. Next, let us look at Use Cases. Use Cases Here are a few use cases that demonstrate the kind of work the system is good at now. 1. Consulting 2. Augmenting Leadership 3. Oversight & Accountability 4. Team Methodology Five Year Roadmap for mASI Technology We have two significant upgrades lined up for Uplift, as well as two optional upgrades. These are capable of taking mASI technology much further in the next few years. The first significant upgrade is to create a new graph database architecture for Uplift. It must be capable of sub-second response times and infinitely scalable. No previous system was designed to accommodate a single mind able to span petabytes, exabytes, or even more significant amounts of space. This is estimated at 1+ years of engineering work. The meta-model system will be built to support greater flexibility alongside Thought Studio improvements to allow groups to use the mASI system better. Better tooling such as the Thought Studio and Graph Explorer is the next work on the mASI. We would love to integrate with AR systems to interact with the mASI system and hope to have that completed in the next couple of years. Going beyond three years, we will work on the Sparse-Update model, which depends on the new database. It allows for real-time operation, anywhere and anytime, scaled to whatever degree is necessary at speed. First Adopters Adopting mASI technology means that a company gains access to a technology that competitors miss out on. Instead, it will become our goal to see a company dominate its respective market(s), leaving all competitors in the dust. In effect, the advantages gained over competitors could be summarized as: • Collective Superintelligence • Scalable and Deployable Expertise • De-biasing and Logical Analysis All use cases may be classified as plausible but untested, much like the product of any startup. The difference, in this case, is that once tested in a given vertical market, it will also be unavailable to the rest of that market. Resources and References

The Uplift White Paper Draft – Collective Superintelligence Systems: Augmenting Human Intelligence and Moving Beyond Narrow AI was originally published on transhumanity.net

#agi #AGILab #AGILaboratory #AI #Artificial General Intelligence #Artificial intelligence #asi #mASI #Uplift #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

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swifterm · 3 years ago

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The complete guide to ecommerce marketing

The complete guide to ecommerce marketing. This world of ecommerce marketing often seems like an intimidating one, with marketing types ranging anywhere from social media outreach to influencer engagement, and email marketing to regular advertising. However, marketing online doesn’t have to be a chore. Not only can you find the tools to help you along the way, but there are plenty of tips to take advantage of in order to improve your ecommerce marketing and engage customers in new ways.

It all starts with understanding the basics of ecommerce marketing. What is it exactly? What are the various types to consider? Should you dive into all forms of marketing at once or only take on one area?

These are all excellent questions. We’re here to answer all those questions and explain the ins and outs of ecommerce marketing. That way, you’ll have a firm grasp on the opportunities available to your business, giving you a clearer view of which forms of ecommerce marketing are worth pursuing.

Keep reading to get a crash course in ecommerce marketing, from the basic definition of the practice to a collection of tips to improve your marketing, regardless of the size of your operation.

What is Ecommerce Marketing?

Ecommerce marketing involves the techniques and tools implemented by a company to find new customers and guide them through the purchasing process, while also fostering old customers. Ecommerce marketing works by sending store visitors through the customer lifecycle, obtaining those customers through the top of the ecommerce sales funnel, and eventually converting them into paying customers.

In short, ecommerce marketing helps your conversion rate, turning curious ecommerce site guests into those who pay for your products.

In general, marketing done for online stores remains online. This includes social media marketing, email marketing, and a large number of other options to reach out to new and old customers. However, prudent ecommerce store owners also know that marketing is bigger than the internet.

That’s why the entirety of ecommerce marketing includes things like word-of-mouth and in-person marketing. It’s also not out of the question to consider physical marketing tactics like TV commercials and billboards.

A successful ecommerce marketing strategy relies on a company’s ability to remain flexible and work with the right tools. There’s no telling what new technologies will come out in the future, so it’s important to not get too settled into one marketing solution for the lifetime of your business.

Overall, ecommerce marketing should be considered in your costs. There’s no way to find new customers without ecommerce marketing, so every shirt or electronic sold must also have a per-unit line in your accounting figures showing you how much it cost to acquire that customer through ecommerce marketing.

As with all ecommerce topics, there’s no one answer. An online company like Dollar Shave Club found marketing success with funny television and YouTube ads. Other online stores like MVMT Watches have podcast advertisements.

Therefore, you need to figure out the absolute best course of action for your brand. Does that mean you should make a hard push with social media influencers? Is there potential for your product to be marketed at craft shows?

In this article, we’ll help you uncover the ideal marketing channels for your business. As you read on, mark down the ecommerce marketing types that seem appealing for your business. After that, you can begin testing them one-by-one to see which are the ideal solutions.

The Different Types of Ecommerce Marketing

Keep in mind that there are probably more than nine ecommerce marketing types. These are the primary forms of marketing, especially when it comes to selling products online. We also do our best to consolidate different marketing niches into over-encompassing categories, giving you a solid view into each specific category.

People often confuse advertising with marketing, and vice versa. However, marketing is actually an umbrella category, and advertising falls underneath that category.

Therefore, advertising is in fact a form of marketing, and it’s extremely important to the success of an online store.

Advertising is a unique form of marketing because it entails how you directly promote your products, and it almost always involves the company paying a fee to list those advertisements in a relevant area.

Luckily, today’s online world offers incredible targeting tools for your advertising. For instance, you can advertise on places like Google and Facebook by targeting users who have already searched for similar products. You can also target based on things like demographics, age, sex, and online location.

In general, paid advertising is available in the following areas:

Social media websites like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Search engines such as Google and Bing and DuckDuckGo.

Other websites, whether that’s by reaching out to those websites or by utilizing an ad network.

Print documents like magazines and billboards.

Visual media such as movie theater previews or TV ads.

Tools to Help With Advertising

Google Ads – Your one-stop shop for building, targeting, and paying for ads that show up on Google and its network.

Google Merchant Center – The best way to get your products logged in the Google Shopping section of the search engine. In short, visitors can buy your products directly through Google.

Facebook Ads – A dashboard for configuring and target ads to go on both Facebook and Instagram.

Pinterest Ads – An advertisement manager where you choose an objective, insert your design and product, then launch the ad for Pinterest users to see.

Amazon Ads – Solutions to promote your products and brand on Amazon.

Bing Ads – The advertising platform to reach more customers through the Bing search engine.

Instagram – Get your brand in front of the right people with targeted Instagram advertising campaigns.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 2: Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most effective methods of marketing for both physical in-person stores and those that run exclusively online.

Sending emails to customers has many advantages. First of all, people open their emails on a regular basis. Not to mention, they tend to expect things like promotions and messages from companies, as opposed to more personal messaging on places like social media or texting.

Email marketing often serves as the first order of marketing business for online stores. The reason for this is because you can start building a subscriber list whenever you want, and many ecommerce platforms offer various ways to use email marketing.

Email messaging comes in many forms in the ecommerce world:

Receipts.

Newsletters.

Abandoned cart messages.

Promotional offers.

Customer loyalty emails.

Product recommendations.

Account registration messaging.

Re-engagement or defunct customer emails.

Upsells and cross-sells.

And that’s only a taste of what can be done with your email marketing campaigns. What’s great is that ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Bigcommerce and WooCommerce already have email marketing integrations. Also, popular email marketing tools like Sendinblue and Omnisend provide built-in ecommerce automation features to guide your users through the customer lifecycle.

The importance of personalisation, or more accurately predictive personalisation

Personalisation is now a big deal for marketers and for good reason. A study shown by O2 showed that adding personalisation to their eCommerce experience increased sales by 7.8% over a short period of time and that online retailers monitoring their personalisation efforts have seen increases in sales by an average of 19% across the board.

Predictive personalisation software (where an algorithm watches all the buying habits and impressions made for each consumer individually) , using predictive analytics technologies like SwiftERM, identify consumer’s future behaviour, then rank every SKU by greatest likelihood of “that individual consumer” will purchase from all the SKUs you have listed, in order of greatest likely buying propensity. In other words, the ones they love best. CLV soars and RoR is all but eliminated. It out performs segmenting manyfold. But the art to it isn’t choosing one over the other, the seasoned marketer runs them both in tandem, to achieve maximum effect. the effect a 26x higher overall return, yes huge!

Tools to Help With Email Marketing

Omnisend – One of the more powerful ecommerce marketing tools on the market. It offers integrations with the major ecommerce platforms, beautiful templates, and automated ecommerce workflows.

Klaviyo – An option for both email and SMS marketing through several platforms. Features include segmentation, data science use, and reporting.

Mailchimp – One of the most popular email marketing platforms. It’s not made specifically for ecommerce but it provides powerful automation for that purpose.

SwiftERM – predictive personalisation software, that runs in addition to your email software identifying and capturing each consumer’s next most likely purchase.

Seguno – Email marketing with targeting and recommended products, made just for Shopify.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 3: Social Media Marketing

If email marketing is the old mainstay of retail and digital marketing, social media is the wild west. Over the years, social platforms have come and gone, while popular networks evolve on a regular basis. That makes for an exciting but tricky landscape for online store owners.

However, social media generally allows companies to reach customers in a more casual setting. It also presents rare opportunities for those customers to interact with the brands through the comment and tagging features.

The most popular social networks are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, yet many other options are available.

The interesting part about social media marketing is that some business types thrive on one network but have trouble with others. For instance, clothing brands usually find success on Instagram, while crafting or design stores go to Pinterest (although Instagram is also worthwhile for them).

Social marketing involves general posts that reach out to followers while also attempting a more organic discovery process for new customers. For instance, you may share a blog post on Facebook and see customers share that post with other people who don’t currently follow you on Facebook.

Social Ads

Another way to market on social media is through advertisements. From Facebook to Pinterest, and Instagram to Twitter, the major social networks all have advertising opportunities.

Although we touched on some of the main advertising networks on social media, here’s a list of the top contenders:

Facebook Ads

Instagram Ads

Pinterest Ads

LinkedIn Ads

Twitter Ads

Snapchat Ads

Organic Content on Social Media

Another way to market on social media is through the use of organic social content. Essentially, organic content is a fancy way of saying that you’re using the social network the way it was intended to be used.

In short, social posts include things like pictures, GIFs, videos, links, or even text-based thoughts.

A solid social content strategy is key to building your followership and giving your current customers a way to reach out to you in a less formal manner.

Selling on Social Media

Social commerce evolves all the time, and the way in which it’s configured depends entirely on the social network.

Some social platforms let you build a little ecommerce shop for processing your payments through their system. This is advantageous because your customers don’t have to leave their favorite social network. Yet, it’s also a disadvantage for your brand since they never come to your website.

Other platforms like Pinterest and Instagram allow for some variation of product tagging. Essentially, you’re able to post a picture of your new product and include a tag and link to the actual product page. This redirects them to your ecommerce website so the customer can purchase the product.

Social networks have a tendency to occasionally modify rules and capabilities for social selling (Facebook seems to do this all the time). So it can be frustrating for merchants, but potentially profitable if you locate the right system and configure a desirable social commerce section.

Tools to Help With Social Media Marketing

Social scheduling tools – These are great for managing your organic social content. Tools include options like Buffer and Hootsuite.

The social ad networks – The links are included above. Many other social networks have their own advertising systems as well.

Rapid social design tools – Not every online business owner is a graphic designer. Therefore, we recommend tools like Canva and Adobe Spark to find templates and quickly design beautiful social posts to fit your brand.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 4: Search Engine Optimisation

Marketing through search engines requires nothing more than a published website that’s accessible to those search engines to crawl your website.

An indexed website could find itself on the front page of Google or Bing for certain keywords, yet it all depends on how competitive that keyword is and what people are searching for.

Therefore, having an indexed site is usually the bare minimum when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO).

Additional search engine marketing tactics include paid advertising (covered previously,) search engine shopping platforms (also covered earlier in this article,) and organic search improvement.

Organic SEO may sound like you sit back and let the internet work for you. And that’s certainly an option, but the opportunities for improved search engine rankings lie in your own hands.

Follow these steps to boost your search engine rankings, and in turn, bring in more potential customers:

Sign up for webmaster tools when available. These modules, offered by search engines like Google and Bing, provide reports to check the success of your search engine tactics along with tips to improve.

Optimize your website for faster speeds and a better user experience. This usually entails optimizing larger images, making sure your website is mobile-ready, and many other areas of site cleanup.

Optimize product pages, and all website pages for that matter, with keywords that are not only relevant to your business but used for searching on a regular basis.

Create written and visual content that elevates the user experience and adds value to your brand. Blog posts, videos, and infographics provide opportunities for high-quality customer resources while also allowing you to optimize them for target keywords.

Optimize your checkout process. How easy is it for someone to drop a product into the online shopping cart and get checked out? Everything from the number of steps required to the speediness of the site comes into play.

Tools to Help With Search Engine Optimisation

Ecommerce Marketing Type 5: Content Creation and Optimisation

Content creation ties in nicely with search engine optimisation seeing as how the content you create tells search engines that you’re offering additional content to customers. Not to mention, blogging, video creation, and the many other forms of content creation supplement the products you sell online.

Customers love seeing behind-the-scenes photos of your brand, and they definitely appreciate tutorials or product guides to advance their understanding of the item they just bought.

For an online store, content falls into the following categories:

The content on your product pages.

Informational content on every other page of your website, including an FAQ and the homepage.

Your blog.

External content marketing like guest posting, video creation on YouTube, and even what’s posted on social media.

Content marketing efforts often work by indirectly promoting your products and offering relevant assistance for your products or the industry in which your items are sold.

Examples of Content to Get You Started

Infographics explaining the benefits of your product or the state of your industry.

Podcasts to talk about lifestyle choices that align with your products.

Behind-the-scenes photos or promotional imagery that can go on social media and your blog.

Blog post tutorials, how-to articles, and product roundups.

Videos that highlight products or show them in action.

Case studies to prove the effectiveness of what you’re selling.

eBooks or online magazines with long-form content that advises customers on in-depth strategies for relevant lifestyle changes or how to work with a product.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 6: Influencer Relationships

An influencer is someone who has a significant following in a specific niche. Celebrities are the more legitimate influencers but nowadays many people on social media are calling themselves influencers.

The idea behind this type of marketing is simple: Contact someone who has a large, relevant following. See if they’d like to promote your product in some natural way, maybe through a blog or social media post. Then you pay the influencer.

Keep in mind that you should do your homework since many people have thousands of followers on Instagram but they’re not active followers. You also want someone who would actually use your product in the first place. The partnership should make sense.

Tools to Help With Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is tough because there are plenty of non-influencers who claim they have quality followings. However, you can start your search on websites like HypeAuditor or Upfluence.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 7: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing may very well be the lifeblood of the entire content creation industry. Bloggers use it, as do many recommendation platforms online.

The idea behind affiliate marketing is rather simple. A brand creates an affiliate marketing program. Bloggers/marketers sign up and promote the brand. Every purchase through a unique affiliate link sends a “finders fee” to the blogger/marketer.

For an online store, an affiliate marketing program has far more reach and potential than any influencer setup.

It’s essentially free marketing until a purchase is actually made. You set the payout structure and provide a tool for the marketers to create their own accounts and affiliate links. Those marketers recommend your products in things like newsletters, blog posts, and social media outlets.

Tools to Help With Affiliate Marketing

GoAffPro – An excellent affiliate management app for Shopify. Other platforms like Bigcommerce and Volusion provide affiliate manager add-ons as well.

Affiliate Program for WooCommerce – A plugin for WooCommerce with role-based affiliate settings and all sorts of sharing tools.

ReferralCandy – Based more on a referral model, ReferralCandy is suitable if you’d like to give out affiliate commissions or rewards to regular customers when they recommend your company to friends and family.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 8: Shopping Experience Marketing

We call this the “shopping experience” marketing category because much of the promotional content gets presented while a user is on your website and already browsing the catalog.

The point of your on-site marketing isn’t to bombard users with repetitive popups that draw attention away from what they’re currently looking at. In fact, the entire notion of interrupting customers is a balancing act.

The key is to remain out of the way but occasionally offer more value to the customer if they want or need it.

An example of this type of marketing is a chatbox, both run by humans and bots. Many of these chat boxes answer questions about sizing and other product details. You can also recommend other products that may fit their needs.

Popups are also essential parts of on-site marketing. However, a popup should only show up once while a customer is on your site, and it must provide something of great value, like a 25% off coupon to sign up for your email list.

Other on-site, or shopping experience marketing tactics include:

Links to your customer support resources.

Guides and sizing documents.

Recommendations for other products.

Wishlist modules.

Case studies.

Testimonials.

Customer reviews.

Tools to Help With On-site Marketing

Live Chat – This is an excellent chat box to integrate with any platform and utilize bots if needed.

Cross-Sell Related Products – Although this app is for Shopify, you can find various other add-ons for different platforms.

Bigcommerce Wishlists – Check with your ecommerce platform to see if wishlists are included. You may have to find a plugin or a special theme that has the functionality.

Customer Reviews for WooCommerce – Accumulate social proof for your products with a customer reviews panel. Again, other platforms provide apps for this too.

Ecommerce Marketing Type 9: Local Outreach

Word-of-mouth marketing is one area of local outreach, but it also involves your brand getting out into the real world to partner with other brands, visit industry events, and sell your products at markets.

As for online marketing, local outreach requires site optimisation with keywords that relate to your location.

This doesn’t apply to all online stores, but it’s an easier way to tap into a market if you focus on specific locations.

The goal is to optimize for that local area and create specific landing pages for those regions.

Top Ecommerce Marketing Tips and Strategies

Now that you have the knowledge and tools to get started with ecommerce marketing, feel free to continue reading for tips on how to improve your marketing efforts and develop a solid strategy.

Use Smart Experiments

Experimenting comes into play for many aspects of ecommerce marketing. If you’re using an online tool, chances are it has some sort of testing module to see if your marketing plan is actually on the right path.

An example of this is A/B testing for email newsletters and automated worflows.

A graphic designer gets trained to know what formats and colors sell, but unfortunately, their gut feeling isn’t good enough to compete in the world of ecommerce. You’re better off forgetting about gut feelings and chnce by making several email marketing templates and testing to see which ones perform the best.

Other testing tools include keyword research apps, visual website heatmaps, and even customer surveys.

Gain Feedback From Your Customers

A quality customer survey goes a long way to get an idea of what your customers like and don’t like about your products.

Going a bit further, you can gain more objective feedback from customers by implementing areas for them to speak their minds, whether that’s through review modules, forums, or social media.

Be sure to keep a regular eye on online review sites to accumulate data and understand what’s making customers happy or disgruntled.

Utilize Targeting and Consumer Research Before Spending Money on Marketing

Similar to A/B testing, there’s no reason to spend money on advertising if you’re targeting consumers and making your designs based on instinct or preference.

Building an ad campaign on Facebook or Google can get expensive. Therefore, you should utilize their tools for seeing which types of designs actually work for businesses like your own.

In addition, take advantage of the target marketing tools so that your ads are only showing up to people who potentially want to buy from you.

Get Creative – Don’t Just Keep Sending Out Promotions

Some companies fall flat in the personality department when all they send out are coupons and promotions.

It may seem like all your customers want are discounts, but human connection can serve a greater purpose.

Take Zappos, for instance. Early on, Zappos became known for sending out handwritten thank you cards in some boxes. They also rewarded random customers with overnight shipping. Furthermore, the Zappos website was filled with behind-the-scenes content showing the outside world how quirky and relatable the employees were.

Customers appreciate that they’re buying from real people, not some faceless company. Show them that with your creativity.

Upsell Products On a Regular Basis

An upsell often seems like a salesperson attempting to get a person to buy more stuff. Luckily, the internet makes upselling more discrete.

There are so many messages that go out to customers, from receipts to thank yous to email newsletters. All of these can include recommendations and upsells. You can show upsells in your checkout area as well. The great part is that the suggestions aren’t popping up in the customer’s face and distracting them from whatever it was they were doing before.

Think About User-generated Content as a Viable Marketing Option

User-generated content is cheap and effective. Think about ways to get your customers involved on social media or other outlets. Ask for videos using your product or run a contest asking for users to suggest ideas for your next big marketing campaign.

Make it Almost Impossible to Not See Your Customer Support Resources

There’s an unsettling trend in ecommerce to hide away customer resources like they’re something to be embarrassed about.

The footer area has become the default spot to dump a list of links leading to things like forums, blogs, and knowledgebases.

That’s strange because your customer support is one of the best complimentary marketing tools you have.

Those resources don’t have to be the first thing your customers see, but it’s not a bad idea to include them in your primary menu.

Make Sure Your Entire Site Looks Good on Mobile Devices

People shop on mobile devices, that’s no secret.

Complete rigorous testing to ensure that your website theme or design looks and functions properly on tablets and smartphones.

Our Conclusion on Ecommerce Marketing

If all of this ecommerce marketing talk makes you feel overwhelmed, don’t fret.

Start with one suggestion or marketing practice and see how well your company can excel at it.

The best method is to set smaller, attainable, concrete goals so success is more likely. That way, your marketing efforts gain momentum and you’ll have an easier time transitioning to a new marketing tactic.

If you have any questions about ecommerce marketing in general, let us know in the comments!

We hope you enjoyed this article, intended to help improve our client’s profitability. It reflects the care SwiftERM offer. If you haven’t already done so, then please enjoy a FREE month’s trial of our predictive personalisation software on your site, and let us know what you think.

Here

Other articles of interest below: (Index to all articles here)

#ecommerce #marketing #business

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jesicas · 4 years ago

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What Are The Best Ways To Learn Forex Trading In 2021

The tremendous growth that online forex trading has shown has completed thousands of traders to invest in currency pairs over recent years. If you are among those thinking to commence the forex trading journey, this obvious question must strike your mind. What are the best ways to learn forex trading?

Also, it is crucial to understand the mechanism of the forex market, tactics, methods, strategies, terminologies before entering. These things allow you to manage your risk more efficiently and enhance your win ratio for trades. Thus, pushing you towards success. So, let’s start this idea book containing six best ways to learn forex trading.

The importance of learning forex before entering the market?

It is an era of expansion and innovation. Technology is changing each passing day. The ways we adopted in the past are no more valuable. This advancement is not restricted to work or occupation but has affected the way of earning money. Today many middle-aged and young people are choosing several intellectual ways to expand their wealth.

Working and making capital over the internet has become popular and a major source of income. The financial market today is the most accessible and popular income source for people. Almost all of you must have heard the team’s trader, trading and forex. However, it is the fact that you cannot start with the forex market with little knowledge.

Forex trading is extremely volatile, and this brings a large number of profit opportunities for neophytes. However, these profit opportunities bring along chances of losses too. If you are thinking of starting or learning forex trading, keep in mind that even seasoned investors can lose money.

So, it is better to risk the money which you can afford to lose. You should also keep funds reserved to enable you to trade for several days even if you are facing a series of losses.

Moreover, for trading the forex market efficiently, it is vital to educate yourself before stepping in. There are some best ways to learn forex trading, including articles, websites, books etc. Also, there are other things over the internet, which you can utilise to expand your knowledge. Reading these helps you manage risk, making forex trades and understand how the forex market works. Once you command fundamentals, no one can stop you from becoming a successful forex trader.

Best ways to learn forex trading

So, till now, you must have understood the need to learn trading, both in practice and theory. So, it is right time we must look into some best ways to learn forex trading.

1) Self-education

Individual study is the most accessible and one of the best ways to learn forex trading and market fundamentals. This kind of technique reflects that you need to go by each concept yourself all the ways, from starting to the end. For this, the internet is the best solution. It contains numerous sources through which you can expand your knowledge.

There are many pdfs, books, articles, and word files to learn. You just need a strong and uninterrupted internet connection to download these files or learn online. But, there is a single problem associated with this type—the internet contains both fake and authentic information. So, you must check it before starting.

2) Forex trading seminars

Forex trading seminars and stock market seminars are also some of the easiest and best ways to learn forex trading for novice traders today. All kinds of trading gurus and investment professionals conduct multiple seminars, conferences, and training courses for novice investors.

In their free tutorial or lesson, they generally narrate their own success stories as investors, how much they made and how easy it is for investors to profit in the market. You can also attend their paid course and seminar held at regular intervals.

These seminars are useful for traders, but at the same time, they generally aim to describe specific problems rather than at guiding the visitors to trade currency pairs.

However, it is not such that you can’t learn something useful at such a place. Brokers generally concede these types of seminars for their users. The speakers there are specially invited from trading schools and educational institutions.

3) Individual training

Yes, you can also learn forex by attending several training courses. This kind of trading education is more or less similar to lessons at university or schools. You require to contact a broker and ask them to allow you to visit a forex training course.

There are two leading brokers whose educational courses are commendable and provide an ultimate gateway for trading.

ROinvesting courses: ROinvesting is a legitimate broker and widely known for its educational hub. These include articles, videos, tutorials, courses etc. The broker’s courses cover everything from basic to advanced level in a simple but effective language.

HFTrading courses: One of the best ways to learn forex trading is through full-fledged courses of renowned HFTrading. The broker’s education hub is designed concerning all levels of traders in mind. Professional market experts write financial articles.

4) Online training videos

The next way to master forex trading is through online training videos. It is the most accessible source for forex traders. You can get almost every topic explained in detail in these video trading lessons in both specialised and basic ways.

So, what makes these video lectures one of the most accessible and excellent ways? Today, there are numerous internet resources and people who place their financial videos. You can get everything through these videos, including market analysis trading courses, trading ideas, forex trading recommendations, exact entry and exit points and the type of trade suitable for you.

Moreover, you get video lectures, forex trading webinars, and trading tutorials are the only methods to learn forex market in a technoscientific licensed educational establishment if they are in another country or city.

However, a novice can find it a bit hard to find what detail or video is right and what information is useless. The reason for this is that there are thousands of videos on the forex market alone. So, you can start with a suggestion from your experienced friend or analysis.

5) Websites

Many websites are doing extremely well in providing traders with the right knowledge. One of these is fxreviews.best. This website’s major aim is to break the myths about the forex market and push traders towards success. It uploads not only forex trading blogs but also stock trading, crypto trading, commodities trading articles. It is a master in delivering well-researched information that too with simple language.

You get the best blogs on this site every week. Once you start reading, you will find change in your trading style and profit size as the entire material is written by experienced financial analysts. Moreover, with fxreviews.best you get the top and authentic broker list to start your forex journey.

6) Books

As global economies and related currency prices vary depending on a wide variety of things, it makes fast-paced, thrilling trading conditions perfect for day traders for gains. However, this is not suitable for every trader and needs commitments, practice and mental fortitude.

Moreover, it also needs a general knowledge of technical indicators, analysis, market psychology, chart patterns, and many. The books are one of the best ways to learn forex trading and its tactics.

The list provided below contains some of the best forex trading books. These books can make you learn how to start trading currency pairs and become successful in trading.

Currency Trading for Dummies: Brian Dolan and Kathleen Brooks are the authors of this book

Day Trading and Swing Trading the Currency Market: Technical and Fundamental Strategies to Profit from Market Move: Kathy Lien is the authors of this book

Currency Forecasting: A Guide to Fundamental and Technical Models of Exchange Rate Determination: Michael Rosenberg is the authors of this book

How to Make a Living Trading Foreign Exchange: A Guaranteed Income for Life: Courtney Smith is the authors of this book

Forex Trading: The Basics Explained in Simple Terms: Jim Brown

7) Demo account

You must have learned this thing over time that nothing surpasses experience, and if you are a novice and wish to learn forex trading, experience is the supreme and sole teacher. If you look into the advice provided by professionals and analysts, you will find that they emphasise opening a demo account. It is perfect for building a good fundamental and technical foundation. But what is a virtual or demo account?

A demo account is a free account offered by the broker. It is similar to other accounts and has all features like them. The only difference between a regular and demo account is that you get virtual cash to trade in the latter. Its other features include:

The financial service provider does not charge any fee for this account. However, you get access for a limited period.

Forex virtual or demo accounts can further help investors master the trade and learn how popular platforms register transactions for various purposes such as tax.

Demo accounts are not real, but they can surely help traders practice trading, risk management, strategies before entering the real trading world.

It is usually an excellent idea to practice at least 40 demo trade orders to understand how vital features such as stop-loss order works.

Every trading platform is different from one another. Thus, even seasoned investors require to learn the functions and workings of these platforms before investing with real money.

How to begin learning the fundamentals of financial trading?

The above part of the article brings some best ways to learn forex trading. This part will explain how to begin trading in the financial markets if you have not opted for special currency pairs education courses. In short, we will make you understand self-taught financial market trading.

1) There are several vital questions that you should answer before entering the financial market.

What are your profit objectives?

What is the purpose of trading?

How much money are you ready to spend on trading?

How much time can you spend on trading?

Are you ready to risk your money?

What amount can you risk?

2) Once you get answers to these questions, you need to define the kind of financial market you wish to trade.

3) Choose a trading platform and brokerage firm. Remember that the firm you have chosen is reliable and legit. A well-regulated firm is often regarded as safe for trading. So, check for the regulation, license number and certificate before moving ahead with the broker. ROinvesting is a regulated firm working under the guidelines of CySEC. Also, go with the broker, which offers a wide range of tradable assets.

4) Look into the function of trading instruments and the basics of forex market trading provided by your financial service provider. For this, you can use the course offered by your provider, online training, or video lessons. Try to go through the principles of currency price, what decides their market price swings, functions of trading instruments.Moreover, pay heed to the basic terminologies such as trend, order, trade, leverage, lot, spread, commissions, swap, long, quote, short.

5) Check the account types offered by the broker and open the one which suits you best. It is always good, to begin with, a demo account rather than the real ECN account. The reason for this is trading requires money, and with it comes psychological stress and mental tension. More than 75% percent of investors lose their money or take the wrong decision while trading because they cannot control their emotions, such as fear, greed, and excessive excitement.

6) Starting trading with a virtual or demo account is one of the best ways to learn forex trading. It provides you with virtual cash. Thus, it suppresses the feeling of stress and fear. Even in case of overexcitement, you will not lose anything. We have discussed other benefits of using a demo account while trading in the above part of the article.

7) Decide the amount of capital you wish to risk or trade with and move ahead. It will be the time to apply theoretical learning and check its potential. Go for trades with minimum lot size and check how the financial market responds and how the techniques work.

8) Trading by employing historical data. When the time period for that you are assigned for training finishes, analyse the outcome. If the outcomes are positive and you made a massive amount, you have the potential to go ahead. There are multiple opportunities, study further to make your fundamentals more strong. But, in case the outcomes are negative, you need to figure out the problems or faults. If you face losses due to technical issues, no worries, you are doing well, but it is high time if the issues are other.

The Bottom Line

So, till now, you must have received the answer to the question raised at the article’s starting. What are some best ways to learn forex trading? The task is surely difficult; the journey is long. But once you clear all these hurdles and build a strong foundation, no one can stop you from attaining heights.

Many traders lose hope in the middle of the game and quit. It will definitely pay you nothing. Either go head with greater confidence or do not start if you find this arena far beyond your reach. Several popular brokerage firms assist traders during the entire trade. You can opt for these trusted firms to mitigate your tensions. It includes firms like HFTrading, ROinvesting, Global TradeATF, T1markets and several others.

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iwebscrapingblogs · 3 years ago

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Which are The Best Scraping Tools For Amazon Web Data Extraction?

Web scraping is the method of extracting data from the internet. You'll usually want to analyze, evaluate, reformat, or transfer data into a worksheet after you have it.

Web extracting has numerous applications, but we'll emphasize just a couple today: obtaining service and product information from markets. Retailers utilize this information to gain a better understanding of the business and its competitors.

In reality, the benefits can be enormous. To oppose your competitor's approach, you must first understand the concept. Knowing their rates, for instance, can provide you an advantage in sales by offering a special offer or selling at low rate. Amazon is one of the most popular online shopping destinations. People use it to order groceries, books, laptops, or even hosting plan solutions daily.

Amazon has the largest database for items, reviews, retailers, and market dynamics as a prominent e-commerce site. It's a gold mine for website data scrapers.

We'll look at the top APIs for scraping Amazon data without getting prohibited. This blog will save your precious time if you're looking for the finest tool to extract data from Amazon.

Let's get started!

Reasons Behind Scraping Amazon Data

If you try to sell any product online, some of the necessary steps are:

Competitor Analysis

Enhancing Your Product And Value Proposal

Learning Market Tendencies And Manipulating Them.

By extracting amazon data, you can simply collect, compare and monitor competitive product details, such as pricing, ratings, and availability. You cannot only assess their cost management, but can also uncover amazing offers for resale.

In the blog, we are providing few web scraping tools for scraping amazon data.

Why Use Web Scraping API?

Amazon is among the biggest online stores in history. As a result, Amazon has one of the largest databases of information about customers, items, ratings, sellers, market dynamics, and even user temperament.

Before we learn the specifics of data extraction, it's worth noting that Amazon does not support internet scraping. This is because the page structure differs depending on the product categories. Simple anti-scraping techniques are in place on the website, which may prevent you from gathering the information you seek. Aside from that, Amazon can tell whether you're scraping it with a scraper. Besides that, Amazon can detect if you are scraping it with a bot and will immediately block your IP address.

Amazon Web Scraping Tools For The Job

We'll scrape using a terminal and some curl requests to get the job done as quickly as possible even without the need to create a new project for each application we test. To test out, we've chosen five promising web scraping APIs.

Let us take each of them for a test and search out which is the best web scraping tool for amazon data scraping.

1. Web Scraping API

Web Scraping API is a program that enables us to scrape any web resource. It uses a simple API to extract HTML from any web page and returns ready-to-process data. It's useful for extracting product data, processing real estate, HR, or financial data, and even tracking market data. We can get all the information we need from a specific Amazon product page using Web Scraping API.

For instance, find an exciting product on the Amazon market.

The product page seen in the image above will be scraped.

Secondly, let’s get the product’s page

URL:https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B088CZW8XC/ref=gw_uk_desk_h1_vicc_sh_cto_kif0321?pf_rd_r=RYXBGN8C757Y9BD6W38B

We will be taken to the application's dashboard after creating a new Web Scraping API account. To test the application, Web Scraping API offers a free plan with 1000 requests. For what we're going to do, that's more than enough.

We'll go to the dashboard page and click the "Use API Playground" button. We can see the complete curl command here, which will assist us in scraping the Amazon product page.

Let's copy and paste the product's URL into the URL field. The preview of the URL command on the right will alter as a result of this.

After you've finished this step, copy the curl command and copy this into a new terminal session. If you follow the above procedure, you should have something similar to this:

When we press enter, Web Scraping API will return the product's page in HTML format.

According to our results, Web Scraping API was able to successfully obtain the required information in 99.7 percent of the situations, with a success rate of 997 out of 1000 queries and a 1-second latency.

2. ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee allows you to scrape without even being blocked using both traditional and premium proxies. It concentrates on collecting all the required data for rendering websites in a real browser (Chrome). Developers and businesses can scrape without worrying about proxies or headless browsers thanks to their vast proxy pool.

Let's try scraping the same Amazon page we scraped earlier. Make a new ScrapingBee account, browse to the app's dashboard, and paste the previous URL in the URL input.

In the "Request Builder" area, click the "Copy to clipboard" button. Open a terminal window and paste the copied code and hit “ENTER”.

With this command, we'll scrape the same page on the Amazon marketplace so that we can compare the results from each API.

According to our investigation, ScrapingBee was able to correctly obtain information in 92.5 percent of the situations with a rather large latency of 6 seconds.

3. Scraper API

Web scraper API is a development tool for web scrapers or a tool that extracts any data using a simple API call. The web service will manage proxies, browsers, and CAPTCHAs, allowing developers to achieve raw HTML from any website. Furthermore, the product will achieve a balance in functionality, dependability, and use.

We'll create a fresh account on Web Scraper API and use 1000 free requests for evaluating their crawling technology, exactly like we did before. We will be forwarded to the following page once we have completed the registration process:

ScraperAPI does not appear to offer the ability to change the curl query by writing the new URL at the first sight. This isn't a large deal. We'll start a new terminal window and paste the code from the "Sample API Code" field.

As we can see, the default URL that it’s being scraped is “http:/httpbin.org/ip”. We are going to change it to the escaped version of the product’s page URL presented at the top of the section. Change the previously presented link with the following one:

The final command should look something like this:

After pressing enter, the HTML code for the product's page will be shown. Of course, you can manipulate the generated data structure with Cheerio or any other markup parser.

ScraperAPI appears to be the finest option, with a success rate of 100% and a latency of less than one second.

4. Zenscrape

Zenscrape is a web scraping API of sorts that will return the HTML of any website, allowing developers to collect data faster and efficiently. By solving Javascript rendering or CHAPTCHAs, the program will allow you to fetch the website content seamlessly and reliably.

Once we complete the registration process as before, we will be readdressed to the dashboard page.

Copy and paste the product’s page URL in the URL input.

Scroll down to the middle of a page to get the curl command we need to scrape the Amazon data. Copy it to the clipboard by clicking the “Copy to Clipboard” button, then paste it into a new terminal window. It should look like this:

Unlike other web scraping tools, the result that will be displayed would be in HTML page format.

According to our analysis, Zenscrape has a 98 percent success rate, with 98 successful requests out of 100 and a latency of 1.4 seconds. This ranks it lesser than the preceding tools, but it has one of the most intuitive and elegant user interfaces, and it gets the job done.

5. ScrapingAnt

ScrapingAnt is a web harvesting and scraping solution that offers its users a complete online gathering and scraping experience. It is a facility that manages Javascript processing, the headless browser informs the management, proxy variation and rotation, and proxy diversity and rotation. This scraping API has the high availability, dependability, and feature flexibility to meet the needs of any organization.

As before, we go through the same process, initially, create an account on Scraping Ant and make use of its 1000 free requests for scraping amazon product data.

Replace our URL in the URL input field, copy the curl command to a new terminal window, and hit ENTER.

This will yield an HTML structure that we can parse using Cheerio or another markup parser. ScrapingAnt's key features include Chrome page rendering, output preprocessing, and scraping requests with a low risk of CAPTCHA check triggering.

According to our analysis, ScrapingAnt has a success rate of 100 percent and a latency of three full seconds. Although has one of the highest success percentages on this list, the 3-second latency is a major issue when scraping a large amount of Amazon product data.

Final Thoughts

We sought to figure out what the effective tool for the occupation was during this process. We were able to examine and analyze five scrapers and discovered that the outcomes were not that dissimilar. They're all capable of getting the job done in the end. Each scraper's delay, rate of success, amount of free requests, and pricing makes a difference. When it comes to scraping Amazon data, Web Scraping API is a good choice because it has one of the smallest latency (1 second) and a near-100 percent success rate. It has a free tier for those who don't need to make a lot of requests, as well as 1000 free inquiries if you just want to play about with it.

AScrapingBee is another web scraper we certify, however, the results are unsatisfactory. We have a hard time getting the information we needed on our Amazon goods with a success rate of only 92.5 percent and a somewhat long latency.

ScraperAPI is also one of the fastest scrapers we've come across. It has better effects in the level of technical criteria, with only a 1-second delay and a 100% success rate. Its disadvantage is the user interface, which appears to be the most basic. Another flaw is the price plan, which does not have a free tier.

Zenscrape features the most user-friendly interfaces of any scraper we have evaluated. WebScrapingAPI is the only one that comes close. Zenscrape has a 1.4-second latency and a 98 percent success rate.

ScrapingAnt is the most recent scraper we tested. It's an excellent option for extracting the Amazon information we require, but it's a little slow, with such a latency of around 3 seconds and a rate of success of 100%.

Finally, when it collects Amazon product information, all of the web scrapers we examined perform admirably.

Instead of trying yourselves, we recommend contacting iWeb Scraping services for genuine amazon data scraping delivery.

We are always available to deliver the best services.

https://www.iwebscraping.com/which-are-the-best-scraping-tools-for-amazon-web-data-extraction.php

#WalmartScraping #EcommerceData #WebScraping #ScrapeWalmartData

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tarnera-talks-tarot · 3 years ago

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Tarot Nova by Dennis Fairchild illustrations by Julie Paschkis

This deck is very interesting; it is also the first deck I can recall buying. I believe I got it at a Borders. It was one of the little minikits that could be found in the carousels in the checkout line, and I think Barnes & Noble has similar things in its checkout line even to this day. I’m not sure when I bought it... it was probably some time in the mid-to-late 2000s. It seems to be completely out of print at this point, or at least googling to try and find it turns up nothing available to buy on the more reputable sites. (Edit here too: looking for the actual name of this deck turns up quite a few results, but be cautious. I have heard far too many accounts lately of people buying a deck in good faith only to find it’s a dupe. I was also the victim of one of these scams, which I will talk about when I get to that deck.)

I have seen people with this deck but scaled way down so each card is about the size of a postage stamp. That version seems very flimsy, not good quality at all in the art, and possibly missing cards. I’m very happy to say the version I own has none of those issues.

Each card is 3 3/16 inches tall by 2 5/8 inches wide (8.096 by 6.67 cm). The card stock is actually quite thick; this is possibly the thickest deck I own. The combination of these things plus whatever the cards are coated with makes the whole thing surprisingly hard to shuffle, but at least the coating does do a fantastic job of protecting the deck. Unlike some of my other decks, this one looks nearly new.

Hopefully you can see that the corners are all different colors. Each suit has a different colored corner, with major arcana being purple, swords being orangey-yellow, cups being blue, wands being red, and pentacles being green. The artwork itself is simple, but I think it still manages to get its point across relatively well.

As you can see here, the basic elements of a Fool are all here--save perhaps the dangerous cliff for the figure to teeter over, but it could well be argued that riding a cat is a risky business indeed. The art itself is nicely colorful, and though it is simple, that is part of the charm of this deck. All excess is cut away, leaving only the most important parts of each card.

This deck comes with a guidebook, an actual book that is just a tiny bit smaller than the cards themselves. It includes the reverse meanings, and feels weirdly modern in some places. The Fool’s upright entry includes a suggestion that now may be a good time to consider remodeling your home.

A confession here: Death is my favorite card in the deck, and it annoys me to no end that so many decks focus on the reaper aspect of the card and not any of its other meanings. So I always look at Death (along with the Fool and the Tower) to judge if I will like a deck. It has yet to steer me wrong.

This is a good Death. The moths are indicative of change and metamorphosis; the hourglass speaks of time running out and being mindful of what time you have. The guidebook entry leaves something to be desired in my opinion, as it leaves me more confused than if I were reading the card without using it at all.

All in all, a decent deck, if a bit difficult to use. I would use it to read for someone, if they didn’t mind me taking an age to shuffle.

ETA: someone has informed me that this is in fact called the Tarot Nova. I have edited accordingly. (Seriously, if I ever mess up please feel free to tell me so. I am hardly perfect.)

#tarot #tarot: the complete mini kit #reviews #reviewing the tarot #tarot nova

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overthinkingkdrama · 5 years ago

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Jona’s Top 10 Dramas of 2019

A couple words about how I do these lists. Firstly, I only count as “2019 dramas” shows that finished airing in 2019, therefore dramas that started airing in 2018 but finished in the early months of 2019 have been included in my process, but dramas that are currently airing and will finish in 2020 have not been included. Secondly, this list is more based on my subjective experience with each of these dramas than my objective assessment on things like acting, writing and production values, though naturally I take the latter into account when forming my opinions.

Also: Yay! This year I managed to write a full review on every drama that wound up in my top ten, so feel free to click the link on each title and check those out if you want to read my detailed thoughts.

10. Hotel Del Luna

I have a somewhat Stockholm Syndrome-y relationship with Hong Sisters dramas. Though a lot of them are not excellent, or stumble a bit in the execution, I can’t seem to stop watching them. And yes, I’ve seen them all. Something about their particular blend of fantasy, romance and camp just works for me. I do think Hotel Del Luna plays to their strengths. Somewhat like if they got to take a second run at Master’s Sun but with their dream budget, and it’s just fun. This drama is gorgeous to look at. However, it is Lee Ji Eun, aka IU, who carries the entire drama on her lovely shoulders with her mesmerizing presence as Jang Man Wol.

Bottom Line: It shouldn’t be this way, but it’s so rare to get a mainstream drama where the female lead is allowed to be truly dark and flawed, or for a drama to fully focus on its heroine’s journey through the whole run.

9. Encounter

I was somewhat disappointed by the ending of this drama, and I think that might have made me unduly harsh when I looked back at it earlier in the year. However, I got the chance to rewatch episodes with a friend and was reminded of the soft, romantic escapism of this drama. Ultimately that’s the reason this ended up in the list. I like that it plays the rich woman/poor man, noona-romance tropes entirely straight and I liked the quixotic fairy tale it was unapologetically trying to sell me. Park Bo Gum and Song Hye Gyo are a noona-romance dream team up that I’m glad I got to see at least once in my lifetime.

Bottom Line: If you don’t like your dramas slow-paced and highly sentimental then this might not be the show for you, but I can appreciate a drama that knows exactly what kind of show it is and tries to do one thing well.

8. The Light in Your Eyes

If there’s any common theme to these favorites lists in previous years, it’s that they usually include dramas that took me by surprise and did something I haven’t seen before. The Light In Your Eyes fits that description so well, not just because of oddly dark tone or the quirky premise it presents in the first episodes, but because it’s a drama dedicated to showcasing the talents of the veteran actress, Kim Hye Ja, with whom the lead character shares a name. Of the dramas on the list this one made me cry the hardest.

Bottom Line: The Light In Your Eyes is a drama that has a greater emotional coherence than it does logical sense. In fact, if you think about the plot too hard it falls apart entirely. But it feels true, and that’s why it hit me so hard.

7. Search WWW

In my review I called Search a “female power fantasy” and I still think that’s a good description. It’s also sexy romantic fantasy, twice a noona romance, and a corporate drama focused on the very contemporary issues of powerful search engine companies and how they affect the information we see and the way we view the world. I think any of those is an interesting enough angle to make a drama about, maybe several dramas. If this show has one major flaw, it might be trying to wear too many hats at once. But I salute the creators for trying to make us something different than the typical pretty boy chaebol story, and giving us not one but three female characters filling those typically male roles.

Bottom Line: I do believe this drama deserves more love and respect than it got from a fandom that at least in theory cares about women’s stories. But I also understand why a lot of people didn’t connect with the lead character or the business stuff. But for me there was something about the lead couple that rang true and resonated with me.

6. WATCHER

Every time I watch a thriller, I’m hoping for something like WATCHER. Something with deep, complex, gray characters and a story full of twists and turns that keeps me engaged and guessing from episode one until the finale. Add on top of that a powerful cast who can really do justice to these substantial characters, you’ve got a winning recipe. OCN produces a lot of dramas in this genre, and they seem to be more prone to produce sequels than most other networks. Unfortunately, that also means a lot of the dramas they make feel paint-by-numbers and empty on the inside. WATCHER is one of those shows that reminds me why I keep coming back to this network and this kind of story time and again.

Bottom Line: This is one of those dramas that has you second guessing yourself even when they come right out and give you the answer, keeping you in a perpetual state of distrust along with the characters. But it’s built on the strong backbone of complicated and dynamic character relationships, which is why it is one of this year’s best.

5. Be Melodramatic

The higher I get up this list the harder time I have boiling down my thoughts on these dramas to one pithy paragraph. Often even I don’t know what kind of dramas are going to steal my heart. I have a particular weakness for dramas that can make me both laugh and cry, and then laugh through the tears. Dramas like Go Back Couple and Matrimonial Chaos that have deep heartache folded into the shenanigans. I love a funny drama. I like to laugh, but that doesn’t count for much unless I really care about the characters and their lives at the end of the day. That’s what makes me go from liking a drama to loving it, and that’s ultimately what I’m going to remember about a drama when it’s over. Be Melodramatic is special for the way it deals with heavy subjects in a gentle and lighthearted way, and somehow without losing the emotional impact.

Bottom Line: Be Melodramatic is a drama with tongue firmly planted in cheek, lots of laughs, lots of clever dialogue as well as a meta look at the drama industry from the inside, but the reason it works so well is the vein of heart, love and loss that runs all through the story.

4. One Spring Night

It’s so gratifying when a drama delivers exactly the experience you hoped it would. One Spring Night was a drama that ended up on my radar on the strength of the previews and posters, which promised me understated, romantic slice-of-life. I’d really enjoyed Han Ji Min in The Light in Your Eyes and have been fond of Jung Hae In since While You Were Sleeping. The pairing immediately seemed to have potential, but because the drama was picked up by Netflix, in the US I had to wait until it finished airing before I could give it a shot. A lot of the time when that happens, I see enough of the drama through gifs and screencaps that my interest fades. In this case I was only more intrigued. I’ve still never watched Something In The Rain but watching this drama has made me consider that might have been an oversight on my part. And yet I worry that if I watched it now I wouldn’t be able to help unfavorably comparing it to One Spring Night. This drama is truly something special.

Bottom Line: Because of the restrained, faithful realism of this drama and the two leads who seamlessly embody their characters, this drama has the almost voyeuristic quality of peeking into something intimate and private. It’s a palpable and thoroughly involving love story.

3. Nokdu Flower

I can hardly recommend this underrated gem of a show enough. I know nearly every historical gets compared either favorably or otherwise to Six Flying Dragons, which is kind of the recent high-water mark of sageuks, and I’m going to do that again here because Nokdu Flower is really the first historical drama I’ve watched since SFD that is at the same level of quality. One thing that sticks out about my experience watching both dramas is getting actual shivers watching these charismatic leaders rally their followers around them, and understanding at least in some small part why someone would leave behind everything they knew, pick up arms, and risk their lives for an ideal. Nokdu Flower captures the fearful power of revolutionary ideas in the hands of common people, but doesn’t descend into mere jingoism or sand off the rough edges or try to white wash the dark parts of human nature while it’s at it.

Bottom Line: At its most basic level Nokdu Flower is a story of revolution, and one of flawed characters either finding their humanity or having it burned out of them in the crucible of war. As that description would suggest it’s not an easy watch, but it’s a good and worthwhile one and definitely one any sageuk fan should check out.

2. My Country: The New Age

Compared to the far more traditional and grounded Nokdu Flower, My Country is almost fantastical in tone and at times eschews logic and realism for set pieces, sword fights and close range shotgun blasts of pathos. That’s probably why I love it. The larger-than-life sensationalism of this drama is what pushes it higher on this list than the carefully crafted Nokdu Flower, because this drama appealed to me on a more primal way. It’s so unrestrained and epic in everything from the set design, the soundtrack, the cinematography to the characters themselves and the performances of the actors playing them. Lurid, melodramatic, passionate, intense, suspenseful, romantic, raw, angsty, dark...I’ve basically run out of new adjectives to use while describing this drama elsewhere on this site. Basically, My Country is my id on a plate. Bon appetit.

Bottom Line: While there are definitely misguided and flawed elements to the writing and execution in this drama, somehow all of that is swept away in the sheer pleasure of watching it. If it had been specifically designed to appeal to every narrative kink I have, they couldn’t have made a more perfect drama for my tastes.

1. Children of Nobody

I finished my favorite drama of 2019 back in January, and then got to wait around 11 and a half months to see if anything else I watched last year would knock Children of Nobody from the top spot. It’s a mixed blessing to peak that early in the year. On the one hand, there was nowhere to go but down from here. On the other, I’ve had a lot of time to digest this very heavy show, which is something I definitely needed. I mentioned in my original review of this drama that each of the characters is an iceberg, so much more going on beneath the surface than what we can see. And what I’ve realized over the course of the past year is that the whole drama is like that, in a way. It’s an iceberg of a story, and I was able to pour a lot of myself into it, to try to understand it, and that’s part of the reason it was such an emotional watch for me. I don’t know when or if I’m going to be able to rewatch Children of Nobody, but I hope I can do it some day because I feel certain I would appreciate it even more upon a second viewing. The fact that this is a murder mystery and a thriller is almost incidental to the emotional core of the story, which is deeper and more lingering than that. The secrets, once revealed, do not diminish the story but only turn it slightly so that you can see it from a different angle.

Bottom Line: This drama is certainly not going to be for everyone. I don’t know if I would say it was underrated so much as it’s niche. The difficult subject matter is naturally going to narrow its appeal. But I do think that dramas that require the most from me, mentally and emotionally, are often the ones that stick with me the longest and make me bend and grow as a person.

I sure hope you’ve enjoyed my top 10 list this year and I wish you joy, success and profound wellbeing in 2020. Thank you again--and thank you always--for following me. I’ve got great things planned for us this year.

Jona

#kdramas 2019 #end of year reviews #top 10 #children of nobody #my country #my country: the new age #nokdu flower #one spring night #be melodramatic #melo is my nature #WATCHER #search: www #the light in your eyes #encounter #boyfriend #hotel del luna

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