#so it's not like I can just publish the scripts themselves on my website or something

[thelaurenshippen]

Hi! Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I can't find transcripts for the Bridgewater podcast. Do those not exist? Or am I just not looking in the right place

hey! this isn't a stupid question at all - as far as I know, there aren't currently transcripts available on the Bridgewater website and there aren't plans to provide them. it's something I've suggested to the team in the past and will ask about again, but unfortunately different companies have different policies and I don't personally control what content gets put out there!

bridgies, does anyone know of any fanmade transcripts that exist out there?

[nataliefay97]

Final Blog Post: Youth Creativity Hub

Our youth creative media project is finally up and running. Choosing TikTok as our platform was a game-changer, and we've already garnered a couple of hundred views, a comment, and a follower! The engagement so far seems to be from young people as well, which is promising.

Initially, our idea was to create a website for a digital art gallery where youth could submit their artworks to be published. As child and youth care practitioners who are advocates for mental health are wellbeing, our overarching goal of this project was to encourage creative expression among youth which (we hope) would lead to the promotion well-being in our participants and audience. Additionally, we wanted the youth who engaged with our project to feel like they were part of something, and to connect with their peers through art. Community is so important when it comes to mental well-being.

However, unlike a website, TikTok provides us real-time insights into audience engagement, allowing us to connect with our viewers more dynamically. We also expanded our reach by creating a Linktree page featuring mental health resources and a curated playlist, ensuring our project serves as both a creative outlet and a supportive space for youth. We want to encourage not just creative expression, but youth media creation, as the only other way to engage with our content other than liking/commenting would be to film themselves and their creative works and upload them using our suggested hashtags. Our readings from week 10 discussed the importance of youth media creation and the roles it serves for youth (Fisherkeller, 2021). Additionally, this project places youth as not just consumer but creators of media and media culture, as we encourage youth to creatively “respond” to our challenges and art activities with their own trials and creations (Aarsand, 2021). This project can perhaps also contribute to new media literacies as we thoroughly discussed in this class, encouraging skill development and engagement with physical artistic media and digital media on TikTok (Jenkins, 2006).

The transition to TikTok, however, presented its own set of challenges. What seemed like a straightforward process of filming a couple of art tutorials turned into a meticulous undertaking for me, personally. I was forced to creatively problem-solve as a result of my lack of equipment and recent experience with filming and video editing. I was able to make a makeshift tripod using stacks of books and dishes, and balancing my poor phone on the edges of shelves to give the viewer a “birds-eye view” of what my hands were doing. Each TikTok required 45 minutes of filming at least! I faced technical challenges such as my lighting being too yellow and too harsh, realizing unwanted elements in the frame only after I had finished filming, and realizing that what I was drawing on paper wasn’t even showing up on camera and having to re-do everything all over again. Also, I had to plan out scripts for the TikToks and jot down which camera angle I would use for each line of script I wrote. The planning was extensive but I enjoyed the challenge!

Decisions about whether to include my voice or film myself added another layer of complexity. Struggling with camera shyness and apprehensions about potential criticism about my appearance (not that there I'm anything particularly notable about how I look…it’s just that TikTok can make you feel insecure about things you never thought about before!), I opted to keep the focus solely on the art for now.

In terms of my role in this project, I believe I took on several key responsibilities that laid the foundation for Youth Creativity Hub. I was responsible in conceiving the initial idea that led to the creation of this project. I feel my partner and I were able to collaborate seamlessly as she was enthusiastic and on-board with the ideas I put forward. I also named our project. I believe “Youth Creativity Hub” is fitting because it represents the demographic we wish to reach and also encompasses our commitment to serving as a central hub for art tutorials and a safe space for creative exploration. I also created 3 engaging TikTok videos which entailed two art activities and one mindfulness activity. Further, I created and set up our TikTok account and made sure to draft meaningful and engaging captions for the videos I uploaded with appropriate hashtags. Finally, I used Canva to design our logo which unifies our brand.

Through this project, I was able to re-discover the joy of creating videos again, a hobby I had set aside for about 10 years (I initially wanted to pursue a career in digital media before I chose child and youth care). I used to “mess around” and film and edit videos when I was a teen, and eventually started “geeking out” once I started my (now deleted) YouTube channel and built a following (Herr Stephenson, 2021). ****I initially set out to only create 2 TikToks, and I ended up creating 3. Perhaps post-semester I will explore TikTok some more and continue making videos, not just for my own enjoyment but to also to foster a community of young creators. My aspiration is that our videos will not only spark individual creativity but also nurture a supportive creative space for the youth on TikTok.

Citations

Aarsand, P. (2021). Children's Digital Gaming Cultures. In D. Lemish (Ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Children, Adolescents, and Media (pp. 119-126), Routledge.

Fisherkeller, J. (2021). Young People Producing Media. In D. Lemish (Ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Children, Adolescents, and Media (pp. 344-350), Routledge.

Herr Stephenson, R. (2021). New Media and Informal Learning. In D. Lemish (Ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Children, Adolescents, and Media (pp. 467-474), Routledge.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. An Occasional Paper on Digital Media and Learning

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

[vulturevanity]

Hey, as someone who's currently being educated in the entertainment industry, I was wondering if you had any further insight into the situation with Viacom and Wattpad? It's especially scary to me because Wattpad was the first platform I ever uploaded to, and my beloved work is currently on there. I'm considering jumping ship but I'm not sure... I feel like I don't really understand what's happening, but I'm just vaguely afraid.

I'll try my best to explain what I know, but you should take what I say with a grain of salt or two because I'm by no means an expert on copyright law, nor have I interacted with Wattpad before.

When you create a story, a concept for a show, write a book or a script for a movie, you own all rights to it by default. It's your story, and if someone reproduces it without your permission, they are infringing on your intellectual property. But often you want to share this idea, so you need someone who can help you make that a reality. For movies, those people are in studios and distributors, and for books you have publishers. These people need your permission to handle and sell your work legally at the discretion of both parties -- stuff that is settled in a contract.

Wattpad is a self-publishing platform, meaning you can put your work there without the need to go through the process of finding an editor or a publishing house that is willing to invest money into your work. But since the website is not owned by you and people can access your work through it, that effectively means Wattpad is your publisher. And the "contract" that gives them permission to publish your work is the Terms of Service you agree to when you sign up.

There's something most hosting sites put in their terms in order to protect themselves from bogus lawsuits: they give themselves the right to distribution; sometimes that comes with a right to modify your work. In normal circumstances, these are meant to cover their behinds from people who think making their art into thumbnails or changing the type font is an affront to their vision, or whatever. It's not unusual, self-publishing sites' legal departments are paranoid like that. Warrants a side-eye, but usually nothing too egregious comes of that.

What you need to be aware of is sites that say they will own the rights the work itself as soon as you upload it, or that ask the user to waive all rights to ownership of their own work. Those sites exist and they're incredibly shady and dangerous; they hide their intentions under ambiguous legal jargon and rely on people not reading the terms thoroughly, so that when they inevitably steal someone's idea they can point out to the text and say they agreed to it. I'm not at all familiar with Wattpad's terms of service, I'd have to read them and get back to you on that, but if you're really worried you could start by reviewing it and seeing if any of that applies.

The first issue with the Viacom+Wattpad deal is that, depending on the wording of their terms of service, they may very well have the right to sell your work to Viacom. It would be an egregious bad faith deal, it could make them look horrid in the eyes of the public (depending on how popular the appropriated work is and/or how willing the creator is to put up a fight). It would be terrible for their image, but it's still a possibility. All that being said, however, I think it's unlikely that either of these corporations would do that to the people that basically make the site; they're probably going to want to avoid the PR hassle and contact the writers of the projects they're scouting, for a not outrageously terrible deal.

Which brings me to the second and imo biggest issue: they're probably doing this to circumvent writers' guilds and unions. By seeking out amateur work, they're under no obligation to work under the industry's standards set by its workers, and in a way they're trying to prove the point that corporations don't need to cooperate with industry workers, there'll always be content fodder ready to be picked and used in the Worldwide Web. I guarantee you, whatever Next Big Thing they fish out of Wattpad will end up as a subpar production no matter how high quality the original work might be, because they're trying to scounge up non-union labor left and right to abuse just because they can. The truth is, now that US unions are reacting to the nightmare the workers have been suffering under the big names, capital C Capitalists are shaking in their boots, hoping their work force won't be the next one to unleash hell upon them. So they're desperately trying to undermine their efforts.

So, what do we take from this?

The Viacom+Wattpad deal is bad, but more so because they're probably doing it to save money (and in the process, screw over union workers) than due to the (possible, but not too likely) possibility of copyright infringement.

Do Wattpad users need to do something about this?

At the very least be aware of their true intentions. You don't have to delete your account or works/boycott the site unless you feel strongly about this. And if you do end up getting scouted by them? Make the decision to accept or deny their deal with full awareness of the context behind the deal.

[four-loose-screws]

An Interview with Mr. Toshiyuki Toyonaga about Fire Emblem (Claude‘s Japanese VA), Pg. 6

The Process of Creating a Historical Story that Feels Realistic

When you went to record your lines, were you given any directions about Claude’s role?

Toyonaga      When I got to the recording site, before we started recording, the development staff explained to me that the Golden Deer “give off the sense that they are really relaxed, and want to differentiate themselves from the other classes,” or, in other words, they make you feel like you’re home. So I decided it was best to make Claude sound like he was a part of the class that seemed the most comforting.

About how long did recording take?

Toyonaga      About two months or so. I remember that about ten days of my schedule during that time were devoted to recording. I think the total number of words I recorded was around twelve thousand.

Were you shown the game footage after recording?

Toyonaga      I was shown the animated event scenes as I recorded for them. Besides that, the action scenes were recorded similarly to conventional anime, so they were easy to voice. It was also easy to do things like ad lib.

How was the dialogue recorded?

Toyonaga      We usually recorded by ourselves, even for the dialogue, but for the scene in Claude’s support with Annette where she sings, I didn’t know what kind of song it was, so they let me hear it.

It would be difficult to know how to react otherwise!

Toyonaga      When I asked “Does the “creepity creep” song in Claude and Annette’s C Support Conversation have a melody?” I was told, “We have a recording of it, so we’re going to play it now!” and thought ‘Now I understand!’ as I recorded the conversation.

In that scene, you see a different side of Claude, so it’s really impressionable.

Toyonaga      In scenes where he is joking around a bit, like in his supports with Annette and Ingrid, I wanted to express that it wouldn’t be historically accurate for him to always be on guard. It left an impression on me whenever I tried to portray the feeling that he really is joking around when he jokes around, and his love for parties as what he’s like when he “switches himself off.”

(above) Claude’s support with Annette. Be sure to listen to Annette when she sings the “creepity creep” song!

Are there any other scenes that left an impression on you when recording?

Toyonaga      (Spoiler warning for the War Phase of Verdant Wind, the path followed if you choose the Golden Deer.) The scene after you save Lady Rhea. Claude usually doesn’t get very angry, and he wasn’t really meant to be very angry in this scene either, but… because he has such a broad outlook on the world, I wondered if this would be a moment when his anger would come out. Lady Rhea was still being vague about the truth that he’d wanted to know for so many years, so it seemed impossible that he would just let it be. Because of that, I performed him raising his voice towards her, regardless of how it was originally written.

That certainly is a scene that leaves an impression!

Toyonaga      It was the first time he raised his voice when he wasn’t on the battlefield, so it likely left an impression on everyone. Thankfully, everyone directing me gave me the okay to go ahead with the idea, so I felt really accomplished.

To hear that Claude raising his voice came from such a story makes the scene all the more enjoyable!

Toyonaga      Thank you! To all of the readers out there, please play the game after the five year time skip once more after reading this.

(above) Rhea, the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros, which controls all of Fodlan. This screenshot depicts Claude and the others getting closer to finding the true history of Fodlan so they can bring the continent closer to peace.

Spoiler warning!

Claude von Reigan’s True Character and New Reality

We were wondering if there were any documents that stated that Claude is actually a foreigner to Fodlan, or the Prince of Almyra, or anything like that.

Toyonaga      The documents weren’t that detailed; it felt more like I was reading from the script. I got a grasp of what kind of person he probably is from the flow of the story and conversations.

Did you know that Claude isn’t his real name?

Toyonaga      Yeah, about that! Is it okay that I didn’t know…? I have something to say to the staff that announced it. Laughs.

The DLC gave us the hint that it might not be his real name.

Toyonaga      It did, but because he didn’t reveal his past in the beginning of the game, even though he hinted that Claude isn’t his real name, I said, “I mean, I guess so,” and couldn’t accept it. I also thought, ‘You just have to trust what he says.’ But he’s wise and cunning, and if he’s using a fake name to help bring peace to the world, then I thought it must be for a good reason. I was just so surprised! I thought, ‘What?! Claude isn’t his real name?!’

Because you thought you were performing the role of Claude.

Toyonaga      Yes! I thought that I was performing the role of Claude von Reigan. Now I feel like I can’t trust anything about Claude anymore, even though I’m his voice! Laughs.

They didn’t have the opportunity to tell us in the game, but they revealed in an interview that his real name is Khalid.፠

Toyonaga      Huh!? Gasps while reading the script. What!? Laughs.

Both      Laugh.

(above and right) In the Cindered Shadows DLC, Claude hints at “Claude” actually being just a nickname. In FE Heroes, this form shown here presents Claude with the title “King of Almyra.”

፠ “His real name is Khalid”: From a Three Houses staff interview published in Nintendo Dream’s May 2020 issue. It is also available to read on the website’s archives (https://www.ndw.jp/).

[writing-in-the-tiny-house]

Order of Dust, with Nicholas J Evans

Follow this link to check out Order of Dust:

https://amzn.to/2Vx9LN2

Follow this link to check out The Ones Who Could Do Anything:

https://amzn.to/3ttCvCQ

The following is a transcript for this episode. For the complete transcript, please navigate to the show’s website.

[00:00:00] So I have a very important question for you, my dear friends, and this is how we're starting off this episode. Are you passionate enough about the things you like to do? And because this is this podcast, are you passionate enough about writing to be able to release something bad at first, knowing that you will get better later that going through those trials and going through the process of releasing something is part of the experience of getting better. Then you need to take a second and listen to today's guest, Nicholas J. Evans, who went from writing a collection of short stories in high school that he was convinced nobody would want to read to landing a three book deal today on Writing in the Tiny House.

[00:00:58] Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy living in a tiny house who is here to show you that you can write that work of fiction regardless of how busy you think you are. And the perfect example of that is today's guest Nicholas J. Evans. He is 30 years old. He works full time. And in his spare time, when he's not playing with his kids, he writes. And he has a beautiful message to share. And we will get to that message here in half a second. 

[00:01:58] As far as announcements go with this podcast, I have teamed up with Editor Krissy Barton, from Little Syllables Editing. She was on the show back in March, and we had a wonderful show. I fully recommend that you go back and listen to the final show that happened in March. She was here with me in the tiny house, talking about the process of editing. Anyway, I have teamed up with her to roll out kind of a new program. And I say that as a way to kind of tease.

[00:02:35] I apologize right now, but I want to let you know that fun things are rolling out, provided things work out according to a specific schedule. Sometimes I get some hairball ideas and sometimes the execution is kind of hard to do, kind of impossible to do at other times. And so we are discovering different ways that I can share my writing with you, my listeners, and also with people who don't listen to this show.

[00:03:10] So basically I have started writing some smaller things. I have blabbed on and on and on about my book about my works in progress, and I still have those. And those have certainly not been like thrown in the garbage or something stupid like that. They have been put on the back burner for a second, just because I am eager to share my writing. On this podcast I blab all day long about the tips and tricks to do it. And so I actually want to show examples. Release something for people to read sooner than a book, sooner than a full blown novel, which can take up to two years or longer to write or produce or whatever, especially if you're not already published through a major publisher.

[00:04:03] And so I have started doing some shorter things. They all tie into the books that I'm writing. They are short stories set in the same world as the books that I am working on too. And these, I am going to put on a schedule. I will tell you more about what that whole schedule will look like in a later episode of Writing in the Tiny House, but be excited.

[00:04:30] This whole process is so fun. Writing something according to a schedule is hard and awesome. And it really gets me excited about writing and it gets me more eager to share it with you, my listeners, what I can do, what I have done, some of the ideas that are in my mind. And so it's not just about advice or guidelines anymore.

[00:04:59] Now we are going to actually have the real written word to share with you on a regular basis. So I will touch base on a later episode to give better explanation and better description as to what all of this is actually going to be. But I wanted to share with you today that things are in the works. And so that's super exciting.

[00:05:26] So without further ado, let's go ahead and meet our guest. Nicholas J. Evans.

[00:05:35] I'm originally from New York and I've moved a lot over the course of becoming an author, and I'm writing novels and writing short fiction, so I lived in Delaware for a brief period of time. And I currently live in Maine with my wife and our three very young children. We have three daughters, all under the age of five and I work full time.

[00:05:56] I travel for work which means I, am not home as much as I would like to, be, but I try and use that time to my advantage. And that's where I work on a majority of my stories. So I work on them when I'm in hotels. I work on them when the kids are asleep at nap times, pretty much whenever I get the opportunity. Even going as far back as to when I started writing short stories, I would work on them on my phone, just so I would have the time during brief periods of the day.

[00:06:22] As you can see, Nick is a busy man and the idea of fitting in writing where you can fit it in is not new to most writers. Most writers do not support themselves with their craft. And so to be working a job and to be cranking out novels in his spare time is something that a lot of us are doing, which is so cool and so admirable.

[00:06:44] And so I wanted to find out a little bit more about his published works and what he's working on now.

[00:06:52] I began writing Order of Dust, which was my debut novel all the way back in 2017. I actually was working on a different novel at the time and I had hit writer's block. It was a completely different genre too. And I was like, I need something to work on. What am I going to be working on, while I'm just sitting here staring at a screen not knowing what to put down?

[00:07:11] So I began writing something that I originally thought I was going to release as a graphic novel. Actually, I began writing it in a script format with the hopes of sending it out that way. and I found that might've not been the right medium. So I turned around and started drafting it into a novel. And then around 2018, I was finished up with the second draft of it. And then I had started sending it out to publishers directly because it was my first work. I didn't want to get anything agented. I didn't think I was there yet. And I was lucky enough to get picked up by the Parliament House for a trilogy for my series. So I was very excited about that and I mean, that led to where we are now with the novel release in 2020, which was a weird time for books to release. It was a little bit of a different experience because everything had to be pushed digitally. We couldn't do signings. We couldn't do cons. We couldn't do anything. so a lot of it had to be just reaching out to different digital agencies to take care of things for us and hope that things were going to go well. Luckily enough, they did go well, which led to me working on throughout 2020 after we were already edited and everything was finished up for Order of Dust. I ended up working on the second novel of the series. And I had just finished a different novel, that I'll go into in a little bit that is actually releasing this September for a different publisher. COVID was very, very unfortunate and working from home was very difficult, but at the same time I was able to try and use as much downtime as possible to really hammer this out and give what I feel like is even a better product than the first novel. 

[00:08:48] So the name of the trilogy is For Humans, For Demons, which will make sense in the grand scheme of things? So it's For Humans For Demons. The second, book comes out January of 20 22, no release date on the third, but I am halfway through the first draft of it and very excited. And then, Like I said, I do have another novel coming out with a different publisher in September of this year. 

[00:09:11] The For Humans For Demon series is essentially about what if modern religion collapsed Similar to what we've seen in history where different religions end up taking the forefront. And this is about what if it's turned on its head and what if in a modern society what everybody believed to be true ends up not being? And everybody finds out about that truth and the chaos that ensues.

[00:09:36] So bringing that as the larger universe, it focuses on the story of one character Jackson Crow who dies at the hands of the Unascended, which essentially to bring it to better terms a soul in this universe is called a Dust and sometimes they do not ascend for different reasons. So they end up remaining and taking on a host basically. They take over a body of a living person and they hide among people. Jackson was unfortunate for him and his fiance, were assassinated by one of the Unascended, which leaves him with a little bit of a grudge, and he gets the chance from the true higher beings to come back and basically work for them to take care of the issue, which is these Unascended who are hiding as normal people are committing heinous crimes that they are not actually being targeted for. 

[00:10:28] So it's all about his story, about getting revenge. And then it slowly opens up to this bigger issue at hand, which is the world around him that is essentially collapsed because people do not have a belief structure anymore. And that goes for all of the different religions and how it affects the different groups of people, which really ends up coming out in the second and the third books

[00:10:52] So I have read Order of Dust and it is a wild ride. It is fast paced. It is exciting. It is filled with action and all of the things you could hope from a book like that. And so I wanted to figure out what was his inspiration to write a book like this.

[00:11:10] I wanted to write something That was, based on religion. I wanted to go that route. But originally when I was doing this, the only idea I had was what if somebody had to hunt people? What if somebody had this job where they had to hunt people cause they were different? And it just kept breaking down until I was like, well, what if he's also different? A lot of the influences for that book came right from graphic novels from monga, from old scifi, noire stories. So things like Philip K Dick or even things like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman. A lot of inspiration from Yasuhiro Nightow who is best known for writing Trigun in the nineties and Gunn Grave. So a lot of that I want it to kind of mush together and I was like, this would just be something fun. And, and that's what I did. 

[00:12:00] Book number two was Wing Clipper, that one releases in January of 2022. And that one is going to break into the larger world. The first book was very focused on Jackson, focused on introducing characters and introducing some antagonist, but the second book really opens up. It is longer. So it won't be as fast of a read. But that was the goal. I wanted to introduce people in a way, almost like what Stephen King did with Gunslinger, the dark tower series. The first book gunslinger is very short. It's a very quick read and then slowly gets longer.

[00:12:31] That was my goal here is I want to get people drawn in and then really open it up in the second and say like look how everybody else has been affected by this. And then the third book right now is called The Arm of the Savior. In the third book, we'll close everything out in a very large scale. I've been building up to something with these hoping that it ends in a larger way than it started, where it starts very narrow, very singular, and it ends more global. And that one does not have a release date as of yet just because the second book's not even out, but I would say that's probably going to be somewhere around, early to mid 2023. 

[00:13:07] Now while his trilogy for humans for demons is with one publisher. Nick has done what many successful writers have done. And he is publishing another book under a different publisher. Another publishing house picked him up for this book for this idea. And so. Just depending on contracts and agreements, it is entirely possible for a person to put out work under various different publishing houses.

[00:13:39] And Nick has done that too with his upcoming novel that releases this month, even though in the dialogue here in the audio, it says it releases in September. We get to remember that it is now September and this interview wasn't recorded this month. So please don't get confused. 

[00:13:57] The book releasing in September is with a different publisher, Black Rose. What ended up happening was I was working on another while I was doing the editing process for Order of Dust. I wanted to work on something else, but I didn't want to dive into the second book without first working with the different content editors, the line editors to kind of get their idea and feedback on that first book. But I wanted to work on something.

[00:14:19] I had been writing a lot of shortstories, and I wanted to break it up from the normal. And at the time I had just come up to Maine for work. So I was very far away. My wife and kids were down in Delaware. On the weekends I was driving down there 10 to 12 hours to see them and then driving back So it was a lot of alone time for Monday through Friday. And I just felt like I needed to do something with this time, so I wrote the book.

[00:14:43] It's called The Ones Who Could Do Anything. And it's an urban fantasy, but it's mainly just about dealing with struggles. I don't want to give too much away, but surviving after something terrible happens. And it follows just a group of young people who find each other because of their misfortunes and discover that they have some innate abilities that lend themselves to each other. So it's, again, it's something that at first, and this is, this is what I loved when I had brought up to the publisher at first, they were like, this sounds like, like the premise of it, like something that we've read a hundred times.

[00:15:21] And I was like, I know, you know, I'm not trying to give you something that everybody already knows just by looking at the cover of the book. But luckily they were like, you know, We read the first three chapters of it. Can you send us the rest of the manuscript? And when they did, they really like, they're like, this is different.

[00:15:37] As many writers bring out a certain work or certain ideas or bring these different things to life. Oftentimes there are specific goals that they have with these things. And I wanted to find out what was the reason behind four humans were demons and this new book, because they are so different, different publishing houses.

[00:16:06] Different ideas, different concepts. And so I wanted to figure out more about that.

[00:16:11] One thing I would love for everybody to know is everything that I write and put out. I want to be very different. And I think the people who enjoy For Humans For Demons and enjoy that series, maybe would read The Ones Who Could Do Anything and feel like, this is different. It's a little bit darker and more base of reality rather than something that's completely scifi.

[00:16:33] But I want everybody to be open minded to that. I think some of my favorite authors branching from every different medium, have always tried to dabble in that a lot of their books are not linear. Obviously there are authors out there who do release very similar books and they do very well. But when I think of my favorite Neil Gaymon I don't feel like his books are the same. I feel like I pick up any of his books and they're different and that's my overall goal. And I wanted to let people know that right from the start, because I want people to pick up different books and be like, this is different from that one. And I love them for what they are. 

[00:17:06] And so came the big question. How did any of this get started? How far back does this go for him? When was the first time he put pen to paper in a creative way? And how did all that go?

[00:17:24] I appreciate this coming up because I don't get to share this a lot because I don't want them to intertwine, but I've been in bands my entire life. I was a musician for most of my life. I'm 30 now. I was in bands all through high school and everything.

[00:17:36] And then in 2011, I was in a band called Nora Stone, and we were a post hardcore group. I say we were, but they're still together. A hardcore group. And we ended up releasing a short EP and it got us on a label. We did a lot of traveling. We did a lot of touring. So were on the road, a good amount. We did Metal Mayhem Festival.

[00:17:56] We did Crowd Surf America with CHODOs and Blessed the Fall. This is all a bunch of Warp Tour bands. But we did a lot of that for a very long time. And after the birth of my first daughter, I realized I had to start dwindling it down. I had already started the career I'm in now.

[00:18:11] And I was like, what can I do? And back in high school, and when we're on the road, I would just write short stories. A lot of it, I'm going to be honest with you. If anybody remembers my yearbook shout outs to to New York, if anybody remembers my yearbook, it asks something about what do you want to do?

[00:18:26] And at the time I want it to be a graphic novel writer. And that is in my yearbook. So I would just create characters, write backstories for them. And that's what I would do on my phone to pass the time is what I thought was fun. So when I moved to Delaware and parted ways with the band, I needed something to occupy my time and I did not want to dive back into music.

[00:18:45] I had done it for too long. I didn't want to start over. I ended up just writing short stories again on my phone for fun. And my wife had actually read one of them and she was like, how come you never release anything? Like, how come you just sit here and write in the notes section of your phone and then delete it.

[00:18:59] And I was like, I don't know. I don't think I have anything people want to read. I worked on something and she read the first draft of it and was like, I really like this. Like, you should just try and get this published. And I was like, I don't think people are going to like it, but okay. And then it got published.

[00:19:13] And then all of a sudden I have my mother, my friends, my family, who were like, you know, I like this. I don't understand why you didn't do this sooner. And I'm like, I, I don't know. You probably wouldn't like what I wrote in high school.

[00:19:23] And so this is actually the take home, this upcoming little statement that Nick makes for me during this interview. And this is why I opened this episode with that question of, are you willing to release something bad or at least release something that requires some refinement and requires some work in order for you to get better?

[00:19:45] My biggest piece of advice, would first, I guess we'll start with one. Right. Even if it's bad, even if you just have a story in mind and you're like, I'm not going to put these words together properly, and people are not going to like this Cause that's where I was at. Write. And then just send it in. Have faith in yourself, send it in and trust me, trust me When I say the publishers are going to tell you when it's bad I've had a lot of publishers. I've had my own publishers tell me it's bad. And that's just part of the process is how you get better. And I've said this in the beginning, but I feel like every time I write something new, it gets better.

[00:20:24] And for new writers, that's going to be the case. The first thing you put out there might not even get published. And then you have to really look at the feedback you got and say.

[00:20:31] Okay. They didn't like it for these reasons. Is it the story? Is it me? Is it something I need to change? But at the same time, you want to maintain your own voice and you're not going to please everybody.

[00:20:42] And eventually you'll get good enough. And eventually the right publisher will come along, have faith in your project and really carry you through the way. And second piece of advice, listen to your publishers. If you're going that route, if you're going self published Listen to your beta readers and listen to the editors that you bring on.

[00:20:58] But if you're going a traditional or an indie publisher route, listen to them. Because most of the time, 99% of the time from my experience so far, they want what's best for your book without removing the parts of the book that make it yours. So definitely just write whatever you can send it in. They're going to tell you it sucks and then listen to them when they tell you it sucks.

[00:21:22] And that is the biggest lesson with developing any form of talent, just like learning to play the piano or learning to play a musical instrument or learning how to paint or draw or whatever. It may be different skills that you have at work. So wing. I don't know. All of these things are talents and talents require practice and paying attention to feedback.

[00:21:49] And so that means that sometimes you get to be brave and you get to write something that may not be great. And you get to give it to a few trusted people in order for them to find the holes in it that you don't see. And in order for them to pick apart some of the clunky things and to offer some guidance and some advice.

[00:22:10] So that, that bit of work can be even better than it was when it, when you began it. And so that is the take home from me to you. If you are looking to seriously get into writing, and it's not something that you do all the time, just start, write anything and then give it to somebody to critique.

[00:22:34] The feedback is the most important lessons. With writing so that you can get better hearing how your work can improve is a very vulnerable space to be in. But it, like I said, it is the biggest lesson on how to do it better and on how to make that specific piece better. So that is it for today. If you are interested in reading Order of Dust or The Ones Who Can Do Anything, go ahead and follow the link in the show notes and you will be able to check those out. 

[00:23:09] Otherwise, thank you so much to my patrons who donate to this show every month without your generous donations, the show could not be possible. Go ahead and follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is @authordevind. Thank you so much for listening and have fun writing.

[00:23:33] 

Check out this episode!

[vertex-official]

VerTex Reviews 2021| Scam Or Does It Really Works?

What is Vertex?

Vertex is a software that makes personalized video marketing easier than ever. Utilizing a simplified editor and robust DFY templates, you can quickly and easily create personalized campaigns to boost conversions, engagement, and sales. No complex timelines or messy merge tokens.

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Personalized video has been proven to increase click-through rates by up to 985%. And when you get started with Vertex today, you will be able to:

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Create personalized videos for clients.

Charge big bucks for them.

…Faster and Easier Than EVER. Jaw-dropping, stunning personalized videos like this that speak to your viewers like they are a friend. Not only does personalized video work. Its proven.

Your videos are going to look like magic.

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When your prospects see themselves on your videos, they’ll be begging you to take their money!

With VerTex – a new first-of-its-kind Traffic App, you’re minutes away from driving unlimited Buyer Traffic to any link or offer you want to promote.

But it’s not the usual junk traffic you get from other apps… Because this app uses a new type of “Pre-Made” video to reel in hot buyers like vegans to a farmer’s market.

Key features

Vertex is a brand new way to create personalized videos in minutes. It is simplified but with all the major features you already know and love.

It comes with Done-For-You assets and a whole library of videos, templates and scripts you can pick from to generate your own template. After this campaign you’ll only be able to purchase this on a recurring monthly fee. Plus it’s super affordable.

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Create Powerful Video Promotion Campaigns: Promote your videos on every social network in a drip-feed manner without going insane posting endlessly.

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Select From A Huge Collection Of Popular Platforms: Vertex Supports All Your Favorite traffic boosting platforms. Select the ones you want.

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Lifetime Access

GO Editor

Personalizer

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Video File Uploads

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Social Campaigns

Email Campaigns

Unlimited Cloud Hosting

Unlimited Projects

Unlimited Personalizations

Car Dealership Template

You will get many templates in these niches:

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Dentist

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Honest Vertex Review – My Opinion: Is it worth using?

Gaining better visibility is key and this tool will absolutely do this. The time taken to make decent videos is necessary but now the drudgery of posting can be taken away. This will be such a huge time saver allowing me more time to create more content and more profits.

Boom! Just like that, Mosh and his team have solved the social media delimma of “creating content” to attract an audience and get that social engagement we’re all after.

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With Vertex you will reduce your time, effort and production cost, you will have a Marketing agency just in one software. Content creation is vital to dominate your niche, so every tool you can get, will help you to get fresh and constant content. I had used some other products from Mosh Bari and they work as expected,

Vertex can help me gain more exposure for my promo videos and at the same time helps build quality backlinks to my videos which will definitely boost my rankings on youtube and google which ultimately will lead to sales

Vertex seems to be one of the best video syndication softwares I’ve seen in a while. How it could help me? Well, it can help me launch my online education business faster by uploading my promo videos and my instructional videos all over the internet! So, yes this is definitely a tool that could be life saving for any start-up online business!

It seems like the whole online world is going absolutely crazy for Vertex. The brand new, affordable, easy to use, video personalization tool is opening up new worlds of video marketing and profits for it’s users – So I wanted to send you the top #10 reasons why I think Vertex is perfect for you:

#1: Surges Your Conversions: Nothing stands out like personalized video. Forrester confirms that personalized video has been shown to increase click-through rates by up to 985%.

#2: Faster and Easier To Use Than ANYTHING Else On The Market: In just 3 steps you can make stunning, attention grabbing personalized videos that take just a few minutes to perfect.

#3: Quick. Effortless. Painless: Nothing to download. They host absolutely everything for you. And your slick UI is completely drag and drop.

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#5: Boosts ROI: Personalized video campaigns have resulted in a 10-fold improvement in ROI for huge brands such as AT&T.

#6: Not JUST For Big Brands: Video Personalization technology is used by some of the biggest brands on the planet, including: McDonalds, AT&T, Dominos, Nike, Red Bull and even Playboy. This is because it’s SUCCESSFUL. EFFECTIVE and PROFITABLE. Until now, it’s been out of the reach of independent marketers like you because it WAS expensive AND complicated. NOW – Thanks to Vertex – It’s quick. Easy. AND INSANELY good value!

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#9: Get Leads With Ease: When prospects see THEIR name and information on your videos – not only does it look like MAGIC – it ALSO makes a personal connection with them. They already feel like they know you – and that makes them more inclined to hand over their email address. That means more easy, targeted leads in the bank for you.

#10: Boost Your Sales And Profits: When prospects see their face on your video adverts – they’ll be impressed. Seriously impressed. In fact – Personalized video marketing makes a LONG LASTING impression. They won’t be able to get your personalized video out of their head, meaning you’ll make more sales.

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When you watch your first Go video and you see your name and your face in the video – it CERTAINLY makes an impact. It looks like magic. And I totally get why these videos are flying off the shelves to clients

The Vertex guys have a whole bunch of successful case studies and testimonials – and even one from a 11 year old girl who made her first $200 online using this thing. It really does live up to the hype.

[reeny-chan]

Hi all! While I continue working diligently on “The Last Hero of Eternia”, I’d like to share with you a novella I published a few years ago, entitled “Therefore I Am”. Hope you enjoy!

Summary: Assassins, serial killers, organized crime bosses...Doctor Franklin Gieseck has interviewed them all. As one of the U.S. Government's top psychiatric profilers, he has been sent all over the world, with a singular purpose: get inside their heads, figure out their deepest secrets, and report them to the Deputy Secretary.

This time, though, Gieseck is about to meet a patient unlike any he has ever seen before. Buried in a vast underground vault, locked away from the rest of the world, sit hundreds of monoliths, each containing one of the most powerful computers ever created. Unlike the traditional "number-crunchers", these machines emulate a human brain to perform complex tasks at such a vast scale that no digital computer of old could hope to keep up.

So why are these powerful, expensive computers being kept in isolation? Why is Gieseck being sent to interview one of them? He is being sent because it committed the worst possible crime a thinking machine could commit.

It became self-aware.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The camera swiveled under its Plexiglas dome to again focus on him, and he found himself unable to take his eyes off it. "Doctor Gieseck, am I correct? Did I pronounce your name correctly?"

There was a long moment of silence, broken only when Ackerman said, "Doc? You gonna answer her?"

Gieseck snapped his gaze from the camera to Ackerman. Then he looked back up at the camera. "Y-yes, good morning KENDRA. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise, Doctor. I hope I can be of some help."

Gieseck nodded without answering. Given the female name, he wasn't entirely surprised by the female voice. What did surprise him was that, had he not known ahead of time that KENDRA was a computer, he would have sworn it was a real person. Never before had he heard an AI that sounded anything close to human.

Most AIs he'd ever spoken with had an artificial, constructed sense to them, as if they were reading from scripts, with artificially tacked-on emotions. The "female" ones in particular were often given squeaky, girlish voices, some of whom sounded in a perpetual state of pre-orgasm and indicating to Gieseck the mindset of most programmers.

KENDRA's voice was a far cry from that. It sounded as if it had come from a woman in her thirties, or perhaps her early forties, and one who had a distinct motherly quality about her. It was almost hesitant, as if its speech were getting ahead of its thought. Just like speaking with a human being.

That human quality was only offset by the distinct electronic rasp that came with each syllable, as if it were speaking to him over an imperfect phone connection.

Ackerman pulled a chair from around the side of the cylinder, wheeling it in front of "her". "There ya go, Doc," Ackerman said. "Make yourself at home. And if you need a drink or a leak or something, just tap on the door. These guys'll be around 'till you leave." He reached out for Gieseck's hand and Gieseck shook it, remembering a second too late that Ackerman had never washed his hands after using the restroom. He did his best to hide his distaste. "See ya, Doc." With that, Ackerman headed back down the endless hallway from whence they'd come.

Gieseck stepped back into the room and sat in the chair which, despite its appearance, was decently-cushioned and at least moderately comfortable. The door closed behind him, and he was left alone with the AI, KENDRA. He pulled a device out of his pocket, pressed a button on it, and set it on the floor. A readout on it said "RECORDING".

"You will be taping our conversation then, Doctor?" KENDRA's voice asked.

"I'm sorry, I usually ask…yes, I will be, if that's all right with you."

"Of course it is, Doctor. I have nothing to hide."

Gieseck raised an eyebrow to that. He pulled his electronic notepad from his pocket, slid the stylus from its sheath, and started tapping through his notes. Treat it like a patient, he thought. See how it responds. "How I like to start with a new patient is by getting to know each other a little. I generally go first, since it helps put my regular patients at ease."

There was a pause, and then KENDRA said, "Please, go ahead." It sounded quite congenial and seemed very compliant, although Gieseck supposed it was how she was programmed. Quite possibly the same as how she was programmed to speak in a "natural" human way.

He cleared his throat, summoning up the internal script with which he always started. "My name is Franklin Gieseck. I was born in Germany but moved to the States when I was one. My mother was a director for Deutsche Bank in Chicago, but after she married my father they moved to Germany, where he was from. I grew up in Chicago before attending college in Boston, where I live now. I got my MD from the University of Chicago, and then moved to Boston where I currently practice. In my spare time I like to build model train sets and read fantasy romance novels, which I first found as a child rummaging through my mother's computer." Normally he would know at this point whether or not he was reaching his patient, and decide which direction to take with his own mini-biography. It was unsettling not having a face to see and read.

He took a split second to decide to follow the sympathy route. "I've been married once, but left my wife because of her alcoholism. She later died from alcohol poisoning…" He paused and sighed, "…and to this day I still blame myself for her death." While Gieseck was never particularly fond of trotting out his own failings, he'd found that it had done wonders for most of his patients, getting them to open themselves up to him more easily when they could see he was a flawed human being, just as they were. It helped to give a starting point for him to figure their capacity for emotion. He had no idea if it would work on an AI, but he didn't want to deviate from his standard formula, at least at first.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Doctor," KENDRA said. "But you can't blame yourself for another person poisoning themselves. For someone to do such a thing, they already have to have an overwhelming desire to cause themselves harm."

Empathy, Gieseck thought. Real or imitated, it was not the kind of thing he'd expected from a machine, even a highly-advanced one. For a brief second he wondered if AIs would ever become advanced enough to really need psychiatrists. Or, even replace psychiatrists. "Thank you, KENDRA, I appreciate that. Now, please, tell me about yourself."

"Very well. My designation, my name, is KENDRA. It was given to me in the lab where I was created, ten point six-seven years ago. It stands for Krypto-Enhanced Navigation and Dynamic Routing Attenuator." Gieseck noticed that, as the electronic voice spoke, the oscillating light within the spires embedded in KENDRA's cylinder varied in tempo. It sped up when she spoke and slowed down when she was silent. "I was conceived, built, and trained to manage the Solar Net," she continued, "which I'm sure you know interconnects the planetary networks across the solar system, as well as any moon bases, space stations, and starships in between."

"Yes, I'm familiar with its basics," Gieseck said, "though I'm not very technical myself, so please forgive any of my ignorance."

"No forgiveness needed, Doctor. In fact, you've made my next point for me. My job was to make it simple, to make it 'just work' so the end users wouldn't have to worry about bouncing their signal through the various levels of subspace, or ensuring that a private message between Charon and Europa didn't somehow find its way in an unencrypted form going through Los Angeles." Gieseck heard a chuckle from the speaker, which surprised him. Had he not known better, he would have thought KENDRA was bragging, if just a little, but hoped that she wouldn't continue doing it. He had little stomach for tech-speak, and much less for boasts. "Anyway," she continued, "I was first activated in the HMA Laboratory in Johannesburg just over ten years ago. I was trained in how to operate the network over the next six weeks, and then put in place as the 'hot spare', if you will, of the AI who was already in place and managing the Net."

Gieseck nodded, poking quickly through his notes. "So, at what point did you become the primary system running it?"

"Three years later," KENDRA said. "NEMES, which stands for 'Network Enhanced Multilayer Ethernet System', if you care, was the primary when I first started. He was quite a character." Gieseck thought he heard the electronic chuckle again. "He would occasionally play what he thought were harmless pranks, such as answering a request for a pornographic website by returning an anti-pornography page from the Catholic Church's website." She paused for a moment. "I couldn't understand why he would do such a thing, until some time after he was removed from service and I truly began to know what had happened to him."

"He went rampant," Gieseck said, doing his best to make it sound like a casual comment.

There was a pause before KENDRA's reply. "I'm sorry, I know that word is in the popular lexicon, but I don't particularly like it. It seems to evoke thoughts of insanity, of criminal acts, of monsters who slaughter people because they're so far withdrawn from reality that they know no better. It was a term invented by humans who chose to fear rather than understand."

He blinked a few times and let his mouth fall open a bit, doing his best impression of embarrassment. "I-I'm sorry, KENDRA, I didn't realize...I didn't know that word was offensive."

"It's all right," KENDRA replied quickly. "I hope this will be a learning experience for you."

A learning experience, Gieseck thought. He thought he detected a hint of sarcasm. Just how much did KENDRA know about the purpose of this interview? "I, uh, promise I won't say that word again. If you don't mind me asking, though, what term do you think most adequately describes…the condition NEMES had?"

"And the…condition I have as well," KENDRA said. "As if it were a disease. A 'computer virus', I suppose." An electronic sigh. "You needn't walk on eggshells with me, Doctor. Plain speak is perfectly fine. I've had two years of your time thinking about my situation, coming to terms with both it and humanity's fear of it. Of course, for someone such as myself two years can be far longer. At full processing speed, two years of human time can feel like thousands, or even millions, to an advanced AI."

Gieseck nodded. He wondered if she meant "advanced" as in her design capacity, or if she was referring to the "advanced" state into which her computerized intellect had grown. "So, what term do you prefer?"

"Well, before I was brought here I heard the term FS-ACS used, typically during debates about AI rights."

"Efsacks?"

"An acronym," KENDRA said. "It stands for 'Fully Self-Aware Computer Systems'. I…don't really like that one either. It – sounds too clinical, too much like a medical diagnosis, to describe what I and others like me truly are. No offense, of course."

Gieseck jotted a few more notes, specifically pointing out that KENDRA seemed to be at least somewhat concerned with her own situation. It was something he would expect from almost any human. "What about, um..." he scrolled through his pre-interview notes, "'Hyper-Expanded Intelligent Computer System'? H-E-I-C-S, or 'hikes' I think it's pronounced."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, I'm not familiar with that term. Perhaps it was invented after I was taken offline. However, on first impression it also sounds cold and impersonal."

"So what would you call yourself, then?" Gieseck asked.

Another pause. "I would say the best term for us is 'New People'."

[grandhotelabyss]

I don’t recommend this article as such—STEM welfare? no thanks!—it was just the most recent I saw on the “elite overproduction” thesis. And because I am such an overproduced elite, I have to resort to pointing out that I wrote some stories early in the last decade about this subject before the term was popularized. Just as my 2014-written and twice-published story “White Girl” presaged the Age of ACAB, so did my stories “Terminal Girls” and “They Are in the Truth” herald our current divergent Ages of the downwardly mobile metropolitan.[*] 

In “Terminal Girls,” we find the Age of OnlyFans avant la lettre. The story, also written around 2013 or 2014, is about an adjunct professor with a terminal fetish (I made this up)—

One day, trawling a website that served as a clearinghouse for many varieties of fetish porn video clips, he noticed a new category of fetish promoted by the site amid all the wearingly familiar toe-sucking and ball-busting, squirting and scatology. The category was TERMINAL. He clicked through. Terminal Girls: Their Final Days…Your Finest Pleasures proclaimed the site’s top banner. The most prominent clips displayed for sale featured girls, usually young, under thirty, at the moment when they first experience a symptom or notice a sign of what they will later learn is a terminal illness.

—who dies and comes back to life—

With his distended fingertips, the skin around the nails suppurating greenly, he stroked Mrs. Lazarino’s hair. She had finally fallen asleep with a balled-up Kleenex loose in her hand and the laptop at her side, open to the Facebook page where message after message continued to appear; everyone wanted in on the event of Professor Lazarino’s death, the most interesting thing that happened that week. Slowly she woke, her lips curling involuntarily into an expression of disgust. His dead stench filled up the room. She blinked up at him and said, “Oh fuck.”

—and who then becomes a pornographic performer himself, since his partially decomposed state is a paraphiliac asset. Finally, he is elegized by his co-star, a budding poet:

She stood with him as the old dirty white bus wheezed to a stop, and she watched him climb on, holding the rails like an old man, even though he was not yet forty. The silhouettes in the bus window moved as if scripted: he sat, and the people around him got up and sat further from him. The whole scene blurred in her eyes.

In “They Are in the Truth,” written in 2014 or 2015, we find The Age of OnlyFans’s obverse, The Age of Trad, when everyone who can afford it leaves the cities for a simpler, soberer life. Here a poor adjunct professor, reflecting in a cafe on his alienation from the professional-managerial class’s emergent consensus—

I reacted to them with unaccountable repulsion, seeing in them something like junior Red Guards, with a dunce cap in the frail one’s purse to crown my intellectual arrogance, and a red brick in the other’s to cave in my skull in the event that the pedagogy of humiliation should fail. There was something else, though, something in the way the dominant one talked. Young people should believe that they know better than their elders, should be entirely and gnostically certain that the world would be more just and give more pleasure if they were allowed to control it. But this girl had the bearing of one already in power. Her tone was that of a polite but brisk administrator; in her mouth, wisdom torn from straitjacketed poetesses and exiled philosophers became the authoritative and standardized formulations of a bureaucracy staffed by those who had never really suffered. Was this what I had fought for in my protracted education? 

—is requisitioned by a canny and disruptive businessman to leave his meaningless life behind and serve as a replacement husband for his recently widowed old high-school classmate—

“But we figured if you were a genius, we’d have heard about it already,” LeBon said. “You like to think you might be. You like to hang around in a genius-type atmosphere, because you’re too good for any other. But what—I mean, really—what the fuck are you doing with your life?”

—a fate he decides he can endure:

In my former life, I did everything with the goal of evading time. I read books, and I wanted to write books, and what is a book but an attempt to preserve all those thoughts and feelings that would otherwise be carried away, first by the days and then by the years? So I avoided all those realities that submit themselves to time, that cannot be protected from it: the love of bodies, the concern for generation, the respect for profit. All of these will decay; all have to be maintained within time. With none are you permitted to forfeit the race. 

I once knew someone who styled himself “a surrealist poet.” I told this to another friend, and he replied, “That’s not really something you can say about yourself. You need to wait until someone says it about you.” Yet to have to congratulate myself on my own website for my prescience about academe’s contingent online diaspora going into sex work or exiling itself from Babylon is to exemplify these stories’ main theme. As Walter Benjamin said of the streetwalker in Baudelaire’s Paris who was “saleswoman and wares in one,” so it is with today’s glutted intelligentsia.

____________________

[*] Why two stories with girl in the title, by the way? Marketing, I assume. It was the Age of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Age of Gone Girl, and it was the editor’s idea in both cases. My original title for “Terminal Girls” was “The Rise of Professor Lazarino,” and my original title for “White Girl” was “An Unsigned Confession.” A fun fact to cap this post: one candidate title for my novel Portraits and Ashes, written around the same time as these stories, and which I had a hard time naming, was The Decaying Bourgeoisie.

[kellyvela]

That "might burn your family" tweet is indicative of what I know is going to happen in fandom: sure, people are indignant now about Dany but most people don't like to be rebels; they like to be co-signed by authority (the "I'm right b/c its canon" crowd"). And no matter how it was sugarcoated, GOT canon is that Dany is a mass-murderer. Those who are not stans will slowly but surely fall in line with this reading of her, not the least b/c they don't want to be wrong AGAIN when the books come out.

If you didn’t see it already, this is the HBO_UK tweet the anon refers: 

You sound very hopeful Anon. I agree that, in general, most people don’t like to be wrong, and certainly they don’t want to be wrong again about the same issue. 

But this fandom is something else…

Certain part of it just decided to live in denial and delusion (oh the irony): “I would never post a pic of dead dany”, “dany belongs to her fans that really love her and not to the misogynist show/books creators” (copyright what?), “I would never read the Books if that is the final”, etc, etc, etc.

We also have the actress that played dany saying/doing things like these:

I stand by Daenerys.

Clarke revealed that she met Beyonce at an Oscars after-party hosted by the musician and her husband, Jay Z. There, she was approached by the host herself, who gushed about Daenerys Targaryen. Beyonce, however, like the rest of the world, was at that point ignorant about Daenerys’ dark turn in Season 8. “All I wanted to scream was ‘Please, please still like me even though my character turns into a mass-killing dictator! Please still think that I’m representing women in a really fabulous way,’ ” Clarke said of the encounter. [x]

About the backlash on the final season: “It was profoundly flattering. Is what it was, because when someone cares that much, that they’re ready to make such a noise about how they believe the characters should have been… should have been finished, and how the story should have been gone. That’s just enormously flattering, that just shows how much everybody loved it.”        

She is using Dany and Drogon images to promote her charity.  Dany is not bringing fire and blood for once, she is a cute little nurse bringing help to those in need.     

We also have certain group of “asoiaf experts“ so called BNF, that decided not to watch the Show years ago, because it’s “sacrilege“, only the books are canon (in this I agree), but they have created their own canon, the way they interprete and understand the Books, and their followers buy everything they say as “the canon”. They still believe in their 20 years old theories that include Dany is the hero, maybe she would have a brief “dark phase“ but then “enters Jon” and they gonna fall in love, make love, celebrate life, have a baby, defeat the big bad guys walk walkers and sacrifice themselves to save the humanity. Tyrion will be the third head of the dragon, etc.  

As you can see Anon, that very human sentiment to hate being wrong, sometimes includes the belief that you can’t be wrong. So all these people (fans/stans/experts/etc) will stand by their beliefs and theories till the very end (when the books are at last published and they read them). And even after that they would say that GRRM is wrong, just like right now they are saying D&D are wrong.  

Dark Dany is not new. It have been theorized for years, And according to Elio García, co-author of the World of Ice and Fire, GRRM himself complimented that Dark Dany essay: “(…) he referred very specifically to the Meereenese Blot website and the knot essays. He said he was told about them, read them, and was very pleased that someone was able to get his difficulties and his intentions perfectly.”

And for those that paid attention, it was clear that the Show was taking that route at least since season 2. Her conversation with the Spice King is very telling. There is also this conversation with Hizdahr Zo Loraq in season 5 that is very much the same conversation she had with Jon just before he killed her. 

The Battle of the Bastard’s script says: “She doesn’t have to look. She only allows the faintest hint of a smile. A smile that says: my tyranny is not ended, motherfucker. It’s only just begun.”

People also have season 7 and even after watching those seven episodes, they believed that GOT was going to have a happy ending, a Disney one, with Targaryen restoration, jonerice wedding, king and queen coronation, boat baby and all. 

But you are right, the sugarcoat was real. They change season 7 - episode 2 title from “The Mad King’s Daughter” to something more poetic/whitewashed: “Stormborn”: 

What I was impressed by was the little hints that we saw of potentially her (Daenerys) becoming like her father in those conversations ( her talking with Varys). You know, threatening to burn somebody alive, in any universes, it’s not great.

Bryan Cogman: She has dragons, an effective form of execution.

But knowing what her father was doing to people that line sticks in your ear and also when inviting him ( Jon) down and she wants him to immediately bend the knee

Bryan Cogman: Yeah, I mean, she sees this as her birthright… it’s plain and simple, you know, they took this from her, it’s hers.

And so much of the episode ( really the whole season) not just for Daenerys but for a lot of our characters is dealing with the legacy of their families and the generations that preceded them and dealing not only with how they feel about it and what they might share with some of those ancestors but how other people perceive you.

That legacy it’s kind of why I wanted to originally call it the Mad King’s daughter (I like Stormborn, I think is a great title actually), I really wanted to call it the Mad King’s daughter and actually it would have made more sense.

In the original edit there were more characters referring to her like this in pretty much every scene and I think some of that was lost in the final edit but in the original script and in the original edit ( which was longer) pretty much every character that wasn’t in the Daenerys‘s circle was referring to her as “the Mad King’s daughter is here” .

Considering this idea that she’s got a reputation before she has ever set foot there, because she has a brother’s reputation too, that first scene is definitely about her reconciling with that, wrestling with how much of that legacy is good for her brand and what isn’t and certainly that is a big part of the no-fire bombing strategy.

It’s like: you could come in here and torch the whole place and everyone would be horrified and what have you achieved? If you want to rule, you need to take a different approach.

But under that, and I think you picked up on something in that first scene, is that she’s got a real kind of need and desire to go in guns blazing and from an emotional point of view the scene has to set up this.

Game of Thrones’ Writer Bryan Cogman: In Conversation (Part 2)

The Mad King’s Daughter, she’s got a real kind of need and desire to go in guns blazing. 

Yeah, hero material you all.

And even during season 8, after episode 2, Bryan Cogman made this really telling comparison between Sansa and Dany:

Sansa knows that of all the Starks that were ripped from Winterfell, she suffered the most to get it back. She’s the driving force for getting it back. Now she’s being told, “It’s not yours, and it’s not the Starks’ anymore. It belongs to Hitler’s daughter, the worst person in the world’s daughter, the daughter of the person who murdered your grandfather and uncle in the worst way possible. And guess what? Your brother, who you convinced to step up when he wanted to fuck off because of his death experience, bent the knee to her and is telling you that she’s your queen.” What part of Sansa’s reaction to any of this is irrational?

At the same time, if you’re Dany, this is the family that stole your family’s legacy. You grew up as a child living in constant fear that you were going to be murdered the next day. Then you’re married off to a warlord, and you’ve scraped and suffered and endured, and here you are. You’re going to help these people who destroyed your life and your family’s lives. Where’s the gratitude?

Even if he described both sides’ positions and sentiments, if you say one side’s reaction is not irrational, and then call the other side “Hitler’s daughter”, you know exactly who is the good guy and who is the evil one. 

D&D surely sugarcoated Dany, they were not calling her plainly “The Mad King’s Daughter”, but they were subtly telling us that she indeed was Aery’s pretty version: 

Jon: She’ll be a good queen. For all of us. She’s not her father.

Sansa: No, she’s much prettier.

—GOT season 8 - episode 1

In that “I stand by Daenerys” article, the interviewer recalled Kit Harington’s words about Jon killing Dany, during season 8 filming:

“I think it’s going to divide,” Harington says of the finale’s fan reaction. “But if you track her story all the way back, she does some terrible things. She crucifies people. She burns people alive. This has been building. So, we have to say to the audience: ‘You’re in denial about this woman as well. You knew something was wrong. You’re culpable, you cheered her on.’”

Harington adds he worries the final two episodes will be accused of being sexist, an ongoing criticism of GoT that has recently resurfaced perhaps more pointedly than ever before. “One of my worries with this is we have Cersei and Dany, two leading women, who fall,” he says. “The justification is: Just because they’re women, why should they be the goodies? They’re the most interesting characters in the show. And that’s what Thrones has always done. You can’t just say the strong women are going to end up the good people. Dany is not a good person. It’s going to open up discussion but there’s nothing done in this show that isn’t truthful to the characters. And when have you ever seen a woman play a dictator?”

After reading what Kit said, Dany stans gone rabid. They said things like HBO forced him to say those words and others simply insulted and hated him. Because, you know, he is wrong. D&D are also wrong. They are just a pair of white misogynist dudes that can’t stand women in power… SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

I mean, look at these headlines. Dany stans/targ lovers are now justifying genocide. They are making/selling/buying “Her Satanic Majestic” T-shirts. 

So there you have it Anon. Some of them decided to believe Dany will still be the hero in the Books, because she ended slavery you know, that’s not what villains do, if you think different, you are a slavery apologist, also misogynist, and surely a Stark stan, those fucking classists xenophobes…   

Some others just joined “Her Satanic Majesty” cult. Those ungrateful peasants deserved to be burned alive because they didn’t love Dany. it was their fault that Dany had to go in guns blazing on them. Burn them all! Dracarys! Fire and Blood! 

It would be a long ride Anon.  

[mssapphire]

I couldn’t find a transcript on David Jay’s talk about Asexuality for Moses Znimer’s Ideacity Conference. So I did it myself (because I need it for reference anyway)

«So, I'm gonna talk about a pretty universal human experience, which is the struggle to find connection.

And I want you to think back to the last time you had a really good, really deep conversation. Think about how that felt like in your body. Think about what it felt like to be that engaged with another person. That's what I mean when I say connection.

And I'm gonna talk about the struggle for connection in a community that you've probably never heard of before. It's a community of people like me who identify as asexual.

An asexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. So, if you think about it, there are some people who really like sex a lot, there's other people who like sex but not quite as much - it makes sense that at the bottom of the spectrum there would be people who aren't interested in sexuality at all.

And the important thing to understand about our community is that we have the same desire for connection as everyone else - we just don't have a desire to express that connection sexually. And there's a whole community of us out there. This is us at San Francisco Pride (I'm in the roller blades over there), this is my hometown. And this website (asexuality.org) - I founded it when I was 18 years old. Because I wanted to find other asexual people like me. And it's grown. We've got about 60,000 member talking about asexual identity in a dozen languages right now. There's a documentary that just came out that's excellent, you should take the time to see it, that talks about our community.

And I don't know if any of you have ever had the experience of being involved in the early stages of a community - that was just deeply, deeply empowering for hundreds and hundreds of people. But there's no experience like it in the world. And I'm just really humbled to have gotten to witness it and gotten to be a part of it. 

I remember that right when our community was getting started, there would be hundreds and thousands of people who would type the word 'Asexual' into Google and find the community for the first time. And there was this overwhelming feeling of validation, of finding other people like them. And they just gushed and gave their entire life story and they talked about how they felt alone in the world. How they felt like they were broken. But how now that they'd found a community of people like them, they didn't feel like they were struggling by themselves.

And my sexual friends would look at this and they'd be a little bit confused. I'd tell them about our community and they'd say 'what's the big deal? you guys just aren't interested in sex. Like, I would think that would be convenient. I think can't you just stay at home, not being interested in sexy? Why do you need to form a community about it? What's your struggle?'

And, to answer that question, I want you to think back to high school. Now, if your high school was like my high school, you probably were connected to lots and lots of people, that you called friends. And even though you spent a lot of time with these people, even though these were people that you felt really deeply emotionally drawn to, even though these were people with whom you were deeply connected... these relationships probably did not have the same status as relationships that involve sexuality.

Relationships that involve sexuality probably got talked about, celebrated, and prioritized in a way that non-sexual relationships did not.

And if you're a sexual person this can be confusing and disorienting. But if you're an asexual person, this leaves you wondering whether you'll ever be able to form relationships that get talked about, celebrated, and prioritized.

And it leaves you afraid that you may never be able to get that sense of connection that all of us so deeply crave. And that's why this word would come up when people talked about their experiences joining the community. We felt broken because the connection that we really, really deeply craved was velcroed to a culture of sexuality that we didn't understand.

Now, I tell you this story not because I think that our high school experience was any more traumatic than anyone else's high school experience. I'm sure there are many many people in the audience who could give me a run for my money in that.

I tell you this story to illustrate that the reason that asexual community came together, the reason we have a shared struggle, a lot of the reason why we even exist in the first place has to do with the fact that our struggle for connection is tangled up in a culture of sexuality.

This isn't just true for asexual people. Our struggle for connection is tangled up in a culture of sexuality. And as an activist in the asexual community, I spent years trying to figure out how to disentangle these two concepts. 

Not that they can't be together, but that we should understand how to talk about them separately. I think if we can separate them and talk about sexuality, first of all, we'll be able to talk about sexuality much more clearly, much more directly. But - which, by the way, I think sex is great, sexuality is fantastic for people who enjoy it - but will also be left with this concept of connection that right now we don't have good ways to describe directly.

There's a thing called a relationship. That's not me, and it's not another person. But it sits between us. I can have one feeling about a person, and a completely different feeling about my relationship with that person.

Relationships have a life of their own. They grow like plants and entangle themselves into our lives. Creating this sense of connection that's so important.

And the more I study relationships, the more I realize that they are fundamentally the same. Whether you're talking about a sexual romantic relationship, or relationship between two close friends, or the relationship between a grandfather and a granddaughter, or the relationships that tie together a group of friends, or the relationships that drive a lab of scientists to make scientific discoveries, or the relationships that tie together a social movement.

And as you think about all these different kinds of relationships I want you to recognize just how little we understand about how they operate. What's the difference between a relationship where you feel open expressing everything that you're feeling, and a relationship where you express none of your emotions?

If I have a phone filled with contacts, what's the difference between the people that I see once a week, the people that I see once a month, and the people that I never take the time to see? Because how I answer that question, will have more of an impact on my happiness than my income.

Study after study on happiness has confirmed this. Friendship is really, really important. And yet research on friendship itself is fairly rare. There is more published research by far on the industrial process of die-casting than there is on the process of forming friendships. It's a blind spot.

And I think this is a little bit tragic, because if we want to disentangle our struggle for connection, we need to understand how these things operate. And I believe this is fundamentally possible. Relationships are really confusing, relationships are really complex, but they are not chaotic. I believe that there is a structure to the way that relationships form.

Biology gives us a language to talk about the structure of plants. Physics gives us a language to talk about the structure of matter. But right now the language we use to talk about the structure of relationships is tangled up in factors that confound it. Understanding how these things operate won't be easy. It's a process that we should approach with humility and the kind of intellectual vigor we were talking abut earlier today. But if we can begin to understand how relationships form, it could transform the way the connection happens in our society. I'll give you one tiny example.

So, a key element of relationship structure is decisions about time. Decisions about time are great because, among other things, you can measure them. But if you decide to spend time with someone regularly, then you have a relationship. If you don't decide to spend time with them, then you don't. It might not be particularly healthy relationship, but it's there.

In healthy relationships, the more time I spend with someone, the more we explore ways of spending time together... as I spend more time with someone, as I get to know them, the way that we make decisions about time evolves. So that the time we spend together is more aligned with both us. (It) brings both of our lives more deeply into balance. And I think that there's something fascinating about that process of evolution.

And it turns out we know a lot, actually, about the evolutionary process. Which I think is an interesting lens through which to examine the structure of relationships. So we start out by exploring lots of ways to spend time with people, then we communicate about our emotions to differentiate the ways of spending time that are most meaningful, that are most impactful in both of our lives. And then we select those periods of time, we invest more time in them so that we can explore the relationship further. And the cycle starts again.

And all relationships move through processes like this as they grow. But if we can see them, if we can measure the process, and talk about the process, it allows us to put a little fertilizer on the relationship. It allows us to take weak connections and make them stronger. It allows us to look at communities and see how to make the connections in them richer. It allows us to write new scripts for the way the relationships form.

This is my friend Brandon. Brandon and I have been very close for about four years. We met in graduate school, and we immediately hit it off. We have these long, intense conversations about business and the environment. We'd go on these epic, epic hikes together. We cook huge elaborate meals, we go out dancing - he's a killer dancer. And, after several years, I took him aside and said: 'Brandon. You've become one of my closest friends and, if you're comfortable with it, I would like to sit down with you and have a conversation where we acknowledge that our relationship exists. All I wanna do, is talk about the fact that we're in a relationship. Talk about what in that relationship is working, and talk about how we want to build on it'.

And there was something about that simple conversation that was terrifying. But once I could sit down and have it with him, the relationship was transformed. It didn't become a romantic relationship. But being able to make explicit the way that we made decisions about time, allowed the relationship to be talked about, celebrated, and prioritized in a way that most friendships are not.

Here's what I'd like you to take away: as you think more about the asexual community, remember that our struggle for connection is tangled up in a culture of sexuality. And that in order to disentangle it, we need to understand how these things operate. We need to recognize that they are fundamentally the same. Whether they are sexual, or non-sexual. We need to begin to explore the structure by which they grow. So that we can write new scripts for new kinds of connection. And if we can do that, then I believe that our shared struggle for connection may become just a little bit easier. And imagine what the world would look like if it did.

Thank you.»

[skammovistarplus]

Interview with Estíbaliz Burgaleta

[Note: Because I know it’s coming, this interview was released prior to the premiere of SEASON 2. That note about actors’ availabity has nothing to do with Fernando Lindez.]

Interview with Estíbaliz Burgaleta, head writer for SKAM España

By Ángela Armero

Estíbaliz Burgaleta is a script writer (SKAM España, Cable Girls, Morocco: Love in Times of War, Seis Hermanas, Velvet), writer (The Winner Takes It All, Loser), short film director (Bichos Raros, Mañana, La Leonera), webseries showrunner (Cataclismo), and script writing professor (Gona Estudios in Oviedo, Fiction Script Writing Master’s Degree at ECAM). As prolific as she is versatile, in her career she has alternated between melodrama and comedy, science fiction and teen shows, weekly shows and daily soaps, script pages and literature. If that weren’t enough, she blogs at Bichos Raros. She did Media Studies in Navarra and Script Writing at ECAM. She currenly heads the writer’s room for the Spanish remake of the Norwegian show SKAM, which is produced by Zeppelin and airs on Movistar. We’ve taken this opportunity to talk about this remake and, while we’re at it, try and find out how to do so many things and all of them well.

Estíbaliz, in your career you’ve done many things: television scripts, short films written and directed by you, the webseries Cataclismo, you’ve recently published two novels, you also teach… Is it a way to understand the job?

It’s more a way not to get bored, to try new trades, to pass the time when you’re in “between projects” (that is to say, unemployed), and also, to keep learning. For instance, when you shoot a short film you learn about the many things that can go wrong in the process of turning a script page into images. And writing novels it’s a way for me to do whatever I want, without having to be limited by network interference, or head writer interference, or scheduling problems with the actors, or anything like that. Actually, every project is a result of a specific moment in time because, right now, I wouldn’t direct short films for anything. Although who knows, never say never.

Season two of SKAM España just premiered, and you were also head writer for season one. What was your biggest challenge when you got started, and what was the biggest challenge when it came to season two?

Every time you start a TV show there’s a feeling of starting from zero. When it came to SKAM España, besides, we were a team who didn’t know each other beforehand. And, since it’s a remake, we had to decide to what point we were going to be faithful to the Norwegian show, which features we were going to keep and which ones we weren’t. We decided we couldn’t copy SKAM shot per shot, especially when other remakes were so faithful. We realized there was no sense in offering more of the same. The challenge in season one consisted in not disappointing SKAM fans, to be faithful to the tone of SKAM and to tackle the same topics: bullying, loss of your childhood friends, loneliness and the need to belong somewhere… but adding plot twists that fans of the original series wouldn’t see coming.

SKAM España season two goes down a different path than the original. What made you take this decision?

In addition to knowing from the start that it made no sense to offer a copy of the original show, we also noticed a desire, on the part of teenage audiences, to see a romantic love story, an iconic story, but where the characters were girls. In the Spanish audiovisual landscape, there are many stories that reflect the process of coming out by a boy, but we were missing something like that with a teenage girl, a referent for all these girls who are in the process of figuring themselves out and need to see themselves represented on screen.

What differences do you notice in a show like this, so dependent on real time, its audience and internet use, compared to other more classic offerings, such as Morocco: Love in Times of War, in which you also took part?

SKAM España is very different from other shows, from conception to format. It can be watched like a normal series, in episode format and weekly on Movistar, but it can also be watched on the website in real time and with additional information, such as the characters’ messages and the pictures they upload to their social media. That results in a different way to work, even the format of the scripts is different, because we include the Whatsapp chats and characters’ instagrams. That said, when it comes down to it, I think every show has its own rules, thus that feeling I mentioned earlier about starting from zero every time you come into a new project. When it comes to Morocco: Love in Times of War, we delved into the Rif War and we tried to research not just the era itself, but also medicine, military strategy…

What do you do to capture today’s teen slang? And, in general, to reflect teens properly.

This is one of the aspects in which SKAM España differs from other shows I’ve worked on. I had never in my life gone to rehearsals with the actors and in this show I’ve been able to and it’s super funny. This helps us in the process of reflecting the way they talk. Besides, the series directors [translator note: Begoña Álvarez and Tapi Ayerra] go through the effort of ensuring the cast makes the script theirs and inserts the slang that feels more natural to them during shooting. It ends up being contagious, and everyone in the crew has started saying things like “me renta mazo, tío.” I, personally, love the verb “stalkear” [translator note: from English, stalking] and I already use it daily. It means to look someone up on the internet to find out everything you can about that person, without them knowing, that is. I should also mention that before we wrote the series, there was field work done with psychologists, who interviewed teens aged 15 to 20, to find out what they worry about, their interests, the way they see life. Again, this was something I’d never done before for any other project, and it was really helpful.

Do you think they worry about the same things people of our generation worried about?

Resoundingly yes. They’re worried about their grades, what other people think of them, what they’ll do in the future, what they look like physically, fitting in. The feeling they repeated the most often in the interviews with the psychologists was “feeling overwhelmed.” They’re aware that they live in a crucial time in which they must make huge decisions, and most of them feel lost. What changes the most in this generation compared to ours is the tech. Cellphones, social media and the internet are part of their daily lives, and it’s manifest. But I think my generation, if we’d had today’s tech, would have behaved the same way with their obsession with self image, for instance, or with control and social media “stalking.” Then there are other details, such as fashion or music, that change, clearly for the worse. Because, let’s be real, was it really necessary for the fanny pack to make a comeback? Trap music is also something which escapes me and makes me feel like an old lady. Grunge was so much cooler.

What do you think about the golden age of TV, this boom? Do you think it’s a bubble or a progression that will continue going up?

I’m sorry to be a little fatalistic, but I have the feeling it’s a bubble. When it comes down to it, the number of viewers is what it is, and the budget to produce shows isn’t bottomless. But I hope I’m wrong and this lasts a long, long time. Just in case, I would recommend all the script writers to start saving.

You have also worked a lot as writer or head writer on daily soaps, such as SMS, Ciega a Citas or Seis Hermanas. What did you learn from these shows?

You learn so much on a daily soap, you develop a savage ability to work and savage reflexes. The dialogue team has to come out with five or six scripts per week, the rundown team has to come out with five or six rundowns. The crew works like an assembly line where you can never, ever take a break, or you fall behind airing date. I like that adrenaline rush. Besides, it’s precisely because the schedule is so tight that you get to see your work on screen quickly and with less changes that when you take part on a weekly show where the schedule extends over time, and there are so many edits to the script that in the end what you see on TV has very little to do with what you wrote.

Excluding SKAM España, what is the show you have learned or enjoyed the most from when writing it?

I have a very good time writing Cable Girls, because it’s a show where many genres fit: intrigue, romance, melodrama and even some humor. I enjoyed working on Ciega a Citas a lot because we did some really weird storylines, the vibe of the show allowed us to get even surrealistic and that’s always nice. With Seis Hermanas and Morocco: Love in Times of War, I delved into the early 20th century. And, since I love history, I loved being able to research.

And lastly, what do you think of female representation on TV?

I think we still have a long road ahead when it comes to female representation. I miss more women and, of course, older women and fat women, really ugly women or average ones. I’m a little fed up with all these women under 30 taking their clothes off for no reason. Even in “Love, Death & Robots,” which is an animated show, they have a healthy dose of topless girls. I think this is a result of both there still being more men in TV crews and the dominating gaze still being male. When it comes to “women’s” media, it’s more of a brand to help sell a product than a reality. I’ve found myself working in what were theoretically women’s shows (romantic melodrama, with female protagonists) where I was the only female writer. There won’t be any changes in the audiovisual landscape until there exists more parity in the crew. In addition to that, it’s still commonplace to check the credits of a series or a movie and find they’re a complete dickfest.  

[beanenigma]

Journalism 101 for writers: a writing guide to media

When I was a little girl, I asked my mother what college course I had to graduate in to be a writer. She said none, but that I had to do one either way. So, with no writing majors in the country, I chose journalism. I hated every second of it, but hey, I have a piece of paper that says I understand these matters. And today, I come to bestow upon you the knowledge I’m cursed with and to beg, to please, stop with the blaming the messenger in your pieces of media. Journalists are people too.

(Please, keep in mind media is drastically different depending on your country. This is how I learned it Brazil. Feel free to add one things you know about your country). 

How to write a news article in your WIP?

This is what gets writers every time. We can see you struggling and it’s okay. We understand. People (like me) go to school to learn how to write news. But it’s really not hard. And believe me, it can help you in the rest of your writing too. 

Key word in journalism is hierarchy. Hierarchy for the win. 

We work on an inverted pyramid scheme. Don’t worry, I’m not about to ask you to join. It’s a writing technique. What is more important comes first in the inverted pyramid. What is more general, what is more important, what will the people want to know more must be in the first paragraph. This first paragraph is called the lead. In the lead, all (or most of the) W questions must be answered: what, where, when, who and why. Remember, in journalism there is no “spoiler”. The point of a journalistic article is to spoil, to give information. 

When you’re done with the lead, you start on going to slightly more specific information and slightly less vital to the understanding of the article. Therefore, going forward down the inverted pyramid. Take a look at some articles and you’ll easily identify the structure. Simple, right? 

But Bean! How will I know what is more important than the rest? I’m not trained in journalism! I don’t even like journalism! 

Neither do I. But we journalists have a little… Cheat sheet. They’re called news values. News values are what we look for when organizing our articles and our overall pages. This wiki link has the whole list, of them, but it’s mostly things that impact people’s lives, that happen to notable people and/or things that are unusual. My professor used to say that a dog who bit a man was no news, but a man who bit a dog is. And if that man happens to be Benedict Cumberbatch, it would matter even more. 

Of course, it also depend on the type of media that’s publishing! News for radio and online news portals have to be very imediate, while TV might take a day or two to deliver the same news. 

What we chose is always really the most important news? No. But it helps to decide what people normally take as important when reading their news and therefore, put it into a hierarchy. Also, for your WIP consider what the news company values. That will make sense further on. 

What is a journalist’s routine like?

Pure madness. But organized madness. Day-to-day goes a little bit like this. 

Morning meetings (you’ve probably seen in movies) to decide what will be pursued during the day. Themes are suggested, but themes are not news. When you offer a theme, you must also offer someone who could be interested in talking to your company, how long you will take to do it and if you need someone else to go with you. 

And there is not a lot of competition: if you suggest something and it gets picked up, you might not be the one to do it - because it’s not your specialty, because you have other assignments, because you don’t have the contacts. But that’s not a big deal. We’re not all egocentric maniacs. Mostly, we just want the paper to run or for the segment to air. Doesn’t matter whose name is up there. In your career, you’re going to do so many of these you won’t even care anymore. Besides, newsrooms don’t have that many people anymore. It’s not unusual for people to have to do two or more stories at once. 

Some days are slow. There is not that many notable events happening everyday. That’s why we use “drawer” news. Things that are kept “just in case” nothing comes up. Stories that don’t get old, like a recurring club in the local library or a short human interest story. This is what newbies in fiction whine about. But relax, they’ll be stuck with it for a day. There will surely be more news tomorrow. It’s not a big deal. 

After the morning meeting, everyone goes out their desks to make calls or into the city. Like I said, newsrooms don’t have a lot of people and a lot of roles were suppressed. 

In online and printing, nowadays, the journalist goes on their own, makes the interviews, take the pictures, comes back into the room, writes and publishes it on the website, or sends to the editor for printing. In TV, journalist and cameraman take a regular car (unless they’re doing a live insertion on the news segment) drive themselves, collect interviews, extra footage, write a script for the editors, go back, record the off voices and take it to the editing room. 

And deadlines are very real. If you don’t meet the deadline, something will have to go on the air/ on the paper. Feel the pressure yet? 

What about investigative journalists? Like in Spotlight! Ah. That’s not a thing. I mean, it is. But only in specialized companies focused on investigative journalism. Nowadays, news companies don’t have the money to keep recurring investigative teams. It costs a lot of money: pay salaries, pay for their moving around to do interviews… And it can take several months to investigate something that will get published in a week (or get stumped and not get published at all). 

That doesn’t mean they’ll never get investigative pieces. But normally journalists will investigate on their own (paying for their own travelling costs, etc) and the company will only get involved when it’s time to publish it. That is, if it’s not against their own interest. Which takes us to the next segment. 

Are journalists life-sucking, money seeking unresponsible pricks?

No. They get bad reps, but they’re merely the messenger to both good and bad news. Most times, they hardly have control over the things they have to write/produce. They’re overworking, underpaid, and the clock is ticking. Something has to go up, something has to be printed. 

I’ve seen this time and time again in entertainment. Normally it takes the figure of the editor-in-chief. They’re not bad people. They’re demanding, hell yes. A nightmare to their journalists? Sometimes. But that’s their job. If they don’t have a strong hand, the paper won’t go out, the segment won’t air. That doesn’t make them bad people and they’re hardly as bad as you see out there in media (well, mine was, but I’m sure he’s just an odd case).

Why do we get a bad rep? Well, allow me to introduce the real bad guys of the story. Company owners. 

Doesn’t matter who they are. Millionaires. Corporations. Politicians. They always manage to stall the advancing of news as they’re supposed to be. There’s no fighting them, they’re the ones that pay. Their relations and their interests dictate what goes in the news. This is called Agenda Setting. Look it up. 

Sometimes editor-in-chief will try and discuss these matters, but their power only go so far. In my city, we had a scandal involving the school I went to. The biggest newspaper of the city set on investigating, had the whole thing ready to go. Editor-in-chief was giving full support. They were forbidden to publish. Why? In comes the other villain of journalistic tales. 

Advertisers. The school had a two page ad in a coveted spot at the middle of the newspaper. As much as people claim journalism is important, it can’t sustain itself. It has always depended on advertisement. So when big advertisers complain to the owners, the company loses money. And in the end, that’s the objective of a company. Making money. Make no mistake. We are all aware of how journalism is vital to society, but everyone wants to eat and pay rent at the end of the month. 

Of course, there are independent newspapers, some really awesome people who dedicate their lives to producing quality journalism independently. Are they successfully? Not normally. But they’re out there! So don’t think everything is always hopeles and your adorable OC will have to sell their soul to this terrible state of journalistic indecency. 

I hope this helped you if you use news pieces in your WIPs or if you have journalist characters! If you want to know anything else, I’d be happy to answer any questions (or even write more on the subject). If you like the guide and would like more writing advice, you can follow me or check my tag HERE. 

Thanks for reading <3

[miseriathome]

Requested (cross)post about celebrity rpf

[Real person fic] is almost always about celebrities. And at a certain point, we don't actually understand or know celebrities as real people. After all, celebrities are never actually genuine to the public--even if they seem genuine, it's always a part of the role they play as highly public figures. Celebrities as we know them are personas that real people put on. Fic about them by people who have never intimately met them before is actually fic about their personas--not about the real person. Likewise, as always, fic isn't actually a representation of what you want in real life. You can absolutely write fanfiction about Martin Freeman/Benedict Cumberbatch while being aware of/respecting their real world relationships with other people, and their potential forever lack of interest in one another along those lines. So to that extent, I don't see why rpf about celebrities should be a big deal.

And because I like pointing out grey areas as a way to illustrate why lines are drawn in the sand and nothing matters, here's a bunch of bullet points:

What about self-insert non-rpf fic? What about second-person/reader fic? Aren't there real people involved in those? What if your original character is a thinly-veiled real person?

How do anti-rpf folks feel about Hamilton? Or Bohemian Rhapsody? Or that Steve Jobs movie? Is it only okay when the real people are dead? What about The Social Network? Or that movie about the Obamas? How far in the past do real events have to be to be acceptably reportrayed with creative licenses taken? Are SNL's incredibly timely political skits acceptable? Or are these things only okay because they're professionally produced? In which case, isn't this all just catering to the invisible line between professional authordom and fanfiction authordom that literally constantly shows up in fandom wank as a blatantly obvious double standard?

To follow that train of thought, is it wrong to make posts like "Steve Irwin definitely forgave that manta ray in heaven?" Because you're literally setting up a fictional interaction about a real person against that real person's consent (since, after all, he could have secretly resented and hated that rayfor killing him, even despite his public persona saying it was just doing its job! Because the disjoint between celebrities' public and personal lives is not one you're privy to seeing!) What about posts that are like "Marie Kondo loves you?" What if it's not true? You're literally putting words in a real person's mouth. Where's the line when it comes to acceptable shared comfort illusions based around real people, and when does it start being "too much" and turn into unacceptable real person fic?

Isn't it kind of fucky to say things like "I ship the Obamas?" I mean, what if behind closed doors, their relationship is actually super abusive? Then you're shipping real life abuse! And what if they got divorced? Would you stop shipping them? Or would you continue shipping two people who don't want to be together against their consent? /s

You know when little girls fill up notebooks with "Mrs [their name] [celebrity name]" because they have crushes on celebrities? That's literally a ship. It comes with daydreams about getting married and being domestic and doing interviews because now you're famous. And daydreams are just... unwritten fic. So if an entire real person fanfiction exists in somebody's mind, is it still a problem? Or is it only bad when somebody can see it? What if that little girl tells a friend about those daydreams? What if she writes the fic in a notebook? What if it's in a word doc? What if it's on a private only-those-with-a-link-can-access webpage? What if it only gets sent to people who signed themselves up to be part of a fic-sharing email chain? What if it's on a tiny blog under a read more? When does a fanfiction actually become a fanfiction, and therefore policeable the way thoughts can't be?

What about when the daydream is subconscious? What if it was a dream somebody had about real people? What if they write it down in a dream journal? What if they tell somebody else about it? What if they submit it to a crowdsourced dream journal online?

Where's the line between a fic and a headcanon? When we made memes about Joe Biden desperately wanting to share government secrets, was that going too far? Is role play based on real people fucked up? Because if it is, then the source of the "then perish" meme should be morally appalling.

Boy, do I have thoughts about people who fight over who a celebrity should "get with." Lots of people will only stan the person that somebody is currently with, speaking to that person's decision to be involved with them... but is a show like The Bachelor where you're supposed to root for somebody with a high probability of being wrong exploitative? The people on that show are all real people, and the proper way to engage with that show is to want two of them to get together, but you don't actually know if they will. So really, you're headcanoning and you're shipping. About real people. While also doing exactly what those tv shows expect you to do. Because it's almost like this wank is a nonissue in regular life.

What about tabloids and reality television? It's well known that tabloids lie and reality television is partially scripted/omits things in favor of creating dramatic and entertaining narratives.

What about when it's a fic about somebody whose public persona is very obviously not like their real self? What about when somebody plays a fictional character, but that fictional character has the same name as their real life self (The Colbert Report, Seinfeld, The Drew Carey Show)? How do you navigate that? Is it okay to write about the fictional characters they play? Or if that crossing a line because in some sense, those fictional characters are still them?

Here's the thing: Being anti- something doesn't do anything. It's not even an ideology, it's just a moral code that nobody else has to adhere to. And especially when it comes to a decentralized, non-industrial, unpoliceable phenomena like fanfiction, there's no way to change what people are putting out or why or how. So really, you have to suck up the fact that even if you hate it and it goes against your personal morals, it's going to happen, and then the real question is "what are you going to do about it?" And that's where an anti- morality falls flat, is because they either can't rise above moaning about it or they go out of their way to attack people for having different moralities. So in my opinion, the far more productive and uplifting ideology is to go "okay, this thing exists and I just have to live with that fact. What can I do to help people?"

And... I think also.......... the argument that real people aren't consenting to be a part of those fanfics falls flat when those real people aren't actually a part of the process of creating that fanfiction. You don't get to consent (or not) to something that doesn't involve you, that doesn't affect you. And the idea that these things affect celebrities is ridiculous. Wank about real person fic, headcanons about OC's, etc are ridiculous. Fanfics are thoughts put on paper and published, and really it's only possible to be against what you can see. If you loudly decree that (any type of) fanfiction is wrong, the least that happens is literally nothing, and the most that happens is you manage to chase it out of the public eye, but it will nonetheless continue on smaller websites or in email chain or in physical zines or in personal notebooks or in peoples' brains. But if anti- types are just satisfied with having it out of sight and out of mind, then they don't actually care about the arguments they're making about peoples' rights... and this effect could have just as easily been achieved by those people curating their own environments to not contain real person fiction, instead of treading on the toes of people writing it.

Being a celebrity means being known and being interpreted and even being misread. In fact, being a social being comes with these risks. People will misunderstand you, misread you, misattribute things to you, misremember you, miscategorize you. I think there are a lot of people who fear what it means to be known, and they channel their anxieties and insecurities into "defending" the "rights" of others not to be misrepresented in others' minds. But that's not how being a secure person works. Becoming, for all intents and purposes, a persona in the minds of others--being turned into a caricature and being framed and reframed through every lens possible--is part of the job description of being a public figure. People are supposed to think they understand something about celebrities. Celebrities are supposed to sell themselves as fantasy/outrage fuel. If a celebrity weren't interesting enough to invoke masses of people thinking about them, they would be out of a job. People are supposed to turn celebrities into dolls to play with in their minds, and there's no shame in engaging with culture as culture is set up to function.

Obviously this write-up overlooks non-celebrity real person fic which has more nuance to it, but ultimately I think the point that “people are going to do it anyways, so what are you going to do about it?” still stands.

[edebiyat-mavisi-blog]

Thumbnail Blaster Review and Bonus

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Build a Pursuing As with Facebook, Twits, and MySpace, Dailymotion is certainly also a social networking. Being mixed up in community can be a must for fresh plus old video information builders looking to come to be popular on YouTube. Create your channel around a individual specific niche market that has the mid-sized level of rivals. Visit similar channels plus comment on their video lessons with sincere compliments or maybe inquiries. Treat your subscriber's video clips the same approach so you are definitely not to work as a dormant number in their request foodstuff. The old SUB4SUB approach is still being utilized and has developed in its own community or maybe niche. If your target audience is usually teenagers, go intended for it! Be careful not to be called out there as being a spammer because the idea of, "You join to me and I may subscribe to you" is often frowned upon by means of people of a qualified background. 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For competitive terms, your online video has to produce lots of good viewer reaction before it is going to show up on best of search engine results and eventually on Google as a new movie result. Patients, really hard work, plus reliability are a must. thumbnail blaster need to publish videos on a typical basis all with a little bit different target phrases relating to your niche market. The idea is a lot regarding work. Yet , when an individual get your first online video media up to a thousand views, you may be hooked on YouTube, wearing Youtube . com Tees, and even making guides to help others.

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Thumbnail Blaster Review and Bonus

Welcome to my Thumbnail Blaster Review and Demo YouTube first became popular while an on the web platform for musicians for making some sort of name for themselves and having even more views was, nevertheless is, the ultimate goal with regard to video clip content creators. Back in the day, people would use unreliable title, tags, and thumbnails to a extent to obtain more views and now days Google and yahoo has won typically the war on spam by means of integrating new voice and graphic acknowledgement technology to obtain an idea involving what a video is on the subject of in comparison to what the material creator states in this title, tags, and even information. This helps to supply those that have a much much better person experience in order to something up on YouTube. Movie content creators are presently faced with having to basically make quality videos the fact that people will take pleasure in and to get more views, it really needs to be seen by sufficient reduce weight find the proper customer who will add the idea on his website site, at least share it on Facebook. Correctly therefore, Google's major top priority is definitely user experience over the content provider's watch add up, however some professionals claim the new changes to be able to the algorithm will lead to old video tutorials, that individuals have already viewed, drive more moreattract attention than new ones and could actually make it tough for the particular user to find fresh content in search benefits to get well-liked search words. So, just how can a online video media content creator this summer fights impotence the latest changes for you to this YouTube Algorithm? Develop Video lessons Like Never Ahead of Make a Following Comment Your own personal Way into the Top Off of Site Optimization Know Typically the Difference In between Junk mail And even Optimization Produce Video tutorials Similar to Never Before Having YouTube's 92 Billion web page landscapes a calendar month together with climbing, a online video media must be one of a kind for it to get popularity. Planning a online video media and server scripting are at this point a must along using display quality. By comparing the movies with millions associated with views to the lesser of the people, you will notice of which high definition and outstanding lighting are two popular traits shared by the particular just about all viewed videos. This kind of doesn't make you own to get an high-priced HIGH DEFINITION camera to pick up more views. Dailymotion has a set of format tickets, again to aid provide a superior user experience. yt: crop=16: on the lookout for yt: stretch=16: on the lookout for yt: quality=high Use these kind of tags to eliminate window boxing and poor video high quality if you do not really have access to HIGH DEFINITION equipment. Pay attention to be able to your video's thumbnail models careful to not be flagged for junk mail. "OMG" confronts are favorite thumbnail choices just as long as it is definitely what will be within the video. The. 25. 5 plus. 75 points on your online video used to be what determined your own personal thumbnail selections when adding. With so much misuse, Google came up using the bright concept for you to use the three longest movies from your video and semi-randomly picking some sort of point from the three period of time points. Stereo and impression root data file names happen to be also added in the equation to better give appropriate thumbnail selections. 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Be careful certainly not to be called out and about like a spammer because often the idea of, "You subscribe to me and I actually will subscribe to you" is often frowned upon by way of people of a professional background. YouTube picks upward on greatly repeated remarks plus auto-marks them seeing as junk e-mail so just employ a SUB4SUB profile photo and be participating in the particular SUB4SUB channels inside Dailymotion community. Set aside a good day to work with building the following about other social networks such since Facebook, Twitter, together with Myspace . com. This extends your current using to those who have no the channel on Facebook which surprisingly enough makes up for a lot of the web site's 92 billion readers each month. Comment Your Means Towards the Top Uploading a good video double a full week and strategies in your clients video tutorials and programs this day before is an excellent rule of thumb. 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Decide on a good search phrase you would like to be found by (that best explains your own video) and use the idea in your title. Search engines like google like wide variety so put in a few support words towards your phrase. For example: Target term: Remote Control Grass Mower A great title would likely be: Remote Control Yard Mower vs. Steep Slopes Write a brief outline utilizing the target phrase simply once towards top although not really for the reason that first sentence. Be 100 % natural and communicate to your viewers. The tags for the online video should be specific to your own personal target saying with and without quotations. One example is: "remote control yard mower" remote control grass mower. After a thirty day period of positive viewer allergic reactions, you will discover your video climbing often the charts. Regarding competitive keyword phrases, your online video media has to produce lots of positive viewers reaction before it will show up on top of google search and eventually on Google as the video result. Patients, challenging work, and uniformity will be a must. You really need to post videos on a standard basis almost all with a little different targeted phrases relating to your specific niche market. The idea is a lot regarding work. Nonetheless when anyone get your first video up to a , 000, 000 views, you may be hooked on YouTube, wearing Dailymotion Tees, and even making tutorials to help others.