#then i corrected her on one too many spongebob facts and she started to think that i fully stepped out of the show

[buoyantsaturn]

coworker today told me that she wouldnt be surprised if she turned on spongebob one day and saw me hanging out with the cast of characters. just like my normal human self in bikini bottom. she insisted that she meant this as a compliment

[peawinkls]

What's Up With Jack? - A JFK Clone High Character Analysis Written By a Mentally Unwell Highschool Student

I'm gonna start this essay off with 5 words: JFK is an iconic character. He's not as iconic as…Spongebob, sure, but he is the glue that holds together Clone High as a whole because of his character. I've written an essay on him once, and since then I've always loved him and he was so interesting to analyze. Though, I felt as if I had gotten a few things wrong in that one analysis. So, I'm remaking it. In addition, I'm adding some more stuff and correcting what I've gotten wrong.

We know who JFK is. Not the former US president, the cartoon character. The brute, dumb womanizing jock. The one that's used for comedic relief from time to time. The silly himbo that people have grown to love since 2020.

While Clone High is a very satire show that makes fun of various teen tropes, we get ourselves some very interesting characters like Joan, the shadowy board, etc. So in a way, making this analysis is very silly of me but I'm a Clone High obsessed nerd who relates to some of the characters. Most of all, JFK. I want to highlight some elements that most of the fandom doesn't really dig into that much. Good news for JoanFK and Jfabe fans, I can't infodump without mentioning both of these ships.

This is a JFK Clone High essay, and why I care so fucking much. Contains season 2 spoilers.

LGBTQ: THE SEXUAL MINORITY

To state the obvious, JFK has gay foster dads. Something that you don't see in many other 2000s cartoons. Most people would expect the last thing is for a jock to have same sex foster parents. Jack seeks advice from them. He loves them. However, we do get moments where JFK gets confused about his own sexual orientation at times. For instance, he messes up his words and gets flustered around "John Dark", who is actually Joan. In the end, however, he becomes relieved at the thought of not being attracted to the same sex.

This could either mean that he was "intimidated" by his own sexual orientation, or the fact that he's bisexual in a country that many sexual minorities struggle through– even today. Even if this might be a stretch, this is the 2000s, I must remind you. It was a VERY different time for people who identified with their orientations. Since JFK is so popular in the school, he could've become afraid of ruining his own reputation because he was simply bisexual. So what does he do? He goes to his foster parents for advice.

A lot of people in the world aren't very accepting of people who are queer (hell, people shunned Abe for kissing his friend Gandhi. And while Abe isn't attracted to Gandhi in any way, I feel like this could be a good example).

Let's put ourselves in JFK's shoes for a moment. You'd happen to be a kid growing up in the 80s-90s. You have gay foster parents. You'd get made fun of for having gay parents. I think that at some point during Jack's childhood, he was probably ridiculed for having parents of the same sex. It's possible.

His Personality, His Reputation, And His Feelings

JFK loves receiving praise. He pulls constantly, he's the captain of the football team, and he likes making himself look nice. But it's very obvious that he hides his feelings, he wants to make himself look tough SO much that he's almost forgotten the one thing: It's okay to feel human emotions. JFK has mentioned before that the only girl who ever gave him feelings (before Joan came in) was Cleo– and even if she did, the two were in a toxic relationship. They argued with each other constantly, they put each other down.

This could suggest that he's only ever felt way too empty when he was around with other girls, so Cleo coming into his life brought a little color into his world. Just…not for long. He has a deep fear of breaking up with Joan and losing her, because he has abandonment issues. Yes, JFK, the asshole jock, has abandonment issues, and it's been right in front of our eyes. He himself demonstrates a genuine fear of losing someone close to us.

Now to talk about one of my favorite episodes where JFK gets some character development. Litter Kills: Litterally. If you don't know the premise of this episode, JFK loses his best friend, Ponce, due to him being killed by litter. And. That's pretty much it, everyone go home

Seriously though, while the episode itself is pretty stupid and hilarious, it also remains one of the emotional Clone High episodes. When Ponce dies, JFK is devastated, clearly. He lost one of his only best friends, and as the funeral for Ponce went on, JFK didn't care about his reputation, he didn't care how insane he looked to everyone, he only wanted to be with his friend. But even in the current situation he was in, JFK first refused to be comforted by Abe. This is also the moment of one of the first ever times he ever felt a warm embrace. And by his enemy, of all people.

Towards the end of the episode, we can see that JFK is at least starting to move on.

Now, on to season 2 JFK, I do believe that he had some sort of character growth ever since Joan came into his life, which brings me to number 3:

Loneliness And Insecurities

JFK is noticeably happier when he's with Joan, correct. She's the only person he's ever felt comfortable being with compared to Cleo, whereas the two were in a completely toxic relationship back in season 1.

I want to remind you all that Joan is genuinely the only woman JFK has ever loved, so the thought of breaking up with her makes him…anxious. He has an irrational fear of losing her, same as he lost Cleo (though, the two remained friends). In Anxious Times At Clone High, JFK avoids Joan so she wouldn't break up with him. He runs away from his problems in this episode, to be exact. When he's not with Joan, he is prone to overthinking.

Joan and JFK do share something in common, they both struggle in actually making friends. But in season 2 episode 2, Joan makes friends faster than JFK does. He's spent most of his highschool years being a womanizing stud, that he came to the realization that he actually doesn't have any friends. His only friend was his girlfriend.

So, he resorts to crying in the boys restroom. Which is where we see him become friends with Confucius, as he invites him over to his mansion for a boys night. A very convenient thing that caught my eye was: Confucius also struggles in making friends. So he and JFK also share a thing in common. This is one of the first friends he ever made, mind you.

JFK admits to the fact that he's a "loser with zero friends", after getting absolutely demolished in an internet argument against Topher Bus.

So, JFK is a very insecure person, got it. He insults himself over having no friends. He's afraid of losing someone close to him because he fears he's not good enough for her. He's so scared about the thought of her breaking up with him that it pushes him out of his comfort zone. Though, as the episodes progressed, we do see JFK gaining many other friendships, even becoming friends with his former rival, Abe.

JoanFK (And Why It Didn't Work Out)

I will start off with this section by saying that I do not dislike JoanFK, I personally think they are very cute. They have a great ship dynamic. Goth girl x dumb jock. But, and this is a very lukewarm take: I feel like their break up was fair.

Saved By The Knoll was the breaking point, where in one of the scenes, JFK…cheats on Joan by making out with Harriet. And while they both apologized and admitted it to her, it's still treated as cheating by Joan (however forgives them both in the end).

I believe that JFK letting Joan break up with him in Spring Broken was a very responsible thing to do of him, and he goes on about how Joan needs someone with her that's not just sexually. And JFK…makes a lot of sex jokes. He's not a perfect person. He has flaws in relationships, this includes Joan. Even though it was a pretty emotional scene, and Joan was saddened by JFK's suggestion, they are able to work things out in episode 8, Sexy Ed.

You get where I'm going with this. I personally think that JFK and Joan are better off as friends, they have an excellent platonic duo dynamic that could work out so well. The whole entire relationship thing was doomed to fail, and couldn't last long as a result. And while they both look out for each other and care for each other, I don't think I'm the only one who thought that the relationship was quickly gonna sink like the titanic.

Jfabe (And Why It Does Work Out)

I'm not saying JFK and Abe have to be a romantic couple, like JoanFK, they could also form a cool duo dynamic that we pretty much have little to see so far. I can only hope that in season 3, we could have more moments between them where they're just a powerful brotp.

I'd like to point out that these two are complete opposites; Abe is tall and lanky while JFK is short and buff. I like the thought of the tall loser boyfriend x short jock boyfriend ship dynamic. They both influenced each other's goals, Abe was determined to get Cleo to be with him because JFK was competing against him to also get the girl, and JFK wanted to win the presidential election because Abe was getting himself into danger (as said by Joan). In season 2 episode 10 however, they both agreed to the fact that, "Hey, we actually do great as a team!"

I believe that JFK and Abe could work out things if they were to be in a relationship together, such as JFK learning from his previous break up that he needs to improve. I figured that Abe could be his emotional support. The one who's always there for him, willing to help JFK out whenever he needs it. Just wanted to share my thoughts.

Conclusion

For a satirical highschool comedy, JFK is an interesting antagonist to supporting character despite being the stereotypical highschool bully, and that's probably part of why people like him so much. While they have watered him down a bit in season 2 I couldn't be more grateful that we at least got some more JFK content to work with. He has been rotting my brain asides from the show itself i think i need help . Thanks for sticking around

[hannibard]

I recently got second hole earrings and it inspired me to write this!

Pairing: Geralt x Jaskier

Read on ao3

“Do I really have to do this?” Geralt asked as he got inside his ex-girlfriends car.

“Yes.” Yennefer answered without looking at him before turning the engine on and exiting the parking.

“Hm. Can’t I just buy you a meal instead?”

“No.”

“What about one of those unicorn dildos you wanted?”

“Tempting but still no.”

Geralt sighed and raised his hand to run it through his hair before remembering that it’s up in a bun and doing so would ruin it, so he placed it back on his lap instead.

Yennefer rolled her eyes.

“Can you maybe chill a bit? You’re the one who bet that you could eat 80 hotdogs in a row without puking and you agreed that if you lost you’d get your ears pierced.” She said, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “A deal’s a deal, you can’t just back out now.”

Geralt let out a frustrated grunt. “In my defense I was wasted at the time, but I know.”

“Then stop being a little bitch. What are you even worried about anyways? Don’t tell me you’re scared. It doesn’t hurt much, you’re barely gonna feel it.” 

“Fuck no Yenn. I don’t mind a bit of pain, you know that.”

Yennefer turned to wink at him. “That I do.”

They were both silent for a moment as they reminisce some of the better parts of their previous romantic entanglement.

Yennefer cleared her throat and asked again. “Then what’s the fucking problem?”

“I just… I’m not sure how earrings would look on me.”

Yennefer hummed and Geralt chuckled softly. “That’s my line.”

Yennefer laughed but then turned serious. “…I personally think they’d look very sexy on you and fit with your general rocker/bordering on too much leather vibe but if you really don’t want to do this then I can find another equally torturous way for you to settle this bet but without any permanent changes to your appearance.”

Geralt was somewhat shocked to see her yield this easily but he probably shouldn’t have been. He knew how good of a person she was underneath her cold exterior and he also knew that even though things didn’t work out between them she still cared a great deal about him, the same way he still cared about her. It’s the reason they became such good friends after their inevitable separation, and she would never push him to do something outside of his boundaries. 

He smiled softly even though she can’t see it with her eyes on the road.

 “It’s fine. I made a promise and I intend to keep it.”

 …

 They arrived at the piercing/tattoo parlor soon after, Yennefer telling Geralt about a new sushi restaurant she and her girlfriend, Renfri, went to last weekend as they enter the building. They walked up to the counter where a clerk with shoulder-length curly chestnut hair was waiting to assist them. “Hello and welcome to ‘Yellow Lotus Body Art’, my name’s Triss. Do you have an appointment?”

Yennefer nodded.

Triss smiled politely. “Great, could you please give me a name?”

“Geralt Rivia.” 

“Oh, for the ear piercings right? Please wait a moment while I go check if Jaskier’s ready.” She said before disappearing behind a door.

Geralt side-eyed his friend. “You made the appointment in my name?”

“You’re the one requesting their services so isn’t it natural?”

Geralt was about to reply with something snarky when suddenly the backdoor opened and the most attractive guy Geralt had ever laid eyes on walked out.

 He was a little bit younger than him, maybe in his mid-twenties and he had short brown hair in a teen Justin Bieber type hairstyle, that while long out of fashion looked really good on him and gorgeous cornflower blue eyes that seemed to look right into his soul. 

He was wearing an oversized dress shirt with wide pink and white stripes which was messily tucked into his skinny ripped jeans that were folded at the bottom. Several of the buttons at the top of the shirt were left unbuttoned, revealing pale skin covered with a thick patch of chest hair that made Geralt’s mouth go dry.

For shoes he was sporting a pair of brown leather oxford boots that were short enough to show his ridiculous SpongeBob patterned socks. He had various jewelry on, such as a black choker and a simple silver necklace around his neck, rings on his fingers and also several piercings on his ears as well as his nose, eyebrows and one single silver stud on his chin and his arms and collarbone were covered in tattoos depicting yellow flowers (buttercups maybe? Geralt wasn’t sure), music notes and many other random designs. Last but not least, wrapped around his wrist was a bracelet with the bisexual flag on which Geralt was especially happy to see and it made his heart soar with hope.

The man looked at both Yennefer and Geralt up and down with a glint in his eye and grinned widely. “Hello there! I’m Julian but everyone calls me Jaskier. I do both piercings and tattoos here and I’m very happy to make your acquaintance.” He clapped his hands together. “So! Which one of you is Geralt?”

The pair gave him a dry look, or at least Yennefer did because Geralt’s was closer to smitten more than anything else.

“What? I didn’t want to make any assumptions.” Jaskier said sheepishly and bit his lower lip. Geralt’s eyes were immediately drawn to the gesture.

Yennefer leaned on the counter and nodded towards her ex with a roll of her eyes. “It’s him.”

“Perfect! Please follow me.” Jaskier said and led them down a hallway and inside a room. There was a tattoo chair in the middle and the younger man motioned for Geralt to sit on it.

“Triss mentioned that it’s your first time getting a piercing correct?” Jaskier asked while putting on some plastic gloves.

“Yeah.” Geralt answered and avoided eye contact trying to not stare at the guy too much, something which was proving to be quite hard.

Jaskier sighed and looked up dreamily. 

“I remember when I first had my ears pierced.” He said and started taking various small packages out from a drawer and arranging them neatly in a surgical stand next to Geralt’s chair.

“I was in middle school and the guy I liked at the time had earrings so I asked him where he got them just to start a conversation and he told me and then offered to come with me if I ever wanted to try it out so of course I said yes and after I did it I became obsessed with piercings so here I am today.”

Yennefer snorted from the doorway where she was standing with her arms crossed. “Wait, so you basically just did it for some guy?” she asked in a judgmental tone which Geralt was confused about since she literally brought him here for an even stupider reason.

Jaskier just chuckled unoffended. “Not just some guy! I lost my virginity to him not long after.” He said and started opening the packages and taking various metal tools out of them. “And I’d blame it on the fact that I was a teenager at the time but even now when I fall in love it’s always fast.” He turned and winked at Geralt. “And hard.”

Geralt’s eyes widened and he blushed. He cleared his throat trying to feign nonchalance “Hm. That doesn’t really sound fun honestly.”

Jaskier made a thoughtful sound. “Sometimes it is and other times it isn’t I guess. Depends on how the other party will respond.”

He seemed to want to say more on the subject, but he was done with the preparations and he had no reason to stall. “Before we start, I must inform you that all the tools I’m gonna use have been sterilized and sealed in those packages you saw earlier to avoid infection so you don’t have to worry about that.”

He picked up a marker and came close to Geralt to mark the place where the holes on his ears would be made. Once he was done he held a mirror in front of his client. “Is this ok?”

The older man just nodded and Jaskier put the mirror back.

 “Have you thought about what sort of earrings you’d like?”

Geralt had in fact not thought about this at all. “Not really.” He answered honestly.

“Whoa seriously? How do you even come to a place like this without deciding that first?”

“…I lost a bet.” Geralt grumbled while Yennefer laughed.

“Well I’ll have your friend here tell me all about it while you go back to the counter and choose something with Triss. Come on now, off you go!” Jaskier said and kicked him out of the room.

Geralt was worried that his newfound crush was more interested in his ex-girlfriend than him so he wasn’t really paying attention to what Triss was saying, basically letting her pick the first thing she suggested before hurriedly making his way back to the room.

As he got closer, he could hear Jaskier’s beautiful laugh and he quickened his pacing. He was about to open the door when the question the tattoo artist asked Yennefer stopped him dead in his tracks.

“So are you guys together or…?”

“No no, we’re just friends currently. Tried the whole relationship thing out long ago and it didn’t work out. Though I must inform you that I’m dating someone else at the moment but Geralt’s single if you wanna shoot your shot.” 

“I just might.” Jaskier was saying as Geralt re-entered the room. 

Two pair of eyes looked back at him and the piercer shot him a charming smile. “Welcome back big guy! Come here and show me what you’ve chosen.”

Geralt handed him the earrings and sat back down. 

“Black studs huh? Not a bad choice for your first time.” He said and picked up something that looked like scissors, leaning over Geralt.

“You ready?” he asked and Geralt took a deep breath which was the wrong thing to do because his lungs filled with Jaskier’s scent and it was intoxicating. If he had to use words to describe it he’d say it was a pleasant mix of lavender and something citrusy with a hint of sweat coming through as well. 

His heart started beating faster and he looked at Yennefer all panicked. She just raised an eyebrow in return. “What? Need me to hold your hand or something?” 

Geralt growled and looked back at Jaskier. “Just get it over with.”

Jaskier shrugged and got to work. It stung a bit, but it didn’t bother Geralt in the slightest. He actually barely noticed it with Jaskier’s close proximity and the sound of his gentle humming as he worked being all he could thing about.

After he was done, Jaskier picked up a few cotton swabs and poured some sort of clear liquid over them before using them to wipe at Geralt’s ears.

“All done!” He said after stepping back to admire his work. He gave Geralt the mirror from previously to look at the earrings himself as Yennefer came over as well.

Geralt was pleasantly surprised to note that he really liked what he saw. They were very noticeable with his hair being white and all but they didn’t make him look any less masculine as he secretly feared. Plus, they fit quite nicely with his all-black outfit that consisted of black jeans, black combat boots, a black t-shirt and a black leather jacket.

Yennefer whistled appreciatively. “I don’t know about you but I love them.”

Geralt shook his head. “No no, I feel the same way. Thanks for convincing me to do this.” He turned to Jaskier who was smiling back at him. “And thank you for everything.” 

“Just doing my job.” He said in a sing song voice and turned around, bending down to rummage through one of the lower drawers and giving Geralt a very nice view of his ass. His shirt rode up as well, making the tramp stamp of a dragonfly he had tattooed on his lower back visible and Geralt felt himself getting hotter by the second.

Yennefer noticed him looking and smirked but didn’t comment.

Jaskier stood back up and handed him a piece of paper and a small card. He pointed at the paper. “This one has instructions on what to do after you go home, though the gist of it is clean the holes with a cotton swab drenched in saline solution two to three times every day for 2 months and then you’d be able to take those earrings off and try on others.”

He then pointed at the card. “And this is the warranty for the black studs.” He said and took the gloves off, throwing them in a trash can.

“If you somehow happen to lose them, come by and we’ll just redo the process ok?” 

“Yes.” Geralt answered and cursed himself for his bad social skills. How does he keep the conversation going?

“Oh, and I also think I should give you my personal number, y’know, just in case something happens.” Jaskier added and looked up at him expectantly.

Geralt was quick to take the chance that was given to him. “I’d like that.”

Jaskier beamed at him relieved. He took back the paper and quickly scribbled his number down before handing it to him. “Have a nice day Geralt. And Yennefer too.”

“I’m honored you remembered me. Come on Geralt, let’s go pay.” Geralt smiled and gave Jaskier a small wave as he was dragged outside by his ex.

“Goodbye Jaskier.”

[itsclydebitches]

I just realized how many similarities Patrick’s plan has with Ironwood. It makes me wonder if, like Patrick’s plan, Ironwood’s would actually work only to be screwed over by the protagonists. Heck, unlike in RWBY, it’s actually justified that the heroes unintentionally ruined the plan, Patrick and the rest of the city had no faith in Sponge-bob and Sandy, and ended up paying the price when they did defeat the worm. RWBY's plan makes NO SENSE and James shouldn’t be screwed over!

Anon I’m going to level with you: I have no idea if this is a joke ask, a serious ask, or what precisely is going on but I’m compelled to respond with my exact thought process so that you understand the experience you’ve granted me: 

I received a whole bunch of asks over the last few days and decided to put them aside until I had time to read through them 

Why not take a gander at this one before bed? What could possibly go wrong? 

It is 3:00am. Three-A-Am. It’s very important to me that everyone understand the time and precisely how tired I am as I begin this journey 

(Obligatory PSA: Don’t be me, kids! Get an actual sleep schedule) 

I start by wondering who in the world Patrick is. Could I have forgotten a RWBY character? 

Googling “Patrick RWBY” reveals Patrick Rodriguez, the art director for Volumes 3-7

Somehow I don’t think this is the Patrick we’re discussing. I doubt Rodriguez has many plans in the works. Personally? Undoubtably. Within RWBY’s narrative? Unlikely 

It then occurs to me that maybe I should read the whole ask before attempting more google searches 

“Patrick and the rest of the city had no faith in Sponge-bob and Sandy”

Oh we’re talking about SPONGEBOB? 

I take a moment to appreciate that I could have never, in my life, predicted this twist 

I examine the rest of my ask box for other SpongeBob related material. If it ever existed it’s been consumed by tumblr’s maw

Where did this come from? What prompted this fascinating comparison? Have I reblogged SpongeBob lately? Not that I recall 

I question my life choices of not reblogging SpongeBob lately. That show is a gift

However, it’s a gift I haven’t properly experienced in, oh, say... fifteen years? I need a refresher

The google search becomes “Patrick, SpongeBob, worm attack” 

I discover “Sandy, SpongeBob, and the Worm” which for a moment I think is google correcting my choice of search terms until I realize that’s the name of the episode 

I read the wiki entry in its entirety, dredging up vague childhood memories in the process. Certain sentences and phrases stand out to me: 

“They all agree that they need a plan to protect themselves from this monster” 

“SpongeBob is terrified and asks Sandy to reconsider [attacking the worm]. Sandy refused to listen to his pleas and rushes out” 

“The townspeople then decide, as a backup plan, to follow Patrick's suggestion and start shoving the city out of harm's way”

“After contemplating the fact that the cave itself is the worm, Sandy sagely decides to hightail it.” 

“SpongeBob cannot help but point out he was right all along about the worm being too much for her to handle, coercing Sandy into admitting it and she does after a while”

“[Sandy] swings them out of the charging worm's path, leaving it to hurtle off a cliff... [they] congratulate themselves and head off to inform the town of the worm's defeat” 

“the plummeting worm lands right on top of [the city], destroying it”

“Clyde,” I think to myself. “You are not going to start explaining how a 90s cartoon manages these themes better than RWBY. It is now 3:30am and you’ve got to be up tomorrow!” 

“Fine, fine,” I concede. “But this ask deserves an answer first because that was a journey I did not expect to go on tonight” 

So: 

Thanks, anon 😂

[therainroguefanfiction]

🔥 ℝise Ⱥbove I̾t ◈ [Thanksgiving Special! 🦃]

📑 Table of Contents | ◂Backward

Word Count: 4,439

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〈“Oh, oh, oh, it’s Thanksgiving, we’re gonna have a good time. With the turkey ey! and mashed potatoes ey!. We are gonna have a good time. It’s Thanksgiving~” Nicole Westbrook, “It’s Thanksgiving”〉

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

Oh look, the Author’s Note is at the top this time. I bet you’re thinking, ‘Well shit, this can’t be good!’ And you’d be right 😂 Okay so, I wanted to write a special for Thanksgiving right and I had these plans to make it this shit fest of just absolute crack and humor right. WELL if you know anything about me you know that I go back to angst by default. Like, you know how when you play online games, sometimes your settings just reset on their own and then you gotta go and turn off the music and turn the subtitles back on and why the fuck is PVP ticked on?? That’s basically me okay. I auto default back to angst unless I changed the settings again lmfao

So, I started this off, full fucking intent on being funny right. Yeah, no. Runaway while you fucking can. It got so fucking heavy in the middle and it’s just… I’m sorry bro. That’s all I can say. It might make you cry? I mean, I’m a sensitive lil bitch and I cried while I wrote it sooo~ But fear not! I gave it a cheerful, happy and somewhat enlightening/inspiring ending?? At least I think so anyway… Also, you don’t have to celebrate Thanksgiving to enjoy this! Oh yeah, and don’t @ me about facts, I literally used Wikipedia because I’m an uncultured fuck that knows nothing about Thanksgiving even though I live in the USA lmao Don’t fucking @ me about the song I chose either 😂 I ain’t adding that shit to the playlist tho.

So yeah! Read this shit, cry into your snuggie or your dog that looks like a mop and then go enjoy some turkey or hug your mum. Don’t forget to reblog this chapter because I’m a hoe for them reblogs ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

☔ Rain

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

The door to class 1-A slammed open with so much force, it bounced off the wall and came back, stopped only by a gloved hand. An obnoxiously loud voice filled the room, “Are you ready, kids?!”

“Aye aye, captain!” I jumped up, automatically answering only to curse myself a moment later when he smirked. “Bitch, this ain’t Spongebob!!”

He clicked his tongue and gave me double finger guns. “But you responded!”

I slumped into my seat in frustration.

Present Mic approached the board, picking up a piece of bright orange chalk before writing a word on the board in English: Thanksgiving. He slapped his palm under the word, making several pieces of chalk fall to the floor. “We’re going to be talking about the meaning of Thanksgiving in Western Countries, most notably in the United States!”

“Sir!” Iida’s hand shot into the air.

“Thanks for calling, listener! What is your request?!”

Iida stood tall. “With all due respect, sir, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Japan, we celebrate National Labor Day.”

“You’re correct… almost! Many people consider National Labor Day to be Japan’s Thanksgiving! Plus, I’m your English teacher, so why not take this time to talk about a wonderful holiday where you get to stuff your face with as much food as you can handle without being looked at like a weirdo?!”

“It doesn’t matter what you do,” I commented blankly. “People will always think you’re a weirdo, cockatiel.”

“Hey, aren’t you American, Winchester?” Kaminari questioned, tilting his head back to look at me.

I shrugged. “My mom was American, but I was born in Japan. I mean, Gramps taught me English and we had a small dinner every Thanksgiving to ‘celebrate my heritage’ or some shit, but I don’t really know the details about the holiday.”

“Which is what I’m here for!” He slapped the board again, giving up a grin. “Now pay close attention, listeners! In America, Thanksgiving occurs on the fourth Thursday of November every year! In Western Countries, this holiday is known to be the moment to thank the Native American people for helping European pilgrims to survive their first winter in the United States! Typically, this is a day when families come together from across the country to be with their loved ones and feast!”

I hummed. “Gramps used to always make me watch these American pageants where grade-schoolers put on plays reenacting the interaction between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. I remember one year, this kid was dressed in a fucking black trash bag stuffed with newspaper.”

“Plays are very popular in schools all across the states!” He nodded his head. “Can anyone tell me what year that Thanksgiving became a federal holiday in the USA?” He cupped his ear, but the only thing he got in response was a cricket that had snuck into the room a week ago to avoid the approaching chill settling over Japan. That fucker is really good at hide-n-seek because we still can’t find him and he’s at the back of the room so it’s like he’s in my fucking ear. “That’s right, the year is 1863! Before that, it was celebrated off and on since 1789 but the third president, Thomas Jefferson, just wasn’t feeling the holiday so he put a stop to it!”

“Seems suspect,” I responded.

“Now, who can tell me about the First Thanksgiving?!”

Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp.

My eye twitched and I turned in my seat, eyes scanning the back wall. Where the fuck is that goddamn cricket?! I swear to Deadpool I’m gonna roast that bitch when I finally fucking find it.

“Right again, my impressionable listeners! The First Thanksgiving was created by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621! The feast lasted a total of three days and, according to one attendee named Edward Winslow, there were one-hundred-forty-three rockin’ attendees – ninety Native Americans and fifty-three Pilgrims!” He continued to drone on about the history of Thanksgiving in the states, listing off several different dates and names I couldn’t be bothered to remember.

I mean, History is cool, I guess, but when am I ever gonna need to know this stuff to function as a member of today’s society? Especially here in Japan, where American norms aren’t focused on at all? Plus, that fucking cricket is all I can think about!

“By the way, there will be a test on this and if you fail, you get remedial lessons with me, your chart-topping host!!”

Oh, fuck me.

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

I stepped out into the chilly night, my breath coming in puffs of smoke as I walked. Aizawa didn’t like us to leave the dorms after dark, but there was no specific rule about it as long as we stayed on campus. It was two in the morning, and I had been tossing and turning in my bed since I got there. It hadn’t bothered me at first when Mic brought up Thanksgiving, but now that it was just a couple days away, I’m starting to get restless.

This would be my first Thanksgiving without Gramps…

I fell onto the icy cold stone bench, letting my head fall back to stare up at the navy sky. It looked like ribbons of velvet, bright stars dotting across it like sequins caught under the light. The moon was a perfect crescent.

“Jen?”

I glanced over, seeing Zuku with his arms wrapped tight around his body. Even with the thick sweater he wore, it was obvious he was cold. I patted the bench beside me and he sat down, letting me throw my arms around his body. I focused on my quirk, raising my body temperature to warm him up. “Why are you awake?”

“I got up to use the bathroom and spotted you out the window.” He frowned up at me, his brow furrowed. “You look so… sad. What’s wrong?”

My grip tightened around him and I smiled sadly. “I guess I am a bit sad… This is my first Thanksgiving without Gramps, so… it kinda hurts, you know?”

“Oh, I see… I’m sorry…”

“It’s fine. Just something you gotta deal with, ya know? It’s life, and life is full of unfairness.”

“Will you… tell me about it?” He asked softly, playing with his fingers in his lap. “About what the two of you did each year? If it’s not too painful, I mean…”

“I’d love to,” I ruffled his hair and closed my eyes. “Let’s see – Gramps thought it was important for us to celebrate Thanksgiving because my mother was American. ‘It’s part of who you are, kitten, so we must celebrate!’ is what he’d always tell me. He spent the first five years learning everything he could about the holiday because he wanted it to be authentic and at age five, he started hosting a small feast for the two of us each year.”

“It sounds like he loved you a lot.”

“Yeah… Yeah, he did. We were each other’s world, the only two people we had in life. It was just us against the world!” I chuckled, but it held no humor. “Gramps was a hell of a good chef. He always used to attribute that to the fact that he worked for near six years in a restaurant with his father before the man died and the place had to be sold. Cooking reminded him of a simpler time, so he took pride in everything he cooked. Now that I think about it… that was the first time I met Skye and Heather.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Nah, they made my life hell growing up.” I waved my hand. “I don’t think they remembered this, but I met them once when I was seven. They lived a couple blocks down from us and Gramps had met them on several of his midday walks. Skye was half-Japanese on her mother’s side, while her dad was American and Heather was full American but her family moved to Japan just a year or two previously. Since Gramps wanted to make Thanksgiving as authentic as possible, he went to them for advice. Sky’s father had asked his grandma back home to send a few of her recipes for the holiday and that’s when I met Skye for the first time. He stopped by on his way to work to drop them off and she was with him, but she took one look at me and turned her nose up.”

“You were bullied?” He asked softly, lowering his head. “I never would have thought that.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t start until I was twelve.” I chuckled. “Anyway, we didn’t have much money to work with, but he saved up with every paycheck for months in advance. Just small amounts from each check and then the week before Thanksgiving, he’d take the money he saved and go all out, buying a Turkey, potatoes, pumpkin pie, the works. Some of the shit he couldn’t even get in our town, he had to travel to specialty shops or order the ingredients online from overseas. I kept telling him it was too much work, but he was a stubborn old man.”

Izuku shifted in my arms, his head on my shoulder. “Tell me more about him,” his voice was soft and growing husky as sleep started to claim him.

I hummed softly. “He liked what the day symbolized – families coming together to be thankful for the people in their lives and for the things they were gifted with. To be honest, I often wondered as a child if he regretted raising me, but I knew that was wrong as I got older. It was almost like… raising me gave him a purpose, a reason to face every day with a smile. And I guess in a way… he was the same for me. I remember it so clearly, waking up at one in the morning on Thanksgiving day to sounds in the kitchen. I’d sneak down the hallway, careful of that stupid ass board on the right that always creaked when you stepped on it. And there he was, seeming to radiate warmth and happiness as he bustled around the kitchen getting all the dishes ready for that day.”

I smiled, my hands fisting around his jacket as I took a shaky breath. “He always wore that stupid ass apron I gave him on his birthday in fifth grade. It was this god awful snot yellow color with lime green stripes. If you stared at it too long, you’d go fucking cross-eyed. And it had this… hell, even to this day I don’t know what it was. I think it was a Rhino in a chef’s hat but I guess it coulda been a hippo? Or a fat giraffe with a short neck. He was convinced it was a Thanksgiving Zebra, but I still think he’s nuts. There’s no way that was a damn Zebra, and I would literally list the reasons why it couldn’t be, but he’d just listen intently with a bright smile, nodding his head to show that he was listening. And once I was done ranting, he’d pat my head and simply say, ‘Thanksgiving Zebras are quite special’. I swear he was batty.”

Zuku chuckled. “What makes a Zebra a Thanksgiving Zebra?”

“They have to be fat as fuck apparently. And orange. At least I think it was orange. It coulda just been a really dark yellow. I’m telling you, this apron was all kinds of wrong! I will never understand what I was thinking when I looked at that thing in the store and was like, ‘This is feckin’ awesome, he’s gonna love it!’. But he did love it, wore it every time he cooked, even on the rare occasions we had guests over. He wore it without shame and always with a smile.”

“Because it was from you, so it was special.”

“Hmm, probably, yeah.” I sighed deeply. “Come on, let’s get you to bed, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I wanted to hear more stories,” he pouted, but he was clearly having trouble holding his eyes open.

“I promise to tell you some more later, okay?” I stood up, putting my arms under his body and lifting him into my arms. He snuggled closer, mumbling something under his breath before sleep finally claimed him. I held him closer, feeling my eyes sting with tears, but I forced them back. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t cry, not until I’ve earned the right to do so.

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

“Hey, Jen, wait up!”

I paused in the hallway, glancing over my shoulder. Ryuu was dodging students as he headed toward me, smiling brightly. When he finally reached me, he threw his arms around my neck, pulling me into a hug. I chuckled, hugging him back. “Hello to you, too. What’s up?”

“Are you busy?” He questioned, pulling away.

“Uhh, I got a shit-ton of homework that I probably won’t do and might accidentally burn but that’s about it.” I grinned.

He huffed, putting his hand on his hip. “You better not! You’re not allowed to get kicked from the hero course because you refuse to do your work.”

“Yes, mother.”

He nudged my shoulder but I didn’t miss the way his lips twitched up. “What do you say we hang out at the library for a bit and work on it together?”

I hummed. “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to lure me away, Hiryuu Rin~”

“As if,” he teased, tugging on my hand. “Come on, let’s get to it!”

“But learning is so boring~”

“You won’t be a hero with that attitude~”

“Last time I checked, pros don’t have to go around dividing letters with numbers to defeat villains,” I grumbled, throwing my head back.

He hummed. “True, but what if you come across a math villain?”

“Punch him in the dick.”

He sweatdropped. “What if he has hostages and he’ll only release them if you solve his math problems?”

I looked at him blankly. “What are the actual chances of that fucking happening, Ryuu?”

He huffed, puffing out his cheeks. “It could happen!”

I poked his inflated cheek with a chuckle. “Anything is possible, I guess.”

Ryuu led me to the back of the library, settling down in the corner. The next few hours were spent taking turns on our homework assignments. I was able to help him with a couple subjects, while he had my back for some of the harder ones, like math. And then there was physics, which left us both fucking stumped.

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

The librarian peeked her head around a large bookshelf, her tired, dull eyes landing on us. “Library’s about to close. Time to leave.”

I glanced out the window and clicked my tongue. “Damn, we were here for a while. It’s dark out.”

He nodded, stuffing his books into his bag. “They say time flies when you’re having fun, but…”

“We weren’t having fun at all,” I pointed out and he shrugged, stifling a yawn.

“Can I come back to your dorm?”

“Ho~? I didn’t know you were so forward, Ryuu.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him and he rolled his eyes, rubbing his arms as we stepped out into the cold.

“I was thinking more along the lines of hot chocolate and a movie.”

“Well, that’s no fun.”

“Just what were you thinking…” he muttered under his breath before shaking his head at my grin. “Nevermind, I don’t want to know!”

The walk to 1-A’s dorm passed in comfortable silence, Ryuu practically glued to my side as he soaked up the warmth from my body. I wonder if his body reacts negatively to the cold because of his reptile-like quirk. I should ask him about that later.

We stepped inside and I immediately froze in the doorway, my eyes wide.

Ryuu took his shoes off, looking back at me curiously. “Jen? What’s wrong?”

“I, uh…” I swallowed hard, covering my mouth and closing my eyes. As soon as I stepped into the building, the smell of food had wafted to my nose, almost as if it were waiting at the door to tease me. It smells just like… like the house did every Thanksgiving morning. It’s the exact same smell.

A hand rested on my shoulder, Ryuu looking at me with worry. “Do you feel sick?”

“No, I just…” I took a breath, forcing a smile as I tried to ignore the smell. “Sorry, just remembered something.”

“Are you sure? You look pale…”

I chuckled, pushing past him. “I was born pale. You up for grabbing the hot chocolate and heading to my room for the movie? Not really in the mood for socializing.” I stepped into the kitchen and froze for the second time. What the fuck?

“If you’re not in the mood for socializing, that might be a problem, Winchester.” Kirishima grinned.

“You better fucking get in the mood, bitch!” Katsuki scowled, his face twisted up.

“Welcome home, Jen.” Izuku greeted, brightly.

“Huh, class A certainly loves going over the top for everything, don’t they?!” Monoma laughed, but it didn’t have its usual mocking undertone to it.

“I hope you don’t mind us joining you guys,” Kendo smiled, tilting her head.

My eyes scanned the faces of classes A and B, all stuffed into the kitchen around the table that had been covered in various dishes of food – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole… Am I dreaming? I don’t… I can’t…

Ryuu embraced me, his hand finding my cheek. “You’re crying…”

“What? No, I -” I lifted my hand, wiping at my eyes. I am crying. I’m crying in front of both classes. They’re supposed to look at me and be reassured and feel safe, how can they do that if I’m crying my eyes out? Why am I even crying?

Momo and Ashido rushed over to me, pushing Ryuu away as they fussed over me, squishing me between them. “We’re sorry, we should have asked first!”

“Yeah, don’t cry, Jen!” Ashido squeezed me tighter.

“I don’t… know why I’m crying…” I sobbed, rubbing at my eyes furiously but the tears wouldn’t stop coming.

Izuku smiled sadly as he approached, pulling my hands away from my face. “All Might thinks you haven’t properly grieved for Gramps. That’s why I thought it would be a good idea to do this, to give you a chance to… to… properly grieve and to realize… to realize that you’re not alone!” His shoulders shook as his eyes filled with tears.

“Damn it, Deku! You’re supposed to make her feel better not start crying with her!!” Katsuki slammed his hand on the table, the silverware rattling.

“Can I… have a minute, please?” I asked softly.

The two girls exchanged a look before hesitantly pulling away. I bowed my head and stepped out of the kitchen, heading back out through the doorway. As soon as it clicked, I leaned back and slid down, my body shaking from the effort it took to hold back the rest of my tears.

‘Remember, kitten, life isn’t always easy. More often than not, you will face hardships and pain that will be so bad, you will begin to question why it has to be that way. However, just as happiness is often fleeting, so, too, is sadness. You may think that crying makes you a weak person, but I assure you it does not. Crying is a sign that you’ve been strong for too long, and there is no shame in it. Don’t be afraid to show your emotions, kitten. They are not your weakness, they are your strength.’

“Young Jen?”

“Toshi…” I sobbed, tears flowing down my cheeks as my body shook.

Warmth flooded me as I was brought into a strong chest, arms wrapped tight around me. A tired voice sighed from somewhere behind him, “I told you this was a bad idea.”

“Shouta…”

He kneeled beside us, his hand gently rubbing the top of my head. “Sorry, I should’ve stopped them.”

I shook my head. “No, I… I just…”

Toshi rubbed my back comfortingly. “When young Midoriya came to me and told me about his conversation with you the other night, I saw this as a teaching moment. He wanted to get together with the rest of your class, as well as class B, to have a Thanksgiving dinner in honor of your Gramps. I knew this would be hard for you, but I was sure that it was the right thing to do. You accepted the fact that he was gone, but you never grieved for him, did you?”

I shook my head, clutching his sweater between my fingers.

“When we lose someone we love, closure is important for us to heal and move forward. And… I worry that you might feel alone in this new world, but you have impacted those around you, even those from class B. They were more than happy to help out when young Midoriya explained things to them.” Toshi pushed me backward, grasping me by the shoulders and giving me his signature smile. “You are surrounded by people who love you, my dear Jen. Never forget that.”

And I smiled back, even with the tears still falling from my eyes.

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

When I returned to the kitchen twenty minutes later, several worried eyes snapped to me, no doubt noticing my red and swollen eyes, but I smiled brightly at them to ease their worries, stepping aside to let the two teachers inside.

“Hey, All Might made it!” Kaminari cheered.

“And Aizawa-sensei, too!” Kishima grinned.

“Does that mean we can eat now? I’m fucking starving,” Katsuki complained, his arm thrown over the back of the chair as he glared at the ceiling.

“Yes, let’s dig in!” Momo clapped her hands excitedly and the room sprung to life, everyone squeezing into the chairs around the table. Not everyone could fit, of course, and they ended up sitting off to the side or on the counters. All Might himself took up two and a half seats as he sat at the head of the table, laughing and chatting with the students as he told them stories from his youth.

I sat at the opposite end, between Shouta and Izuku, both of whom kept glancing at me with worry, though the greenette wasn’t trying to hide it like our teacher was. I chuckled, taking each of their hands with my own. “Thank you for this. It really means a lot to me.”

“Of course!” Izuku squeezed my hand, giving me a bright smile. Aizawa didn’t say anything, but he squeezed my other hand.

“You Sparky fuck, that turkey leg was mine!!”

“Huh? I don’t see your name on it, Bakugo.”

“Do you wanna die?!”

“Ahahaha! What deplorable manners class A has! Pathetic!”

“Be quiet, Monoma!”

“So many beautiful girls packed into one room, I just wanna touch them…”

“You’re disgusting!”

“Can you pass the cranberry sauce? Ribbit.”

“Here you go, frog girl!!”

“You’re too loud, Tetsu!”

“Hey, All Might, what was your favorite thing about America when you lived there?”

“That’s easy, young Kaibara! I loved seeing the -”

“Hey, you guys started without us!!” The room turned their attention to the doorway where Midnight, Gran and Present Mic stood. Midnight, who had spoken, huffed in annoyance. “There better be a turkey leg left!”

“Itps mjinre!” Katsuki mumbled around the turkey leg that he had stolen from Kaminari.

“You little brat, give it here!” She demanded, nearly jumping across the table to tackle him. His eyes grew wide and he took off, yelling obscenities at her as she chased him around the kitchen.

Gran approached me, putting her hand on my shoulder and smiling kindly. “Happy Thanksgiving, deary.”

I looked around the room, watching the chaos that was ensuing around me. And I smiled, my heart full of happiness and warmth. Things haven’t been easy, and I’m sure the road ahead of me is far from clear, but I’m surrounded by people that care about me, that I care about. Gramps… wherever you are right now, I want you to know that I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me. These idiots may not be entirely sane and they may drive me up a wall sometimes but… they are home. My home.

“Hey, hey!” Mic raised his voice, making the glasses rattle. “Let’s go around and say what we’re thankful for! Start us off, Uraraka!”

She pulled a surprised face at suddenly being called before tilting her head and smiling. “I’m thankful that we can all be here together!”

“Excellent! Iida, you next!”

“I’m thankful to be with friends during this time of giving thanks!”

“That’s the same as what Uraraka just said but good job! Let’s keep this train a-rollin’, folks!”

“I’m thankful for music.”

“Boobs. Definitely boobs.”

“I’m thankful Bakugo didn’t kill me for that turkey leg…”

“I’m thankful that everyone here is so manly!”

“I’m thankful I’m not sitting next to Mineta…”

“Anime and manga, definitely.”

“I’d be thankful if this bitch would stop chasing me!!”

“And I’d be thankful if you’d give me that turkey leg you brat!”

“I’m thankful that all of you dears are healthy~”

“Hah, I’ll be thankful when class A finally goes down!”

“I’ll be thankful when I don’t have to babysit Monoma anymore…”

“I’m thankful I got to meet Kirishima!!”

“I’m thankful that I sparkle so beautifully. I am magnifi -”

“I’m thankful for this awesome food!”

“What about you, Jen?” Izuku asked, curiously.

“Me?” I hummed as several people looked at me expectantly. I grinned brightly. “Ain’t it obvious? I’m thankful for tacos!”

Zuku sweatdropped. “I shoulda guessed…”

“Well, you stick to your guns, at least, young Jen!”

“Speaking of,” I looked Zuku dead in the eye, my expression deadly serious. “Where the fuck are my tacos, bro?”

His body tensed and he swallowed hard. “Um, I… I didn’t see any mention of tacos when I was researching Thanksgiving…”

I clicked my tongue. “That’s fucking shameful, Zuku. No holiday is complete without tacos.”

“I-I’m sorry!”

I grinned, ruffling his messy hair. “Make sure you don’t forget next year, ‘kay?”

His face lit up and he nodded. “Of course!”

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

「“Give thanks for a little, and you will find a lot.” – Hausa Proverb」

「“People cry, not because they’re weak. It’s because they’ve been strong for too long.” – Johnny Depp」

「“Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.” – William Shakespeare」

「“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Franklin P. Jones」

「“We fall, we break, we fail. But then, we rise. We heal. We overcome.” – Unknown」

[pug gif]

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

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[aforgottenballad]

Feelings on Sally Face Episode 5

Under a read more for obvious reasons, includes heavy spoilers and potentially triggering subjects. 

Disclaimer: I might miss-remember some parts of the story or have missed a piece of lore that would settle minor complaints. I am however disappointed in the ending as a whole and in some of the very harmful tropes included in it. But I’m also just some dude online with an opinion, and you can stop reading at any time. 

Rant under cut. 

Alright ya’ll. I’ve had a couple days to digest the ending to Sally Face.  While playing, I genuinely enjoyed some elements of the game. The chapter started on a dark but nearly hopeful note. Neil and Ash were still working to bring the cult down. It seemed likely Sal would be resurrected. Todd had apparently escaped the hospital, and that had potential to be either a very very good or very very bad thing. Maple was possessed by whatever fucked up the souls of the other apartment tenants, but hey! At least her and Neil weren’t in on the cult like so many fans predicted. Unfortunately, this series has a way of getting darker and darker as it progresses.  First thing that bugged me was the lore drop about how the cult was founded.  A Native American tribe. Right. Because why wouldn’t Indigenous peoples be in a story without being part of some mystical occult backstory, portrayed as mysterious historical props who worshiped something dark and evil instead of being portrayed as human beings. 

But I continued. I really enjoyed playing as Ashley and getting some insight into her character. I enjoyed the task of planting the C4 in the temple... catacomb... thing. We get to see Travis again! I was excited that a lot of us were right about him being indoctrinated but also working to fight the cult from the inside. We knew he had some good in him after all. 

When Ash tries to resurrect Sal, we get even more insight into her character, and unfortunately a lot of it is “Grieving, distraught, and full of self-blame”. I want to hug her.  Sal’s spirit is apparently revived by those pyramids, and he can dimension warp. We meet Jim, or what’s left of him, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore but agrees to help Sal anyway. This is, narratively speaking, weird as hell. His entire character arc for four episodes was “Loved his family so much he sacrificed himself to save them”, and suddenly he’s just some glowy dude attached to Magic Spirit Tubes who doesn’t give half a shit. I guess it makes sense as a way to wrap up why he’s been able to drift between worlds but... if he doesn’t care about any of that anymore why help Sal? And what about Rosenberg? Is she like Jim, or do we just have to assume she’s magical because her family helped found the cult? (Explained in an easter egg later on, because this game doesn’t just drop its lore. Not even the CRUCIAL lore. You have to achievement hunt for it.) Sal can enter various doors in the House In The Void to step into alternate realities, and this was my favorite aspect of the game. Each door has a different art style, and I really liked seeing these alternate realities. Steve probably worked the hardest and longest on drawing out and coding these scenes. I genuinely applaud the man for the work put into this endeavor I’m assuming all by himself. 

Meanwhile, Ash tries to unbind Larry’s soul from the tree house he died in, which doesn’t work. Did we ever find out why his body was never found? No? Ok that seems important.

After each puzzle, Sal’s body is restored a little bit at a time, but even after turning on all the pyramids and solving the mysteries behind all three doors, he can’t make it back to the “real” world. So Ashley kills herself. Or tries to. Because apparently that’s the only way to complete the ritual, and also because she feels really bad about not unbinding Larry’s soul and about not fixing Sal. Again, I want to hug her, but I have to watch her hurt herself instead, cause Steve doesn’t let us have nice things.

Okay, so this is a gorey game. We know. But one of the BIGGEST no-nos suicide prevention networks will tell you when consulting them about mental illness and suicide in media is NOT to show a graphic suicide in progress. Steve is aware a lot of his fans are A) Young teens to young adults B) Struggling with mental illness. 

His main character suffers from depression and anxiety and this fact has resonated with hundreds of fans. It’s irresponsible to purposefully include a graphic suicide attempt, but he did it last chapter, showing a gunshot suicide’s aftermath, then he did it again with Ashley. Call me a wiener if you like, point out the graphic scenes from earlier in the game and call me a hypocrite for not being upset by that, but you have to admit the Spongebob-close-up-shot look to those scenes have a totally different feel. Speaking as someone who actually has a pretty thick skin, but is concerned about the fans who might be in a worse place or who could be as young as 12, that was fucked up. 

Anyway, Ash’s attempt doesn’t take, because she’s struck by magic lightning, which infuses Sal’s soul into her. Now her arm is one of those stretchy sticky hands, but with bio luminescence and the ability to kick cultist ass. I actually thought this part was really cool, and was super ready to go on a cultist smacking spree. But again, we can’t have nice things and before we get to do anything badass we have to look at gruesome imagery again. 

You get to see Void Larry, who is now old and a wizard or something, but first...

Surprise! Maple and Neil are dead! Not just dead, but hung up from hooks covered in blood! And naked! 

Hey?? Hey Steve????? You know how they’re both POC?? And that lynching imagery is EXTREMELY NOT GOOD?!!????

“Two white people are hung up with them” YEAH? WELL WE’VE NEVER SEEN THOSE CHARACTERS BEFORE. THEY’RE JUST RANDOM PEOPLE.

I’ve seen people arguing “The white characters go through terrible things too” but it’s still really fucked up that by the end of the game, every. Single. Person of color. In the game. Has died. Gruesomely. It’s a gorey, dark, bleak game, and white characters die as well, gruesomely; but not all of them. None of them that are named are shown strung up, naked. That’s fucked up. That isn’t okay. 

There are also a total of three gay characters in this game. One is Todd, who goes through the standard “bad bad stuff” the game is used to, is the white one, and he survives. One is Neil, one of the aforementioned people of color who died horribly and who only really existed to be Todd’s boyfriend and therefore a source of angst for Todd when he dies. The third is Travis, another man of color, and an abuse victim, who dies to fulfill his character arc as an abuse victim, which is also really shitty to see over and over again as an abuse survivor. 

Look, I know Steve pulled a lot of inspiration from old TV shows and horror series that probably weren’t all “politically correct”. I know it’s always been kind of an edgy and dark game. I know Steve probably didn’t think about the repercussions of all his narrative choices. But I also know he actively ignored some people offering to educate him on issues he has no experience with. I know he worked hard on this game, by himself, but we as fans have paid him and waited for years and it isn’t selfish or ungrateful to be hurt and disappointed. He knows his audience is diverse, he knows a lot of us were attracted to the game because of a gender nonconforming main character, a main character who struggles with mental illness, a cast that isn’t 100% white and conventionally attractive. Of course he didn’t need to change the plot for us! It’s his game, his vision, but the least he could have done is research how to not actively hurt and alienate a good portion of us.  I don’t think anyone is bad or racist for still finding solace in the characters and in what the story was before this, I’m not attacking you personally, whoever is reading this. I, personally, still have loads of Sally Face art in my queue, I still have active role plays going on, my Sal wig is sitting like 8 feet away waiting for the next time my friends want to take cosplay pictures. I still enjoyed playing the game for the most part. Without this game I wouldn’t even know most of my current friends. It’s just really shitty how it ended like this, and a lot of people I talk to daily either feel too sick to even talk about the game anymore after seeing people like them treated like trash by the narrative or try to focus on the good things they got out of just being part of the fandom but don’t feel comfortable supporting the developer anymore. 

Even if there wasn’t all these hurtful tropes packed into the game, and yes, even after unlocking the epilogue, the game just feels cold. It feels rushed, probably because of how much time went into the alternate dimension gimmick. I wish Steve had at least consulted people over the script. It felt like not only did he pour all his work into experimenting with the mixed media, he also just took whatever expectations the fans had and went somewhere completely different just to have his story be “unpredictable”. That isn’t always a good thing. Plot twists, downer endings, dark and scary imagery, all of these things can be done beautifully, but in this case it felt like he just wanted the series to end. The game didn’t subvert expectations, it fed into the harmful stereotypes and tropes all the fans were so hopeful it wouldn’t. 

...On top of not making any sense unless you’re able to 100% all the puzzles. And even when you do, it feels like all the bad stuff happened for no reason. The ending doesn’t conclude anything. Even when you unlock the epilogue, all it tells you is that a third of the world has died and that the main cast haven’t accomplished much besides “Trying to help”. Sal and Todd have powers now, but that isn’t elaborated on much. Larry’s spirit is missing, if he even exists in any plane at all anymore. It doesn’t even mention what’s going on with Ash.  It just feels like nothing mattered. 

[kjs-s]

The senior trip

Pairing  Leonard McCoy x reader

Fandom Star Trek Aos

Summary Leonard and the reader are rival teachers who are the only ones to accompany the students on a field trip 

Teachers AU

Word Count: 2500

Warnings: none

A/N: This is my entry for @goingknowherewastaken birthday challenge.Happy early birthday.  I hope you like it.  I have no idea how the American educational system works so it can be all wrong.

@writing-journeyx   @sprinkleofhappinessuniverse @ohyesmarvel​ @agentpeggicarter  @buckys-fossil @romantichen @once-upon-an-imagine @locke-writes @lucetheding @marveliskindacool @captainrogerss   @jurassicbarnes @uncomfortable-writers @theassetseyeliner​ @sgtbxckybxrnes​ @thetherianthropydaily @dresupi @caplansteverogers @captainrogerss @dirajunara-archive @musikat18 @imamotherfuckingstar-lord @outside-the-government @thefanficfaerie @admiralamott

‘’Miss (Y/LN) I hope you have cleared your schedule for the week before the finals. We are not going to Hawaii without you. It’s going to be the most memorable and fun thing of our time here. We need our favorite teachers to be a part of it.’’ one of your students said.  

''Favorite teachers? You mean to tell me that I'm not your only favorite one?'' He looked nervous trying to find a way to answer that question without insulting you or hurting your feelings. ''I'm joking Adam. Who else is coming on the trip?''

''Does that mean you'll come? That's great. The principal said we will need two teachers but we asked both Mr. McCoy and Mr. Kirk alongside you. You three are the coolest and more laid-back adults here. We are still waiting for their answers though. The other students started coming it and Adam decided to share the good news.

''Hey guys, Ms. (Y/LN) said yes to chaperone us to Hawaii. This trip is looking up every day.''

''It's going to be great since we are the most awesome senior class in this school. That's why we are the only students here Mr. McCoy likes. I heard last week he corrected one of the freshmen so much, he made the boy cry. I think I picked up something about the grumpy teacher who would punish him. The poor boy was sobbing so hard and in an ugly way.'' Jessica told before defending Leonard. She used to be one of the students to get on his nerves because Leonard could see how smart she is yet she couldn’t apply her intelligence to study. Leonard McCoy showed her a better way of studying and made her into a valedictorian. Apart from that, he was one of everyone's favorite teachers seeing that he cared too much for them and he had a fun way of teaching biology.

When you first started working at the school, you knew nobody there. You had just moved to San Fransisco because you wanted to finally work as a teacher somewhere instead of the substitute jobs you had your entire career. The first two weeks you became friends with the other teachers, mostly with Jim, the drama teacher. You two clicked immediately and even sometimes helped each other with your classes. With you being the creative writing teacher, you often wrote scripts for him or had the students' ideas made into plays.  

The only person you haven't met was Leonard. However, you have heard everything about him. Not just because Jim was his best friend and insisted that the two of you would get along but from literally everyone in the school. Apparently, he was, from what you have heard, a little cranky although mostly at the people who didn't take their studies seriously. He gave the students interesting projects and his tests were all in trivial pursuit style in groups. On top of that, all the girls in your class seemed to have a crush on him.  

His reputation intrigued you for the handsome coworker you haven't met yet. However, it also made you a little competitive because you were used to being the most loved amongst the faulty in your old schools. You made a mission to be as liked as him. And you succeeded it that. Leonard senses your competitive vibe towards him and that made him a little hostile towards you. The fact he just had an unpleasant trip, trying to spend some time with his daughter, but ending up having fights with his ex every day didn't help his mood.  

''Please tell me you agreed to come on this trip with us Jim. I believe I will need you there.'' You went to lunch with him hoping he would come to Hawaii with the rest of you.

''Don't be silly (Y/N). You won't need me. I know you are not worried about handling the kids since they are all well-behaved. So, if this is about Leonard you two will be fine on your own, I bet you will have fun together.'' Jim wasn't even subtle about how much he wanted you and his best friend to get together. He was vocal about how good you will be from the beginning.

''I am not so sure about that. I mean, we are not in each other's throat anymore, but a whole week in Hawaii taking care of so many kids? We might end up arguing a lot. Besides, why don’t you want to come along? You have something interesting to do here?'' You smiled at him ready to gossip about his life for once.

''Yes, something exciting thanks to you. He laughed at your bewildered expression.

''Nothing like what you imagine. I took your advice about the final exam to be improv based on ''Whose line is it anyway?'' and I will spend the week watching it so I can come up with ideas. The students were over the moon to hear they didn't have to study and they were thankful for your creativity. What about your final exams? Are you done?''  

''Almost. I just have to write the epilogue of the story. I can't believe writing so terribly would be such a challenge. The kids will need a painkiller after editing that thing. Seriously I wrote it with so many mistakes they won't believe it came from me.''  

''They will curse you under their breaths. Yet again, they know you are soft on them. Listen I have to go back to school to prepare my classroom ok? Talk to you later.'' He pressed a gentle kiss to your cheek and hurried away.

The days leading up to the trip went by in a flash. You finished writing the horrible story for the finals and packed your bags. Much to your surprise, Leonard was civil towards you and even sounded friendly on occasion.

The days in Hawaii were relaxing and fun. You loved spending time on the beach and you ended up sunbathing for hours every day. It was entertaining to experience being with your students in such an environment and Leonard was enjoying himself a little too.

On the last night the student government president, Kelly had the idea to built a bonfire on the beach and stay up all night to finish the trip with a party.  

''Miss (Y/LN) why don't you come with us at the beach? We were staring at Mr. McCoy looking for the perfect place for our party and now he is gathering wood.'' You reluctantly went with the girls only after you made them promise to help you buy food.

When you were at the beach, you couldn't help yourself from admiring the view in front of you.  

Leonard couldn’t find any pieces of wood on the ground so he found an ax. Seeing him tearing down branches of trees made you feel a little flustered. Having focused on your rivalry and how you wanted to beat him for the most liked teacher in the senior year, you failed to notice how good-looking he is. His muscles were visible under his top and you assumed his arms were strong enough to lift you.

You shook yourself out of the trance of daydreaming about Leonard and you gathered the girls to help you buy food and set up a picnic. You had barely enough time to prepare before the night fell and you would start the party. Kelly wanted to begin with smores and scary stories. Afterward, they would move on to other games.

After the scary stories, you and Leonard left the students to play truth or dare by themselves and sat down nearby just the two of you.

You sat down next to him drinking out of your cup.

''I was hoping you would bring me a drink as well. You know, as a peace offer to stop this ridiculous rivalry between us.'' Leonard seemed somewhat apologetic. He had spent the day thinking how he has been towards you from the day you met. Also, he kind of heard Jim's voice in his head that you two would be great together.

''I would bring you one, I just assumed you don't like fruity virgin cocktails. If you want, I can get you one. We are out of anything else at the moment.'' You were surprised he expected you to try to mend things between you but you decided that this party would bring the two of you closer.

''I thought it was light beer, thanks for the offer though. Besides, we need to stay vigilant to watch these kids. Who knows, what kind of trouble they can get themselves into. I didn't go on my senior trip. And I spent the one in college making sure Jim wouldn't die from any of his allergies.'' He rolled his eyes and you smiled at the idea of how the two teachers would be when they were younger.

''You're telling me? I still remember a few about mine. Like the fact I woke up wearing a pineapple costume because I was too tired to change. And my classmates back home have a video of me dancing and singing the theme to SpongeBob SquarePants.''

''Let's hope embarrassing themselves is the worst that happens to them tonight. Otherwise, we will be the parents' least favorite teacher regardless how popular we are with the students.''  

''I believe your reputation will never be ruined. From my first day at the school, all I hear is how great and determined Mr. McCoy is. You have helped out so many students figure out what they want to follow as a career and how to work hard to get it. You are like a rock star in our school.'' You hated to admit it but deep down you admired him for how passionate he is about his job.

''You are like that too. I have overheard students talking about how awesome your class is in the hallway. And how you not only encouraging them to write, you try to make their ideas work without criticism. Not to mention that Jim was thrilled after you helped him make his class more interesting. It just occurred to me that maybe our rivalry was just jealousy. Sorry I was rude to you.''

''It's ok I was competitive towards you too and I sometimes don't like people being better than me at something. I'm sorry Leonard.''  

Leonard then spotted that one of the kids bringing more of the free beer, Leonard was happy it tasted almost like the real one even without alcohol, and he left to grab a cup. He offered to refill yours too.

''So, I don't think I have no idea where you are from.'' Leonard tried to get to know you better.

''Originally from a small town a few miles north from here. My parents still live there. After my graduation, I started moving around anywhere I could get a teaching position. It was mostly substitute work. The last place before I came here was Atlanta Georgia, I loved it there.''

''You're joking, right? The look on your face gave away your confusion so he elaborated himself.

''I'm from Atlanta I lived there all my life up until a few years ago.''

''If you don't mind me asking, why did you leave?'' You were focused on him and at the same time sneak glances to the kids partying. Thankfully nothing was out of control.

''I went back there after graduation to be with my then-girlfriend. We ended up marrying each other and everything was peachy up until she decided to leave me. She got everything in the divorce and I moved here to San Fransisco to start over. Thank God Jim had moved here and he let me be his roommate. I owe him a lot.  

He drank a little thinking how much he had been through.

''And now I try to go back every chance I get to visit my daughter.''

''You have a daughter? I had no idea.''

''Yes, I do. She is finishing elementary school this year. Let me show you a picture.'' He took his phone and gave it to you to see the picture.

''That's Joanna.'' You were stunned at seeing a familiar face.

''Yes, how do you know my daughter?'' He was intrigued to hear the story.

''I used to work as a tutor for elementary school kids when I first started working in Atlanta. I can't believe I never made the connection, Joanna was my favorite student there. I'm sure you already know how brilliant she is. I only tutored her because her mom, your ex-wife, thought it would make her better than the rest of her class.  

I never liked her. Your ex, not Joanna. Joanna was really adorable. And my favorite thing was how she always talked about her dad. She loves you so much. She would tell me about the costume you sent her for Halloween or that you were coming over to go to the zoo with her. She never stopped praising you.'' You smiled and help his hand noticing how much your words affected him.

Before he could reply to thank you for your story about his daughter, your students informed you they were continuing the party back at the hotel because the food was over.

''We should go back to the hotel as well. And maybe talk a little bit more. Maybe we will find out we have more things in common than the love for my daughter.'' Leonard helped you up and offered to link his arm with yours.

''I like the sound of that. I just can't believe we finally talked and buried the hatchet on the last day of the trip after sharing a room for a week.'' You giggled and Leonard started as well.

''But today we will stay up all night making sure the kids are alright. Also, for them to not start any rumors. We both know how much they like us together and they will definitely talk. Not to mention Jim will be thrilled that we get along. I can picture him insisting on us going to more trip together.''

''That I can imagine too. So, let's go inside and try to keep the rumors from spreading.''

Despite your efforts, the rumors of you ending up dating started immediately. You wouldn't really mind. You wanted to know you started it but your investigation was fruitless. It was impossible for you to fathom the fact that all of the seniors had colluded with Jim to make their favorite teachers a couple. And that the rumors were spread even before you returned from Hawaii.  

[theresawelchy]

How to Build an Effective Remote Team

Howdy fellas!

Never before has there been such a large number of remote employees scattered around the world. And several businesses that prefer a remote team building format still increases. It is a flexible and viable model if it is properly organized.

A work team is like a ship’s crew: everyone has a role to play in a huge effective system. A remote team is a virtual ship crew, a ship that floats in the future of work.

Like most IT companies, Standuply crew has a cozy office too, where we go to work every day. As an office team, we managed to reach considerable heights in product building, but it was time to expand the team. So we decided to set the course in the direction of remote team building and began to look for employees in other places.

Now, many months later, we know a lot about remote work: how to work from home, how to manage a remote team and how to create a business with employees who rarely see each other in real life.

Don’t get us wrong, we don’t want to say that everyone has to quit office work and start working remotely right now. We really love our office, but also we have an experience of remote team building and now want to share it with you hoping that it will help those who have not passed that hard way yet. So are you standing in front of the challenge of building a remote team and do not know where to start? Then this article is for you.

Cast off! We are going on our journey across the workflow! Remote workflow, to be specific.

Less is More

This is the first rule that you need to consider in team building with remote employees. First of all, you need to identify the people you need and what they will do. No need to recruit a lot of people, just take three persons who will be able to do the work for the five. This does not mean that three people have to work for the whole company, it means that working remotely employee performs a greater amount of work than working in the office, making the same efforts and not being distracted.

Most modern IT offices are coolly equipped, there are a lot of bean bag chairs instead of hard ones, and even hammocks, you can play kicker with colleagues, and some offices like Google’s one reminds children’s town. We do not argue with the fact that a cozy office is indeed awesome because everybody should work in comfort.

Those who go into remote work just clearly understand that work is the work, not just a kicker.

They create a comfortable area around themselves for work and they have no temptation to have snacks with employees and games. They plan when they work and rest during the remaining time.

This rule is about minimalism. Remote employees just don’t need such stuff that office gives, such as table football, and bean bag chair could be at home.

Find an ideal employee

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest! um… startup.

Search for perfect employees, who will succeed in the project implementation and will strive to realize the global idea. Companies that hire remote employees are much more likely to find a candidate with the unique abilities necessary to perform tasks because the geographical search from one sea expands to the world ocean. There are dozens of such skills, but we have identified four main criteria, which we look at when choosing an employee:

– Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of.. enthusiasm!

Any captain wants each of the crew to share the interests of the whole ship, see him/her being proud of work and striving for common success. Enthusiasm is the fuel in the workflow ship that keeps it afloat. It all starts with an idea and desire to bring it to life. It is critical that applicants are interested in your company’s area. If a candidate at the interview did not even bother to read about the project on its official website, he/she would waste your time.

– Perfectionism (but not too much)

For a remote employee, it’s important to think critically and evaluate the work done objectively, especially if the time zone is different. Being picky and look at work as a head. The person needs to clearly understand the main goal, be able to break it into small ones and move step by step to achieve the main goal.

– Make work, not shirk

Office employees are used to working and getting paid for the time, for example from 9 to 6. Remote workers are paid not for the time, but for a result that should not be affected by any distracting things, whether it’s a sudden general cleaning or a kid who wants to watch SpongeBob right now. Or possibly it is you who want it, whatever. All this can cause the work to be completed in the last minutes before the deadline.

– Desire to work

And to learn. If the person is too lazy, has no desire to develop, and is looking for work only for money, most likely he/she is not interested in the company’s goals at all. The imaginary presence of a few working hours at the computer will not help this new fish to join the team. But what is more important is to contribute to the development of the company. It’s not gold that should keep a sailor on board.

As a rule, lazy employees are eliminated at the test task stage. If they are not really interested, they will not spend their time. You don’t need people like that.

We’ll talk more about how to cultivate these traits to go to a remote job as a job seeker and without any discomfort, but this article is not just about that.

I will call you yesterday…

Or timezones problem. Well, let’s say you found the perfect sailors on your virtual ship, but here’s the problem – time zones. If the time difference is up to 8 hours, it is almost invisible. Anyway, most of the day you are in touch with the employee.

In some cases, you will have to initially look for an employee to work at your night time, which means a time difference of 10-12 hours because the position involves working in shifts, but 24/7.

This time gap reduces the ability to call/chat during the day, so you need to allocate a couple of hours to call and give as much detail on the daily tasks for the employee to prevent possible questions to you.

What about tools?

For the most automated operation and correct processes resolution during remote team building, you will need some tools. Fortunately now on the market, you can find a lot of cool programs-assistants both paid and free and even choose by the price/functionality ratio.

– Messengers

Among messengers, we prefer Slack, of course. Our Standuply bot daily helps hundreds of teams to organize processes in Slack and to establish communication channels. Here you can read more about how to run standup meetings in Slack via Standuply. For us, this messenger is like an office: logging in Slack means coming to work.

Build a better team culture in Slack with Standuply too!

Still, of course, we use Telegram and Skype. The first is more convenient for chatting, the second one is useful for calls.

– Tasks trackers

Notebooks in the past! Use task trackers to not keep all your plans, ideas and tasks in mind. In our opinion, Asana, Trello or Jira are the most convenient ways to plan your workflow as in a diary. All tasks can be painted on the urgent or not, and forget something very difficult because everything is before my eyes. Actually, the most difficult thing is to teach each team member to use task trackers and systematically mark each step.

– Time Helper

It’s not so easy to find common work time and schedule calls with employees scattered around the world. If team members are in different time zones, you’ll need the World Clock program for Mac. In other cases, Every Time Zone or World Time Buddy will help you with time planning.

– Cloud Storage

So, in a big team, you can not deal without a storage solution which extends to cover network drives. And in that case, for us, Google Drive has no equal. It will not only free up space on your hard drive but also make it easier to communicate with your team. It is much more convenient to share a link to a document and give access to editing instead sending the same file to each other for the sake of one little edit. In addition, if your computer suddenly breaks down, you can be sure that your documents are safe in the network.

– Remote Screen Control

“Ahh! I clicked something and it’s all gone! Devs please do something!” Huh, familiar words from employees who are far from coding, aren’t they? In such a situation, it is easier to do yourself than to explain what button to press. For remote support and screen sharing, you can use a wonderful TeamViewer that allows you to control someone else’s computer and solve the problem with your own hands. Also, this program is used for remote technical support of users.

Motivation

It is hardly possible to single out a special motivation for remote employees, as for a separate type of employees. Each person’s motivation is individual, regardless of whether it is a remote or office employee. And it is important to focus on the person, analyze and to think, what is important for each one. The difference is that it’s much more difficult to understand the values and aspirations of the employee, whom you don’t see daily in the office.

Normally, it’s a set of needs, for example, an interesting area, a convenient schedule, and a decent salary. If the person is attracted only by the format of remote work or a good salary, but absolutely do not care about work itself, then it is unlikely to achieve good results.

Your sincere interest and praise even for the simplest tasks are very important for the employee’s good motivation. Did a newbie just solved a simple problem or came up with a new idea? Tell that person is doing great and you never would have come up with that yourself. Without any sarcasm, just let the employee know that he/she is important and much in the project depends. And then the person will do very best not to let you down.

Control your control

Obviously, when you build a remote team, it is difficult not to worry about the employees’ productivity. How do you know if a person is really working if you are not sitting in the same room? But actually, the problem is not about hundreds of miles between you and the employee. The problem is about lack of trust.

Some companies force remote employees to install special programs on a personal computer for time control. These are accounting systems for website traffic and counting employees’ work time. We strongly don’t support such method (and we didn’t even mention these apps in the tools section) and that’s why:

Firstly, such a distrustful attitude kills any motivation and initiative. Your employee will do the job half-heartedly and just to work off the required hours.

Secondly… Really, if there is a need to control your worker so much, do you need such worker at all? People choose remote work for freedom and the opportunity to work for the result, not for the number of hours spent on the site. Remember that your remote employees are your secret weapon.

Give your employees the freedom they are looking for and you will be surprised how effective people can work if they are not pressured.

Instead of conclusion

If you follow these uneasy rules (who said that remote team building is an easy thing?), you can assemble a remote dream team. Because the opportunities for this become more and more widespread every day. New developments are emerging, the interest of remote employees is growing, and the owners of companies are finding more and more benefits of such a solution. Remember, it is not enough to find and organize really valuable employees. They need to be interested and motivated for the best result — and this rule is applicable for any type of teams.

So good luck and may the wind be in your jib!

DataTau published first on DataTau

[paragon-yoshi]

My feelings on the Pokemon Anime!

Taken from my DeviantArt journal.

Long ago, I asked various people on what is so great about the Pokemon anime. The main one with Ash as the (never dying/quitting) protagonist. I enjoyed it as a kid for some time. But as I grew up, I learned to hate it. It's such a nonsensical mess... And yet people love it to bits, for some incomprehensible reason. In fact, if there were to be a movie scene to describe, how incomprehensible this is to me... The "Ass Movie" scene from Idiocracy would be a perfect fit. (Go look it up yourself. It shouldn't be hard to find on YouTube. ;) ) With everyone loving it, but me as the only one who can't believe the people around myself. So I tried to understand, why people like it so much. Because I seriously can't understand how grown up people can enjoy such a trippy, random mess of events. Especially Pokemon-Fans, considering the Anime is a very poor representation of the Pokemon-games... So I asked around... It's been a while, since then. But the people I asked seem to agree with some of the criticism the anime receives. But they don't mind it too much. The good things the anime has is enough for them to enjoy. Or they find Ash an interesting character to follow, despite how much the writers decide to misuse him... Or it is about the better look at the world of Pokemon and the Pokemon themselves... Or to see what other forms of competitions are there in the Pokemon-World, outside of battles. I still don't agree with most of them. But if they can enjoy it, then all is good. But sadly, I can't! Despite liking the main games, I have a lot of problems with the Pokemon-Series in general. The main anime is at the top of my list! I have a VERY harsh opinion of the Pokemon Anime. One that I will share with you now. If you are sensitive about stuff like this, then you better stop reading now. You have been warned... To be fair, not everything about the anime is terrible. It does have some good things going for it. The aforementioned better look on the world, seeing what wild Pokemon do outside of battling and seeing other forms of competition, like sled races and such.

So basicly a mix of expanding upon the world seen in the games, Pokemon Wildlife Documentary and action-packed battling.

And if it were only that, I would probably enjoy it. But sadly, it has a lot of terrible things, ruining all the good stuff for me. So much, that I hate it, regardless of the things it did correct! The trippy, random things. Such as Jessie, James and Meowth constantly attacking the party with "Dr. Robotnik" machines. Them always getting blasted, giant Pokemon mimicing Godzilla, Mecha-Pokemon, men with boobs, etc. etc. This is the primary reason, why I think the story writers must be on a drug-trip, on their jobs. I can't explain why else, people would put this in a Pokemon-related thing and think of it as a good idea. It's not funny... It's CRINGEWORTHY! And more importantly, THIS ISN'T POKEMON!!! Pokemon isn't fighting Dr. Robotnik/Dr. Wily machines over and over again... Or fighting mechs in general... Or Pokemon pulling a Godzilla, growing massive and destroying entire cities... There are too much of these stupid things happening in the anime. Far more than I can count or remember... But I know one thing: THEY ARE STUPID AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH POKEMON!! It doesn't tell a good story or develops the main character well. Story-writing and character development is something I expect from every sort of storytelling, including animes. A good story and characters that grow, learn and develop over time, make a story compelling. But the anime story-writers completely fail at this! It is obvious to me now, that storytelling and character development was never a factor in the making of this anime. It's all about the cash-in and advertisement. Which is exactly why it's so bad! And the thing that makes it most obvious to me, that they don't really care about developing Ash as a character... Is the fact that they always push the "Reset Button" at the end of every reason, completely negating everything Ash has learned and making him start all over again in a different region. The most infuriating thing to most people, as I have seen. And I completely agree with the anger (though personally, I think there is an offense far worse than this one.). And I kinda feel sorry for Ash. I don't really see him as a bad character. Throughout most seasons, I think he had a cool design and in the anime he actually did some badass-things! It's a shame the story-writers never decided to make use of his full potential and instead use him as a cash-cow. Milking him for everything he is worth, instead of giving him closure and a strong ending. He has suffered the same fate as characters like "SpongeBob". SpongeBob was a great series and he himself a really likable character. Then the creator ran out of ideas and wanted to end the series. But SpongeBob was too much of financial success to Nickelodeon... They didn't want to lose their primary cash-cow! So they artifically extended the series, without the creator's blessing. The result was a massive loss in story and character quality. SpongeBob heavily deteriorated as a character, as a result! And a similar thing happened to Ash. He is a cash-cow and not a true character, like a should be! One thing about making a good character, is to know when to end his/her story! Every story has an end! So giving a character a fitting end and closure, and maybe passing the torch to the next main character, is something vital to making a good character. There are a lot of anime-series who do this right and have great characters as a result! Such as "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure" or even "Digimon". (Seriously, give the Rival-Monsters a chance! Their anime-series are FAR BETTER than the Pokemon anime will ever be!) Now you have Plot-Armor... Now you don't! The powers of Ash and his Pokemon are so inconsistent... One episode he can take down the Gym Leaders with ease, or even stand toe to toe with LEGENDARY POKEMON! While in another episode he loses to someone with the stupidest of excuses! And as the series went on, they decided to come up with the most ridiculous excuses to make Ash lose and keep him around. Such as creating a random, uninteresting character with a FULL LEGENDARY TEAM!! HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?!?!? But yeah, this stupid thing adds to the point of "Bad storytelling". The anime-writers are unwilling to have any other main characters Seriously, if they gave Ash closure in the Gen 1 season and started featuring the other seasons with a main character of their own, it'd be a much better anime. Such as an anime-version of "Gold" as the main protagonist of Gen 2, May as the main character of Gen 3, etc. And speaking of May, I have to ask one thing: Why are Pokemon Anime-makers in general so against the idea of a female lead?! Seriously in every Pokemon-anime in existence (not just the Ash-Anime!), it's always the male character featured. And the female counterpart is either not featured at all or is put in a much lesser role, than she should be. Ever since Crystal, we could pick our gender. Given that, is it really so bad for a female character to be the main character for once?! The anime doesn't represent the games well at all. For instance there are so many "Canonical Errors" in this anime-series! The most annoying thing is "Pokemon saying their own names". While in actuality they are supposed to make roars and noises, similar to real-life animals! Ok, in the game-canon there are SOME Pokemon, that do this. Such as Pikachu! But most Pokemon are supposed to make grunts, cries and roars. Not to mention Pokemon constantly saying their own names IS ABSOLUTE TORTURE TO LISTEN TO! Seriously, it's one of these things that give me the idea of forcing a running drill through my ears! And it is one of the reasons, why Pikachu is my least favourite Pokemon in the series! But then there are also a lot of other things: In-game characters being totally different in the anime, story-differences, etc etc. Basicly the anime not trying to capture the games. To be fair, in some of these instances, the changes were actually good. And it felt more like the anime "taking artistic liberties", rather than failing at completely capturing the games. But most of the changes are bad, rather than good. Prime example: The entirety of the Black/White season! With Team Plasma mind controlling Pokemon, rather than trying to liberate them. It was a story-change so bad, that the Pokemon Company finally had the balls to FIRE the story-writers. (Good riddance. They belong to rehab anyways...) Too bad the new ones aren't that much better... I'm not against changes in the story. But they should be well thought out and add to the experience, rather than taking away from it. But more often than not, the changes were absolutely terrible. And the few good ones don't exactly help it. Especially with the absolute worst offense the anime has done, in my opinion... Character Bastardization and the "Fan Character Curse" This is where I get really angry at the anime! Great characters from the games, that either not exist at all in the anime (such as Krys, Brendan or Wally!) or WORSE, are heavily bastardized. The best example of character bastardization happening in the anime, is May! An unpopular opinion perhaps. But May from the original Ruby and Sapphire is one my favourite characters in the series. In the Player-Role, she is the badass-trainer you can expect her to be. And in the Rival-Role, I found her to be lovable, yet slightly tomboyish and capable. Not to mention she had a cool design in the GBA-originals! She really looked like a brave adventurer. And to this day, she has my favourite design of any Player-Character in the series. (Screw the naysayers, I love her!) Which is why I find it so infuriating, how much the anime destroyed her character! In the anime, she basicly dislikes Pokemon and only takes on the trainer-route for travelling. Not to mention she is A FREAKING WUSS in the anime! She gets scared of every little thing happening. And is absolutely terrible as a trainer! Basicly the exact opposite, as she is in the games! And ultimately she was demoted to being Ash's tag-along, when she easily could've been the main character herself! I will come back to that later... And they did it to other characters as well. Such as Dawn or Serena! Who also easily could've been the main characters, but took on a much lesser role, that didn't do them justice at all! Or Maylene, who was first depicted as being absolutely useless as a Gym Leader, only growing capable under Ash's guidance. Or Korrina, who couldn't control Mega Evolution and was rather weak, when compared to the games, where she is the successor of her grandfather, who passed on the knowledge of Mega Evolution and passed it on to you. And considering that both Maylene and Korrina were my favourite Gym Leaders in the respective Gens, it breaks my heart to see them bastardized like this. And then they make terrible OCs like Max from the Gen 3. Did anyone even like this arrogant, obnoxious little piece of sh**?! And most of these bastardizations seem to happen, to give Ash more of a presence. This is where the "Fan Character Curse" part comes into play. For those of you who don't know: The "Fan Character Curse" is a phenomenon among fan-created works, mostly FanFictions. Where said fanworks feature canon characters, but make them weak or otherwise bastardize them, in order to promote their own Fan Characters. And as a result, completely negates the achievements and strength of the official characters, in said fanwork. This may be a phenomenon happening in fan-works most of the time. But Ash Ketchum is the prime example that even official characters can be guilty of this! Because seriously, the exact same thing is happening here! Many of the in-game characters are bastardized and/or are given a much less important role than they deserve, just to promote Ash! Which is why the anime feels like a badly written FanFiction most of the time! In honestly don't have anything else to say to this. There are other strange things about the anime, such as Ash constantly having human sidekicks (including two Gym Leaders in both Gen 1 and 2!). Why does he need them again...? And considering you always travel alone in the games, at least as far as humans are concerned, it just feels strange. But this isn't really bad, just strange. In any case, this is the end of my long essay. Summary So basicly, the anime doesn't fail completely. Expanding the world, seeing the Pokemon Wild Life, more competitions outside battling and action-packed Pokemon battles, are the things it does correctly! But the Canonical Errors, bad storytelling and character development, the random BS happening and the bastardization of characters from the games, is what makes it so unbearable! In my opinion it does far more things wrong, than correct! So for me "Pokemon Origins" remains as the only good Pokemon Anime series. It may be short and cut out a lot of criticial plot-points, to cram everything from Pokemon Red and Blue into 4 episodes. But what it did deliver, didn't disappoint at all! We saw Red starting out as a weakling, but he grew as a character, became champion and even caught Mewtwo in the end. These 4 episodes of Origins succeed, where 1000+ episodes of Pokemon Main Anime fail horribly! And I recently watched "Digimon Adventures 1 and 2" again. Since I had fond memories of them as well. And unlike the Pokemon Main Anime, they still hold up today. Simply because the Digimon-Anime takes their characters seriously. They grow and develop as characters and actually are given closure and a fitting end. It tells a good story, rather than being a 30 minutes advertisement. Seriously, I recommend the Digimon Anime series. They handle their characters so much better. So please give the Rival-Monsters a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised. And that is all I'm saying today. See ya! :D

[donnafmae]

What do dolphins eat? Lessons from how kids search

I recently came across a couple of fascinating papers (here and here) all about how kids search. I found it fascinating in its own right, and also found it thought-provoking in the new ways of searching it showed that had simply never occurred to me. Here are some of the most interesting things I found (though it’s remarkably accessible, and you should totally read the whole thing).

The researchers studied children aged 7-11, and of varying degrees of experience and comfort with the web and with computer-based research. In the course of their study, they identified seven “search roles” (almost like personas) that children display when seeking information:

Many of these are fairly self-explanatory on the surface (though it’s always interesting to read the details) and you may even identify with some of them yourself, as an adult. One of the most interesting to me was what they called the visual searcher.

People don’t all think like you

This was a mode of search that I had rarely found myself in, and had barely even considered could be a thing outside of certain forms of specific image search (e.g. [microsoft logo]). What they found was a cohort of children who turned first to image search for a wide range of their information-gathering needs. In some cases, this appeared to be motivated by discomfort with text and with reading, or at least with scanning and reading fast. In others, though, it seemed to be about veracity and trusting only what you have seen with your own eyes. For those of us who know people who write on the internet, maybe this isn’t the craziest instinct.

One example that has stayed in my mind since I read about it is the experience of certain kids when asked to answer the question what do dolphins eat?

The anecdote that stood out for me was the child who not only turned to image search to answer the question, but did the one-word image search [dolphin] and then scrolled down through pages of results until, having found a picture of a dolphin eating something, turned to the researcher to declare triumphantly that dolphins eat fish.

The lesson here is clearly about the power of observing real-world users. This is the kind of insight that is hard to glean from the raw data of keyword research. Even if you figure out that there is image search volume for [dolphin], you’re some way from the insight that someone is searching for information about what they eat.

This era (the research was published in 2010) was marked by a wide range of qualitative research coming out of Google. I might dive deeper into some other research in another post, but for now, onto the next insight.

There are searches that are hard, and people are failing to complete them

In my presentation and post the next trillion searches, I talked about the incremental search volume available in the coming years as technology progresses to the point that it can satisfy intents, and answer questions that current technology cannot:

One of the things I didn’t talk about in that post was the times that current searcher intent is not fulfilled even though the information is out there and today’s technology is more than capable of finding it. To understand more about what I mean here, let’s take another look at search challenges for kids:

For a start, it’s worth noting that Google can’t answer this query outright. Unlike with more and more factual queries, Google is not able to return a one-box with any answer, never mind the correct answer.

Unsurprisingly, kids struggled with this one (as I suspect would many adults). It tests their ability to string together a sequence of queries, each one building on the last, to discover the answer at the end of the rainbow. And along the way, they have to be sceptical of the information they come across and not get distracted by the pots of fools’ gold:

At certain points along the way, our intrepid searcher may come across pages that purport to give the answer, but which in fact do not for a variety of reasons (not least, as with the example above, that this information can fall easily out of date).

So it combines the ability to break down a question into structured thoughts, achieve complex stringing together of queries, and avoid pitfalls of incorrect and misleading information along the way. How many adults do you know who might trip up on this?

Amazingly, some of the older kids in the study managed to find the correct answer.

If you have kids in your life, try this out

If you have kids, or you have younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. I’d strongly encourage anyone interested in search to sit and watch them take on relatively undirected searching tasks while you watch. I think it’s pretty educational (for them!), but I also think there’s a good chance you will learn a good deal. In particular, since this research was done in 2010, it appears to have been entirely desktop-driven. I’d be interested in the mobile-first version if anyone wants to run it and write it up!

Anyway, it turns out my kids are (roughly) in the right age range - at the time of experimenting, my daughter was just turned 8, and my son was 5. My daughter was therefore in the age range, and it was interesting to see how she fared:

Rachel aged 8

She found it fairly easy to find out what dolphins eat. Google coped fine with her misspelling of “dolfin” and she wasn’t fazed by the results coming back for the correct spelling. She didn’t bother reading the “showing results for…” section (nor the paid ad, natch) and skipped straight to the one-box. She scanned it without reading aloud and then answered the question: telling me some things dolphins eat. In the process she went from an unmotivated searcher to a motivated searcher: she got intrigued by what a cephalopod is (it is mentioned in the one-box) and set of on an unprompted search to find out.

The next task was too much for her. She’s British, so I decided to go with prime minister, as I didn’t think she’d know what or who the vice president was. It turns out she wasn’t entirely clear on what a prime minister is either, searching for primeinister. She composed a search that could have worked as a stand-alone query: Google corrected it to [when is the prime minister’s birthday next year]. In fact, Google couldn’t answer this directly, and since it wasn’t quite the actual answer to the question as asked, she got stuck at this point, unable to structure the query quite how she wanted it.

Actually, she probably went slightly too far in the first jump. She probably should have gone with something like [when is the prime minister’s birthday] and followed with [what day is <date> next year] but she didn’t make that logical leap unprompted.

Even though my son was a little young, we thought it’d be fun to see how he fared on the “dolphin” question. The date one was a little too much of a stretch:

Adam aged 5

Interestingly, he spelled “dolfin” the same way as his sister (this must be our failing as parents!) but also went with the phonetic “wat” instead of “what”. Nonetheless, Google was quite happy interpreting his search as [what do dolphins eat] so he got the same one-box as his sister.

Just like her, he skipped everything else on the page to go straight to the one-box. This is probably not that surprising in either of their cases - it’s most likely what adults do, and it’s clearly designed to draw attention with the bright image high up on the page.

What was interesting and different was that he didn’t read the whole thing. At the time of the experiment, he was obviously a less confident reader, and preferred to read aloud rather than in his head. He didn’t scan the one-box for the answer and report it, but interestingly, nor did he read the one-box aloud. Instead, he read only the words in bold.

This isn’t the most obviously crazy strategy (at least in the mind of a 5 year old): it isn’t crazy to think that Google would have bolded the words that are the answers to the question you asked, though search professionals know that’s not what’s really going on here. It started okay but then went a little bit off the rails. Here’s what he read out as the answer to [what do dolphins eat?]:

Fishes

Herring

Killer whales

Mammals

He got a bit confused at “killer whales” and knew he was off-track, but wasn’t sure what had gone wrong.

I think the lesson here is that even though people may primarily use the obvious tools and affordances presented to them, they will also make potentially incorrect assumptions and risk being led astray by well-intentioned sign-posts in the UI.

Some other kids’ misconceptions

One child apparently thought that the autosuggest was a list of answers to the query he was typing. That doesn’t always work perfectly:

But to be fair, it’s not immediately obvious that UX like “people also ask” (which does come with embedded answers where possible):

Is entirely different to related searches which are not necessarily even suggested sensible questions:

And finally, to end on a light-hearted anecdote from the research, probably my favourite story was the child (not mine!) who looked for both dolphins and information about the Vice President of the United States on the SpongeBob SquarePants website.

Presumably unsuccessfully, at least in the case of the VP’s birthday.

If you liked this post, check out the whole session from my recent SearchLove talk in San Diego (all you need to do is create a Distilled account to access it for free). You can also check out the slides from my presentation below. Enjoy!

WATCH THE VIDEO

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/what-do-dolphins-eat-lessons-from-how-kids-search/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[davidrsmithlove]

What do dolphins eat? Lessons from how kids search

I recently came across a couple of fascinating papers (here and here) all about how kids search. I found it fascinating in its own right, and also found it thought-provoking in the new ways of searching it showed that had simply never occurred to me. Here are some of the most interesting things I found (though it’s remarkably accessible, and you should totally read the whole thing).

The researchers studied children aged 7-11, and of varying degrees of experience and comfort with the web and with computer-based research. In the course of their study, they identified seven “search roles” (almost like personas) that children display when seeking information:

Many of these are fairly self-explanatory on the surface (though it’s always interesting to read the details) and you may even identify with some of them yourself, as an adult. One of the most interesting to me was what they called the visual searcher.

People don’t all think like you

This was a mode of search that I had rarely found myself in, and had barely even considered could be a thing outside of certain forms of specific image search (e.g. [microsoft logo]). What they found was a cohort of children who turned first to image search for a wide range of their information-gathering needs. In some cases, this appeared to be motivated by discomfort with text and with reading, or at least with scanning and reading fast. In others, though, it seemed to be about veracity and trusting only what you have seen with your own eyes. For those of us who know people who write on the internet, maybe this isn’t the craziest instinct.

One example that has stayed in my mind since I read about it is the experience of certain kids when asked to answer the question what do dolphins eat?

The anecdote that stood out for me was the child who not only turned to image search to answer the question, but did the one-word image search [dolphin] and then scrolled down through pages of results until, having found a picture of a dolphin eating something, turned to the researcher to declare triumphantly that dolphins eat fish.

The lesson here is clearly about the power of observing real-world users. This is the kind of insight that is hard to glean from the raw data of keyword research. Even if you figure out that there is image search volume for [dolphin], you’re some way from the insight that someone is searching for information about what they eat.

This era (the research was published in 2010) was marked by a wide range of qualitative research coming out of Google. I might dive deeper into some other research in another post, but for now, onto the next insight.

There are searches that are hard, and people are failing to complete them

In my presentation and post the next trillion searches, I talked about the incremental search volume available in the coming years as technology progresses to the point that it can satisfy intents, and answer questions that current technology cannot:

One of the things I didn’t talk about in that post was the times that current searcher intent is not fulfilled even though the information is out there and today’s technology is more than capable of finding it. To understand more about what I mean here, let’s take another look at search challenges for kids:

For a start, it’s worth noting that Google can’t answer this query outright. Unlike with more and more factual queries, Google is not able to return a one-box with any answer, never mind the correct answer.

Unsurprisingly, kids struggled with this one (as I suspect would many adults). It tests their ability to string together a sequence of queries, each one building on the last, to discover the answer at the end of the rainbow. And along the way, they have to be sceptical of the information they come across and not get distracted by the pots of fools’ gold:

At certain points along the way, our intrepid searcher may come across pages that purport to give the answer, but which in fact do not for a variety of reasons (not least, as with the example above, that this information can fall easily out of date).

So it combines the ability to break down a question into structured thoughts, achieve complex stringing together of queries, and avoid pitfalls of incorrect and misleading information along the way. How many adults do you know who might trip up on this?

Amazingly, some of the older kids in the study managed to find the correct answer.

If you have kids in your life, try this out

If you have kids, or you have younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. I’d strongly encourage anyone interested in search to sit and watch them take on relatively undirected searching tasks while you watch. I think it’s pretty educational (for them!), but I also think there’s a good chance you will learn a good deal. In particular, since this research was done in 2010, it appears to have been entirely desktop-driven. I’d be interested in the mobile-first version if anyone wants to run it and write it up!

Anyway, it turns out my kids are (roughly) in the right age range - at the time of experimenting, my daughter was just turned 8, and my son was 5. My daughter was therefore in the age range, and it was interesting to see how she fared:

Rachel aged 8

She found it fairly easy to find out what dolphins eat. Google coped fine with her misspelling of “dolfin” and she wasn’t fazed by the results coming back for the correct spelling. She didn’t bother reading the “showing results for…” section (nor the paid ad, natch) and skipped straight to the one-box. She scanned it without reading aloud and then answered the question: telling me some things dolphins eat. In the process she went from an unmotivated searcher to a motivated searcher: she got intrigued by what a cephalopod is (it is mentioned in the one-box) and set of on an unprompted search to find out.

The next task was too much for her. She’s British, so I decided to go with prime minister, as I didn’t think she’d know what or who the vice president was. It turns out she wasn’t entirely clear on what a prime minister is either, searching for primeinister. She composed a search that could have worked as a stand-alone query: Google corrected it to [when is the prime minister’s birthday next year]. In fact, Google couldn’t answer this directly, and since it wasn’t quite the actual answer to the question as asked, she got stuck at this point, unable to structure the query quite how she wanted it.

Actually, she probably went slightly too far in the first jump. She probably should have gone with something like [when is the prime minister’s birthday] and followed with [what day is <date> next year] but she didn’t make that logical leap unprompted.

Even though my son was a little young, we thought it’d be fun to see how he fared on the “dolphin” question. The date one was a little too much of a stretch:

Adam aged 5

Interestingly, he spelled “dolfin” the same way as his sister (this must be our failing as parents!) but also went with the phonetic “wat” instead of “what”. Nonetheless, Google was quite happy interpreting his search as [what do dolphins eat] so he got the same one-box as his sister.

Just like her, he skipped everything else on the page to go straight to the one-box. This is probably not that surprising in either of their cases - it’s most likely what adults do, and it’s clearly designed to draw attention with the bright image high up on the page.

What was interesting and different was that he didn’t read the whole thing. At the time of the experiment, he was obviously a less confident reader, and preferred to read aloud rather than in his head. He didn’t scan the one-box for the answer and report it, but interestingly, nor did he read the one-box aloud. Instead, he read only the words in bold.

This isn’t the most obviously crazy strategy (at least in the mind of a 5 year old): it isn’t crazy to think that Google would have bolded the words that are the answers to the question you asked, though search professionals know that’s not what’s really going on here. It started okay but then went a little bit off the rails. Here’s what he read out as the answer to [what do dolphins eat?]:

Fishes

Herring

Killer whales

Mammals

He got a bit confused at “killer whales” and knew he was off-track, but wasn’t sure what had gone wrong.

I think the lesson here is that even though people may primarily use the obvious tools and affordances presented to them, they will also make potentially incorrect assumptions and risk being led astray by well-intentioned sign-posts in the UI.

Some other kids’ misconceptions

One child apparently thought that the autosuggest was a list of answers to the query he was typing. That doesn’t always work perfectly:

But to be fair, it’s not immediately obvious that UX like “people also ask” (which does come with embedded answers where possible):

Is entirely different to related searches which are not necessarily even suggested sensible questions:

And finally, to end on a light-hearted anecdote from the research, probably my favourite story was the child (not mine!) who looked for both dolphins and information about the Vice President of the United States on the SpongeBob SquarePants website.

Presumably unsuccessfully, at least in the case of the VP’s birthday.

If you liked this post, check out the whole session from my recent SearchLove talk in San Diego (all you need to do is create a Distilled account to access it for free). You can also check out the slides from my presentation below. Enjoy!

WATCH THE VIDEO

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

[ronijashworth]

What do dolphins eat? Lessons from how kids search

I recently came across a couple of fascinating papers (here and here) all about how kids search. I found it fascinating in its own right, and also found it thought-provoking in the new ways of searching it showed that had simply never occurred to me. Here are some of the most interesting things I found (though it’s remarkably accessible, and you should totally read the whole thing).

The researchers studied children aged 7-11, and of varying degrees of experience and comfort with the web and with computer-based research. In the course of their study, they identified seven “search roles” (almost like personas) that children display when seeking information:

Many of these are fairly self-explanatory on the surface (though it’s always interesting to read the details) and you may even identify with some of them yourself, as an adult. One of the most interesting to me was what they called the visual searcher.

People don’t all think like you

This was a mode of search that I had rarely found myself in, and had barely even considered could be a thing outside of certain forms of specific image search (e.g. [microsoft logo]). What they found was a cohort of children who turned first to image search for a wide range of their information-gathering needs. In some cases, this appeared to be motivated by discomfort with text and with reading, or at least with scanning and reading fast. In others, though, it seemed to be about veracity and trusting only what you have seen with your own eyes. For those of us who know people who write on the internet, maybe this isn’t the craziest instinct.

One example that has stayed in my mind since I read about it is the experience of certain kids when asked to answer the question what do dolphins eat?

The anecdote that stood out for me was the child who not only turned to image search to answer the question, but did the one-word image search [dolphin] and then scrolled down through pages of results until, having found a picture of a dolphin eating something, turned to the researcher to declare triumphantly that dolphins eat fish.

The lesson here is clearly about the power of observing real-world users. This is the kind of insight that is hard to glean from the raw data of keyword research. Even if you figure out that there is image search volume for [dolphin], you’re some way from the insight that someone is searching for information about what they eat.

This era (the research was published in 2010) was marked by a wide range of qualitative research coming out of Google. I might dive deeper into some other research in another post, but for now, onto the next insight.

There are searches that are hard, and people are failing to complete them

In my presentation and post the next trillion searches, I talked about the incremental search volume available in the coming years as technology progresses to the point that it can satisfy intents, and answer questions that current technology cannot:

One of the things I didn’t talk about in that post was the times that current searcher intent is not fulfilled even though the information is out there and today’s technology is more than capable of finding it. To understand more about what I mean here, let’s take another look at search challenges for kids:

For a start, it’s worth noting that Google can’t answer this query outright. Unlike with more and more factual queries, Google is not able to return a one-box with any answer, never mind the correct answer.

Unsurprisingly, kids struggled with this one (as I suspect would many adults). It tests their ability to string together a sequence of queries, each one building on the last, to discover the answer at the end of the rainbow. And along the way, they have to be sceptical of the information they come across and not get distracted by the pots of fools’ gold:

At certain points along the way, our intrepid searcher may come across pages that purport to give the answer, but which in fact do not for a variety of reasons (not least, as with the example above, that this information can fall easily out of date).

So it combines the ability to break down a question into structured thoughts, achieve complex stringing together of queries, and avoid pitfalls of incorrect and misleading information along the way. How many adults do you know who might trip up on this?

Amazingly, some of the older kids in the study managed to find the correct answer.

If you have kids in your life, try this out

If you have kids, or you have younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. I’d strongly encourage anyone interested in search to sit and watch them take on relatively undirected searching tasks while you watch. I think it’s pretty educational (for them!), but I also think there’s a good chance you will learn a good deal. In particular, since this research was done in 2010, it appears to have been entirely desktop-driven. I’d be interested in the mobile-first version if anyone wants to run it and write it up!

Anyway, it turns out my kids are (roughly) in the right age range - at the time of experimenting, my daughter was just turned 8, and my son was 5. My daughter was therefore in the age range, and it was interesting to see how she fared:

Rachel aged 8

She found it fairly easy to find out what dolphins eat. Google coped fine with her misspelling of “dolfin” and she wasn’t fazed by the results coming back for the correct spelling. She didn’t bother reading the “showing results for…” section (nor the paid ad, natch) and skipped straight to the one-box. She scanned it without reading aloud and then answered the question: telling me some things dolphins eat. In the process she went from an unmotivated searcher to a motivated searcher: she got intrigued by what a cephalopod is (it is mentioned in the one-box) and set of on an unprompted search to find out.

The next task was too much for her. She’s British, so I decided to go with prime minister, as I didn’t think she’d know what or who the vice president was. It turns out she wasn’t entirely clear on what a prime minister is either, searching for primeinister. She composed a search that could have worked as a stand-alone query: Google corrected it to [when is the prime minister’s birthday next year]. In fact, Google couldn’t answer this directly, and since it wasn’t quite the actual answer to the question as asked, she got stuck at this point, unable to structure the query quite how she wanted it.

Actually, she probably went slightly too far in the first jump. She probably should have gone with something like [when is the prime minister’s birthday] and followed with [what day is <date> next year] but she didn’t make that logical leap unprompted.

Even though my son was a little young, we thought it’d be fun to see how he fared on the “dolphin” question. The date one was a little too much of a stretch:

Adam aged 5

Interestingly, he spelled “dolfin” the same way as his sister (this must be our failing as parents!) but also went with the phonetic “wat” instead of “what”. Nonetheless, Google was quite happy interpreting his search as [what do dolphins eat] so he got the same one-box as his sister.

Just like her, he skipped everything else on the page to go straight to the one-box. This is probably not that surprising in either of their cases - it’s most likely what adults do, and it’s clearly designed to draw attention with the bright image high up on the page.

What was interesting and different was that he didn’t read the whole thing. At the time of the experiment, he was obviously a less confident reader, and preferred to read aloud rather than in his head. He didn’t scan the one-box for the answer and report it, but interestingly, nor did he read the one-box aloud. Instead, he read only the words in bold.

This isn’t the most obviously crazy strategy (at least in the mind of a 5 year old): it isn’t crazy to think that Google would have bolded the words that are the answers to the question you asked, though search professionals know that’s not what’s really going on here. It started okay but then went a little bit off the rails. Here’s what he read out as the answer to [what do dolphins eat?]:

Fishes

Herring

Killer whales

Mammals

He got a bit confused at “killer whales” and knew he was off-track, but wasn’t sure what had gone wrong.

I think the lesson here is that even though people may primarily use the obvious tools and affordances presented to them, they will also make potentially incorrect assumptions and risk being led astray by well-intentioned sign-posts in the UI.

Some other kids’ misconceptions

One child apparently thought that the autosuggest was a list of answers to the query he was typing. That doesn’t always work perfectly:

But to be fair, it’s not immediately obvious that UX like “people also ask” (which does come with embedded answers where possible):

Is entirely different to related searches which are not necessarily even suggested sensible questions:

And finally, to end on a light-hearted anecdote from the research, probably my favourite story was the child (not mine!) who looked for both dolphins and information about the Vice President of the United States on the SpongeBob SquarePants website.

Presumably unsuccessfully, at least in the case of the VP’s birthday.

If you liked this post, check out the whole session from my recent SearchLove talk in San Diego (all you need to do is create a Distilled account to access it for free). You can also check out the slides from my presentation below. Enjoy!

WATCH THE VIDEO

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/what-do-dolphins-eat-lessons-from-how-kids-search/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[anthonykrierion]

What do dolphins eat? Lessons from how kids search

I recently came across a couple of fascinating papers (here and here) all about how kids search. I found it fascinating in its own right, and also found it thought-provoking in the new ways of searching it showed that had simply never occurred to me. Here are some of the most interesting things I found (though it’s remarkably accessible, and you should totally read the whole thing).

The researchers studied children aged 7-11, and of varying degrees of experience and comfort with the web and with computer-based research. In the course of their study, they identified seven “search roles” (almost like personas) that children display when seeking information:

Many of these are fairly self-explanatory on the surface (though it’s always interesting to read the details) and you may even identify with some of them yourself, as an adult. One of the most interesting to me was what they called the visual searcher.

People don’t all think like you

This was a mode of search that I had rarely found myself in, and had barely even considered could be a thing outside of certain forms of specific image search (e.g. [microsoft logo]). What they found was a cohort of children who turned first to image search for a wide range of their information-gathering needs. In some cases, this appeared to be motivated by discomfort with text and with reading, or at least with scanning and reading fast. In others, though, it seemed to be about veracity and trusting only what you have seen with your own eyes. For those of us who know people who write on the internet, maybe this isn’t the craziest instinct.

One example that has stayed in my mind since I read about it is the experience of certain kids when asked to answer the question what do dolphins eat?

The anecdote that stood out for me was the child who not only turned to image search to answer the question, but did the one-word image search [dolphin] and then scrolled down through pages of results until, having found a picture of a dolphin eating something, turned to the researcher to declare triumphantly that dolphins eat fish.

The lesson here is clearly about the power of observing real-world users. This is the kind of insight that is hard to glean from the raw data of keyword research. Even if you figure out that there is image search volume for [dolphin], you’re some way from the insight that someone is searching for information about what they eat.

This era (the research was published in 2010) was marked by a wide range of qualitative research coming out of Google. I might dive deeper into some other research in another post, but for now, onto the next insight.

There are searches that are hard, and people are failing to complete them

In my presentation and post the next trillion searches, I talked about the incremental search volume available in the coming years as technology progresses to the point that it can satisfy intents, and answer questions that current technology cannot:

One of the things I didn’t talk about in that post was the times that current searcher intent is not fulfilled even though the information is out there and today’s technology is more than capable of finding it. To understand more about what I mean here, let’s take another look at search challenges for kids:

For a start, it’s worth noting that Google can’t answer this query outright. Unlike with more and more factual queries, Google is not able to return a one-box with any answer, never mind the correct answer.

Unsurprisingly, kids struggled with this one (as I suspect would many adults). It tests their ability to string together a sequence of queries, each one building on the last, to discover the answer at the end of the rainbow. And along the way, they have to be sceptical of the information they come across and not get distracted by the pots of fools’ gold:

At certain points along the way, our intrepid searcher may come across pages that purport to give the answer, but which in fact do not for a variety of reasons (not least, as with the example above, that this information can fall easily out of date).

So it combines the ability to break down a question into structured thoughts, achieve complex stringing together of queries, and avoid pitfalls of incorrect and misleading information along the way. How many adults do you know who might trip up on this?

Amazingly, some of the older kids in the study managed to find the correct answer.

If you have kids in your life, try this out

If you have kids, or you have younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. I’d strongly encourage anyone interested in search to sit and watch them take on relatively undirected searching tasks while you watch. I think it’s pretty educational (for them!), but I also think there’s a good chance you will learn a good deal. In particular, since this research was done in 2010, it appears to have been entirely desktop-driven. I’d be interested in the mobile-first version if anyone wants to run it and write it up!

Anyway, it turns out my kids are (roughly) in the right age range - at the time of experimenting, my daughter was just turned 8, and my son was 5. My daughter was therefore in the age range, and it was interesting to see how she fared:

Rachel aged 8

She found it fairly easy to find out what dolphins eat. Google coped fine with her misspelling of “dolfin” and she wasn’t fazed by the results coming back for the correct spelling. She didn’t bother reading the “showing results for…” section (nor the paid ad, natch) and skipped straight to the one-box. She scanned it without reading aloud and then answered the question: telling me some things dolphins eat. In the process she went from an unmotivated searcher to a motivated searcher: she got intrigued by what a cephalopod is (it is mentioned in the one-box) and set of on an unprompted search to find out.

The next task was too much for her. She’s British, so I decided to go with prime minister, as I didn’t think she’d know what or who the vice president was. It turns out she wasn’t entirely clear on what a prime minister is either, searching for primeinister. She composed a search that could have worked as a stand-alone query: Google corrected it to [when is the prime minister’s birthday next year]. In fact, Google couldn’t answer this directly, and since it wasn’t quite the actual answer to the question as asked, she got stuck at this point, unable to structure the query quite how she wanted it.

Actually, she probably went slightly too far in the first jump. She probably should have gone with something like [when is the prime minister’s birthday] and followed with [what day is <date> next year] but she didn’t make that logical leap unprompted.

Even though my son was a little young, we thought it’d be fun to see how he fared on the “dolphin” question. The date one was a little too much of a stretch:

Adam aged 5

Interestingly, he spelled “dolfin” the same way as his sister (this must be our failing as parents!) but also went with the phonetic “wat” instead of “what”. Nonetheless, Google was quite happy interpreting his search as [what do dolphins eat] so he got the same one-box as his sister.

Just like her, he skipped everything else on the page to go straight to the one-box. This is probably not that surprising in either of their cases - it’s most likely what adults do, and it’s clearly designed to draw attention with the bright image high up on the page.

What was interesting and different was that he didn’t read the whole thing. At the time of the experiment, he was obviously a less confident reader, and preferred to read aloud rather than in his head. He didn’t scan the one-box for the answer and report it, but interestingly, nor did he read the one-box aloud. Instead, he read only the words in bold.

This isn’t the most obviously crazy strategy (at least in the mind of a 5 year old): it isn’t crazy to think that Google would have bolded the words that are the answers to the question you asked, though search professionals know that’s not what’s really going on here. It started okay but then went a little bit off the rails. Here’s what he read out as the answer to [what do dolphins eat?]:

Fishes

Herring

Killer whales

Mammals

He got a bit confused at “killer whales” and knew he was off-track, but wasn’t sure what had gone wrong.

I think the lesson here is that even though people may primarily use the obvious tools and affordances presented to them, they will also make potentially incorrect assumptions and risk being led astray by well-intentioned sign-posts in the UI.

Some other kids’ misconceptions

One child apparently thought that the autosuggest was a list of answers to the query he was typing. That doesn’t always work perfectly:

But to be fair, it’s not immediately obvious that UX like “people also ask” (which does come with embedded answers where possible):

Is entirely different to related searches which are not necessarily even suggested sensible questions:

And finally, to end on a light-hearted anecdote from the research, probably my favourite story was the child (not mine!) who looked for both dolphins and information about the Vice President of the United States on the SpongeBob SquarePants website.

Presumably unsuccessfully, at least in the case of the VP’s birthday.

If you liked this post, check out the whole session from my recent SearchLove talk in San Diego (all you need to do is create a Distilled account to access it for free). You can also check out the slides from my presentation below. Enjoy!

WATCH THE VIDEO

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

What do dolphins eat? Lessons from how kids search was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[ilvaru-alvaru]

i hope it's not too much effort but please all the questions! X

I don’t have anything to do anyways so sure!

1: What is your name and does it mean anything? Julia. Google tells me it means “youthful” but I don’t know if it’s correct.

2: How long have you known your best friend? I have 2 best friends. I have known her for around 8 years now and him for around 6 years.

3: What position do you normally sleep in? On my side.

4: Were you a part of any “clique” in high school? Nope.

5: Who was your favorite teacher in high school and why? My English teacher because she liked the same music as me, lol.

6: Do you wish to travel a lot? Yeah, why not.

7: Did you participate in any sports while in school? Only normal P.E. class.

8: Show a sample of your handwriting: I will do that in an extra post if I can be bothered :D

9: Have you ever given blood? Yes.

10: Do you like the way that you grew up? Partly.

11: Do you like your siblings? Why or why not? I’m not very close with my sister but we get along well.

12: How did you meet your best friend and why did you become friends? I met my female best friend on a website called Habbo Hotel and we started talking because we were both obsessed with Lady Gaga and then, around a year later we met for the concert and the rest is history. I met my male best friend through another friend and we also became friends because we both were obsessed with Lady Gaga. Also both of them, especially the girl, are my soulmates.

13: Name one movie that made you cry. The Last Unicorn.

14: Do you prefer to read poetry, write poetry, or neither? Read.

15: Things about someone that you find attractive? Intelligence, confidence, kindness, individuality.

16: What song are you currently listening to? Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane because it’s one of my faves and also has been stuck in my head forever.

17: Have you ever broken a bone? If so, how? Nope, luckily not.

18: A random memory from you childhood: I used to go on holiday to Spain with my grandma and there were lots of stray cats and dogs and she always told me not to pet and feed them because they’re full of fleas etc etc. but I still did it and they always waited for me in the morning and in the evening and it was the best thing ever.

19: Where did you grow up? In a shitty small town full of narrow minded people.

20: What was the last thing you watched on tv? News.

21: Do you think you’d make a good parent? No. I also never want kids.

22: Would you like to meet any of your Tumblr friends in person? Yes!

22: What was the last dream you remember having? I was going to a party in the woods with my friends, we took some shrooms and then I could fly and hit my head on a cloud. I dream the weirdest things man.

23: When is your birthday? 10th of June 1993.

24: How many pillows do you sleep with? I have 6 in my bed but only sleep on two.

25: Do you wear glasses? If so, how long have you been wearing glasses? I wear contact lenses. I got my first glasses when I was 6 but stopped wearing them and that on and off thing went on for years, lol. But now I stick to wearing contacts,

26: What color is your hair? At the moment it’s turquoise but naturally brown with a hint of ginger haha.

27: Name 5 facts about your appearance: This is difficult man. 1. I have tattoos. 2. I always wear my hair either in a ponytail or down with a side parting. 3. I wear bandshirts most of the time because that’s pretty much what my wardrobe consists of now. 4. I’m 1,70m tall. 5. I have two arms and two legs.

28: What is your favorite soda? Coke zero with ice cubes and lemon slices.

29: What is a strange talent that you have? I can imitate Spongebob perfectly.

30: How’s the weather right now? Cloudy but warm.

31: Why did one of your friendships end? Because our lives went in different directions and we just had nothing in common anymore.

32: Who do you miss right now? My grandma. Always my grandma.

33: Why did your last relationship end? Because they were mentally abusing me and I’ve had enough relationships like that and am worth more than that and deserve better.

34: Are you still figuring out who you are? I’m always changing.

35: Have you ever been admitted to a hospital? Why? Yes but that’s private. Nothing embarrassing though.

36: What is your favorite restaurant? I don’t really have one.

37: What is word that you always seem to spell wrong? Margarine and Marmalade both in English and German lol.

38: Would ever adopt kids? No because, as I wrote before, I don’t ever want kids.

39: What is your favorite kind of pizza? Cheeeeeeese!

40: What was your first thought when you woke up this morning? “Why am I awake?”

41: When was the last time you got really really happy and why? The other day because I smoked a ton of weed, listened to psychedelic Rock and just chilled the fuck out and enjoyed myself and my existence and I don’t have that very often.

42: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten? Shrimps in ice cream.

43: How do you start a conversation? Pretty much always with a question. It’s a good conversation starter.

44: What’s a band you’ve been obsessed with lately? Jefferson Airplane.

45: Do you come from a family “of money?” Not at all, lol. But it’s good that way.

46: Do you have a bucket list? Yes.

47: What is your favorite series of books? ‘Die Elfen’ series by Bernhard Hennen.

48: When was the last time you laughed so hard your stomach hurt? When I visited my friend and one of her friends just acted funny and said stupid stuff.

49: Where do you go when you’re sad? Into the forest.

50: 5 random facts about yourself: 1. I used to have arachnophobia but decided to take some time to learn about and get to know spiders and now they’re my faves. 2. I started collecting herbs for health and cooking and I can highly recommend it. 3. I used to be a real shitty person who always acted really horrible and mean towards people who I thought treated me wrong, when they weren’t, and now I just ignore it and keep on being the kind person I really am. If people are shit to me, I get them out of my life without being childish. 4. I feel like the forest is the only place where I really, truly belong. 5. I’ve suffered from depression, anxiety and other mental illness all my life and am proud to say that I’m still here and still fighting.