#unnecessarily niche humor

[lovinglampcalzonepalace]

RWRB Incorrect Quotes

[phantom-of-the-north]

Info post about Swedish discussion forum Flashback. Part 1

I wanted to provide some information about Flashback Forum, a part of Swedish internet culture and a discussion forum that is seemingly unprecedented in the rest of the world. This is probably too niche for someone on here to care about, but I thought it would be nice to make information about Flashback available in English.

I've become interested in the forum after I started listening to the humor podcast Flashback Forever three years ago. The podcast is hosted by three women, Ina Lundström, Emma Knyckare and Scroll-Mia (real name: Mia Gruffman-Cruse) and every week they go through some of Flashback's teeming threads and discuss various findings. It's given me a more nuanced picture of the forum and I've come to appreciate it more and more. Growing up I was basically taught that Flashback was an awful place that you should keep away from at all costs. I learned that it's full of racist, misogynistic, homophobic and overall unpleasant people. Which isn't far from the truth I guess. Right-wing extreme opinions are over-represented on Flashback and the majority of the userbase are men aged 26-35. The term Dödsknarkarnazister (stoner nazis) is often used on the site to ironically describe the average Flashback user.

I think, in part, the reason the userbase looks the way it does has to do with this: in a "politically correct" country like Sweden, people with views that would be considered bigoted would be alienated if they expressed these views out loud, so they take refuge in Flashback where they can voice their thoughts without having to worry about societal acceptance.

That being said, Flashback is politically independent. All opinions are welcome there. There's just a high prevalence of xenophobia, misogyny etc because those views can't be voiced anywhere without retaliation, except on Flashback.

Anyways, I think Flashback Forever has helped normalize the public's perception of the forum which I think is positive. Instead of being horrified by the things that people write on there, you can laugh at it. Because the stuff people write there is often ridiculous. However, there are a lot of truly interesting discussions on the forum and some of the users are actually sane and reasonable lol.

I do think traditional media in Sweden gives Flashback an unnecessarily bad reputation. One thing though; you should definitely keep children away from it because there's a lot of information about drugs, weapons and prostitution. But if you delve into it as an adult, Flashback is a pretty fascinating place full of advice, life experience and fun topics. It's a truly unique platform.

So, here's my translation of the text Bakgrund (background) on the page Om Flashback (about Flashback) to give you an idea of it's values:

"In 1776 Sweden was the first country in the world to impose freedom of the press through then existing Tryckfrihetsförordningen. This gave every citizen a statutory right to, among other things, freely render one's opinions without censorship.

Flashback has existed as a newspaper since 1983, and on the internet since 1995. The discussion forum Flashback Forum was launched in 2000. A platform that rests upon a nonconformist value-system; and where the members have the possibility to be anonymous. It is socially acceptable to breach consensus on Flashback, and even those with deviant opinions are welcome in the dialogue.

Freedom of speech is important. Flashback has a long history of defending the free word and it aims to pass on the Swedish tradition of freedom of speech. To actively defend the freedom of opinion and speech, even when it comes to those who wish to abolish or restrict said rights. In the long term, Flashback believes this acting will contribute to a decreased polarisation in society, and an increased understanding of those with opposite views."

Adding to this; the founder of Flashback is a man named Jan Axelsson. I'm not gonna go into detail about Jan as not much is known about him as a person, but freedom of speech seems to have been his passion since he was 14 years old and his intentions with Flashback has been to stimulate the intellectual debate and involve all types of opinions, including distasteful and taboo subjects, that traditional media would otherwize exclude. He believes that freedom of speech is a prerequisite for a literate population.

Here’s a photo of Jan, taken from this article.

The photo caption in the article reads: Jan Axelsson in Stockholm 1999, before he went underground. Photo: Anna Littorin

Yeah so, Axelsson lives under a protected identity, probably because he gets a lot of threats for being the person who founded Flashback.

Because of Flashback's almost complete freedom of speech it's seen as a controversial site and some people have wanted to shut it down. This has happened twice, in 2003 at the latest. During September that year, a sentence in Marknadsdomstolen (the Market Court) forced the forum-part of Flashback to shut down. The TV companies ComHem, Senda and Viasat had found advertisements for piratkort (equipment used for piracy decryption of cable TV) on Flashback's website for advertisements, Popmart.se. The companies demanded that Jan Axelsson censor posts on Flashback, something that would've been pretty much impossible if Flashback were to continue as a discussion forum. After the trial, Axelsson had to pay the trial costs of 250 000 SEK and was threatened with a penalty of 400 000 SEK if advertisements continued to show up on Flashback.

But by moving the operation of Flashback to Great Britain and running the forum through a new domain, flashback.info, the forum could continue, because it no longer had a connection to Axelsson's company Flashback Media Group. As long as Axelsson doesn't publicly represent the forum, the penalty threat is out of sight. In 2010 the domain moved to New York but since 2021 the forum is once again owned by Flashback Media Group and the domain is now flashback.org, which Flashback's admin announced in this thread. The reason why Flashback's domain could move back to Sweden is because the Market Court doesn't exist anymore - it's been replaced by Patent- och marknadsdomstolen, the Patent and Market Court, and thus the sentence from 2003 doesn't apply to Flashback Forum anymore.

Okay, I think that will do it for this first info post, a little insight into Flashback!

[sugar-petals]

free reign tarot reading timeeee🔥🔥

i wanna branch out a bit and do a reading on hot boy baekhyun🌹 a) what’s his general erotic style and b) what are his secret kinks? 

↳ sexual style

tarot card: STRENGTH 

Baekhyun prefers sex to be bold and both partners confident. Not abrasively so, but coming from an inner conviction and bravery. He doesn’t feel like you’d have to be shy, embarrassed, or unnecessarily polite. It’s sex, if you go for it, you do it properly. Shame is left at the doorstep. Gestures of affection are unambiguous: Hugs are tight, kisses are long, penetration is deep, there is no room left for doubt. He has no problems with elements of power play being involved. Stamina is important to him, he wants to drive it home and not just lose control after three minutes. Nobody is left unsatisfied here, he has an eye on both his own and his partner’s pleasure. STRENGTH is also a card that talks about taming, if he’s feeling wild and passionate he enjoys being put in his place. Maybe awarded with a pat on the head or a tickle under the chin like you see on the card. Vice versa, fights for dominance and hardcore sadomasochism are more than frequent in his bedroom, he enjoys to bathe in the vast sea of extremes.

↳ secret kinks

“RESTRAINS” — Bondage just might be Baekhyun’s number one hidden interest. Ropes have quite a fascinating effect on him. As do handcuffs which are sure to be pink and fluffy and nicely fitted around his wrists. Oh dear, he knows of the effect his pretty hands have. He’ll play naughty prisoner and try to escape to tease his partner. 

“PLAYFUL” — No way he’ll be able to keep a straight face during sex. He does feel the expectation to be serious, but at the end of the day, Baek is a playful little bean who can’t help his quirks and all-encompassing humor. He can easily smooth over awkward situations and bond with his partner without holding something back. 

“VANILLA” — Leaving away all the toys and kinks and antics, Baekhyun wants to see what’s left. This card is about knowing your true substance when you keep it minimal. I know why this is a secret kink, Baek is very much caught in his kinky niche but has covert eyes for soft, silent, and simple things. Morning sex is gonna be super vanilla. 

“GRACEFUL” — You know how good a dancer he is. Baekhyun is the guy who knows talent should not go to waste. Just like he will exploit how elegant his hands are, how he moves is something he will capitalize on, too. Very seductive. He also loves when his partner puts on a little show, soft grinding is very much welcome here. 

“TOYS” — Feels like a duh moment, I can’t imagine Baekhyun without at least one set of vibrators in his private erotic collection. It plays to his experimental nature and always keeps him on his toes. He doesn’t feel rivaled by toys. In fact, because he knows how good it feels to be tortured all over his body with ‘em.

[ctrl-alt-aesthetic]

stuff i’ve watched/am watching

all of these can be found on netflix :)) (i included a review too because i’m bored lol)

tv shows i’m watching: 

criminal minds: i would say this is a tv show staple right here.SO good, also spencer reid, but the plot does get boring sometimes since it’s the same line of reasoning for like hundreds of episodes - still engaging tho. my least favorite aspect of this show is that they make minorities act so freaking stereotypically (9/10)

extracurricular: it seems kind of obscure at first but it’s actually so good, i like the realism aspect of it too (10/10)

money heist: really interesting and honestly kind of genius - cool characters but the last two parts are an overreach and so unrealistic, kind of the mary sue of heist tv shows (8/10)

tiger king: i swear i plan to finish this  not too much of a fan but it’s interesting, the premise of this documentary is so obscure though, how did the producers find something so niche and manage to make so many episodes out of it (6/10)

abyss: this show is really good but i stopped watching it, i need to pick it back up (8/10)

tv shows i’ve watched/stopped watching: 

gossip girl: it’s actually such a fun watch, also a staple tv show, but they kind of lost me after a while and it became kinda uninteresting since it was the same shit lol, also chuck bass is the best character even though his character is more static than a boulder (7/10)

sex education: SO GOOD, really really amazing show, the characters were so loveable and complex, i live for the plot and character development, they really seem like people and not some sort of one-dimensional unit (10/10)

meteor garden: soooo cheesy in the end but i live for it, it was so fun to watch, good character development (8/10)  

patriot act: desi icon, super informative, hilarious way to discuss heavy information (10/10)

madam secretary: honestly a really good show, even though it’s pretty dramatized i got a lot out of it, and it was honestly binge-worthy. definitely a staple tv show for me (10/10) 

memories of the alhambra: it got annoying to watch in the end because it didn’t make any logical sense, but i still found myself binge-watching it. sooo good haha (8/10)

accidentally in love: its the iconic chinese cheesy cheesy cheezy rom com you didn’t know you needed. (10/10) 

the umbrella academy: i kinda didn’t get it after a while, it felt like a fever dream. nonetheless, it was a really interesting concept. (6/10) 

never have i ever: regardless of the complaints that people have of this show, i actually really really liked it. as a desi person i was able to relate to it since they didn’t make the main character have an overwhelmingly desi identity but still kept it a significant part of her, and if i were a non-desi person, i think i would say it was really palatable. amazing representation and characters, although some were static. (8.5/10) 

my first first love: i never watched season two, but it was pretty good. the plot was interesting and the love triangle too haha, i kinda lost interest tho rip (7/10)

persona: it was really abstract, but honestly super interesting. incredibly trippy and made me think. loved it. (9/10)

terrace house: opening new doors: super fun to watch all the drama go down lol, i also learned a lot of japanese from it haha (8/10)

queer eye: obviously iconic, what more is there to say, i don’t find myself binging it tho (9/10) 

movies i’ve watched: 

avengers: infinity war: obviously amazing,, i mean it’s marvel sooo (10/10)

thor: ragnarok: funniest movie ever. also jeff goldblum. (10/10)

comedies: 

john mulaney: the comeback kid: it’s john mulaney (10/10) 

john mulaney: kid gorgeous (at radio city): my personal favorite comedy film, absolutely iconic (10/10)

trevor noah: afraid of the dark: i never finished it but it was really interesting, it was more of a documentary than a comedy tho (8/10)

hasan minhaj: homecoming king: sooo funny but i don’t remember anything lol (9/10)

gabriel iglesias: i’m sorry for what i said when i was hungry: i don’t remember the jokes but i remember laughing so (8/10) 

russell peters: almost famous: don’t remember a thing but he was funny...i remember how didn’t like how much he was swearing tho, it took away from the humor a bit (7/10)

gad elmaleh: american dream: absolutely hilarious. it was interesting to see how foreigners/immigrants see america lol (9/10)

russell peters: notorious: don’t remember so i’m gonna rate it the same as the other russell peters one (7/10)

vir das: losing it: iconic. he’s so funny but he does it in a way where he infuses super important messages into his jokes. (9/10)

animes: 

attack on titan: this was it. this was the anime that made me fall into the anime rabbit hole in middle school. super good but they can chill with the violence (9/10) 

ouran high school host club: iconic. (10/10)

black butler: ok to be real this anime was crazy good. it had really good characters but i honestly didn’t get the plot sometimes... (9/10) 

sword art online: i wasn’t the biggest fan but i can’t rlly have an opinion of it bc i never got into it (5/10) 

fairytail: it was a really good, pretty lighthearted anime, good watch hahah (7.5/10)

fullmetal alchemist: the absolute best. plot was really captivating as well as the characters and concepts. (10/10) 

kill la kill: it was good, characters were interesting, i also like the art style. it was super unnecessarily horny tho  (7/10)

[pengychan]

[Coco] Mind the Gap, Pt. 4

Title: Mind the Gap Summary: Modern Day AU. Tired of Ernesto’s snide remarks, Imelda decides to put him in his place and her husband is more than happy to help. It was supposed to be a one-night deal. Things quickly get out of hand. [OT3, mostly porn and humor. Plenty of instances of Ernesto being Dramatic, Imelda getting Sick Of His Shit, and Héctor trying to be the peacekeeper. Don’t expect anything serious.] Pairings: Ernesto/Héctor/Imelda Rating: Explicit.

To see the version with art by Dara, check it out on Ao3.

Tag for all parts up so far.

A/N: Even more art in this chapter 'cause Dara is a gift.

***

“Oh, there you are. Did you absolutely have to sing in the shower?”

“I did not--”

“I could swear I heard a grito. Or were you just shrieking?”

“Well, if a certain someone hadn’t finished all the hot water…” Ernesto grumbles, causing Imelda - who personally turned off hot water the moment she and Héctor were out of the shower - to smirk.

“Serves you right for getting up last. And to think Héctor and I shower together to save water,” she says, causing Héctor to snicker over his breakfast.

“We’re very environmentally conscious,” he mutters through a mouthful, causing Ernesto to roll his eyes. “But the shower is pretty big. Maybe next time we can all save water and--”

“Absolutely not,” Imelda and Ernesto snap exactly at the same time, causing Héctor to recoil and lift his hands in surrender. Not that it stops either of them from speaking again.

“As much as I’d love to see her melt when water touches her--”

“It’s a miracle he even fits in it on his own, with that ego in the way,” Imelda cuts him off, and he glares at her. She supposes he means to be intimidating; he only comes across as the overgrown pouting child he is. She smirks, and pushes a plate towards him, a couple of tacos mañaneros in it. “Eat. You look like you need the energy to keep up.”

Several things happen in quick succession: Ernesto opens his mouth to retort only for his stomach to grumble loudly before he can utter a single word, Imelda’s smirk widens, and Héctor tries to disguise his laugh with a very unconvincing coughing fit. Ernesto scowls at both of them, but eventually he sits down and starts eating. Within minutes he’s talking about music through mouthfuls, about a producer they absolutely need to meet - he knows people who know him, he can get them in touch - and entirely ignoring Imelda… who, on the other hand, is ignoring him as well and checking her emails for new orders on her phone.

Héctor dutifully nods along with what Ernesto says, and promises he’ll be available whenever this Armando Abascal can meet them, but truth be told he’s only half-listening. What he’s really wondering, as his gaze moves back and forth between his wife and his best friend, is how much time should he let pass before he suggests another night together.

He’s not an idiot; he can tell that as much as they butt heads over everything, the central focus of it all - the thing that keeps Ernesto coming and Imelda letting it happen, the rope they’re both clutching while trying to win an unspoken tug war, the one person who binds them - is him.

They keep trying to outdo each other and, really, that works to Héctor’s advantage given everything that he gets out of it… but now he’s starting to wonder if that is actually the entire story. Maybe it is most of it, yes, but Héctor’s mind keeps going back to how relatively easy Imelda was to convince to invite Ernesto over again, and how quickly Ernesto had been to bend down on their bed again despite all his complaints.

As much as she rolls her eyes and as much as he protests, Héctor can tell they are enjoying the fuck out of this, pun intended. Or at least, they’re enjoying it far more than either is willing to admit. Héctor wonders, for the first time, what it may take to get them to say as much.

A lot, very likely: they are both stubborn and prideful, as much as they like to deny having anything in common. Making them admit something as simple as the fact they’re enjoying the challenge, or at the very least the sex, isn’t gonna be easy. But then again, if you want your life to be easy, you do not pick Ernesto as your best friend, and you do not marry Imelda. Héctor has done both, and regrets neither.

It’s time to up the game.

***

I bought a pair of boots last month, and it was my best purchase in years! They were custom-made to my measurements, fit perfectly form the first day and didn’t give me a single blister  as I trekked up a mountain. I cannot recommend these enough!

The review is followed by a smiley as well as a full five-star rating, and Imelda finds herself smiling back at it. Almost all the reviews are like that - the only exception are a few whining about late delivery caused by postage issues she had no control over, as she always mentions in the reply - but she’s always happy to see a new one, giving her credit for a job well done.

When the first glowing reviews began coming in, as well as the beginning of a steady flow of income, it took all of her willpower not to take screenshots and send everything to her parents, writing nothing but I told you so. She held back because she’s not that childish but oh, was she tempted. Told you so has always been one of her parents’ favorite sentences to utter.

Don’t take chances. Don’t attempt anything new. Follow our advice. Stay in your lane. Oh, you tried and failed? Well, we told you so.

Sometimes it was warranted - Óscar and Felipe’s attempt to build a homemade pressure cooker when they were eight was one such occasion - but a lot of the time it was unnecessarily smug and grated her nerves like nothing else. Getting to make things work despite their misgiving was always very, very satisfying.

Moving to Mexico City for a course in business management? They had supported her in the end, but not without a lot of stubborn silences, thinly veiled jabs and grumbling. But she stood her ground, and excelled; Imelda knows they’re proud… but she also knows that they are somehow disappointed for having been proven wrong, for never getting to tell her that they told her it was a bad idea.

Starting her own business, and online? It would never work, they told her, to many people already did the same. And making shoes the old way, to order? Who even does that anymore? Who would pay money for that when you can buy much cheaper shoes elsewhere?

But it did work; she's found herself a niche in the market and her business has grown to the point she now estimates that, in about a year’s time, she might very well think of looking into renting proper premises and employing a few people. Again, the told you so mantra failed to leave their lips, and they were proud of her. They usually are, despite everything.

And then she decided to marry Héctor which, of course caused friction. That too, according to them, was a bad idea. They didn’t dislike Héctor, whom they had seen from time to time when they played together as children; they knew that, while a troublemaker - that was usually Ernesto’s fault, but he had a way to evade all the blame somehow - he was a good kid who had grown into a good man.

When Héctor’s parents had died when he wasn’t yet seventeen - a gas leak, a spark, and they were both gone while their son was a couple of towns over for a gig - hers went to the funeral with her, after donating some money to help pay for it. Imelda has hazy memories of that bleak day, of Héctor standing alone before the coffins until Ernesto reached him and passed an arm around his shoulders. She remembers walking up to them, and squeezing Héctor’s hand, but she cannot recall what she told him.

The following year, both Ernesto and Héctor packed up quite suddenly and left for Mexico city to turn their passion for music into a proper career. Her parents had talked about it over the dinner table, expressed their sympathy for Héctor and wished him luck, and that was the last they'd said of him. Until their daughter moved to Mexico City, met him again, and began dating him. Until she had announced they were going to marry.

A musician, and with no steady job and no family behind him? They hadn’t liked that at all, questioning how he’d even be able to provide for her and pretending to have forgotten how her business was beginning to take off well enough to support them both in bad times if need be.

Óscar and Felipe supported her quite vocally - they always liked Héctor, who was a very willing guinea pig for some of their experimenting back when they were just children - and in the end, while grudgingly, her parents stopped arguing. They came to the wedding, were perfectly polite, but Imelda knew that they were waiting for the day that told you so would be warranted.

So far, it never was: Héctor always finds work. As much as Imelda doesn’t like to admit it, she knows that Ernesto - his used-car-salesman charm, his shameless self-advertising and the fooling around he calls networking - is the main reason why. Héctor has so much talent and plenty of charm of his own, but lacks the ambition and drive Ernesto has; that pendejo is the one who gets them most of the paid work and, for that, Imelda can tolerate him. Grudgingly.

Oh yes, Third Wheel Ernesto. What would your parents think of that development?

The thought makes her laugh aloud - oh God, they would flip if they knew  - and she doesn’t realize how loud she was until Héctor’s head peeks into the workshop. “Found another singing cat video, mi amor?”

Imelda rolls her eyes - it was one time she laughed to tears, just one time, can he stop bringing it up? - and turns from her laptop to glance at him. “I was thinking about Ernesto.”

Héctor raises his eyebrows. “What a coincidence. So was I.”

“Not that way.”

“I was thinking we could have him over next Friday.”

“No. I need at least another two weeks without seeing or hearing of that--”

“I have an idea,” Héctor cuts her off, and he’s grinning so widely she can’t help but be intrigued. When that expression appears on his face, she knows he’s thinking something really interesting. She leans back, folds her hands, and crosses one leg over the other.

“... You have two minutes to convince me.”

One minute later, Héctor is already sending out a text message.

***

“Do you really have to go already?”

Sitting on the bed with only the sheets around her, Luciana - or Lucia? He doesn’t remember and just refers to her with pet names to avoid trouble - is pouting. Ernesto kisses that pout.

“I have a meeting. I’d love to stay,” he lies, and follows it up with another lie. “I’ll call you.”

Another number to block, of course. She’s getting attached, he suspects, and Ernesto doesn’t like that, no señor. Best for both of them if he ends this here. Most of all, best for him. He’s a free man, no strings but those of his guitar, and he’d rather keep it that way.

Plus, last night wasn’t even fun. It usually is, with Lucia - or Luciana? - but this time it was… underwhelming. Not that he can pinpoint the reason; she did or said nothing out of the ordinary, and there was nothing wrong with the sex itself. It hasn’t exactly left him unsatisfied, but something was lacking and that gnaws at him in a way he cannot explain.

A few more reassurances, just enough time to throw his clothes back on, and Ernesto leaves the apartment, heaving out a long sigh of relief. He glances at a cab passing by, and digs into his pockets to pull out some change. Not nearly enough for a fare. He shrugs and gets walking towards the bus stop, putting the change back in his pocket - and feels his phone vibrating against his hand. A text from Héctor.

Come Friday at nine. You don’t want to miss this one.

***

"Red or white?"

"Black. You look good in black."

"All right, let me see..." Héctor lets out a hum and rummages in the closet, finally pulling back with some black lingerie in his hands. He unfolds it, glancing at the transparent skirt, and holds it up. "Is this mine or yours?"

"Yours. I'd need to walk in stilts to wear that one without tripping over the skirt."

"Or very high heels," Héctor mutters, glancing at Imelda. She's standing in front of her section of the closet, tapping her chin with a finger. She tilts her head towards him, and the braid falls from her shoulder down her back; Héctor has to ignore a sudden urge to undo it, and run his fingers through her hair.

"Is that a suggestion?" she asks, and Héctor grins.

"You look wonderful in heels."

"Aw, what a charmer."

"Plus, it's nice not having to bend over too much to kiss you."

"Aaaand you ruined it."

Héctor gives her his tried and tested Can't Be Mad At Me smile. It always works. "I'll make sure to kiss you plenty to make up for it. You still love me, right?"

Imelda laughs. "Against my better judgment," she says, and reaches in the closet to pull out some lingerie of her own - the red lacy one that never fails to drive Héctor loco. "This, with the red boots?"

"Sounds perfect."

"I get the feeling you'd say that no matter what I put on."

"You could just stay naked. You're perfect when you're naked."

Imelda's smile turns into a smirk. "Ah, but isn't it better when you get to unwrap me?"

That, of course, is a logic Héctor cannot possibly argue against. Trying to think of something else - anything that will keep him from thinking of the moment he'll get to unwrap her, because this isn't the right moment to get hard - Héctor turns away from her and begins putting on the lacy black lingerie... which, truth be told, was a nightmare to find his size. Maybe he is ridiculously tall, which is why he has so little lingerie of his own and mostly borrows from Imelda, when they feel like it.

Sometimes Héctor still has trouble believing what an amazing woman he had somehow managed to marry. Back when they had been dating just for a few weeks and were learning to know each other in ways they definitely hadn’t as kids, there were very few things about himself Héctor was afraid to talk about... his taste for crossdressing being one of them.

He knew plenty of people would find it ridiculous at best, and break up with him as soon as the confession was past his lips; the thought Imelda could do that - ridicule him and turn away - scared him more than words could say... but when he finally brought it up, his face hot as fire, there was no rejection nor mockery. Imelda had seemed intrigued, and - for the first time - she had told him about her taste for strap-ons, adding that she’d wondered if the mention of it would send him running for the hills. It had been his turn to be intrigued and soon enough they both ended up laughing, their faces bright red but relieved beyond belief, clasping each other's hand.

When they had met at her place the following week, Imelda surprised him with lingerie for them both. It was one very, very interesting evening; Héctor was delighted to find out that Imelda was as aroused as him. Crossdressing soon became normal - not something that happened every time, but often enough. It was exciting, and fun, and if made for some really nice pictures that they took great care to keep in a very, very safe place.  

Not long afterwards, they’d tried the strap on together for the first time and it had been more enjoyable than Héctor had dreamed it could be - so much so that he’d lasted… forty seconds, maybe. Likely something closer to thirty.

But practice makes perfect, and they had a lot of practice since.

“When is he going to show up?” Imelda speaks interrupting the reminiscence. She sounds suddenly annoyed, and Ernesto isn’t even there yet. It’s kind of a new record, but Héctor hopes they might begin to get along better, in time. It’s a project he’s actively working on.

Héctor glances at the clock on the wall, slipping on the lingerie and lacing it up. “I told him to come in about half a-” he starts, only to trail off when the doorbell rings. “... Well, there he is.”

“And there he stays.”

“Imelda.”

“He’s got to learn to take you seriously when you give him a set time,” she points out, frowning. Héctor wonders if she even realizes how beautiful she is like this, scantily dressed in red silk and laces as she puts on her boots, the braid falling over her shoulder. “He can’t come and go as he plea--”

Clack.

Imelda freezes. So does Héctor. She turns. He smiles innocently. “I, uh--”

“You gave him the spare key?”

“I figured it would be a good idea, in case one of us got locked out. I mean, he lives downstairs, and we have his spare key.”

Imelda scoffs, lacing up her boots. “We’ll talk about this later,” he says, but Héctor knows she’s conceding the point. “And you go make it clear to him that he’s not supposed to use that key when he damn well pleases.”

“All right.”

“Use those exact words, or I will. Loudly.”

“Fine, fine,” he promises. Of course he doesn’t use those exact words, even even if he did, they would be wasted. The moment Héctor shows up in the living room, Ernesto’s jaw very nearly drops - and so does the bottle of wine in his hands, really, but he manages to catch himself just on time before it slips from his fingers and crashes on the floor.

That would definitely put Imelda in a bad mood.

“You’re early, amigo. How much cologne did you put on?” Héctor asks, tilting his head on one side in the most nonchalant way possible - like he’s fully clothed and they’re having a chat over a drink.

“I… a dash,” Ernesto mutters, gaze running across him, and he swallows.

Héctor raises an eyebrow in doubt.

“All right, maybe two. I… I brought… I… are those earrings?”

“Clip-on ones, no worries. No one had to be subjected to the sight of yours truly crying before a needle. Unlike that poor tattoo artist in Oaxaca who saw you jumping five feet in the air the second the needle touched your skin,” he adds. That is a little story that never fails to make Ernesto defensive, and it doesn’t fail now either.

“I just… I changed my mind, all right? I realized that defacing my skin was a stupid idea.”

“Of course. Was that why you were also holding my hand?”

“I was not--” Ernesto starts, but suddenly there is the clicking of high heels on hardwood floor, and his gaze goes past Héctor, to the door. He doesn’t turn to look, but he can tell the exact moment Imelda stands in the doorway from the way Ernesto’s eyes go wide, and his jaw slack. His brain seems to have crashed and, really, Héctor cannot blame him.

“Oh, there you are,” Imelda says, and walks up to Héctor. She leans on him, and taps her lower lip with a finger as she glances at Ernesto. “You’re awfully overdressed.”

That causes him to recoil, as though snapped out of a trance. The look on his face goes from the personification of a blue screen of death to sudden, clear awkwardness.

“I, er…” he starts, and swallows, his gaze moving back and forth between them. His skin is flushed, and he tugs at the collar of his white shirt. “I thought we. Dinner. First,” he manages.

Ernesto.exe is not working. Please restart.

The thought almost makes Héctor laugh, but he manages to hold back, allowing himself just the smallest quirk of his lips as Imelda shrugs and walks up to Ernesto - who almost, almost steps back… but does not. He just stays still, transfixed, as Imelda reaches to toy with the upper button of his shirt.  

“Later. First, let’s get this off you,” she says, her voice soft, and tilts up his head to look at him in the eye, a hand reaching to cup his cheek. Normally, Héctor would expect his best friend to smell the trap from a mile away. Now, however, he's not at all surprised when stares at her and, slowly, he smirks. Look at him, Héctor muses, thinking he knows what’s ahead.

Ay, mi amigo, you won’t see this coming.

He somehow manages to stay serious as Imelda pulls her hand away from Ernesto’s face. Ernesto lifts his own free hand as though to catch it, but he stops himself just on time; Imelda doesn’t seem to notice, and takes the bottle of wine from Ernesto’s limp fingers.

“A good choice,” she practically purrs. “I’ll get the glasses. Héctor, would you be so kind to get him ready?”

Héctor smiles and holds out his hand, gesturing for Ernesto to follow, and he does.

Oh, he's definitely getting the wrong idea of where this is going.

***

Ernesto is very much enjoying the way things are going.

It’s not something he’s ever going to admit aloud, of course, but the fact stays that this is finally taking the direction he wanted - with Héctor and Imelda entirely focused on what mattered. Namely, on him. Oh yes, Ernesto can get used to this.

He was slightly disappointed when Héctor slapped his hands away on the way to the bedroom, but very much willing to let himself be undressed down to his underwear. He was already getting hard and he expected Héctor to get rid of his boxers, too, but he had not. Instead he'd pushed him on the bed, straddled him, and kissed him deeply.

On the mouth.

That caused his mind to go blank for a moment, because despite everything that has happened - the kisses Héctor had dropped on his shoulder and neck and face, the fact Ernesto gave him, all humbleness aside, the best blowjob a man could ask for - a kiss on the mouth was something that had just never happened before between them.

Taken aback, he found himself letting Héctor lead; it was slow and thorough, and entirely too brief. All too soon, Héctor pulled back and grinned down at him. Ernesto opened his mouth to protest, or demand more, but he placed two fingers on his lips and gave him a look that made words die in his throat. His eyes roamed across on his body, on the silk and laces on him and, in that moment, he could have let him do anything.

Which includes, apparently, tying his arms to the bedpost with silk scarves.

“Try to break free,” Héctor tells him. He does, and he can’t. To be fair, it's not like he tried with all his might; he's a pretty strong guy, so of course he could break free if he really wanted to... but for now, he'll play along.

"Good knots," he says, and tries to catch Héctor’s mouth again, only to miss when he pulls back to turn to the door.

Ernesto follows his gaze and there’s Imelda, carrying two long-stemmed glasses of red wine in one hand and a third in the other. She looks down at him, tilting her head on one side, and Ernesto has to make a conscious effort not to squirm when her gaze pauses on his groin.

He’s painfully hard and, he knows, his boxer shorts are doing absolutely nothing to hide it. Suddenly very much aware of how helpless he is, he braces himself for the calm expression to turn into a mocking smirk… but it doesn’t. She just hands two of the glasses to Héctor, and smiles.

“He might need help to drink,” she says, and looks back down at him, calmly sipping her wine.

What game is she playing?

The thought makes it briefly to Ernesto’s mind, but he chases it away before it can fully form - because thinking that would mean that deep down he knew something was up, and that would open up the very annoying possibility that he’d willed himself to ignore it to go along with... whatever Imelda is planning.

If she’s planning something, of course. Which she isn’t, or else like hell he’d have handed over control like that. Ernesto wills himself to believe as much, and turns his attention on Héctor - who has put down one glass and is holding the other in one hand, the other on the back of his head to support it.

“Salud,” Héctor says with a grin, and brings the glass to Ernesto’s mouth. Impatient as he is to get things going, he drinks in slow gulps. It’s good wine, if he says so himself - and he does say so; he picked it, after all - so there is no reason to make it go to waste. Once the glass is empty, Héctor pulls it away. A few drops fall on Ernesto’s collarbone, and before he can even protest Héctor lowers is head and suckles at his skin where the drops fell, causing Ernesto - who now he feels pleasantly warm as well as desperately aroused - to shiver.

He tosses back his head, and his gaze finds Imelda, who’s almost finished his own wine and is staring at him, her expression unreadable.

“Good choice,” Héctor chuckles, and takes the glass he left by the table - guzzling it down way too fast, but Ernesto really doesn’t give a damn whether he properly tastes it; there is one thing he wants Héctor to taste now, and it’s not the damn wine.

The empty glass is placed back, and Héctor is grinning more widely. The next moment he’s back on the bed, crawling towards him, and then he’s reaching to brush back Ernesto’s hair, humming. “Looking good,” he mumbles, and something seems to leap in Ernesto’s chest. Héctor is smiling, Imelda is towering over him, and he has a few moments to savor, once again, their full attention… until they turn to glance at each other, smirk, and are suddenly a few steps away from the bed, in each other’s arms. What the…?

“Hey!” Ernesto calls out in protest, or at least he tries to; all that leaves his mouth is a choked-out noise. He tugs at his bounds, but the knots don’t give in at all - Imelda’s fault, surely, who else may have taught him to tie knots? With a snarl, Ernesto glares furiously at them as they lock lips, hands all over each other. “Seriously? Untie me!”

“Oh, we could do that,” Imelda says, turning to glance at him. She’s leaning her head against Héctor’s chest, and traces abstract patterns over it as she speaks again. Her voice is silk-covered steel. “We could untie you, and you can go home. Or you can stay put, and if you behave you get a reward later. Your choice.”

Ernesto opens his mouth to snap at her to go ahead and untie him, but then Héctor moves to kiss her neck, and words die in his throat. For several moments he can only watch them with wide eyes because oh, they are a sight to behold, heat is pooling in his groin and his cock is so hard it hurts.

“I…” is all he manages in the end, and nothing more. Imelda smirks.

“A rare good choice from you,” she says, and Ernesto wants to hit her, wants to scream, wants to fuck her, and he can do none of those things. He scoffs, and turns away. Fine, so they can tie him up, but they can’t make him watch, and so he won’t. He won’t play along, won’t even steal a glance. He shuts his eyes, and keeps them shut.

For two whole minutes.

***

By the time the last bit fabric hits the ground - once they’ve done unwrapping each other like you do with a gift, as Imelda would put it - Héctor is desperately hard, Imelda is soaking wet… and, unsurprisingly, Ernesto is beyond frustrated.

“Are you always this slow? I think I’m about to fall asleep.”

The moan leaving Imelda as Héctor nips at her breasts turns into a scoff halfway through. She turns to glance at Ernesto, an eyebrow raised. “Are you? There seems to be a small part of you that is still very much awake.”

Ernesto glares at her, and bends his knees to try hiding the very obvious bulge in his underwear. Not that he can hide his flushed skin, or the marks on his wrists from pulling so hard at his restraints. He shifts his gaze on Héctor and his expression turns mocking. “You know, if it were me in your place, your wife would already have forgotten how to talk at this point.”

That annoys Imelda enough to pull away from Héctor. “Another sound from you, and I’ll stick a gag in that stupid mouth,” she warns, crossing her arms over her heaving chest.

Ernesto sputters. “You wouldn’t!”

“One more word, and I will,” she hisses. She is beautiful like this, hair undone and eyes flashing, and her tone makes it clear that she means every word.  Ernesto can see that, too, and he goes quiet for a moment… then there is a flash of something in his eyes that Héctor cannot quite pinpoint, there one moment and gone the next, a bolt of lighting against Imelda’s steady fire.

Then, Ernesto sneers. “You wouldn’t,” he repeats, and that’s it. Next thing Héctor knows, Imelda is at the dresser and the ball gag is in her hand. Ernesto has just enough time to sputter again before said ball gag is shoved in his mouth, the strap fastened behind his head. That causes him to give a noise like that of an angry ox, and to shake his head furiously, but of course it isn’t enough to dislodge it.

Imelda grasps his hair, and forces his head back so that he’ll look at her face; he stares at her with wide eyes before he catches himself and glares. She responds with a smile. "I like you best with your mouth busy,” she says, and her free hand reaches down to palm him through the boxer shorts. The glare immediately fades, and buckles into her touch one moment before she pulls her hand away, causing him to whine in the back of his throat. The grip on his hair slackens, and she ruffles it.

“Behave, and Héctor will take care of that,” she says, giving his erection one last pat before she stands and, without another word, she’s in Héctor’s arms again.

They fuck against the wall, with Imelda clinging to him, scratching his back and biting bruises on his neck and shoulder. Even in the midst of it all - skin on skin, his wife’s body so welcoming and warm, the scent of her hair in his nostrils and oh God he’s not going to last much longer - Héctor knows, with utmost certainty, that Imelda is looking straight at Ernesto over his shoulder... and that he’s glaring back.

He loves them both but ay, sometimes they can be so predictable.

***

[Back to Part 3]

[On to Part 5]

[zerochanges]

Night of the Banshee

With less than a week or so to go, Halloween this year is fast approaching. So now’s the time to get in the last few frights and scares before we all start our unnecessarily long 3 month celebration of Christmas (What? Don’t try to tell me your January isn’t full of Christmas decorations that just refuse to die; like a zombie’s death-grip on some poor background character). Last year I was encumbered with a busy work schedule and really didn’t get to enjoy the frightful holiday, at best I think I saw maybe 20 minutes of Cujo on cable TV and that was pretty much the extent of my spooks that year. So this year I wanted to do something special and check out something truly horrifying. Which leads us to today’s subject: Banshee’s Last Cry.  

Now what is Banshee’s Last Cry, I hear you asking. Well it is a sound novel released for the iPhone in the US during January of 2014. So then what’s a sound novel you ask. Well, that can be a bit complicated. Similar to a visual novel, a sound novels usually forgo character sprites and CG art and instead focuses more on the novel aspect. It’s much closer to the novel nomenclature and essentially feels like reading a digital book with music and sound effects to amplify the experience. Of course like a visual novel there are still moments where you get to make choices in the story that lead to different endings.

The easiest western comparison would probably be text based adventure games, a genre that similar to the much more popular point ‘n click adventure games faded away a lot as technology advanced but is making a comeback, especially in the indie scene on Steam and the Mobile phone market. For the sake of this article, that’s pretty much all you really need to know about sound novels, but yes, any nerd I may have just upset; you are right, it’s much more complicated; a lot of games will use that label and have just as many visuals as visual novels, and it also started life as more of a brand of games for Chunsoft (the developer of today’s game) but yet nowadays some of the most famous sound novels like Higurashi When They Cry have nothing to do with Chunsoft. Basically, the more you try to categorize things the bigger of a cluster duck it becomes (quack). But really, all you need to understand what the game play in Banshee’s Last Cry’s is like is to just think of classic text adventure games!

(The original Super Famicom box for Kamaitachi no Yoru - 1994)

In Japan Banshee’s Last Cry was originally named Kamaitachi no Yoru (かまいたちの夜 / Night of the Kamaitachi) but the localization company, Aksys Games, renamed it something a lot less Japanese. In America it’s pretty easy to have missed this game but in Japan when it originally released in 1994 for the Super Famicom it was a huge hit and has remained to this day a cult classic that has spawned off numerous sequels, ports, remakes, reimaginings, and even its own live action TV drama (that’s when you KNOW you made it!). Now obviously this mobile phone release is one of the many rereleases for the game, but for us in America this marks the very first (and at the time of this writing -- only) time we have ever seen a release. This is quite momentous considering despite how incredibly popular Kamaitachi no Yoru was in Japan no one has ever tackled translating it for 20 years until this point, not even fan translations; any real attempt or interest shown in the fan community had always fizzled out until then.

This release while momentous however was also met with some concerns, the most obvious of which was its Americanization (or maybe Canadianization?). A lot of fans weren’t incredibly sold on this aspect of the English release when it first revealed. The plot was moved from Japan to Canada (Nagano to Whistler, British Columbia to be precise), and all the characters were renamed to match. The protagonist Toru became Max, and the heroine Mari became Grace, for example. The good thing is you can rename these two to whatever you like--I personally kept Max’s name but changed the heroine back to Mari because her English name also happens to be the name of my pet dog, and that’s weird--I don’t wanna romance a character with my dog’s name (plus I am too unoriginal to think up any other girl’s name for Grace/Mari). You cannot however rename anyone else in the story, and more importantly for those who took issue with this decision, the location change will stick no matter what.

In Japan they have a lot of folklore creatures, or yokai, who have a very long and rich history. This complex hierarchy of creatures, monsters, ghosts, and ghoulies all help to make for incredibly unique literature you just can’t quite recreate in English. That’s not to say the English world does not have its fair share of great horror writers who could conjure up their own parthenon of fantastically terrifying Lovecraftian horrors, but culturally the things that go bump in the night are really quite different between us. While in Japan yokai may seem like a fun part of their own local folklore that kids to adults all have, at the very least, a familiarity with, not much else like that is true for America.

You may have your occasional local legends like the Headless Horsemen (insert Christopher Walken gif here), but there really isn't any cemented creature folklore that everyone just “gets” in America. At least, not anything nearly as rich and complicated as a lot of Asian or even European folklore creatures. The best alternative I can think of off-the-top-of-my-head would be Big Foot, and ‘Night of the Big Feet’ sounds about as menacing as it does sensual. It’s because of this that veteran translator Jeremy Blaustein (Metal Gear Solid, Snatcher) decided to go in a different direction. Americans don’t really have a great set of creature folklore, and obviously outside our own little niche communities of nerds, don’t know Japanese folklore either--and thus would not get much out of the material presented that way--but that isn’t to say there weren’t plenty of other folk creatures out there that are well known to Americans. While Blaustein’s choice of the Banshee has some awkward work-arounds (mainly an Irish ghost being in Canada and all that), it’s something pretty much everyone knows--a part of popular culture that has stayed with us all, and was a really great stand in for a Kamaitachi, or Sickle Weasel.

Not everyone knows what a Kamaitachi is, even anime nerds might not, as it isn’t the most popular yokai (sadly not enough people have read Ushio & Tora), but pretty much anyone knows what a Banshee is. Both creatures also work quite nicely together, setting the right winter horror atmosphere. In the middle of a terrible blizzard, the howling winds have enough force to knock down tress, shatter glass, and even flip over cars. You can feel the cold down to your bones, it’s bitter and resentful, and while it might just be your imagination, the thought that such fierceness could even be enough to cut through you doesn't seem too ludicrous while out there in the storm. In the original Japanese text we had the Kamaitachi that are known for riding on dust devils, and their sickles that can easily be associated with a wind so fierce that it may even scratch you, while in the English text there’s the Banshee, known for their howls--like that of the howling wind. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a fierce wind storm can attest to the truly demonic, otherworldly sounds fierce wind can make--a howling Banshee’s does not seem far off during a terrible blizzard.

What’s important here is that the original essence of the story is coming out for the audience, and in that regard Blaustein succeeds remarkably, creating a very enjoyable reading experience that is truly on par with the Japanese writing. The text is a pleasure to read, and flows incredibly well. The utter horror and sense of being trapped truly leaps off the ‘page’ and it’s a genuinely harrowing experience while also not missing any of the charm and unique humor the original Japanese version is so well known for as well. In his own words Blaustein talks about his decision for such a strong localization as opposed to keeping the original folklore and setting:

“When I asked myself if the idea of small weasels with scythes strapped to the legs would resonate with a Western audience that has no such myth, I had to answer no. Furthermore, even the word "weasel" brings to mind shifty Steve Buscemi-like personalities as opposed to something supernatural and scary. In trying to make a true localization that would capture the essence as opposed to the trappings of the story, I decided Banshee would be more in keeping with the original SPIRIT of the game. From that POV, I feel that I am actually closer to the reproducing the feel of the original for a Western audience than I would be if I had kept it Japanese. It is hard perhaps to explain, but I feel strongly about it.”

So let’s finally talk about this story, as really it’s the whole meat and potatoes of the game and is what it’s all about. Banshee’s Last Cry has a simple premise at first: a group of people are trapped in an Inn during a terrible snowstorm, things soon become suspicious when three of the guests find a note slipped under their door that reads “TONIGHT@MIDNIGHT=DEATH”. The characters initially try to write this off as a prank but it doesn't take long until people go missing and their corpses show up: the first of which is horribly mangled in a grotesque, almost implausible manner, that leads to the cast wondering if perhaps something supernatural is at play. It’s a Whodunit, with a spice of the potential paranormal. Think old dark house, but with snow.

There are 43 different endings in this particular version of the game, however many of these endings are death related bad ends. For example, let’s say you are given three options when it comes time to confront a potential murderer: one of these options will probably lead you to confronting the wrong person and accidentally escalating the situation until you through your own actions or the actions of another ends up getting an innocent person killed resulting in a game over. The second choice then might result in you choosing the right person but messing up how you confront said person and being killed yourself. That’s two bad endings right there, and 41 more endings to go. The third choice then is the actual right choice to keep the story moving down its natural progression. A lot of the branches in the story can work like this example I just made up, but don’t be disheartened as you can always skip ahead after the game restarts and get right back to where you were and try again. Plus completing endings may unlock new dialogue choices given to you and can lead to endings you could not have seen otherwise at the start of the game.  

Despite the many death related bad endings out there to haunt you in your mystery solving there are plenty of other actual story progressing endings as well, and lots of different stories even to boot. Once you solve the main mystery and finally figure out the murderer and how they pulled off their killings, the game is not over yet. There are other stories that get told with the same basic setting and characters. Sometimes some character’s backgrounds and personalities change completely, other times some characters might be swapped out with new characters! This is especially true in a gag story you can unlock where the first victim who dies a particularly gruesome death is replaced by an overly flamboyant cross-dresser (or maybe it’s an anthropomorphic goat?) and hijinks ensue.

Yes, there also happens to be tons of comedy in this. Probably half the game is really hard edged and full of gruesome horror with crazy high death counts, while you white knuckle your way through it trying to find the bastard who did all this, if it’s even an human to being with, while the other half of the stories are gut busters that turn everything you know on its side and deconstruct horror tropes leaving you laughing the whole way through. Sometimes people are murdered horribly, sometimes you are caught up in a James Bound movie between a war of spies, and sometimes the game just goes absolutely nuts. There is honestly nothing quite like it, you can say Banshee’s Last Cry is an expert case of a video game that both terrifies and trolls its audience, and that’s the best part about it.

Out of all the crazy endings in the game I think my personal favorites have to be the one where you can decode a hidden message in the dialogue presented and learn that Chunsoft is behind a conspiracy to take over the world by brainwashing you and everyone else who plays their games, and the ending that pokes fun at Chunsoft’s other big series: The Mystery Dungeon games. If you ever played a Shiren the Wanderer, or the many, many, many other mystery dungeon flavored games such as Chocobo Dungeon, Etrain Mystery Dungeon, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Barbie’s Dream Dungeon, or even Call of Dungeon Medieval Warfare, you’d get a real kick out of exploring the basement of the Inn and discovering it’s actually an RPG Dungeon that you can dungeon crawl through, fight classic fantasy monsters like Goblins in turn based combat, and try to find treasure chests. This game is just an absolute marvel that keeps giving in how it messes with your expectations.

And this is truly the most horrifying thing about Banshee’s Last Cry, there’s nothing quite like it out there in English, and it’s already about to fade away forever. Banshee’s Last Cry launched in January of 2014,  and since then has only had one update, about a week later after it came out and has never been updated since. This September (2017), Apple has launched their newest update: iOS 11 that moves their devices from 32-bit to 64-bit, in the process breaking a lot of past games and applications. A lot of developers have been prepping for this and have updated their products, but a lot of other apps have been left to wallow in oblivion (much like Shin Megami Tensei I -- another miracle of the mobile market now dying with iOS 11). Banshee’s Last Cry has not yet been updated and very likely never will be. This is another game lost to the harsh reality of a digital market place. If you’re thinking maybe the Android version can still be saved, well unfortunately even though Aksys Games advertised an Android version. one never materialized. The only way to play Kamaitachi no Yoru in English is to have an iPhone that hasn't yet converted to iOS 11, an update that is already a month old now at the time of this writing.

There may be hope in the future, as Spike Chunsoft has since shown some interest, a previous Twitter poll from last year over what games people may want to see localized saw “Kamaitachi no Yoru” (yes, not Banshee’s Last Cry) show up in it. While it did not win the poll there still might be a chance for it yet. Another sound novel in that poll, 428, lost as well but was announced for an English steam release. Perhaps if 428 can make it maybe Kamaitachi no Yoru can eventually too. There also happens to be a really nice and shiny new PS Vita remake to work off of for Kamaitachi no Yoru, that converted the game into a more traditional visual novel which will most likely have greater appeal to the English speaking market nowadays.

The future is hard to really tell, but such a fascinating and important game like Kamaitachi no Yoru deserves a better chance for an English audience to enjoy. It shouldn't be stuck on a dead platform that won’t work on modern phones and just the few YouTube Let’s Plays that are out there of it. I cannot think of anything more horrifying than the lost of game like this.

Fun Facts:

1.) Kamaitachi no Yoru was originally made using photographs of the real world location it was set in as the backgrounds. The developers added in some digital effects where they were needed such as pixelated snow moving across the screen and the silhouettes of characters talking. When the developers could not get a background they wanted in real life they created miniature models for them, such as the wine cellar. The Mobile version of the game again does the same thing, but interestingly the English localization Banshee’s Last Cry, retook a lot of the photographs of the Inn setting by using a real Inn you can actually visit in British-Columbia. While some of the interior shots are the same, some are quite different. The miniature models and digital effects seem to have all stayed the same though. You really have to appreciate such workmanship in keeping everything as real and practical as possible. Here are some comparisons of the Japanese and English Inn used:

Kamaitachi no Yoru iOS Comparison

2.) The music in Banshee’s Last Cry is just fantastic. I couldn’t really think of a spot to properly talk about it above but I really loved this particular version of the soundtrack. If you want to check it out you can should be able to find it on YouTube. I also uploaded the music to my Soundcloud as a back-up.

3.) While I didn't want to go to the monstrous task of hunting down EVERY version of Kamaitachi no Yoru I did at least take some comparison screenshots between the original Super Famicom version, the localized Banshee’s Last Cry iOS version, and 2017 Vita remake that turns the game into a visual novel. Check below:

Kamaitachi no Yoru - SuFami - iOS - PS Vita Comparison

[pantysleep64-blog]

Who Is ZNN?

Ever wanted to know more about your beloved ZNN?  I mean sure, we know we’re your absolute favorite source for Zwift news and information, but perhaps there’s a bit more ‘behind the scenes’ (or behind the mask) information you’d like to have about the team that puts together the greatest content in the history of Zwift media?  Well that’s why we’ve come to your second favorite source for Zwift content, Zwift Insider, to share a little bit more about us.

Regarding my identity, that’s a trade secret.  But I wanted to take this generous opportunity, provided by Eric, to explain “why.”  Zwift News Network was created in an attempt to be a humorous, satirical “voice of the community.”  We’re nameless not because we don’t believe what we say or are somehow “concerned” about the content that we share.  But rather, because we think it’s really important that it could, in fact, be “any one of us.” As a personal filter before writing or sharing any content for ZNN, it’s important to me that the content sound like it could have come from just about anyone within the Zwift community.  Sure, very few opinions held by ZNN are universally held by the Zwift community.  There are Zwifters who love Richmond for its rich racing heritage and punchy steep climbs, and both of them comment regularly on ZNN posts which could be seen by some as “critical” of the first American Zwift course.

In other words, ZNN’s identity is you!  Or rather, it could be you at any given moment.  ZNN is your voice.  ZNN is people who love Zwift, who use Zwift regularly, who wouldn’t know what to do without Zwift.  And who enjoy poking a little fun at some of Zwift’s curious quirks, bugs, and even the occasional strange decision made by ZwiftHQ that doesn’t immediately make sense to the Zwift userbase.

Zwift UI engineers release update unnecessarily and arbitrarily increasing the number of steps required to change direction on a course.

“The old way was so simple, intuitive, and easy” said new chief of UI, Beelzebub. “This is much worse, and we’re really happy with it.”

— Zwift News Network (@ZwiftNews) October 4, 2018

Coupled with that understanding that “ZNN is everyone” is the ethos that “ZNN is FOR everyone.”  Often we get asked to make satirical posts about niche racing issues or to poke fun at individuals within the Zwift community.  While occasionally we do poke a little light-hearted fun at prominent members of the Zwift community, we’re never mean.  We don’t create content about niche elements of Zwift, like individual race events or series.  Not because these aren’t essential to the fabric of Zwift, but because they aren’t relevant to everyone. Furthermore, we’re not in the business of exposing cheaters, making mean-spirited comments about ZwiftHQ members or other community members, or other things that cross the line from “light-hearted satire” into “vindictive and anonymous criticism.”

Sadly, ZNN does occasionally receive requests or submissions of content that fall well outside of our established ethical criteria.  But far and away more, we hear about what a great job Zwift is doing, how much they love Zwift, and suggestions for other light-hearted ways to poke fun at what we love.  We also love that, on occasion, we get angry feedback from people who don’t understand that we’re fans of Zwift just poking a little fun at Zwift, and who angrily push back at our content.  We think that’s great— really!  It shows what a devoted and supportive fanbase Zwift has.

Maybe you’re a big fan of ZNN, maybe you think it’s petulant and silly, or maybe you’ve never even heard of ZNN (@ZwiftNews on Twitter and Facebook).  Regardless, we hope to make this little essay the start of a short series of essays not only detailing ZNN and it’s impact on Zwift, as told by its creators and others who have interacted with us over the last year, but also as a sort of “state of the Zwift community” evaluation as interpreted by ZNN.  We cannot claim to speak for the Zwift community (only that we try to speak as if we could), but we think we are uniquely connected to the people who make Zwift the incredible social fabric that it is. And we think that gives us a really special story to tell.

Of course, ZNN is nothing without content.  (It’s barely something WITH our terrible content).  Did you know that you can send direct messages to ZNN on both Twitter and Facebook?  We read every message we receive!  (Mostly because we never really receive any).  If you’ve got something to say, say it!  Your Zwift joke or satirical observation just might make it in to a ZNN post someday.

Making you smile and love Zwift even more is our mission, and we’d love to hear how we’re doing!  Leave a comment on this post below to let ZNN know just how we’re getting along, or perhaps, if it’s time for us to finally get going.  We can’t wait to hear from you, and to create even more smiles and chuckles from Zwifters in the future!

Your Secret Admirer, ZNN Editor in Chief

Source: https://zwiftinsider.com/who-is-znn/

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

Optimisation is the enemy of creativity in marketing and music

No, you are not becoming crankier as you approach middle age – music is indeed getting worse every year. And the marketing industry’s obsession with optimisation is to blame.

In late 2017, the YouTube channel Thoughty2 published a video exploring how music has changed over the decades. After starting with The Beatles, the narrator continues with an example of classic British understatement: “Fast forward to 2010, when Justin Bieber released his hit single Baby. This is generally considered to be a bad move.”

According to the research in the video, lyrical intelligence, harmonic complexity, and timbral diversity have decreased while dynamic range compression has been used to make music louder and louder. In short, songs are becoming stupider – especially since every hit now includes the “millennial whoop” as well.

“Instead of experimenting with different musical techniques and instruments, the vast majority of pop music today is built using the exact same combination of keyboard, drum machine, sampler, and computer software,” Thoughty2’s narrator states. “This might be considered as progressive by some people, but it truth it sucks the creativity and originality out of music – making everything sound somewhat similar.”

As a rule, businesses do not like risk. The video states that record companies today must spend anywhere from $500,000 to $3m to sign and market a new artist. That is a lot of money to spend on a band without being fully confident of success.

To minimise the risk and maximise the potential return, these companies optimise the music to do whatever seems to have worked in the past. Same set of instruments? Check. Simple lyrics? Check. Is it loud? Check. Simple melody? Check. Can you dance to it? Check. Millennial whoop? Check check.

But that optimisation process is a downward spiral that will result only in songs that will make Rebecca Black’s Friday sound as brilliant as Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. It is creating music by paint-by-numbers. It is ticking boxes rather than being creative. And the same thing is occurring in the marketing industry today.

The rise of optimisation

After my first career in journalism years ago, I went into marketing and at one point met with a recruiter who was looking for a digital marketer. “I need an expert in SEO, ASO, and SMO,” she told me, further rattling off a lengthier list of random acronyms.

“Optimisation” became all the rage after companies discovered in the 2000s how much traffic websites could attract from search engines. After the birth of search engine optimisation (SEO), marketers tacked on the latter word to create “app store optimisation” and “social media optimisation” as well as countless other uses where the term also made little sense.

App store optimisation (ASO) looks for hacks to increase a mobile application’s ranking and findability in places such as the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store – rather than, you know, creating and promoting a real, useful app that people will like. Social media optimisation (SMO) is a useless term because social media is simply a set of channels and tools that can be used for any specific promotion tactic.

Now, businesses have always discussed general best practices. My last job in journalism in the 2000s was serving as the editor-in-chief and executive director of the Boston non-profit newspaper Spare Change News. (It is one of the newspapers in the United States that are modeled on The Big Issue in the UK.)

In that role, I once attended an annual convention of the North American Street Newspaper Association that was held in Halifax, Canada. There, the assembled staffers discussed the best practices in terms of pricing, circulation, and countless other topics. Today, marketers talk about optimisation, which often means the best practices in line with someone else’s algorithms or what has purportedly worked for others.

Buffer has published studies on the ideal lengths of everything from blog posts to tweets to headlines to Facebook updates. HubSpot has reported the best times to post on social media. But in the end, both best practices and optimisation come down to the same thing: doing what everyone else is doing.

The perils of optimisation

Once, I was in a meeting where people were discussing how to get more traffic from blog posts spread on Facebook. The ideas focused on using psychology and gaming the social network’s algorithm: “Let’s ask people to comment on posts to increase engagement!” and “Let’s change the posts so that they are lists whose headlines start with numbers!”

“Make a funny, creative video advertisement instead,” I suggested, noting the reach that humorous videos receive on Facebook. But no one listened. Everyone cared so much about optimising the form of the creative that no one thought about the creativity of the creative. They prioritised the form over the function.

The perfect example of this is when marketers see studies on which headlines get the most “engagement.” In June 2017, Buzzsumo analysed 100m headlines and found this information on which headlines receive the most clicks, “likes,” and shares on Facebook:

Too many digital marketers use such information and focus on producing whatever marcom is cheapest and then optimising it. Here is a sample of recent blog posts on Medium from a certain prolific marketing writer:

5 Strange But True Habits of the World’s Richest People

5 Smart Reasons to Create Content Outside Your Niche

5 Simple Hacks to Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence

10 Insanely Good Reasons You Should Publish On Medium

3 Unusual Hacks to Completely Up Your LinkedIn Game

Bored now.

Too many marketers go overboard and focus on optimisation to produce rubbish marketing such as clickbait blog posts with the same headline format such as this: [number] [unnecessarily strong adjective] [noun] to [achieve some goal].

The internet will continue to be flooded with boring, optimised posts that all have the same title formats in an effort to get clicks or satisfy other short-term metrics. But optimisation is the enemy of creativity and leads to worst long-term results. (Just look at how many reboots of successful TV shows from the 80s and 90s have failed today. The studios likely thought that copying what was done before would guarantee another success.)

Redundant optimisation quickly becomes cliched, hurts the brand, and is obvious to consumers. If Oxford Academic were to title journal articles in the above manner, the Oxford brand would become laughable. The only way for BuzzFeed News to be taken seriously – and the publication is indeed doing excellent journalism – has been to decouple its brand from the notoriously clickbait parent company.

Optimised reflects only short-term thinking. Using clickbait to get people to a website is the same as knocking people over the head and dragging them into your store. They may be there, but they will not buy anything because they will hate your brand.

When everyone optimises for everything, it is no longer a competitive advantage. The only true competitive advantage that people will have is what rests in their brains – creativity. Without that, you will only be as good as everyone else.

The benefits of creativity

According to an updated study in Admap magazine by Data2Decisions founder Paul Dyson, creativity is – by far – the second-best profit multiplier after market size:

Optimisation and best practices aim to do what someone else defines or the best of what everyone else does – but nothing more than that.

"Best practice is like training wheels – it keeps you safe whilst you're learning how to excel in your industry,” Helen Pollitt, head of SEO at the British digital marketing agency Reflect Digital, said. “To really differentiate yourself from the competition you need to be open to experimentation and growth, true optimisation requires facing failure. The issue with sticking to the safe zone of best practice is it stifles creativity."

The best depiction of the benefit of being different that I have seen comes from this BBH ad:

People notice what is different. And if your marketing does not get noticed in the first place, nothing else you do matters. As BBH London strategy director Lucian Trestler recently put it:

“‘Difference’ isn’t just a two bob philosophy or a frivolous creative penchant. It is the most powerful communications tool there is to deliver commercial results. We have a vast amount of data to support that. Evidence from neuroscience, marketing science and creative effectiveness data all agree on this point; difference is commercially safer than ‘safety.’”

Optimising based on data or algorithms is easier than being creative – but it is not always better, according to Wistia co-founder and chief executive Chris Savage.

“Today, everyone scores their leads with Marketo and A/B tests thirty different varieties of their landing page. You can’t get a competitive advantage doing that stuff anymore. You could say that as the percentage of marketers with a certain tech stack or using a certain tool approaches 100%, the competitive advantage you reap from it approaches zero,” he once wrote. "Using data to scale your marketing is critical. But when we all have access to the same types of data, it won’t be the data that differentiates us — it’ll be the art.”

Tom Goodwin recently said something similar: “A/B testing seems to be getting out of hand. Seems to be a way to offload decision making, not have a strategy, or gut or courage. What great art/music/products would ever be made this way?”

But tell that to those digital marketers who think only in terms of optimisation. Tell that to high-tech chief executives who want to mimic the marketing of competitors and think that they need only a differentiated product to be successful. (Just like record companies, startups are risk-averse because they do not want to lose the millions of investor dollars.)

In a quote attributed to John Ward from B&B Dorland in England, “advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total mayhem.”

At Digital Annexe University in 2015, Dave Trott gave a classic speech on creativity. Effective communications, he said, needs to have an impact, needs to communicate, and needs to be persuasive. “Impact” is the most important part.

“Impact will get you on the radar,” he said. “Without impact, there’s nothing there. There might be a bloke outside on the street right now telling us the secret of all life, and we’ll never know because we can’t hear him. Without impact, nothing happens.”

Now, take the desire of so many marketers to optimise all collateral to match some alleged universal standard. How will their work be different from that of everyone else? How will their work stand out? How will their work have an impact?

“Optimisation might work for certain businesses for a certain amount of time,” Steve Daniels, an independent graphic designer in the UK, said. “This course of action may feel safer, but it only remains safe if there are no competitors who disrupt the market or start playing the brand game in a strong way. As soon as that happens, focusing on creativity is a great a way to play the long game – and to invest in your future success.”

If your business wants to remain safe, no one will notice you. Taking creative risks is how you become memorable.

A quick recommendation

So, if you want to listen to an album where the musicians wrote their own material, played dozens of instruments, and created songs that are lyrically intelligent, harmonically complex, and timbrally diverse, I have an assignment for you.

Listen to records or remastered CDs of the Moody Blues album In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) and The Smiths’ song How Soon Is Now? (1985) with a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones and some refreshment of your choice. Maybe it will kickstart some creative inspiration.

After all, the Beatles will be remembered forever. Justin Bieber will not.

The Promotion Fix is an exclusive biweekly column for The Drum contributed by global marketing and technology keynote speaker Samuel Scott, a former journalist, consultant and director of marketing in the high-tech industry. Follow him on Twitter. Scott is based out of Tel Aviv, Israel.

This content was originally published here.

[stowawayproductions-blog]

Border - We Are All Disgusting

Any of us who have seen Let the Right One In know that writer John Ajvide Lindqvist has a unique voice, giving three dimensional life to fairy tales as old as mankind. It’s not a niche subject. We’ve seen many attempts to realize the Grimm fairy tales (among others), usually without success. Lindqvist, however, modernizes classic fables by looking at the real modern world, bringing together light fantasy and grotesque reality into a perfect blend of cold Scandinavian wonder.

While many of the plotlines are shocking and definitely not for the faint of heart, Border finds a balance by moving us seamlessly between gruesome examples of life at its ugliest and quiet explorations of nature and love. Tina (Eva Melander) is a perfect heroine for us to follow, acting as a kind and courteous guide into an uncharted myth, questioning just enough without giving way to needless exposition.

Lindqvist and director Ali Abbasi pull at our minds and judgments by giving us the character of Vore (Eero Milonoff) to wrestle with. Is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? Do we only think he’s a bad guy because of his appearance? Or do we only think he’s a good guy because we’re compensating for our original villainous assumption of his appearance? Making Vore a much more difficult character to digest is a subtle and genius way of connecting us with Tina, and reminding us that we aren’t watching a story simply about not judging others for their outward condition, there’s so much more going on.

My only complaint is the unnecessarily graphic depiction of an unspeakable act, but it is brief and it could be argued that it helps drive home the seriousness of the horrid situation; it just wasn’t my cup of tea. What the film lacks in decorum it well makes up for with astounding performances all around, surprising moments of humor, and jaw-dropping makeup and visual effects that took me pleasantly by surprise. My favorite moment was a truly glorious scene of nudist freedom that brought tears to my eyes.

What’s beautiful about a film like this is that each viewer brings a different life to it. Myself, being of a less-than-average body type, connected with Tina’s feeling of no one seeing her as a woman or appreciating her looks. My fiance, who struggles with social anxiety, was moved by the attention to loneliness and dangerously strong desire to connect. Another viewer might be drawn to the topical exploration of xenophobia and mutual disgust by two similar sides. Someone else might come away pondering the difficult decision of betraying one’s morals or remaining forever alone.

Regardless of which messages were intended by the creators, or which theme is arguably “the point,” Lindqvist and Abbasi have laid out a canvas for us to paint our emotions onto and explore at our own leisure. They put forth a story about an extraordinary world filled with extraordinary beings who possess extraordinary powers, and yet I have rarely seen a film that is so relatable for us ordinary humans.

For a quiet, strange movie that I’m still not quite sure I fully understand, it has remained cemented in my brain since the moment I saw it and I suspect I will be wrestling with its messages for years to come. One thing, however, is made abundantly clear: we are all evil, we are all good, we are all lost, and we are all disgusting; human or mythical entity, we are all the same.

Rating: Good. In my top 20 of 2018.

Good 19) Crazy Rich Asians 20) Border 21) BlackkKlansman 22) First Reformed 23) A Quiet Place 24) Annihilation 25) Tag 26) Can You Ever Forgive Me? 27) Overlord 28) First Man 29) Blaze 30) The Miseducation of Cameron Post 31) The Hate U Give 32) Avengers: Infinity War 33) Black Panther 34) Tully 35) Hereditary 36) Searching 37) Mandy 38) Widows

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

Optimisation is the enemy of creativity in marketing and music

No, you are not becoming crankier as you approach middle age – music is indeed getting worse every year. And the marketing industry’s obsession with optimisation is to blame.

In late 2017, the YouTube channel Thoughty2 published a video exploring how music has changed over the decades. After starting with The Beatles, the narrator continues with an example of classic British understatement: “Fast forward to 2010, when Justin Bieber released his hit single Baby. This is generally considered to be a bad move.”

According to the research in the video, lyrical intelligence, harmonic complexity, and timbral diversity have decreased while dynamic range compression has been used to make music louder and louder. In short, songs are becoming stupider – especially since every hit now includes the “millennial whoop” as well.

“Instead of experimenting with different musical techniques and instruments, the vast majority of pop music today is built using the exact same combination of keyboard, drum machine, sampler, and computer software,” Thoughty2’s narrator states. “This might be considered as progressive by some people, but it truth it sucks the creativity and originality out of music – making everything sound somewhat similar.”

As a rule, businesses do not like risk. The video states that record companies today must spend anywhere from $500,000 to $3m to sign and market a new artist. That is a lot of money to spend on a band without being fully confident of success.

To minimise the risk and maximise the potential return, these companies optimise the music to do whatever seems to have worked in the past. Same set of instruments? Check. Simple lyrics? Check. Is it loud? Check. Simple melody? Check. Can you dance to it? Check. Millennial whoop? Check check.

But that optimisation process is a downward spiral that will result only in songs that will make Rebecca Black’s Friday sound as brilliant as Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. It is creating music by paint-by-numbers. It is ticking boxes rather than being creative. And the same thing is occurring in the marketing industry today.

The rise of optimisation

After my first career in journalism years ago, I went into marketing and at one point met with a recruiter who was looking for a digital marketer. “I need an expert in SEO, ASO, and SMO,” she told me, further rattling off a lengthier list of random acronyms.

“Optimisation” became all the rage after companies discovered in the 2000s how much traffic websites could attract from search engines. After the birth of search engine optimisation (SEO), marketers tacked on the latter word to create “app store optimisation” and “social media optimisation” as well as countless other uses where the term also made little sense.

App store optimisation (ASO) looks for hacks to increase a mobile application’s ranking and findability in places such as the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store – rather than, you know, creating and promoting a real, useful app that people will like. Social media optimisation (SMO) is a useless term because social media is simply a set of channels and tools that can be used for any specific promotion tactic.

Now, businesses have always discussed general best practices. My last job in journalism in the 2000s was serving as the editor-in-chief and executive director of the Boston non-profit newspaper Spare Change News. (It is one of the newspapers in the United States that are modeled on The Big Issue in the UK.)

In that role, I once attended an annual convention of the North American Street Newspaper Association that was held in Halifax, Canada. There, the assembled staffers discussed the best practices in terms of pricing, circulation, and countless other topics. Today, marketers talk about optimisation, which often means the best practices in line with someone else’s algorithms or what has purportedly worked for others.

Buffer has published studies on the ideal lengths of everything from blog posts to tweets to headlines to Facebook updates. HubSpot has reported the best times to post on social media. But in the end, both best practices and optimisation come down to the same thing: doing what everyone else is doing.

The perils of optimisation

Once, I was in a meeting where people were discussing how to get more traffic from blog posts spread on Facebook. The ideas focused on using psychology and gaming the social network’s algorithm: “Let’s ask people to comment on posts to increase engagement!” and “Let’s change the posts so that they are lists whose headlines start with numbers!”

“Make a funny, creative video advertisement instead,” I suggested, noting the reach that humorous videos receive on Facebook. But no one listened. Everyone cared so much about optimising the form of the creative that no one thought about the creativity of the creative. They prioritised the form over the function.

The perfect example of this is when marketers see studies on which headlines get the most “engagement.” In June 2017, Buzzsumo analysed 100m headlines and found this information on which headlines receive the most clicks, “likes,” and shares on Facebook:

Too many digital marketers use such information and focus on producing whatever marcom is cheapest and then optimising it. Here is a sample of recent blog posts on Medium from a certain prolific marketing writer:

5 Strange But True Habits of the World’s Richest People

5 Smart Reasons to Create Content Outside Your Niche

5 Simple Hacks to Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence

10 Insanely Good Reasons You Should Publish On Medium

3 Unusual Hacks to Completely Up Your LinkedIn Game

Bored now.

Too many marketers go overboard and focus on optimisation to produce rubbish marketing such as clickbait blog posts with the same headline format such as this: [number] [unnecessarily strong adjective] [noun] to [achieve some goal].

The internet will continue to be flooded with boring, optimised posts that all have the same title formats in an effort to get clicks or satisfy other short-term metrics. But optimisation is the enemy of creativity and leads to worst long-term results. (Just look at how many reboots of successful TV shows from the 80s and 90s have failed today. The studios likely thought that copying what was done before would guarantee another success.)

Redundant optimisation quickly becomes cliched, hurts the brand, and is obvious to consumers. If Oxford Academic were to title journal articles in the above manner, the Oxford brand would become laughable. The only way for BuzzFeed News to be taken seriously – and the publication is indeed doing excellent journalism – has been to decouple its brand from the notoriously clickbait parent company.

Optimised reflects only short-term thinking. Using clickbait to get people to a website is the same as knocking people over the head and dragging them into your store. They may be there, but they will not buy anything because they will hate your brand.

When everyone optimises for everything, it is no longer a competitive advantage. The only true competitive advantage that people will have is what rests in their brains – creativity. Without that, you will only be as good as everyone else.

The benefits of creativity

According to an updated study in Admap magazine by Data2Decisions founder Paul Dyson, creativity is – by far – the second-best profit multiplier after market size:

Optimisation and best practices aim to do what someone else defines or the best of what everyone else does – but nothing more than that.

"Best practice is like training wheels – it keeps you safe whilst you're learning how to excel in your industry,” Helen Pollitt, head of SEO at the British digital marketing agency Reflect Digital, said. “To really differentiate yourself from the competition you need to be open to experimentation and growth, true optimisation requires facing failure. The issue with sticking to the safe zone of best practice is it stifles creativity."

The best depiction of the benefit of being different that I have seen comes from this BBH ad:

People notice what is different. And if your marketing does not get noticed in the first place, nothing else you do matters. As BBH London strategy director Lucian Trestler recently put it:

“‘Difference’ isn’t just a two bob philosophy or a frivolous creative penchant. It is the most powerful communications tool there is to deliver commercial results. We have a vast amount of data to support that. Evidence from neuroscience, marketing science and creative effectiveness data all agree on this point; difference is commercially safer than ‘safety.’”

Optimising based on data or algorithms is easier than being creative – but it is not always better, according to Wistia co-founder and chief executive Chris Savage.

“Today, everyone scores their leads with Marketo and A/B tests thirty different varieties of their landing page. You can’t get a competitive advantage doing that stuff anymore. You could say that as the percentage of marketers with a certain tech stack or using a certain tool approaches 100%, the competitive advantage you reap from it approaches zero,” he once wrote. "Using data to scale your marketing is critical. But when we all have access to the same types of data, it won’t be the data that differentiates us — it’ll be the art.”

Tom Goodwin recently said something similar: “A/B testing seems to be getting out of hand. Seems to be a way to offload decision making, not have a strategy, or gut or courage. What great art/music/products would ever be made this way?”

But tell that to those digital marketers who think only in terms of optimisation. Tell that to high-tech chief executives who want to mimic the marketing of competitors and think that they need only a differentiated product to be successful. (Just like record companies, startups are risk-averse because they do not want to lose the millions of investor dollars.)

In a quote attributed to John Ward from B&B Dorland in England, “advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total mayhem.”

At Digital Annexe University in 2015, Dave Trott gave a classic speech on creativity. Effective communications, he said, needs to have an impact, needs to communicate, and needs to be persuasive. “Impact” is the most important part.

“Impact will get you on the radar,” he said. “Without impact, there’s nothing there. There might be a bloke outside on the street right now telling us the secret of all life, and we’ll never know because we can’t hear him. Without impact, nothing happens.”

Now, take the desire of so many marketers to optimise all collateral to match some alleged universal standard. How will their work be different from that of everyone else? How will their work stand out? How will their work have an impact?

“Optimisation might work for certain businesses for a certain amount of time,” Steve Daniels, an independent graphic designer in the UK, said. “This course of action may feel safer, but it only remains safe if there are no competitors who disrupt the market or start playing the brand game in a strong way. As soon as that happens, focusing on creativity is a great a way to play the long game – and to invest in your future success.”

If your business wants to remain safe, no one will notice you. Taking creative risks is how you become memorable.

A quick recommendation

So, if you want to listen to an album where the musicians wrote their own material, played dozens of instruments, and created songs that are lyrically intelligent, harmonically complex, and timbrally diverse, I have an assignment for you.

Listen to records or remastered CDs of the Moody Blues album In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) and The Smiths’ song How Soon Is Now? (1985) with a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones and some refreshment of your choice. Maybe it will kickstart some creative inspiration.

After all, the Beatles will be remembered forever. Justin Bieber will not.

The Promotion Fix is an exclusive biweekly column for The Drum contributed by global marketing and technology keynote speaker Samuel Scott, a former journalist, consultant and director of marketing in the high-tech industry. Follow him on Twitter. Scott is based out of Tel Aviv, Israel.

This content was originally published here.