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universitypenguin · 3 years ago

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What happened to u? U okay?

Hello!

First off, thank you for your concern. I appreciate it and I needed it after the past two days. To answer your question - I'm doing great.

I don’t have a lot of context about your question, but I’m guessing your concern is due to my recent blocking spree. A day ago, I went through my followers list and found some minors. I’ve previously seen smut fanfic writers concerned by underage people interacting with their posts. Until I had to block a few of them, I wasn’t aware how uncomfortable it would make me feel.

Since the blocking spree, I've had a lot of thoughts. I'm about to spew them everywhere. You might regret asking me if I was okay. Sorry about that. No one needs to read this whole manifesto about my rollercoaster of emotions the past few days. But in the interest of transparency, I'm posting this very long note.

What I want my readers to know is the following:

Tumblr is both a place for fanfiction and a social media site.

When I interact with followers and write explicit content, I have to be careful about what I'm saying and who I'm saying it to.

I don't intend to block or purge my followers in the future.

As long as I appropriately tag and put warnings on my work, that is adequate protection for my blog. Everything I write containing explicit content is tagged.

However, I won't interact with users who don't have an age stated in their bio.

There have to be boundaries, given the content of my writing. But I've also come around to the realization that I'm not capable of policing every interaction. Tumblr is a public forum. Minors following me makes me uncomfortable. But by the same token, my work is clearly labeled at 18+ and so is my blog.

There's a lot of explicit content out there for minors if you really think about it. In my high school freshman English class we talked about the book "The Color Purple." Believe me, that was explicit and we were only 14. Any minor with a library card and a Google browser can access a lot more intense content than what I write. I hope they're all being safe, but I can't have a melt down blocking spree again.

I'm not a cop, I'm not a parent, and what minors consume is down to them and the adult responsible for them. If I know someone is a minor I'll block them, should I notice they're trying to interact with me. Otherwise, I'm not purging my followers ever again. It's too much drama. I'd rather leave Tumblr than do that twice. I'm tired and I'm starting to work on my post graduate classes, I work full time in a demanding job, I'm in the process of editing my novel, and trying to keep up with my personal life. Quite literally, I don't have time to block. Writing fanfic is supposed to be my fun time. Let's keep it that way.

Due to the fact that some people I blocked were later unblocked after I took a closer look at their blogs, I'm posting a full explanation below. A quick summary is this:

After only writing for three months, I'd amassed 500 followers. On Monday I blocked almost 200 of them. Then I reviewed my block list and editing down some people who were prematurely blocked. [I assume the anon is one of the unblocked who had me disappear from their dash. Sorry!] This blocking thing isn't sustainable. In the future I'll run my blog differently as far as interaction goes in an effort to be responsible.

Continue reading for the saga of:

The Great Blocking Spree and Existential Crisis of an Erotic Fanfic Writer.

The Blocking Spree:

On Monday I realized a thirteen year old was following me and interacting with my work. This creeped me out.

*Commence blocking spree*

Then I realized how daunting my followers list was. I had 500 followers prior to Monday. That day I blocked about 200 people (some of them prematurely - more on that later.) So after the daunting task of trying to assume, to check bios for ages, to review blog content and determine the user's age, I was tired. Today, I even took a moment to reconsider if I wanted to use Tumblr. Because if all this is my responsibility, maybe I don't have the time or dedication to manage it. When I can be chill, I try to be. This attitude also affected by blocking. It contributed to me unblocking people. When I was doing the blocking spree, I'd give people with no age in their bio a fair shot by reviewing their posts.

I blocked some bot accounts, then a bunch of blank blogs, some ambiguous people who very well could be of age. For the first 100 followers I was pretty aggressive. Then my attention span dropped off and I was a bit more ambivalent. I realized I was doing a crappy job of moderating and wondered what the point was.

The point was that the thirteen year old interacting with my work freaked me out. When I found two sixteen year old followers, it pushed me to continue the purge.

So on I go, blocking. I'm so responsible for doing this, right? But my methodology is crap. What is context for being an adult? Someone had posted about budgeting advice. I thought the budgeting advice was too good for it not to have come from an adult. But my father's a financial advisor and to be honest, I could have given that level of advice at fifteen just from osmosis. Someone had pictures of themselves entering their marijuana plants in the Oregon State Fair. Okay, you've got to be over 18. I didn't block them. Someone else complained about their stats professor and I didn't block them. But in retrospect, one of my high school friends got permission to take college level math courses when we were seniors. She was seventeen when she had a stats professor. The thought circles back - what am I accomplishing here? Next, I went back and unblocked someone who ranted about her Tinder matches being 60 year old men. I wondered if their post was even real. I've lied on the internet before. Nonetheless, I persisted and worked through all 500 followers. When I was done I had 312 followers left.

Post Blocking Spree Existential Crisis:

I know that all the blocking in the world can't stop a teenager who wants to read smut fanfic. I'm not much for posting on social media and I'm not used to a lot of anonymous interaction online. Honestly, I got rid of my SM accounts during college when I felt it was wasting my time. This is the first time I've really use a social media site to post content since college. My twitter account is unused, my Instagram is for close personal friends only, and my TikTok is for mindless consumption of cat videos. (I've trained the algorithm to feed me only cat videos, it's great and I highly recommend it.) I don't post on TikTok, so I don't consider it full use, just lurking.

Okay, Alice, get back to the point....

Right, being anonymous on social media. My blocks are a fence and it's based on self identification from the blogs that follow me. I have little faith in underage consumers to out themselves. I have even less faith in their honesty or respect for an adult's boundaries. They're at a stage in life where they want to push the boundaries. Telling them no is all but inviting them in. I did my blocking spree because I was worried about backlash from someone's parents. But what reasonable judge would come after a fanfic writer? Come on. Logical thoughts but me emotional distress was still brewing.

Why I am the one responsible for who clicks the follow button on my blog? I've always clearly identified what I write and tagged my work as smut.

That thought snapped me out of my whirlwind of anxious thoughts. So I started looking into the laws. My regular work involves medicine, not the legal profession, so I was lost. I found some state level laws that made me glad I'd gone on a blocking spree. California and Florida have specific language in their laws about 'providing minors with explicit content.' But what exactly is that? What I researched applied to the following activities: co-writing smut fanfic with other people, sexting, roleplaying and online messaging.

I run a fanfic blog with limited interaction. I've never done an ask. I don't roleplay on here and I don't want to.

The blocks weren't personal. They were partly based on the awareness that Tumblr is an interactive site and a place that's had a problem with child pornography in the past. But I'm not the smut police. I suck at blocking, and I doubt I did a good job of purging my followers list. This is when it hit me that boundaries are only what I can enforce. They've never been about how other people relate to me, only how I relate to them. (Wow. I've never sounded more like my mother in my life...) After this thought, I started considering what actions I ought to take if I wanted to keep posting fanfic on Tumblr.

My Post Blocking Spree Clarity...

It's up to me who I interact with. I don't have to reply to every comment and re-blog, but I'd like to. I'm stuck between wanting to write for everyone and handling interactions on a social media site that's mostly anonymous.

The fact remains: I can't be the smut police because I suck at it.

What I've decided is that I'll make it very clear on my blog that this is an 18+ space where I publish erotic fanfiction. Smut will always be appropriately marked. I'm not going to interact with reviews, re-blogs, and messages from accounts who don't have their age in their profile. I won't include them in my tag list either. The internet is a public forum. Just as with publishing erotica, once it's out there online for download, it's done. As a ghost writer and an author, I don't control who buys my original fiction, which is just as spicy as my fanfiction. (Trust me, it's explicit. I once had a romance editor tell me I should dial it back on the smutty parts of a novel because "it's a lot of sex for a non-erotica market.") The key difference on Tumblr is about interaction. And that's something I can control. I can decide when I reply to other users. What brought me around to this was the realization that even after the blocking spree, I can't review every single like I get. That's an amount of time and mental energy that's beyond me. Just the past two days have been exhausting and sapped my will to write. Which sucks because I need to go write the next chapter of "Restitution" before tomorrow.

I think the reasons I went on the blocking spree are nuanced. The thirteen year old freaked me out. So did the other underaged people who had ages in their bios. But it also relates to my work. In my job I've seen some nasty child abuse cases. Early on in my career, when I was a 23 year old new hire, I was working on an autopsy for a child abuse victim who'd been murdered by their parent. It was so terrible and graphic, I had to ask one of my older colleagues to take the case. This colleague didn't like me. But she took one look at my face and took the file. She closed out the review without a question and never brought it up again to anyone. I was very grateful. Where I used to work (and where this incident took place) was a major city that holds the unfortunate title of being the human trafficking capital of the US. And something I learned working there was that most human trafficking victims go with their captors willingly. In two years at that job, I never saw one who'd been kidnapped from a dark alley like you see on TV. They were all groomed on social media and thought they were escaping their families (who were often overbearing, toxic, or dysfunctional) for a get away with friends. It was a fun adventure with their internet buddies, until it wasn't.

In retrospect, the underage interaction I found on my blog made me react because of what I've been through. The autopsy case kept coming back to me today while I was at work and I've finally untangled my emotions enough to figure out what caused my melt down. When I was blocking, I was feeling an anxious motivation that I know can only stem from the stress I deal with at my job. Don't feel sorry for me about this - I know my work in medicine helps a lot of people and it's a tremendously satisfying career.

Our Saga's Resolution & How I'm Going to Deal With This In The Future...

- - - - -

In post block clarity, I offer this conclusion:

I'm writing on a public forum. My work is appropriately tagged as smut. In the future, I will also use the tag #no minors to help with filtering. I've always asked underage people not to interact. And on a public forum, what more can I reasonably do? Going forward I will only interact with those who have their age posted in their bio. But blocking sprees and policing every interaction isn't feasible.

I'll review how I'm going to run my tag lists as well. I need to think it over and let my followers know my decision as to if I'll continue using them. Because tagging is definitely interaction and my current tag list was not screened at all. *face palm*

Finally, to my readers who have blank blogs or don't have an age listed. I respect your right to privacy and I'm careful with my personal information as well. But I've also had an uncomfortable two days. If you've lasted through this venting session until now, you must understand that I'm upset by underage interaction. I'm setting my own boundaries and going forward, I'll own my side of the internet. No interaction from me, unless I know your age. Full stop - no exceptions. I think it is reasonable for me to suggest that you leave something on your blog that signifies you are not a minor, whatever that may be. Someone who I didn't block that stands out in my memory had a bio that said "90s baby." It was simple, direct, and left no doubt they were over 18. No age reveal and not even a name. If you put something like this on your blog it'll help explicit content creators feel more comfortable about their interactions.

I went on a spree this Monday and I admit to being heavy handed and aggressive about pruning followers. I had an emotional reaction due to work stress and I didn't think things through logically. I'm relieved for the chance explain myself and set new boundaries that I'm capable of sticking to in the future. But remember - the block button is on my side of the screen. At the end of the day, you might be unhappy with me for the block, but it's my button, it's my blog, and I'll use it as I see fit.

Thank you for reading.

#tw vent #tw child abuse #tw trauma #tw violence #tw human trafficking #penguin blog update #new rules #i'm sorry #its been a long week #I almost left tumblr over this #blocking spree #clarity #smut #no minors #smut fanfiction #smut writing #smut blog #I talk about my work trauma from medicine #boundaries

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1989xtaylorsversion · 4 years ago

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emma macdonald: is she worth watching or should you keep scrolling? my thoughts, opinions, and review.

i don’t know about a lot of you, but if you’re someone who watches a lot of youtube, you might’ve stumbled upon one of the most fascinating and interesting genres on the platform - lifestyle vlogs. there are countless people - mostly teen / young adult girls who document their lives and journeys of going through life, and sharing their daily or weekly celebrations, struggles, and experiences. most of them live a life that seems glamorous and fun, but it begs the question of who��s really telling the truth and who’s just putting on a show?

i’ve watched a lot of lifestyle gurus, and one person in particular i’ve stumbled upon a little over a year ago was miss emma macdonald (pictured below). in case you don’t know who she is, she’s a 19 year old vlogger from boston, massachusetts. according to her, her channel “is mostly around my daily life, fitness, health, fashion (if hoodies and sweatpants count). Mostly a place to make you happy and feel good about you!!” in this current moment, she has garnered 336k subscribers. something i find kind of unique about her is the fact that her older sister maggie also has a youtube channel with 327k subscribers, and she makes similar content, if her description is anything to go by.

now don’t get me wrong, two sisters making similar content isn’t that special, but it’s just a little interesting. based on their videos, you can tell they’re very close and often hang out together and make cameos in each other’s vlogs, which isn’t surprising since they live close together.

EMMA’S CHANNEL - her likability

now, diving into emma’s channel, here’s my opinion. i can totally see her appeal. i mean, let’s not forget the society in which we live in. she’s a young, conventionally attractive, white, thin, and blonde woman living an incredibly privileged life in one of the best cities in america. with these factors it’s no surprise she has an audience. i will admit, there are times i’ve watched her channel and i find myself having this surge of sudden motivation, and i suddenly want to go and do something besides watch youtube videos all day. i think sometimes she gives off good vibes in her videos, and i enjoy watching her and her sister interact - they’re very sweet together.

WHERE EMMA FALLS SHORT

if i’m being honest, my problem with emma lies in the fact that oftentimes she comes across as materialistic. don’t get me wrong, i know she must make a ton of money on youtube, and i’m not going to sit here and tell her how to spend her money. she can do whatever she wants with it, but the amount of times she uploads videos in which she talks about her clothes, sneakers, and sweats can't go unnoticed. i don’t want to come across as nitpicky, but this criticism is one i often read in her comment sections, and on tumblr blogs. it’s also a prevalent thing i find with a lot of young influencers these days. it gives off the vibe of all show, and no substance. i think emma is capable of making good content, but there are moments when she comes across as vapid and shallow. i’m not saying every vlog has to be some shakespearean masterpiece, but if you go through her catalogue from even the past few months, you’d see what i’m talking about.

on a related note, another opinion i’ve developed and read is that emma’s life just isn’t all too interesting. if we narrow down how many of her vlogs are centered around her talking about shopping, hanging out with her sister, working out, or just riding in her car, it’d probably add up to 95% of her content. i understand that’s what her content would revolve around according to her description, but i often wonder, if you took away the glitz and glamor, and she was a regular girl, would you be interested in her life? some content is exciting, but it’s really nothing special. i mean, how long can you show the same thing before people move on and grow out of it? i watched maggie’s videos to get a sense of these two, and sometimes i prefer maggie’s vlogs to emma’s. i think maggie’s older age and maturity givers her a certain appeal that i don’t always see from emma. the macdonald sisters make very similar content, so it’s not a huge contrast, but sometimes i feel like i prefer maggie’s videos to emma’s. it’s subjective, of course, but since i’ve caught myself having these thoughts, i feel like it’s worth noting.

EMMA’S LIFE - who is she?

when we watch these people, it’s natural to want to know everything about them, including their personal life. sometimes the line between privacy and honesty gets blurred and youtubers overshare and reveal too much, or they share too little and their subscribers feel as if they know nothing about the person they’re watching. i feel like emma falls somewhere in the middle because she does open up about personal struggles, relationships, and journeys, but she also maintains a certain level of privacy that’s probably needed for the internet. however, one thing i always wonder is who are emma’s friends? if you watch her videos, you can see that her best friend is maggie. it’s common for your sibling to be your best friend, but is that all? emma has youtube friends, and her roommate, but she hardly talks about them. one of her public friendships is with paige lorenze, who’s not exactly the paragon of maturity and likability. the common consensus with paige is not a favorable one, and i can make a whole post dedicated to her and her foolishness. it’s not surprising these two paired up since they seem to be in the hockey scene, but that's another topic. something worth noting with these two is that months ago emma uploaded a grwm for a date night video, and she essentially promoted products in which all signs pointed to a pyramid scheme. she had hundreds of people telling her to be more cautious and judicious about what she promotes, but she held her belief that they were good, clean products since paige was a consultant for the company. this rubbed me and everyone else with a modicum of common sense the wrong way, because she clearly didn’t do her due diligence, and she didn’t realize that it’s probably not the smartest idea to promote a pyramid scheme. emma’s audience is likely made up of girls her age and younger who are impressionable. she has to be more aware of what she puts out there. it’s not a huge scandal, but it wasn't one of her brightest moments. if she keeps that up, i can totally see her carelessness getting her into more trouble later on.

additionally, i feel like she’s had fall outs with some of her friends, such as her high school best friend ella. i don’t know too much about her, but it’s obvious emma and ella have been best friends for a long time, and she even made a lot of appearances in emma’s earlier videos. however, clearly something went wrong at some point because i recall months ago ella made a tiktok calling emma out for trying to confess her love for ella’s boyfriend. i also recall emma clapping back in the comments, but then she talked about hanging out with ella in some of her recent vlogs, so who knows what even happened there. i just found this to be shady, and if it’s the truth, it could be indicative of emma’s character. but, since not much came of this, i guess there’s not much to tell.

overall, what do i think of emma?

i think she’s an average girl who just got lucky with the platform she’s been given. you can find a hundred girls like her on any social media. she’s not reinventing the wheel or anything with her content. i can see the appeal at times, but her vlogs are nothing more than those videos you watch at night when you want to shut your brain off and unwind.

what i would love to see more of is her real personality. something that other people say about emma (when she’s with her sister or friends) is that she’s actually a funny person in real life and it doesn’t always come across that way in videos. i’d love for her to open up more about her true self and make more sit down videos, or more q&a’s. the q&a she did with paige recently was actually a pleasant change of pace, and i liked some of the things she had to say. when she vlogs her daily or weekly life, and all she talks about is working out, shopping, or hanging out with her sister, i don’t feel like i see her real self, and i certainly don’t see the humor everyone else raves about. if she showed her true personality a little bit more, then maybe people would see a different, less materialistic version of herself. she has the potential, but right now i’m not seeing anything incredibly special.

overall rating:

3/5

EDIT: JAN 11, 2O21

as i’m editing this, the macdonald sisters have decided to travel - AGAIN - during the PANDEMIC. i’m not sure if they understand this little concept, but a social media following doesn’t exempt them from catching corona. it’s really disappointing to see them traveling for the third time?? i’ve lost count because they keep doing it. like i stated in my conclusion, their videos aren’t anything spectacular, so i get going on a vacation spices your content up, but girls read the room. if influencers can’t be entertaining without traveling all the time, then why do they even have a youtube channel? the comments on maggie’s tiktok in which people rightfully called them out for their recent trip gives me some hope in humanity. at least some people know better. @ macdonald sisters, be smarter. do better. you guys have an influence. google the definition of the word if you have to, just stay home.

#emma macdonald #maggie macdonald #youtube #vlogs #paige lorenze #lifestyle #hockey #nhl

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general-mahamatra · 4 years ago

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Spalbert being domestic? Love your writing!

Spalbert, eh? fuck yeah dude

i’ll admit... i went a bit overboard and its more like “cooking with albert with some added heated making out” but what can i say? i couldnt stop myself

Pairing: Spalbert

Genre: Slice of Life

TW: Suggestive/Mildly Graphic NSFW

Wordcount: 3862

Note: I went overboard please send help. Also, sorry I can’t shorten it! Tumblr hates to work with me when I make these posts and edit them

Cooking dinner was not a common occurrence in the small Conlon-DaSilva apartment. It was rarer than the sight of them doing anything romantic in general.

But their one year anniversary was coming up and Albert wanted to do something special.

He stood in the doorway of the tiny kitchen, hands clasped together just under his chin. He had no idea what he was doing. Despite his years of friendship with Racer, all of the knowledge Albert had gained fell through. The guy barely retained information; he was lucky if he could remember what happened the day before. Hell, he didn’t even know what he had for breakfast that morning.

...did he eat breakfast?

Albert wasn’t too sure about that. His mind drew a blank the harder he thought, only resulting in a minor headache to begin his descent into misery. This wasn’t going to go well, was it?

His eyes slipped shut as he took a deep breath. Slowly, he exhaled, allowing the air to seep out at its own pace.

He can do this. He has the ingredients. He just needs to be careful with instructions and find the recipe Race had given him months ago. It shouldn’t be too hard.

Opening his eyes, Albert let his hands fall to his sides.

Spot’s not gonna be home for another hour at least. That left plenty of time for Albert to figure out how he was going to do this. After all, last he checked pasta doesn’t take that long to make. Not even the recipe he swore Race sent him.

Stepping into the kitchen, the ginger was slow. Taking his time to cross the wooden floor. He winced at the cold that rushed against his bare feet. How the hell could wood be so much colder than carpet?

Wait, that’s a stupid question. One of the stupidest Albert ever wondered.

Of course the wood is gonna be colder, it’s not made to be warm.

He padded across the kitchen, eventually making his way to the barely-cleared counter. Neither of them were ones to cook. While there were plenty of different things in the fridge and their cabinets, the most they did at home was make sandwiches. Hell, Albert’s rarely seen Spot eat anything but a sandwich of some sort at home.

Albeit, they would go out a lot. It was the perks of Spot being a personal trainer and Albert working as an electrician… in training. They made enough to support themselves and go out and spend some money for fun. Not a lot, of course. Spot was much more minimalist than Albert, leading to them barely having a stocked fridge.

Albert didn’t mind that. Although he grew up with a decent amount of food in the house, it was nice not to worry about stuff constantly going bad. Christ, they had an entire empty shelf in the door just because they barely had anything.

Except it made it hard for Albert to hide the stuff he bought.

Thankfully, Spot never commented on it.

Not that Albert cared too much. He would’ve brushed it off as wanting to try something new sometime and that’s that. Not like they started dating a year ago and he wanted to make something nice for the guy. Just a simple experiment.

He leaned against the counter with a small huff. If he was going to get anything done, he would have to find the recipe. And by God would that take a long time.

Pulling his phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants, Albert went ahead and pulled up his text messages with Race. It was nice how they never actually texted “normally”. Majority of their conversations were on Snapchat. That meant whenever they sent each other important things, it wouldn’t be lost to chat history.

Of course, that didn’t mean they never sent each other things via text. Even now, it was clear the link Race had sent was drowned out by way too many messages.

It took ages for Albert to scroll through everything. How much time had actually passed was beyond him. It was likely it was maybe a minute or two but to him it felt like way more. It was stupid, so stupid. Why didn’t he just click the link to save it like a normal person?

Because he’s an idiot, that’s why.

Finally. Finally, he found it.

He clicked on the link, selecting the option to force it to pull up in Safari.

He’s not gonna lose it and be forced to scroll again. He refused.

By the time he had the link fully pulled up, Albert turned around, setting the phone on the counter. His eyes scanned over the words, a small frown setting into his features. This was far too much work just to make a simple thing of noodles.

Work that would be worth it in the end.

But dear God, there was so much stupid writing in the beginning. There were some helpful tips, yeah, but why did there have to be so much extra stuff? He’ll never understand the world of cooking.

With the page pulled up, Albert moved to the fridge and cabinet respectful, grabbing what he needed to make it. Noodles, vegetables, tomato paste… far too much shit.

Why did he follow through on actually making the sauce from scratch?

This was going to be a shit show.

A shit show that better be worth it in the end.

Albert tapped the screen when he realized it went dark so he could continue reading. Approximately 45 minute cook time, 6 servings. Yeah, that should be fine. They both ate a decent amount and it could be used for leftovers.

Though…

His eyes trailed over to where he had some ground beef thawing from earlier.

He wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to add any meat to it. As much as he knew Spot liked red meats, Albert himself was pescatarian. Which meant he only ate fish. Sometimes he would cave and begrudgingly eat hotdogs or cheeseburgers, but that was only if they were stuck at some sort of arena event.

But he didn’t wanna take that away from Spot. After all, he was prepping the entire meal for him. It shouldn’t matter what Albert liked. He could deal with some beef in the pasta for the sake of his boyfriend.

So, Albert continued on as normal.

He scrolled past the ingredients, already knowing he had everything. The sooner he started the sauce, the better off he would be.

What sucked was the fact he would have to begin immediately with the meat.

Pulling out a decent-sized pot, Albert set it on the stove. It felt a bit weird having to cook meat in it, but he was just following the recipe. It was just going to be awkward for a while.

Taking the bottle of olive oil, he measured out the allotted amount and dumped it into the pot. Then, with a swift motion, he turned the burner on to the designated heat.

When he went to grab the thawed meat, he paused.

This was the moment where it was all or nothing. As soon as he started cooking the meat, he would have to deal with it for the rest of the meal.

He grabbed a steak knife out of the holder before picking up the package. With a simple swipe, the plastic was sliced open. Setting the blade down, Albert pulled the packaging open.

There was no turning back now.

He carefully dumped the ground beef into the pot before setting the empty plastic to the side. Grabbing a wooden spoon, he looked back at his phone. Upon reading ahead, he was so glad he precut everything. He would’ve dropped dead right then and there if he had to chop anything now.

As the eight minutes passed by, Albert continued to follow the instructions. Soon enough, he was adding the onions before letting it simmer.

Idly, he stirred the pot from time to time. His eyes were mostly glued on his phone, scrolling through TikTok like his life depended on it. It was a nice way to pass the time.

By the time Albert was on the final step with the sauce, he had calmed down a bit. Not that he was too antsy, he was just… nervous. He wanted this to be perfect. The two weren’t able to go out anywhere fancy since apparently a lot of people have anniversaries in June. Either that or people were a bit too eager to go out to eat during the sixth month of the year.

After adding in the tomato paste and garlic and a select few other ingredients, he made care to stir it for almost exactly a minute. It wasn’t too hard given the next video he watched was just barely 50 seconds, so there was a plus there.

Jumping back to the recipe, Albert scanned over the next step before setting the phone down, screen up. He needed to add water, some crushed tomatoes, salt, and a “generous pinch” of pepper. Then all he had to do was stir it and let it simmer on low for 25 minutes. Not too bad.

With a quick glance ahead, Albert took note he had to start cooking the pasta itself 10 minutes in. Alright.

He followed the instructions, scraping the meat and veggies off the bottom of the pan before officially letting it simmer. With a quick set of the timer, Albert turned his attention back to his phone.

Opening YouTube, it didn’t take long for him to find a 7 minute video.

He stood there, hunched over the counter with his elbows propped up on the stone. Occasionally, he would move back to the stove to stir the sauce. Of course, he didn’t pay too much attention.

When the video finished, Albert jumped into action with the pasta. There was 17 minutes left on the timer, meaning he had a couple minutes to spare. Maybe then he could figure out how much salt he’s supposed to put in the damn water.

In the end it wasn’t too hard to gauge. He just dumped a decent amount into the half-full pot and set it on the burner diagonal from the sauce. Turning the handle away from the main walkway, Albert turned the dial to let it boil and stepped back. It wasn’t going too bad.

Turning back to the sauce, he picked up the wooden spoon and stood there for a moment. The website had mentioned that he should taste it from time to time, make sure it was properly seasoned.

But the stuff was hot, he didn’t wanna burn his tongue.

He pursed his lips, staring at the red sauce as it continued to simmer on the hot burner. A small taste wouldn’t hurt. After all, he can just blow on it and be on with his life. He just didn’t want to have to suffer through dinner with a burnt tongue, unable to taste what he made.

Albert dipped the spoon into the pot, scooping a small amount of the pasta sauce.

With one simple taste, he was surprised to find it didn’t taste half bad. He did pretty good for his first try.

Now that he was content, Albert went back to watching YouTube.

It wasn’t long before the water was boiling and he had to grab the noodles.

With the box in his hands, Albert read over the directions on the side to get a good grasp of how long to cook the pasta. The label stated 10 minutes, which meant he would have to start testing it at about 8 minutes. That wouldn’t be too hard.

He opened the box and dumped the noodles out. It felt oddly surreal seeing the long noodles stick straight out of the pan. As much as he had seen spaghetti cooked in videos and on TV, he had never actually witnessed the process.

It was at that moment anxiety decided to hit him like a truck. Full on, straight into his chest. It was almost like a physical force had knocked him into an altered form of reality. Suddenly he was hyperaware; his clothing rubbed wrong against his skin, he heard every noise in the apartment along with the sizzling of the sauce and faint blabbering of the video. Everything was shoved full force into his senses.

Albert stood there, box in hand as he tried to process it all.

His heart pounded against his ribs, ramming against it as if it were trying to break free. At the same time, a shiver coursed through his body, adding to the bizarre sense of consciousness.

His racing heart was what made his thoughts move a mile a minute.

What if Spot doesn’t like it? What if he came home with some fast food takeout like a normal day and it was all in vain? Does Spot even like pasta?

Fuck, is Spot allergic to pasta?

God. Shit. Fuck. He forgot to check what Spot was allergic to. What if he grabbed something and used it and Spot broke out into hives? God, that would be the worst anniversary ever.

A small whimper made itself heard and Albert was thankful he was alone. It was a pathetic sound, one of worry and panic that he never allowed the public to hear.

He finally set the box down, his vision blurred and unfocused as he stared at the cooking food. It’s going to be fine, it’s all going to be fine. Spot’s his boyfriend, he would know if the guy was allergic to something.

But… What if Spot lied? Or… What if he doesn’t like the meal?

He didn’t put it beyond Spot -- or anyone for that matter -- to pretend to like the food and just order something later in the night. Anyone with a sense of decency would wait until Albert had long since fallen asleep.

Albert closed his eyes, taking a shaky deep breath through his nose.

Everything’s gonna be alright.

Nothing will go wrong.

Albert peeked one of his eyes open to glance down at the cabinet next to him. Quickly, as if he were worried about embarrassing himself, he knocked on the wood.

By the time he managed to get himself to settle down, the noodles were nearly done. It was a bit odd knowing he had spaced off for almost 10 minutes, but it happened nonetheless. He just hoped the stuff didn’t need to be stirred too much.

Following the rest of the cooking instructions, he ended off with strained pasta being tossed into the pot of sauce. With a quick stir, Albert stepped back and sighed. It was basically done. He did it.

A small smile tugged at his lips only to be whisked away.

There’s still so many possibilities of him fucking this over.

He could spill the sauce, overcook it as he waited for Spot, forget to dress up nice… but he had plenty of time. There was at least 15 minutes before his boyfriend was home.

Albert rested his arms on the counter, allowing his head to lul forward as he shut his eyes. It was almost 7 P.M., it was barely evening. At this point on a normal day he would’ve been wide awake playing video games or watching videos. Hell, maybe he’d even be harassing Spot, who knows.

But this isn’t a normal day, it’s their fucking anniversary. And now he’s exhausted for no fucking reason.

How much worse could it possibly get?

He pressed one of his hands to his face, letting out an exasperated sigh. He stayed like that for a while, ignoring the blaring time on the stove. He knew better than to assume he’d be in a position like that for much longer than a minute.

The light click of the front door closing went unnoticed by Albert. Despite how aware he had been earlier, suddenly he was ignorant. Everything that went on around him was ignored, purposely or not. His fatigue was enough to keep him bent over the counter, his eyes shut and head resting in his hand for support.

He didn’t notice the rustling just outside the kitchen or the heavy footsteps that followed. Hell, he barely even realized there was a presence nearby before a strong pair of hands settled on his hips.

“Well, isn’t this a surprise?”

Albert practically jumped out of his skin. He tried to spin around but only ended up knocking his hand against the knife holder. He hissed out a few colorful words and in the end, didn’t turn.

His boyfriend’s arms slid around his waist, allowing the familiar feeling of the shorter man being pressed against him be made known.

“Didn’t think I’d ever see you in the kitchen,” Spot teased, resting his chin on Albert’s shoulder.

The simple, solid touch instantly made Albert relax. Tension he didn’t even realize he still had faded away and left him loose against his boyfriend. It was nice.

“Well, jokes on you, here I am,” Albert said back, smiling slightly. He tilted his head a bit as he tried to look at the brunette.

A small hum came from the shorter man, the vibrations sending a shiver down Albert’s spine. “And what brings you here?”

That was when the panic returned.

Every inch of Albert tensed up, his attention darting over to the spaghetti. Fuck, he didn’t even prepare it. It’s still in the pot and he hasn’t even gotten dressed.

As if he noticed the tension, Spot gently caressed his thumb along Albert’s side. “Hey, it’s fine. You good?”

Albert tore his gaze away from the food and forced a small smile. “Yeah, I am.” Once again, he managed to relax. The feeling of Spot trying to offer physical comfort being enough to loosen him up. Though, it didn’t necessarily take off the edge.

What did was the sly movement of hands reaching up his shirt, running along his skin until they were on his lower back. The feeling of calloused fingers barely grazing his body made his breath hitch. He bit his lower lip, forcing himself to focus on that instead.

It wasn’t a surprise that Spot knew just what to do to get Albert’s mind off of things. The way the brunette moved along his body was distracting enough. It was even more to have the man reach up higher, almost as if he were exploring.

Except, is it even exploring if it’s already known?

“If you say so,” Spot said with yet another hum before leaning in.

A soft kiss pressed against Albert’s neck, causing his eyes to flutter shut. It was a pleasant feeling, one that spread warmth throughout his body. The warmth gradually grew fiery as the kissing continued. They were rougher than the initial one, eliciting a slight reaction from the ginger.

He tilted his head, hoping to allow the man more access. Despite it being from behind, Albert was mildly surprised the reach the brunette had.

It was always difficult for him to think about how exactly any of this was possible.

The rough hands that still held his body slid down to his hips and held tight. For a short moment, Spot pulled away just enough to spin the taller boy around. The movement was enough for Albert to glance down, offering a smile.

Said smile was immediately cut off by lips crashing into his. Once again, Spot was pressed up against him, pinning him against the counter.

Instead of returning to his upper body, Spot slipped his fingers just below the waistband. His thumbs pressed low, just enough to get Albert to try and squirm. It wasn’t unwelcome. In fact, it was far from it. It just happened to be foreign yet again.

It was hard to focus on the chapped lips that moved so perfectly against his own, not with the small pokes and prods from Spot. There was so much going on at once that Albert didn’t know what to pay attention to or when.

Spot’s kisses trailed away from Albert’s mouth, pressing against his jaw as he slowly made his way to the ginger’s neck. Each one made him shiver, sending a shock down to the rest of his body.

Without the constant action, Albert was free to let his lips part as he basked in the moment. It all felt so wonderful, so… nice. He didn’t want it to end and he wanted more.

It was the first nip along his throat that extracted a quiet squeak from the taller man. The rush that ran through him at that very second nearly made Albert go limp. He hadn’t realized how deprived he’d been until then. And by God, was it amazing.

Spot’s hands dipped further, causing Albert to let out one of the most pathetic noises he’d ever made.

It was almost hilarious considering just how tough he likes to make himself seem. All stoic and angry and yet Spot always managed to do the perfect thing.

He could practically feel the smirk against his neck, making his cheeks heat up way more than necessary. Of course Spot would be cocky about it.

Any thought Albert had was cut off by the abrupt feeling of being groped. He hadn’t even realized the shorter man had moved one of his hands. With his focus on the bites, any other action had gone unnoticed.

A stifled moan slipped out of his mouth.

God, this was far better than the spaghetti.

The pleasurable heat that emanated from his groin was enough to let Albert forget about the food. If he could just get Spot to do more-

Wait.

The spaghetti.

Albert’s eyes shot open and he scrambled to push Spot away. The brunette backed off as some as Albert began to push, knowing better than to try and continue. He frowned at the ginger, his brows furrowed with confusion and worry.

“You alright?”

Albert nodded, shifting a bit as he tried to regain any composure he had prior. “Yeah, don’t worry.” He spun around, stumbling a bit as he scrambled to turn the burner off. He didn’t need the pasta overcooking.

Sheepishly, he turned back to Spot. “I just… I didn’t want to keep it on too long.” Spot tilted his head at the comment. “I wanted to cook something for tonight and I didn’t want it to be overdone.” Albert bit the inside of his cheek for a moment before continuing. “I’ve never done this before. Cooking, that is, obviously.”

Realization washed over Spot’s features as the shorter man smiled up at him. That smile shifted into a grin within seconds when his eyes fell onto the pot. “Then let’s eat. We can continue later.”

Albert would’ve been perfectly fine if Spot didn’t wink right after that.

The sheer action nearly kicked his knees out from under him.

“Yeah,” Albert managed to say, swallowing as he tried to form words. “Later. Definitely. Yes.”

Spot smirked at the reaction, a bit too pleased with it in Albert’s eyes.

Maybe it would be a great anniversary after all.

#Newsies #spot conlon #albert dasilva #spot conlon x albert dasilva #spalbert #newsies fic #slice of life #request #heelys gang #prince's writing

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brookeblough · 4 years ago

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Dead by TikTok

THE COMMUNITY

The community I have chosen to analyze is that of people who play the game Dead by Daylight (DBD), and specifically those who take to the app TikTok to converse with the community.

In the words of the official Dead by Daylight website, “Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game where one player takes on the role of a brutal Killer and the other four play as Survivors,” (Game).

Because of the fact that there are two sides of the game that can be played, there are a lot of differing opinions in the community. Killer players think that survivor players should play a certain way, survivor players think that killer players should play a certain way, and those who play both mostly just wish everyone would shut up. Often, either side of the argument doesn’t even agree with their own side.

One thing that the community usually comes together on is to criticize the developers of the game. DBD is made by a fairly small independent development team, and they are still often making changes and adding updates to the game. Of course, there will likely never be a time where every person who plays the game is pleased, so this is often a topic of discussion (or more likely disagreement).

Every few months, the developers also add a new killer and/or survivor to play as, and with these come more perks as well (more about this later). This brings even more ground for discussion and disagreement as players argue over whether the killer is too strong or too weak.

I chose to play on one of the common assumptions held by players of the game in choosing one of my posts and how I captioned it. This requires a bit of background to really understand it.

In the game, there are multiple different survivors that can be chosen to play as. Each of these come with 3 of their own unique “perks” which give the survivor an ability during the match. However, as one continues to play the game, these perks become unlocked through leveling characters and then can be applied to other survivors as well. So, basically, once you have played the game for a couple of months, all survivors end up with all of the same perks and so they all can be played exactly the same.

This being said, one assumption that the community still holds is that a certain “type” of player tends to play a specific survivor. I usually play as the character Meg. “Meg players” are usually known for running around, making dumb decisions, and getting their team killed. While I would argue that this is not always the case, I found a gameplay clip of my own where I did fall into this “Meg player” stereotype.

So I decided, “why not?” and decided to play into this and post the clip to TikTok.

@_bekoorb

when you get way too confident for no reason 😅 who’s your least favorite killer? ##dbd ##dbdclips ##dbdvideos ##deadbydaylight ##streamclips ##streamer

♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod

The video shows me being saved by another player, and then running us both straight to the killer. I ended up getting away, but the other player did not.

I chose to use the caption “Your real mistake was following a Meg,” to further speak to this assumption. I thought this was a clever way to start a conversation with the community, even if it just gave them an excuse to make fun of the way I played. I believe that if the video had gotten more views, it would have been enjoyed by the community.

MY CONTRIBUTION

Over the course of posting in this community, my posts received on average about 7 views, with only 2 or 3 likes on each. None of my posts received any comments. Additionally, the comments that I left on other posts did not receive any interaction. I guess, if there was a pattern, it was that no one really saw my posts.

Having spent a lot of time on TikTok in my free time, I used my knowledge of the app to attempt to break into the algorithm. First of all, I used trending music on the app as background noise for my videos because posts with these audio sounds are more likely to be promoted.

When I say “promoted”, I mean showing up on other users For You Page. This is basically the front page of the app, and where a large majority of users spend all of their time scrolling. This is really the only way to find new content on TikTok.

Other than using trending background music, I also designed the captions of my posts to the community. I used hashtags such as #dbd, #dbdclips, and #deadbydaylight in order to cover a range of different hashtags while still covering the same topic. I also tried out adding a question into the caption so that if anyone did stumble upon my post, they would have something to respond to.

I also attempted to use up to date trends in the content of my videos posted. For my first one, I used a trend of not actually speaking but using pop up text-to-speech on the screen. This is the one that I mentioned earlier, but here it is again:

@_bekoorb

your real mistake was following a meg ##dbd ##dbdclips ##dbdvideos ##streamer ##streamclips

♬ Elevator Music - Bohoman

This was something that I was seeing a lot in trending videos, so I decided to try it out and see if it would be promoted, but it unfortunately did not work out how I wanted it to.

Something that I learned about this community in this process was how difficult it can be to break into it. You really have to be consistent in posting and interacting, and it is mostly left up to luck whether people end up seeing it or not.

I also learned that despite the fact that the DBD community is very opinionated, through my time analyzing this specific community I actually found that on TikTok the focus was usually not that of opinion. Most of the posts that I saw and interacted with have been funny, entertaining, or informative. Sometimes there will be posts giving tips or strategies on the gameplay, but a lot of the time the clips on TikTok are highlight videos.

Because of this, for one of my posts I decided to try to fit into the “highlight videos” category. I found a funny moment from a time that I was playing the game, and again added some trending background music to it. I also edited text on the screen so that it would pop up as I was speaking it, which I thought added a level of comedy.

@_bekoorb

when you get way too confident for no reason 😅 who’s your least favorite killer? ##dbd ##dbdclips ##dbdvideos ##deadbydaylight ##streamclips ##streamer

♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod

In this post, I also added a question to my caption so that if my post was viewed, my audience would have something to respond to. THE PLATFORM

Something interesting that I found was that TikTok users almost always use hashtags in their posts. However, I’m not sure this really accomplishes much. It’s possible that it makes the post more likely to show up on someone’s feed who often watches or likes videos with that hashtag, but something I found is that it is very difficult to find new videos using the hashtags.

In the same way that I found it difficult to find posts to comment on in order to interact with this community, others were unable to find my posts in the hashtags.

If you do search a hashtag with the intention to find new content or new users, you won’t find much. This is because the posts under a certain hashtag are listed in order according to how popular they are, and there is no way to change the order. This basically means that if you are looking for new videos, you won’t find them there. The only place to find new content is on your ‘For You Page’, and that is pretty randomized and mostly shows popular videos as well.

This means that in order to gain views and followers, most of the time you have to already have views and followers.

It’s like when an entry level job requires a year of past experience. If I can’t get hired because I don’t have experience, how am I supposed to gain the experience?

This further solidifies the fact that the TikTok algorithm favors only content that is already popular. The people with the most followers and views continue to have their videos promoted, and they basically control the format of the app from there.

I don’t think this is all bad. Sure, the platform very much favors already popular content so it is difficult for newcomers to gain any sort of traction on the app. But on the other hand, I believe this puts less stress on trying to become “popular” and more emphasis on making posts for fun and as a creative outlet. Of course, I’d argue that there is a little part in all of us that would like our posts to become popular, but that doesn’t always have to be the point.

This also has an effect on how communication happens (or doesn’t) on the app. When the posts being shown on peoples feed is often from the same handful of creators, there is not much opportunity to see a variety of opinions or discussion.

Works Cited

“Game.” Dead by Daylight, deadbydaylight.com/en/game.

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blogblogbrog · 5 years ago

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Assignment 3 Commentary

Before coming up with ideas, I brainstormed for topics that I was interested in researching on for the infographic. I came up with a list of topics such as:

- Trending music

- Asian Oscar nominees

- Academy awards for Best International Feature Film across the years

- Dance

I searched for infographics relevant to these and found that dance infographics looked relatively different from what I had in mind – I expected infographics to show dance steps but most of them described the dance as a whole with fewer illustrations. I found a lot more infographics on music and film awards (Spotify even automatically made infographics for each individual user’s listening habits) and decided to think of fresh topics on dance to make a more original infographic.

Ultimately, as I was listening to a Doja Cat song which was getting growingly viral on TikTok with a simple short dance routine, I became momentarily inspired to make an infographic on Viral Dances across the decade. After doing my research, I came up with some sketch attempts to illustrate the most popular viral dance of each year over a span of 10 years (which I later narrowed to 8 so more space could be dedicated to illustrations of the dances).

These are some of the rough sketches with short explanations below.

Prior to sketching, I already had the idea to use silhouettes to represent the moves and hence sketched with that in mind.

The above is a bunch of sketches I made in attempt to organize the dance moves. I tried incorporating them into a circle but I eliminated that idea because I wanted to show a series of dance moves (dance sequence) to illustrate steps. And I felt that a circular illustration of clusters of dancing figures would look to disorganized for an A4 sized infographic.

Another idea I had was to illustrate moving figures in a timeline such that one series of moves would progress into another. This was inspired by two things:

1) Akuma from the game ‘Street Fighter’ which inspired the idea of multiple figures in a straight line

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUFKjo8uPpA

The concept of changing locations using dance moves. The shadow transitions inspired this concept too. (kind of like the Shadow Imitation Technique in Naruto) The idea of transition came from these sources

3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqA0CaPrF8

The concept of identifying similarities in dances which was used in this video also inspired this.

I ultimately decided not to use this concept because I found that by doing so, I would have to find similarities between dance moves. And since I wanted to illustrate the progression/evolution of viral dance moves, I would have to fill in the transitions between the different dance sequences with extra steps.

These extra steps would not have existed in the original dance sequences since the viral dance sequences representative of each year were vastly different. I felt that these intermediate transition steps may confuse and mislead viewers. Kind of like forcefully transitioning between viral dances with little visual similarity.

Ultimately, I settled on a timeline concept. I tried a few more styles for the timeline such as:

And a regular vertical timeline.

Ultimately I decided on a vertical timeline to have a neater presentation and better use of the space. I tried a few sketches and researched on some related facts I could possibly place in the infographic.

My first draft was a vertical timeline segmented by the representative platform which the video was popularized on. Illustrations of the main dance move were first incorporated in the year number. A short segment was also dedicated to explain what a viral dance was, for those who did not know.

A description of the background of the dance move and how it got popular was described.

However, I decided to expand on this skeleton draft by incorporating more illustrations of the dance sequence. I decided to move the words around to accommodate the dance sequences.

I also decided to segment a larger area for more background information so the timeline would not be the only thing. I sketched different versions of this segmentation.

This was one of the segments I tried to sketch. However, I found that this would render the timeline way too small to be of significant attention. Hence, I edited from the first draft and made the changes.

I decided to segment the top portion for some facts, and went with a browser theme to segment some facts about dance. The new description included both the history of how the dance move gained its virality and how the dance was essentially done.

After the critique, I received the comments that the text was too long and I could omit some details to shorten the text. Hence, working on that prototype, I set off to first gather the illustrations for the dance moves. These illustrations would be a huge portion of my infographic.

For consistency, I wanted the same figure to be represented across all the dances so that it would be easy for the viewer to interpret without confusing them. As such, I got a model to perform the moves which I recorded in slo-mo and later screen captured three main moves for each sequence (except for The Floss, which I later narrowed down to two moves since that would be clearer than having an intermediate move).

I decided the colour of the words by using similar shades to their corresponding social media platform where they had gone viral on.

The process of obtaining the illustrations was rather tedious and would be explained below:

I used magnetic lasso on Photoshop to extract the figure as a layer.

Then I created a clipping mask with a black-coloured layer to obtain the silhouette.

The below is a screenshot of the layers for one of the silhouette files during editing on Photoshop.

After exporting the silhouette as a PDP file, I opened it on Illustrator and referenced the original image to fill in important details that were not visible in the silhouette. As seen below, the original line at 1.0pt was too fine and when I zoomed out it was too faint.

As such, I increased the white lines to 6.0pt as per below. The screenshot below also shows the layers used for each of the silhouettes within Illustrator.

I did this for all twenty-three (23) of the silhouettes used for the infographic and put them in the file according to my sketch.

I followed most of what was portrayed on the sketch. However, I faced a challenge when having to place the silhouettes over the words. The initial plan was to place the smaller silhouettes over low opacity wordings. However, I felt that it would have been difficult to see the words or even pay attention to it. I also felt that the illustrations were too small.

As such, I adjusted the leading of the words and blew up the illustrations. I also decided to tweak certain sizes of the illustrations to provide some variation.

After doing this, I found that the words were still blocked. Especially with its low opacity, I figured that it would have been overpowered if I were to change the background colour, which I intended to. Thus, I decided to adjust the leading and tracking of all the words such that the illustrations would fit within the spaces between the letters well, instead of outright blocking the words. Additionally, I changed the opacity of the words to 100%.

I received this suggestion, after my second critique, to reduce the opacity of the illustration. I did not want to do so because this would steal the attention on the illustration from the viewer. While the name of the dance was important, the illustration was the most important and basically the highlight of the infographic. As such, I readjusted the illustrations instead of reducing their opacity.

While some of the words were slightly blocked, I made sure that the overall word was well visible and understandable.

Continuing my journey to complete the second critique prototype, I followed the sketch and completed it. However, I found the typography of the title to look strange, which I ended up mentioning in my forum post.

I tried a few fonts but ended up going with an italic one since I wanted a cleaner look. This was one of the bold fonts I ended up scrapping because the long sentence of words looked too imposing being in bold:

I spaced out my illustrations, not wanting to cramp up the infographic at this stage.

I chose a faint orange background because all the text colours were well visible on it. And I also did not want to go with a white background because the theme was viral dance, which was a more exciting, fun and casual topic. As such I wanted to make use of colours to convey this lighter mood. White would have been too sterile for the theme.

I tried to play around with the background as well, and initially added giant blown-up silhouettes in the back. On reflection, I found that a huge reason for this issue I had with the background stemmed from the over-abundance of empty space between the diagrams. I would later tackle this issue ater the second critique.

Ultimately, I abandoned the silhouette backgrounds because I felt that it drew attention away from the content, and also interfered with the timeline (which I wanted to be white since white looked best pierced through the icons like a kebab haha)

Hence this was my second critique submission in the end:

After receiving comments from the second critique, I found the need to adjust 3 main things

1) The size of my illustrations and to add more visual directions.

2) Increase the visibility of my title since it was not well-visible.

3) Change the second fact about 1 in 10 dancers going professional since it was not directly related to Viral Dance.

The first thing I did was to tackle 1 and 3. I first changed my fact to a fact directly relevant to viral dances and raised a fact on the current most popular dance trend in 2020. Since, 2020 is not yet over, this would be a nice fact to raise and a nice verdict for the viewer to call as the year progresses. (if someone were to see this in 2021 and the overall 2020 viral dance representative ended up to not be Renegade, it would be a funfact to know that in the first quarter of the year, Renegade was a strong contender)

I mentioned the choreographer’s name, since there had been controversy over how little credit was given to her despite the virality of the choreo. As such, this was both a funfact and and attempt to subtly pay homage to her. To illustrate her, I sketched and traced her on ProCreate on the iPad, referencing the original video of her choreo before repeating what I did for the other illustrations (magnetic lasso, clipping mask etc.)

Next, I added more details to the dance illustrations to emphasise the directions for the movements.

I then blew them up such that they were much more visible. In doing so, I realized that with the empty space filled up more, the background need not be fancy or more attractive and it solved my background worry too.

Adjusting the title was the hardest part and I tried various variations of bolding, changing the font, italicizing and more:

I even tried removing the windows theme and played around with the size of the bordering rectangle.

Ultimately I tried to shorten the title, changing it and playing around with the fonts, tracking and opacity/shades.

I decided to just align the words center and blow them up as large as possible.

I even attempted to use small caps but it gave off a sterile vibe that was too calm for my more exciting theme. Ultimately I realized that it was vertically dismissive and decided to tweak it such that it took more vertical space.

I ended up with the style below. Where I used visual hierarchy to focus on viral dance trends, bolded the whole title and also used the ‘8 years of’ to allow it to be more vertically imposing.Thus the final decision on using this.

Thus concluded my final submission. Below is the screenshot of the layers as well as the final work.

Final work:

#assignment 3

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plogan721 · 5 years ago

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How to Start a Blog

It is the New Year, and there are people who want to start something new and different. Writing is usually one of those hobbies that people want to start doing, but, for the most part, they are clueless on how to start or where to start. 10 years ago, I was in that same place most people are in when the itch to start writing kicks in. I loved writing, but I was not sure if I had the skills to be a writer. In the past, I was that person who had tons of spelling and grammar mistakes, and I did not care when I started my blogs. One of my problems was that I was always an impatient writer. This lead to being a careless writer. Another problem was I never did any research. I wanted the paper to be done and done quickly. If I did any research, I copied the text word for word without putting my spin into what I was reading and still meaning the same thing.

Photos from Pixabay

Side Note: I want to take this moment to talk about the art of writing in general. I find writing a lost art and a lost skill. We, as humans, may not like to write with pen and paper anymore, but in order to write an effective paper, both in pen and paper or digitally, you need to know how to write basic sentences. Social media has made us lazy and I must admit at the time it includes me. We depend on the computer to correct our mistakes and this includes, spell checkers, grammar checkers, instead of watching what we say, and how we write it.

You should know the difference, for example, between words that sound the same but have two totally different meanings. You should know where to insert a comma, and the difference between a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, and a preposition, and how to use it. In social media, you SHOULD ALWAYS punctate a sentence with a period (.), an exclamation point (!), or a question mark (?), no matter what Twitter says. A person should not try to figure out what you are trying to say to them in a Facebook post or Tweet. Learn how to spell. I am saying this because it does not matter if you want to be viewed as a professional writer to your friends on social media, or when you write for a blog or a business, the rules do not change. Blogs may be more relaxed, but that’s about it. Okay, rant over. Back to my story.

When I first started writing the papers that my teachers wanted, I did it on a typewriter or wrote it as older people would call, “long-hand”. By the time I graduated from high school, the home computer started becoming a thing in the household. Now we have smartphones, tablets, and all sorts of devices that make starting a blog easy and fun to start. The key to writing is to have content that interesting, informative, and relatable.

Are blogs still a thing?

I was asked on Quora.com if starting a blog in 2020 was a silly idea, and it is not. In fact in an age where Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, and Snapchat are the marketing norm, writing a blog is still relevant today, as it was over 10 years ago when I first started. Another fact is that some bloggers use their blogs as an addition to the vlogs that they put out. Blogs today are more of a marketing tool to sell their products than to give out information about their products. For instance, If you have a brand to promote with products to sell on your website, you need content that promotes the very thing you want to sell.

For example, if you are a crafter and you sell paintings your life in the Columbus, Ohio area, You would create an e-commerce website with portraits of downtown, the Eastside, and Southside of the city. You decide to create a portrait of a family enjoying the Ohio State Fair. Once you have the concept of the painting, who the family is and represent, and what they are doing. Next, you create a story about this family and why they are important on your blog website. Perhaps, you may not want to do that, but write a post on how to bring life to your portraits or how to bring light and shadows to portraits for intermediates or the beginnings on how to paint for beginners.

Tip: Whatever you decide to do on your blog, make it interesting, informative, and relatable to your website or brand.

So how do you start a blog?

I was looking to see how you start a blog in 2020. Yes, I know how, but you have to remember that I started writing my blog 10 years ago, and well times have changed slightly. A person I found called Blog starter suggested you start a blog in these 6 simple steps:

1. Pick a blog name. to me, pick a name that is easy for a reader to remember and is not already taken. For instance, I wanted to name my business and blog, P Lynn Designs. Lynn is my legalized or government middle name. Of course, the “P” stands for Patricia. The problem with it is there was already a blog with that spelling, and I did not want people and companies I deal with to get confused with that spelling. I chose to use P. Lynne Designs because I always wanted to change the spelling of my middle name since the 10th grade (my parents had a fit about it), and a period (.) to further distance my blog and business from the other P Lynn Designs. Little did I know how much the website servers hate it. Etsy still calls my shop, Plynne Designs.

2. Get your blog online. Yes, it is important to find a self-hosting site. I use SiteGround, and I could not have been any happy with the site. Right now, all three blogs are still on Blogger, which is not a self-hosted site. It is owned by Google, which means Google has a say so to the things you can and cannot do on your blog. WordPress is the type of blog that most bloggers use. Yes, there are sites like Wix, and it is a good blogging website, but you want something that can stand the test of time. I am very confident in Siteground.

Also, register your blog with a domain name. I use GoDaddy, but any hosting site that allows you to create a website or blog will allow you to create and register a domain name. Godaddy is cheaper for the first year. Renewals, however, are $17.00, at least that is what I paid yesterday.

Photo by Becca Clark for Pixabay

3. Customize your blog. Once you have created a blog name, registered the blog and domain name, you will want to pick a theme. You can use the default theme, which is usually named after the year it was created (Twenty Nineteen is the theme that is currently activated on my new My Ambiance Life site), but if I were you, I would pick a theme that resonated with your blog. Twenty Nineteen is not that theme, so I will have to change it. Also, choose a theme that has a “parent-child relationship (main and sub-main pages). We could get into plug-ins later, but there are thousands of plug-ins to suit the style you want to go into for your blog. One tip: do not fall in love with too many plug-ins. The reason is a server is a great big computer, and if you fill your blog with too many plug-ins, it will take longer for the blog to load. If your blog takes to long, you could push away some readers who only want to get to your post, read it, make a comment, and move on.

4. Write and publish your first post. Once you have customized your blog, it is time to write your first post. It is important that reach your audience and provide the answers that they seek, even if your post is for mere entertainment. Here is what I do in order to write a post from start to publish:

With that being said, when I first write a blog post, I plan it out. This takes about 15–20 minutes. Next, anything that I am not familiar with, even if I am well versed in the topic, I research the parts I am not familiar with. after the research, I write a rough draft, which takes about an hour or two. Then I proofread and edit the post. this takes about 30 minutes. Lastly, I will add photos, affiliate links, and other things that may draw a reader’s attention.

I tell readers that the way to start a blog post is to start with a concept. Choose a topic. I always use motorcycles as a starting point but this time I am not. Let’s take Disney as a subject. I know, there are Disney movies, property, theme parks, food in the theme parks, and shows. Yes, you have to be able to break this Whenever you write a blog, it does not matter if it is 500 words or 5000 words, always plan out your topic and do your research, especially on a topic you are not familiar with. So, I would have to say that depending on what I have to do that day, it will take me about 24 hours from concept to publishing the post. This is an estimated time. Some posts may take a little longer, while others may be shorter than 24-hours. Once you have written and edited your post you want to

5. Promote your blog. After all, if you do not tell anyone that you have written a new blog post, how are you going to get clicks throughs and traffic. I will admit that I have a hard time doing, and I have a degree in marketing. Silly, huh?

There are many ways to promote your post. Currently, I am in at least 5 groups whose sole purpose is to allow you to promote your blog posts and 3 groups that allow you to promote my YouTube channel. I am also on 3 Twitter groups that allow blog post promotion, and I use Tailwind to promote my posts through Pinterest and Instagram. About YouTube, while you are uploading your video to your channel, fill out your description of what the video is about. You can place a call to action link in the description area. This is where you can place a link to your blog and everything that links your social media to both the blog and video channel.

There are also websites that allow the promotion of blogs as well. One such website I am on is Bloglovin. The way Bloglovin works is you submit your blog to the site. There is a code you put on your blog that allows Bloglovin to grab your post every time you post it on your blog. That is all there is. For those in fear of coding, it is super simple to plug it into the backend of your blog site or ask any teen to do it for you. They would love to be paid a couple of dollars for the chance to sharpen their skills. There is always a catch and, in this case, follow other bloggers and like their posts.

One word about marketing. It is getting harder and harder to promote because of states like California, who a few weeks ago passed a law that if a person does not want to receive any communication from a third-party company, you, as the company they are communicating with have to honor that request, and you need to display it on your blog or website. This is something that requires some more discussion on the matter, and since I live in the State of Ohio, the only way it affects me is if I am doing business with a customer who lives in California. What you need to do is be strategic about marketing, and research what is allowed in your state or country because if you are not careful, marketing can cost you additional thousands of dollars over what you have estimated the cost to be in your yearly budget.

6. Make money blogging.

This is a tricky subject as well. I cannot tell you the full details on how, except what I am trying to do, which is through affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and products.

Tip: Find what works for you and your blog. Do not try everything, because everything may not work for you and your type of business.

This ties into promoting your blog: Promote companies that are in line with your business and brand. If you are a crafter, find craft companies that you use on s regular basis. I love my Cricut Electronic Cutting Machine. I have been using one since 2005 when the first one started selling. I am now using the Cricut Maker exclusively, which not only cuts paper, but Balsa Wood, Acetate, and fabric to name a few materials. I have every single type of blade this machine can use, and I have invested money for this machine. I also have the older Cricut Explore (1st edition), but it is on standby, in case something goes wrong with the maker. It almost did 5 weeks ago when Microsoft updated the operating system, and I found out the computer kicked out my Bluetooth for all Cricut machines because, hey, it was not made by Microsoft (the little turds), so, I couldn't work neither machine. “This is the very reason why I do not like automatic updates, Microsoft, stop this nonsense.”

Yes, I sometimes promote the heck out of Cricut machines, including the EasyPress, which I need time to learn. But if you want to earn some money, you need to put in the work to allow your blog to earn that extra cash. By the way, Cricut does not pay me to say these nice things about their products by giving them to me, I buy them with my own money. There is that aspect too, which I will dive into through the year.

Well, another long blog post is done and ready to publish. Remember these 6 principles to having a profitable blog, and I just touched the surface on this subject. There is plenty of content to cover with blogging for beginners. Blogging is not for everyone, and there is a 7th principle that I have not touched on, and that is what if you have to quit. I have done that on a couple of blogs that I no longer write, and I will touch on that topic later.

Until then, be well, and do not give up.

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