#AI-based competitive authority

[technologyequality]

AI-Powered Brand Authority: Establishing Yourself as the Go-To Expert

AI-Powered Brand Authority Establishing Yourself as the Go-To Expert We’ve tackled AI-powered storytelling and AI-driven content marketing, but now it’s time for the real game-changer: building brand authority. Because let’s be honest, people don’t buy from businesses, they buy from experts. And in an AI-driven world, positioning yourself as the go-to authority in your field is…

[ronearoundblindly]

Your Dog, His Tricks

a Steve Rogers x Avenger!Reader tale set a little over a year after losing their virginity together and based on this ask.

Summary: Injured on a mission and MIA for days, you return to a very high-strung boyfriend who can't express what he's feeling until it boils to the surface.

Warnings: arguments and smut. MINORS DNI. WC 5.4k

You don’t know when it started, this sort of competition with your boyfriend, but at some point you and Steve became a packaged deal. Unfortunately, that package was labeled: Steve Rogers and his girl. You feel nameless sometimes, and you know you are better than that; maybe you aren’t super like he is, but you are (and were since before dating) a whole-ass Avenger in your own right. You are a stellar agent. You can bring home the top prize. You can finish this shit-show of a mission all on your own.

No help.

None.

You noticed a problem after months and months of fighting with Steve—no, that sounds wrong—beside Steve. 

Okay, maybe it’s not wrong-wrong to say fighting with him because you two do have the occasional argument. Just one argument, really. One argument over and over again about you fighting beside him, why it’s fine, why he should let it go. You are as safe fighting beside him now as you were before the two of you became this set, this lop-sided partnership. He still wants to protect you from shit you are trained to protect yourself from, shit you survived just fine without him, shit like the last three days.

He’s stubborn, and so are you.

You’ve had trouble getting him to back off. The Team is a team, and Steve does great, delegating all sorts of jobs when you are one among many. As soon as it’s you and him alone? He’s…overly helpful, over-protective, and generally over-the-top fussy. He is adoring and caring and competent. Apparently, those things make him feel capable of doing everything for you. It’s sweet until it’s not. Every time you start a project—laundry, cooking, organizing shelves, or leading an actual mission—Steve waltzes in and has to finish it for you.

Because he loves you. Because he’s trying to help. Because he can.

It makes you feel as if you can’t, or, at least, as if he thinks you can’t.

“Well, buddy, you can’t have this one,” you mutter outside of HQ’s gate, gripping your side and flicking open the phone you stole a few states back.

You’ve been gone for just shy of seventy-three hours.

At first, you truly had no way to contact the Team. You were on your own a thousand miles from home, fried comms and a spent weapon. You missed the rendezvous at the safehouse because it took twenty or so hours to find a vet office with the supplies to patch yourself up, and by the time you could have reached out, that ear worm wouldn’t leave you alone.

He’ll swoop in.

He’ll save you.

You’re his girl, so you need him. You can’t handle this without him. No one will believe you did once he gets anywhere near you.

Call it adrenaline. Call it blood loss. Call it shock. You can’t give up this glory, so you told yourself you needed radio silence to keep the recovered intel secure until back on Avengers campus. You told yourself the risk of interception was too high to chance a phone call.

Now, fifty feet from the infirmary, you need to get past one more obstacle.

You know Steve would jump from a third-story window to get to you, know he would scoop you right up into his arms and carry you over the threshold, know that would mean Steve wins.

No. Not this time. This is yours. You deserve the credit. You are crossing that finish line solo.

You jab the last of the epi-pens into your good leg, letting yet more adrenaline heave through what little of your blood volume is left and call the HQ secure line from the burner.

“Friday,” you start, standing at the bus stop, a blindspot from the Avengers’ surveillance cameras because the city already monitors it, “authorization Gamma-Lima-Four-Whisky. Do not declare connection. I repeat, do not declare this connection.”

The AI welcomes you back onto the grid politely.

“Thank you.” A bubble of pain bursts in your throat. “Give them a different location for this call, ok? Tell them it’s from the nearest functional payphone.”

Friday does as you say because why wouldn’t she? It’s not as if Steve is going to pause to question where the ping is—

—and he’s already out, on the bike, pushing that engine to its acceleration limit and narrowly escaping a shoulder check from the slowly opening gates.

You sneak right past, knowing he won’t look in his rearview, not with his eye on a prize ten blocks away, and you collapse just inside the garage ramp.

You wake prone in the Regeneration Cradle after surgery to a kind, smiling nurse monitoring your progress.

It’s difficult to focus. After a few blinks, you can see her features clearly, then beyond her are just eyes.

His eyes.

Piercing blue doesn’t begin to describe the intensity of Steve’s gaze, and his silence is deafening.

Each quarter-minute he inventories the room, and he exhales. That is the sum total of what he can manage to do right now. He’s attempting to keep it together until you two are alone obviously. Steve fails at very few things in life; this is one of them. You can see the outline of his teeth through his tight cheek.

“Doc wanted me to tell you you did a great job,” the nurse states softly. “If you hadn’t packed those wounds so tight, you’d have died for sure.”

Your mouth is too dry to respond, so you flash a wry smile. No one gets the Cradle without…extensive injuries. You’ve never had the ‘pleasure,’ not even for your through-and-through last year.

Steve huffs in frustration, keeping his huge body out of the nurse’s way even when you can feel him try to astral project himself forward to hand you ice chips. Instead, you swallow cotton.

“Captain Rogers,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. chimes from above, “your motorcycle has been cited for running five red lights with a further two dozen traffic violations. Shall I claim Official Avengers’ business?”

You croak ‘no.’ He says ‘yes.’

There’s a pause. “I will ask again later.”

Who says AIs can’t throw some serious shade?

Silence descends again as the spindling print needle moves on to a different wound. You’re lucid but wobbly trying to think, a combination of the waning anesthesia and pain meds.

If frowns could kill, your boyfriend’s would devastate the entire med bay.

This is what you hoped beyond hope to avoid, but it’s also why your endgame involved going solo.

“You’re making my point for me,” you sigh, your chest hurting more after surgery than it has in the past twenty-four hours. Clearly, your nerves are back online.

“And what point was that?“ he asks sarcastically, waiting in your own stubborn silence. “You gave me a heart attack.”

“Really?” You’re playfully shocked.

“No, not really! God.” He rushes closer. “What the hell were you thinking? If you had time to send me on a wild goose chase, you could damn well have called to tell me you were alive!”

The cradle’s lights shut off, job complete.

“Language, Steve.” 

He looks incredulous, engrossingly livid, anxious outrage contained by his one frayed thread of control left. 

“We found the intel,” he grits through a clenched jaw. “After power-washing your blood off it, everything was on the drive.”

You can’t sit up on your elbows yet, so you bite back, “good. It all worked out fine then.”

Wafting off him in thick clouds, Steve’s anger is near-flammable in the small room.

The nurse offers to step out for a second.

You say ‘yes.’ Steve barks ‘no.’

This isn’t the nurse’s first rodeo. “Alright, surgery went well. All debris and fragments removed. Your tissue is all intact now, too, but remember, this treatment doesn’t train new muscle fiber or nerve-endings.” She ignores Steve and pushes past to the other end of the table. “Rest up. Tomorrow, you can report to PT. They’ll work with you until you’re field-approved again.”

“She is not—“

“Both of you are ordered to rest,” the nurse snaps, nodding in Steve’s direction “—and make yourself useful by changing her drip when it runs out. If you can’t manage that, Captain, I will find a separate apartment or keep her here overnight.”

“No,” Steve breathes, visibly deflating. Like a scolded puppy, your boyfriend tucks his chin down, rings of grey settling beneath his dark sea eyes. It’s plain as day he hasn’t slept either.

The nurse calls for a wheelchair, and Steve dutifully helps you scoot off the table when it arrives. While he positions the IV to move in tandem, you attempt to push yourself by the huge rubber wheels and fail. Doc was not kidding about muscle weakness.

Steve says nothing.

You’re rolled back to your shared room by the grumpiest Captain America. 

He helps you dress in baggy, comfy clothes and silently reattaches the line of your drip. Not one touch is in a sexual, sensual, or even intimate way even though you are naked at some point.

You can’t remember what you expected; you’ve been so focused on completing the mission for so long. Did you want a desperate homecoming? Did you want him to grovel or worship at your feet? You think, at some point, you knew he’d push back, but you thought…maybe…he’d want you more.

Steve seems to turn his interest on and off so easily, which is great professionally but hard to read personally…or maybe you’re just struggling under the distracting hum of medication. It’s a white noise you can’t ignore, lulling you unconscious, so you can’t analyze the situation anymore. Maybe, you think, you try…but the thoughts don’t come.

He situates you on his side of the bed—to accommodate the cord and stand—and tucks himself quietly into the smallest corner of mattress that his bulk can fit on.

He falls asleep holding your hand. It’s the only place you two are connected. After nearly eighty-five hours apart, that’s still worth it. Maybe.

At some point, his hand goes limp and falls away.

Finally clear of mind, you keep watching Steve the next day. He doesn’t necessarily seem angry, and he doesn’t necessarily seem relieved either. He’s so robotic in his interactions. He won’t talk to you just at you. 

You understand why he was so standoffish last night, but you thought Steve would surely want you after that. You thought he’d start touching you again. 

You two waited so long for your first time, but after that, sex was relatively easy. Steve is an affectionate man when he’s allowed, when he’s in love, and you know he loves you.

Like the nurse said: all your tissue is fully healed. The only restrictions you have are in regards to field work, and the phantom jolts of pain—when you reach into a cabinet or take down a clothes hanger—aren’t real. 

Steve’s always an arm’s length away, just in case, meaning he is there to help you.

Always an arm’s length away.

No closer. No farther.

That afternoon you attempt to start talking about your mission, but that’s when he moves.

Steve practically sprints out the door with a half-baked excuse, so you go to physical therapy alone. You can go alone. That’s not the problem.

If you thought talking to Steve was difficult, you weren’t ready for how hard touching Steve would be.

You try to initiate even a cuddle that second night, and he jumps up claiming to have forgotten something somewhere else that he promised someone. Your boyfriend can’t lie worth beans. You don’t know why he tries.

You’re asleep before he returns.

The next night is exactly the opposite. You spend longer at the gym, slowly and painstakingly repeating every single exercise you know in order to streamline these new muscles. It’s an unholy pain in the ass, but you do it because you can—and will—get back in the field.

Even though the workout was mild, you’re awash with that runner’s high when you return to find Steve passed out already. He looks so peaceful, brow relaxed and lips gently parted. He also looks, well, good enough to eat, but you’ll start slow.

There was one time early on, before you two went all the way, that you woke him up by grinding on him in your sleep. You think now, perhaps, you can recreate that, catch him off-guard and dissipate some of this tension between you. This would be a good release. You don’t normally go this long. Obviously, Steve wouldn’t have masturbated while you were MIA and possibly dead, and every other second since has been accounted for.

He practically can’t have sex anywhere else except naked in a bed. He’s even told you, point blank, that he feels no need to touch himself since he has you. You are what he wants. That’s what he said.

Except he doesn’t wake up to your advances. He just rolls over like you’re disturbing him and softly snores.

For the first time, you wonder if you’ve really broken the two of you. How long will he be mad at you for doing your job? 

Steve rolls back over in his sleep, holding you close like nothing’s happened. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it, but it’s enough and so, so wonderful to imagine all is well.

About a week into your ‘recovery’ (which is sorta bullshit since you can do everything the same by now just with an occasional, faint twinge, no more than the strain of every workout, ever), Steve takes Sam Wilson up on his offer of 1-on-1 basketball for a while. The Team—minus you—has a raid planned in the morning, and there’s always nervous energy to burn off in anticipation.

Your boyfriend has been a nightmare grump, but no one wants to take on the hassle of convincing Steve that he’s being too Steve to Steve properly. He still won’t talk to you about anything other than the weather, food, or daily schedules.

You’re even considering taking a break from field work because this all has become too much. If Steve is gonna shut down after every dangerous mission—which is, in fact, all of them—then maybe it’s not worth the risk. You’re good, you’re great, but you aren’t super.

“Taste of his own medicine, I say,” Bucky mutters, sitting beside you on the bleachers between courts.

“Huh?” You were distracted, watching Steve and Sam squeak across the floor.

Steve sinks a perfect layup and doesn’t gloat. Do-gooder.

“He used to get so mad when I’d find him in an alley all beaten up,” Buck continues. “Thought I was being too protective. I trusted him, but he was puny and he did get sick all the time. He could take a punch, sure, but every mark took weeks to heal. Half the time, they were still yellow when some idiot landed fresh ones.”

Steve claps beneath the net, encouraging Sam, focused on not outshining anyone.

He’s been the same with everyone else but you, and the whole Team can see it. You shouldn’t be surprised someone is finally talking about it; you simply wonder how Buck drew the short straw.

“Didn’t wanna be babied,” Bucky snorts, fondly glowering at his century-long bestie, “while low and behold, he pulls that stunt with everybody, every day.” 

“Yup,” you pop, looking at the matte metal beneath your feet, knowing there’s a line between the ‘caring’ version and the ‘coddling’ version. Steve nose-dived right over that line this time.

“What he appreciated, though, was consistency.” Bucky swivels his hair around into a bun and ties it. “Punk is dedicated, and even if it was just him--the hund’ed pound soaking-wet guy whose only real talent at that point was getting back on his feet--he knew he’d fight anyway.

“Bit hypocritical to be mad at his girl for doing the same, don’t ya think?” Bucky muses, clucking his tongue.

The brunette watches you bristle slightly at the moniker. His girl. Not only is it what got you into this mess, it feels untrue based on that big, broad, cold shoulder you’ve received from the man racing back and forth in front of you.

Smiling, Bucky nudges you with his elbow. “I’m excited for you to get back on your feet,” he adds.

You’re stuck thinking about that long after Bucky jumps into the game.

It’s no surprise then that when the doctor gives you the all-clear the very next morning, you’re over the moon and ready to strike. You don’t hesitate for a second when the alarm sounds less than an hour later.

The Team needs reinforcements. Your Team needs you.

You hustle into the back of a quinjet with a dozen agents. While the others file out to where the main conflict is raging, you sneak around the perimeter to suss out the mission goal, a treasure trove of enemy tech hidden somewhere in what was thought to be an abandoned village.

Not so abandoned if it’s lighting up like the pyrotechnics show on an action film set...

The explosions rattle the ground, yet you know the Team have breached the main chamber. Those enemy forces still fighting are distracting from a retreat. The other agents can catch them just fine. Your mission is intel recovery.

To keep your approach stealthy, you don’t announce your movements over comms, and Nat doesn’t scan back down the dark hallway you wedge into as she carries out an asset. If you weren’t so far back, you never would have seen him.

An enemy agent slinks out from behind a floor-to-ceiling tapestry right in front of you. His silhouette is short and thin; he’s built for stealth, too.

Your heart thumps loud in your ears as you follow, and that bastard gets close—so close—to Steve’s turned back that the pistol’s muzzle nearly touches.

Not this time. Not a chance. None.

You land a roundhouse kick to the exposed neck above his kevlar, and that sucker goes down like a sack of potatoes.

Steve turns around at the ready, stunned silent in the middle of his instructions to Bucky who is not visible from the other side heaped boxes. The papers still smoke where evidence was burned.

You salute at big, blue eyes. 

“On your six, Cap.” 

Steve looks at you, looks down at the man, and looks back up at you…pissed. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

What the fuck indeed…

All you did was help your team. All you did was stop Captain America from getting his head blown off. In no small fashion, all you did was save your boyfriend’s life.

“Uh, you’re welcome.”

His grip on your arm is painful as he leads you all the way back to the jet himself, shoving you into the jump seat between other returned agents and shouting for you to 'stay right there.'

Bucky announces over comms that the rest is clean up. All but the specialized document interpretation and perimeter teams are moving out. 

Steve huffs, contemplates staying on a battlefield instead of going back with you, but decides to sit across the ship in silence again, fuming, making fists over and over in his fingerless leather gloves, bitterly sniffing as loud as possible the entire flight home. He refuses to answer a single person until the jet touches down at HQ. 

“Everyone off,” he bellows, “everyone except you.” 

You can’t stop it. Your hands fly up in exaggerated annoyance automatically.

“What do you want, Steve? I got the go-ahead this morning. I’m allowed to be here.”

“Stop doing that.” He rounds on you.

“Doing what? My job?!”

Chest puffed out, feathers ruffled, cheeks hot and red, Steve peels off his cowl. “Being insubordinate.”

“You’re not my superior officer,” you hiss, “we are equals, and if you think for one second I did anything wrong out there, go ahead and report me. From where I’m standing, I did the work, got cleared for duty, helped out the team, and stopped you from being shot.”

You poke a finger to his chest for each achievement listed.

“Fine," Steve shouts, crossing his arms, "but quit acting like a selfish coward.”

Them be fightin’ words. “A what?”

“You heard me,” he all but whispers.

It’s laughable, truly laughable how bad Steve is at hiding some of those wheels from turning in his head. This isn’t about today. This is the thing he buried the past week.

You roll your eyes. “If you’re gonna throw a hissy fit every time I get a scratch—“

“THREE BULLETS IS NOT A SCRATCH.” He tries—he visibly, painfully tries—to keep his cool one last time. “You weren’t ready,” he concludes, judge, jury, and executioner all poured into one star-spangled package.

“Say’s who?” You’re stepping closer, getting in his face because this is bullshit and unfair. “Last time I checked you’re not a doctor, and you should be thanking me for saving your ass—“

“It’s not your job to save me.”

“We have the same job, Steve! We are both perfectly capable of—“

“I know that,” he barks, hot breath mingling with yours.

“Do you? Because you don’t seem to think I can handle myself.” You push weakly at his chest, taunting, like it's a game. “Maybe you need to walk it off, buddy.”

His face cracks, an avalanche unmoored from a stable mountain.

Oh shit. You’ve done it now.

“Walk it off?! WALK IT OFF?!”

Steve charges like a bull seeing red, crowding you against the far wall, his own derisive finger pointed at your heart.

“You were injured. You didn’t make contact. You went dark for days, and you could have died. Alone. In the middle of nowhere. Who knows how long it would have taken us to find you. No—“ he cups your chin in a tight pinch “—you want to talk about the job? It’s protocol to check in. It’s common courtesy to let me know you’re alive, and it’s goddamn rude to ignore your own safety.”

A dark, hazy sheen layers over his sharp gaze. “Don’t make me keep you home.”

There’s a deep line of frustration carved between his brows. His nostrils flair as he waits, daring you to refute him.

“Well—” you purse your lips in defiance “—isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.”

Steve lets go of you, smacked away by your cutting tone.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, whatever, Rogers,” you dismiss. “We both know you don’t have the authority to bench me.”

“Like hell I don’t,” he growls, grabbing your wrists and throwing your arms above your head, He weaves your hands through the cargo net behind you. The loops are tight and complicated in seconds, he’s so fast.

You can’t wriggle away.

“Let’s see how you like it.”

Steve roughly throws the zipper of your uniform down, letting the jacket hang open to show nothing but your sports bra.

“Feeling paralyzed—“ he dexterously undoes your belt “—exposed—“ your pants and underwear are yanked down to your ankles “—and afraid.” His last word thickens the air on the jet. 

How can this man launch you into unbridled lust in the space of two syllables?

Who. Fucking. Cares. How.

Steve’s fingertips teasingly glide over the swell of your breasts, brush down your belly, and tick their way in a casual walk between your legs. He retracts his touch the instant you let out a longing sigh, unable to restrain how needy you are. His fingers wander to perfectly clean and unmarked flesh…on your thigh, along one side, and a few inches below that. He’s tracing the bullet wounds he watched heal so quickly.

“Maybe I should leave you wondering how it’ll all play out?” he says absently, lost in thought, his thumb shifting to notch into the dip of your hip. “Maybe I should leave you wondering if we’ll ever—”

“Yes,” you whimper, no real idea what you’re saying. That’s not what answer you meant.

“How would you like three whole days of this feeling, huh? You think you’d fare any better than I did? Think you’d make it even five minutes?”

“Uh-uh.” Again, with no clue what you’re truly responding to, you buck your hips forward onto his long fingers.

The cords around your wrists get tighter while you struggle to set a pace. Behind you, the metal rings of the netting hit the hull with a soft clinking noise. 

“Not so fast.” Steve pulls his hand away just far enough to remove all friction. “Because three days, sweetheart, it was torture. Felt like an eternity right on the edge.”

“Please,” you beg.

One deliberate swipe of his fingers through your slick is enough to make you mewl.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Steve. Please, I need you.”

“Need me? You have an odd way of showing it, doll. You have to promise me—“ he thrusts his fingers in “—promise me you’ll never leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you,” you cry, convinced that it’s true for the sole reason: you never want to experience anything other than this Steve for as long as you live.

“You are so brave, and so…capable, and I know you can do anything, but you…can’t survive anything.” He takes excruciating pleasure in slow thrusts and teasing circles. “Promise me you won’t be so reckless. Promise, say it.”

“I promise.” Your weight sags into his ministrations, called to focus on nothing but where his hand disappears between you. “I promise I won’t be reckless.”

“That’s my girl.”

Your head falls limp against your tied arms. It sounds so good from his lips. Why did you ever doubt?

“I promise I’ll come back to you,” you manage out like a prayer.

“Yeah? That’s it. Is that what you want?”

“I promise. I promise, Steve.” You time your movements sloppily with his measured tempo. “Please, I need more.”

“I know. I know.” He’s strung out, too, listening to your pathetic whimpers after less than five minutes, exactly like he predicted.

You’re so over-wrought with desperation you can’t coordinate with his manhandling your legs apart—your knees, really, since your ankles are still caught in your pants. Instead of taking off your boots, Steve simply unzips himself and dives right into your wet, warm, and welcoming pussy.

Knowing he has a thing against anything naughty in his suits makes it sexier. You want his intensity—you’ve always been curious—and finally you have it: unhinged, untethered, super Steve Rogers. Your body makes room out of sheer joy.

“I know,” Steve coos, his face pressed to your chest as he adjusts. “Fuck, I know, honey.”

“Move, Steve.”

“No,” he says with a gentle kiss to your sternum. “You wanna come? Go ahead. You can do it all on your own. You can do anything you want, can’t ya?”

You groan in frustration.

You wanted this, an annoying voice in the muddled depths of your mind calls. You’re independent.

With a sob of both excitement and fury, your thighs weld onto that sturdy, I-beam beast. You brace your bent arms over your angled and hovering body, leveraging the cargo straps to hoist you up and down.

Your muscles burn, strained more than they were on your lone journey back to HQ.

Steve grunts and moans, the ghost of his wide spread palms beneath your back as a safety net.

“That’s it. That’s it, good girl.” 

Amidst your own noises, you can barely hear him. You’re not building to a climax, you’re falling into one at terminal velocity, flailing. Struggling to hang on and let go all at once, you do come, but it’s more of a plateau than a full release.

Steve’s unhappy and takes your ass in a bruising grip, finally pumping his thick length in and out, dragging the head of his cock across that perfect spot over and over.

“You can do better than that,” he snarls, hair wrecked and falling in his face.

Wave, undertow, and wave again, pleasures simply blend into the next. He gets handsy, keyed up and out of control, muttering “don’t you ever fucking leave me.”

You’d scold him for cursing if the air weren’t being punched from your lungs.

“Come on, sweetheart. Three for three.”

You’re almost disappointed he only wants you to come three times in payment for his days of torture. Even as a tear escapes the corner of your eye and your throat breaks in a hoarse “please,” you know you would give him more. You'd give him anything.

When you finally reach that shattering end, Steve is almost incoherently feral, one hand clamped at the back of your neck, the other anchored to the small of your back, slamming your ass to his leather-covered thighs like you are his mission.

“I promise,” you try to repeat, but you aren’t sure they sound like words.

Whether in response to you or as an errant thought, Steve’s own broken voice rattles at your sweaty neck. “You can take it,” he whispers gruffly. “You can take it.”

You’re floating by the time he comes, his hips stilling slowly. The buzz of your body now outdoes anything anesthesia or pain meds concocted.

Steve peppers your skin with lazy, light kisses until you remind him of your bound wrists, but then he’s overly apologetic and scrambling to free them.

He keeps himself inside you and maneuvers to sit with you on his lap.

You stay there for a while, your numb and sore arms folded between your chests. Steve only stops petting your shoulders to cradle your face, soft blue eyes roaming, adoring. He whispers concern that you’re okay, how are your legs, are you warm enough, you feeling good?

Yes, you think, you’ve taken care of your girl.

“I love seeing you like this,” he mumbles long after the pins and needles have abandoned their assault on your tired legs.

You tuck some silky hair behind his ear. “Like what? Fucked out?”

He’s floating too because he doesn’t chastise.

“Happy, healthy—“ he lets out a deep sigh “—home.”

“Speaking of home,” you say, inching ever so slightly higher to let him slide out of you, “wanna cuddle in bed all night and not get up until someone tries to break in the door?”

That knocks some of the glow off him. He drags a hand down his face. “Oh god, the poor people who have to clean this thing…”

“Let’s be honest,” you snort. “This isn’t the worst thing that’s been on you, but if it’s that big of a deal, we could go hose you down before handing our equipment in.”

He smiles, shaking his head in dismissal.

With his help, you climb off his lap and slowly shimmy up your bottoms, realizing he did truly make a mess of you both.

Steve looks down at his own lap, horrified. “Do I need to burn this?”

“That sounds like a challenge to make you filthier,” you consider, but maybe you should change into your civies before exiting the jet…

“Ya know,” Steve muses, passing over to the small locker of clothing overhead and grabbing a t-shirt and sweats, “I almost got shot in the head today, and you had three bullets fished outta you a week ago. I’m thinking we’ve earned a vacation.”

Workaholic Steve? Actively applying for time off? You’ll be damned.

“My my my, Captain Rogers…the real dirty talk begins.”

He huffs out a laugh and blushes.

“Well, I know we didn’t do anything more special than dinner for our anniversary, so…” He pulls you to his chest again, smelling of slightly musty laundry and pungent sex. “Let’s go on a fucking vacation.”

Your neck cranes to his height to see a soft smile. Oof, he’s good.

 “I missed you,” he adds like a prayer, “and you’re the badass who saved me.”

He giggles at your scrunched nose and watches you bask in that glory.

“Like I said, you’re welcome—“ you hug Steve, letting his warmth radiate through you, moving in time with his rising and falling chest “—and I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He kisses the crown of your head.

When you open the bombay doors, there’s a thermos left at the base of the ramp, a folded paper tucked beneath it. 

We should talk about how to better soundproof the jets. Brought you some refreshments. It’s hazelnut. ~Bucky

Tags: @supraveng @1950schick @patzammit @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @yiiiikesmish @ashesofblackroses @jamneuromain @bucky-fricking-barnes-reads @fallinallinmendes @deandreamernp @brandycranby

A/N: I sincerely give up on editing this anymore, so I hope it turned out okay 🙇🏻‍♀️

[Main Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

[fresitalimonsandia]

La Vie En Rose Series Masterlist センパ

pairing: ot8!ateez x fem!reader x ot8!stray kids

thriller & fantasy au

genres: non kpop-idols au, romance, fluff, angst, slow burn, thriller, fantasy, suspense, murder, serial killer, drama, hurt/confort, magic, poly!ateez, poly!stray kids, royalty, monsters & creatures.

warnings: polyamory dynamics, original characters death, minor characters death, afterlife, reincarnation, violence, toxic relantionships, mother/father/child relationships, chronic illness, pregnancy themes, trauma, grief and loss, survival themes, discrimination themes, many other idols appear as main and supporting characters.

synopsis: "A sorceress who dreams of breaking free from the curse, but is trying to lead everything while carrying a dangerous dragon pregnancy.

An extensive and exhausting competition to choose a king.

The sorceress knew the contestants were in danger.

There was much work to be done.

Would she manage to save each of the 16 participants?"

language: the fanfic was originally written in spanish, translated into english, and modified with ai for better understanding.

inspiration: it is based on two venezuelan series: "la mujer de judas" & "la viuda joven" (the woman of judas & the young widow)

author's notes:

i'll try to update every week (possibly sunday or monday).

this fanfic is being published simultaneously on ao3.

if you notice any errors, please feel free to let me know.

taglist is open!

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚.

i. / ii. / iii. / iv. / v. / vi.

Come back soon for more updates!

Remember that all of this is fiction and is not related to any of the people and artists mentioned.

[tuesdayisfordancing]

Unfortunate as it is, copyright law is the only practical leverage most people have to fight against tech companies scraping their work for commercial usage without their permission, especially people who also don't have union power to leverage either. Even people who prefer to upload their work for free online shouldn't be taken advantage of; Just because something is available for free online doesn't mean that it's freely available for someone to profit from in any way, especially if the author did not authorize it.

Okay Nonny. Bear with me, you’re not gonna like how I start this and probably not how I finish it either, but I do have a point in the middle. So.

There is in fact long established precedent for people being allowed to profit off of various uses of others’ work without permission, in ways that creative types in general and fandom specifically tend to wholeheartedly approve of. Parody, collage, fanart commissions, unauthorized merch, monetized reaction or analysis videos on youtube, these are significantly clearer cut examples of actually *using* copyrighted material in your own work than the generative ai case. And except for fanart commissions and unauthorized merch, which mostly live off of copyright holders staying cool about it, these are all explicitly permitted under copyright law.

Now, the generative ai case has some conflicting factors around it. On the one hand, it’s not only blatantly transformative to the point where the dataset cannot be recognized in the end result (and when it overfits and comes out with something not sufficiently transformative, that’s covered by preexisting copyright law), it also doesn’t exactly *use* the copyrighted work the way other transformative uses do. A parody riffs off a particular other work, or a few particular other works. A collage or a reaction video uses individual pieces of other works. Generative AI doesn’t do that, it comes up with patterns based on having looked at what a huge number of other works have in common. Like if a formulaic writing/art advice book were instead a robot artist. But on the other hand, the AI that was trained is potentially being used to compete in the same market as the work it was trained on. That “competition in the same market” element is why fan merch and fanart commissions rely on sufferance, rather than legality. That’s part of fair use too. So perhaps there’s some case to be made against AI from that perspective. *But*… the genAI creations, while competing in the same market as some of their training data, are *a lot more different from that training data* than a fanart is from an official art. To a significant degree the most similar comparison here isn’t other types of transformative work it’s… a person who learns to write by reading a lot. They’ll end up competing in the same market as some of *their* training data too. But of course that doesn’t *feel* the same. For starters, that’s *one person* adding themselves to the competition pool. An AI is adding *everyone who uses the AI* to the competition pool. It may be a similar process, but the end result is much more disruptive. Generative AI is going to make making a living off art even harder - and even finding cool *free* art harder - by flooding the market with crap at a whole new scale. That sucks! It’s shitty, and it feels hideously unfair that it uses artists’ work to do it, and people have decided to label this unfairness “theft”. Now, I do not think that is an accurate label and I’ve reached the point of being really frustrated and annoyed about it, on a personal level. Not all things that are unfair are theft and just saying “theft” louder each time is not actually an argument for why something should be considered theft. An analogy I like here: If someone used art you made to make a collage campaigning against your right to make that art (I can picture some assholes doing this with, say, selfies of drag queens), that would feel violating. It would feel unfair. It would suck! But it wouldn’t be theft or plagiarism.

…*And* on whatever hand we’re on now, my own first thought *was* “Okay well, on the one hand when you look at the mechanics this is pretty obviously less infringing than collage or parody, which I don’t think should be banned, but… maybe we can make a special extra strict copyright that applies only to AI? Just because of how this sucks.” And you know, maybe I’m wrong about my current stance and that’s still a good idea! But there seems to be a lack of caution regarding what sorts of rulings are being invited. It seems like some people are running towards any interpretation of copyright that slows down AI, regardless of what *else* it implies. Maybe I’m wrong! I’m no expert. Maybe it’ll be fine and maybe I’m just too pissed at anti-ai shit to see this clearly. I really wish the AI people had done open calls requesting people to add their work to the datasets, for which I think they would have gotten a lot of uptake before the public turned against AI. Maybe if we do end up with copyright protections against AI training that’ll happen and everything’ll be drastically improved. I dunno.

But I get fucking nervous and freaked out at OTW sending DMCA takedowns as a form of agitation for increased copyright protection and I think that’s a reasonable emotional response.

[sugar-petals]

Hi caro hope you're doing well, when you mentioned that both levi and William had the "ideal" body types , I couldn't help but think of taeha and haesoo from tears on a withered flower, I think that taeha is a FN ( look at that man he's built like tank ( or a wall as the author says) his face is pretty mature ad gives me D/SD vibes but his width , muscles and vertical ( he's over 190cm) points to FN plus he does the biker aesthetic like no other ( N) . Even a typical DC suit looks comical on him , like it barely contains him . Haesoo on the other hand looks like a typical R ( that double dourve/ 8 figure don't lie 💃) people have been criticizing the series for its unattainable body types but I think people like that do exist . Have a good day 😊

yep, another FN - pure R pairing. your typing skills have become sharp with time, it pays off to study the system!

my opinion on the debate is: exaggeration in art has to be treated as a wishful parallel world: those shapes are not fully attainable for 11 out of 13 body types IRL. and even then, only few FN bodybuilders look like that, and only some Rs like her. actors/influencers with workouts, surgery, filters, angles, corsets, glam teams & personal chefs, most likely. we all know it's a giant effort and a front. that's why authors + readers resort to fiction to begin with. it's a shortcut, and arouses the viewer through oddly normalized extremes that startle, bewilder, and hook us to keep watching, reading, etc.

now, beauty standards are already deliberately based on rarity.

to make people struggle -> spend cash to alleviate pressure, instigate competition, waste time, never feel content, and dream their lives away. always try to figure out who that serves. body ideals remain unnatural aka cosmetically fake, no matter what the evo psych squad tries to tell you over and over (why do they have to lecture this constantly and change body type trends every week if it's so ingrained in us on auto pilot apparently? hmm.)

those images are not even fantasy, but first and foremost industrial (!), frequently racial in character, and serve those ever-polarizing gendered power imbalances/sexploitation, i.e. they sabotage, bind, distract and impoverish us consumers. it bolsters personal tastes and agendas, too, but even those are easily influenced. whatever sells the product and maintains the supposedly stronger party's social leverage. infuriating, and it looks for complicity or punishment for not giving in everywhere by ostracizing and crazy bullying, which almost everyone has been through at this point because body politics are everywhere 24/7. even the pretty people receive their own hell 💀 i blame nobody for feeling like the walls are closing in.

plus, it's perspective. as a dramatic i would have to get every surgery in history to resemble haesoo even slightly if i wished i was her (i don't, but for the sake of the argument), and even then, i'd still be twice as tall and become SD, not R! i'd have more luck using shoulder/pec pads or take steroids to be built like taeha lmao! see how our essence and height predispose us? soft dramatic plastique tiara's drag is so femme because duc is very yin already (small waist, soft facial features and limbs):

of course it's going to be hard to come to terms with in a world where celebs and even regular people morph their aesthetic with one tiktok button or jump cut, CGI or AI click. beauty methods reach a new level every month. rihanna's shapeshifting role as bubble in valerian pretty much encapsulates that: it's dangerously mesmerizing, but the person behind it... isn't automatically happy (bubble was a slave since childhood, remember).

(NOTE: here we see the typical D + G alliance again, by the way, as dane dehaan is very gamine a man, and rihanna the SD: both types seem to learn from each other in fiction. see how rihanna has a bolder impression and curve while dane is slim and compact at 5'8?)

dane dehaan is for the girlies. he is like nicholas hoult to me!!! if he blows up big and ppl finally realize how HAWT he is you heard it here first!!!

thankfully, at one point, as you read more and more about types, it does become easier to accept that you are firmly yin, yang, both or blended in between, and that each image ID does their own thing by default, each having the same value. experimenting is cool, so is theatre and dress-up, but no need to endlessly think you must shapeshift your body for aim XYZ. someone out there likes your type unquestioningly no matter the social norm. and you can like your own type as well. 😊🎶

i like my little dramatic world with its sharp long lines. kibbe taught me its worth. i still toil with the asymmetry and proportions, but i'll get there. it just confirms i'm not a DC and need a more matching style to create harmony. see how this externalizes and eliminates self-hate? don't change the body, but the surroundings. one kibbe ig account admin said, if you're not a diamond, shine like stars instead, or like glimmering water waves. many kinds of appeal are out there. yes, even the person in the mirror has a certain something!

i could never be mainstream 3D curvy, and have a pretty face, yet! all i need is a black wig to serve "tall female protagonist of yeonwoo's innocence" 😂 even the more highly idealized fan art depictions of the couple don't make me feel bad about myself, because even if it's not an exact science i still resemble haesol / the idea (and her precise height).

every other kibbe - except maybe FN - would have to get leg/hand/neck/torso-lengthening surgery and tie their breasts & butt down and diet like crazy and carve their shoulder bones to be lean and tall like haesol. 12 types out of 13 would find her proportions ridiculous and not reality-based, and see her times older than she is portrayed (typical for D types), but to me her build is close to home.

just like some guys who are gamines like yeonwoo (5'4) exist, and look petite/youthful and extremely short even as they age. those IDs are rarely shown in media, but they occur, and are no anomaly, nor anti-beauty. it just disturbs the status quo, that's why some body types and weights are left out or seen as niche, fetish, non-hetero or "strange", or so warped & edited that reality falls flat, demoralizing us.

still won't shake the reality that 13 very varied physical types are out there, and e.g. some guys have lots of yin and vice versa, yang is surprisingly common among women. i respect kibbe for showing this and not censoring out gnc types (e.g. like some D and N women, or some G and R men, i am generalizing rather strongly there, but you know what i mean).

all that leads to why it's so important for authors to portray different body shapes no matter the social pressure, and for readers, to sometimes (not compulsively and exclusively) find relatable characters in fiction with YOUR body type, or similar traits, so you don't tear yourself apart and hurt your physicality to become someone else thinking you can attain what they did; love, assets, comfort, social mobility, attention, praise, etc, ironically destroying what already made you lovely in other people's eyes.

that's why it feels good to find the niche where your non-surgical looks are celebrated and even taken for granted. that's why i'm not against mangas/manhwas stylizing some body types, i just think it goes too far to elicit a sexual response. the madness starts when industries and cultures push only for one possible ideal there, making life harder for basically everyone ever so needlessly. to be what, copy paste mass produced shapes? that would be mind-numbing and dulls our drive. attraction relies on a person having something special. soulless cookie-cutter does not excite and focus the mind on someone at all, and creates inertia.

...so boring!!! who even reads these??

put taemin in his little silky suit next to any of these guys, he will clear them. because his difference and mystery creates prolonged interest and bigger sex appeal. almost no one else aspires to this, which is why taemin immediately stands out so glaringly with his femme aesthetic. lack of androgyny might promise a false safety, but it is too quickly figured out in the long run. that's why TR, both yin and yang, is declared as kibbe's sexiest type. although, yes, the benchmark culturally is a different one, and widely accepted, even if it hurts to achieve it.

thankfully, kibbe acts as an antidote for this, knowing that 13 variations of beauty are possible. e.g., guys far below 6'0 are not nonexistent, invisible or unattractive in kibbe's very correct eyes, and FN women are the pinnacle of the 90s, for instance (even though imo all body types should rule a decade simultaneously - and everyone should have ease finding clothes).

kibbe normalizes human variety and our looks as they are, although the metamorphosis admittedly does seem like a forced glow-up sometimes, and the examples in the book frequently don't hit the spot. it's more of a feeling thing for him anyway, maybe we all could benefit from that approach and start writing poems about our own and each other's types 😅 all that being said, thanks for reading this far with my pep talks and musings. kisses, byee

[manonamora-if]

Interactive Fiction Showcase 2024

Showcase your Game!

The Interactive Fiction Showcase is a year-long "jam" meant to collect and showcase Interactive Fiction games completed in 2024, and show how diverse the Interactive Fiction scene is! And maybe: build more bridges between the community, help people finding their new favourite game/author...

Whether it is long or short, an easy adventure or a complicated puzzle, a strange experiment, a quick creation, or a years-in-the-making game, come show off what you've made!

Are you more of a player? Then, come check this page regularly for new submissions! Maybe leave a rating or a comment too :)

This is an unranked event.

Rules:

The Showcase is open to IF games in all of its forms: kinetic, choice-based, hyperlinks, parser, visual novels... As long as it is Interactive Fiction (there is interactivity and the focus of the game is on the text), the entry will be accepted.

The Showcase is open to IF games in any language.

Entries must be playable and in its complete form when submitted. Completed games in 2024, whose demo was previously public, are welcome. Games submitted to other events (jams/competitions) are welcome.

Entries can include NSFW content, as long as it is indicated in the submission.

Entries should not include any generated AI content - or it will be removed.

Spam or hateful content will be removed.

Creating Interactive Fiction:

Interactive Fiction is a text-based narrative medium, where players can interact with the story in some fashion (input commands, click a link/button, press key). There are many different ways of creating IF, and many different programs to do so. You can find some mentioned below:

Primarily HyperText/Choice-Based: Twine,  Ink, ChoiceScript, Dendry

Primarily Parser/Input: Inform 6, Inform 7, PunyInform, Adventuron, ADRIFT

Other: Bitsy, Binksi, Ren'Py

and many more can be found listed in the IF Wiki.

If you are looking for other Interactive Fiction Events, discuss general IF, or ask question, you can visit the IntFiction Forum. (we also have monthly IF events over at @neointeractives)

Interactive Fiction Database and Archive:

IFDB

The IFDB, or Interactive Fiction Database, is an IF game information catalogue, creating a historical record of the IF landscape. The database is a community project, updated by its members, by adding titles to the directory, ratings games, writing reviews... If a listing has not yet been created for your game, please consider making one!

IF Archive

The IF Archive is an archive of Interactive Fiction games, and IF-related elements (walkthroughs, interpreters, articles, collections...). The Archive’s mission is to preserve the history and practice of interactive fiction and make it freely available to the public. If you wish to, you can upload a copy of your game to the IFArchive, through the IFDB listing of your game (recommended) or directly to the archive.

The IFDB and IFArchive, as well as the IntFiction Forum and Twine, are managed by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. These programs are funded through individual donations.

Visual Novel Database

The VNDB, or Visual Novel Database, is a community project that strives to be a comprehensive database for information about visual novels. The database is updated by its members, by adding titles to the directory, ratings games, writing reviews... If a listing has not yet been created for your visual novel, please consider making one!

[mariacallous]

Every day brings new examples of fake campaign-related pictures, videos, and narratives. In recent weeks, there have been false images of Kamala Harris in a swimming suit hugging convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an AI-generated video of a young man saying he was sexually abused by Tim Walz 30 years ago, a fraudulent Fordham transcript for Donald Trump claiming he had a barely passing 1.28 grade point average, liberal conspiracy theories saying Trump engineered his assassination attempts to generate sympathy for himself, and online pronouncements saying needed hurricane disaster relief funding went to undocumented immigrants.

The fact that none of these claims are true has not stopped their widespread sharing on social media platforms, broad dissemination across the country, and the belief by many people who want to think the worst things about the opposition. The emergence of generative AI makes it easy and inexpensive to manufacture fake images and videos and make someone look guilty of things they did not do.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised on election night if we see false narratives seeking to affect people’s belief about election integrity and the true winner of the race. Having followed this subject for some time as part of a new Brookings Press book co-authored with Elaine Kamarck entitled “Lies That Kill: A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation,” there are several election night disinformation risks that could materialize as final votes are being cast and ballots tabulated.

Allegations of mail ballot fraud in Pennsylvania

One of the biggest risks is in Pennsylvania, which is shaping up to be one of the key states for both presidential candidates. It is a competitive swing state that is vital to winning the Electoral College, and both Trump and Harris have spent heavily there to influence the vote. But one of the problems is that the legislature there has mandated that mail ballots can’t be tabulated until after the polls are closed. With Republicans typically favoring in-person voting on Election Day and Democrats preferring mail ballots, there could be a situation where the election evening tabulations favor Trump but the vote shifts to Harris as the mail ballots are counted. While party differences in vote casting likely would explain these shifts, in 2020 those alterations were taken as evidence of ballot fraud and an election that was stolen from Trump. The risk in 2024 is that disinformation agents either from the United States and/or abroad will repeat those claims, and those accusations will sound believable to skeptical voters.

Slow vote counts being interpreted as evidence of ballot fraud

In addition to slow vote counts in Pennsylvania, there are likely to be slow vote counts in contested areas because turnout is likely to be high this year, and both sides will be watching vote casting and tabulations and filing legal claims based on their observations. Vote counts that take several days look suspicious even when there are logical reasons for the time delays. It will be easy for either side to promote false narratives if the ballots take several days to process.

Not knowing the winner on election night being seen as evidence of ballot fraud

Americans are used to knowing election winners on election night. The 2020 elections were unusual in this regard because vote counts took several days in a number of states, and it was not completely clear who won on the evening of the election. If that situation repeats itself this year, uncertainty is likely to breed paranoia that the other side has stolen the election, and the losing side should be suspicious of what happened.

Claims that substantial numbers of undocumented immigrants voted in key swing states

With Hurricanes Helene and Milton, there already have been false claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency funds were diverted from those devastated by the flooding to undocumented immigrants. And for months, Republicans have peddled the line that Democrats support open borders in order to enable “the illegals” to cast ballots in favor of their party. We should expect some variation on that theme on election night if Trump does poorly and looks for an excuse to rile up his supporters and make them doubt the integrity of the election process.

Charges of ballot stuffing or vote buying in African American and Latino precincts

Race and ethnicity are crucial dividing points in the 2024 elections. For several decades, Democratic presidential candidates have garnered about 90% of the African-American vote and two-thirds of the Latino vote. Yet this year, pre-election surveys show Harris running below those historical figures. If she does well on election night, there could be claims of ballot stuffing or vote-buying in African American and Latino precincts in key states. Her current performance below typical vote levels would be considered by her opponents as evidence of nefarious actions that benefitted her electorally. Since these precincts are likely to go Democratic, if leaders can throw out votes in those areas or cast doubt on the legitimacy of ballot totals, that could be enough in a crucial jurisdiction to move that state from Democrat to Republican.

Premature victory claims

In contested elections, candidates sometimes have political incentives to claim victory before there is independent and objective evidence of winning. Journalists and pundits should interpret those arguments as false claims designed to generate a political advantage. There should be no victory speeches taken seriously by anyone until there is actual evidence of triumph because that simply would be an effort to claim the moral high ground for coming legal and political battles.

What can be done about election night disinformation

To deal with what likely will be an avalanche of fake claims and accusations on election night and thereafter, there are several things we need to do over the next few weeks. Journalists, candidates, opinion leaders, and the general public need to be informed about the high probability of election night disinformation claims and specific ways the results are likely to be challenged. Opinion leaders should “pre-bunk” and “de-bunk” false claims about mail ballots, undocumented immigrant voters, vote-buying, ballot stuffing, vote tabulations, and victory claims.

Both parties will have large numbers of observers in key battleground states to make sure the electoral process operates fairly and openly. Any deviations from legal procedures by either side should be publicized based on factual evidence. In the absence of “facts” before vote counting is complete, pundits, reporters, and experts should refrain from unsubstantiated speculation that could lead to wild conspiracy theories or false narratives about what actually happened and who won.

People should anticipate it could be several days before the 2024 elections are resolved. There likely will be lots of litigation over disputed claims. Indeed, there were over 60 cases filed in 2020, but a review of the legal evidence in open courtrooms rejected the view that there was widespread ballot fraud and the election was stolen from Trump. If it turns out to be a very close election in 2024 as is expected right now, that uncertainty will spawn disinformation, and it will be the job of candidates, reporters, and judges to check the facts based on the legal evidence.

Although we likely will know the winner within several days of November 5, we should keep in mind that election results are not definitive until December 11 when states have to certify the election winners, December 17 when members of the Electoral College meet in their respective states, January 6 when Congress certifies state results, and January 20 when the next president is inaugurated. Based on the 2020 experience, each step of that certification process is important, and the winner will not be able to breathe a sigh of relief until all those steps are complete.

[homestuck-fanauthor-coalition]

The Homestuck Fan Author Coalition's March 2025 Competition was a gift swap! Authors were asked to write 3-5 Homestuck related prompts, and then they received a set of prompts from another author to write. Participants had one month to write any fic they liked based on their prompts, and votes were done to determine the awards.

All Fic Submissions and Awards

your hands protect the flames by @tehstripe

Davesprite survives the explosion that took John on the ship, and now he's survived the end of the game. How does he find his place on the new world when there's already a Dave?

Winner of the Vriska Award for Most Dramatic Winner of the Nepeta Award for Most Romantic

Always watching by @aspen1185

Jake appreciated the gesture, he really did. But sometimes he missed the privacy he had before Dirk sent him the damn robot. For one, he was pretty sure it watched him sleep.

A sickness by another name (wouldn't be sweet either but with luck, it would at least look much more tame) by @thoughts-of-a-scoundrel

A good handful of decades after the events of the last book, Jade Mountain Academy opens its doors yet again to a new generation of dragonets, all of them ready to learn and get a good education... except one. Timekeeper is just trying to survive. Or, what happens when you throw Homestuck characters, the Wings of Fire world, and a high school AU into a blender.

Winner of the Davesprite Superlative for Best Imitator

In which Two Trolls whom are Friends in the Human Connotation of the Word Attempt to Bake as well as One of Them Tries to Be a Good Friend by Partaking in the Other's Interest Without Actually Understanding it by @justficsnthings

Just two buds trying to bake some mother fucking bomb ass pies.

Winner of the Gamzee Award for Most Comedic

Conduction of Heat in Solids by @dave2olkat

‘Heat transfer is an area of thermal engineering that focuses on the transport, exchange, and redistribution of thermal energy. The three modes or ways that heat can be transferred have been termed conduction, convection, and radiation.’ Nepeta Leijon has achieved the dream of every mutant lowblood wriggler in Alternia: she has defected the empire and joined Starfleet. She has a Federation citizenship and has successfully avoided imperial culling! It only, you know, came at the expense of never being able to see or talk to her beloved moirail ever again.

Winner of the Sollux Award for Best Combination of Prompts Winner of the Flinty Award for Best Executed Crossover Winner of the Fruity Rumpus Superlative

you were always my problem by @princevaping11-11

Terezi and an alternate universe Vriska take a walk through the dream bubbles.

dis-ease by shudder

Even the strangest and most unsettling of dolls deserves to wear something that doesn’t physically harm the gander bulbs of passersby.

Winner of the Caliborn Award for Most Canon-Compliant Winner of the Lil Cal Award for Most Horrifying

holding my breath with a baseball bat by @toxicchamomile

Today is your sixteenth birthday. Normally on your birthdays, Feferi bakes you a cake and you make a dumbfuck wish and blow out candles. Today is different.

Winner of the Calliope Award for Most Interesting AU Winner of the Nepeta Award for Most Romantic

suffer the children by @diet-marzipan

raising a kid is hard its hard and nobody understands

Winner of the Eridan Award for Most Angsty Winner of the Lord English Award for Most Directly Inspired by the Prompt Winner of the Bro Award for Worst Parenting

franz freudinand by @ambrosianlullaby

Five times Dirk Strider and his AI Proxy Lil Hal run into the Red Scarf, Lighter, and the one time that Dirk actually gets something out of the interactions. But not without some fumbling and failure along the way.

Winner of the Equius Award for Most Action-Packed

A Time to Kill, A Time to Heal by @aeroargonic

"Maybe that’s what it takes to divert a timeline. Just one child to be offered a chance. A chance to prove themselves to the world, that if the world was willing to smile down at them, they would eagerly smile back." Vriska Serket can't save the world, so she saves herself instead. Well, technically a younger version of herself. But sometimes, that's all you need.

Winner of the Dad Award for Best Parenting

Pride and Prejudice and Horses by @meowloudly15

Jade Harley is super excited to start her very first undergraduate research project! The only problem is, the graduate student whom she's working with is kind of a jerk. No, scratch that, he's definitely a jerk. Will she be able to find common ground with him?

Haunting On The Top Floor by @june-egbert-official

Karkat Vantas' life is changing fast. New home, new landlord, new...ghost? boyfriend? Look, it's complicated. When he moves into his new apartment, his landlord is a dick, the pizza is mid, and something is there with him...but is it the horror story he thinks? Or is there more to meets the eye in his apartment?

This Time Around by @simsandchesscrossover

Jane Crocker finds her friends and loses them, again and again.

Winner of the Calliope Award for Most Interesting AU

Glimpse Into An Alternate Journey by @myusernameisstolen

Jade is very glad she did as that suspicious note suggested, and chose to shrink down the ship and drag John through the portal to the meteor.

Winner of the Feferi Award for Most Fluffy

Weaver by @rose-icosahedron

There's a prophecy, and it goes something like this: "When the war has lasted twenty years, the Dragonets will come. When the land is soaked in blood and tears when the land is soaked in blood and tears, the Dragonets will come. Find the Seawing egg of deepest blue-" Blah blah blah Nightwing Skywing Mudwing Sandwing Three queens Brightest night blah blah blah. Prophecy isn't real, there's not a single Skywing alive hatched within two weeks of the brightest night, and you aren't going to be an adult till the prophecy is over, so you won't get to leave the Nightwing Palace either. You could always run away from the palace of course, but you're too much of a coward to do that.

Winner of the Time Superlative for Most Time Spent Sprinting

Away with the fairies. by bralsra

Tavros spends a night with Nepeta and Roxy and has loads of fun!

Winner of the Feferi Award for Most Fluffy

Playing God by @icedcoolatta

Rose has ascended to Ultimate Self, but with so much power comes so, so much responsibility.

Angel Among the Stars by @calamitascalliope

A young woman pretends to be asleep in her bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 30th of November, 1928, is not this young woman's birthday. Not yet. And soon she will be free of the cage she's been kept in for nearly eighteen years.

Winner of the Caliborn Award for Most Canon-Compliant

[websitedesignpretoria]

AI-Driven SEO in Pretoria: Bridging Global Vision with Local Impact (2025)

In 2025, the digital strategies for businesses in Pretoria is more interconnected than ever. Gone are the days when you could simply focus on one aspect of SEO. Today, true online success hinges on “connecting the dots” between your global reach, national presence, and hyper-local visibility. This integrated approach, often guided by an expert SEO company in Pretoria, is vital for thriving in an AI-driven search world.

The Global Web: Beyond Borders for Pretoria Businesses

Even if your primary market is local, operating in a globalized digital world means global factors impact your Pretoria presence.

Algorithmic Consistency: Google’s core algorithms, heavily influenced by AI, are global. Understanding how these global AI systems interpret content, assess E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), and rank websites is fundamental, regardless of your target audience.

Industry Authority: Becoming a recognized authority in your industry – even globally – can boost your credibility and ranking power locally and nationally. If international publications or thought leaders cite your business, AI models are more likely to see you as a trusted source, benefiting your overall SEO.

Competitive Intelligence: Your competitors aren’t just down the street. They’re national and sometimes global players. Observing their strategies provides valuable insights into what’s working on a broader scale, which you can then adapt for your local efforts.

National Reach: Solidifying Your Presence Across South Africa

While Pretoria is your home base, expanding your reach across South Africa significantly amplifies your brand’s impact.

Broader Audience, More Traffic: A strong national SEO strategy means your business appears in search results for users across Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and beyond. This vastly increases your potential customer base.

Brand Authority and Trust: Being recognized nationally builds significant brand authority. South African consumers, even those in Pretoria, are more likely to trust a business that demonstrates a strong national footprint.

Content Relevance: National SEO involves creating content that addresses topics relevant to the entire South African market, not just local nuances. This positions you as a leading voice in your industry nationwide.

Supply Chain & Logistics Integration: For businesses dealing with physical products like medical equipment, national SEO supports your logistical capabilities, allowing you to serve a wider client base efficiently.

Local Dominance: Winning the Pretoria Market

This is where your integrated strategy truly shines, translating broader authority into tangible local leads and sales. For any SEO company in Pretoria, local dominance is a cornerstone.

Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization: Your GBP is your most powerful local SEO tool. Optimizing it with accurate information, engaging photos, regular posts, and active review management is paramount for appearing in “near me” searches and map results.

Hyper-Local Keywords: Beyond just “medical equipment Pretoria,” think about “dental instruments Hatfield,” “surgical supplies Centurion,” or “hospital equipment Arcadia.” Targeting these highly specific terms brings in qualified local traffic.

Local Citations & Reviews: Consistent business information across local directories and platforms, combined with a robust strategy for acquiring and responding to reviews, significantly boosts local search visibility and trust. AI often synthesizes information from reviews to answer user queries.

Community Engagement: Sponsoring local events, participating in community initiatives, and creating content about Pretoria-specific topics (e.g., “Best Physiotherapists in Pretoria recommending our equipment“) further cements your local relevance.

Voice Search Optimization: People often use voice search for local queries (“find a medical supplier near me”). Optimizing for conversational, natural language queries is crucial.

The Synergy: Connecting the Dots with an Expert SEO Company in Pretoria

The real magic happens when these three layers work in harmony.

Your global industry authority (developed through high-quality content and E-E-A-T) strengthens your national rankings.

Your national brand recognition translates into greater trust and visibility in local Pretoria searches.

Your local success and positive reviews reinforce your overall online reputation, feeding back into your national and even global standing.

Choosing an SEO company in Pretoria that understands this holistic, interconnected approach is critical. They won’t just optimize your Google Business Profile; they’ll develop a strategy that leverages your expertise, builds national authority, and ensures you’re visible at every touchpoint – from a broad AI query to a hyper-local “near me” search.

Don’t let your digital potential be fragmented. Connect the dots for comprehensive, future-proof SEO success in Pretoria and beyond.

Author: Aakshat Vaishnav

SEO Expert / Business Owner

Digital Marketing PTA

[jasir247]

Top Digital Marketing Strategies for 2025

1. AI-Driven SEO & Content Marketing

Search engines are evolving, with AI-powered algorithms reshaping how content ranks. To maintain a competitive edge: ✅ Prioritise Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) when creating content. ✅ Utilise AI-based tools like Jasper, SurferSEO, and Frase.io for content optimisation. ✅ Focus on long-form, informative content tailored to user intent. ✅ Implement structured data and schema markup to improve search visibility. ✅ Optimise for voice search and AI-generated responses to align with new search behaviours.

2. Hyper-Personalised Marketing

Consumers expect customised experiences across all digital platforms. To meet this demand: ✅ Use AI-powered customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as HubSpot, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign for audience segmentation. ✅ Personalise email campaigns with dynamic content and behaviour-based automation. ✅ Leverage Google Ads Performance Max and Meta’s AI-driven targeting for precise ad placements. ✅ Incorporate personalised product recommendations for eCommerce and digital shopfronts.

3. Short-Form & Interactive Video Content

Video remains a dominant force in digital marketing, particularly short, engaging formats: ✅ Create content for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts to capture audience attention quickly. ✅ Utilise AI-powered video creation platforms like Synthesia, RunwayML, and Pictory. ✅ Integrate interactive elements such as polls, quizzes, and live Q&A sessions to drive engagement. ✅ Experiment with immersive experiences like 360-degree videos and augmented reality (AR).

4. Performance-Driven Paid Advertising

Data-driven advertising is becoming smarter and more efficient: ✅ Use AI-powered Google and Meta Ads for automated bidding and precise targeting. ✅ Implement retargeting strategies to reconnect with past visitors. ✅ Leverage AI analytics to anticipate user behaviour and optimise conversion rates. ✅ Adopt programmatic advertising for automated, real-time ad placements.

5. Influencer & User-Generated Content (UGC) Marketing

Influencer marketing is shifting towards authenticity and community engagement: ✅ Partner with micro and nano influencers to achieve higher engagement at lower costs. ✅ Encourage UGC through branded challenges, reviews, and community hashtags. ✅ Use AI tools to evaluate influencer reach and engagement rates. ✅ Feature UGC across websites, social platforms, and email marketing for credibility.

6. Community & Conversational Marketing

Building digital communities fosters brand loyalty and customer retention: ✅ Engage with audiences on WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord. ✅ Deploy AI chatbots for real-time customer interactions and automated lead nurturing. ✅ Host live events, such as webinars and Q&A sessions, to strengthen brand relationships. ✅ Implement SMS marketing and AI-driven chat to provide personalised communication.

7. Ethical & Sustainable Marketing

Consumers increasingly value sustainability and ethical business practices: ✅ Promote eco-friendly products and sustainable packaging in digital campaigns. ✅ Share corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives through storytelling. ✅ Adopt privacy-focused marketing strategies, including ethical data collection and zero-party data. ✅ Be transparent about sourcing, brand values, and business ethics.

8. Web3 & Blockchain in Marketing

Decentralised technologies are reshaping digital marketing strategies: ✅ Explore NFT-based loyalty programs to drive engagement. ✅ Utilise decentralised social media for better audience ownership. ✅ Implement blockchain for transparency in advertising and fraud prevention. ✅ Accept cryptocurrency payments for online services and eCommerce transactions.

9. AI-Powered Data Analytics & CRO

Data-driven decision-making enhances marketing performance: ✅ Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Hotjar, and Crazy Egg to analyse user behaviour. ✅ Conduct A/B testing on landing pages, emails, and ads for optimisation. ✅ Leverage predictive analytics to identify trends and customer preferences. ✅ Improve website UX and sales funnels to increase conversions.

10. Voice & Visual Search Optimisation

As voice and visual search continue to grow, businesses must adapt: ✅ Optimise content for natural language and voice search queries. ✅ Implement image and video search SEO using Google Lens and Pinterest Visual Search. ✅ Enhance accessibility with alt text, metadata, and structured product descriptions. ✅ Focus on multimedia-rich content to align with AI-driven search results.

🔥 Final Thoughts

To stay competitive in 2025, brands must embrace AI, automation, and data-driven strategies while maintaining an authentic connection with their audience. Businesses that leverage new technologies while prioritising customer experience will stand out in the evolving digital space.

📌 Read more insights at: 👉 check out

[severesoulninja]

The Complete Manual for SEO in 2025: Methods to Rule Search Results

Digital marketing

Because Google's algorithms are becoming more intelligent and user behavior is changing, search engine optimization, or SEO, is always changing. To stay ahead of the curve in 2025, you will need to combine technical know-how, excellent content, and strategic link-building. If you are a blogger, digital marketer, or business owner, learning SEO can help you increase conversions and drive organic traffic.

In order to help you dominate search engine rankings in 2024, we will examine the most recent SEO tactics in this guide.

1. Recognizing SEO in 2025

Enhancing your website's visibility on search engines such as Google and Bing is known as SEO. A higher ranking for pertinent keywords, organic traffic, and improved user experience are the objectives.

Relevance, authority, and high-quality content are given top priority by search engines. Google's algorithms have become increasingly complex in comprehending search intent and rewarding websites that offer genuine value as a result of developments in AI and machine learning.

2. Keyword Analysis: The Basis for SEO

The foundation of SEO is still keyword research. But in 2025, search intent will be more important than ever. Take into account the following rather than just high-volume keywords:

Long-tail keywords are longer, more focused terms with higher conversion rates and less competition.

Semantic keywords: Include synonyms and variations of your primary keyword because Google's algorithms can comprehend related terms.

Keywords that are based on questions: A lot of users enter terms like "how to," "best way to," or "why does." By responding to these questions, you can increase how likely you are to be featured in snippets.

The Top Resources for Researching Keywords:

For both PPC and organic search insights, Google Keyword Planner is a free and helpful tool.

Ahrefs: Offers competitor analysis, search volume, and keyword difficulty.

SEMrush: Provides backlink analysis, site audits, and keyword research.

Finding frequently asked questions about your subject is made easier with AnswerThePublic.

3. Optimizing Your Content with On-Page SEO

Improving search rankings by optimizing individual pages is known as on-page SEO. Here's how to make your content better:

a. Meta descriptions and title tags

Your title tag should contain your target keyword, be compelling, and be no more than 60 characters. Likewise, your 160-character meta description should enticingly summarize your content and entice readers to click.

b. Header tags, such as H1, H2, and H3.

Use the main title in H1.

Utilize H2s and H3s for subheadings to enhance structure and readability.

Naturalize the use of primary and secondary keywords.

c. Optimizing URLs

A clean, descriptive URL helps both search engines and users. Example: Bad URL: www.example.com/p=12345 Visit www.example.com/seo-strategies-2025 for a good URL.

d. Linking Inside

Link equity is distributed, navigation is improved, and user engagement is prolonged when you link to other pertinent pages on your website.

e. Optimization of Images

To speed up page loads, reduce the size of images.

To help search engines understand images, use alt text to describe them.

4. Improving Website Performance with Technical SEO

Making a site's backend better for search engines to crawl and index is the main goal of technical SEO.

A. Optimization for Mobile

As mobile-first indexing is the standard, make sure your website is responsive. Google's Mobile-Friendly Test can be used to test your mobile performance.

b. Page Speed and Essential Web Elements

Google takes into account Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, and CLS) and page speed when determining rankings. Boost speed by:

making use of a content delivery network (CDN).

making videos and pictures better.

turning on browser caching and minifying JavaScript and CSS.

c. Make Your Website Secure with HTTPS

Safe websites are given priority by Google. Convert your website to HTTPS if it still uses HTTP for better search engine rankings and user confidence.

Robots.txt and XML Sitemap

Make sure that all of the key pages are indexed by submitting an updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console. A robots.txt file can also be used to prevent the crawling of unnecessary pages.

5. Developing Authority and Trust through Off-Page SEO

a. Creating Links

One important ranking factor is still backlinks. Quantity is not as important as quality. Pay attention to:

guest posting on trustworthy websites.

Links are created by having high-quality content.

"Broken link building" is the process of identifying and fixing broken links.

Consider using HARO (Help A Reporter Out) to get backlinks from news websites.

b. Social Media Brand Mentions

Despite social signals not being direct ranking factors, a strong social media presence can boost credibility and drive traffic.

c. Local SEO and Internet critiques

If your business operates locally, encourage customers to leave positive reviews on Google My Business and Yelp. The local SEO rankings of your business are also raised when local citations contain your company's name, address, and phone number.

7. The Growth of Voice and Zero-Click Searches

It is imperative to optimize for voice search given the popularity of smart assistants like Alexa and Siri.

Make use of FAQs and keywords in natural language.

Because many voice searches are location-based, make sure your website is optimized for local search engines.

There is also an increase in zero-click searches, in which Google provides an answer right in the SERP. In order to appear in featured snippets:

Give succinct, well-organized responses.

For clarity, use lists and bullet points.

8. The Synergy of Content Marketing and SEO

Content marketing and SEO are closely related. For 2025 success, concentrate on

1,500+ words of long-form content that offers comprehensive answers.

Integration of multimedia (podcasts, infographics, and videos).

User interaction promotes sharing, comments, and conversations.

9. Tracking and Enhancing SEO Results

Use resources such as:

Google Analytics: Monitors conversions, traffic, and bounce rates.

Data on indexing and keyword performance is provided by Google Search Console.

Analysis of competitors and backlinks is provided by Ahrefs and SEMrush.

Important data to monitor:

an increase in organic traffic.

ranking of keywords.

CTR stands for click-through rates.

bounce rates and dwell time.

Conclusion: Make Your SEO Strategy Future-Proof

The process of SEO is continuous and necessitates continuous modification. Creating valuable content, staying up to date with algorithm changes, and focusing on technical optimizations are all ways to maintain high search rankings in 2025.

Ready to make your website more successful? Put these tactics into practice right now, and see how your organic traffic increases! 

[sublimeobservationarcade]

The Economics Of Self Service

You are probably seeing a lot more self service checkouts when you go to the supermarket, airport, banks, and other stores. What are the economics of self service? First up, there are less jobs for human beings in your community because the machines are taking their employment. So, if you care about this fact it is a good idea to take note of this. The next economic question is whether you are saving money because you are now doing the work of what used to be done by a checkout operator paid by the store? There is no guarantee of this and I have seen no dedicated savings based on this in my own experience. “Whether these new technologies replace jobs, relegate existing positions to non-public facing roles or create new employment opportunities, they will result in us interacting with fewer people than we have historically.” (https://theconversation.com/a-rise-in-self-service-technologies-may-cause-a-decline-in-our-sense-of-community-201339)

The Exploitation Of Your Unpaid Labour

Personally, I prefer to use the self service checkout at ALDI, simply because I like to be doing stuff rather than standing their waiting. I am sure there are a bunch of people like me in this regard. However, the trend toward self service checkouts without a clearly defined discount is dishonest business in my view. I wonder when dumb human beings are going to wake up to this scam love affair with technology. This is an exploitation of unpaid labour, which CFOs at big corporations are enamoured of.

The Economics Of Corporate Concentration The over concentration of corporate ownership into too few hands, which is occurring around the world right now is accelerating the automation of services. AI is pushed by PR companies as the greatest thing since the commodification of sex. Human beings are leaving the scene enmasse so that bean counters can save money. Installing a machine or a programme is the popular solution to everything. Obviously, jobs are going and some sort of massive readjustment is going to have to happen.

the economics of self service Workers & Consumers Are Being Shafted The economics of self service is seen as the answer to many previously labour intensive sectors. The economics add up for the shareholders and corporate executive but not for us consumers. In the past, this would matter because consumers used to be king. Now, however, due to the rise of duopolies and oligopolies consumers no longer have buying power. These companies can set the prices because of the lack of competition in the market. Capitalism and the free market economy have been manipulated by these huge companies to the detriment of consumers. The monopolisation of sectors destroys the basis upon which we depend upon for our economies to work for us. Basically, we are being screwed by private enterprise. Putting more and more power into the hands of these businesses is only going to make things worse. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom. ©WordsForWeb Read the full article

[mitigatedchaos]

"Writing? In 2024?"

Monday, April 29, 2024

(~2,400 words, 12 minutes)

@northshorewave Re: this publishing post:

I've read through the post that was linked, and an earlier related post by the same author that preceded it.

Her position is that the traditional publishing industry is essentially buying books as lottery tickets, paying for most of them using the few big winners they can't predict.

NorthShoreWave - The personal qualities of NSW specifically.

LLMs - Is AI a threat right now? Mostly as spam.

How Many Readers? - One famous book had 3,000 readers on an email list before its Amazon e-book debut, and went on to traditional publishing.

Funding Options - Many authors and artists are currently using subscription services. Some reasoning and numbers are provided.

Illustrations - Should you use illustrations? This lengthy section does a bit of fundamentals analysis of posting to suggest that maybe, you should.

Interaction - Reader replies are one method by which a post will spread.

Search - The people who want to read your story can't read it if they don't know about it. Writing a good book is essential, but only half the battle.

Some thoughts for you:

1 - NorthShoreWave

You implicitly asked if we had discussed your story in detail before, but the answer is that we hadn't. I have a sense of what you're trying to accomplish based on what I've observed of your character. While you think of yourself as seething, I think you're actually wise, compassionate, self-aware, and able to view things from multiple perspectives. A significant number of people are much worse at practicing at least one of these virtues. On its own, that's not enough to write a best-seller, but I think it does provide you with an advantage.

2 - LLMs

Based on my experiments (see @mitigatedai for some logs), I wouldn't worry about competition from AI. For you, the chief issue caused by AI will be spam. AI moves sideways (different text) and downwards (less meaning). I may tell LLMs to "combine Inspector Gadget and Death Note," but...

Do I actually use the information provided? No.

3 - How many readers do you need?

From one of those publishing posts, to get a sense of the number of readers you need...

Andy Weir first published The Martian as a serial for his own blog, then as a self-published novel on Amazon, then as a traditionally published novel with Random House. “I had an email list with about 3,000 people on it, so, initially, the audience was roughly that much,” he tells me. “When I first posted it to Amazon, I didn’t do anything to market or publicize it. All I did was tell my readers it was available there.” The book was on Amazon for five months, at a price point of 99 cents, and he sold 35,000 copies before Random House bought the rights in February of 2014.

Note that being a provocative firebrand doesn't necessarily mean you'll sell copies. Some politicians with tremendous name recognition failed to move copies of their books.

4 - Funding Options

I don't recommend using a Kickstarter to publish your book at this time or in the near future. You just don't have the name recognition, but also, Slashdotter Caimlas (who I don't know, so I don't know how trustworthy he is) wrote:

I'm personal friends with a number of authors who publish books in one of several subgenres. Mostly, they rely on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited: some of them are prolific enough that their book sales account for most of their income, simply based on peoples' reading of their works. Mostly, unless people want a piece of history or something they can reference, folks seem to hate having clutter. Fiction that sells isn't usually, primarily sold as a hardcopy book anymore, I don't believe - short of the kinds of books that end up at the end of the grocery store isle or in an airport novelty store.

A lot of publishing is done online these days, often through subscription services such as Substack (for essays) or Patreon. (Kindle Unlimited is also a subscription service, costing $12/mo.) As an example, the webcomic Spinnerette has a Patreon (bringing down $3.3k/mo), and then runs Kickstarter campaigns for print runs (volume 8 raised $27k).

To give you an estimate, Spinnerette's Patreon has only 536 subscribers, and pulls down $3.3k/mo, but you probably haven't heard of it. El Goonish Shive, which I'm confident you have heard of, brings in $3.6k/mo on 2.4k subscribers. The famous Kill Six Billion Demons has ~5.4k subscribers, bringing down ~$8.4k.

In Patreon terms, a good foothold to try for might be 100 subscribers at $3/mo each, with an initial focus on getting to 50.

5 - Illustrations

You've posted some drawings. They have some character, showing that you have the basic aptitude to develop the skill if you applied yourself to regular practice. However, the proportions are too far off to attract much attention (except as a stylistic choice, which, I can tell, it is not).

This blog tends to break things down into their abstract fundamentals for analysis. I promised myself I wasn't going to do that here, but eh, we'll do just a bit.

To quote one of the publishing articles...

“People tend to buy the books that are already really popular,” Deahl says. “They look at the bestseller list to see what they want to buy and that reinforces this tiny amount of books at the top. It’s a very top-heavy system. The tricky thing in publishing is success begets success. But it’s really hard to create that spark.”

Let's stop to think about this.

a. Banter - Fame

There is one layer to this that you can't do much of anything about, which is that people will watch the same shows their friends watch in order to have something to talk about with their friends.

b. Investment - Background

However, there is another layer over which you have more influence. It's very easy to make a quick judgment of a movie based on its visuals, or a short trailer. It's also relatively easy to judge short songs, since they're only a few minutes long (but I don't find myself doing this often).

In order to judge a book, you have to read the text and process it. You can't make a snap judgment off a single picture, because you have to read the text first to produce the mental picture.

This website does have viral text posts, but they're like...

You seem to have fundamentally misunderstood me, Anon.  Go read all 5,640 posts again.

Some of these posts can get a bit long, but it's usually a back-and-forth where each individual post is short. Often, they'll mix in images, or memes.

People supposedly read at 200 words per minute. Based on that estimate, this blog's most viral post of all time can be read in 5 seconds. That's about the same amount of time someone would spend looking at a jpeg.

That doesn't mean people don't enjoy effortposts. They will follow a blog upon encountering a good effortpost! They just don't like or reblog them.

I think you already know this part, but for "acceptable" length for reblogging, it's usually best to keep it under one "Tumblr page," meaning around one screen length on desktop, or around 200-300 words. I've talked about this part before, but if the reader can see the end of the post, it feels like less of an investment to read the post, and reblogging it won't fill up a friend's Tumblr dash.

Obviously that's tough for long-form fiction, because it has to load more context about the characters in order to establish the stakes. (Unless it's fan fiction, where the audience already knows the characters.)

c. Investment - Strategy

As you know, this blog will sometimes post political cartoons and other illustrations as part of its general stream of content.

The obvious strategy is just to have some nice-looking character images or images of scenes from the story. It can be "read" faster, so it's more shareable.

I think that strategy suffers from a weakness in that it's easy to just look at the image and disregard the text. This would reduce your fiction blog to an art blog - and it is not an art blog.

Therefore, I would like to gently suggest - and keep in mind, I do not have any published novels - a different potential approach. This proposal is speculative, and this technique is not widely used.

Do you know that famous Rockwell painting, Breaking Home Ties? Rockwell is a master of telling a story with just a single still-frame painting.

Rockwell has to tell the whole story in one picture, because that's the medium he's got to work with. This limits how much story he can tell. As an author, you don't have to limit yourself to what can be told in just one image, because you have the text.

This strategy would involve a two-step maneuver.

First, the image at the top of the post communicates the essentials that the reader needs to know about the characters through the composition of the scene (so that they don't need to read background material), as well as various subtle details, while raising questions, also through the use of details/etc, to increase the viewer's curiosity.

Fortunately for the viewer, second, the questions raised by the image are answered in the text right below it.

The post would form an entry point into a network of related posts; tags for particular characters could be linked at the bottom, or links to other posts in the sequence.

Secondary characters would be ideal for this, because you can manipulate their scenarios/context/character to fit the short format, while your overall project will focus on the main characters and thus have a greater, long-term narrative investment for appropriately larger payoff.

As I wrote in my post on 'text wall memes,' people will read text in an image, and they'll even reblog it, but it's contextual. So again, this is speculative, but it should be feasible. It's a matter of creating the appropriate context.

d. Investment - AI Art

I don't think you should use AI-generated art. Yes, people will be able to tell, but the even bigger problem...

Compare this AI knockoff to Norman Rockwell's original Girl with Black Eye.

The expression is wrong. The pose is different. This is a completely different story from the one Rockwell was telling! The prompteur 'borrows' the right 25% of the image from Norman's original because he can't reproduce it. And what is that random white cloth on the left side of the image?

There is a significant reduction in the amount of intention in the image. Putting it back in involves working over the image, repeatedly, usually with inpainting, and often working against what's in the AI's training data, forcing it to pull from more and more improbable parts of the distribution (until eventually, there's no matching data in the training at all; you have to get out and draw it yourself).

I'm going to borrow a post of my own here from 2019.

This isn't oriented towards the strategy I've described, and it only got 21 notes, but note the teacup with steam and tea bag tag, the obscured flag in the background, and the Youtube-style video tracker on the bottom. The combination of the special effect, text that looks like a subtitle, and video tracker imply that the image is a screenshot from a streaming anime.

The character is casually (as indicated by the cup of tea) sitting at a computer desk (as indicated by the faintly sketched keyboard and hand position for a mouse). What's that flag in the background? It certainly doesn't belong to any extant country. (In fact, as the artist, I'll tell you - it's based on an O'Neill Cylinder.)

Obviously this art is very much just a sketch in quality terms. An AI rendering usually looks much fancier. However, an AI would not put that detail in.

e. Investment - Technical Skills

However, I will suggest the use of software if you go this route. (Or the hiring of an artist, but that could get expensive.)

Your issue is with proportions. Lots of people have trouble with proportions. (You also have trouble with hands. Lots of people have trouble with hands.)

One way to deal with this is to just train. You'd be surprised at how fast you improve if you draw from realistic sources such as photographs an hour a day for a year, even if it's just a quick sketch. You probably aren't willing to do so. You have other things to worry about, including writing.

However, you could use posing software. You could save the proportions of several characters and position them throughout the scene, as well as having a grid for the ground and potentially other props to help with positioning of items like lamp posts or the edges of buildings. (I've experimented with posing software a bit myself.)

Dan Shive (of El Goonish Shive) does not use posing software as far as I know, but he has used 3D software. Although his style is cartoonish, one thing people like about him is that he does put effort in at improvement, and the quality of his work has improved substantially. (That was actually the inspiration for the second part of the "in 2028, Hollywood runs out of ideas and adapts El Goonish Shive" post.)

6 - Interaction

Though shorter posts tend to go more viral, I find that posts which someone can reblog and share their opinion tend to show up a lot in my top posts (as long as they're only about one tumblr page long). The MOON PRISON poll is a good example of something that's approachable and neutral, but fits heavily with the themes of my blog, but other posts may take a political position that invites disagreement, resulting in discourse, and get reblogged that way. (You may also remember the silly Swift Pill poll.)

I don't recommend courting disagreement on purpose. Not only is this bad for the social environment, but it tends to make people go crazy.

7 - Search

I think you've probably noticed some of this already and are working with it (posting short excerpts, initial art). Most of this is, again, speculative. This is all just information for your consideration.

Writing a good book is the first problem. Getting the readers who would enjoy the book to find it in such a noisy environment is the second problem. I think you can do it, but if your trajectory isn't currently looking as good as you want (e.g. # followers on your story's sideblog), I would recommend expanding your strategy so that you're in a good position when the book itself is ready to launch.

[tech4bizsolutions]

Deep Dives into Tech and Digital Growth Strategies

In an era of rapid technological advancements and evolving business landscapes, understanding the nuances of tech-driven strategies is essential for sustained growth. Companies today must leverage cutting-edge technologies and innovative digital growth strategies to stay competitive. This article takes a deep dive into the world of technology and digital strategies, highlighting how businesses can harness them to achieve their full potential.

Tech Innovation: The Catalyst for Business Evolution

Innovation in technology is reshaping industries, from manufacturing and healthcare to retail and financial services. Businesses that embrace tech innovations can unlock new opportunities and create unique competitive advantages.

Automation and AI: Automation tools and artificial intelligence (AI) are driving efficiency, reducing human errors, and freeing up resources for more strategic tasks. Companies that adopt AI-driven decision-making processes gain valuable insights and predictive analytics.

Cloud Computing: Cloud-based solutions offer businesses scalable, cost-effective options for data storage and software deployment. Cloud technologies facilitate remote work, enhance collaboration, and provide data accessibility from any location.

Internet of Things (IoT): IoT is transforming industries by connecting devices and enabling real-time data collection and analysis. Businesses can leverage IoT to monitor operations, optimize workflows, and improve customer experiences.

5G Connectivity: The rollout of 5G networks is enabling faster communication and data transfer. This enhanced connectivity paves the way for innovations in areas like telemedicine, augmented reality, and autonomous vehicles.

Digital Marketing Strategies for Sustainable Growth

Digital marketing is at the heart of modern business strategies. To stand out in a crowded market, businesses must adopt targeted and innovative marketing tactics.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is critical for improving online visibility and driving organic traffic. Businesses should focus on creating high-quality content, optimizing for keywords, and building authoritative backlinks to enhance search engine rankings.

Content Marketing: Content is king when it comes to building brand authority and engaging audiences. Businesses should invest in creating informative, relevant content that addresses customer pain points and provides solutions.

Social Media Engagement: Social media platforms are powerful tools for building brand awareness and fostering community engagement. Consistent posting, audience interaction, and strategic advertising can amplify a brand’s reach.

Data-Driven Marketing: Analyzing marketing performance data allows businesses to make informed decisions and refine strategies. By leveraging analytics tools, businesses can identify trends, understand customer behaviors, and optimize campaigns for better results.

Personalization: Today’s consumers expect personalized experiences. Businesses that use data to tailor their offerings and communication to individual preferences are more likely to build lasting relationships with customers.

Cybersecurity: Protecting Digital Assets

As businesses become more reliant on digital technologies, cybersecurity is paramount. Cyber threats can compromise sensitive data, disrupt operations, and damage reputations. To safeguard digital assets, businesses must implement robust cybersecurity measures.

Multi-Layered Security: Implementing multi-layered security protocols ensures that businesses are protected from various attack vectors. This includes firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and endpoint protection.

Data Encryption: Encrypting sensitive data both in transit and at rest protects it from unauthorized access.

Regular Audits: Conducting regular security audits helps identify vulnerabilities and ensures that security measures are up-to-date.

Employee Training: Human error is a common cause of data breaches. Educating employees on cybersecurity best practices can reduce the risk of phishing attacks and other social engineering tactics.

Customer-Centric Tech Solutions

Understanding and prioritizing customer needs is key to business growth. Tech innovations can enhance customer experiences and build long-term loyalty.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: CRM systems help businesses manage customer interactions and provide personalized experiences. By analyzing customer data, businesses can tailor their offerings and improve satisfaction.

Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: AI-powered chatbots offer 24/7 customer support, answering queries and resolving issues in real-time. These tools enhance customer service while reducing operational costs.

Omnichannel Experiences: Today’s consumers interact with businesses across multiple channels. Providing a seamless, consistent experience across all touchpoints—whether online, in-store, or on mobile—is essential for customer satisfaction.

Tech Integration for Operational Efficiency

Integrating technology into core business processes can streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve overall efficiency.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems: ERP systems integrate various business functions into a unified platform, improving visibility and coordination across departments.

Project Management Tools: Digital project management platforms enable teams to collaborate, track progress, and meet deadlines efficiently.

Supply Chain Optimization: Advanced technologies like IoT and blockchain can enhance supply chain transparency, improve inventory management, and reduce delays.

Sustainable Growth with Tech Partnerships

Partnering with tech solution providers can accelerate business transformation and growth. Collaborating with experts allows businesses to access specialized knowledge and cutting-edge technologies without investing heavily in in-house resources.

Scalability: Tech partnerships enable businesses to scale operations as needed, adapting to market demands without significant disruptions.

Innovation: Partnering with tech innovators ensures that businesses stay ahead of industry trends and adopt new technologies as they emerge.

Looking Ahead: Future Trends in Tech and Digital Growth

The tech landscape is constantly evolving, and businesses must stay agile to remain competitive. Emerging trends like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and edge computing are set to redefine industries. By staying informed and embracing change, businesses can position themselves for long-term success.

Conclusion

Tech4Biz Solutions is committed to empowering businesses with innovative tech solutions and digital growth strategies. Whether it’s leveraging advanced technologies, optimizing marketing efforts, or enhancing customer experiences, Tech4Biz helps businesses unlock new possibilities. By diving deep into the world of tech and digital strategies, companies can fuel growth, drive innovation, and stay ahead of the curve in an ever-changing business landscape. Visit Tech4Biz Solutions to learn more about how we can help transform your business.

[beardedsweetsfart]

What is Mern stack And Its importance? Before that I will Tell you the best institute for Mern stack course in Chandigarh.

What is Mern stack?

MERN Stack is a popular JavaScript-based technology stack used for building full-stack web applications. It consists of four key technologies:

MongoDB: A NoSQL database that stores data in a flexible, JSON-like format.

Express.js: A lightweight and fast backend framework for Node.js.

React.js: A front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

Node.js: A runtime environment that allows JavaScript to run on the server side.

Importance of Mern Stack :

Full-Stack JavaScript – Uses JavaScript for frontend and backend, simplifying development.

High Performance – Node.js ensures fast, scalable applications.

Cost-Effective – Open-source, reducing development costs.

Rapid Development – React’s reusable components speed up UI building.

Flexibility – Suitable for web apps, SPAs, eCommerce, and real-time applications.

Scalability – MongoDB handles large data efficiently.

Strong Community Support – Large developer base ensures continuous updates and support. 

Now i will tell you the best institute for Mern stack course in Chandigarh .

Excellence Technology is a leading EdTech (Educational technology) company dedicated to empowering individuals with cutting -edge IT skills and bridging the gap between education and industry demands. Specializing in IT training ,carrer development, and placement assistance ,the company equipts learners with the technical expertise and practical experience needed to thrive in  today's competitive tech landscape. We provide IT courses like python ,Full stack Development, Web Design ,Graphic Design and Digital Marketing. 

Contact Us for more details: 93177-88822

Extech Digital is a leading software development company dedicated to empowering individuals with cutting -edge IT skills and bridging the gap between education and industry demands. Specializing in IT training ,carrer development, and placement assistance ,the company equipt learners with the technical expertise and practical experience needed to thrive in  today's competitive tech landscape. e provide IT courses like Python ,Full stack Development, Web Design ,Graphic Design and Digital Marketing. 

Contact Us for more details: 93177-88822

Excellence academy is a leading software development company dedicated to empowering individual with cutting edge IT skills and bridging the gap between education and industry demands.specializing in IT training, career development, and placement assistance, the company equits learners with the technical expertise and practical experience needed to thrive in today's landscape. We provide IT courses like python, full stack development,Web design, and Digital marketing.

Contact Us for more details: 93177-88822

About Author

Nikita Thakur

Mern stack AI Developer/ 2+ years of experience

Excellence technology

Professional summary

Nikita thakur  is a skilled MERN Stack AI Developer with over 2 years of experience at Excellence Technology. Proficient in MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, and Node.js, she integrates AI solutions to build scalable, high-performance web applications. Nikita excels in developing innovative solutions, enhancing user experiences, and driving business growth through technology. 

[mariacallous]

Europe’s most famous privacy activist, Max Schrems, landed another blow against Meta today after the EU’s top court ruled the tech giant cannot exploit users’ public statements about their sexual orientation for online advertising.

Since 2014, Schrems has complained of seeing advertising on Meta platforms targeting his sexual orientation. Schrems claims, based on data he obtained from the company, that advertisers using Meta can deduce his sexuality from proxies, such as his app logins or website visits. Meta denies it showed Schrems personalized ads based on his off-Facebook data, and the company has long said it excludes any sensitive data it detects from its advertising operations.

The case started with Schrems challenging whether this practice violated Europe’s GDPR privacy law. But it took an unexpected turn when a judge in his home country of Austria ruled Meta was entitled to use his sexuality data for advertising because he had spoken about it publicly during an event in Vienna. The Austrian Supreme Court then referred the case to the EU’s top court in 2021.

Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) finally ruled that a person’s sexual orientation cannot be used for advertising, even if that person speaks publicly about being gay.

“Meta Platforms Ireland collects the personal data of Facebook users, including Mr. Schrems, concerning those users’ activities both on and outside that social network,” the court said. “With the data available to it, Meta Platforms Ireland is also able to identify Mr. Schrems’ interest in sensitive topics, such as sexual orientation, which enables it to direct targeted advertising at him.”

The fact that Schrems had spoken publicly about his sexual identity does not authorize any platform to process related data to offer him personalized advertising, the court added.

“Now we know that if you're on a public stage, that doesn't necessarily mean that you agree to this personal data being processed,” says Schrems, founder of the Austrian privacy group NOYB. He believes only a handful of Facebook users will have the same issue. “It's a really, really niche problem.”

The CJEU also ruled today Meta has to limit the data it uses for advertising more broadly, essentially setting ground rules for how the GDPR should be enforced. Europe’s privacy law means personal data should not be “aggregated, analyzed, and processed for the purposes of targeted advertising without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data,” the court said in a statement.

“It's really important to set ground rules,” says Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig, the lawyer representing Schrems. “There are some companies who think they can just disregard them and get a competitive advantage from this behavior.”

Meta said it was waiting for the CJEU’s judgment to be published in full. “Meta takes privacy very seriously and has invested over 5 billion Euros to embed privacy at the heart of all of our products,” Meta spokesperson Matt Pollard told WIRED. “Everyone using Facebook has access to a wide range of settings and tools that allow people to manage how we use their information."

Schrems has been a prolific campaigner against Meta since a legal challenge he made resulted in a surprise 2015 ruling invalidating a transatlantic data transfer system over concerns US spies could use it to access EU data. His organization has since filed legal complaints against Meta’s pay-for-privacy subscription model and the company’s plans to use Europeans’ data to train its AI.

“It's major for the whole online advertisement space. But for Meta, it's just another one in the long list of violations they have,” says Schrems, of this latest ruling. “The walls are closing in.”