#spreadsheet talk

[nostalgicfun]

my day job is at a college, and this morning my boss was like "go collect all the suggestion slips from our suggestion boxes around the school and create a document and a spreadsheet outlining the needs of the student body."

Ok cool very easy! fun, even!

there were two. two suggestions.

"spring fling should be steampunk themed :3 I'd like to see more pipes and gears with no discernible function"

and

"free food. starbocks. privitized resturaunts."

I can't wait to turn in my 1/8th page report with "pipes and gears with no discernible function" and three out of five words misspelled on it. the students have spoken, boss; such are the needs of the student body.

[blizzardfluffykpop]

Bias Spreadsheet Math

Okay, so I have a spreadsheet for my biases because I have quite a few (currently on this sheet: 27) and I like to keep facts about them stored. Just to see what lines up with the other ones. (Side note: None of my biases seem to line up...)

Anyways, I always have to manually put in the age they've turned. And I've had this spreadsheet for like a few years now. And it's tiring...

Cause I'm lazy & okay with math- I made an equation? So, the =DATEDIF() equation only works w/numbers. While Google does have the function for "TODAY" it wouldn't work in said function.

So, if I wanted it to always solve from birthdate to today. I'd have to come up with a different way, so I'd never had to type their ages manually again. I configured a little 'today's date' cell in the sheet. Thus, dubbing "AB2" as the dedicated cell.

And here 'X' will stand for any birthdate/cell w/birthdate. And years will be represented by "Y." After all, that is what we are solving for.

Thus the equation looks like:

=DATEDIF(X, AB2, "Y")

I'll be the first to admit I love math, but as a person who doesn't like to do the same tedious work over and over... This is going to make a nice difference when I look at the sheet again in the future.

Also, disclaimer: I didn't get the idea for the bias spreadsheet, someone else made the original. I have just made it custom to me. It does have some functions from the original, most of them have been scrapped tbh. Especially because this is my third version of the spreadsheet. (I don't keep up w/a lot of groups anymore, so I made a new one to decrease clutter). I don't know how much of it remains? I do have the link to the official one tho.

Anyways- if you've read on this far- and are still intrigued! If you wish to start your own: I have the link to the original and can also link mine! And if you'd like I'd be more than happy to help you set it up!

Idk I'm very proud of myself for figuring it out. It took me a little bit, but algebra was my favorite in school, so it came with ease! :)

(Also, this post marks: 25,000 posts *reblogs & originals* 🥰)

[charl0ttan]

blue dot for each rating ive given an album on rateyourmusic from each year, red is the rolling average rating of my 908 albums over each year

[fjordfolk]

Honestly, the reason I very rarely get into actual training discussions is that I very rarely agree with the premise. I don't care to involve myself in how you, a professional or far-above-averagly engaged hobbyist dog trainer, approach your dogs. I may not necessarily agree with it, and it may not be aligned with what I would consider a harmonious household, but it's not actually my business. You can stack your dog with prongs and ecollars from sternum to axis and I'll just trust that your ethical barometer and situational reflexes are well tuned. It's not really an interesting topic for me to discuss.

But the vast vast majority of people who train, handle and own dogs aren't dedicated dog trainers. They're the people in front of and behind you in line at the grocery store. And if we can't agree that 1) a misplaced reward is probably a kinder failure than a misplaced correction and b) we owe it to the animals we brought into our lives for our own enjoyment to at least err on the side of kindness, and so the most generic public-facing baseline form of dog training should at least be reward-based, then I really don't know how to help.

[phoenixyfriend]

New OC clones idea

His name is XL. He's average clone size, so people are naturally curious about what the name means. They ask if it's a dirty joke about his dingaling.

It's not. He pulls up some files. He's the quartermaster. He uses Space Excel, and it's not CALLED Excel, but he Excels at it. Hence XL.

His friends in two other battalions are Spread and Sheets. All of them get asked the Is It A Dirty Joke question and ALL respond with The Same Fucking Move (files).

This clone's job is spreadsheets and he LOVES it.

[kindasleepycryptid]

I keep thinking about how Mel learns about abbott and samora and wonders if its a little inappropriate, meanwhile Santos is like girl youre NOT the one who can criticize

But given that Mel doesnt see her relationship with Langdon going anywhere romantic or sexual she goes on an excel spreadsheet quest of trying to figure who she is supposedly harassing.

[bronzetomatoes]

I need to listen to Soul Punk (2011) by Patrick Stump

[sunlight-shunlight]

i realized i may be one of the only people on this webbed site who played both earthdawn and dragon age, so i thought i should share haha, i've never seen anyone else talking about the similarities.

earthdawn is: a tabletop rpg initially developed in the 90s and still publishing to this day. david gaider mentioned playing/running some campaigns of it. and the similarities are... very extensive and funny. let me go over them:

earthdawn is an apocalyptic high fantasy setting where every few thousand years, there's a cyclical, catastrophic event where monsters (both physical and astral) unstoppably ravage the world for centuries. this has led to loss of entire civilizations, and vast areas that are permanently tainted by their effects and are uninhabitable.

there's a small order of distrusted, secretive people, who take on an aspect of the monsters they're hunting, in order to more effectively track and kill them. this connection goes both ways, and the monsters can find and torment them in turn. regular people find this a bit scary. members of this order tend to not live very long (not like a physical limitation in their case, they just usually die on the job before they get old)

great dragons are very magically powerful, the oldest form of sapient life, and used to rule the world in a very bygone past era. they created immortal elves as servants, went into hibernation, and then their disaffected immortal elf lackeys rose up and killed some of them off to create their own civilization instead. there are some remaining great dragons, but they're reclusive. if needed, they can take on a humanoid form and blend into society and pull strings to influence various cultures. there are a few groups of people who live near the dragons and worship them, and the dragon protects them in return. there's also a bit about dragons possibly feeding people their blood in rituals as a way to create servants, or imbue people with power/greater lifespan, and thus influence entire noble lineages descended from there.

magic used to be far more powerful and prevalent, but has declined somewhat. there's an astral plane that reflects the real world. it's only easily accessible by mages, and can be entered physically, but that's very dangerous to the point of being usually fatal, and generally the astral plane is only perceived mentally while staying in the regular world. the astral realm is corrupted and dangerous, while also containing some neutral/friendly spirits. unwary mages can get possessed or killed by the monsters in the astral plane. spirits can manifest out of the astral plane and into the physical world voluntarily, or be summoned or bound for various tasks. this is controversial in the setting, as some people see it as fine, and others see it as forced servitude. some spirits are old and complex enough to clearly communicate with people and have their own full blown agendas and personalities, some are much simpler and only focused on a small domain of influence relating to a single trait they have.

blood magic is not as common in the area where the game is set, but...

there's a huge, decadent, ancient byzantium/rome themed blood magic empire, that runs on slavery and sacrifices. it used to have control over the entire map, but it was weakened by the apocalyptic event + various uprisings, so now its sphere of influence is much smaller. it still maintains slaving raids and tries to expand back into its old provinces. it was influenced very early on by weird shady mages who left the elven empire, and had convenient knowledge of the apocalypse before it happened. the empire has a much better scholarship around magic in general + the apocalypse than others, as well as a more "magic is indistinguishable from high tech" vibe to its standard of living. it has floating castles and fortresses that protect its nobility/can be deployed in warfare.

there's one underground dwarven kingdom remaining out of a few dozen that used to exist - all the others fell to infighting or the apocalyptic monster hordes. at the time of the setting, this kingdom is having a bit of a succession/legitimacy crisis with its monarchy. the dwarves are also a hub of trade and commerce bc their city was well-shielded from the apocalypse, so their language is the base of the common tongue and writing system everyone uses.

there's also an ancient elven empire that used to exist, but was also mostly lost in the apocalypse. currently, elves are mortal and about as magical as everybody else. there are some elves who are fully immortal, and still walk the earth - either gaining power and going through false identities to pose as normal rulers and maintain a vice-grip on elven society, or doing magical research and stuff to stave off more of the apocalypse, or doing centuries-long shadow warfare against each other/the dragons by using mortal kingdoms as pawns.

there's an elven pantheon of gods that everyone else adopted when the elven empire was bigger - it included a trickster deity who sealed themselves + two other gods into the Apocalypse Juice to try and partially nullify it, thus preventing the apocalypse from running over the whole area. unfortunately, this has corrupted all 3 gods who are marinating in that Juice, and now they generate madness and violence and despair in people they connect to.

[mamawasatesttube]

pondering tim drake fic aka figuring out how to work with html/css table element formatting so i can put a "spreadsheet" in there...

[drenched-in-sunlight]

Been looking at all your awesome Armoured Core stuff again recently, and it reminded me of something.

I vaguely remember that there was some reason a lot of folks shipped Flatwell & O'Keefe, I think something about their callsigns or emblems, but I can't remember what specifically and It's bothering me a disproportionate amount.

Would you happen to know what that might be about?

(To be clear I don't disapprove of it at all, it's just been on my mind and my internet searches haven't turned anything up :/ ).

o-oh.... the reason ppl ship O'Keefe and Flatwell is because of me haha :sweat:

there are only 4 pilots that use the MA-J-200 RANSETSU-RF rifle in the game and it's Rusty, Flatewell, O'Keeffe and Dolmayan.

the description of MA-J-201 RANSETSU-AR (another Ransetsu rifle in-game) states that this line of rifle is mass-produced for Rubicon Liberation Front.

Given that 3 out of 4 people that use it are RLF members, it's not a stretch to say O'Keeffe could be one of them or at least a sympathizer, since there's text data stating Vespers don’t favour kinetic weapons (which Ransetsu rifle is).

There's also that thing about how Flatwell used to be a spy & having swayed over a significant contact in Schneider's HR department + his AC being an agile, lightweight AC with the same design concept as Schneider ACs + O'Keeffe being head hunted by Arquebus information dept + Schneider being a subsidiary of Arquebus

-> i believe Flatwell used to work as a double agent in Schneider & the important contact he managed to sway over is O'Keeffe, who went on to become V.III

Rusty being able to rise so quick through Arquebus rank is a joint effort between the two of them (or as i like to joke the nepo baby allegation)

there are other things like Flatwell and O'Keeffe being the only pilots to use the same line of Furlong missile launcher (BML-G1 line) with Furlong also giving out the technology to help build Rusty's Steel Haze ORTUS, Flatwell and O'Keeffe also rank next to each other in the arena lol.

what you mentioned about emblems is one of my talking points too (:head in hands:...), Vespers are named after famous individuals and O'Keeffe is an artist, whereas Flatwell's emblem is a cover art of a real book

(if you want another truth nuke, the photographer providing inside photos for that book is Russell Munson.

"Rusty" is shortened nickname version of Russell.)

(i swear the Japanese fandom also discussed that, im not insane)

[kbsd]

eugene sledge & robert leckie // "station to station"

it's too late to be hateful the European canon is here

-> WATCH ON GOOGLE DRIVE

(i've been thinking about this video for a long time, but this gifset by meg @ww2yaoi really inspired me to finish it. i also drew a lot of inspiration and themes from where to begin by ama @warriorgays. thank you both!)

some content warnings under the cut:

i wanted this video to be a really comprehensive dive into both leckie’s and sledge’s arcs, which meant including the particularly horrible parts of the war: namely the dehumanization of japanese people, the way the marines used that dehumanization to justify their actions, and how it eroded their own humanity in turn. as such, i included a lot of elements of the show that i wouldn’t normally put into a video and that i don’t often see in visual fanworks, so i wanted to content warn accordingly. this video includes (in addition to the usual canon-typical violence and discussion of ptsd):

canon-typical racism including racial slurs, desecration of corpses, animal cruelty, frontal nudity, and suicide

[vamptits]

Here's the final version of my MCR 2022/2023 tour spreadsheet!

It's got show stats, all the outfits, info about individual shows, albums, drum photos, blood, and it's color-coded by album. Photos are sourced and linked. Have fun!!

[charl0ttan]

hi is there any way to autofill 900 rows like this all at once

[croquettish]

I just read your response to the anon about the story potential/Hansry romance direction for KCD3, it was so interesting! Thanks for sharing! I just wanted to say I'm so intrigued by this color-coded spreadsheet of Hans dialogue trees you mentioned lol, if you're willing to share 👀

Thank you so so much!!! 🥹

And I'm more than willing to share!! Here's the spreadsheet in all its glory:

Non-Romanced vs. Romanced Hans - End Conversation: A Comparison

As a crazy person who makes spreadsheets whenever I find a possible excuse, I jumped at the chance when I needed to get the full dialogue for my hansry fic anyway, especially because it really struck me just how different the two felt even though the changes made are honestly fairly subtle!!

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Statistical analysis of the most popular A:TLA fics on AO3

(All of this is accurate as of May 27 2024)

I like numbers and statistical analysis and for some unfathomable reason I find it calming. So last night I made this spreadsheet!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a judgement of the quality, value, or merits of any of the fics on this list. It's just me being curious about what's popular with the A:TLA fandom on AO3. I was genuinely surprised at some of the results!

Observations and analysis under the cut:

TL:DR, the fandom fucking loves putting Zuko into Situations.

Methodology: I'm including all fics from the first page of results from the most kudos'd, commented, hits, and bookmarks tagged under the Avatar: The Last Airbender (cartoon, 2005) tag on ao3. I am deliberately not including any larger multifandom flash fiction or drabble collections because I don't think they're super relevant. This ended up including 38 fics in total.

I put all the fics into one single spreadsheet in order to compare the differences between fics that are really high on the kudos count but not the hit count, or what has a lot of comments but fewer hits. Basically, I'm throwing a lot of things together to observe what gets engagement and looking at patterns that emerge!

Top 5 most popular fics by hit count:

Salvage - MuffinLance

Fractures - EvieNyx

Embers- Vathara

Towards the Sun - MuffinLance

The Art Of Burning - hella1975

Max: 1,407,170 (Salvage -MuffinLance)

Min: 78,168 (Risking it all - Sreeder)

Average: 349,442

Top 5 most popular fics by kudos count:

Salvage - MuffinLance

The Family You Choose - TunaFishChris

where the stars do not take sides - WitchofEndor

Fractures - EvieNyx

The beginning of a new and brighter birth - aloneintherain

Max: 59,947 (Salvage - MuffinLance)

Min: 3293 (Risking it all - Sreeder)

Average: 19,868

Top 5 most popular fics by number of comments:

The Art Of Burning - hella1975

Salvage - MuffinLance

Fractures - EvieNyx

Towards the Sun - MuffinLance

War Games - Lovely_Elbow_Leech

Max: 13,469 (The Art Of Burning - hella1975)

Min: 358 (Hallowed - Haircrescendo)

Average: 3634

Top 5 most popular fics by number of bookmarks:

absence of heat, excess of destiny - theycallmesuperboy

Salvage - MuffinLance

where the stars do not take sides - WitchofEndor

The Family You Choose - TunaFishChris

The beginning of a new and brighter birth - aloneintherain

Max: 150,317 (absence of heat - theycallmesuperboy)

Min: 430 (Risking it all - Sreeder)

Average: 9297

Highest kudos/hit ratio: Safety First - Haircrescendo (20.36%)

Lowest kudos/hit ratio: My Heart Burns For You - alwaysZutarian (0.89%)

Average kudos/hit ratio: 8.25%

Fic Ratings:

G: 9

T: 18

M: 6

E: 2

Unrated: 3

Popular authors (people who showed up more than once):

Aloneintherain (3)

Haircrescendo (5)

MuffinLance (4)

WitchofEndor (2)

Characters:

Literally all of these fics are Zuko-centric. Not all of them are Zuko-pov but every. single. one. focuses on Zuko as a main character. At least one of the following tags is on every single fic in this list: "The Gaang & Zuko", "Zuko & Zuko's Crew", "Zuko & Iroh" "Zuko & Azula" and "Zuko & [insert gaang member here]"

Relationships:

Ok this is what actually shocked me the most. I fully expected to see more Kataang, Zutara, etc in the top rated fics, but NO! Only 21 out of the 38 fics had any relationship slash tag, and of those, 20/21 were Sokka/Zuko (shoutout to My Heart Burns For You as the token Zutara fic to make it into this list). I did NOT realize Zukka was so popular! Now I'm super curious about what it would be like to run these numbers on FF.net because I know so much A:tla fanfic was written before ao3 existed and most hasn't been cross-posted, and Zukka wasn't a popular ship until more recently.

Other random observations:

There seems to be a pretty even split between post-canon firelord Zuko fics and canon-divergent "Zuko joins the Gaang early" fics.

Only one modern au as far as I could tell! (shoutout to "The Good Vanilla")

We all seem to love a Dadkoda fic

There is a very strong correlation between one-shots and a high kudos/hit ratio.

Seemingly no correlation between word count and number of kudos. The top kudos'd stories were mostly under 10k words, while all the other catergories were dominated by fics in the 100k+ word count.

I didn't really see much correlation between hits, kudos, and comments overall.

There were LOTS of fics that only showed up in one category, which was really interesting! I figured each list would look pretty much the same, and there were several fics that did show up on the front page of every category (Salvage definitely sweeps the board for overall most popular fic), but there was a lot of variation between each list! Some fics had TONS of hits but very few comments, some had truly wild kudos/hit ratios, some were just massively bookmarked.

Thank you for indulging in my nerdiness, and feel free to tell me what I missed or anything you're curious about!

Update: I did it again, this time with Legend of Zelda