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yamayuandadu · 4 years ago

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Wikipedia troubles, or “Father Enlil, (...) don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld“

clarification regarding my post about troubles with a certain site i’ve been contributing to a lot for the past few months. To preface this with a mythical metaphor: in Inanna’s Descent, when Ninshubur pleads with the other gods to save Inanna, she uses the formula “don't let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. Don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld. Don't let your precious lapis lazuli be split there with the mason's stone. Don't let your boxwood be chopped up there with the carpenter's wood.” Currently this is what is happening to the Inanna article, I am afraid.

So, long story short, as most of you probably have noticed I am contributing relatively often to wikipedia as of late, starting with the creation of a Matara-jin article a few months ago. Among other things I wrote, rewrote or at least significantly improved the following:

articles about Mesopotamian medicine goddesses:

Ninkarrak from the western frontier, Nintinugga, who was associated with funerary offerings, Ninisina, who took over Inanna's gimmick in Isin, Bau, who became a healing goddess by chance, Gula, who eclipsed her peers - as expected from someone named “the great” articles about Inanna's courtiers and associated goddesses:

Ninshubur, her sidekick (my best work overall imo, the one article I wrote which I think fully deserves the “good” badge but I am not vain enough to apply myself), Ninegal, a goddess turned into her title, Nanaya, just the horny part distilled (bought a book just for this one!), Irnina, inexplicably cthtonic personified victory

articles about Mesopotamian gods too insignificant for anyone else to care about them:

Tishpak, a god so foreign nobody knows where he came from, Sebitti, seven warlike brothers, Enmesharra, Enlil's evil uncle, Urash, not the earth goddess – there are two... Urashes, Ningishzida, Dumuzi but with a snake gimmick, Zababa, a war god who's NOT Nergal, Ninimma, Enlil's court scribe, Gatumdag, popular as ersatz mom among kings of Lagash, Manzat, the rainbow

articles about Mesopotamian goddesses whose main trait was being someone's wife: Marduk's wife Sarpanit, Adad's wife Shala, Shamash's wife Aya

articles about Hurrian gods: Alalu, primordial vanquished king of gods, Kumarbi, his son, divine Saturday morning cartoon villain, Ninatta and Kulitta, a pair of divine musicians who always appeared together, Allani, oddly joyful queen of the dead, Šauška, who was so firmly genderfluid there's two of them in the most famous image of the Hurrian pantheon, Lelluri, a mountain goddess, Kubaba, who isn't Cybele, Goddess of the Night, who has no proper name despite being a case study in important religious rituals, Belet Nagar, who was like Ashur before Ashur got popular, Nupatik, who was important but we don't know why

articles about Eblaite gods: Ishara, “independent lady of love associated with scorpion and cannabis” popular everywhere where she went, Aštabi, a war god who really wanted to be like the weather god, Hadabal, who used to be famous but vanished out of blue, Kura, whose mask had to be renewed each year, Adamma, who left her husband to hang out with Kubaba

articles about Elamite gods: Pinikir, sort of like a bootleg Ishtar and an international sensation, Jabru, who exists only in Mesopotamian texts about Elam, Humban, mandate of heaven personified, Ruhurater, oddly obscure creator of mankind, Inshushinak, the underworld judge and his Akkadian helpers Lagamar and Ishmekarab, and Simut, the “strange star”

articles which were borderline unusable before due to low quality of sources:

Astarte, who was much more than vintage Bible scholars might lead you to believe (but not a fertility goddess), Dagan, who wasn't a fishman, Qetesh whose existence proves that Egyptians were fond of making ocs for their favorite foreign franchises

assorted articles about general topics pertaining to Mesopotamia:

Sukkal, Hurrian religion (ongoing project), List of Elamite gods; also a much needed overhaul of List of Mesopotamian deities (ongoing project)

and, last but not least, a solid chunk of the Inanna article.

Two guiding principles of these ventures were the following:

people who cannot access academic resources or don't know how to use them and as a result rely on wikipedia aren't any less deserving of receiving up to date, credible information

Wikipedia's mode of operation isn't flawed in itself and the only problem is lack of will to edit it

I think I did a pretty good job at these two things, honestly. I made sure to rely on rigorous, credible, and, if possible, easy to understand sources, and removed the horrors which sometimes were hidden in bibliographies: a book written by a hate preacher who believed Bush didn't start enough wars; 1930s race science; what I can only describe as a hybrid of Woman's Encyclopedia and a bdsm manual; a fringe book asserting that Minoan palaces were graveyards and that Egyptians only learned mummification from superior Minoans; etc. Of course, it’s a thankless job, but as long as I could make the site more credible undisturbed, that’s fine by me. I even got some help in a few cases, most notably that of the god list, indicating that the work was on some level appreciated. The only problem I've encountered prior to today came from editing the Ereshkigal article – I've removed the claim the Burney relief depicts “Lilith”; this edit was however undone. I left a message on the editor's page, complete with links to articles about the Burney relief AND about the possible Mesopotamian forerunners of Lilith (who are undeniably not depicted on the Burney relief). They're responded rather dismissively to it, and asserted that even if unproven, a connection existed, so I pretty quickly gave up, as they relied on sources which were outdated or fringe. I focused on fixing two long, important articles instead: the god list, and the Inanna article. Some parts of it were alright, but there was much work needed: fringe theories trying to assign greater antiquity to relatively late myths, and frankly insane hyperdiffusionism, had a prominent place in the article, while well attested association between Inanna and similar deities from cultures closely associated with Mesopotamia wasn't, much of the info was outdated, scandalous hot takes about Dumuzi's treatment were all over the place, the section on Inanna's descent favored Jungian confabulations over credible research, etc. My progress on fixing that had been slow and steady. However, today the aforementioned person intervened when, in between editing the Inanna article and the god list, I reverted a dumb, brief , unsourced edit – made by a third party - which asserted that Inanna's descent is “similar to Persephone” which it isn't – if anything is similar to Persephone in Mesopotamian mythology it's Nergal and Ereshkigal. They pretty clearly didn't take it well: not only the unfounded speculation went back up, but they also added a “source” affirming it, from a controversial -medical- author, not an Assyriologist. They also added Persephone to the list of Inanna equivalents in the infobox, removing any credibility whatsoever from it. The author of the claim this is all about relied on sources so antiquated that they interpreted Inanna's sexual character as her being a child-snatching boogeyman. Inanna's primary connection to boogeymen is that she was invoked, alongside Nanaya whose sexual connection is even more blatant, to -ward off- child-snatching boogeyman Lamashtu (whose character was not sexual, because sumerians and akkadians weren't victorian aristrocrats and weren't paranoically afraid of sex - and why would a demon representing death in infancy be sexual in nature, anyway?). Simply put, the book in mention is worthless as a source. Of course, I reverted that; when it went back up (despite a justification being included in my reversal) I edited the Inanna article to remove this outlandish claim (you have a limited number of possible reversions per day for some arcane reason), also adding other information about Inanna I had prepared: a few tidbits on Assyrian royal inscriptions which involved the warlike and erotic aspects at once, suggesting that transgressors should lose both potency and bravery in battle, some info on love poetry about her and Dumuzi, that sort of stuff. The weird person reverted my edit – removing valuable info – and reinstated the claim. For a moment I lost my cool and reverted this edit, which sadly put me in the reversion overuse danger zone, but which was a necessary sacrifice to save the credibility of article I put weeks of work into. See the edit history here. As you can guess HaniwaEnthusiast is me. I left messages critical of this decision on the talk page of the article and on the talk page of the outlandish editor. Sadly, they responded rather rudely, and basically declared Wikipedia isn't meant to be credible, and that favoring academic sources over random crap is an “ivory tower” approach and should be discouraged; they also insulted me but that's much less relevant and much less hurtful than their desire to spread lies. If you ask me it's more of an ivory tower attitude to say people who cannot access or don't know how to use academic sources do not deserve equally credible info and need to be at the mercy of weird wikipedia editors. What's the main problem here, though? That person is a mod. Not a random user. They have 16 years of Wikipedia experience. They spread fringe, pop-spiritual claims about Lilith and the like, so I assume they have an ulterior religious agenda of some sort, which they seem to actively encourage judging from these ventures. I'm not sure if the Inanna article is a lost cause yet but I do think the weird addition of Persephone they made is a step into some hellish direction, and I am entirely certain I cannot win this conflict. Simply put, I think that if this is the sort of staff the site has, this is a lost cause. I am not sure if I will go back to editing.

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muthaz-rapapa · 4 years ago

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Let’s talk TroPreCure! (^∀^ 🌺)

i’m so stupidly proud of this dumb pun “tropurikyua~”, hahahahaha

Last post of the year and wow is there are lot to be excited for!

I even had to make a list for the stuff I want to talk about and I’m sure I already forgot one or two things but we’ll get to them as we continue to float~ along the wave to February 28th, mmkay? :)

Now for what has peaked my interest so far. And yes, we have to talk about the following first:

1) HealPre the shortest Precure season??

Unless they plan for double features in February (which I doubt but you never know), HealPre is likely going to reach only 45 episodes long instead of the usual 48~50 before TroPre I’m using this shortening of the title for now so if there’s a better alternative, tell me and I’ll switch out begins its broadcast.

Understandable because the producers probably want to get back to their normal scheduling as soon as possible (toy sales, y’know) and I suspect pushing the start of the new season back by a month is the most they’re willing to compromise.

As for me, I’m quite happy about this since HealPre’s lost its hold on my attention a while ago so the sooner TroPre gets here, the better. Though the downside might be a scrambled climax and a rushed, underwhelming ending for HealPre (I dunno if it’s January’s titles that feel a bit messy or if the hiatus is still throwing me off) but whatever. We’ll refresh ourselves with the new blood Cures so it’s all good.

2) Tropical movie announced for Autumn 2021, no All Stars??

(source)

First saw this mentioned on Youtube somewhere but it’s all over the fandom forums by now. I mean, HealPre’s movie is set for March, the usual time slot for All Stars release. If Toei intended for there to be an All Stars in 2021, there’s no way they would announce the seasonal movie before it so speculations of them skipping it this year are probably true.

To squeeze it somewhere between March and October-ish would force them to readjust their budgets as well and I don’t think even Toei wants to go through that extra hassle after all the trouble the pandemic’s caused for everyone already. It’s just easier to resume All Stars in 2022.

That, and I think Laura being a major character in TroPre despite not having a Cure title (yet) would make for an awkward situation when the three latest teams gather so perhaps that’s also one of the reasons. But I’ll get back to Laura in a bit.

3) Cure Summer is a RAINBOW Cure

So god help me if I see anyone calling her a Pink Cure.

Yes, she’s the lead Cure for this season. NO, she is not a Pink Cure.

Look, even the official website has a rainbow overlay for her profile pic and text font while everyone else’s respective theme colors are a solid hue:

Therefore, RAINBOW.

In promotional material and merchandising, they’re probably going to advertise her primarily with pink bah and at worst, she might occasionally be labeled as a White Cure with multiple subcolors (her outfit is not pink-dominant) but definitely NOT. PINK.

...also, this goes without saying but f***yea, we finally got a lead Cure practically and unabashedly wearing the LGBTQ flag and you cannot tell me otherwise, Toei!

Own up to it! Declare Manatsu/Cure Summer as the Precure queer icon!

I’m not gonna stop yellin’ until you do! 😠

4) Laura = obvious midseason Cure is obvious

First of all, Laura is a babe. I already love her the best and she’s not even Precure yet. <3

Anyways, the set-up is pretty much in the description. Important main character who’s not a mascot, stated to have a self-confident personality and just speaks her mind (oooh, I like~ :D), magical/foreign being from another world looking for Precure to save her home, possesses her own special item(s), has aspirations to become the next Queen (so she’s a princess-candidate or something to that effect, I suppose).

We’ve seen various combinations of these traits in past midseason (and a few starter) Cures so nobody should be surprised when we all guessed that one of the Cures would be a real live mermaid.

The only question is why not just make Laura a Cure from the get-go if she’s introduced to us at the beginning (like Hime or Lala) and having a team of five with no unnecessary extra add-ons later on (like Smile).

Well, there’s a simple answer for that: formula.

Toei is afraid that if they don’t spit out some new animation sequence at the halfway and third quarter points of the show, the kids will lose interest and abandon the series altogether. Which means failed toy sales. Oh nooo... [/sarcasm]

...Yea.

And this way they can also have Laura available in the Cure lineup for the next All Stars in 2022 instead of making her sit the fight out if we were going to have one in 2021. I’m convinced that’s gotta be one of the reasons. *shrug*

But ok, whatever. Her debut is gonna be later, that’s all. She’s a delayed Cure. Midseason Cure, same difference.

Moving along to the more important stuff now like what’s her Cure name gonna be, y/y?

Well, knowing Toei, a translation of the term “mermaid” into another language is the most predictable route even though we already have a Cure Mermaid. Not like that ever stopped them from repeating words before (ex. Cure Happy vs Cure Felice). Though if they do go down that road, I hope they opt for the Spanish/Italian “sirena” and not the French “sirène” because the latter sounds too close to how Cure Selene is pronounced in Japanese. And, putting it nicely, we all know Japanese pronunciation of foreign words is as off kilter as can be.

Hell, even the the Portuguese “sereia” sounds aesthetic as hell so it’d be nice if they can just remember there are other languages that exist out there besides Japanese, English and French when making the final decision at the writing table! *stomps foot* >:/

Alternatively, “nereid” or “naiad” are good choices too but they remind me too much of Greek myths and Laura’s from the Grand Ocean which covers more than just a couple of seas (Greece is surrounded by three, btw) so...

I dunno. But whatever it’s gonna be, she’s definitely got a strong association with water and her powers will probably be based on that.

As for theme color, since there’s noticeably no blue or green Cure in the starter lineup, it’s likely she will take up that spot when she debuts around ep 20.

Pink is also open since Cure Summer, again, is technically not a Pink Cure and Laura’s hair and tail fin are hot and light pink respectively but looking at Laura’s design and concept, does anyone seriously believe that?

Her upper torso consists of aquamarine while the body of her tail is definitely some shade of cyan, implying they’re aiming for somewhere around the middle of green and blue on the lighter spectrum.

And yea, I’m aware that green and blue are considered exchangeable in some perspectives with how close some of their shades are to each other but officially, I think Laura’s gonna be grouped with the Green Cures.

Cuz of the hair. If Laura’s gonna keep it the same or a similar shade after transforming, that is. The Blues have always had cool-colored hair so putting Laura in with them might disrupt that harmony whereas if you put her with the few Greens there are (including Parfait), she’d fit right in.

I mean, we’ll see but that makes the most sense, doesn’t it?

On another note, I just want to say that I love how they added frills to her arms instead of letting her elbows go bare naked. It definitely makes her look more like a genuine mermaid than if she didn’t have them (remember, half fish doesn’t mean half the body :P).

5) Magical Items

Frankly, I’m tired of seeing the transformation device being a compact again even though one of the main motifs is make-up this season. But at least, as far as Precure compacts goes, the Tropical one is my favorite cuz of how cute and delightfully colorful its toy version looks! So I guess I’m okay with it.

The Heart Rouge Rod, though? ...I dunno. I think it would’ve been fine without that...straw (?) jutting out at the top. It looks weird, doesn’t it look weird? :S

As for the collectible clip-ons, I can live without those for the rest of my life. Yeesh.

Laura’s items, the Aqua Pot and the Ocean Prism Mirror.

Again with the portable, travel-size housing. *sigh* 😩

Alright, I can let this year slide cuz Laura (I’m so soft for her, omg) probably won’t be getting legs for 20 weeks so she’s got to move about on land somehow. But unless they’re really thinking about turning this idea of carrying your apartment around in your bag/pocket/purse into a reality (cuz that would be effin’ awesome), please be more creative with your toys.

On the other hand, I’m much more interested in the Ocean Prism Mirror but from what Kusyami (the Precure merchandise reviews I follow on Youtube) said in his latest vid, this is the ED dance item so don’t know if it’ll actually have an relevance to the story or not. But I did hear him mention it having something to do with the Queen as well and since Laura wishes to become Queen, maybe it’ll be important after all? Maybe it’s her transformation device?

That’d be super cool. Let’s continue the trend of the midseason Cure having a different transformation item than the starters. Honestly, we should alternate every other year or two but we’ve gone three seasons with all of them using the same henshin gimmicks up till HealPre and I just want a break from that.

6) Fin sleeves??

These look so impractical for combat so maybe it’s exclusive to group attacks.

And/or a sort of precursor to the super forms?

*GASP* Does that mean they all eventually turn into mermaids? 🤩

7) Yui finally became Precure!! 😭

lol, it’s all crack from this point on so don’t take it too seriously but man, after Yuni’s deceptive braids, I thought I wasn’t gonna see anything that reminded me of Yui for a while and lo behold, Sango.

kehehehehehe xD;

Though Yui might be closer to Minori in terms of personal interests (fairytales and storybooks).

8) Akira, the actual Onee-chan version

I didn’t think this when I first saw her but once I read “Onee-san” in her profile, there’s no saving you now. Sorry, Asuka. 😅

Also, damn, do her sandals make her feet look big! Compare them to the heels she wears as Flamingo. Are they even the same?! lololol

9) ...this sounds awfully familiar...

Translation:

Tokimeku Tokonatsu! [Exciting/Thrilling Everlasting Summer!] Cure Summer! Kirameku Hoseki! [Sparkling Jewel!] Cure Coral! Hirameku Fuurutsu! [Flashing Fruit!] Cure Papaya!

Japanese reiteration:

Mallow/Mao: Pink no tokimeki! Lillie: Blue no kirameki! Lana/Suiren: Yellow no kagayaki!

….........

@Toei

Care to explain yourselves, punks?!

୧(ʘ ∀ ʘ ╬)

#it is 1:30 AM and im hungry and still have to do work on new year's eve so i'll come back to amuse-rage later #tropical rouge! precure #precure 2021 #cure summer #cure coral #cure papaya #cure flamingo #laura la mer

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lesbianmarth · 5 years ago

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it’s been a while since i posted about aa but i just finished soj in its entirety tonight. here’s my new list so far

i still have to give thoughts on cases 4 5 and dlc so that’ll be under a cut. spoilers!

6-4: this was such a filler case, almost shamefully so. i don’t know why they thought they could manage to do this in the 4th case when every game with 5 cases has been pretty consistent about making the 4th case plot relevant, sometimes literally just a preamble to case 5. so yeah i think this one was kinda ass

the two things it had going for it: one, athena. in 6-2 i actually got confused about why i ever liked her, because in that case she felt like she was just acting the part of the Peppy Teen Girl With a Rowdy Streak that makes up almost every assistant character. But then as SOON as she started bantering with Simon in 6-4 i was like “oh, THAT’S why i liked her!” was nice to take control of her again.

two, uendo toneido. while i don’t think you can say the DID was portrayed with quite the necessary respect or kindness, it was handled better than i’ve seen other media handle it-- at least it’s not completely demonized. other people have written more on that in better detail so i’m not really the judge, but the basic point is that this witness was mad fun to read, and even the dumb jokes like the changing number of floor cushions were entertaining. thus why this case is in the “hard carried by one side character” tier.

especially since there was like nothing else going on. no connection to the main plot, only two other characters besides uendo, and for some reason the clown tits girl was here instead of the magic show case (and to be honest, she wasn’t enjoyable for me even BEFORE she did the standard aa female villain thing and changed her speech pattern as soon as she fell under suspicion). just a weird, nothing case stuck right around the point aa games usually enter endgame. And especially weird because...

6-5 part 1: inexplicably there are two separate cases in the final chapter and each gets one day of investigation and trial. such a weird setup, and it really shouldn’t work... but i think it kinda barely does. barely. it would still have been better to split it into case 4 and case 5 though.

i have a hard time articulating much on the first case bc it sort of blends together for me. the main thing is that the concept of it being a civil case where apollo and phoenix face off is really good. it was a good change of pace, even though you knew it was gonna be a murder somehow anyway. sarge was reasonably nice, i guess, paul atishon had some good animations and quirks (my favorite being when he tries to just walk away from the stand to avoid answering a question), and the logic of the actual murder was good enough.

but i especially got those strong “oh this is a FINAL case!” vibes during the segment in the cave, and that added so much to it even if not much of it was relevant in the first half of the case. the adventure feel reminded me of some of the (out of context bc i still havent played it) scenes i know from 3-5, which is a good association to invoke imo. and it did a lot to give apollo and dhurke time to bond.

speaking of which, dhurke, holy shit. what a KING. i don’t think i’ve ever liked a dad character in ace attorney this much. he’s so genuine and like down to earth that it’s impossible not to start liking him and believe how much he cares for his sons. the bit where he rescued apollo from the cave flood... i felt it in my heart

6-5 part 2: let me just get this out of the way: ga’ran sucks. her design after she goes full evil is so bad, she’s so malicious that it’s immediately obvious she’s going to be the culprit, her breakdown is ridiculous and just embarrassing to watch, and inga had already established way more charisma as a villain when he did the “those were orders of execution actually” bit in 6-3. with that said,

i actually liked it for the most part. the spirit channeling stuff was excellent imo-- they probably use it to similar or greater effect in 3-5 but as someone who again has not played that, i was surprised and almost impressed by how well it was applied. maya was relevant for something! it feels like it’s been ages!

rayfa was a little underutilized, i think-- her moment of determination where she stops letting ga’ran have control over her was alright but it fell flat bc it didn’t have any weight during the moment. i kept hoping she would like, wordlessly take of her shawl and do the little verbal preamble to the divination seance while ga’ran kept yelling at her to stop, but no, the script can’t be good like that, i guess. and since she didn’t get to be the investigation assistant for long, none of her charm in that role carried through.

but DHURKE!! oh my god! in a game almost devoid of emotional impact, his involvement in this case really hit. the way they painstakingly animated his death, the scene where he makes a promise with maya, and then the weight of knowing in hindsight that everything he did in the first part of the case was after he’d already died and just wanted to see his son again before passing on for real....... it hurt. i felt something during that section. this case would also be hard carried by him if not for the fact that i really liked the murder bits.

amara was good too--liked how they made her suspiciously serene and accentuated it with the lightning strikes to make her look like a hidden murderer character about to reveal herself, only to walk it back and confirm she was being forced to act that way. i thought it worked. nahyuta was boring though, i’m sorry-- i get the motivation with having to be a bastard bc his sister and mom were basically held hostage, but the only time i found him compelling in that mess was the bit where he removed his one fingerless glove and revealed he still has the dragon tattoo. that was it. athena was also completely unused the whole case (not even a single mood matrix? really?) and trucy one again went without any role of importance.

the ending also... yknow, a friend said they had to end it this way bc they never figured out what they were going to do with apollo (since following up on what they started in aa4 clearly wasn’t an option???) and just threw him on a bus to get rid of him. i agree with that-- he really feels thrown to the side, and with that i think trucy’s officially stranded with no hope of any character advancement. and the way they ended the game with phoenix and lamiroir deciding “yeah, maybe NOW we should finally tell those two they’re related” honestly felt insulting lol

but maybe the dlc case will let things go out on a high note...?!

6-6: it was okay.

it would’ve worked pretty well as a filler case in an older aa-- honestly i think it’d be one of the better filler cases, certainly worth replacing the shitty ones like 2-3 or 3-3 or, hey, 6-4. but whether i’d say it was worth paying for... eh.

the time travel conceit was done well enough, i think. the way they tied it back to sorin and pierce’s backstories was nice, and the twist about having two receptions was good, although they needed to treat that as a real twist with much more gravity. when the truth comes out it just feels like “oh of course that’s what happened” rather than a big surprise worthy of the Confessing the Truth theme. it’s sort of important because the case becomes a lot less interesting when you take out the time travel element.

far as characters are concerned, i think they needed more side characters to sell the whole thing-- another sprocket family member or another servant of the household. it felt a little limited-- sorin and pierce are pretty good witnesses and i like their quirks and their secrets, but the only alive woman (ellen) has very few traits and no connection to the deeper story of the case, so she falls really flat. the old aa characters didn’t add much- maya and edgeworth were just there for fanservice, ema didn’t get to do much other than acknowledge for the first time in years that she’s a big edgeworth fan, and larry is annoying as hell like he always is.

and oh my god i actually forgot while i was writing that, how they put in athena and trucy but only used them for brief slapstick where trucy would try to set athena on fire and shit. again-- no mood matrix? couldn’t even try once to fit those two characters into something?

i did like pierce’s transformation into his surgeon form though-- that was really cool. loved him doing surgery on a robot, taking xrays of the lawyers, and his breakdown was fantastic-- he would make a really good culprit if they didn’t whiff the last bit of pathos at the end. i don’t think he should’ve been aiming for revenge on sorin; it would have hurt much more if he was still loyal to the guy and never intended for him to be in danger, but the final “why’d you do it?” talk in the trial just felt flat and one-note, much like the one in 6-4.

... so that’s spirit of justice! not a super positive experience but i’m happy to say it’s done. as much as i want to go and replay dgs, i think when i do go back to ace attorney i’ll be replaying the trilogy for the first time since high school

#ace attorney #aa playthrough

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crowstan · 5 years ago

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How I see each house due to my friends

A side note before I begin: I can Not spell, so you will see me using different words throughout this, instead of my usual speaking words that I Can pronounce, so apologies for that lmao. The order of each section will be: ravenclaw, slytherin, hufflepuff, gryffindor, and outliers. The outliers get their own category because I refuse to put them with the rest of the data, you’ll see why.

Ravenclaw:

The people:

Leave her johnny, leave her: A good friend, we talk about stuff sometimes. Usually it’s her talking about legend of Zelda. I quite like her.

A pal: From India. Their English isn’t the best, but I can still understand them. Likes to talk about Disney movies and how Elsa deserves a girlfriend, and has called Disney a coward many times because they most likely won’t give her one.

Great British Bake off: From Brittan. Where, I have no clue. Likes to talk about how the law and justice system needs to be changed, and about her family sometimes, usually when prompted. I have no idea what she’s talking about half the time because I’m American, and that sometimes leads to funny misunderstandings.

Done with school: We haven’t talked a lot, but lives in the same state as me. Is completely done with their schoolmates, their school, the teachers, and with life. Often jokes about wanting to become a 7/11 crypt.

Wholesome: We talked for a while, and then somehow our conversation got deleted and I haven’t been able to find them since. Really like astronomy, and told me cool facts about the horoscopes, galaxies, and even a bit about stars. I miss them :,(

In conclusion: Ravenclaws most likely have a passionate topic they know a lot about, and are eagerly willing to share every bit of knowledge they have to teach you about it. They may even ramble about the topic for no reason and without prompting. They also really like learning for the sake of learning, and usually despise school because it “ruins learning” (source: me, Leave her johnny leave her, Great British Bake off, Done with school). Can sometimes lack common sense and “smarts” in some subjects, but excel in others. Also usually lgbt+ or a huge supporter of lgbt+ rights, and other rights movements such as black lives matter. I generally vibe with them very well.

Slytherin:

The people:

Bestie in the form of three ounces of whoop-ass: My best friend! We talk about psychology, mental health, psychological disorders, the apocalypse, and religion quite a bit. Some defining traits she has is: willing to fight for the smaller/weaker person, has good morals, is a chaotic neutral, a moral grey character, loves bloody anime and vocaloid.

Laid back: No offense to him, but he’s not the brightest. Can be snarky at times, but is usually more willing to let others do the talking and observe. Also may possibly be a people pleaser but I haven’t done much looking into that. Tbh I’m kinda scared of him.

Quakeing: Has adhd. Can sometimes be a dick, but it’s usually not intentional. Is actually pretty good at debate, not sure if she knows it. Is almost the perfect human version “Yes, BUT-” and “So?”

In conclusion: Mostly crackheads. Are also good friends. Some are trustworthy, some are not, just always be cautious.

Hufflepuff:

The people:

Owo?: Very soft. Doensnt really like conflict that much. Will fight you if you’re mean to yourself. Has talked me out of doing various... “Experiments”, especially the kind involving people in any way or involving scissors. Would not let me try to make an airplane out of playing cards. She does encourage my writing, and sometimes likes it. Is very positive.

In conclusion: A mom friend that won’t let me do anything I consider “fun”. Often passive, but cares about their friends, and won’t let them do anything that could result in even a potential scratch. Very nice to be around, hufflepuffs have calm vibes. They simply radiate calm. I have not met one that didn’t, tbh.

The people:

I call them K because I can’t spell their name right and at this point I’m too afraid to ask: Likes to be in charge. We don’t talk much, but they do have some dumbass/crakhead energy from what I can tell. May be a facade. Can be a little hot headed but mostly isn’t, haven’t seen them get too mad. Yet.

In conclusion: Somehow the only gryffindor I’ve met? I don’t know enough of these people to make any actual claims, because it could be a gryffindor thing or a personal thing, and I have no way of telling.

Outliers:

Furry: Hufflepuff. Excluded because they took too long to reply. Also a dumbass. Isn’t into harry potter but says that from what she was told, hufflepuff is the windclan of hogwarts. I have no idea what that means.

An ex long gone: Slytherclaw like me. Didn’t want to put him on the list twice, plus he fucked up all my data. Claimed that he hates anyone who lies, proceeded to lie to me, and then claimed he was doing the right thing. I only cut him off recently. he also frequently talked down to me like I was a dumb child. I did enjoy his company but in hindsight I really shouldn’t have had. Added him because he’s the only person that has the same 50/50 house mix as me.

The shape of friend: I think their house is hufflepuff? They wear a lot of hufflepuff merch, and are really sweet and loyal. Honestly, a good person, too pure. I really like them, even if we don’t talk a lot. Also somewhat shy. Didn’t add because I’m not actually sure of their house, and I didn’t want any of the sections to be inaccurate.

Is this even human?: An online friend. Doesn’t like to stick to one house, prefers to switch houses based off of mood and what they’re doing at the moment. Shouldn’t even be on this list but I thought I should add them anyway. Can barely function as a human, forgets to eat sometimes, has spent a full day and a half sleeping. Honestly, a whole ass mood.

Final thoughts: Most of my friends fit their stereotypes, and have a few bits in common that I, ultimately, associate with each house. This is in no way accurate to each house, as I can sometimes perceive things wrong (Example: this semester in science, in which I thought I understood earths plate movement, only to fail my test because apparently, what I had gathered was incorrect, even though it was what was taught). Anyway, this was quite fun to put together, and I quite enjoyed being able to do this.

#slytherclaw #slytherin #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #gryffindor #im sorry yall

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serenasoto-blog · 5 years ago

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9 Best Places to Add Keywords Inside Content for On-Page SEO

Catchphrases. Web optimization is about catchphrases.

Right stated, huh.

Catchphrases resemble the seeds that connote the entire tree in itself.

Accordingly, they convey tremendous significance with regards to SEO.

Truly, SEO is nothing without watchwords.

Its everything about the best catchphrase rehearses, utilizes and the executives that prompts all around streamlined on page SEO.

Previously, I will proceed onward directly to the subject, it will be a great idea to convey a harsh foundation on catchphrase inquire about.

Substance cover up

1. Watchword investigate

2. #9 Best Places to Add Keywords in Content

3. 1. Website design enhancement Title – The #1 Best spot to include watchwords

4. 2. Meta depiction

5. 3. Title of page content

6. 4. Beginning passage of substance

7. 5. Headings and subheadings in content

8. 6. Fundamental substance

9. 7. Picture alt labels

10. 8. Stay writings

11. 9. Labels and breadcrumbs

12. Outline

Catchphrase inquire about

The world is loaded with words, characters and sounds. So do you put all of them any place you need, anyway you need?

No!!!

Truly, much the same as you can't talk b***s***t to anybody, you can't compose anything you desire, trusting getting included on the first page of Google.

In this way, you have to do an appropriate research before you even beginning composition.

I have quickly canvassed watchword explore procedure in my instructional exercise here.

To close to put it plainly, you can utilize Google straightforward hunt, just as different instruments for catchphrase explore.

Google catchphrase organizer, keywordtool.io, SEMRush,.. There are many out there.

OK… So now you're prepared with your rundown of catchphrases. Next what?

You will obviously begin composing on the theme. This is what you have to mind while adding watchwords to the substance piece.

#9 Best Places to Add Keywords in Content

Website design enhancement Title

Website design enhancement Meta portrayal

Blog entry title

Beginning passage of post

Headings/Subheadings

Fundamental substance

Picture alt labels

Stay writings

Labels and breadcrumbs

Lets comprehend individually.

1. Website design enhancement Title – The #1 Best spot to include catchphrases

website design enhancement title

Website design enhancement title is the MOST (I state multiple times) significant thing you can't pass up a great opportunity.

Fundamentally, it is this title appears on Google indexed lists in blue shaded connections.

So you can think about how idiotic will it be to skip including SEO title.

Let me clear one thing here.

In reality, regardless of whether you don't include SEO title and depictions (coming up straightaway), your substance despite everything can possibly be positioned!

Goodness God, at that point what was that previously? You may be thinking.

Truth is, its not tied in with planning for the most pessimistic scenarios all things considered!

Furthermore, on the off chance that you don't include these labels, Google will haphazardly pick the initial not many lines as the portrayal for your page, and the blog title as SEO title.

Also, wonder in the event that you that isn't as significant as what you could really had in charge of!

Right?!

Thus, don't face such challenges, simply compose a basic better than average SEO title.

It has be to totally pertinent to the substance and exact, long-tail!

In case you're utilizing WordPress, you can a few modules for this.

Yoast SEO, RankMath SEO are truly outstanding out there for holding nothing back web optimization benefits.

I have added connections to the modules toward the finish of instructional exercise.

Give them a shot!

2. Meta portrayal

That is second most significant spot.

Meta portrayals are essentially said metadata of the run of the mill site page.

You can check for metadata of destinations in their source code, which can be seen utilizing "View page source" (or Ctrl + U) in Google Chrome.

These are some place covered up inside <meta> labels in the source code.

As examined in the past subject, the equivalent modules, Yoast SEO, RankMath SEO can likewise be utilized to include meta portrayals in the substance.

Along these lines, when you include both the SEO title and depictions, you essentially state the Google, "Hello bae, please me. Take me with you."

Tips to remember while including meta information:

Try not to keep it excessively short or excessively long. The modules in WordPress help you with as far as possible.

In the event that conceivable include the center watchwords, in the beginning just as in the center of the meta portrayal.

Try not to include immaterial stuff here. This should be extremely important just as appealing at that point. Think, individuals perusing your portrayal ought to get spurred tom read your substance further by tapping the connection to your subject.

3. Title of page content

post title search engine optimization

This is only the genuine title of the substance that you see when you land on the page.

For instance, here in this example, "10 best places to include catchphrases inside substance" is the subject of this post.

This is additionally eqaully significant in light of the fact that it can possibly get the peruser's consideration.

Envision, if a peruser likes the title of your post, he will peruse on further. Or then again he may simply tap the back catch and skip perusing by any stretch of the imagination!

You won't care for that occur!

In this way, take a stab at including a sharp however alluring title to your blog entry.

As a tip, its better to keep the title long-tail here as well.

4. Beginning section of substance

WordPress modules like Yoast SEO request you to specify catchphrases in the beginning section of the substance.

Its not critical to state honestly. Be that as it may, including it, won't hurt you truly.

Consider it like the third limit for your peruser, the first being SEO title-depiction, and second, post title.

Who needs to lose individuals in the wake of snaring them in not once, however twice?!

Feel free to compose the primary passages for your posts.

5. Headings and subheadings in content

Headings resemble the little loosen up focuses in your article!

Truly, envision that it is so exhausting to peruse entire large lumps of content with no breakpoints in the center.

Senseless right?

Indeed, even I despise that. C'on, we are bloggers, advertisers, scholars. Not promoters or Ph.D. holders.

Try not to outrage please. I regard you as well.

So as you probably are aware, its imperative to include watchwords in headings and resulting subheadings in article.

This gives an away from to web search tools of something identified with the watchwords and valuable coming up in the accompanying segment.

Snappy tip: Never include superfluous sub-headers and headers in your substance. Break the substance into pieces as required and reasonable to facilitate its meaningfulness.

6. Fundamental substance

Furthermore, here's coming the body of your substance.

I will pressure more here.

There have been numerous contentions, a large number of them uncertain and even profoundly questioned with respect to what ought to be the specific include of watchwords in content.

Suppositions with respect to this shift from individual to individual, SEOs to SEOs, journalists to authors.

The best practice is to include the catchphrases just where required and coordinate the significance of the present setting.

In straightforward terms, I mean, simply be it common.

It ought NOT be constrained notice. Keep in mind, Google has treated such substance gravely previously.

You additionally may fall prey to Google's punishment, emerging by the spam factor.

7. Picture alt labels

picture alt labels for website optimization

Pictures resemble the magnificence of your article.

They add beat to the understanding experience.

As the time is advancing to an ever increasing extent, visuals have become a significant piece of our lives, Internet is no special case to it.

Thus, adding pictures to content is sound. Truly.

However, does the Google search bots truly comprehend your picture proerly like we people.

You may contend that, AI and Machine learning is changing the way Google bots decipher substance and visuals. I concur, master!

Yet at the same time its a best practice to add alt labels to the pictures in content.

Who knows, Google bots may be as yet searching for it?!

You can include these basically by altering the HTML code of your page.

In HTML, the <img> label serves picture on the site page. "alt" is one of the key traits of <img> tag, which you can alter utilizing any code supervisor of your decision.

Good karma!

Tip: The alt labels ought to carefully be basic, short and direct. Try not to be senseless to compose long queues and passages here.

Get familiar with picture website optimization in our article.

8. Grapple writings

Ever observed those blue hued hyperlinks on sites?

Did you consider it a spot to grandstand your watchwords?

Truly. The content on which a hyperlink is assembled, is called a "stay content".

All things considered, it fills in as an extraordinary open door for good SEO.

The truth of the matter is very generally welcomed that watchword focused on grapple writings fill in as solid advantage to both on page and off page SEO.

Ensure while composing stay writings, it needs to representation the connected substance extremely right. A ton of fledglings miss this out.

9. Labels and breadcrumbs

catchphrases in labels breadcrumbs

Truly, this isn't SO significant one. So I'm hardly any requiring some investment here.

Labels and breadcrumbs are essentially billboards on your site. Inquire as to why?

At the point when you read a concise substance, regardless of whether short or little, labels help to associate the substance with explicit subjects. This is especially valuable while having more substance than typical.

In spite of the fact that labels have been a pattern via web-based networking media, their utilization on online sites and entryways is as yet common.

Breadcrumbs are the office to sort out your substance into a chain of command.

This is something that you frequently find at the highest point of the substance on certain website pages.

Assembling everything, labels and breadcrumbs do support your site or blog look progressively sorted out in a way. Be that as it may, the decision is to actualize them is yours.

You can utilize your catchphrases in these and help Google and other web crawlers see better.

Synopsis

So people, since you have the information, its opportunity to execute it straight.

Beneath you can discover connections to different modules or applications for different stages, which will assist you with doing SEO.

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kylydian · 7 years ago

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Nier Automata: Using Vocals in New and Innovative Ways

If I said that Breath of the Wild was the best OST of 2017, I would say that Nier: Automata’s held the most weight. The concept of weight is something we’re going to be talking a lot about. There’s no other way to describe the music other than depressing, dystopian, and hopeless. If you’ve played the game, you know that these are all themes you encounter on your multiple runthroughs. Strictly composition wise, I think Nier doesn’t break too much new ground. It knows what it wants to do, and it does it well. It does it fucking well. Something can be said for a soundtrack that knows so well what it needs to do and executes that better than it honestly should. Doing something so well that it’s genre defining is definitely a trait that we’re going to talk about in the future, but today’s topic is what makes this soundtrack shine: The human voice.

Instrument choice. When you’re selecting an instrument, how do you go about it? Picking randomly? Off the sound you want? Genre maybe? Most composers would agree that instrument choice is crucial, and it can set the tone for the entire soundtrack if you feature one instrument over others. The voice is the oldest instrument known to humankind, but how often is it featured in video game music? Pretty often! It’s used at climatic moments of the story, for intros, credits, main themes, backing orchestras, music performed by characters…the list goes on and on! But how often do you hear it in an individual soundtrack? Not too often. Voice is a really powerful instrument, and without a doubt is it the instrument that holds the most weight in the context of media, which is why it’s generally saved for special moments.

How often do you hear voice in Nier: Automata?

Constantly.

Ocarina of Time has the Ocarina. The Elder Scrolls have strings. Cuphead has the big band. Doom 2016 has the Doom Instrument. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire has trumpets (Okay..okay…I’m only partially kidding.)

Nier: Automata has voice. The game has a huge soundtrack, and though much of the music is different, one thing is pretty consistent throughout, voice is the featured instrument. Instead of being saved for epic or emotional scenes, voice is featured just as much as any string, wind or percussion instrument would be in other games. This is huge. The amount of emotional range delivered by the voice is incredible, and absolutely cannot be understated when talking about this soundtrack.

If you know the plot of Nier, the use of what is arguably the most expressive instrument compliments the plot perfectly. It’s used to accentuate instruments, in place of instruments, for percussion, for story, for characters, for literally everything.

Why is voice so effective for Nier though? What does it do differently?

Think about what language the lyrics are usually in. English? Japanese? French? You do hear all of these languages in the soundtrack, but none of the languages are featured too prominently. Doing some quick research shows that the language is a fictional language made for the universe. In addition, the lyrics were sometimes improvised on the spot at the time of recording. It’s kind of a mashup of English, Japanese and French, but no words of any of the languages are actually used.

This is vital to begin to understand how vocals were used.

Using a fictional language does a few things for this soundtrack.

· It allows the tone to be easily molded without worrying about word choice

· It removes the literary implications of language

· It removes direct attention from voice

· It allows the voice to be presented as an instrument

When you add vocals to something, you have lyrics. Unless you’re singing only on vowels, there’s not really a way around that. However, while Nier has lyrics, they aren’t associated with meaning. There is no context, meaning that the singer can transition to vowels when wanted, presenting a very natural vocal sound without having to worry about choice of words.

When you assign words to music, you begin to pull attention to the vocals. And in video game music, while you want music to be noticed and loved, you want it to be in the background. Adding lyrics implies a story of some kind, which adds a focal point for the player. In general, this will distract from the most important element of the game: Gameplay. Making the lyrics unattached to literary meaning will probably get people thinking “What language is this?” But that’s the only focal point they’ll have, and it’ll quickly drop to the back of their mind. This removes any direct attention on the voice. Most importantly, removing the language barrier allows the voice to be presented in an instrumental context.

The voice is an instrument. But while the voice is an instrument, vocal music is not equivalent to instrumental music. I’m not saying that instrumental music is better, just that the mindset behind the two forms is different. This separation has existed all throughout music history and continues to exist today. One of the most important lessons on this I’ve encountered was when I was at a master class with the late band composer, Francis McBeth. He has an extensive library of wind band literature for all grade levels. During a Q&A, someone asked him “How many songs have you written?” And he responded very flatly with “Two.” It’s no surprise that the person asking wasn’t expecting this, so he clarified, “If you mean ‘pieces,’ I’ve written several hundred. A song features voice, a piece is instrumental.”

Now this could be taken as a condescending answer, but it does hold a lot of truth. In writing a song, there are many differences when compared to writing for an instrumental ensemble. You can’t approach it the same way.

Removing the meaning behind lyrics allows this association of vocals to song to be altered and approach a more instrumental format. This is where the soundtrack shines, and this is how the voice in the soundtrack is so haunting and appropriate.

For the overwhelming majority of the soundtrack, you’re going to find primarily instrumental forms and writing techniques, but the voice is presented as the main melody instrument within this context. This would not be nearly as possible if the lyrics were in a set language, even if it wasn’t our native one. We aren’t used to hearing the voice in a musical context away from the song format, even if it’s in a language we don’t understand. This makes the voice in this case very haunting, because we aren’t familiar with it.

If you think about where “songs” are used in game music, they’re usually used for openings, cinematics, climatic scenes, or credits. They’re used sparingly, and this is because the literary association holds a ton of weight in the context of media. Anime is a great example of this. When an opening theme is presented at the very end in the actual episode, that’s always the most uplifting moment, the most climatic moment, or the fuck yeah moment. This is because you take material that everyone already associates with and present it in a new way. Using song format for climaxes is so effective because it’s different from what we’ve come to expect from the rest of the game and OST, which literally accompanies the definition of climax.

So. How many “songs” are there in Nier: Automata? There’s a few, but in the service of gameplay there’s one: The Weight of the World. What’s the primary difference about this though? Well, there’s three different versions…

English, Japanese and the fictional language.

Weight of the World is also written differently too, it’s written in a very vocal form, with verses, choruses, bridges and literary meaning. There’s a couple of other songs in the soundtrack too, but they don’t hold the …weight that this song does. Sorry………bad pun.

This cements the fact to me that the voice used for the majority of Nier removes the association with being voice, and instead features voice to be a part of the soundtrack, part of the world, part of the lore.

When it clicked for me how simple everything involving voice in Nier seemed, my mind was absolutely blown. Making a language? Removing meaning? Allowing the voice to function as an instrument? All so that they can get the exact feeling that they want in a soundtrack?

That is literally the coolest thing.

Another quick note, after researching, I found that sometimes the tracks in the game were rewritten or altered to better fit the vocals. That’s how important the use of voice as the primary instrument was to this team.

There’s more than just this though. God there’s more.

One track I hear talked about all the time is the one that plays when the robot cult is committing mass suicide. Before the track starts to play, the cult begins a menacing chant, “Become as gods. Become as gods.” This chant has a very rhythmic quality to it but is somewhat displaced to simulate a crowd chant. Overtime as you regain control of 2B, instruments begin to enter, and music comes full swing. You begin your escape, but the chanting never stops. It’s quickly melded into the piece of music in the background. If you listen to the OST, the chanting isn’t part of the track, meaning that it was added in as a rhythmic chant. This is a direct musical reference to what’s happening in the game and the story. And the crazy thing is that spoken language is used for the chant! Granted the robots speak English or Japanese, but finally your focus is drawn to “Become as gods. Become as gods.” However, after enough time the vocals fade to the back of your mind because it’s simply so repetitive. But on they chant. The game will not let you forget what’s happening in the scene. Robots are killing themselves, chanting their belief that if they die, they become gods. The vocal lines, the driving rhythmic strings and percussion, it’s all written to add to the insanity of the chant. This is remembered not only for the content, but the way that music and story are put together. It’s a very surreal and impactful scene, but without the chant of the suiciding robots, the piece used would in no way be so haunting.

This soundtrack does so much good for video game music. These are pretty advanced techniques and conceptual ideas within music and composition, so how might we be able to apply this to our own writing and games? It’s definitely true that we can do something similar in our own music, we can find nonsense syllables, write music off of them, and present the voice in a similar way. Ideas are stolen all the time. I would be willing to bet that this has been done before multiple times. Nier probably stole the idea from someone else! Even I hope to do something like this someday! But I think the biggest take away from today’s topic is something I’m going to coin as “Impactful choice.”

Our choices in design, plot, art and music hold weight. If we want to make a statement with our music, we need to make sure that our choices have impact and carry weight. Writing an original language for a game? That’s an impactful choice. Presenting voice in an instrumental context? That’s an impactful choice. Without a question in my mind, voice is the most expressive instrument, but it easily overpowers in the context of video game music. Removing the strength that voice holds through language, and writing tracks so that voice is featured, but not overpowering? That’s an impactful choice.

Every time we write music, we make choices. Finding new ways to present music through our choices that people haven’t heard is how we get music like in Nier: Automata. Understanding instrument choice and how to alter instruments to get the exact sound we want is an important first step. But it doesn’t stop there. See how far you can take an idea. The farther you go, the farther you can take people with you.

Making a choice that can influence the entire project can be daunting, and it can kill the project if the intuition is off. It’s a scary path to take.

But most success stories start with a risk.

Here’s some takeaways:

General

· Nier: Automata removes implied literacy to help present the voice in an instrumental format.

· Story and gameplay can be blended with music to create unique tracks.

· Songs have words, pieces don’t.

Developers

· Your game carries weight. Capitalizing on the arts to add more meaningful weight is essential.

· Find ways to innovate outside and inside the box.

· Success comes from risk.

Composers

· Think about ways to use the expressiveness of the voice as a primary instrument without over powering the game.

· Write songs for specific reasons in the game, not for the overall soundtrack.

· When possible, find ways to integrate gameplay into music.

There’s a lot that can be taken away from this soundtrack, and it’s very possible that I’m going to revisit it in the future! The dystopian sound, the robot armies, the faction of androids that don’t know what they’re fighting for anymore. It’s definitely one of my top games from 2017.

Music adds weight. In games, make it your world’s weight.

#nier automata #Nier #2b #9S #Video Games #Video Game Music #Indie music #music #voice #composer #composition #cinematic music #Yoko taro #Kylydian

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ahumanintraining · 7 years ago

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compatible

"I wonder what marks you would have, if you were Altean.” —shallura. (ao3 link)

Even after a long and hard training session, they’re not done sparring, bringing teasing jabs and vengeful tickles back to Allura’s bedroom. This goes on even after they’ve showered and dressed down for sleep, and they toss and turn in her bed, rolling over each other until she ends everything and sits on Shiro’s hips, pinning him down with her thighs. Ever the pillow fight victor, she leans over to give him a triumphant you’re-mine kind of kiss.

She looks down at him for a long quiet moment, grinning and catching her breath. Her hair falls out from behind her ears and spills over his face. Some of the ends of her silver waves fall over his eyelashes and he lightly blows them away so he can see the curiously pensive stare she gives him.

She blinks. “Take off your shirt,” she suddenly commands him.

“…What?” he asks, unable to help the goofy grin that emerges over his face.

“Just take it off,” she repeats. She climbs off his body, getting back up to her feet and standing next to the bed to watch him do just that.

“Yes, Princess,” he immediately obliges, not exactly sure what to think of it. He hadn’t thought their bed wrestling was actually any kind of foreplay, but he figures he can quickly get into the mood for sex if that’s what she wanted out of him at that second. He sits up and pulls his shirt over his head, and then shirtless, he looks back up at her.

“Good,” she says. Her eyes sparkle. “Wait here.”

“What are you doing?” he protests, pulling off the sheets and blankets from over his legs. He reaches forward to grab her leg, as if to pull her back into bed.

“No, stay there! I told you to stay!” she laughs, ducking his grasp. She quickly grabs a pillow in each hand — fallen off her bed from their earlier messing around — and throws both at him before skittering away to her dresser. Opening a few of the drawers, she rummages but is unable to find what she’s looking for.

All the meanwhile Shiro is very confused, unable to figure out what this is all leading to. Although, he supposes, at the end of the day, for him, this really just boils down to — one, they were having sex; or two, they were not having sex.

For the sake of his rising libido, he sincerely hopes for the former.

He watches her search for whatever it is that she’s looking for, more like, enjoying the sight of her long brown muscular legs slipping out from under her nightgown and her loose and untied hair following her every motion.

Still trying to find whatever it is, Allura browses every other nook and cranny in her path. Eventually Allura reaches her closet door, pulling it open and glancing over each shelf until she finally finds her coveted item, giggling when she sees it.

“What are you laughing about?” he asks her accusingly.

“You’ll see,” she promises him, growing a few inches taller so that she could reach the jar on the very top of her closet shelf. She shrinks back to normal height as she walks back toward the bed, quickly reading over the label.

Seeing that indeed, there was no expiration date to be wary of, she places the nondescript jar into Shiro’s hands.

He furrows his eyebrows. “What’s this?” he asks her, turning the jar around to read the label. He tries to understand as much of the writing as he can, but doesn’t get very far. “All I can read is this vowel,” he tells her, pointing to a character. “Ah,” he sounds out.

“Bravo,” she congratulates him, also giving herself a little clap for the impromptu lesson she gave him on the phonetics of Altean alphabet the other day.

He tips the jar back and forth, watching the glowing magenta liquid inside of it slide from side to side. It looks viscous — and definitely not edible. After some observation, he daringly twists open the jar and peers inside before looking up at her to demand an explanation.

“It’s agluri,” she tells him. “We used to play with it when we were children.”

“So…” he muses, looking back down at the substance. “…what do you do with it?”

“Children usually paint it over their faces and arms, trying to guess what colors and designs would emerge on their skin when they grew older,” she says, taking the jar from him and sitting back down on the mattress, crossed-legged in front of him. She smiles. “It doesn’t have much use for me now since I already have my marks, but I should like to imagine the marks you would have, provided you were Altean.”

Shiro looks at the magenta crescents under Allura’s eyes for a moment, then following the lines that start at her clavicles down her arms, and the swirls that trail down her thighs to her calves.

“Is there a pattern to them at all?” he asks her.

She shakes her head. “Other than the ones under our eyes, everyone’s marks are different,” she tells him, thinking to herself. “Some fortunetellers make a science out of it — reading marks and positing the personality traits and fates associated with each kind of whirl or line, but honestly I’m not too much a believer in all of that symbolism.” She shrugs. “But the marks are important to Altean culture and to personal identity… after all the only person that knows your marks is yourself.” She flirts her eyes up at him. “And well, whoever you’re intimate with, I suppose.”

The faint smile on his lips grows. He loves these moments when she shares about Altean people, language, society, culture, everything. “So how do you imagine mine would look?” he asks.

She ponders a moment. “Well, of course we can start with your eyes,” she says, dipping her finger into the agluri. She comes close to him, raising herself to her knees and crouching down to meet him at eye level. “Hold still,” she whispers, her eyes focused. Obediently, he closes his eyes, holding his breath.

A cool and moist liquid rolls under his eyes, his left eye first and then his right eye, and when he opens his eyes, he sees Allura smiling to herself on a job well done.

“Perfect,” she mumbles. She looks down at his bare chest, thinking to herself before dipping her finger back into the agluri and dotting halfway up his neck before drawing a line over his collarbone and shoulder, ending with a small loop midway over his right arm. She stops just before his arm becomes metal. She does the same to his other arm, and self-satisfied she sits back and admires her work.

Shiro looks down at himself, but he can’t really see the work that she’s done so far. “You’re just making this up as you go along, aren’t you?” he teases.

She ignores the question. “Turn around,” she instructs instead through pursed lips.

Obligingly, he turns his back to her, sitting straight up. He feels her finger trace two cool lines from the top of his neck, following his spine all the way down to the top of his hips, before creating a few more lines along his shoulder blades.

He closes his eyes, trying to imagine what exactly she’s drawing on him, but her fingers are too fast and his back can’t feel the details well, and so eventually he just lets go of his thoughts and just enjoys the experience of being her canvas.

Eventually she stops, and then he feels her kiss his right cheek from behind him, getting herself up and off the bed. “Come,” she tells him, urging him to rise as well.

He does, standing straight to his full height and turns to her. She looks up at him, but more below his eyes and along the lines she’s painted on him with the agluri. She beams, and then out of nowhere, she drops to her knees and pulls his boxers down to his feet.

“Allura!” he chokes, instinctively covering himself. He quickly tries to recover, sputtering, “You can’t just do that while you’re… down there like that!” He feels a blush come over his face.

“Oh, you’re such a boy,” she chides him, sitting herself back on the mattress and tucking the jar of agluri between her thighs. “Not everything we do is sexual.” She rests her hands on his hips, turning him to face his front to her. She looks up at him. “Besides, I’m familiar with everything already,” she adds, leaning forward to kiss his abdomen.

He looks away, embarrassed. “Honestly, this feels a little kinky.”

She smiles, picking up the agluri and dipping her finger in it again. “Well if you find we have better sex after such an activity, we can add it to our list of foreplay,” she tells him cheekily. “Turn to your side now, will you? Right side first.”

He does, and she stares at his body very intensely before seeming to settle on an artistic plan. She starts a line from about midpoint of his spine and follows his lowermost rib, crossing over to the front of his abdomen until halfway to his bellybutton, before diving straight down to the jut of his hip bone. She turns him around and makes a symmetrical line on his left side. After positioning him to face her, she connects the two lines from his right and left side in a straight line just under his bellybutton, chuckling to herself as she crosses a line of short hairs.

She leans back on her arms, giving him a once over.

“Done?” he asks, feeling like a weird combination of an art specimen and a naked model.

She shakes her head. “I’m trying to figure out what sort of a design I should draw over your legs,” she tells him, thinking to herself.

He looks down at the pink slithering marks on her legs, from under the slit of her nightgown. “Why don’t we just make them like yours?”

“No,” she replies. “I want something more valiant for you.”

Momentarily confused, he wishes he could read her mind, watching her intently as she swings legs back and forth until a thought occurs to her. She picks up a glob of agluri onto her finger and makes an open circle midway up his right thigh, adding a downward straight line before deflecting the line to the backside of his thigh and continuing down until just past the underside of his knee. She shifts her attention to his left leg, making the same marks as she did on his right leg, but this time, the circle on his left thigh is filled in completely.

“Done,” she says, lifting her finger from him. She stands up and takes his shoulders. “Now come, let me show you,” she says, gently prodding him over to the full-length mirror against her wall. “See?” she says, pointing at his reflection in the mirror. “Now you look properly Altean.”

He takes a look at himself, seeing the unnatural colors painted over his skin. But as alien as the color is on him, there’s a somewhat familiar feel to seeing the agluri designs. He turns, seeing the lines, dots, and swirls along his back and the bit that ends at his calves.

“What do you think?” she asks him, almost breathlessly, also staring at his reflection in the mirror.

“It’s strange to say but it feels… right,” he admits. The shimmering agluri looks so realistic; if Shiro forgot for a moment he’s an Earthling, he thinks he would fit right in with the other Alteans. “You’re very good at this,” he tells her, pulling her into an embrace. “Whatever… this art would be called.”

She smiles. “Let me explain what I did,” she suggests, slipping out of his arms. She points up to the beginning line of agluri on his neck, the three dots at the start. “This is where Alteans represent the voice, our language,” she explains. “And I connected your voice to your upper arm because you are a leader. You not only say things you want done, but you’re willing to put in the effort yourself to see that change through.”

She spins him around to face his back to the mirror. “The two straight lines along your back are to represent your strength and stability,” she continues. “In the face of adversity, you stand tall whether you will win or lose.”

“And the designs up here?” he asks her, pointing to the swirls and dots over his shoulder blades.

“I’ll come to that later,” she promises him. “Now turn back around.”

He feels a smile growing over his lips, and does as she says, facing himself in the mirror again.

“And now, I emphasized your belly because…” she trails off, and when Shiro looks at her, she’s covering her mouth as if to hide a grin. “Well…”

“Don’t tell me it’s because you were finding an excuse to feel me up,” he says.

“No!” she exclaims. She takes both his hands in hers. “No…” She smiles and finds the words. “I just really like your laugh,” she admits. She takes a breath to think. “It’s very genuine. You laugh from the inside,” she says. “It’s very rich.”

His smile widens and he leans in to touch her forehead to his, pulling her hands to his lips. “I love your laugh and smile, too.”

“Hm…” she hums, staying there a moment against him.

“Tell me what you’ve drawn on my legs,” he says softly, urging her to continue.

“Yes. You’re an adventurer,” she explains, stepping back to recall what she drew along his legs. “And you journey not only in the outside world your body lives in,” she says, running her hand on the open circle on his right thigh. “But also seek purpose within the inside world of your mind,” she continues, her other hand shifting to the closed circle on his left thigh. “You’re a deep thinker,” she concludes. “Your mind and body never rest.”

He thinks on her words for a moment, letting them settle in his heart before he grins. “Is this all bullshit symbolism you just created on the spot?”

She playfully hits his chest with her palm. “No!” she laughs. “I really meant all of that!”

“Okay, okay, I believe you,” he replies, trying to catch her eyes. When he does, he smiles at her.

She returns the smile. “Let me tell you what I did here,” she says, tapping the back of his shoulders.

“Ah, yes,” he says, turning his back to the mirror and craning his neck over his shoulder to get a better look at the set of branched curving lines that all together looked somewhat wing-shaped.

“They’re meant to match mine,” she tells him, quickly unbuttoning her nightgown and letting it fall to her feet.

Although he’s completely naked himself, he’s not quite ready to process Allura unclothed without feeling a catch in his throat. Her gown slips off her easily, like drops of water in the shower, and as her silver hair tumbles back over her shoulders, some strands curling over and around her breasts, he takes a breath.

She pulls her hair over her shoulder and turns around to show him her back.

He’s seen her back many time before — the marks on her back a soft and shimmering pink that glowed when she was deep asleep and dreaming, and sometimes flushing so bright when he kisses her that he can see the light through his fingers when he holds her close to him. But it’s really only know that he actually looks at the arched lines that radiate downward two-by-two, branching off a single line down her spine, like the veins of a dogwood leaf.

She looks over her shoulder and traces the lines with her finger. “These are the marks of the Archer,” she explains. “I’m supposedly a visionary, aiming my arrow into some infinite space at a target that no one can foresee but everyone will eventually come to.” She looks over at his back. “And according to the fortunetellers, the complementary marks are that of the Architect — someone that can ground the quixotic nature of the Archer but also can form a base to build dreams from.”

She continues, as if reciting from her memories. Her hands come to his body, her fingers tracing over his skin delicately. “The Architect is an innovator, good with their hands, resourceful and able to make something out of what seems like nothing. Despite their prowess, an Architect is cautious and risk-averse, sometimes getting in the way of their inventions. The Archer balances that. The Archer is blind and can’t fear even when fear is staring them right in the eyes, and often pushes the other signs out of their comfort.”

“Hm,” Shiro replies, taking it all in. He thinks there’s something to how familiar the marks feel to his eyes and how he identifies with Allura’s words, and feeling an overwhelming feeling of fate and destiny and adoration that he doesn’t think he can contain, he quickly switches the subject. “Reminds me of horoscopes, but I’ll take it,” he jokes.

She shrugs, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. “I suppose every culture will hold beliefs over things they can’t control and will create significance out of things to understand.”

“You know for someone that doesn’t believe in reading marks, you certainly know plenty about it,” he remarks, reaching forward to wrap his arms around her waist. “Unless you actually believe them?”

“Well sometimes it’s hard for me to think it’s just by chance you found me,” she tells him softly, draping her arms around his neck and sinking into his embrace. She looks up at him. “I just feel like this is all too perfect, you know?”

Shiro can’t find the words to respond, so he says the only thing that’s on his mind. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too,” she replies, lifting her lips to give him a long kiss.

It’s a moment that Shiro enjoys to no end. The feel of her soft warm skin up against his, the ends of her hair tickling his forearms, her smell completely surrounding him. Her breasts are supple against his chest and his hands rest comfortably at the dip of her back. His fingers trace circle over her curves.

“So,” he says, when they take a breath. “What do the signs say about our sexual life?”

She looks at him funny. “What?”

He bites his tongue. “Is that not part of reading marks? Things about an Archer’s romantic life or future careers? Sex with an Archer?”

“That’s silly,” she laughs, resting her hand on his cheek. “We don’t quite take mark reading that far.” When her laughter subsides, she traces his face with her eyes, resting on his lips. “But I suppose we can determine that for ourselves, can’t we?” Her eyes flicker up to him.

He grins, slowing stepping them toward her bed. “Our clothes are already on the floor. We’re already halfway there.”

She walks with him backwards until her calves hit the side of the mattress.

“It would be a shame to waste our efforts, yes,” she agrees, and pulls him down.

To Shiro’s horror, the agluri doesn’t come off in the shower, even after a full minute of scrubbing so hard it makes his skin flush pink.

Allura doesn’t seem to notice, wrapping her hair up into a towel over her head. She bends down and then in one swift maneuver sets the swirl of towel and hair over her head. She turns around to face him and beams, coming forward to give him a kiss.

“That was amazing,” she tells him. And then she sees his concerned face and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Is this… stuff supposed to come off?” he asks, looking at the bathroom mirror after rubbing the mark under his eye in one last attempt.

She furrows her eyebrows. “Yes. Did you not wash yourself properly?”

“I’m trying,” he says, now rubbing the agluri line over his stomach. Nothing happens.

“Oh,” she says, looking closer. “Well…” she says, thinking to herself. “It’s supposed to come off, but…” She steps out of the bathroom, letting a burst of cool air from outside of the shower come into the bathroom as she leans over to pick up the jar of agluri left on the nightstand. She reads the label quickly. “Right,” she says. “It’s supposed to come off without much — oh...”

“What?” he asks, but he already know it sounds bad.

She turns around, giving him a shaky smile. “Well… as long as you remove it within an hour it won’t stain your skin,” she says slowly.

He quickly does mental math, recounting the last time he looked at a clock. “So by the time we got into the shower, we were already well past an hour.”

“Yes,” she confirms. She gives him another guilty smile. “Sorry?”

He blinks. “Okay, we’ll just…” He looks back at the mirror. “No one’s going to notice, right? The only marks visible are the ones under my eyes.”

Allura hesitates. “Well… those are fairly obvious.”

“It’s fine, I’ll…” He thinks to himself. “How long does this stain last?”

“I don’t know,” she replies, taking the agluri jar and immediately returning it to the top shelf of her closet. “Maybe until your skin sheds it?”

She watches him rinse his face off one more time before he looks in the mirror, unfortunately seeing no progress in the disappearance of the agluri.

“It’s fine,” he tells her, but more to himself. “It’s fine. No one’s going to notice, and it’s just going to be a couple of days.”

But everyone did, and it was for much longer than just a couple of days.

“Hey, Shiro, I know how bad you want to dress up as an Altean, but it’s still three months until Halloween,” Lance says at the breakfast table, cackling.

“Maybe it’ll last until then,” Pidge adds with a chortle.

Shiro takes a deep breath in and out. “You know, Lance, if you want to keep making fun of the situation, at least find a better joke,” he replies.

Coran leans toward Allura, shielding his mouth as he whispers. “How long has it been now?”

“Two weeks,” she answers, unamused.

“You know,” Coran tells her, with a twinkle in his eye. “Your father fell for the same mistake back many deca-pheobs ago. He had a smorgasbora scrawled on his knee for at least a month. Can you imagine? He had to pretend he had injured his knee so he could cover it with a splint! For an entire pheob before the agluri came off!”

“Incredible,” Allura replies dryly.

She doesn’t mention there’s now a heart and a smiley face stained on her stomach, the byproduct of Shiro taking revenge while she was fast asleep one night.

Like father, like daughter, she presumes to herself.

#shallura #shallura positivity #shiro x allura #shiro #allura #voltron #just me and a headcanon im entertaining #—shallura

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kai-keda · 6 years ago

Link

YO!

We have a character analysis on Prussia based on Hetalia World Stars/character songs/the anime (as those are the only things I have full access to)

Full script under the "read more”

Clapping Nasty! Thot! Turbo! Virgin! Chaotic! Energy! Clapping

I was dared to say all those things first thing when starting this video. Except that last one. That last one was my own doing.

Anyways, let’s give a quick overview of how this analysis is gonna work. First, we need to discuss what may be considered the elephant in the room to people in the Hetalia fandom who know me on Discord.

Specifically the people in one particular RP server I’m in.

We need to talk about canon.

Now in the past I’ve made a point of the importance of canon when representing these characters. And I stand by everything I’ve said in the past, just not the way I said it. See, I don’t think the people I’ve talked to about it really understand what I meant and that may be my own fault.

When I tried to push the importance of keeping true to what we know about the characters, I got hit with comments like “well I like to add my own ‘glam’ to the character” or “there’s not much about my muse in canon so where does that leave me?” and so on and so forth.

What I really meant by ‘keeping true to canon’ in Hetalia is that we shouldn’t purposefully go against something we know for a fact is true. Even though it’s really easy when there’s not a lot of material for the character in question in the first place, I just can’t understand the appeal of doing something like that. To put it simply, I fell in love with the characters for who they are, not for who I believe they should be.

This issue came up again - unrelated to the first time it was brought up - on tumblr when someone made a popular post about people being told they’re wrong for representing the characters of Hetalia in certain ways outside of canon because they were from the area in question and wanted their character to be more accurate to their culture as they saw it.

Which is a really complicated, controversial and specific to Hetalia discussion, to be perfectly honest. It’s still a great discussion to be had, though!

Where do we draw the line between cultural/historical accuracy and canon characterization? How do we decide what’s more important? When do we let one side win out if we let it win out at all?

These are all great questions that should be saved to be answered another time on another video and/or tumblr post.

For now, let’s just talk about the meaning behind the title of this video and then I promise we’ll get into the character analysis.

If any of my Dragon Ball fans are here, you’ll probably recognize said title from “This is My Goku” and yes I did it on purpose. I’m sort of parodying my own video because that one was so serious and fueled by anger, spite and hatred that it turned out pretty comical in nature. And this one is one fueled by happiness, positive energy and genuine curiosity.

I’m not here to prove some sort of point, I’m here to see how in-line my personal idea of the character is with how he’s represented in the most recent version of “canon” in Hetalia. (i.e; How well does my headcanon fueled characterization fit with the Hetalia World Stars comic strips that HetaScanalations has so graciously shared with all of us?)

A LOT of what we know of Prussia cannot help but be based on personal headcanons and popular fanons alike. He’s frankly not in the series enough to do a full proper analysis of his character because we only really see him in passing in pretty insignificant strips.

So while I really wanted to call this video “Hetalia Prussia Dissection” I can’t do it. I really honestly either don’t have the skill level or really don’t have the material to do that concept justice. So today we’re going to go into what’s canon and what my own ‘glam’ added to the character really is. (See what I did there? I have nothing against combining headcanon with canon, I just don’t like letting headcanon completely and purposefully override canon but again, that’s a topic for another day.)

So with all that said and understood, let us begin our awesome journey.

Okay so here’s the dealio, Prussia is a narcissist and we’re gonna go into the psychology of that in depth and talk about what all that entails and see how much evidence we have to support that claim in canon.

According to PsychologyToday which, to my understanding, is a credible enough source for quick glances into the minds of people, while having a superiority complex does play a part in narcissism, it’s really a feeling of fear of showing vulnerability that leads it.To quote; “The narcissist fears that acknowledging any weakness will allow someone else the chance to take advantage of him or gain power over him.” And another quote: “Simply put, true narcissists have zero interest in introspection or self-improvement. Their guiding principle: Never, ever let your guard down.”

Now, none of the Hetalia World Stars comics, the Anime nor the character songs themselves actually show Prussia being afraid of being vulnerable explicitly stating, but if we look at the symptoms of narcissism and his history, we can see, in my honest opinion, where that comes into play.

The DSM 5th Editions symptoms for narcissistic personality disorder as described by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. on psychologytoday.com are as follows:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance.

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

3. Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration [regularly fishes for compliments, and is highly susceptible to flattery].

5. Has a sense of entitlement.

6. Is interpersonally exploitative.

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty [rude and abusive] behaviors or attitudes.

This particular author of this particular article goes on to add a few more traits and symptoms. Those being:

1. They are highly reactive to criticism

2. They have a low self-esteem

3. Can be inordinately self-righteous and defensive

4. React to contrary viewpoints with anger or rage

5. Project onto others qualities, traits and behaviors they can’t - or won’t - accept in themselves

6. Have poor interpersonal boundaries

This article began by stating that only five of these fifteen traits need to be met in order to be considered for having narcissistic personality disorder. So let’s take a I’m-discovering-writing-this-analysis-as-I-go dive into my notes of where all Prussia's appearances are with these symptoms in mind to see if we can name at least five instances.

Right off the bat in both cases with the first listed symptom and the first appearance of Prussia in Chapter 12 where he unifies Germany, Prussia considers himself the one that is destined to lead the newly formed nation of Germany as his older brother. This is the idea of self-importance. Basically he has the idea of “If I’m not the one to do it, then no one can do it properly.” hence his fighting with Austria (and I bet winning said fight didn’t help.)

So there’s one.

But wait! There’s more in this chapter!

That same instance of him believing he needs to be Germany’s older brother goes along with the symptom of entitlement. It MUST be him simply because it MUST be him.

So we’ve got two now.

“Is highly susceptible to flattery”. When I read that I knew exactly what chapter we were going to discuss. I literally wrote in my notes for chapter 294 “Prussia is weak to flattery” because in the beginning of 294 and the whole of 293, Prussia was arguing with his king Frederick I about how much focus should be put on clothing, but the INSTANT Frederick I mentions that Prussia would probably look cool in the flashy outfits, Prussia caves and goes to spy on France to see about getting said flashy outfits for himself.

That’s three~ Two more and we’ve got ourselves a narcissist.

Being ‘arrogant’ is defined as ‘having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities’ and if that doesn’t describe Prussia in literally all of his “I am awesome!” glory, I don’t know what does. It should be self-explanatory to any fan of this series that, yes, Prussia is very arrogant.

Four down, one to go!

Number two in our list of symptoms “Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.” I BELIEVE this includes having constant daydreams about past glories as well as bringing them up all the time or when discussing said past glories, only discusses how great and awesome they were at the time.

Cough-cough - Prussia’s diary in 339 where he openly admits that said diary is mostly him saying “You are awesome” 20 times over.

And there we go. Let me know if you think of anymore instances in ANY official material that fits into these symptoms. I’d love to hear about them.

So with those five understood, it’s safe to assume Prussia is in fact a narcissist which - I know - comes as a shock to literally NOBODY but I figured it was important to actually pull up evidence for as opposed to just stating it as a passing fact and moving on like a lot of us Hetalians tend to do.

Explaining understandings of characterization is the fun part of character analysis, after all.

So let’s backtrack a little. Remember how that first article said being a narcissist comes from having a fear of vulnerability? Well, let’s go into headcanon and fanon land for two seconds as we read between the lines to find these signs of vulnerability based on the assumption that Prussia does in fact have this disorder.

Constantly in his official character songs, like “Mein Gott” or the Bad Friends Trio’s song “Overflowing Passion”, Prussia can be heard singing about how ‘it’s great to be alone!’ I take this to be a sign that Prussia understands that everyone is aware of him being lonely but he takes that understanding and turns it into a sign of ‘awesomeness’ as opposed to a weakness. He’d rather turn something most of humanity recognizes as a negative into a positive than admit to his own sadness. It’s the last thing he wants.

Let’s continue down this headcanon rabbit hole and talk about the wonderful Law 46 that was signed in 1947 after WWII and before the Berlin Wall. This is the Law signed by the Allied Control Council (France, America, Britain and the USSR) that stated that Prussia’s excessive militarism combined with excessive nationalism was too dangerous for the world as it was to blame for “repeated German pestilence” as Churchill put it.

Basically, this is the moment Prussia lost his nation and, in popular fanon, became East Germany.

There is no way on God’s green Earth that ANYONE is going to convince me that losing his nation like this - not just losing it in general but losing it to a piece of paper instead of a glorious battle that wiped his resources out - didn’t hurt and still to this day hurts Prussia on a deep emotional level. But do we ever see him talk about it?

No. And why is that? Because that would be a vulnerability.

See, I interpret Prussia as being my favorite type of character. The character that smiles and laughs and puts on a show about how great life is even though deep down they’re suffering from some serious issues whether it be trauma, negative mental health or just bad memories.

I know, I know, that’s not exactly a rare character type but I really don’t care, it’s still my favorite. It’s also not something that’s hard to see in real life. People will often hide behind a mask. We see it all the time in celebrities that people will refuse to ask for help when they are suffering because they’d rather everyone believe everything is fine for this that and/or another reason.

(Honestly though, can’t relate, because when I’m sad I let everyone know but that’s just a personal aside)

Getting off the narcissism train, let’s talk about something significantly less serious.

Prussia likes cute things and is attuned to nature. He’s constantly making references to nature like saying that it’s a great sign that even rabbits will prostrate before him in 299, saying “it’s cool like a wild little bird” in 293 and also mentioning how cute a little chirping bird is in his songs “Mein Gott” and his “Marukaitte Chikyuu.” Not to mention his image for his character profile shows him with a little bird on his head and holding a stuffed bear.

This ties in to both wanting to keep young ones’ innocence in tact as well as how in real life history, the German people had the most respect for nature at a time.

I have a friend who has taken multiple art history classes tell me that in German art there are often scenes of humans being lesser than nature that show how vast, beautiful and truly terrifying nature is.

As for Prussia wanting to help younger people keep their innocence, there is a chapter (chapter 187) where Prussia is reading Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales to a dying Holy Roman Empire (a character still portrayed as a child) and when questions arise like “Why would the witch be mad about Rapunzel’s clothes not fitting her and why would she blame the prince? There was no evidence of the prince bringing in food for her to eat.” he literally throws the book out the window.

He’s later, in the same chapter, shown to be writing the Grimm brothers asking them to PLEASE make the stories more actually child friendly if they’re going to advertise them as being stories for children.

So while in headcanon I imagine Prussia as not-shy-at-all about such things around other adults, it’s another story around children and those he perceives to be innocent. He canonically wants to preserve that cute nature of theirs and will do what he can to do such.

Random fun fact about the Hetalia character of Prussia; he gets really whiny when he’s hungover in chapter 32. He begs Germany to make him food and do other things for him even while Germany himself is also hungover. Also he says “I can’t eat things with faces on them” which woooo boy I’d hate to see what our cute-little-bird loving fool would think of Peeps.

Anyways, I think that’s about all I’ve got and surprisingly, we actually did have a lot to talk about with Prussia using mainly the comics and only partially headcanon. And it’s not even including the original run of the webcomic and manga since I don’t have easy access to those. And we didn’t really discuss the anime too much (mainly because it was just more of what we were able to see in the World Stars serialization).

Please feel free to continue the discussion in the comments. I’d love to hear/read more about one of my three favorite characters and how he’s perceived by others.

#aph prussia #hetalia #hetalia world stars #hws prussia #character analysis #kairi yajuu analysis

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nphofrph · 8 years ago

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NPHofRPH’s Sing-Along Glossary of Roleplay Terms

The quintessential dictionary for the new RPer, or the veteran RPer who wants to get caught up on all the new-fangled slang them young folks are using.

(Note: does not actually come with any particular melody, but feel free to make one up as you go and hum it.)

1x1: A roleplay between just two people, you and your partner.

2x2: A roleplay between four characters. Not sure why it’s referred to this way. I guess the characters are all supposed to have paired up by the end of it?

4x4: Wait, are we stilling pairing them up, or can this just be eight characters?

32x32: Apparently we just like dividing by two in this neck of the woods.

Activity Check: A time when the admins go through the characters of a roleplay and make sure that they’re all still posting and haven’t run away from home.

Admin: The manager or moderator of a roleplay group; the one who’s in charge of creating the roleplay and keeping it running.

Angst: Piling on the hurt - usually emotional, sometimes physical - for your character to endure. Really fun. You should try it. Be a malevolent god.

Anon Hate: A message someone sends anonymously detailing why they despise you and what they’ve done to your mother, or threatening you in some way. Honestly, it’s hard to be threatened by that little gray fella with the sunglasses, but okay.

Apartment RP: A roleplay in which all or most of the characters live in a single apartment building.

Application: A description of your character to submit in order to be considered to join a roleplay group. Like a job interview, but not as painful.

Appless RP: A roleplay where you don’t have to fill out an application. Just insert a couple of details about your character onto a little form and you’re in. Quality may vary.

Ask Meme: A post containing a list of questions for others to send to your character.

AU: Alternate universe. This is where the characters of the work are placed in a setting or scenario not present in canon. For example, characters who are superheroes in their canon work meeting as ordinary high school students instead.

Backstory: The events of a character’s life that occurred before the beginning of the roleplay. Doesn’t have to be tragic. Is usually tragic.

Bandom RP: A roleplay in which the characters are in a band. It’s a pun, see. A portmanteau of “band” and “fandom”, I think. I’m assuming. I mean, I’m not a roleplay etymologist or anything.

Bio RP: A roleplay in which a detailed description of the character’s background and personality is required in the application.

Blogroll: A page which displays all the blogs that a user is following.

BroTP: Like an OTP (see below), except for best buddies instead of romantic partners.

Bubble Roleplaying: Roleplaying with only a select few characters or members in a group RP setting and ignoring the others.

Canon: The stuff that the original writer of a work made. For an RP group, this consists of the plot, additional info, and any characters made by the admins intended to be a part of the overall story. For other works, it’s simply everything that occurs in the work.

CBR: Could be related. Two faceclaims who could play biological family members.

Celebrity RP: A roleplay in which you play actual celebrities as characters. These exist for some reason.

Charrie: Short for character. Not to be confused with Carrie, a Stephen King novel in which a girl gets a bit power-crazy with her telekinesis.

City RP: A roleplay in which the plot takes place in a single city as its primary or only setting. Like a town RP, but the buildings are taller.

Closed Starter: A starter made for a particular blog to reply to. Sure, you can still reply to it if it wasn’t intended for you, but it’ll just lead to secondhand embarrassment for all involved.

Contained Theme: A theme that is frightened. It tries to hide from predators by curling up and making itself smaller.

Crackship: A relationship between two characters whose pairing seems unlikely or absurd.

Crackship Gifs: Gifs of two characters edited together so that it appears the characters are interacting with each other.

Crossover: A work consisting of elements from two or more works or fandoms.

Cross-tagging: Tagging a post with related things that are not actually in the post. For example, tagging a picture of Wonder Woman with ‘#superman’. Don’t do this. It’s all of the annoying.

CW: Content Warning. Same as trigger warning. See below.

Defiantly: Definitely, but misspelled.

DM: Dungeon Master. The person who is in charge of - wait, hang on, wrong type of roleplay. Sorry about that. Move along.

Drabble: Technically it’s a story of exactly 100 words, but it’s more used to just refer to a very short standalone piece about a character or characters in a particular single scenario.

Dry Docking: The opposite of shipping. When two characters who are a couple in canon are either broken up or were never together in the first place in your fan work or RP.

Event: In a roleplay group, an occurrence in the story in which all characters can participate. Also can be several days in which the verse is altered, such as a Future Week or other AU.

Exclusive: In a fandom-related independent RP, when the mun will RP with only one version of a particular character. For example, an indie RP playing Hermione Granger only interacts with a single indie Ron Weasley blog, and others who play Ron must go elsewhere.

FxF: A romantic pairing between two female characters, usually in 1x1 roleplay.

Face-chaser: Someone who pursues a roleplay or ship with a character based on their faceclaim instead of their characterization or the writing.

Faceclaim/FC: A real-life person used to represent what a roleplay character looks like.

Faceless Gifs/Images: Gifs or images that can be used in roleplaying regardless of the character’s faceclaim, since a person’s face is not visible or present in the gif or image.

Female Ban: An element in some works of dystopian fiction wherein the government or other higher power attempts to suppress a population by eliminating females and thus making it hard to procreate... Hang on, no, I’ve just been informed that it’s when an RP doesn’t allow any more female characters to be added to the group. Presumably, male bans exist too, but I think that’s just an urban legend.

First Look: A type of review based on a quick glance over the roleplay and what first impressions the reviewer gleaned from it.

Floating Timeline: A concept in roleplay that suggests that events in threads that are being written at a particular time do not necessarily take place in that time in-story. So, if a character has multiple ongoing threads, they are not actually in multiple places at once.

Fluff: Scenes that do not involve any significant obstacle and instead are intended to give the characters time to just have fun and be cute together.

Gif Chat: A type of roleplay thread in which each post is accompanied by a gif to illustrate the character.

Gif Hunt: Collection of gifs gathered from throughout tumblr or from various sources.

Gif Icons: Collection of gifs that are 100x100 pixels in size. Sometimes people make them 90x90 or 75x75 for what I can only assume are unsavory purposes. Don’t let your guard down around those things.

Gif Pack: Collection of gifs in which all of the gifs are made by the person posting the pack, and usually are all from the same source (the same movie, TV episode, etc.)

Godmodding: Collectively refers to powerplaying, metagaming, or both. See below.

Gore: Explicit and/or graphic violence and blood. A challenge to see how many synonyms for “red” you know.

Gossip Blog: A blog affiliated with a roleplay group that talks about and passes judgment on the characters. Sometimes can be fun, if managed well, but often creates all species of drama.

Headcanon: Something that an individual or fandom believes to be true about a story or character, even though it is not shown to be the case in the canon work.

Hiatus: Taking a break from roleplaying due to real life occurrences taking priority. As if anything could be more important than finishing those replies, pfft! The nerve.

IC: In-character. The actions, thoughts, and posts of the character; the stuff that occurs in the roleplay proper.

Icons: Also called static icons, a 100x100 image of the character or faceclaim used to illustrate the character in lieu of gifs.

I’m sorry, what did you say?: An extremely vague starter. For some reason, people keep making this starter, despite it annoying and frustrating people. Like an Alvin and the Chipmunks film.

Independent RP/Indie RP: A roleplay blog or character not associated with any particular established RP group.

IRL: In real life. Don’t worry, you won’t have to use this one often. Nothing ever happens in real life.

Kik: Something that I recently learned is not a dating site, as I had thought. This is all I know.

KRP: A roleplay that uses K-Pop artists as faceclaims exclusively or nearly exclusively. This community has some terminology of its own that I don’t know, but most of it’s similar to the rest of the RPC.

Label: A brief descriptor or trope used to describe a character in an application. Some examples are The Scholar, The Heartbreaker, The Intrepid Reporter, The Lizard Tamer, etc.

Literate RP: An RP that is highly writing-focused and requires longer posts and replies than other roleplays. Despite the misleading name, it is not actually saying that other roleplays are illiterate.

LSRP: Legit Serious Roleplay. Same as Literate RP. Yes, this acronym is ridiculous, just roll with it.

MxM: A romantic pairing between two male characters, usually in 1x1 roleplay.

Magic Anon/M!A: A post for which you invite others to make your character take on a certain trait or action for a select period of time.

Main: In a group, the blog that contains all of the information and updates for the roleplay. Home base, basically.

Manip: A graphic edit of two faceclaims in which they are photoshopped to look like they’re in a picture together.

Mary Sue: A character whose unreasonable ease or difficulty in overcoming obstacles, forming relationships, and/or gaining accolades runs contrary to the intent of the writer and makes it difficult for the reader to get invested in the story or character arc. Also, apparently, a term used to refer to any female character you don’t like.

Mature RP: A roleplay that may contain dark or adult themes, and thus doesn’t allow players under the age of 18. Seriously, if you’re under 18, don’t lie about your age. That’s a dick move.

Meme: A post that features small prompts that others can send in to begin a thread. Elsewhere on the internet, this term refers to drawings of sad frogs.

Metagaming: Letting your character have in-character knowledge that they shouldn’t logically possess, just because the mun has it.

Mod: Another term for admin. We could never settle on one term for them. It’s like the couch vs. sofa dilemma.

Moodboard: A collection of images or gifs used to sum up a character’s personality.

Multifandom: Similar to Crossover, although usually used to refer to a work with elements from three or more works or fandoms.

Multi-Storyline/Multiverse: In independent roleplay, when the character exists in more than one universe at once, such that threads with a character do not impact the events of threads with a different character.

Mumu: Multi-muse. In which a single blog is used to play more than one character.

Mun: The writer/roleplayer. The person who’s controlling the character. You. This is you. Use this power wisely.

Muse: The character that you roleplay. Also, a Greek goddess who presided over the arts, although this definition is usually irrelevant in roleplay.

Musing: Posts that represent the character’s personality, history, or thoughts in someway, such as aesthetic photos, songs, or philosophical rants.

Mutuals: Blogs on tumblr that are both following each other.

MW: Most wanted. A character or faceclaim that admins or members in a group would really like someone to play.

NoTP: When some people think that two characters would make a good couple, and you would like to stab those people with a fork for being so stupid.

Novella: Very long format for roleplaying, in which responses should contain several paragraphs of writing. Don’t worry, you don’t actually have to write a novella; a reply shorter than 20,000 words is still acceptable.

NPC: Non-playable character. A character who is present in the roleplay’s universe, but is not played by any one particular writer.

NPH of RPH: That’s me!

NSFW: Not safe for work. Nudity, sex, graphic violence. Basically, the stuff that you absolutely don’t want to come across while browsing at the public library.

OC: Original character. A character you make that is not part of the canon or not pre-written for the RP group.

One-liner: Roleplay consisting of only a single line or a few short lines. Sometimes referred to as “action roleplay” wherein actions are interspersed with speech. For example: “*Enters the room and throws confetti into the air.* I have arrived!”

OOC: Out of character. Can be used to denote that the writer is currently speaking or posting as themselves, rather than as a character, or be used to point out that a character does not act that way in canon, what are you doing, goddamnit.

Open Character: A pre-made character in a group who is currently not being played by any member of the group.

Open Starter: A starter that any character is allowed to reply to.

Original RP: A roleplay in which the plot and characters come from the admins’ and players’ creations rather than another source.

OTP: One true pairing. The ship that you love more than all the other ships. Except that most people have at least twelve OTPs, so...

OT3: One true threesome. Like an OTP, except there are three people.

Para: Relatively longer posts, consisting of full-bodied paragraphs or multiple paragraphs.

Playby: Another word for Faceclaim. Used more outside of Tumblr. See the couch vs. sofa debate.

Plot Bunny: A story that you would like to play out or see others play out through roleplay.

Plot Drop: A significant detail or event of the overarching story in a group RP that causes some change to the lives of the characters.

Powerplaying: Controlling another player’s character without their permission.

Private: In indie RP, a blog that only interacts with mutuals.

Promo: A post used to advertise a roleplay group or account.

PSD: Photoshop Data file. A type of file that’s designed to be edited on Photoshop or other image editing programs. It comes with the image separated into layers, so that different parts of the image, such as a background, a border, or text, can be edited separately.

Revamped: Extreme Makeover, Roleplay Edition.

RP: Roleplay.

RPA: Roleplay Advice. Like roleplay help, except, I dunno, maybe fewer resources, more questions answered? This one’s falling into disuse a bit. Oh, also Roleplay Assistant.

RPC: Roleplay Community. The group of us weirdos here who roleplay instead of just posting funny text posts and photographs of flowers like normal people. Alternatively, Roleplay Critic, a blog that reviews roleplays.

RPCHA: Um, Roleplay Critic/Helper/Advice. Seems a little over the top, but all right.

RPCW: Roleplay Critic Writer, I guess? I think. Same as roleplay critic. Think it’s used to differentiate from Roleplay Community.

RPG: Roleplay group. A group. That roleplays. Also can mean roleplaying game, or rocket-propelled grenade.

RPH: Roleplay Help. A blog that offers resources and answers questions to help people with roleplaying.

RPO: Roleplay Opinions. A blog that reviews roleplays. It doesn’t count as RPO if you just have opinions; you need to share them with the class.

RPT: Roleplay Talk. A blog that talks about roleplays and the roleplay community.

RPWCTOHA: This doesn’t stand for anything yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Sample Para: A few paragraphs of your writing you include as an example as your work when you apply for a roleplay group. Do not just copy and paste a passage from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” The admins will probably notice.

Secrets RP: A roleplay in which every character has a secret. These secrets are all listed together on a page in the RP, but it’s not revealed which character has which secret; that’s up to the other characters to figure out on their own through interactions.

Selective: For independent RP, when the mun does not roleplay indiscriminately with every blog or character that offers, but rather picks and chooses partners based on personal preference or certain criteria.

Self-insert: A character who is a fictionalized version of the mun/author, with little to no change from their actual self. If they die in the game, they die in real life.

Self-para: When your character wanders away from the group for a bit to engage in their own sidequest or navel-gazing. Good times.

Semi-appless RP: A roleplay that sits on an ever-sliding scale, requiring more detail in an application than an appless RP, but less than a bio RP.

Semi-hiatus: Like a hiatus, except that you might still show up to the blog on occasion and do a little bit of activity. When your real life is busy, but you’re just that determined to roleplay.

Semi-selective: For independent RP, a blog that’s not quite as selective as a selective blog, but still maintains the right to refuse service to customers should they so choose.

Semi-truck: A truck that’s not as much truck as a regular truck.

Shipping: Holding up hand-puppet versions of two characters and forcing them to make out.

Shoutout: A brief advertisement for a roleplay group (or occasionally other blogs) that can be submitted to the ask box of a help blog.

Skeleton RP: A roleplay in which some details are given for the roles being offered by the group, but the applicant fills in the rest, usually writing the body of the character bio. Alternatively, a roleplay in which every character is literally a skeleton.

Smut: Sex. Doing the do. The horizontal tango. Bumping uglies. Woohooing. Written out in all of its gory detail. Not worth going to jail for, so for the love of all that is holy, don’t do it if you’re under 18.

Starboarding: Shipping a one-sided ship. When you want one character to be in love with another, but don’t necessarily want the feelings to be returned. The most relatable type of ship, honestly. More people should RP it.

Starter: The first post in a thread, one that is used to kick off a scene in roleplaying. Usually, especially in a group, anyone is allowed to reply and start a thread from that point.

Starter Call: A post that people like or reblog in order to request a starter from the person who posted it.

Supernatural RP: A roleplay consisting of paranormal elements such as magical creatures, witchcraft, etc. Not a roleplay about the TV show Supernatural, although I guess such a roleplay would use this tag too. This is a problem the showrunners should have foreseen.

Taken Character: A character in a roleplay group who is currently being played by a group member.

Task: In a group, a (usually optional) prompt or project that can be used for character development.

Thread: The series of posts and replies to said post that make up a scene between characters in a roleplay.

Time Skip: Usually indicated by a line break, this is when a thread moves from one scene to another without covering the time in between.

Town RP: A roleplay in which the plot takes place in a single town as its primary or only setting. Like a city RP, but the buildings are shorter.

Trigger: Something that makes a user anxious, panicky, or otherwise very upset when they see it on their dashboard without warning. Tag these. No, I don’t care if it doesn’t fit your tagging aesthetic, just tag them.

Tumblr: You are here.

TW: Trigger Warning. Used in a tag to indicate that the post contains content that may be a trigger. Please format as “#[trigger] tw”. Not “#tw: [trigger]”, and definitely not “#☾-*.:｡-❝✿~~ tw ~~✿&&♛”.

Twitter RP: A roleplay that uses Twitter as its primary platform. Don’t ask me how. I can’t even figure out how to use Twitter for its intended purpose.

Urban RP: A roleplay focused primarily on PoC (person of color) characters in a city setting. Often uses musicians such as hip-hop or rap artists as faceclaims.

UTP: Up to player. An acronym used in skeletons to indicated that part of the bio can be chosen by the applicant.

Verse: Short for universe. A character’s world or timeline.

WID: What I do. A list or page on a help blog that lists what services the blog offers.

X-kit: A browser extension that’s popular within the RPC. It works to make tumblr usable again every time the staff creates a new bug and calls it a feature.

#rph #rpc #roleplay help #rp help #roleplay terms #roleplay 101

232 notes · View notes

ageloire · 6 years ago

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9 YouTube Video Ideas to Inspire Your Brand’s YouTube Channel [+ Examples]

Nowadays, almost every brand has a YouTube channel. However, almost no brands can boast a flourishing one.

Building a thriving YouTube channel is one of the most ambitious achievements a marketer can pursue. Not only do you have to spend time scripting, producing, and editing videos, but you also have to make sure your content actually resonates with your target audience.

To help inspire you, we’ve put together a list of video ideas that HubSpot has experienced success with on our own YouTube channel. Read on to get the creative juices flowing.

YouTube Video Ideas

About Us

Culture

Ask Me Anything

Comedy

Shows

Explainers

Tutorials

Customer Case Studies

Product Promos

1. About Us

Your “About Us” video’s main job is to introduce your brand to future customers and make a good first impression with them. Before you put pen to paper, though, you must remember that people don’t just want to know what your company does and how you do it. They also want to know why you do it. Put simply, your brand’s purpose is what actually resonates with your audience and inspires them to follow you.

So when you’re scripting your video, make sure you spotlight why your organization exists, the values you truly believe in, and, ultimately, the reason people should care about your brand. Only then should you cover what your product or service is and how you build or develop it.

2. Culture

As I approach my one-year anniversary as a college graduate, reality has officially sunk into my bones. As adults, we spend the majority of our lives working -- and not hanging out with our friends like we did during the glory days.

However, I’ve also realized that if you love your job and company, work isn’t some dreadful chore that you check off your to-do list everyday. It’s actually a blessing and something you can’t imagine living your life without.

In order to build a company that your employees love working for, cultivating an authentic, people-first culture is a crucial first step. Once you do this, consider creating a video that highlights your culture and your employees’ genuine praises about your company. Not only will it persuade elite talent to apply to your open roles, but it’ll make potential customers think more highly of your brand.

3. Ask Me Anything

Since your executives’ public perception directly impacts people’s sentiment toward your brand, like Elon Musk and Tesla, they’re essentially the face of your company. And with all the status, attention, and aura surrounding them, your knee-jerk reaction might be to polish their interactions with the public as much as possible.

However, most people can spot a walking press releases faster than they can exit out of pop-up ad. So it’s actually better to set your executives free and allow them to genuinely interact with the public.

Breaking down the barriers between your executives and audience also makes your fans feel like they actually know your leaders on a personal level -- and this’ll develop a more intimate and loyal relationship between your company and your potential customers.

One of the best ways to connect your executives with your audience is by setting up Ask Me Anything or Q&A sessions, where people can ask your executives any question they want and your executives agree to honestly answer as many of their questions as they can.

4. Comedy

Even in 2019, most companies still stuff their YouTube channels with formulaic corporate videos that are scripted in jargonese. Trying to capture people’s attention with these boilerplate videos is nearly impossible. That said, what’s the best strategy for standing out from the crowd?

Well, according to Psychology Today, humans associate the same personality traits to brands as they do with people, so, just like how we choose the people we spend our lives with, we engage with the brands that can evoke warm feelings in us, especially feelings of humor.

So before you green-light another talking head video, think about spicing it up and adding some humor. You’ll inject more color and personality into your brand, which consumers desperately crave when they interact with businesses.

5. Shows

In the neuroscience field, researchers have proven that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and resonate emotionally with them. The human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to well-crafted narrative -- that’ll never change.

So just like your favorite Netflix show, creating shows can entire your viewers to watch entire seasons of your series, subscribe to your channel, and get more excited for your show’s newest season than they currently are for the final season of Game of Thrones.

Most brands also produce their content disparately, severing them from any thematic anchor, so tying your stories to a unique angle and telling them in an episodic fashion can help separate your videos from the rest of the pack.

6. Explainers

Whether it’s an exciting new trend or difficult-to-grasp technology, your audience wants to learn about your industry’s innovations to stay ahead of the curve. In order to fill their curiosity gaps, consider creating explainer videos about your industry’s latest trends and technology.

However, don’t just make a talking head video of someone droning on about the topic of discussion. People crave a variety of stimulus when they consume content, so get creative and complement your video’s narration and text with a diverse mix of dynamic graphics, popular movie scenes, and footage of real people.

Visual storytelling also helps people grasp concepts and data easily, so each time your narrator expands on a concept or some data, your viewers can listen to the information and watch a visual representation of it, helping them form a concrete understanding of your video’s central idea.

7. Tutorials

It doesn’t matter if they’re guitar lessons, beauty lessons, or how-to videos about making a fire with a lemon, people love learning how to improve their lives. So if you can cover topics that people are passionate about and teach them how to get better at them, they’ll be able to live better lives, which will help grow your channel’s brand loyalty and sentiment, retain your viewers’ attention, and attract their friends’ attention by way of word-of-mouth marketing.

Just like your explainers, make sure you diversify your tutorials’ visual stimuli. Because, contrary to the rest of the types of videos on this list, the best tutorials are actually talking head videos, but they also have engaging visuals that make them more distinct and gripping.

8. Customer Case Studies

Social proof and word-of-mouth are some of the most potent tactics at your disposal. Humans evolved to follow the crowd and assume the majority is always right, so the more testimonials you have, the more credible and trustworthy your brand will seem.

Your case studies are also some of the most persuasive types of sales enablement content, so make sure your sales reps and potential customers can easily find them on your YouTube channel.

When scripting your case studies, you want to place your potential customers’ in your current customers’ shoes, so focus on how your customer faced a specific problem, what they initially did to try and solve it, how they discovered your solution, the experience of using your solution to solve their problem, and the results they produced with your solution.

9. Product Promos

Tailored for potential customers who are further along the buyer’s journey, product promos are videos that spotlight your product’s top features and tangible benefits. This type of video is powerful because it can convince potential customers to move on to the final stage of the buyer’s journey and seriously consider purchasing your product or service.

If you want to learn how to create compelling product videos, check out one of Meghan Keaney Anderson’s blog posts about 7 of the Best Promotional Product Videos Ever Made.

In her post, the VP of Marketing at HubSpot says remarkable product videos all share four elements: engaging dialogue and narration, a comprehensive yet concise explanation of the product and its benefits, professionalism, and empathy and relatability. To see one of these videos in action, check out this product promo about HubSpot’s Growth Stack.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/youtube-video-ideas

#Marketing

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faemoria-arch · 8 years ago

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@cyrusdreamseeker ; A super long time ago on my previous incarnation of this blog, I wrote just like... a long bullet point list of headcanon’d behaviors and quirks for Tooth. It spanned through things like fidgeting habits to the idea that she will stand at the approach of someone she considers higher authority or more often around someone she’s comfortable enough with, and your question is somewhat relevant to all of that and also you asked for ramblings so here they are. A train-of-thought on all that comes to mind for how Toothiana behaves differently between flying and walking.

Though to start with, admittedly when I am writing threads I probably have Tooth walk more often than my own headcanon says she should, because the way a person walks can tell a lot about how they’re feeling, as opposed to hovering in the air which, while having its own unique behavioral quirks to work with, like a small drop in elevation from surprise ( or honestly this which is one of the few things i really appreciate for tooth from the movie because it’s the most adorable thing ever fight me ), also has its limitations from lack of placing weight . And also it’s easier to give my writing partners something to actually respond if to if necessary when it’s ‘she begins walking away/walks towards them/walks over’ as opposed to ‘she darts off because once tooth has decided to fly somewhere else she’s already gone buh-bye now’.

( makin’ my way downtown. )

So barring writer’s prerogative, it probably goes without saying that Tooth spends most of her time in the air as a preference. It’s where she’s most comfortable, safest, and it just feels natural to her. Because it’s where she is most of her time even while idle, and also because ‘she’s friends with the wind’ and of course in the rotgoc universe there is literally no reason it can’t be assumed that she is literally friends with the wind . But most importantly because she is half Sister of Flight which I’ll get to shortly. The authority aspect is pretty straight-forward I think: Tooth hovers at around eye level or just a few feet above it when talking to most people she has any affinity towards , but Tooth stands to place herself at a lower position, also sacrificing one of the advantages she has in combat and self defense and some level of comfort, than someone she considers to have some claim to her right to live anyways . I.e. Mother Nature and MiM. When Toothiana is standing or sitting she will often fidget from subconsciously quelling the impulse for her wings to be moving, but it’s like 20x worse in their company and so she’s far more stiff from the more intentional effort to not tap her fingers or press at her lips or what have you.

There’s really no one else that receives that response so mechanically, every time. She sometimes stands and walks around people she is intimately closer to; That’s out of trust or... at least something like trust. But also if Tooth is entering like... another kingdom, or some other faecreature’s dwellings, or the home of someone she especially wants to be on good terms with but hasn’t really made an in-person impression on yet, she’ll probably walk in her initial approach as a sign of respect.

Granted, it’s a symbolic gesture of that respect & surrender & a lack of desire to harm. And it doesn’t mean that if she hovers around someone she doesn’t respect them again, hovering at or slightly above their eye level is the default. It’s a simple traditional manner of ‘authority sits on high, while everyone else crawls around on the ground’. I’m not going to say that when Toothiana is walking, she’s actually surrendering that much or really assuring someone she has no desire to harm them, because naturally she can always just go back to flying in a fraction of a second, and even if she can’t, one can’t just clip her wings and expect her to suddenly wilt away uselessly. ( or at least not on this blog. movie canon says that’s exactly what you do, but book canon says that Tooth lost the use of one of her wings and her response to learning about Pitch right at the same time was, ‘Sweet story. I’m gonna go fight him.’ and then she like, falls over and if that ain’t the story of this blog I I’m getting off track, anyways... ) In fact, any thread I have where Tooth is practice sparring against someone else has her on the ground to level the playing field literally. And neither I nor my partners have ever come to the conclusion that it would be enough of a hinderance to make her anything less than let’s be honest, an OP supernatural entity that doesn’t need swords to kill you so why would you think she needs to be able to fly to do it either.

( spoilers: she super does not )

There’s a reason Toothiana tends to perch on things as often as she does; It’s a good midground between the two. A willingness to engage without any real submission, or a sign that she’s being rather aloof. I always feel like if Toothiana is holding a conversation with someone and stays hovering much higher in the air than them, it’s giving the impression that she’s ready to/wants to leave or at least feels it necessary to keep the option as open as possible. But in any case being grounded does take something very... definitive away from her. Like Toothiana should manage to be a pretty elegant and graceful creature whether she’s darting through the clouds or stalking within the trees or rolling in the dirt ( she makes it work ), but there is something different about how she embodies that grace in the air, and how it’s just a trait she has on the ground. It’s the Sister of Flight thing I mentioned earlier, hovering and flying in the air is natural to her it’s where ( half of ) Toothiana was born to be . Actually this is something reflected well in her difficulty dancing with others. Toothiana can fight just fine on the ground because Toothiana feels comfortable fighting anyways. And also some corner of her mind probably thinks it’s fun, even if it’s overpowered by her survival instinct flashing red sirens . ( Because... y’know. ) She can look like she’s dancing when she is fighting well, we’re ignoring the rare and situational berserker mode tooth who will just wail on you with a sword like a club until your shield and the arm holding it is broken because of how instinctively it comes to her, but she has difficulty actually dancing because she handles that very clinically.

Tooth never really dances with others outside of when she’s been expected to ( i.e. where it’s part of the package of being a Queen and also a representative of MiM; Frivolous parties hosted by other spirits and the like because I always imagine at least some portion of immortals do a lot just to stay entertained and engage in petty snooty status-based social climates ) so it’s not something that’s ever been fun for her. There’s more thought put into where her feet are supposed to go because she’s memorized exactly that, than any sort of impulse. So just like how she looks comparably stiff when standing in front of Seraphina or Manny due to how conscious the effort being made is, she looks stiff while she dances and can handle no improvisation. Incidentally, when she’s dancing with someone where everything secretly and not-so-secretly is a fight because ‘what are feelings we only know power struggles not naming any names’ she’s actually way better. On the nicer end of things, if Jack were to dance with her, she’d be better at learning to dance too because he would obviously bring out the...well, fun of it all. But I digress, dancing is just one of the first examples that came to mind, there are other things this applies to as well, like how well you can expect Toothiana to swim, or moving to catch something while on foot, and so on. She can do it, but it will seem far less effortless than its counterpart, and it is less instinctive so... you probably wouldn’t see Toothiana move to catch something by foot unless her wings are broken.

Which brings me to the other element of this whole subject which is the emotional connection Toothiana has to being able to fly. I’ve already covered the portion of Toothiana’s life where she hated everything about what she had turned into, and her wings and feathers were a particular insult added to injury because her own frustration with them would, in turn, cause them to flare and etc. etc. But one of the first things Toothiana did when she changed, was take an absolute child-fitting joy in the ability to do so, particularly for what it allowed her to do for others. Eventually that changed, and she instead embraced them as 1. An aspect of freedom/autonomy/safety and 2. Her starkest connection to the Sister of Flight. To quote this headcanon post:

Undoubtedly the most fragile thing about Toothiana’s body are her wings. They are also unquestionably the most ‘unnatural’ part of her, truly symbolizing the magic that makes up being a fae, more than most of her other physical attributes.

‘Fae’ here also referring more specifically to her heritage, the ability to fly is simply a defining feature of being a Sister of Flight. Toothiana’s wings can break and take time to regrow and so on, but they will come back . In fact, if necessary she can make them grow back very quickly with a bit of time, concentration, and energy to spare . So she doesn’t feel a sudden loss of identity when they aren’t functional or anything. But she will be absolutely pissed if you make the effort to break them, on principle.

( and yet... honestly fuck these two, they ruin everything. ) Not only is it a quick determination of how her opponent views her that her wings are a deciding factor of whether she will overpower them which is probably insulting but it usually feels like a disrespect for the Sisters of Flight and her place as one of them , even if they have no way of knowing that . Actually she’ll probably find it to be even worse and more aggravating if they don’t, because they don’t know the memories and feelings associated to those wings, they just see them as any other body part to be injured for an advantage. Which is a good way to make Toothiana less practical in how she decides to ruin your day.

Can I tldr this? I can try. TLDR ; By default Tooth is more at ease in the air than she is on her feet , it’s not such a big difference that she’s clumsy or disoriented when grounded, but her actions tend not to look and feel as effortless. Tooth could probably still kill a man while wingless, blindfolded, with both arms tied behind her back and make it home in time for breakfast. She will walk around people she considers a higher authority than herself as a gesture of respect, and go between low hovering and walking when around friends/acquaintances/partners/whatever. She perches on high objects/seats in more neutral/observatory situations, and remains hovering higher in the air in the company of those she means to get away from at a moment’s notice. Her wings are fancy magical wings and she will be angry if you purposefully break them. She is mediocre at dancing. I definitely forgot the original question I was meaning to answer about 1/7th of the way through. Why would you ever ask for this?

#cyrusdreamseeker #» โลกีย์ ; Out of Character #» ทั่วไป ; Headcanon #[ i guESS. i mean i should probably give it a little bit of actual structure before i put it in that tag #but i know who i am and i never will.#so anyways i hope this is what you were expecting but i honestly feel bad either way. ]

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readersforum · 6 years ago

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9 YouTube Video Ideas to Inspire Your Brand’s YouTube Channel [+ Examples]

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/9-youtube-video-ideas-to-inspire-your-brands-youtube-channel-examples/

9 YouTube Video Ideas to Inspire Your Brand’s YouTube Channel [+ Examples]

Nowadays, almost every brand has a YouTube channel. However, almost no brands can boast a flourishing one.

To help inspire you, we’ve put together a list of video ideas that HubSpot has experienced success with on our own YouTube channel. Read on to get the creative juices flowing.

YouTube Video Ideas

About Us

Culture

Ask Me Anything

Comedy

Shows

Explainers

Tutorials

Customer Case Studies

Product Promos

1. About Us

2. Culture

As I approach my one-year anniversary as a college graduate, reality has officially sunk into my bones. As adults, we spend the majority of our lives working — and not hanging out with our friends like we did during the glory days.

3. Ask Me Anything

Breaking down the barriers between your executives and audience also makes your fans feel like they actually know your leaders on a personal level — and this’ll develop a more intimate and loyal relationship between your company and your potential customers.

4. Comedy

5. Shows

6. Explainers

7. Tutorials

8. Customer Case Studies

Your case studies are also some of the most persuasive types of sales enablement content, so make sure your sales reps and potential customers can easily find them on your YouTube channel.

9. Product Promos

If you want to learn how to create compelling product videos, check out one of Meghan Keaney Anderson’s blog posts about 7 of the Best Promotional Product Videos Ever Made.

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ohhimatt · 7 years ago

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Reasons Why #201-250

201. You tried to teach Dan about how prostitute is a slur, and seeing you care about something I care about was actually so amazing. I honestly almost cried a little bit, but I couldn’t because drugs. If I had been sober or just drunk though, I would have cried

202. Alex always says that you change personalities completely and smile more when I’m around, and if that’s not the most adorable thing, then I don’t know what is

203. Okay yeah I’m mega overwhelmed right now about everything surrounding Coachella, but the only thing keeping me from having a full on panic attack over this is the fact that I know that no matter what happens I’m going to have a good time because I’m going to be there with you

204. You offer to put my things in your pockets at concerts and festivals, which is beyond helpful, especially since I apparently don’t know how the pockets in a camelbak work

205. You always keep snacks around your house for me or let me grab snacks at the grocery store that I can actually eat (and also Cheese Nips), which is fab because I can’t eat normal people things

206. I feel like most of the time when I’m filling out the gratitude section in my planner I end up writing in something about you

207. You drove us home from Coachella when I made the dumb decision to only sleep for an hour the night before, and then you didn’t get mad at me for sleeping for half of the time

208. You always offered to walk me back to my campsite, which I definitely wasn’t going to allow you to do because it was so far, but it was a really sweet gesture

209. I really did kinda try to start a minor fight over the group message thing, and you just apologized. You just didn’t even let me start the fight. Wow. But also wow thanks

210. You added me to the group message after I complained about it, which didn’t matter at all because nobody said anything in it after that, but it was nice

211. You reminded me to bring my Coachella ticket. Oh my god I was really going to leave without my ticket. What is wrong with me?

212. For the most part, we wanted to see the same people play at Coachella, and I really don’t mind compromising on things like this, but the fact that I didn’t have to was also amazing

213. You stuck around with Lauren and me when she was dealing with her coke sadness and having her credit card information stolen and her identity compromised, and you really could have just gone off and done your own thing, but you stayed, and that was really nice

214. You weren’t having a great time on acid, but you still dealt with me saying things like “I kinda want to die” and “I just feel really sorry for everyone who isn’t me right now.”

215. When I really wanted to go home, the home that I was thinking of was your home, and I’m going to be lame really quick and quote one of my favorite songs from like middle school(?) anyway.. It says “If home is where the heart is, then my home is where you are.” I used to sing along to that all the time, and I would hope that someday I would feel that way about someone, and I finally do. I finally understand the feeling behind that song lyric, and I’ve been dreaming of that feeling since middle school

216. I never have to worry about being honest with you about things. If I want to leave or if I feel weird or uncomfortable, I can just tell you

217. You don’t get weird when I let guys hit on me so that I can get free stuff

218. You don’t get weird about guys hitting on me in general. This has always been a problem I’ve had in past relationships, and considering it’s something that’s out of my control, it’s really nice that I don’t have to worry about getting in trouble over it

219. You make me feel better when I’m literally crying because I’m afraid of one of my teachers

220. I now associate Philz coffee with seeing you because I only really go when I’m in Berkeley, so now no matter where or when I get Philz it just tastes better because it makes me think of you. I know that probably sounds lame, but idc

221. I’ve stolen some of my favorite songs from your playlists, which means that on top of the fact that these songs are great, they make me think of you when I hear them, and that makes them even better

222. I’m not sure if this really counts, but it should count. I feel like the universe had some sort of master plan by putting our six month anniversary on Cal Day because that’s cute af and also v coincidental

223. You were really able to pump me up enough to take shots while power walking through the desert to the entrance to Coachella. That sounds like the worst thing ever. Plastic vodka mixed with heat mixed with exercise, but it was cool because it was with you

224. You will literally just toss compliments around in our conversations for no reason. For. No. Reason. It’s sweet though

225. The only thing I ever really have to be annoyed with you about is how often you compliment me. There really isn’t anything bad about you. Wow

226. I always feel like whenever you take acid you’re going to have some sort of realization that you don’t like me anymore, but you don’t. And I don’t know whether or not it’s on purpose, but you always seem to be much more reassuring about your feelings towards me the next day, and that’s really nice

227. You keep offering to help me pay for things, including formal, and that’s super super not necessary, but it is nice knowing that you’re willing to help

228. You don’t get weird about me hanging out with your friends without you, and it’s super weird to me that that is even possible. I spend so much time at your house, so obviously I’m gong to develop friendships with other people who live there or hang out there all the time, and you’re okay with this, and you don’t think I’m trying to steal your friends

229. We can do our own things, and that’s okay. I didn’t feel like you were going to get mad at me for doing something else while you were still at Chi Psi playing beer die, which is great because I suck at beer die

230. You have given me the gift of littles. My littles are my pride and joy, and I wouldn’t have Sachin or Ken without you. Wow

231. You ate my egg off of my avocado toast for me. This is a good relationship. I can eat the pickles off of your sandwiches at Chick-fil-a, and you can eat the eggs off of my toast. I couldn’t think of a better trade

232. You don’t make fun of me or get weirded out when I cry about little things that I shouldn’t cry about like a joke about us breaking up. I still don’t know why that really made me cry. I’m weak

233. You helped me get my EDC ticket for cheaper than I was planning on getting it for by asking Max to sell his to me. You’re a gem because I’m broke right now

234. You got me started on these stupid facebook games, and I don’t know if this is good or bad because I’m wasting my day, but also it’s kinda entertaining

235. You listen to the songs that I send you. It would be super easy for you to just pretend that you like them and lie to me, but you don’t do that, and it probably helps that we like the same music, but it’s still nice

236. This is going to sound corny af, but I used to listen to love songs and think that the people writing or singing them or whatever were just singing about this made up fantasy love that couldn’t be real at all, and I just thought they were sad and dumb and whatever, but now I like them. So thanks for making these songs make sense. I feel like there’s a whole new world of music I can participate in now

237. You’re fucking adorable at concerts/shows/festivals. Adorable. More than normal, which I didn’t think as possible

238. Okay maybe I’m overstepping some boundary here (but we never set a boundary for this, so I feel like I’m totally allowed to be doing this) but some of my favorite people in my life are in it because of you. I really do love your friends, and obviously I can’t imagine a version of my life without you in it, but I also can’t imagine a version of my life without them in it. So I know I’ve made a few points on this list about your friends already, but they (and you) are just all really cool people, and I’m glad they (and you) are in my life

239. You’re the same way as I am about sharing things, and I just really appreciate the people in my life who share things because I just feel like it’s a good character trait

240. I’m not sure if this belongs on the list or not, but I’m putting it here and also probably making a separate post about it. I lowkey understand where Irlanda is coming from as a crazy ex now because like.. I’m not saying I would attack any future girlfriend you might have (okay but I also hope you never have any future girlfriends besides me sorry) on social media, but I totally get why she’s so upset. I would def be super sad if I ever lost you. It makes sense

241. When I was talking to Stephen in his room on Cal Day I was genuinely able to say that you were the best thing that could have happened to me in the past year, and I’m so happy that you came into my life via Stephen

242. When I wake up craving fries, we get fries. Amazing. Wow. Little things

243. I absolutely love the video of you that I keep adding to. Like I smile just thinking about it, so it’s obviously very important to me that I keep adding to it, but I forget to take videos of all of the stuff we do or I’ll only take one or two because I’m having so much fun with you that I forget about the fact that I want to keep adding to my video, but like I’m not complaining. This is def a good thing

244. We keep doing things that are fun enough to be worth adding to the video. Obviously I’m going to have fun no matter what we’re doing because I’m spending time with you, but I really do feel like every week there’s a new adventure or a new thing to do

245. You don’t hate on my weird gluten free snacks, and you actually eat them with me. This is rad. I feel like less of a problem when you can also enjoy my food

246. Adding on to the last one, I feel like you’re always trying to make sure that there will be something that I can eat whenever we go out somewhere, which normally I don’t care about because I’m going out to eat something that tastes good not something that makes me feel good, but it’s still a really nice gesture, and I appreciate it

247. You’ve started to text me good morning fairly often, which is really sweet. It’s also nice because most of the time I want to text you when I wake up, but that’s usually at least a couple hours before I expect you to be up, so I try not to unless I have something that I feel like I really need to say to you right then

248. You always apologize to me during coke talks because I tend to listen much more than I talk, and this is super not necessary because even though I don’t always look like it, I’m definitely having a good time just listening to what everybody is saying. But it’s still sweet that you notice that I’m not participating and try to make sure I’m still solid

249. I never feel like I’ve run out of things to talk about with you, and we’re always talking. I just feel like I could have a conversation about literally anything, and it would be fine because I’m talking to you

250. I know I made a post about this already on one of my other tumblrs, but I don’t know how often you check any of my tumblrs, and it really is worth its own number on the list anyway, but it’s really soft, so I’m gonna need you to not make fun of me for this one or be like omg Michaela what’s wrong with you because I don’t know honestly, okay? But anyway.. I really felt like loving anyone after Tony was impossible or at least ultimately going to ruin my idea of love even more because comparing any potential new love to what I believed was an ideal love (only because there was no time for it to ruined by one of us) just wouldn’t be fair. But this just feels different, and maybe it’s because I grew up thinking that all love was abusive, and you’re just supposed to choose the one that hurts the least, but idk. I just don’t even feel like I can compare how I feel now to how I’ve ever felt with someone before, and like yeah I know it’s only been six months, but it’s been a long six months for me, and okay this honestly was a lot to put all into just one number on the list, and I feel like it may or may not make sense, and there’s definitely some rambling going on here, and there are a lot of feelings here, and you don’t have to feel the same way or anything, but yeah okay that’s all for 250.

On that note, I’m going to start a new post when I continue the list so that I don’t have to be reminded of #250 and all of my feelings the next time I want to add to the list okay ty goodbye

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