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dcxdpdabbles · 3 days ago

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DCxDP: The Roomate

Despite all their madness, it's no secret in Amity Park that the Fentons are certified geniuses. When Maddie and Jack Fenton first move to town, they are all anyone can talk about.

Maddie was well known among women because, at the time, women in STEM were rare, and it was even rarer for them to actually gain recognition for their efforts. Her work, confusing to most of the public, meant a lot to the women in Amity Park.

Before she arrived, she had been featured in three separate magazines: one for science, another for sponsoring a scholarship for STEM women, and the last for her inventions of self-defense accessories to arm young women. Yes, most didn't know about her until they learned that she was moving into their small town, but that was beside the point.

Her husband was a little less known, but it came as no surprise that he was also said to be rumored as a well-educated man. He had two PhDs. Two.

At the time, almost everyone in Amity Park had a high school diploma, the highest degree level of the masses. Sure, some well-off families could send their children four towns away to the closest college, but it was rare.

It was also a privilege—a means to show off at the annual street market, where the proud mothers would smugly describe their children's dorm rooms or majors to the tightly smiling neighbors.

In the early eighties, having a higher education made people appear more respected, and here was Jack Fenton, a man who had two Ph.D.s and was rumored to be working on his third. The man who had bought out the old Steward faculty building by the main street was having a crew removed into a home/laboratory.

Everyone buzzed for weeks about the new neighbors, and sharing any new details about them was exciting. It may be strange to people outside their little town, but with a population size of at least five thousand (at least in the eighties when the Fentons arrived. and the population grew well into the thousands when Axion Labs was built), news of changes was rare and few in between.

Amity Park didn't have big-shot names on their roads, much less stay to live. Heck, they only recently started getting a carnival to go by, and that was at least seventeen years since the Fentons moved in.

So, it was no surprise that Fenton's daughter showed just as large a brain as she did. Yes, the Fentons were less academic types than they were expecting, showing a rather odd obsession with the paranormal, but no one could deny their ability to build anything.

The Fenton boy was the only one who didn't live up to the family name. Danny was on the right path until Freshman year, when his grade rapidly dropped to the bottom of his class, he vanished for hours on end and went into destructive fits randomly.

He has been found among enough rooms ripped apart to know that Fenton was out of control. School staff spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Fenton often, and the two parents genuinely seemed to take their conversations to heart, attempting to instill better behavior within Danny.

Nothing seems to work. No grounding, detentions, community work, or group meetings seem to get through the boy's head. The Fentons were at their wit's end with their youngest. Mrs. Fenton, fretting that her son had never behaved like this.

Then, ghost attacks started appearing around the same time to make things worse. While the town laughed at them at first, everyone quickly realized the Fentons were one of the few who could provide defense against the ghosts. Throughout more and more attacks, the people started to defer to the Fentons in times of crisis.

The people who once booed them now rallied around them, and it took no time for everyone to acknowledge that the Fentons were now among the highest in the town's social ladder.

That came with some benefits.

"Are you sure this would help Danny?" Maddie asks, staring at the pamphlet in obvious doubt.

"Mrs. Fenton, I assure you that I would not have recommended Daniel for the program if I didn't think it would help him," Mr. Lancer responds with great patience. "It is apparent that he is dealing with something that needs more support than the school staff can provide."

"But to send him away?" Jack cuts in, looking close to tears.

"Don't think of it as sending him away. Think of it as putting him in an environment that can help him. Frankly, Daniel is struggling here. He's been having more and more destructive fits, his teachers have noticed he's paying less and less attention in class, and a few students have even approached me saying he seems to be hiding weapons in his bag."

"Weapons?" Maddie gasps. "Our Danny?"

"Rest assured, we have done searches and investigations as these accusations are not accepted without reason. Daniel does not seem to have any on him, but I worry he may be facing severe bullying if children were willing to lie about something so serious." Mr. Lacner sooth swiftly. He sighed, leaning back in his seat as neither adult looked particularly happy by his words. "The staff and I attempt to step in when we can, but bullies always find ways to slip past us. For example, bothering him off campus. I just think Daniel will be better away from those causing him harm, especially if he really is dealing with a previously unknown mental illness."

He pulls out more pamphlets, one with testimonies from previous program participants. When Lancer left Amity Park for college, he never planned to return. He got his teaching degree alongside his associates in English and History.

Lancer had taught at a different school, a more well-known and better-funded school, but he missed his small town. He missed the neighborly people, the less noise, and Amity's clean, crisp air. He found himself quitting his Gotham Academy job in Grades six to eight, moved back home, and attempted to drag Casper High out of its failing pit.

He still struggled as the school couldn't find enough teachers. He taught four different subjects—math, History, English, and Science—whenever he could, and there was almost no funding.

But Casper High was slowly getting better every year due to the connections Lancer had made in his seven-year tenure as a Gotham Acadamy Professor. One of these connections was the father of his favorite English student.

Bruce Wayne.

Mr. Wayne attended every single one of Jason's plays, and as the Drama Club sponsor, Mr. Lancer would chat with him. Most people knew Wayne was an airhead, but Wayne was delightful to be around. Like Mr. Lancer, he cared deeply about education and always took the teacher's suggestions to bring up at PTA meetings.

When Lancer chose to move back to Amity, Jason was devastated and insisted he had Bruce's number. It was heavily implied that the board wanted Lancer gone due to his "questionable" teaching plan—he tried to teach empathy a little too much, according to some parents—and the boy thought his sudden departure was due to this.

Mr. Wayne assured him if he had been let go or pressured into leaving, he would provide Lancer with an entire team of lawyers. Touching as it was, Lancer assured them he was leaving on his own accord.

He contacted Mr. Wayne, asking for advice on how to apply for school grants or any other tips the billionaire could give him. The man was the most involved Father Lancer had ever met, including fundraising and supporting art programs.

Casper High had been this close to removing Band, Drama, Cheerleading, soccer, and Baseball because it needed more money to afford them. Not to mention all the other clubs that had vanished when Lancer was a Casper student. Bruce was happy to help him save the programs for the students.

It was the main reason Lancer was made vice principal so quickly. He was basically keeping Casper High running.

Two years later, he heard the news that Jason had been murdered. It shattered Lancer's heart. He went to the funeral and watched Mr.Wayne slowly fall apart. Even as he returned home, he tried to reach out to the man whenever he could.

It may have felt different to the other man, but Lancer always thought they were friends. Eventually, Mr. Wayne bounced back—never forgot—from Jason's death, and slowly, the gap between them was reconnected.

The reason for Mr. Wayne's mental recovery was the one that suggested this program. He had personally invited Mr. Lancer to send Daniel.

"Tim Drake is a brilliant boy," Mr. Lancer continued, watching the two couples struggle to decide. "His team is filled with trained psychologists, he has the facilities to deal with Meta children, and Daniel won't be uncomfortable rooming with him as a teenager himself."

Maddie looks at Jack, but while she sees the hurt in his eyes, she also sees his resolve. "Alright, we'll send Danny to the Meta Mentoring Program. It's what's best."

"I'll let Mr. Drake know he'll have a roommate."

#dcxdpdabbles #dcxdp crossover #The roomate #Dead tired #Part 1 #Mr.Lancer is one of those teachers that care and single handle keeing the school open #Bruce may or may not had a crush on Lancer #Jason was trying to hook them up #Tim's first few years of the meta initative program #Dany isn't a troubled meta youth he's a vigilante

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

#pluralistic #social media #post-twitter #post-facebook #switching costs #network effects #web theory #locus magazine #exodus #decentralization

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writingwithfolklore · 5 months ago

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I Will Edit and Give Feedback on Your Writing For Free

Hello all!

As many of you know, I’m a part-time editor of non-fiction and writer of all things fiction, but I would love to get more experience editing creative fiction. I don’t consider myself experienced enough to charge for this, and I also understand paying for editing or feedback can be a huge barrier for improving a manuscript! For these reasons I’m offering my services for the low, low cost of absolutely free :-)

My credentials:

I’ve been a creative writer for over a decade and have written countless novels, short stories, and other forms of fiction.

I have been published several times in magazines, newspapers, and literary journals.

I am an editor for a newspaper and have been an editorial intern at a magazine, an editor for a literary journal and also a marketing intern at a publishing house.

I have a diploma in filmmaking and a degree in Communications studies.

Here’s what I can do:

Give feedback on the first 30-ish pages of a novel, short story, or other work (including fan fiction!)

Edit/copy edit up to 30 pages.

Look over and give feedback on outlines, character building, world building (or all three).

Edit and provide feedback on academic/school work or essay planning (though I can’t write any of it for you)

Offer peptalks and encouragement!

What I can’t do

Smut or otherwise explicit/spicy romances, sorry.

Poetry (I’m useless with it, I don’t think I’d be very helpful in this area)

Writing without any content/trigger warnings (I am able to provide help here, you just need to add the warnings first)

AI-generated work

Write the work for you

Interested?

Sign up to join my waitlist. I'll get in touch when I can take on another piece! If you have a shorter piece or just need some help with brainstorming, consider taking it to my Discord.

Questions? Send them my way through comment, dm, or ask box and I'm happy to answer!

#writing #creative writing #writers #writing community #screenwriting #writing inspiration #filmmaking #writing advice #free editing #free feedback #editing #feedback #I'm giving feedback for free #fanfiction #fanfic edit

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venturelovebot · 2 months ago

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Premise: Fairy reader and beekeeper Venture headcanons for @f3r4lfr0gg3r since you enjoy my AU as much as I do! I hope you like them!

Warnings: None! Just tooth rotting fluff!

(YouTube link for the song instead!)

🌱 They still remember the day they took you in like it all happened yesterday.

🌿 It was a warm and sunny day, fluffy cotton clouds dappling the azure sky.

🍀 They had just finished the days work tending to their bees when they start the process of filtering and storing their collected honey.

🐝 They had so much of it at this point that they really weren't sure what to do with it.

👒 Selling it at the farmers market was certainly a choice, but they didn't know how well it do or if their product was even worth selling.

🍯 They didn't even have a label. Or a farm name. Or anything, really.

🧺 All they had was a shed full of honey and beeswax that no one really wanted. Except themself, of course.

🍄‍🟫 Well... and, as it would seem... one other person.

🌾 They still remember finding their shed door slightly ajar, wondering if they had just forgotten to lock it or the wind somehow opened it on its own.

☀️ That's when they saw you.

🌷 At first, they were horrified. What kind of person breaks into another persons shed to drink that much honey? We're talking about several shelves full lining the walls from top to bottom.

🪻Are you going to be okay? Should they call an ambulance? Should they yell at you and tell you to get out of here?

🌻 You looked back at them with the most gentle eyes they've ever seen. That's when they notice the wings protruding from your back.

🍊 Come to think of it, you're not dressed like a normal human being either. It was like something out of a fantasy movie or maybe a subculture magazine.

🍓 "Oh? My? God?" Are the first words that leave their lips.

🌱 Your wings flap. They start to panic. Surely this has to be some sort of practical joke, right? Are they being filmed?

🌿 Nope. Just an extremely guilty fairy trapped inside a shed filled with sweet, goopy goodness and not a single person in sight to supervise them.

🍀 So they did what any rational human being would do– take you home.

🐝 It's near impossible to communicate at first. You don't seem to speak any known human languages, opting to speak... or more like, produce...? Naturalistic sounds, glimmers, soft chimes and gentle ringing noises instead.

👒 It seems like you understood them for the most part. You just... couldn't speak to them very well.

🍯 So they take it slow and easy over the next few days. They feed you nothing but milk and honey until they can find something better for you.

🧺 They can still remember asking you that question. "Can you tell me what your name is?"

🍄‍🟫 "⋆ .⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹"

🌾 "Uhhh... can you repeat that?"

☀️ "‎⋆˙⊹ع˖⁺ ☁⋆ ୭ .⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹༺⋆｡"

🌷 "Okay. Well, maybe some more honey could work." They think aloud to themself, putting a hand under their chin as they ponder about what to do.

🪻Then they hear it.

🌻 "Honey...?"

🍊 They nearly fall backwards. Did you sincerely just say your first word? Is this how parents feel? Except you're not a child– you're far more intelligent than that.

🍓 "Honey...!" You say again.

🌱 "Yes! Honey! You like that a lot!"

🌿 You smile from seeing them smile. Then you point at them. "Honey...!"

🍀 They're confused. "What? No. I'm not honey."

🐝 "Honey!"

👒 "No– no, no! My name is Sloan. Sloan Cameron."

🍯 "Sloan... honey...!"

🧺 They put two and two together. You were telling them that you liked them. A lot.

🍄‍🟫 Never in their entire life had they felt so special than in that moment.

🌾 A couple days later they take you to see the bees. Instantly they begin to swarm around you, settling in your hair, atop your head and fingertips.

☀️ They were so calm and gentle around you. It made harvesting a breeze.

🌷 A couple days later they also got to meet Lifeweaver– king of the fae– when he was worried about your whereabouts because it's not like fae to go missing.

🪻 The two of you converse in your strange little fairy language. You tell him you're happy, you love your new home and you're well taken care of.

🌻 You even make Sloan breakfast now– although Lifeweaver had to tell you that adding every type of candy you had available on top of pancakes drizzled with a full jar of honey isn't exactly good for humans.

🍊 Unlike fae, humans can build up sugar intolerances and too much can make them sick. So he teaches you simpler dressings and toppings that are equally as yummy as they are sweet.

🍓 And good god, they feel so spoiled.

🌱 A lot of your dates consists of picnics, walking through the city botanical gardens for hours on end, singing to them in your home language and watching TV together.

🌿 Of course, that's not to say you two didn't do other things. It's just the simplest things that you could both do right now.

🍀 Eventually they will teach you how to cook. They'll introduce you to more and more food over time. They want to be extra gentle in expanding your palette and make sure you don't experience the human world so fast that you get overwhelmed.

🐝 They learned that bread and butter was the next biggest hit to milk and honey. They learned that any type of meat made you sick, and to avoid it all costs. They also learned that a lot of vegetarian and vegan options tasted a lot better than they looked.

👒 They introduce you to pizza– you can't get enough of it. Garlic bread was next. Instant favorite. Giant pretzels and cheese. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Ice cream. Various types of fruit smoothies and similar concoctions.

🍯 You loved every single one of them it seems. Unless– it was served by somebody else.

🧺 They learned that you refused to touch food unless they give it to you directly. That's how your fifth date ended in near disaster– but it's okay, garlic bread with extra butter swooped in and saved the day.

🍄‍🟫 "You know, [Y/N]. I'm glad you're still with me." They reach over for your hand and take it in theirs– you were told that hand holding was something only people very close to each other did, so you were honored.

🌾 In this case, [Y/N] was the name they chose for you because they can't pronounce your fairy name.

☀️ They look over at you. Their face is bright red– you were worried. You were taught that redness meant illness. Are they sick?

🌷 "No! I'm not sick. Don't worry about that." They reassure you. "I just–" They choke on what they want to say next. It won't leave their throat.

🪻 But they look at you. They have to tell you, or it's going to eat them alive inside.

🌻 "[Y/N]... I like you a lot. You know that?" Their face is radiating a thousand degrees of heat.

🍊 Your wings flap happily behind you. "I like you, too!" You smile.

🍓 "No! That's not what I meant. I mean– I like you more than you like honey. Or bread. Or pizza." They pause for a moment. "I love you."

🌱 The words tumble around inside your brain for a minute. Then, you understand completely.

🌿 "I love Sloan, too!" You smile.

🍀 Tears start falling. They cover their mouth with their free hand, finally deciding to go in for a hug all together.

🐝 "What is this called?" You ask.

👒 "It's a hug– you give it to the people you love and care for." They explain, holding you close by the waist to avoid bothering your wings.

🍯 "Me, too!" You excitedly wrap your arms around them to hug them back. They felt like they could hold you forever.

🧺 "Longer hugs are called cuddles. Would you like to do that?" They ask you.

🍄‍🟫 You furiously nod. Of course! Long hugs sounded so great!

🌾 The two of you cuddle to sleep every night, and in the morning you're still holding tightly on to them and refuse to let go.

☀️ Except, of course, when Sloan begged you to let them get up and use the bathroom. You knew what that meant. It's the only time they left your sight– but every single time you'd see their smiling face again and it cheered you right up.

🌷 Meanwhile, Lifeweaver approves of the whole thing. He has weekly visits where he comes and explains things a bit more thoroughly than Sloan can. You're learning and adapting so well, and they really couldn't be more proud of you.

🪻 "Niran told me that I should try something called a 'kiss'!" You mention. Before they even had time to react, you lean in and place a soft kiss to their lips and pull away just in time for them to turn the brightest shade of carmine.

🌻 "AAAAAAAAAAAAA—" They're frozen.

🍊 "Oh, dear... perhaps a little too soon for that, then?" He chuckles.

🍓 "Hm. Maybe garlic bread will help?" You point out.

🌱 It's all useless. You've broken them– you'll just have to wait this one out this time.

#dividers by plutism #fairy au #i'm definitely gonna write some more of these featuring sugar plum fairy mercy sometime #i'll put it in the tags because i kinda like how these turned out...#overwatch #overwatch 2 #sloane cameron #sloan cameron #venture overwatch #venture x reader #overwatch x reader #venture x you #overwatch x you #overwatch headcanons #venture #venture ow2 #rambles #Spotify

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micahulrichdraws · 2 months ago

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Hey Micah, how were you able to find your audience I need a guide as an emerging artist. Thank you

I get this question a lot, and I think it's the result of how folks view audiences and art fundamentally. I'm typing this out on my lunch break real quick, so apologies for any incoherent rambling/typos. Long story short: your audience is everyone, make your art as accessible as possible, and artistic culture is a crab bucket. Short story long:

Audiences aren't pre-made: that is there's no preexisting fan club for what you're doing, until you've already created your art, put it out there, and left the folks who've seen it wanting more.

When I first started out, I put myself literally anywhere that I could, and linked back to my socials on every image possible. Mostly I just linked back to my Instagram, built a large following there, then branched out to other social media platforms. It's way easier to snowball success once you've had it, and it's the same for social media. Therefore, I decided to use my large Instagram following to help promote my art on Instagram, then promoted my Facebook (same parent company, so the risk of having organic reach throttled was low, and most people who have one have the other) then expanded onto Tumblr (super niche, but tightknit community) and Twitter (was good, now insanely hit or miss and slowly sinking). By targeting one social media platform at a time, it made it so that my marketing was controlled, and wasn't overwhelming.

As for where to put the art itself that links back to your socials, you want to sit around on content aggregation websites and put your work out there. Tons of professors/talking heads in the industry will tell you to put your work in gallerys/shows/art magazines/forums, and those people are insanely wrong. Your audience is the general public, and NOT OTHER ARTISTS. Other artists and your peers will find your work, because they're also on the internet looking at content aggregators, however the general public won't find your art easily in artistic spaces. Why? Because artistic spaces have absolutely ludicrous barriers of entry. Most spaces carry an assumed knowledge of the art, artistic culture, and artistic association. 99% of people haven't spent their time in art school, so they sure as shit ain't spending their time in a gallery that's open two hours a week. Which leads me to my next point: artists tend to have a ton of art already, aren't looking to buy art, meanwhile we live in capitalism so you need money to live, and living is insanely important to making art. The general public will give you actually useful feedback on your art: if a certain composition is a killer, then folks will be breaking down your door to get prints of it. If it sucks, you'll be made super aware. They don't typically have as much art and are looking to buy some.

Your target audience is everyone who sees your art.

Hope that helps!

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crying-fantasies · 9 months ago

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Love fantasy

Masterlist

It all started as a normal cycle, he swears on his spark that it was an innocent and normal cycle.

"I interfaced with one of the humans".

Until it wasn't.

No bot can verify the fact but all are equally flabbergasted at the statement, humans are still a novelty aboard, it has been only a few earth years since they arrived to the starship and while friendships and primitive market of products are normal to see nowadays it still doesn't stop one or two glass cubes from shattering against the floor of Swerve's or the high grade that has gone down the wrong pipe by the mere words formed by Fizzle's vox.

No bot asked, no one even knew, no one really noticed him gone from the ship or when he came back but now they all have their attention at him even when he simply said it to the bot next to him, but gossiping, no matter species, is a big deal among sentient beings.

"You're lying"

"No!", almost sensing the others receptor audials over him he can only try to cover his EMF as close to his frame as possible, spoiler coiled near to his armor in a display of nervousness, "it was- it was out of this world, okay? And- and then she was-"

"It was a human femme?!"

Again, some were at their seats end, some again chocking on their drinks, others feeling their fans activate, everybot has seen for themselves how soft humans are, and even heard from the same humans that some are most soft than others.

Human femmes- er, woman and alike, were supposed to be the peak of softness, even human primitive communication devices (porn and magazines) said so!

"Primus dammit- do you want everybot to hear about it?", oh yes, please say more was something resonating among the processors of the most curious in the theme and the most deviant of them that had also thought of some organic colleagues in such a way, of course, Fizzle didn't had to know, and in some way it was his fault to talk about such a thing like a sparkling sharing secrets in a public area when the Lost Light was so big.

"Okay, okay, go on, what did she do?", there was silence, one that preceded the proton storm while Fizzle's spoiler raised back again in excitement to remember the exchange.

"...she played with my wires and with my spark"

If the two bots didn't know they were being eavesdropped before now they knew after a few bots cracked their glasses full of energon at the mere mention of the interface related activity, making they almost scape even when some bots wanted to keep hearing and asked them to come back, because it was the discovery of the century, well, almost, but it was still of great interest nonetheless for most of them!

"Wow, that was crazy, huh, Roddy?", Drift tries to ignore the other bots still remaining in the bar and their obnoxiously loud fans, hardly covering the growing charge on their EMF and now heated frames trying to seem as undisturbed as possible.

Even Rodimus, who stops as hard as he can his cooling fans, servos being negated of the littlest possibility to even shake at how hard his spark is pulsing, "Uhum".

First of the questions running around his processor is who was it? Fizzle doesn't even have any game going on or perceived by his optics to be able to drag along another mech on his habsuit, let alone a human that knows nothing about interfacing, which get to the next question running wild in circles around his processor: can a human do sparkplay? The idea is impossible but it doesn't stop his imagination where, in fact, it seems more than possible with those little hands and fingers running wild on a bot's spark chamber, he remembers the humans being taught cybetronian medic techniques, how they were so focused in healing illness and it isn't so hard to change the purposes of the delicate and sometimes rough way those little hands made their way around a spark and all the sensitive wiring around.

He ask to himself if the human Fizzle was talking about were to be, by any chance, you.

And he negates it, scratches it, deletes as far as he can any trace of the mere idea of it because it will break his spark in million pieces would be improper in everyway.

It is also improper to remember it when he is next to you while you read a datapad about once living creatures of Cybertron, little finger moving the page once in a while in your hunger for more information that gets his optics focused on the way your eyes move along the light and the glyphs on the screen.

Will your curiosity also extent to other possibilities? He has seen you go "woah" and "ahh" over simple things like the subtle communication between frames with wings and spoilers or the fair quantity of differences of one frame to the other, the image of your face looking with interest whatever you're reading and how you take notes on your personal datapad, little fingers moving along and pressing different places in the sensible screen while showing your obvious interest, your possible awe over his bared spark in front of you.

It's almost too easy, he only needs to change a few things, his open spark chamber is now the source of light reflecting on your eyes, a perfect miniature mirror of your actions as your fingers touch the sensible glass cover of his spark, he can almost feel the electricity driving away to your body to his waiting spark that welcomes it with a tremor as hard as lightning that spreads to his whole frame in electric pleasure, wires tensing at the movement around and all the pressure, trying to make give accomodations to every little electric pulses your body can send to his most sensible component.

"Roddy"

It's way too real, way too hard, and it gets worse when your fingers get replaced with your soft looking lips and tongue, lapping above the connections before sliding to his tensed wires, making a wet trail to his spark while he debates internally in his own fantasy, he is supposed to concentrate, to not come undone or look because he is sure it would be JUST. SO. HOT.

"Rods"

It doesn't even end there, he can hear your voice along it, processor and cooling fans working overtime while he can only focus on the possibility, on the maybe that lingers above, it only takes so little to have you kiss with tongue his spark and he can't take it-

"Rodimus!" Oh, now, that's his designation, the fantasy is shattered in pieces and he soon realizes one of his digits is above his spark chamber, you are looking at him, maybe confused, obviously worried, it's enough to make him let go of the digit between his dentae and feeling his spike depressurize- "why are you so hot?", nevermind.

"... I'm hot?...", a wicked grin blended with happiness is forming on his faceplate as his words trail on slowly, almost as he is tasting it.

"I mean", you correct yourself, you really didn't need to, "heat is coming from your body, are you going flames on again? Are we under attack again?"

"What? Nah, just...", daydreaming about impossibilities, about a weak porn, like humans call it, without basis, heated romance and passion he isn't even sure you share with him, impossibilities that drag his bleeding spark over every movement and word of yours that he clings on with greedy servos, it's so embarrassing and he is sure he'll offline by pure mortification if you ever get a word about his attraction to you just to be faced by any degree of disgust coming from you, "it's getting cold in here, wouldn't want you to freeze those little fingers to dead", he doesn't even offer his servo but it is almost a natural response when he sees you approaching him with fear on your steps by any possibility of being another normal day aboard the Lost Light, he doesn't even stop and let's you settle on his lap like the security protocols indicated.

Fear washes away quickly when you register his words, there is curiosity on your eyes, looking between him and your hands, before finally look at him in the optics again, "Oh, didn't know you heard about the effects of excessive cold on the most distant phalanges, I mean, it's something that only happens while in extreme freezing conditions in harsh environments or controlled ones in closed lab experiments-"

Rodimus really didn't get what you were talking or the whole deal you were explaining to him, but seeing you feel secure next to him, taking seat above him showing the full confidence and trust you put on him while your hands move to explain your point, putting the warm palm against his armor from time to time.

"Everything you touch is bound to fail anyway", harsh words pang among his memory archives while he touches a side of yours to prevent a fall, but he silenced it, preferring the sound of your voice that now was about something called homeostasis.

He wouldn't trade this moment for anything, not when he offers you a digit and you hold it immediately, well, maybe a kiss if you could be generous enough, but he will get there soon, he hopes so.

I totally offer this one to @archie-sunshine and @pinkanonwrites by their glorious work of overheating and teasing Rodimus, I love it to the moon and back to hear about one of my faves even when he is mentally unstable and runs hot most of the time, it's his own charm, specially their newest works that relate to Roddy so much.

#reader insert #x reader #tf mtmte #transformers x reader #transformers #transformers idw #transformers x human reader #tf rodimus #rodimus x human reader #rodimus x reader #idw rodimus #rodimus prime #valveplug #sparkplay

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floral-ashes · 9 months ago

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🚨📚 Today is release day for my new book Gender/Fucking: The Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body!

Asking what we can learn from sexual arousal, the book takes an incredibly raw and thought-provoking look at community, queerness, fetishization, trauma, and hope.

I decided to go with an indie press that believed in the book and its transformative potential. But it means we don’t have the marketing budget of Penguin et al. I really need your collective help with spreading the word about it. Because it could benefit so many.

Early readers told me it’s a book that unmakes you and puts you back together piece by piece. It hurts, it troubles, and it nourishes. It gives voice to truths that were hidden deep in your bones. That’s how I felt writing it, and what I hope I get to share with all readers.

I’ve joked a few times with friends that this is a book best read one orgasm per chapter. But it has more than a grain of truth to it. I do believe that we can learn from arousal, instead of seeing it as the antithesis of knowledge. Don’t disavow the truths of the body.

The book is an ode to the messiness of human experience. I wrote it as a way of healing and of connecting with others. While I foremost wrote it with other queer and trans people in mind, everyone can see themselves in this book and gain from it. We all share in humanity.

This year has been rough, between the intense harassment, death threats, and hate hitting really close to home. Knowing that this book was coming out has sustained me. Knowing that I would have this moment of community, of shared passion, has been a balm on those psychic wounds.

Once you get your copy, post pictures and share your impressions as you read under the hashtag #GenderFucking. You can also tag me! This book is a journey. You will feel deeply. You will have many thoughts. Some challenging, some cathartic, some freeing. All worthwhile.

You can also help me out by posting reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. If you want to write a longer review for a blog or a magazine, or suggest it for review at your favourite newspaper or magazine, that would be tremendous! All help spreading the word is truly appreciated.

Ignite the flames of passion and curiosity. Join me in embracing the raw, vibrant truth of our gendered existence.

Find it at your local bookstore or order it online here (USA).

For those outside the USA, I created a list of places you can buy it online. It also lets you suggest more websites that carry it.

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postitforward · 2 years ago

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Mental Health Spotlight: Jasmine Marie, Founder of black girls breathing®

Jasmine Marie is a speaker, breathwork practitioner, and the founder of black girls breathing®. Her work is innovating the wellness, healthcare, and research industry by making mental health services accessible to Black women while filling in the gaps of data and research available on this underserved and underrepresented demographic. Marie plans to impact one million Black women and girls with her work by 2025. She is a serial founder with a past life in global haircare brand marketing and an alum of NYU Stern. The impact and range of her work to date is expansive—ranging from underserved minority communities to stressed-out college students and executives. She’s brought her expertise to elite colleges such as Harvard Business School, Columbia University, and Cornell University, and her client list includes corporations such as Estée Lauder Companies, Under Armour, Capital One, Ford Motor Company, Facebook, and Twitter. Marie has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Good Morning America, VOGUE, Forbes, Harper’s Baazar, Marie Claire, Glamour, Nylon Mag, Wall Street Journal, and Black Enterprise, to name a few.

What is black girls breathing®? And why was it created? black girls breathing® is a safe space for Black women to manage their mental and emotional health and heal trauma in their bodies with breathwork and community.

I created black girls breathing® after finishing my breathwork training and seeing so few facilitators that looked like me yet knowing how much chronic stress and trauma (generational, societal, etc.) and decided to create it. I used my background in business to help me develop a model where we could provide this work accessibly.

Do you have any secret hobbies, skills, or interests?

I don’t think I have any secret hobbies but for a while, I would always feel embarrassed whenever anyone asked that question, as a lot of my hobbies can maybe seem boring to others lol. But I love to read. Reading is one of my favorite hobbies. I love having quiet time…any activity that allows me to feel refreshed, sit with my own thoughts and enjoy my solitude. I think because I deal with so many people’s energy that in my spare time, I just like to spend time with self. I love to cook though…it’s a very meditative activity for me that allows me to unwind from my day.

How did you get started in this work? And why is it important to you?

As mentioned above, after my breathwork training, I realized there were so few Black breathworkers. But before that, I found breathwork while being stressed out after graduating from business school at NYU and working in beauty in NYC. My nervous system was so fried I began having physical symptoms…rashes and an inability to sleep. The doctor would see me and always say, “This is stress. How can you reduce your stress?” Fast forward to me finding my first breathwork class and falling in love with the way it allowed me to just feel more space in my mind and body.

WOW — ONE MILLION Black women and girls breathing by 2025 what an ambitious goal! What impact do you see this having?

It is an ambitious goal, but in 2020, we fundraised $55k to make our work accessible for one year. After the year was done, it was so clear that we couldn’t stop there. So many Black women needed this work, and we would hear that over and over again. So I decided if I was going to do this work, I was only interested in creating real impact and a goal that would signify that. Imagining 1 Million Black women using breathwork as a tool to regulate their nervous systems, heal from compounded trauma and reduce the effect that chronic stress has in our community (health challenges linked to chronic stress: heart disease, high blood pressure, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, fertility issues, and the list goes on) will not only affect them but our community as a whole. Ending the passing down of generational trauma and normalizing healing.

What would you suggest to people who feel like they cannot find the time to breathe or practice mindfulness?

I would first affirm that it’s okay they feel that way. Western society has done a great job of making us feel that anything outside of productivity is not only a waste of time but the least important thing we should make space for. Making time for yourself for any mindful activity can be eased into and it can start with being more aware of the present moment and practicing that action on a daily. Maybe you create a routine where every morning for 3 minutes right when you get up, you take a moment to be still, notice your breathing pattern and focus on each and every inhale and exhale.

Why is Black representation important in this industry?

The wellness industry isn’t unlike other industries where Black representation is lacking. I think it’s important to see other Black women caring for themselves because, historically, we’ve been taught to do the opposite for oh so long.

Where do you find joy?

I find joy with my family and my loved ones, in intimate moments with friends, in good food and conversation, and in being able to create something and see it grow, shift, and evolve.

Want to learn more about black girls @blackgirlsbreathing?

Check out their website!

Breathe with us on March 27th @12pm EDT during their Mindful Monday Breathwork for Anxiety session on Tumblr Live

Ask black girls breathing all the questions on your mind for IssueTime on Navigating Anxiety in an increasingly digital, lonely world

Take the pledge with black girls breathing®

#meditation #mindful monday #mindfulness #mental health #well being #tumblr live #black girls breathing x tumblr #black girls breathing #self care #healing #take the pledge #mental health matters #menhealthmatters

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n1kk11-blog · 1 year ago

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Hello Everyone...

https://www.zazzle.com/z/abw3xth9?rf=238378723538093137

Check out this family portrait pin guys

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airesims · 5 months ago

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taura sax.

born and raised in new york city, taura grew up amongst manhattans elite. she lost both parents at a young age and moved to singapore to live with her grandparents.

now, 23, she has graduated from the national university of singapore earning a bachelors degree in marketing and communications and has returned to manhattan after securing a position at vogue magazine.

#magnoliaparks*#sims 4 custom content #sims 4 aesthetic #sims 4 cc #sims4mm #sims 4 #the sims 4 #magnolia parks #mytownies

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vidavalor · 4 months ago

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Polari

@camdenleisurepirates mentioned Polari & Ineffable Husbands Speak, so some thoughts on that below.

I think that C&A know how to speak Polari but the most common Polari words aren't in their language as much so far I don't think-- only because Polari is meant to sound exclusionary while C&A are hiding their cant vocabulary in words that wouldn't raise alarm bells for anyone listening to them.

They know a lot of stuff that influenced Polari and ties into it a bit, like the slang of seamstresses and sailors, which are part of their speak, but saying anything like "bona" and "vada" and "omi-palone" and the like on the bench in St. James' Park, etc. was out for them or the ducks watching them would have figured out something was up.

There are a couple of Polari words that overlap with their language that they seem to be using at least a little, though. The slang of a cottage and cottaging in gay communities is also part of Polari and Crowley & Aziraphale not only know exactly what that means but it also fits into their speak easily and I'd wager they will be smirking about it in relation to their South Downs cottage for some time. It's probably a word we'll hear on different levels in S3.

To "do a turn" in Polari and sailor's slang is one way to refer to having sex. The presumption has been that it comes from the theatrical world and doing a turn on stage. (Rather amusingly, C&A are literally doing a turn on stage during their Big Damn Sexual Euphemism Bullet Catch performance in S2.) Crowley uses "turn" euphemistically in this way in 2008 in 1.01. It's actually euphemistic on two different levels-- the Polari/sailor's slang level and also a joke related to the meaning of crepes in his and Aziraphale's speak.

Polari does have a lot of food euphemisms but not really overlapping with C&A's way that much & not to the same extent (to be fair, it'd be hard for any slang to get anywhere close to the same extent lol.)

It's not specifically Polari but kind of Polari-adjacent coded language but some gay men in England in the 1950s would refer to looking for gay erotica as looking for "American" magazines/books, etc. because that had just begun to be imported from the U.S. at the time. One aspect of the use of "America"/"American" in C&A's speak is in a coded way referring to not just to the idea of freedom in general (though, that too, for sure) but to sexual freedom, which is likely tied to how that was coded language for gay men in London historically at one point. While they still use America/American that way at times, they love their food euphemisms more when it comes to their erotica collection, which Aziraphale referred to as the "cookbook section" in GO: Lockdown. (I'm still laughing over that. 😂)

This one isn't Polari in origin, either-- as it came before it-- but, in Molly slang in the 1700s, the phrase "pleasant deed" was used to describe sex between male partners. It is thought to have possibly originated prior to being used by the Mollies but exactly when & where is unknown, so... technically, it or something *very* close to it could have been around in, say, 1601 😉... in case you ever got the same vibe from this that I do:

There's also that brandy is Polari & Cockney Rhyming Slang for ass and Crowley, when talking about Jane Austen in S2, says that she was a "brandy smuggler." The Napoleonic Wars were happening at the time so the "brandy" in question is actually French brandy-- the term for which is really cognac. (Aziraphale is drinking cognac-- a much more current bottle of Courvoisier-- in GO: Lockdown.) I'm sure that Jane really did have a whole scheme going where she was getting black market cognac into England during the war-- there's always the literal and then the wordplay level in GO-- but for Crowley to refer to Jane as a "brandy" smuggler in S2 might maybe suggest that Jane was also involved in facilitating some clandestine and gay shenanigans? The phrase "brandy smuggler" alone fits C&A's speak independently of any of the other connotations as brandy is alcohol (with the word 'randy' in it, no less lol) and one part of the origin of the word smuggle is "to eat secretly"-- food & alcohol being two of the most common euphemisms for them.

There's one more off the top of my head that is more like a joke about Crowley knowing Polari than actual use of the words itself but it is tied into a couple of Crowley & Muriel scenes in S2. In Polari, there are a bunch of phrases that mean "the police" and one of them is "orderly daughters." At the same time, to "order" in Polari is to orgasm.

Muriel shows up at the door and identifies themselves as a human police officer so insistently that they tell C&A at one point that their name is "Inspector Constable." Crowley makes some jokes that he knows only Aziraphale will understand about how some cops make a "hobby" out of spying on queer people. Later on, when Crowley has Muriel arrest him to get to Heaven, the jokes he's making that are all going over Muriel's head are all related to what will "take him to Heaven"-- some things that will get him to "order", in Polari. This all works without the Polari already but it's also kind of as if Crowley's wordplay-happy mind is turning over "orderly daughters" and "order" and that's part of why he's amusing himself by self-deprecatingly telling cop Muriel that if they throw the cuffs on him and word him a bit ("you just say 'blah blah blah...''), he'll order in no time.

I'm sure there's more but that's what I've noticed so far. 😊

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #good omens meta #good omens 2 #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands speak #etymology #polari

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techramonic · 2 months ago

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The Game of Common Interests: The Symbiotic Relationship of Terrorism and The Media

Mass media and terrorism have developed an interdependent relationship. The media is the terrorist’s breath of fresh air, and it is the lifeblood and sustenance of terrorism, where the media often capitalizes on the public's confusion, intrigue, and paranoia following terrorist attacks by producing sensationalized news that captures widespread attention. This dynamic, however, plays into the hands of terrorists, who exploit the extensive coverage to spread the agency of their extremist agendas and beliefs, particularly targeting and influencing vulnerable audiences, such as the youth. Professor Taha Najem of Naif Arab University had described this relationship as “symbiotic”.

In Najem's own words:

"As for the extremists, they precisely calculate the scope, location, and timing of their attacks to generate ample media attention,—or in other words, to generate advertisements for their messages on a global scale. The broader and more prolonged the media coverage of terrorism turns out to be, the greater the terrorists' feelings of accomplishment, influence, and power." (Najem, 2017).

Bruce Hoffman, the Director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University said:

"Only by spreading the terror and outrage to a much larger audience can the terrorists gain the maximum leverage potential."

Najem argues that the relationship between the two can be understood through the media's tendency to capitalize on horrific tragedies. It often uses these as newsworthy scoops that not only provide information but also serve as marketing opportunities and profitable publicity. In some instances, the media may unintentionally promote terrorist operations by offering excessive coverage, which is driven by their own incessant need for fame, power, money, and influence. This aligns with the perpetrator's likeness, where some stage attacks often with the sole purpose of gaining publicity and creating propaganda rather than resolving political demands.

Researchers have established that media coverage is pivotal to the success of terrorist attacks, with the scope and intensity of coverage often being more important to terrorist groups than the quality of the reporting. However, this perspective can also be overly simplistic, as it overlooks the complex relationship between media coverage and public reaction. It also fails to consider that not all terrorists prioritize publicity over their other tactical or political aims. Additionally, the complex interplay between the media and terrorism cannot be fully understood without considering the role of the state.

Not only does this occur in mass media, but also creating trends within specific online communities. From this, we can see how there is a benefit in both parties: terrorists gain the publicity they desire, while the media profits from the heightened public interest, increasing the influx of coverage because of the heightened value. Furthermore, many individuals drawn into terrorism have been influenced by channels, websites, magazines, and other forms of media that promote bombings and suicide missions, highlighting the powerful role media can play in the recruitment and radicalization process. With this, here are some ways in which the media benefits terrorism, and vice-versa. Allowing media prevalence through marketability and terrorism through radicalization.

World Trade Center Bombing, 2001.

On September 11, 19 terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked and attacked the World Trade center, following four coordinated bombing-suicide attacks against the U.S. There were 2,996 deaths and approximately 6,000 injured. Over the past two decades after the attack, mainstream media audiences have witnessed a significant shift in how news was presented: the rise of dramatic and emotional storytelling, or what can be termed as "public drama."

This approach has increasingly dominated the media landscape, being a central focus on various platforms: lead stories on news programs, main broadcast discussions, and bold headlines on newspapers. This had become a prominent framework for delivering news, particularly in television, due to its entertainment-like qualities. By simplifying complex stories into easily-digestible and compelling narratives with vivid images, the audience is more engaged. News organizations and media professionals favor this dramatic approach because of the direct and cost-effective production.

The 9/11 attack is a prime example of this trend. When news broke of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, broadcasters were initially unprepared for the unfolding catastrophe and the dramatic and chaotic nature of the events presented challenges in conveying the news. With initial coverage featuring footage of billowing flames and smoke from the collapsed towers, the explosion of the Pentagon, and the emergency response—all were easily committed into the viewer's memories. These images captured the raw scale of the disaster and its immediate aftermath. The people were confused, afraid, and intrigued—then they became invested. Thus, the sensationalization of news was adapted.

Oklahoma City Bombing, 1995.

On April 19th, just the second anniversary of the end of the Waco siege, domestic terrorists Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh detonated a nitrate-fuel oil bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Building, claiming 168 lives and injuring 680 others.

Timothy McVeigh was one of America’s most notorious domestic terrorists, and with his involvement with the crime, he was then sentenced to death by lethal injection. In June 2001, the Federal Bureau of Prisons was responsible for the execution of McVeigh. Linda Smith and John Roberts, in their journal article, delve into one significant instance where media demands placed a heavy burden on the Federal Agency. During this time of McVeigh's execution, the Bureau faced a difficult dilemma: balancing the need to facilitate media coverage of the execution while ensuring the safety and security of the maximum-security penitentiary where it was conducted.

This situation highlights a broader paradox faced by many federal agencies. They are tasked with providing information to the media while simultaneously navigating ethical, budgetary, and legal constraints that limit their engagement in traditional public relations activities, such as advertising and lobbying, common in the private sector. Public affairs officers are legally obligated to release non-sensitive information, yet they must carefully avoid disclosing material exempt under the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act, as individual officers can be held criminally liable for such breaches. This tension between transparency and security underscores the complex challenges these agencies must navigate in their public communications.

Boston Marathon Bombing, 2013 and INSPIRE MAGAZINE.

On April 15th, exactly on America's Patriot's Day, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar (Jahar) Tsarnaev detonated two pressure cooker bombs at 2:49 p.m., just a few of hours after the winner completed the Boston Marathon, totaling to 6 deaths and 281 injuries.

Jahar had a fascination with fireworks and explosives, while Tamerlan exhibited early signs of radicalization. Although there were no proper links of the two to terrorist groups, Jahar had revealed that the two obtained plans from Inspire, specifically its first issue revealing a step-by-step recipe on creating pressure cooker bombs or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

Inspire is an English online magazine published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), infamously known as the group that perpetrated the 9/11 and PAL 434 attacks. The magazine is one of the many ways AQAP spreads its online agenda. Both international and domestic extremists have been motivated by radical interpretations of Islam and, in some cases, used its bomb-making instructions in their attempts to carry out attacks.

The insurgence of the 'Jihadi John Slideshow Trend'

During the period of 2014, youtube videos uploaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) started surfacing on the internet. This was characterized by a series of masked militants criticizing the American or British government and then tying in the statements by the gruesome beheadings of hostages, ransoms, and soldiers.

Terrorists had often used their media presence as a driving force to influence the youth into affiliating themselves with terrorist ties. One of these was Jihadi John, unveiled as British militant and Kuwaiti-born Mohamed Emwazi. In these videos, Emwazi is often seen looming over the camera holding a knife and standing next to a kneeled hostage. He ends every video by beheading his victims. One of his most famous videos was the beheading of American Journalist James Foley.

Around June 2010, Emwazi was detained and in the middle of 2020, the insurgence of the “Jihadi John Slideshow” trend had reached tiktok. While the origins of this trend still remains obscure, this has left a lasting impact on the youth. Often, the demographic consisted of teens, specifically young males, who romanticized and glorified the acts of violence portrayed by Emwazi and the aesthetic of militaristic weaponry. Many had credited this behavior to “edgy” standards and humor, however, this idealism was proven to be more unironic than it seemed. Eventually, in the proceeding years, the trend had died out, however, it had came back a few times during period intervals of 2022 to 2023.

This trend had also harmfully villainized harmless ideologies, distorting these ideas to the point where it is repulsing for the public’s perception. An example of this is the concept of Jihad, where it is essentially the Islamic philosophy of struggling to defend the religion and attaining peace within the community and outside of it. It promotes the unity and solidarity of individuals where militaristic action is only done as a last resort of intervention. Often, Jihadi groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS have spread distorted and extremist versions of this ideology, creating a brand new concept of utilizing violent militaristic resistance to protect Islam. With this dangerous approach, muslim communities are stigmatized, discriminated against, and stereotyped. This is especially harmful because it is a large problem that affects the community in various ways, especially when terrorists rebrand concepts initially striving to attain peace as acts of hatred and war, tainting a beautiful religion with images of violence.

Conclusion

Circling back to Prof. Najem’s analysis, without the media’s attention and focus, terrorists are unable to achieve any of the following four objectives: (1) recognition of the group name or ideology, (2) ability to communicate with supporters, (3) communicate with members of the local government, (4) and depict itself as a legitimate political alternative to the current governments. To conclude this essay, the relationship between mass media and terrorism is a complex and interdependent one, where the intricacies of both entities should be carefully observed and analyzed to unravel the deeper connections between the two.

While some researchers argue that media coverage is essential for the success of terrorist attacks, this view is sometimes overly simplistic and does not fully capture the intricate relationship between media portrayal and public reaction. Additionally, not all terrorist groups prioritize publicity over their other objectives. The symbiotic relationship between the media and terrorism is further complicated by the role of the state, which must balance transparency with security.

Several case studies, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the rise of figures like Jihadi John, highlight the ways in which media coverage can both shape and be shaped by terrorist actions. These examples demonstrate how terrorist groups leverage media to spread their message and recruit new members, while the media, in turn, benefits from the increased attention and revenue generated by such coverage.

Ultimately, this relationship underscores the powerful role that the media plays in both perpetuating and combating terrorism. The challenge lies in finding a balance between reporting news and preventing the unintentional promotion of extremist ideologies.

#understandnotcondone #oklahoma city 1995 #timothy mcveigh #world trade center 2001 #boston marathon 2013 #jahar tsarnaev #tamerlan tsarnaev #jihadi john #mohamed emwazi #trrsm

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