#and still they will only keep charging more and more for below subpar content

[sistertinysips]

It truly pains me to say this. But it's looking more and more like Warrior nun was never saved. Not the Warrior nun that Simon and the cast and the writing/producing team lovingly created.

Rather seems the end goal for Dean English was always his original plan. A movie adaptation of the source material. Which is to say the comics. The alleged new producing company is owned by dean English. And he has been apparently working closely with Ben Dunn. They have no claim over Netflix's warrior nun, that includes Ava, Beatrice and whichever original character they introduced. I'm so sorry for all the hard work that the fandom pulled off to gain traction and attention to the show. What I don't know and can't even speculate on is why the hell did Simon Barry announced that Warrior nun was saved only to now wash his hands clean of whatever is going on. Not cool of him, really not cool

I really wanted to get our beloved characters back, but it don't think it will happen. And to me personally the bottom line is that as long as capitalism is allowed to keep bleeding the entertainment business dry, good shows will keep getting cancelled after barely 1-2 seasons, we'll keep getting shows with no more than 10-8 episodes per season (which causes rich complex deep character and plot development to suffer from being shortened). The impact and almost sure success of the WAG strike is definitely a first step in the right direction. But until us consumers find a way to fuck up their cannibalistic market model this will keep happening, specially to LGBTQIA+ shows, specially to shows with lesbian/WLW leading characters.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-02-24

IT’S ONLY BEEN TEN FUCKING DAYS HOW OFTEN ARE WE GONNA GET THIS STUFF

IT’S NOT EVEN A BONUS IT’S SOME MAINLINE THING

Alright, clicking the log to find my place as usual (while squinting so I don’t see too much), I see... one new page... THAT’s ominous.  Unless they’re doing the thing Andrew used to do and only showing the surface link so as not to spoil the update length/contents in the log, which would be nice given the new site format.  (Also I’ll be covering the commentary for the previous chapter here that went up on Patreon.)

...um.  what?

Well, it doesn’t say [S]...

> Chapter 5. YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D

CONTENT NOTE: This chapter contains Discussions of Suicide.

Thanks.

...I kinda understand the need for inclusion of this, though.  Not the trigger warning, that’s genuinely appreciated, I mean the working-through of many of these characters’ probably suicidal-verging thoughts given the bullshit the Epilogues have put them through, and the leadup events thereof.  Or, from the looks of this page trying to lay out how to create these new alien races, clearly based in part on pages of her Zoologically Dubious grimoire...

...the creations THEMSELVES wanting to commit suicide, if I had to guess.

(Hooves?  Dirk.  Don’t let this become a Musclebeasts VS Horrorterrors session.  Whoever wins, we clearly lose.)

*scrooooll*

Ohh, I get it.  It’s a single really long-form story-image to montage the process to us, instead of a series of panels.  THAT’S why it’s a one-page upd8.

What are you clowns doing?  (And that architecture and teal road below it is looking kind of Land of Thought and Flow-y too.)

Hah, poor Rose, just float-noping on out of there cause Dirk’s pushing his whole Cave-shadows-on-the-wall allusion.  Are you getting bored of this monstrous process, Rose?  Yes?  No??

Taking a floatwalk across the gorgeous alien landscape?  (Wait, your robot floats without rocket boosters? Neat. Is that technology or God-Tier flight? Did it need to be a fancy robot to integrate the latter or was that just yours for free?)

What will she run into to make sense of the title of this chapter-panel?

...Wait.

Did Terezi run back to the ship to snoop on that thing Dirk had been hiding while he and Rose were distracted?

I hope that’s what she did.

Eeeewww.  It looked MUCH cooler when your human eye did a magic sun thing.

Yes, yes, you have a technosight HUD, that’s no excuse, your magic was still cooler.

The whimsical wandering angle of this shot makes it unclear whether Rose is flying ahead while looking into the sky, or has suddenly flopped forward onto her face on a pale patch of ground.

Ooh, and now we have text! ...Which makes it unlikely that Terezi successfully snooped anything important unless Dirk would narratively let her.  Shit.

Wait, the command for this page might make sense if she was using the command terminal in the ship to mess with Dirk or someone else, possibly to give her the opportunity to pull something.  Right?

The soft whitenoise ringing of the extensive ventilation network sounds, if she closes her nose just right, like the rustle of wind through the leaves of a treehive universes away.

...closes her nose.  ¬___¬

but Terezi isn’t distracted from the main object of her focus — the unconscious body of Rose Lalonde, bathed in dim light, chest rising and falling in an artificially-induced slumber.

Good.  Her body had better fucking stay alive for a while.  They killed Davebot’s outright, since he was an “extra”, essentially -- Rose’s needs to stay alive if we’re to have fucking hope that Kanaya can snatch her up in a comfortable non-robotic embrace and get her out of this self-centered, brainwashed nightmare.

Wires and tubes run up from her plinth to the ceiling of the chamber, keeping her alive, yes, but too much just for that purpose. Something about the tangle of intravenous tubing and fiber optic cable makes Terezi think of the old stories about the Ψiioniic.

Mhmm.  She has to stay connected to and pilot her body.

ROSE: There you are. I haven’t seen much of you. TEREZI: IV3 B33N R1GHT H3R3 FOR HOURS TEREZI: BUT YOUR 3Y3S H4VE B33N CLOS3D TH3 WHOL3 T1M3 >:[

--Oh.  I’d misremembered the chapter name as “your eyes are NOW closed”.  So it probably wasn’t some sort of trick.  (Unless she’s lying here, and tricked Rose into THINKING her body wasn’t kind of half-awake for a moment, potentially rebelliously? .....nah.)

Better question, though...

Why does Terezi care so much?

I can imagine the old Terezi getting attached enough to Rose (and Kanaya) to look at this and feel bad enough to stare, but...?  She used her emotional distance from most of her remaining friends to vamoose with these people a long while ago.  (Which was a pity.)  How did those feelings and that empathy get resurrected way out here?

Rosebot turns her head to look back at the frail, failing vessel that once housed her consciousness. She doesn't even dispatch a fake laugh to her behavioral display matrix in pity of this half-joke.

Fuck you.  Dirk is writing half of this.

ROSE: Your attachment to my comatose body is unexpectedly charming, as well as slightly sinister. ROSE: She isn’t going to do anything. ROSE: She isn’t coming back from where she’s gone. TEREZI: YOU N3V3R KNOW

Does Terezi really care about Rose that much now?

Also, fuck you, Dirk-manipulating-Rose’s-worldview.

I mean, I know she’s probably really deep into all her new power and foresight, even as herself, but she wouldn’t be nearly as dismissive and comfortable if Dirk hadn’t been shaping her with mind control for years.

ROSE: Yes, I suppose that’s true. ROSE: Anything can happen, you can’t see the future, etc. etc. ROSE: Except I can. I can see the trajectory the story needs to take, and thus I know the trajectory it will take. ROSE: And resurrecting my meat puppet would not only be difficult to the point of being worthless, it would also be extremely lame. ROSE: Not that it would be out of character for this story. We live and breathe on the stupefyingly mind-numbing, and the mind-numbingly stupid.

They’re REALLY pushing her as a full fucking villain here.  Benefits of transcending human flesh aside, she’s being WAY too dismissive of what she’s leaving behind, here.  What came with this body besides the body itself.  The attachments and Blood it means relinquishing and severing.

TEREZI: 1F WH4T YOU'R3 S4Y1NG 1S TRU3 TEREZI: 1F 4 STORY H4S TO B3 COMP3LL1NG TO B3 C4NON TEREZI: DO YOU R34LLY TH1NK D1RK 1S TH3 TYP3 TO T3LL 4 COMP3LL1NG STORY

A compelling story, yes!

But a heartless one.

TEREZI: H1S T4ST3 1N 4N1M3 4LON3 1S CONC3RN1NG TEREZI: 1 D1D 3NJOY TH3 ON3 4BOUT TH3 HORS3S THOUGH ROSE: I don't think that counts as "anime."

MLP is pretty colorful.

TEREZI: PL4Y1NG W1TH 4 WHOL3 WORLD L1K3 1T'S SOM3 K1ND OF SQU34KY LUSUS TOY DO3S SOUND L1K3 1T H4S 1TS MOM3NTS TEREZI: 1 M34N TEREZI: MY FR13NDS W4NT3D TO RUL3 YOUR L1TTL3 WORLD 4S P3TTY TYR4NTS 4FT3R W3 WON TH3 G4M3 OURS3LV3S TEREZI: BUT DO YOU TH1NK TH4T WOULD'V3 B33N FOR TH3 B3ST FOR YOU 4ND 4LL TH3 OTH3R M4MM4L14N W31RDOS ON YOUR PL4N3T >:/ ROSE: It didn't happen because it didn't happen. TEREZI: 1F 1 H4V3 TO H34R ON3 MOR3 T4UTOLOGY FROM 31TH3R OF YOU 1 4M GO1NG TO MOV3 TO TH3 WOODS 4ND PL4GU3 YOUR N3W SOC13TY 4S 4 H3RM1T BOG MONST3R FOR3V3R

Rose has stared into the sun so hard that she is LITERALLY BLIND.  “It didn’t happen because it didn’t happen” is the worst, most basic and wrong level one Seer of Light thing she could possibly believe.  She has completely fucking FORGOTTEN that she played through an entire game session that was clearly trying to TELL her something.  TEACH her something.  And is dismissing everything at play back then, everything that MADE reality and the final timeline what it WAS, as something at worst meaningless or just plotpoints in a subpar story, and at best a failed moral tale that she thinks she would write better in her sleep.  She’s like... worse than inverted Rose right now.  Where’s all this new Lighty wisdom she’s supposed to have?  Jasprose is showing more foresight and prudence in the bonus chapters than she is as a PURE ultimate self, thanks to her own twisted ambitions and Dirk’s horse-blinders.

TEREZI: JUST B3C4US3 YOU'V3 3L3CT3D TO 4B4NDON TH3 CONC3PTS OF "GOOD" 4ND "B4D" 3NT1R3LY DO3SN'T M34N 1 DON'T ST1LL H4V3 MOR4L R3S3RV4T1ONS

...Yeah.  I’d like to think that Rose would never do that on her own without Dirk’s twisting, but...

TEREZI: 1'M T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH3 B4S1C 4B1L1TY OF 1NT3LL1G3NT B31NGS 1N 4LL R34L 4ND HYPOTH3T1C4L PL4N3S OF 3X1ST3NC3 TO G1V3 4 SH1T TEREZI: 1 DON'T G1V3 4 SH1T TEREZI: 4ND HON3STLY 1 H4V3 4 H4RD T1M3 UND3RST4ND1NG WHY YOU DO

I didn’t expect the “Why would anyone read this crap?” line so early in the story.  Still, this sequel WAS designed to both ask and answer this question... I shouldn’t be so surprised.

TEREZI: YOU D1DN'T DO MUCH "WORLDBU1LD1NG" WH3N YOU FUCK3D OFF FOR 3ONS 4ND L3T CH3SS P3OPL3 BU1LD YOUR PL4N3T ROSE: That approach failed. ROSE: Without an organized antagonistic force, the planet became fundamentally unsuited to relevance.

YOU FUCKING MORONS

THE GOAL OF MAKING A NEW UNIVERSE OUTSIDE OF CANON WAS TO ESCAPE RELEVANCE FOR PEACE!

Everything New Rose says makes me want to throttle her.  :(

ROSE: We only know of one way to perpetuate canon for sure. To play and defeat the game, and continue the life cycle of the genesis frog we cling to parasitically.

WHY is “perpetuating canon” EVEN A GOAL

WHY if it isn’t even WORTH anything???

ROSE YOU SOUND LIKE A CASH-IN-HUNGRY MOVIE PRODUCER

ROSE: Now it is protected, in the steady hands of a duly-elected ruler, sure to have a boring and uneventful perpetual term in office.

Oh my GOD, Rose.  You thought leaving Racist Jane in charge was going to just be peachy?

ROSE: As the sheer number of doomed universes our actions in the game spun off should show, we barely understood the design at the time. ROSE: Truly, we stumbled through the tape of the finish line ass-first, cheating all the way.

I suppose I can agree on a small sliver of this, a tangent -- one of the same reasons I was so surprised when Homestuck’s finale closed so few threads:

You all clearly didn’t have time to learn enough lessons.

ROSE: But there was no table of judges waiting to adjudicate our performance by holding up little placards with numbers on them. ROSE: We are the observers, and we are the judges. ROSE: We won, and to the victor go the spoils. ROSE: If you want a hand in making the rules of this new world, then don't storm off.

Terezi knows better than this.  The trolls “WON” with this attitude, and were hoisted on the resulting petard.  Ah, there we go, and she’s saying just that:

TEREZI: YOU'R3 TRY1NG TO L34D M3 TO 4CC3PT YOUR MOR4L FR4M3WORK TEREZI: WH4T 1F NO ON3 SHOULD CONTROL 4 UN1V3RS3 TEREZI: 4LL W3 FOUGHT 4G41NST W4S MONST3RS WHO CONV3RT3D POW3R 1NTO CONTROL TEREZI: 4ND NOT 3V3RYTH1NG W3 LOST F1GHT1NG TH3M W4S 4 M1ST4K3 TEREZI: TH3R3 W4S 4 LOT S4CR1F1C3D FOR TH3 1D34 OF "GOOD" TEREZI: WH4T'S TH3 PO1NT 1N CONT1NU1NG TH1S STORY 1F TH4T W4S M34N1NGL3SS TEREZI: 1F LORD 3NGL1SH W4S JUST HOLD1NG UP TH3 WORLD TEREZI: 1F 1T T4K3S 4CT1NG L1K3 H1M TO K33P 1T 4L1V3 TEREZI: WOULDN'T 1T B3 B3TT3R TO JUST L3T 1T D13

...but that crazy, ruled-over multiverse they ended up escaping is exactly what we think they’re going to end up CREATING in this story, right?  A contained loop of countless universes that follow the same rules they fought so hard to shrug off, many enslaved and miserable under Lord English’s rampaging thumbs?  In trying to do it “better” her own way, Rose is going to possibly end up creating the exact system she once tried to reject.

Congratulations!  You’ll have created a prison.  For your Ultimate Villain, AND yourselves.  I just hope you come to your senses and dodge getting trapped inside there again.

Rosebot looks over at the plinth where her body sits, kept alive, sure, but atrophied and weak, dependent on this machine to continue projecting consciousness to the abiotic enclosure keeping the realization of the Ultimate Self from tearing her apart.

Wouldn't it be better to just let it die? Terezi isn't asking new questions. Rose had first threatened suicide when she was eight.

Ah, damn.  That’s the route we’re going with this conversation, huh.

I was wondering whether keeping Rose’s body alive was “necessary” for the functioning of this particular level of robo-self tech, or whether it’s the last vestige of her vacillation, refusing to cut it off completely yet only because some NON-FUCKING-BRAINWASHED piece of her is wondering if she’ll eventually decide that all this isn’t “right” after all, that she can accept being “less” if it makes her happy.

Explaining things to someone not aided by the exponential increase in processing power Rosebot has is tedious. Terezi's hesitation won't be swayed by explaining more of the universe. There's another source at work.

Source?  What?

ROSE: You said it yourself, that you don't give a shit. ROSE: This melancholy, this meaninglessness you're feeling? ROSE: I think there's another explanation for it. One having little to do with the structural soundness of our plan.

Oh, THAT kind of source. Fuck you, psychoanalyzing anybody else when you’re like THIS right now.

ROSE: You are fucking depressed. TEREZI: OH TH4NK YOU DOCTOR SC13NC3 TEREZI: L3T M3 T4K3 OUT MY HUM4N CH3CKBOOK TO P4Y YOU FOR TH3S3 1NV4LU4BL3 HUM4N 1NS1GHTS

How would you have the slightest impression that Terezi ISN’T completely aware of this, Rose?  Why do you think she CAME with you???

ROSE: The constant insistence that everything is as it ought to be isn’t just counterproductive, it’s pathetic.

Oh, you think she’s projecting.  Fuck you.

ROSE: From one seer to another, we both know how bad you’ve gotten in the past. ROSE: Or, if not in the past, in some past. ROSE: I have no desire to meet that Terezi, no matter how doubtlessly sticky and charming she might be.

Eugh.  It’s interesting that you know so thoroughly about non-blind faygo-chugging Terezi from that timeline (who Terezi fully knows about too), but using it against her is pretty low.

TEREZI: W3 4R3N'T FR13NDS TEREZI: GO 4H34D 4ND DO YOUR 4RTS 4ND CR4FTS PROJ3CT W1TH P3OPL3'S L1V3S

But she DOES keep staring at Rose’s life-support body...  so she DOES care somehow.

ROSE: Your life is going to be short, compared to mine and Dirk’s, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. TEREZI: TH3 TWO OF YOU R34LLY 4R3 M4D3 FOR 34CH OTH3R

:C

Just, a tragedy what an asshole she’s been transformed into.

TEREZI: 1S TH4T WHY YOU L3FT K4N4Y4 B3H1ND TEREZI: B3C4US3 YOU KNOW SO FUCK1NG MUCH 4BOUT "F4M1LY" ROSE: I would be careful if I were you. ROSE: The weight of what I know and you do not is enough to overwhelm a mortal frame. TEREZI: UGH SHUT UP TEREZI: STOP PULL1NG TH1S MYST1C4L BULLSH1T 3V3RY T1M3 TEREZI: DON’T YOU M1SS H3R? ROSE: Don’t you? TEREZI: YOUR CONST4NT D3FL3CT1ON 1S 4S PO1NTL3SS 4S 1T 1S 1N3FF3CT1V3

Yeah, Terezi looking at Rose’s body and seeing constantly that crime committed against Kanaya is enough excuse to stare at Rose’s floating body, if she cares about Kanaya.

Too bad Rose is incapable of even THINKING about Kanaya properly as long as Dirk’s influence persists, and Terezi practically or literally knows it.

ROSE: We are obliged to act. To save the concept of meaning itself by continuing to spin the narrative loom into new tapestries.

Said the movie producer plonking down for the creation of Fast 7.

TEREZI: D1D YOU W4NT 4LL TH1S? TEREZI: OR D1D TH3 PR1NC3 >:?

Abruptly, Terezi is lifted from the ground with a glidingly-smooth effortless motion. Metal is so much stronger than flesh. She flashes a sharp-toothed grin as her feet dangle uselessly in front of the lithe metallic form of her counterpart Seer. Inspiring a reaction like this from Rose's robotic placidity has been like squeezing blood from a stone on this years-long journey.

Delicious, candy-red blood.

Oh hell fucking yes.  Is THIS what you were after, you beautiful troll?  Terezi just proved that SOME deep level of Rose has recognized that she’s being manipulated, and refuses to accept it for the sake of her own ego.  She couldn’t possibly get so ANGRY otherwise.  :D

ROSE: I know what I have lost. I have taken a full account of it. I cannot and will not forget it. ROSE: But to cling to it as it faded to nothing would be a meaningless capitulation to entropy.

Why do you value “perpetuation” so much?  She asked you before, and you barely gave a straight answer.

ROSE: Someone must sit atop Olympus and propagate the fabric of reality upon which these memories sit. ROSE: That is the task we have taken on. The game does not feel. The game does not mourn. The game must be played, and we must guide those who will play it better than we ourselves were guided.

DID it need YOU though?  You already had a universe under your belt.  YOU didn’t have to be the one to cause all this.  But I suppose it’s too late now -- you will be, and you might end up regretting it.

ROSE: Just as I have remembered the good, I can recall the terror that consumed me and overwhelmed my body. ROSE: The visions of dissolution. The narrative unspooling. A thousand voices shouting contradiction. ROSE: What value is a marriage, temporary domestic bliss, if all is lost? ROSE: You understand this bargain.

Yeah-- it’s pretty clear here now.

The heroes’ goal in the initial comic, and the reward they earned -- while unclear on paper and DEFINITELY not spelled out -- was to “stop being Homestuck”.  Was to escape the bounds of the comic, to almost KILL the comic.

But that was a little vaguely put, before.  HS^2 has done us the favor of making it an EXPLICIT GOAL of the heroes.

ROSE: Is your resentment towards my choice about Kanaya, or about V–

BONK. Rosebot's even metallic voice is interrupted by the bang of skull against metal, and Terezi's headbutt collapses the both of them into a crumpling heap of metal and flesh.

That was a step too far. Tensions that once simmered under the surface have found the catalyst for a boil.

Terezi’s barely holding on if she’s going to get so dramatic so fast.

Or Dirk’s writing this so dramatic, anyway.

Rosebot finally has Terezi pinned to the ground by the throat. A cool metallic knee is pressed hard between her legs, holding her down. A natural pause in the staccato squabble is found, and two pairs of red eyes are locked on each other.

Oh God, don’t <3< please.

TEREZI: 1 T4K3 1T B4CK TEREZI: TURNS OUT 1 ST1LL 3NJOY T4LK1NG TO YOU >:]

Ah, shit.  Weakness for Light players, huh.

Rosebot leans in close. Terezi can smell the licorice-black lipstick, the same kind as always, applied now to synthetic polymer lips inches away from her own. Rosebot's metal fingers close just a little tighter around her neck–Woah, woah, woah.

I fiddle with some advanced speciation machinery for a few hours and then come back to this?

...yeah, you can’t get into Terezi’s sex life without a bit of choking and breathplay I guess.

You people are here for logic. Systems. Weird plot shit. Lore. Not this.

Hm.

I have mixed feelings about this possibly-sarcastic point of view of his.  And that’s coming from someone who was fuck deep in those systems and frustrated as hell that Andrew worked them out but never explained them or made their (at least I believe) hidden importance clear.

Quit out of your browser, slam the laptop closed and punt it into the ocean. That shark is probably hungry after all the jumping.

You won’t, though. If you were going to quit you would have quit before this. We’re in this for the long haul, you and I. We’ll all go down together. Welcome to ‘Nam.

...yeah.  :C

I'll just get a head start on my species, then. It's only the fate of a new planet on which the weight of saving the universe lies.

Did Dirk never get the memo that Calliope and fucking Caliborn were born on Earth C millions of years hence???

Your universe’s “relevance” is safe, my dude.  You’re just making excuses to rule the narrative.

And... that’s it!  For this update, anyway.

Let’s cut over to the commentary for the last one, which I expect will be touching on and lampshading just how much of an amoral dick move Rose and Dirk are making with the entire live-draft species creation process.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 4, The Contest

Oh, two members of the writing team are discussing this one.

Plenty of appreciation of the art of the alien planet, apparently art-ed by Gina.

--Yes, I agree, Terezi probably wouldn’t be the best at parallel parking.

Oh right, I should skip most of the fluff y’all would see if you paid and get just any plot important discussion, let’s skip past some ogling of Rose’s pretty well-designed robo-form and its first onscreen appearance...

(Xam’s designs are GREAT all around.)

A1: The imagery is, admittedly, a little heavy-handed. Terezi leaving the cave for the light, the other two remaining in the darkness to talk endless circles around each other. 

Heh.

...There are some seriously good jokes here.

--OH! I finally get to figure out why Dirk’s hand was glowing all weird when he slammed the “map”: ......nope, they just talk about how big his yaoi hand is.

A1: I guess this means we’ve sort of canonized Dirk’s Texas accent? a2: yeah, but i think this was a foregone conclusion. the dude lived in post-apocalyptic texas, and he's ABSOLUTELY the sort of person to adopt a long-dead accent for no reason other than historical accuracy.

That’s fair.  (Yes, I included that for plot relevance. Totally. ...I really need to be a lighter touch with how much I include of these things that isn’t helpful to actually understand what the fuck is going on with the actual plot/characterization, here, this was real borderline.)

i think we could stand to talk more about the writing at this point.

JESUS CHRIST THANK YOU

we sort of go in drunken circles of Dirk and Rose trying to out-bullshit each other and convince themselves they’re doing the right thing.

--which was obvious to everyone, but.  Still appreciated to see it spelled out.  Seeing our points of view validated like this helps us stay sane through the bullshit, a golden promise of eventual reprieve and vindication.

a2: we tried something a little different for the writing process of this update, which is that for large sections of the dialog we just rp'd the characters a2: andrew copied large sections of early homestuck from personal chatlogs with friends, and i always thought that lent it a special kind of humor and rapport that can be hard to capture by yourself. i think this approach worked pretty well for us.

It REALLY is an effective way to write dialogue for these sorts characters in particular!  Heck, I’m kind of helping someone else do exactly that.  It’s pretty fun!  There are chapters and chapters out by my understanding, having diverged from such a focus on the central character I’m playing but using our logs as a guide... none of which I’m allowed to read, not even the FIRST chapter, so as not to spoil me with the surrounding narration and added revelations.

...What?

You expected me to tell you what it is? Where to find it?

No.  :)

(Maybe later.)

A1: Moving right along. We see more of Dirk’s casual manipulation of Rose’s mental state, that he rationalizes away. It’s not actually that bad if she was going to agree anyway, right? 

Mhmm.  Hard to watch.

a2: [...] but it's a large part of what this chapter is about. a2: what is the right thing to do when you're functionally omniscient? a2: or omni...whatever these kids are. A1: Yeah, the question of whether morality actually has anything to do with running a system like this. Can god be moral? a2: and of course, that's kind of the same question that i ask myself a lot when writing. authorship is a peculiar thing.

That last part is pretty key about the story this entire thing is trying to tell.  A story about the morality of how one goes about creating a story.  A just story.  And if what’s created even has value.

a2: i was responsible for the animation on the sprite panels, which was fun. it's obviously imitating andrew an awful lot, but i think that lends it an aura of homestucky authenticity. andrew is low-key really good at animation. 

Yeah, he really, really is.  His keyframing and the devices he used to communicate what was physically happening were really tight.  I always appreciated that.

a2: aaaaand one last gina panel to finish with. rose may have had her doubts about this contest at first, but as soon as dirk made a little creature with tentacles she's like, fuck it, this is all i've ever wanted actually.

:(

A bit sparse on the detail I was looking for once shit started to get horrific, the implications and such... but I can understand that.

Maybe when we get to the second and third place draft aliens, we’ll actually see a hint of a moral crisis in them.  At least a tiny one.

Arrite, that’s it.  See y’all next time.  I’ll wait to blog the commentary on the past bonus chapter whenever the next bonus chapter is up for blogging.

[tearasshouse]

Mostly vidya ramblings pt 3C

Previous post here.

Right, software time. A cursory glance at my PSN Profile will show that I’ve met my personal quota of getting the platinum in at least 10 PlayStation titles over the year, with a few PC titles sprinkled in for good measure since hey, I have access to a Windows machine again (though it’s not exactly a games machine, unless your definition of a “gaming rig” is something with a 15W Core i3 and modest laptop Radeon graphics). While I didn’t start out meaning to rank these games, I find I have a tendency to do so anyway and while I’m certainly not saying these games are outright bad, they were absolutely lower on the rung, so I’ve dubbed this part “C” (again, no disrespect to the devs or any who rate these games higher than I do; these are just my personal assessments). These are OK games.

The Darkness 2 (Steam)

Enjoyable, somewhat! I put this down like, ages ago when I picked it up for a song on PC, feeling it was too basic and uh “console shootery” at the time. Often times, having restrictions placed upon something can net great results, and hamstrung as I am by my less-capable hardware, I’ve only been picking up Steam games that could run on lower end hardware, or anything released prior to say, 2015. Surprisingly this runs at something stupid like 200 FPS on my machine with V-Sync off and all settings on High at 1080p, so go figure. Anyway, it’s a short and enjoyable shooter. I don’t know anything about the comics upon which the game(s) are based, but Jackie is a likeable character, the Darkness powers are fun enough, the locations are varied, the supporting cast surprisingly interesting and the plot was actually pretty cool too, with a major sequel hook that we’ll probably never get. 

Ori & The Blind Forest (Steam)

It sorta hovers a bit below 60fps while running at 1080p, but it’s all just a bit reductive when one spends more time looking at the framerate counter than playing a game, no? The blessing and curse of PC gaming I suppose. Anyway, as a Metroidvania the game is a bit annoying. As a piece of interactive fiction, it’s too saccharine and feels like a B-tier Dreamworks production for children which, I suppose shouldn’t be a knock against the game but I have to say --  wasn’t my cup of tea. Reminds me a bit of Child of Light by Ubisoft -- gorgeous to look at, benign if not frustrating to play (those escape sequences can piss off), and young gamers would probably find more to like in the...emotional tidbits than most adults.

Crysis 2 (Steam)

So apparently this got delisted off Steam but now it’s back up or something with EA deciding to put their back catalog on the platform or something? Anyway, like this list implies, Crysis 2 is an okay game, nothing more and nothing less. The nanosuit energy depletes a bit too quick for my liking, and you’re really made to feel like a badass only some of the times, in quick and short bursts, not unlike BJ in the new Wolfenstein games by MachineGames (any more prolonged exposure to hitscan weapons and other bullshit will quickly send you to the loading screen). Thing is, I don’t want to feel like a badass only some of the time? I mean, you put a ripped supersoldier type doing the Badass Looking Back At the Viewer Pose on the cover and I expect to be able to do certain things without stopping for a breather every 20 seconds, ya know? If you’re going to give me the power fantasy, commit to it. Or, find ways to keep the flow up and reward mastery to make players earn said fantasy (something the new DOOMs  have done and why those have been so successful). I certainly don’t envy game devs for having to balance this shit, but id Software showed you one way of how you might do that while the Crysis games and those of their ilk just feel slow and unrewarding. 

Quantum Break (Steam)

Really surprised I was able to get this running on my PC but hey, it runs on the Xbox One so how hard could it be? I dearly love Remedy’s games, even if they’re a bit straightforward at times and you get the feeling they’d rather be in the business of non-interactive fiction than games making at times. Well here is a TV show hybrid! Made exclusively in partnership with Microsoft as part of their TV & STREAMING, TV & STREAMING, SPORTS & STREAMING strategy of the 2010s. I didn’t care for the plot, nor the endless email / audiobook / loredumps scattered around, nor the characters, any of it. I will say the final stage with the super high tech offices was a delight (boy wouldn’t I love to live the corpo life in such beautiful, clean office environs). Lance Reddick was a treat as always. Peter “Littlefinger” Baelish shows up to do a thing. Yeah, it’s a Remedy joint through and through. 2019′s Control was such a highlight for me that I’ll take any kind of prototype-y take on it (and QB certainly feels like a rougher, worse version of Control, at least mechanically).

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs / Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (Steam)

These titles were certainly...things that I installed onto my PC and sat through... Yes. Look, I’m not one to dog on walking simulators, and I know the devs have faced tough times recently but I still feel these are acquired tastes and could be appreciably improved in too many ways to name. Of the two, Dear Esther is the one I’d rec because at least that one was quite pleasant to meander around in while Amnesia left me disappointed that I’d wasted my time, physically sick with its subpar performance and muddy graphics, flaccid with its stodgy plot and left absolutely disappointed that I’d wasted my time on such a bizarre and confusing payoff towards the end. Chinese Room, I mean this in the most constructive way possible: maybe try a different type of game next time.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (GOG)

I remember putting in some decent time into the DEMO version of RtCW’s MP mode, being amazed at the time by the particle effects, with child-me just running around the D-Day map with the flamethrower out. Anyway, years later and I finally played the SP campaign. It’s maybe better than Allied Assault’s? It feels more consistently entertaining anyway. Hell I think I like these boomer shooters better than MachineGames’ recent efforts (which isn’t saying a whole lot because I find those games just merely okay). I promise you I’m not just being a crotchety old fart.

Ys: Memories of Celceta (PS Vita)

I’d been playing through this over the spring on my Vita TV, before it bit the dust eventually and I’ve been meaning to go back and wrap up the cheevos. I was a bit lukewarm with Oath in Felghana (my first Ys), but could definitely see the appeal in the series, as boss rush games aren’t really my cup of tea (ie. it’s the journey and not the destination of say, a Souls game that is the meat for me). Definitely a game that would benefit from a 60fps refresh and cleaner graphics than what the Vita can provide. I’ve already got a copy of Ys 8 in shrink wrap and have my eyes set on emulating Ys Seven or grabbing the GOG version. A game where action is king and story or character development is secondary; I would prefer more of the latter to make this more of a JRPG and less of a “predominantly Japanese action game with superficial RPG elements”.

Catherine: Full Body (PS4)

I paid $70 for this on day one and I’ve gotta say... should’ve waited for the price drop. I’m a somewhat lapsed Atlus mark, and I still hold the original Persona 5 as my no. 1 in the PS4′s lineup (with Dragon Quest XI possibly being a tie), yet I bought this knowing it wouldn’t really be for me. Why? High difficulty in a genre I don’t play, like at all, a relatively short clear time (in itself not an issue and frankly welcome these days HOWEVER...), and a somewhat unsatisfying payoff despite being a supernatural romance thriller. I bought this as seed money for Atlus’s P.Studio/Studio Zero, in the hopes that Project Re: Fantasy will knock my socks off just like the latter day Persona games have. Because in spite of the contents not really appealing to me, it’s still supremely well made, and it’s not everyday that games like these get made, so there you go. Look, if I could go back in time and put this money towards 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, I probably would, but then the Catherine steelbook is ever so pretty... 

Tearaway Unfolded (PS4)

The OG game is one of the most charming little 3D platformer/collect-a-thons out there, and as far as children’s games (or er, “games that also appeal to children”) go, more of these and less of those please (your Child of Lights and Oris). I’d go as far as to say the OG version is better than the PS4 version, though the PS4 version is also quite good. Really, if I wasn’t going for that stupid Misplaced Gopher trophy, this would probably be an easy shoe-in for the B-tier list, but I place this demotion firmly at Media.Molecule’s feet. That cheevo is cursed.

The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories (PS4)

I’d almost forgotten about this! If that doesn’t qualify for making the C-tier list then I don’t know what else does. I only know of Swery65′s qualities through osmosis, having watched the 2BF’s legendary LP of Deadly Premonition and the gone-too-soon D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. He’s an interesting person with interesting ideas but crucially, as a game dev, his output is just... kinda mediocre? If not outright bad? Case in point with this game. It looks and runs like garbo; it plays like garbo; the character designs are cute; the dialogue is pretty good; there is a wonderful and gradual “twist” to the main character that was super spoiled for me when people were discussing and promoting it (like, that is my bad, but also internet discourse on any kind of entertainment media is just *fucked*); there’s a lot of semi-colons in this sentence so I’ll stop here. 

And the balls to charge like, what, $40+ for the game on PSN?? I’d gotten it for way less on a sale but in a day and age when $1 could buy you 3 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and MS might also throw in a curio like this in there just to fill in the gaps, it makes you wonder if these kinds of games can ever turn a profit, especially when the end product is this jank. And these are commercial goods, make no mistake, any aspirations to being an art piece or social critique notwithstanding, so that also brings to the fore the whole aspect of pricing games, relative value, production and marketing costs, blah blah.

IF you like something different, can appreciate games made on a shoestring budget with arguably bad gameplay and technical deficiencies, but has...heart? Then look no further to the output of this man. The most C-worthy of all the titles listed here. 

[poor-cromwell]

Philippa Gregory and the Virgin-Whore Dichotomy

I like historical fiction. As a historian, I enjoy reading period pieces because they bring to life characters that I spend lots of time with. As a result, I’m usually willing to forgive the genre it’s many shortcomings, yet I have had a particularly difficult time digesting a certain author. With any Philippa Gregory novel, I have found lots and lots of issues to unpack, dissect, and despise. From subpar prose to unfocused plots and especially to the gigantic fallacies in her portrayal of history, specifically because she claims to aim for total historically accuracy. Still, it’s not her ineptness to interpret historical data with any degree of conformity to historiographical consensus that irks me the most. Philippa Gregory writes stories about women for women, they’re (for better or for worse, “chick lit”). And yet the portrayal of the main characters in her two most popular novels, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance make forgiving her for historical inaccuracy for the sake of guilty pleasure nearly impossible.

It’s not just that Gregory ignores facts in favor of her own interpretation, and thus is forced to portray women like Anne Boleyn in ways that conform to said interpretation, but that her characterization of her leads – completely turning away from historical fact – follow several problematic tropes that detract from their actual characters. This in and of itself follows a trope in adaptation wherein women with balanced, fleshed out characters have everything taken away from them so that they can fit into the neat little virgin-whore dichotomy that sadly is seen even in today’s most popular media. So, instead of giving Anne and Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl and Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard in The Boleyn Inheritance their dues as fascinating historical figures, she neatly consigns each of them to one of her little boxes: Mary Boleyn and Anne of Cleves as virgins, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard as whores. 

Mary Boleyn, who was sent from the French court after serving for a time as the King of France’s mistress for her “unseemly behavior,” and came to England and became Henry’s mistress despite her family’s embarrassment and consternation, is inexplicably portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as a naïve, sexually innocent girl who is forced into her affair with Henry by her ambitious family. She is consistently portrayed as the victim of her father’s and uncle’s, and later her sister’s schemes, ousted from the Henry’s affection by the ambitious Anne who wants power and glory (I’ll address Anne’s storyline in more detail below). And despite this being her story, from her point of view, she has no real autonomy, despite historically being one of very few women who clearly were in control and enjoyed their sexuality and didn’t care about seeming virginal. The only thing she does is get married against her family wishes, which is the action that ultimately saved her from being implicated in the coup against the Boleyns in 1536. Additionally, Gregory does this weird thing where she makes Mary the youngest of the Boleyn, born in 1508, even though overwhelming scholarly evidence proves that Mary was the eldest child, born in 1499/1500, which does nothing but further Mary’s infantilization. There is no reason to do any of this but to vilify Anne and make Mary, again, this story’s hero, fit with Anglo-Christian morality so the outcome of her story is justified – which I’ll explain in more detail later.

Anne of Cleves, who most likely died a virgin as she never married and was a devout Lutheran, did not have have a sexual autonomy to be taken away in order for her to be the virginal protagonist to counterbalance Catherine Howard. However, Gregory - for no perceivable reason- invents a history of abuse in the Cleves family (we’re treated to a drawn out scene of Anne being whipped by her mother while her brother watches in the shadows) and Anne’s father being mentally ill. This despite the fact that Anne’s father did not suffer a mental illness, and Anne was known to be the favorite of both her mother and her brother and having a happy family life. Anne of Cleves and Mary Boleyn both have invented abuse and bullying from their family, because according to Philippa Gregory, you can’t like a character unless she’s suffered incredible childhood trauma and has no sexual autonomy, as shown by her portrayal of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

Anne Boleyn, a highly pious woman who initially rebuffed King Henry’s offer of being his mistress because of said piety, is portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as being so power hungry and ruthless that she sells out her sister to pursue her man and has sex with her own brother in order to make and keep herself as Henry’s queen. This isn’t to say that Anne wasn’t ambitious, she most certainly was. But Gregory goes about her ambition in the wrong way. Anne doesn’t pursue power in a vacuum (she also does it after Mary’s affair with Henry had ended) but in part because of her convictions and in part because she knows that she must yield to Henry and tries to make the best out of her situation. Anne took care of Mary and her children, securing a pension for Mary after her husband died and left her in debt, and making sure her son got a good education. Most importantly, unlike the portrayal of the book and the films of the events of 1536, Anne wasn’t executed because Jane Boleyn made a silly report implicating George and Anne in an affair (historians actually believe Jane had very little if anything to do with her husband and sister-in-law’s downfall, which makes sense if you think about it). She was in part executed because she had lost two children and in part because councilors like Thomas Cromwell didn’t like her butting into their work and criticizing their immorality. The charges of incest served the purpose of weakening the Boleyns farther and scrubbing the court of their influence. She was completely innocent of the charges.

Catherine Howard was not. This is another case in Gregory’s novels where she didn’t have to invent a “crime” because Catherine was “guilty” of having sex with both Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper. Most historians, however, give Catherine a pass for her mistake, while being aware of what happened to her cousin, citing her youth and the fact that she was way in over her head at the time to know what she was doing. But Gregory couldn’t possibly let that play out without adding her particular flavor of awful. Catherine is a vapid, empty headed, superficial and annoying character, and even though despite these flaws I still found myself sympathizing with her, I don’t know if Gregory intended me to. She is shown in every bad light, from making fun of Anne of Cleves’ dresses to being utterly fake and more or less the pawn of Uncle Norfolk and his desire for power. Of course, she has her affair with Culpeper not just because she’s infatuated with him, but because her uncle tells her to in order for her to get pregnant, even though the intention of getting pregnant to dupe Henry has no historical grounds whatsoever.

Now, you might be wondering, why would Philippa Gregory go through such pains and take all this criticism when she could have easily just written what actually happened historically. Isn’t it much easier, especially when you already have an interesting plot write for you, to fill in the blanks? Possibly, but I think the answer to this question lies in the fate of the respective characters. Our “virgin” characters, Anne of Cleves and Mary Boleyn get happily ever afters. They outlive their tormentors in peace and fulfillment, and lead contented lives. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, on the other hand, are both executed. Gregory conforms the life to the outcome so that all seems justified in the end. At least, this is the implication of how she chose to tell these stories. By making Anne and Catherine “guilty” of ambition and sexual autonomy, we’re meant feel satisfied in their demise because this is what bad women get. Conversely, if you’re a good, “pure” woman, you get a long and happy life. 

This is nothing new in the world of fiction, but it is a terrible trope that informed by gender roles in our society. Essentially, if you’re a woman and you have agency, your head’s going to get cut off. We as women are told this over and over again in many different ways across every genre, from the scream queen getting killed while having sex with her boyfriend to the countless times on TV that the Strong Female Character has been sexually assaulted as a plot point. And Philippa Gregory definitely helps perpetuate this. And that is why, among other reasons, I do not like her novels.

[onlinepharmausa-blog]

Brands of Sildenafil

Brands of Sildenafil

Sildenafil Citrate, commonly known as Viagra, is a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction. You might be surprised by this, but being prescribed Sildenafil as opposed to ‘Viagra’ actually saves you money while allowing you to receive a product of the same efficacy and quality.

When patents expire, such as in the case of the one held by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which created Sildenafil, generic variants of the drug are released, which are much cheaper.

Content:

Sildenafil Brands Comparison

How to Save Money?

Benefits of Generic Medications

Which Sildenafil Brand to Prefer?

The issue of erectile dysfunction is one that’s not easily talked about due to the delicacy of the subject for many men. Women also stress about reaching orgasm. But you’re at a disadvantage if you simply know the term ‘viagra’ and wish to fix your problem by yourself. But you’re in luck because here we tell you about the different brands and explain why a wealth of choice has never been a bad thing.

There is also generic Sildenafil, which is specifically formulated to help women achieve sex much in the same way there is Viagra for men.

Sildenafil Brands Comparison

There are a variety of manufacturers currently producing generic Sildenafil. Of course, some people still buy the original Pfizer branded Sildenafil known as Viagra, but with the expiration of the patent, other companies such as have moved in with generic versions which are sold at a much lower price.

India is known for state of the art pharmaceutical companies, and it is very pertinent regarding generic Sildenafil. India is not affected by the Pfizer patent, making it a prime destination for generic medications, including Sildenafil.

The most common brands are Kamagra, Silagra, Penegra and Zenegra. The brands are made utilizing the same process, with the only differences being the look of the finished product. The brands are also similar in efficacy to Viagra made by Pfizer but offered at a fraction of the price. Regulatory authorities in India are very strict and would never allow subpar merchandise to flood the market.

The table below shows a comparison. Everything else is exactly the same, except the cost of the drug.

Taken Time to work Lasts for Food Price

Viagra (Penegra) As needed 25-60 mins 5 hours Not recommended $ 0.79

Viagra (Brand) As needed 25-60 mins 5 hours Not recommended $ 2.36

Differences

The chemical structure of Sildenafil does not change depending on the brand that you choose, meaning that the efficacy of the medication remains the same, as will your results. Furthermore, every company that manufactures Sildenafil provides the medication in the same dosage strengths of 25 mg, 50 mg, and 100 mg. The information packet that comes with the medication is also exactly the same because as said before, the molecular structure of Sildenafil remains identical across brands, meaning the issues of how to take it, when to take it, and what to expect, remain exactly the same.

The only differences to be found among the brands is purely cosmetic. Some brands provide Sildenafil in a chalky or white variant, while others provide it in a blue and smooth consistency. Some of the brands are scored, which makes it easier to break the tablet, while others are not.

How to Save Money?

Ordering from India can allow you to save a fair amount of money. Viagra currently retails for around $28-$36 a pill if you purchase the Pfizer brand. But if you go for the generic Sildenafil you’ll see that amount shrink to barely $1 a pill. This means 30 pills of Sildenafil will cost you roughly $30 if you go with an Indian pharmacy and purchase Penegra for instance, but will cost you over a $1000 for Viagra.

Indian pharmacies also offer discounts for bulk purchases, which can further benefit you in the long term. Membership plans allow you to continue to benefit from an accruing incentive that gives you not only Sildenafil benefits but shipping benefits as well.

Benefits of Generic Medications

The benefits of generic drugs are listed below:

works just as well as brand name drugs;

are much cheaper than brand name drugs;

are easier to source than brand name drugs;

your health insurance will charge you less than if you had the brand name drug;

they are easily sourced from India;

you don’t skip a dose due to exorbitant prices.

Generic drugs are really a winner when it comes to saving money and keeping on with your dosing regimen. Imagine not having enough due to the expense of brand names.

Safety of Indian Pharmaceutical Companies

India is known as a fast growing telecommunications giant. However, it’s also been in the pharmaceutical game for a while and there are stringent regulations relative to its production of drugs. The Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) is very thorough in its mandate under the Ministry of Health. Drugs that are manufactured in India are thoroughly vetted and of international standard.

Further, Indian online pharmacy make sure you enter your health information, as they have a doctor on hand to review your information prior to purchase.

Which Sildenafil Brand to Prefer?

Patients, by and large, will always want the same medication again and again if it has worked in the past. You might have been taken Penegra, but then your doctor prescribes you Zenegra. It’s a simple change in one letter but ultimately, you felt Penegra worked better. Still, which Sildenafil brand to go for depends entirely on your confidence and also, your need. The FDA itself states the following:

“Generic drug products have met the same rigid standards as the innovator drug. All generic drugs approved by FDA have the same high-quality, strength, purity, and stability as brand-name drugs. And, the generic manufacturing, packaging, and testing sites must pass the same quality standards as those of brand-name drugs.”

This information from the regulatory site shows that generic drugs have the same safety, efficacy and usefulness profile across the board. The only issue that might arise making you have to choose a different brand is whether or not you prefer brands that have been scored or one that is blue as opposed to chalky white.

Are Generics Right for Me?

Ultimately, the question is whether or not generic medication, in this case, Sildenafil, is right for you. That all depends. Would you like to save money? Would you like to not worry? Would you like to cure your erectile dysfunction without breaking your budget? If you answered yes to all of those questions then generics are definitely for you.

The benefits of generics do not apply to men only. Women can also benefit from generics. Why only allow him to benefit from cheaper and easier ways of deriving pleasure? Don’t waste time, look into generics and see what they can do for you.

For more Information Visit us our website : viabestbuy.co

[myongfisher]

99designs vs. fiverr: which is the best choice for graphic design?

Need a musician to write an advertising jingle? You can hire someone on fiverr. Don’t want to spend hours converting your PDFs to HTML? You can hire someone on fiverr. Want an expert to build you a castle in Minecraft? You can hire someone on fiverr. But if you need graphic design work done, you can hire someone from fiverr, but should you? Can fiverr compete with sites like 99designs that specialize exclusively in design? With 99designs vs fiverr, which is better for getting design work done?

It’s one thing to have a subpar Minecraft castle, but a subpar logo, product packaging or book cover design could hurt your business—or at least necessitate hiring a new designer. A lot of people don’t know whether to choose 99designs or fiverr, so I went through both sites and wrote this in-depth comparison to outline the advantages and disadvantages of each.

99design vs fiverr: At a glance —

In case you’re unfamiliar with either 99designs or fiverr, here’s a brief introduction of who they are and what they can do.

99designs

99designs logo

You may not find data entry specialists or business consultants here, but for graphic design work, 99designs is the go-to choice for hundreds of thousands of clients. They are a global creative platform that connects clients and designers and makes it easy for them to work together, with features that help find the perfect designer to match the client’s style and project criteria. On top of that, 99designs also offers “design contests” that allow clients to see dozens of personalized sample designs before choosing the one they like best.

99designs has paid out over $200 million to designers to date and boasts a community of designers 1.4 million strong. A large part of their business is working hands-on with their designers so clients can more easily—and more quickly—find what they’re looking for, including top-tier skill levels. However 99designs aims to price its services fairly, to attract the best designers in the field, leading some companies to seek cheaper alternatives like…

fiverr

fiverr logo

fiverr is a lot more broad. Like a social media site, their service is more about providing a user-generated platform for clients (“buyers”) to patronize one-off services (“gigs”) listed by freelancers (“sellers”). These gigs can include pretty much anything from lawn-mowing to pranking your friends; however, in recent years the emphasis has shifted to more professional services like digital marketing, content creation and graphic design.

Their business model relies on undercutting traditional industry costs by allowing freelancers to set their own price and cutting out “middle-man” services. Their epithetical name “fiverr” comes from the minimum and most common price of gigs, $5; however, this is most often only a “starting at” price, whereas the final totals are more commensurate with industry rates.

While the user-generated platform allows for cheaper rates, not to mention creative and customizable services, the biggest complaint for fiverr is that it’s unregulated, with documented examples of plagiarized work and even scamming. To be fair, these dishonest practices are far from the norm, but they occur often enough to earn fiverr hundreds of complaints at the Better Business Bureau.

99designs vs. fiverr: a quick comparison —

Everyone has different priorities when getting graphic design done. For some, quality is everything. For others, a seamless process is paramount. Here’s a quick take on what 99designs and fiverr offer. For more detailed information explaining all the options and why we made our choice, click or scroll down to keep reading.

99designs

fiverr

Our choice

Type of work

Graphic design (logo & identity, web & app design, packaging, business & advertising, book covers, illustrations, etc. See full list of categories.)

Just about anything you can imagine outsourcing (web/app development, graphic design, content writing, etc. See full list of categories.)

fiverr for choice, 99designs for design

Ways to get something designed

Contests (designers send you ideas for your unique project)

Find & hire a freelancer

Post a request and receive custom offers

Find & hire a freelancer

Advantage 99designs for contest option

Design tools & process

Great tools to make the design process easier

Handles NDAs & payments

Standard communication tools

Handles payments

99designs

Price

Flat rates for running contests

Negotiable rates with freelancers on a per-project basis. 99designs’ cut is 10%

Contest money back guarantee

Negotiable with freelancers. fiverr’s cut is 5% on purchases over $40.

Tie

Quality

Varies. Mid- and Top-Level designers are hand-selected by designer quality team.

Varies. Seller levels are based on ratings, earnings and past performance. Pro Sellers have been vetted by the fiverr team.

Slight advantage 99designs

Special product features

Great customer service & support manager for platinum contests

Private contests & white labeling

Payment protection plan

Money back guarantee on contests

Business tools (upgraded invoicing and payment options and VIP customer support)

99designs

Agency and pro options

Pro for agencies (assigned Success Manager helps you run projects and find talent, access to privacy and white labeling tools)

fiverr Pro Gigs are offered by freelancers that have gone through a vetting process by the fiver team

99designs

Pricing —

Along with the wide range of job categories, cheaper prices are one of the biggest advantages of fiverr. Prices vary wildly depending on the seller and project, but given the competitive market and the site’s emphasis on low cost, designers often list the lowest possible fees they’re comfortable with. Professional, top-level designers still charge their same high rates, but in general you can find design work for cheaper costs.

Gig listings for logo design on fiverr

Whenever browsing fiverr, it’s important to keep in mind that the “starting at” price is more-or-less just a sale gimmick. The listed price is a often for bare-bones services, with essentials tagged-on for additional costs. fiverr is rife with hidden fees, and if you’re not careful, you may end up missing out on something necessary like ownership of your copyright.

Most designers on fiverr offer a tiered package system, where the basic “starting at” price doesn’t include the most in-demand features like revisions or even setting a logo against a transparent background, all of which cost extra, sometimes hundreds of dollars more.

For example, look at this listing, which advertises a mascot logo design from a Top Rated Seller for a “starting at” price of only $25…

Once clicked, you see that for $25, you don’t get much—just a hand sketch. To get a fully designed digital logo, clients need to pay $110 or $150.

Still, despite the misleading sales tactics, $150 for a mascot logo design is very affordable, and a competitive price compared to other platforms like 99designs. These more affordable prices are what keeps fiverr in business. It’s worth mentioning though that, if you see a suspiciously low gig with seemingly no strings attached, you’re right to be suspicious. If someone is offering a full-treatment logo for $30, they’re cutting corners somewhere, perhaps even stealing designs. While this kind of unsustainably cheap pricing is exactly what attracts businesses to fiverr, the rule of thumb is, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

99designs takes a different strategy: they offer tiered contest packages, which cost more than your average fiverr job, but offer higher design quality and less risk for the client. While at fiverr all you have to go on is the seller’s level, 99designs vets designers, helps with any questions and mediates any problems during a project. With 99designs, you also receive a money-back guarantee, so if the design isn’t what you hoped for, nothing is lost.

99designs pricing for logo design contests

At 99designs you can hire a designer directly or commission a design contest (explained below), although both usually run into the hundreds. To put it in perspective, the minimum cost of a design contest for a logo is $299, but even the most basic package includes full ownership and a money-back guarantee, not to mention all digital files (which some fiverr designers charge extra for).

99designs’ top-tier package, Platinum, runs at $1,299, but you’ll notice this deals with Top Level designers only. Even on fiverr, top-level designers charge similar prices—or more, as you can see in the example below—so if you’re expecting fiverr to be a cheaper alternative for high-quality designs, you’ll be disappointed.

Design quality —

While you can find talented, awe-inspiring designers on 99designs or fiverr, there’s a few different factors worth mentioning. The first is volume, plain and simple.

fiverr has an estimated community of designers at around 7,000, whereas 99designs has 1.4 million registered designers, and counting. For a visual field like graphic design, artistic style is paramount, so more designers means more options for finding your intended style or meeting the criteria for your project. For example, if you have a project like 3D product prototyping, you’ll likely find more designers with experience in this at 99designs than at fiverr.

Another consideration is that 99designs specializes in design work exclusively, while fiverr caters to a wide array of business services (and plenty of non-business ones, too). That’s a distinction with plenty of ramifications.

To name one, fiverr’s interface is built around searching for freelancers of many different disciplines, whereas 99designs only accommodates designers. 99designs’ specialization allows it to build their search functions around design work only, accentuating design-specific search filters and using a results screen that prioritizes visuals instead of pricing or product descriptions.

Moreover, 99designs personally assesses each designer in their database based on design qualifications. This evaluation involves both the designers empirical skill in the graphic arts, as well as individual qualifications—if you’re looking for a designer who excels at designing wordpress websites, you can filter for that.

99designs designer bio for kosta-xd

This accuracy in categorization makes it much easier to pair clients with the right designer, especially compared to a site that has to factor in hundreds of other categories irrelevant to graphic design.

No matter where you go, 99designs or fiverr, you can still search for designers by skill. fiverr rank its designers by level, designated “Level 1 Seller” and “Level 2 Seller,” along with no designation at all. Their seller profile pages also list out CV-like bios, with data like education, certifications and proficiency skills like “Photoshop.”

fiverr seller bio for logoartist7

However, fiverr’s system is automatized and not hand-picked like 99designs. Additionally, there’s again the risk with fiverr that designers are lying about their portfolio, and with no quality checks as with 99designs, fiverr buyers search at their own risk.

But to bring it around again, fiverr has one advantage that 99designs lacks: they’re better for interdisciplinary projects. If a client has a specialized project that requires a freelancer skilled in multiple disciplines—say, a designer-videographer or a designer-writer—they could find one more readily by posting a custom request on fiverr. Remember that fiverr is the jack of all trades, while 99designs is the master of one: graphic design.

Ways to get design work done —

Again, there are plenty of differences in how to actually commission design work when comparing 99designs vs fiverr. Both sites have a couple options each, so I’ll go through each below.

fiverr:

1. Choose a pre-existing gig

fiverr’s interface was built to handle virtually any task or service, giving equal consideration to a gig about graphic design as, say, a gig for casting a magic spell on your crush. Since their shift to more business-oriented operations, sellers have adopted a kind of makeshift organization, where they post a gig about a general service, i.e., “I will design an infographic,” and then leave it to the buyer to fill in the details once they’re hired.

This system works well, thanks to fiverr’s efforts to break the site into umbrella categories. So, to find all the gigs about designing infographics, the buyer simply clicks the “graphic design” category and then the “infographic” subcategory.

fiverr search results for infographic design

This lists all the gigs pertaining to infographic design (or whatever subcategory you want). Although the gig titles vary, most sellers are offering the same or similar services, although at different prices with different features. Buyers can even further filter out results by price range, Seller Level, features or time frame.

fiverr’s logo design search aid

For popular categories like “logo design,” fiverr also offers some guidance in narrowing down the search results according to the buyer’s style. You can fill out a simple, optional questionnaire at the beginning to receive more personalized results.

2. Post a request

To post a custom request, you first must have to be a registered member of fiverr. After initiating the request from your account menu, you write out a description of what you’re looking for, along with the appropriate category. The request will be marked as “pending” until the fiverr staff can review it, but once it’s live, sellers can send you offers and bids until you choose the one you like best.

The problem with fiverr requests, though, is that you have no control over who patronizes your request. Which designers see it depends on when it’s posted, what category it’s posted in and how it’s worded, plus the most successful sellers probably don’t need to check custom requests because they already have enough incoming business.

99designs —

1. Work directly with a designer

In a much more straightforward approach than fiverr’s gig searches, 99designs allows you to pick and choose a designer directly and start working with them on your design project.

99designs Find a Designer search tool

You can find the right designer to fit your project using the optimized Find a Designer search tool. Because of how 99designs categorizes their designers, the search function can offer precise and specific filters. In addition to filtering for design type, language fluency and skill level like fiverr does, 99designs also allows users to search by industry experience (i.e. medical, legal, etc.) as well as customizable user tags (i.e., “retro,” “for children”).

On top of that, because 99designs’ results feature graphic designers only, the search results show multiple samples from the same designer without having to navigate to a new page. This gives you a better idea of the designer’s personal skill—and style—which helps when choosing whom to hire.

2. Commission a design contest

Choosing a design category in 99designs

The design contest is perhaps the most popular design-oriented feature 99designs offers that fiverr doesn’t. Design contests are crowdsourcing at its best, and fit the graphic design industry like a glove because, as a visual medium, you can’t be absolutely sure of something until you see it.

A branding assessment for a 99designs logo design contest

Design contests at 99designs work like this: First, you answer a series of questions to hone in on the kind of brand you are and the best style to match it. These questions are similar to fiverr’s questionnaire, although more thorough and investigative with optional sections on color usage and choosing from preexisting designs to gauge your preferences.

Next, you fill in a design briefing that explains your project, its business goals and what you want your design to look like.

99designs then shows your briefing—along with your answers from the initial questions—to their community of designers and interested designers submit original concepts based on your briefing.

You’re able to browse their submissions, comment and rate the designs and finally choose the finalists you like best.

99designs design briefing

Finally, there’s a final round of revisions where you can pick the winner. With the money-back guarantee, it’s the most surefire way in the design industry to know what you’re getting before you buy.

Higher priced packages give you extra benefits as well. If you’re willing to pay extra, you can expect to get more submissions, or have only high-level designers participate.

99designs vs fiverr: final verdict —

Looking at all the points we’ve discussed, here’s my final verdict: fiverr is great if you are looking for freelancers in different fields who can perform various tasks for you at a low price (such as build that amazing Minecraft castle). If what you want is high-quality graphic design, I’d recommend 99designs.

What it all comes down to is, how much are you willing to gamble? There’s a chance you could get the same quality of design at a cheaper cost on fiverr, but it’s only a chance. There’s also a chance you could receive a poor design and have to pay for a new one from a different designer. Even if you do choose a pro designer on fiverr, they’re going to charge you pro prices, so it negates fiverr’s biggest advantage.

If you’re willing to spend a bit more on good design, 99designs offers better quality designs more consistently. It’s not that fiverr has bad designers, it’s just that with 99designs, there’s a greater chance of finding the designer you want while at fiverr it’s more up to luck. On top of that, 99designs has more designers than the entire population of Dublin, so if you’re searching for a particular style, you’ll most likely find it there.

Want to give 99designs a try?

Work with our brilliant designer community to create your next design.

Let’s go

The post 99designs vs. fiverr: which is the best choice for graphic design? appeared first on 99designs.

99designs vs. fiverr: which is the best choice for graphic design? published first on https://www.lilpackaging.com/

[loycereiber]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

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Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[winniegist]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

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Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[sabrinajulie]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

About Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Trial Lawyer

Real Estate Lawyer

from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

from Top Rated Utah Lawyer https://topratedlawyer.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[loreneweiner]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

About Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Trial Lawyer

Real Estate Lawyer

Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[jimmiekiser]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

About Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Trial Lawyer

Real Estate Lawyer

Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

https://realestatelawyerwestjordanutah.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[vodsel-prime]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

About Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Trial Lawyer

Real Estate Lawyer

Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[thequeenofqueens-blog]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

About Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Trial Lawyer

Real Estate Lawyer

Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[victoriazoey26]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Types of Irrevocable Trusts

Shoplifting and Theft Attoreny

Utah Registered Agent Services

About Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Trial Lawyer

Real Estate Lawyer

Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

from Securities Lawyer In Utah https://securitieslawyerinutah.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[michaeljames1221]

Employee Lawsuit Protection

Asset Protection Tips for entrepreneurs, medical practice professionals and small business owners. As a lawyer for entrepreneurs, I work hard to make sure our clients are protected. This post discusses how to put a plan in place for protection from employee lawsuits. We also cover common employee lawsuits, protecting business and personal assets, avoiding lawsuits, and termination tips.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) receives over 100,000 employee claims filed in a fiscal year. The result is nearly half a billion dollars that employers paid out in EEOC claims. A full 10% of wrongful termination and discrimination cases see employees awarded $1 Million+ settlements. The average is $40,000 per settlement. Legal fees for court trials in these cases average $45,000 in defense costs.

No matter how well prepared you are, you can still become victim to a Robin Hood judge. Many members of the judiciary delight in transferring a business owner’s wealth to an employee looking for an easy buck. So, do what it takes to protect yourself. For example, you can establish an asset protection trust. It one of the most effective tools to shield your hard-earned wealth. Then, divide your business empire into a series of properly filed and maintained companies. When someone sues one of the companies, the lawsuit does not affect the others. Do this before the bullets start to fly is a good start. That said, below we will discuss some additional warnings and corresponding precautions you can take.

Common Employee Lawsuits

The most common employment claims are wrongful termination, discrimination (age, sex, religion), sexual harassment, retaliation, whistleblowing and more. Race discrimination used to top the charts, however retaliation has become the top cited form of discrimination claim.

Unfortunately these figures are on the rise. We assist more and more business owners and medical practice owners who are concerned with employee lawsuit vulnerability. There are many reason why this is happening, both socially and economically, however it means that it’s never been more important to protect yourself and your business from an EEOC claim.

As soon as an employee files an unemployment claim, his or her mailbox is filled with mail from law firms offering free consultations boasting big payouts. It would cost a person nothing to try because a majority of these firms offer services on a contingent fee basis.

Business Protection

Insurance is not enough. Carrying EPLI (employment practices liability insurance) offers limited protection to the business depending on your state and insurance policy. Depending on how you structured your business, your business entity may not shield your business assets. The secret? Set up one corporation or LLC to operate your business. Set up another company (preferably an LLC) that owns business equipment. Your operating company simply leases the equipment from company number two. Both, in turn, protect you from personal exposure.

Personal Asset Protection

Finding yourself in an employee lawsuit could be big and costly, not just in legal fees, but in your time as well. You can take your wealth off of the lawsuit radar for good with a proper asset protection strategy. Set up an asset protection trust. Inside the asset protection trust is an LLC. You are the manager of the LLC. You make investments. As the manager you are the signatory on the bank and investment accounts. When the “bad thing” happens, the trustee steps in as LLC manager. This puts you in a position of impossibility when ordered to release the funds.

Your home goes into a land trust for privacy. Income property also goes into individual land trusts. Then, for anything but a personal residence, an LLC owns each land trust. The land trust provides a shield to keep your name and company names out of the public records. The LLC gives asset protection. For example, you and your spouse own the LLC. When someone sues you, legal provisions protect your company membership and anything inside of it.

Avoiding Lawsuits

The best outcome you could wish for is that nobody hits you with a lawsuit. The problem is that you don’t control the other guy. Any employee can sue you at any time, whether justified or not. The only thing you can do is to protect your assets from lawsuits and be clear about employee and management policies.

Managing employees is challenging because we all want to be a nice person and for others in the workplace to like us. Unfortunately that’s where most of the problems arise. The most problematic management responsibility, in a legal sense, is hiring, firing and discipline in proper and effective ways.

Employee Firing and Discipline Tips

Have written job descriptions with responsibilities and performance expectations

Communicate clearly how you enforce your requirements

Encourage and enable employees to communicate any issues in the workplace or their performance

Establish a specific discipline process and high standards

Firing an employee is a process in which you, the business owner, are responsible. Here’s a four-step discipline plan for employees that can help you avoid an EEOC lawsuit.

Initially, deliver constructive criticism, further instructions and feedback (good or bad) verbally. This is as simple as communicating to your employee that there is a performance issue or conflict in the workplace that he or she needs to assess.

If an employee’s subpar behavior or performance persists, you write down exactly what the performance issue is. Then reference the job description that they interviewed for with your performance expectations, discipline process and responsibilities clearly defined. Provide a copy to the employee. This all becomes a pillar in your case against an EEOC charge.

Before firing your employee, the final management discipline action is to provide an affirmative written agreement. It should generally specify the performance or behavior that the employee needs to improve. The agreement will tie everything together, the employee agreement with employee responsibilities, performance expectations as well as your discipline plan. In the agreement the employee should agree to specific changes in his or her performance and behavior.

More Asset Protection Information

The most common mistake made by managers is not keeping records of underperformance or bad employee behavior

Verbal warnings and discipline often ends up into a hearsay battle

With detailed documentation of repeat offense with an employee signature would leave little chances of losing a lawsuit, or even finding a lawyer to sue

When it comes time to terminate an employee after all of your management efforts have failed, you must have this process defined. Start with security; you should first address access, keys, passwords, entry cards or other security items such as alarm codes. HR experts recommend that you have a witness during this process. It should include a final interview that you document, if possible. If the employee has compensation coming, write a check on the spot (if you can), including any severance or other offering you may have at the time of termination. Finally, encourage feedback, either at the time of the final interview, or in writing later with a form that you provide.

You cannot avoid the lawsuit threat. However you can minimize your vulnerability. Communicated and enforce strong practices and policies. Most importantly, protect your business and personal assets from lawsuits.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you need help protection your assets and your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/employee-lawsuit-protection/

from Criminal Defense Lawyer West Jordan Utah https://criminaldefenselawyerwestjordanutah.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/employee-lawsuit-protection/

[onlinepharmausa-blog]

Brands of Sildenafil

Brands of Sildenafil

Sildenafil Citrate, commonly known as Viagra, is a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction. You might be surprised by this, but being prescribed Sildenafil as opposed to ‘Viagra’ actually saves you money while allowing you to receive a product of the same efficacy and quality.

When patents expire, such as in the case of the one held by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which created Sildenafil, generic variants of the drug are released, which are much cheaper.

Content:

Sildenafil Brands Comparison

How to Save Money?

Benefits of Generic Medications

Which Sildenafil Brand to Prefer?

The issue of erectile dysfunction is one that’s not easily talked about due to the delicacy of the subject for many men. Women also stress about reaching orgasm. But you’re at a disadvantage if you simply know the term ‘viagra’ and wish to fix your problem by yourself. But you’re in luck because here we tell you about the different brands and explain why a wealth of choice has never been a bad thing.

There is also generic Sildenafil, which is specifically formulated to help women achieve sex much in the same way there is Viagra for men.

Sildenafil Brands Comparison

There are a variety of manufacturers currently producing generic Sildenafil. Of course, some people still buy the original Pfizer branded Sildenafil known as Viagra, but with the expiration of the patent, other companies such as have moved in with generic versions which are sold at a much lower price.

India is known for state of the art pharmaceutical companies, and it is very pertinent regarding generic Sildenafil. India is not affected by the Pfizer patent, making it a prime destination for generic medications, including Sildenafil.

The most common brands are Kamagra, Silagra, Penegra and Zenegra. The brands are made utilizing the same process, with the only differences being the look of the finished product. The brands are also similar in efficacy to Viagra made by Pfizer but offered at a fraction of the price. Regulatory authorities in India are very strict and would never allow subpar merchandise to flood the market.

The table below shows a comparison. Everything else is exactly the same, except the cost of the drug.

Taken Time to work Lasts for Food Price

Viagra (Penegra) As needed 25-60 mins 5 hours Not recommended $ 0.79

Viagra (Brand) As needed 25-60 mins 5 hours Not recommended $ 2.36

Differences

The chemical structure of Sildenafil does not change depending on the brand that you choose, meaning that the efficacy of the medication remains the same, as will your results. Furthermore, every company that manufactures Sildenafil provides the medication in the same dosage strengths of 25 mg, 50 mg, and 100 mg. The information packet that comes with the medication is also exactly the same because as said before, the molecular structure of Sildenafil remains identical across brands, meaning the issues of how to take it, when to take it, and what to expect, remain exactly the same.

The only differences to be found among the brands is purely cosmetic. Some brands provide Sildenafil in a chalky or white variant, while others provide it in a blue and smooth consistency. Some of the brands are scored, which makes it easier to break the tablet, while others are not.

How to Save Money?

Ordering from India can allow you to save a fair amount of money. Viagra currently retails for around $28-$36 a pill if you purchase the Pfizer brand. But if you go for the generic Sildenafil you’ll see that amount shrink to barely $1 a pill. This means 30 pills of Sildenafil will cost you roughly $30 if you go with an Indian pharmacy and purchase Penegra for instance, but will cost you over a $1000 for Viagra.

Indian pharmacies also offer discounts for bulk purchases, which can further benefit you in the long term. Membership plans allow you to continue to benefit from an accruing incentive that gives you not only Sildenafil benefits but shipping benefits as well.

Benefits of Generic Medications

The benefits of generic drugs are listed below:

works just as well as brand name drugs;

are much cheaper than brand name drugs;

are easier to source than brand name drugs;

your health insurance will charge you less than if you had the brand name drug;

they are easily sourced from India;

you don’t skip a dose due to exorbitant prices.

Generic drugs are really a winner when it comes to saving money and keeping on with your dosing regimen. Imagine not having enough due to the expense of brand names.

Safety of Indian Pharmaceutical Companies

India is known as a fast growing telecommunications giant. However, it’s also been in the pharmaceutical game for a while and there are stringent regulations relative to its production of drugs. The Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) is very thorough in its mandate under the Ministry of Health. Drugs that are manufactured in India are thoroughly vetted and of international standard.

Further, Indian online pharmacy make sure you enter your health information, as they have a doctor on hand to review your information prior to purchase.

Which Sildenafil Brand to Prefer?

Patients, by and large, will always want the same medication again and again if it has worked in the past. You might have been taken Penegra, but then your doctor prescribes you Zenegra. It’s a simple change in one letter but ultimately, you felt Penegra worked better. Still, which Sildenafil brand to go for depends entirely on your confidence and also, your need. The FDA itself states the following:

“Generic drug products have met the same rigid standards as the innovator drug. All generic drugs approved by FDA have the same high-quality, strength, purity, and stability as brand-name drugs. And, the generic manufacturing, packaging, and testing sites must pass the same quality standards as those of brand-name drugs.”

This information from the regulatory site shows that generic drugs have the same safety, efficacy and usefulness profile across the board. The only issue that might arise making you have to choose a different brand is whether or not you prefer brands that have been scored or one that is blue as opposed to chalky white.

Are Generics Right for Me?

Ultimately, the question is whether or not generic medication, in this case, Sildenafil, is right for you. That all depends. Would you like to save money? Would you like to not worry? Would you like to cure your erectile dysfunction without breaking your budget? If you answered yes to all of those questions then generics are definitely for you.

The benefits of generics do not apply to men only. Women can also benefit from generics. Why only allow him to benefit from cheaper and easier ways of deriving pleasure? Don’t waste time, look into generics and see what they can do for you.

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