#like i genuinely only get asked questions of substance about the topics i post about | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sob-sister · 6 months

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Not trying to be rude at all and I’m also not expecting you to lick his ass to the brim but, if you feel this way about Jack and his career then why do you still follow him? I know you said you’ve been a “follower” for a while (Not sure if you want to be called a fan, lol), but I feel like I could list other artists that share more content with fans and might be more worth your time. Ones that are more open and share more about their lives, not just the same recycled stories. Although, nowadays, there are a few celebrities that won’t keep their personal life somewhat private, but some are definitely more open than others. I hope this doesn’t sound insulting and none of it was meant in that way.

this sounds like genuine interest, so i will answer. i didn't know that this would become an essay, but here we are.

first off, i don't know what your or others people's beliefs are about this page, and this is not me coming at you, i just simply don't know you / what you think, but this is not a hate on jack blog. i am sure (and in fact i know) that some people are unhappy with the existence of my blog, but this is a discussion space where i let others bring forward topics to me and then we discuss them. i might have put out a few things at the very start of my blog to get things going, but now it's very much people coming to me and asking me questions, asking for my opinion, etc. if i am not posting asks, that means there is nothing being sent it (besides the odd hate ask) and i don't want to force any conversation, so i let my followers / anons take the lead on that. we also do discuss things outside of jack, so there's that too.

now that i am done with my little "announcement" i will get to the main question. i follow jack because i like him, believe it or not 😂😂, but there are somethings that i wish were different. other people have brought up these things as well, so i am not the only person who feels this way, but obviously i can't / won't speak on their behalf, and i also feel like since i have a blog discussing these things it potentially amplifies my "dislike for him", if that makes sense? i would say my main two issues with him are his repetitive interviews and lack of content. there are other little bits i could nit pick, but these are the main two.

i have followed other artists, who maybe didn't tick all the boxes in terms of my "requirements", let's call them that, but because they did the other things so well, it didn't really matter that much, because what they were doing it, they were doing it and doing it well. my first example would be the weeknd. i don't know if you or others know how the weeknd started out, but he was not known at the start of his career. people knew his music when it started getting traction, but they didn't know anything about him (he did no press), they didn't even know what he looked like. he made this whole mysterious / i want my privacy thing work and boy did it! with jack, this whole private shtick doesn't, because of the repetitive nature of the things he tells in general and in interviews. people want new stuff and that doesn't have to violate his privacy, he's entitled to that. i think he doesn't understand that when you give people crumbs, and then you might give them a bit more than you did last time, that's not going to be satisfying to them. his normal of "starving" (that's how i feel) people of info and then throwing them a couple more things in the future is not going to do it and that's why we have people prying into his life. anytime the weeknd did an interview, people were really looking forwards to it, because his interviews were great (in general) and because we knew we were going to get something new, and i don't mean basic things like an album announcement or generic things we heard before, but things of actual substance and you know what, that required zero oversharing and privacy violation. give people more than an inch and they won't take a mile.

onto my next point of content. content keeps interest, and interest keeps people happy. funny enough, i actually unfollowed the weeknd, because at one time he was posting a little too much content and it was a overpowering, which should really tell you that i am not asking for heaps and piles of stuff from jack.

speaking of content, there was another musician i used to be interested in, and he wasn't too big on interviews. i don't think he hated them, but he he just didn't do them often. i also didn't know anywhere near enough info on him as much as i do on jack. i could tell you about this guys family and a couple of other things, but besides that, you had to go and look for it. his stuff wasn't hidden, it just wasn't the most interesting thing about him. obviously, there will always be "diggers" in any fandom, but with this guy, people didn't feel the need to dig. all to say, he had his privacy. get you a guy who can do both!!!

the one thing this guy did well though was content. he utilised instagram to his advantage. stories through the day. breakfast. studio time. you name it. nothing grand. nothing that took hours, but it kept interest. it's the small things. however, his specialty was keeping interest during his "off season", when he was taking a break between albums or he was busy in the studio and maybe instagram got put to the side for a bit.

he had his content set up so well, that when "nothing" was going on in his life (no new music), people still cared about him and wanted to keep up with what he was doing. in his "off season" he would release tour vlogs and not only did that keep the connection, it showed them the more behind the scenes of tour, but most importantly it made them excited for the new things that were going to come. to summarise: the engagement with fans was there. it was not taking hours out of his day. people cared. and honestly, nobody even thought about the lack of interviews, because we got content and we were content.

i don't want this to look like i am shitting on jack, because he has a team that are just as responsible for this, if not more, but at the end of the day, these are very simple things that can be improved upon and i am not asking him to move mountains. i feel like if he / his team tried to change some of this or implement other things fans have suggested, the improvement would be significant and so would the satisfaction of fans.

thank you for stopping by. i hope this answered your question.

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tuiyla · 2 years

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You should post or write more about Tina and mercedes :/ they're glee girls too!!

Tone is difficult to get across on tumblr so know that I say all this in a non-annoyed way.

Yes they are, and I love them too. I've been labelled as a Glee girls blog and I don't mind that at all because I do love me the girls and I love talking about them. Even though I never have and never will try to hide that Santana is by far my favourite thing about Glee, hands down, and even with that said I do like talking about basically all aspects of the show, I'm comfortable with the Glee girls niche. And yes, apart from Santana, I've mostly just talked about Santana ships/Brittany/Quinn/Kitty the most, and somewhat about Rachel.

But what I need you to know Anon is that that's what I get asked about. And while I would love to write some meta or really anything about Mercedes and Tina, truth is I just don't really have the capacity to be churning out content besides gifs and answering asks these days. If you look at my masterpost or have followed what I've been doing (which I'm assuming you have, since you know my blindspots?) you'll see that most of what I do writing-wise is ask-based and has been for a while. Even with Santana I don't have time to "independently" do a lot of the posts I want to - I have a long two-part Santanalysis coming up but even that is only getting finished after months of sitting in the drafts because I got an anon on the topic and that was enough motivation. The only thing I do that isn't prompted in this way is this Pezberry Thought of the Week thing, and that's more like "of the Fortnight" tbh because again, time.

All this to say? I'd very gladly talk about any and all Tina and/or Mercedes topics but I don't have the capacity to just, do it unprompted. And I know that can come across weird or whatever, like oh give me attention tell me you wanna hear my thoughts lol. But that's not even it, because I'm also just happy to be a platform if anyone has thoughts they'd wanna share but would rather open up the conversation here or something. It's just, when people bring up a topic I know they wanna talk about it and it's a specific thing I can get started on. Otherwise, like I say even with Santana I can't get anything finished because there's only so much time I can spend on Glee, even if it's my Glee blorbo on a given day. And if I know there's someone interested in this other topic, that's going to take priority, along with keeping up my paintbox gif streak and playing around with other ideas.

Even now, I can't help but think we could be talking about Tina and/or Mercedes as characters instead of this. And once again, I'm not annoyed at this ask nor is this just to complain the boohoo, I have so little time. After all, I could be answering other asks instead of writing this out lol. three of which are about Santana/Brittana btw because again that's what I get asked about. I mean, take someone like Quinn. I've never written anything substantial about Quinn if it wasn't for ask, but I'm happy to headcanon the heck out of her character when people ask me to.

So yeah long story short, let's talk about all the Glee girls! Let's get the Tina and Mercedes love going! I just don't feel like this is the way to do it, ya know Anon. And I could do the usual disclaimers about not owing anything, this is my blog, etc etc, but I genuinely am not interpreting this ask in a demanding and entitled way and I do see what you mean. I just hopefully also explained why that is. And btw I encourage you or anyone else to get that love and appreciation started because far be it from me to view myself as some kind of arbiter of anything lol. The Glee fandom was fine before me and I'm sure it will be long after I stopped going on about the show.

#well that was a convoluted something #and all that to say #okay then talk about them?#hmm yeah #anon #like i genuinely only get asked questions of substance about the topics i post about #and i don't post much else other than asks even about her blorboness #talking about ~original content~ here at least #nonglee asks

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zerogender-onlyswag · 3 years

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VIktor Nikiforov Has ADHD

2 people told me to post this and like 6 people liked it on my last post about this so here we go

Here's why I think Viktor Nikiforov in Yuri On Ice has ADHD

Impulsivity:

Viktor seems to have a high level of impulsiveness, a common symptom of ADHD, as we struggle with impulse control. Viktor flies to Japan to be the coach for a man who asked him while drunk and then never spoke to him again. This also seems to be a common behavior for him based on the way that Yakov reacts to him leaving. Some of the inappropriate questions he asks Yuuri also seem to be centered around this impulsivity as he seems to just sort of blurt out the things he's thinking rather than taking the time to consider his words.

Memory Issues and Interest Based Memory

When Yurio arrives in Japan and confronts Viktor about promising to create a program for his senior debut, Viktor has apparently forgotten all about this. It seems like a genuine memory slip. Forgetfulness is another common symptom of ADHD and one Viktor seems to struggle with.

It's also been stated by the creators that the reason Viktor "doesn't know who JJ is" is because he doesn't find him interesting. People with ADHD have interest based memory and focus: If we don't find something interesting, we won't pay it any attention at all. This leads well into my next consideration:

Interest and Novelity

Viktor's primary appeal as a skater has always relied on his ability to surprise his audience. This is something that at the beginning of the show he seems to have lost the ability to do. I personally think that VIktor's interest in skating has been a long-term hyperfixation that remained novel and interesting for so long because he continuously made it different each time. Every program he did was a creation that was something different each time. When he started to lose that ability skating started to become uninteresting because it was no longer novel, and ADHD brains rely on the new and different to keep them interested...

Hyperfixation and Losing Interest Grief

Viktor has been stated to have been depressed at the beginning on the series, and part of what seems to have him feeling that way is losing his interest in skating. ADHD hyperfixations are the result of us looking for ways to supplement the lack of dopamine our brains naturally produce, as compared to neurotypicals. If the thing we're interested in no longer produces dopamine, we loose interest and also are getting fewer happy chemicals to the brain. This could lead us to become depressed if we don't supplement it with something else, almost like grieving the lost interest.

Viktor also seems to be drinking a lot during the show, especially at the beginning. A lot of ADHDers turn to substances, such as drugs and alcohol, when we're not getting the dopamine we need from hyperfixations or medications.

Yuuri reignites his interest in skating, as he's no longer doing it for the same reasons he was before

External Validation and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria(RSD)

Viktor's need to "surprise the audience", in addition to making skating novel and interesting each time, also seems to be a form of external validation/motivation. ADHDers don't have an internal voice that keeps us motivated in the same way that NTs do, we rely on accountability from others to keep us doing the task we're supposed to be doing.

RSD is a severe reaction to rejection, percieved rejection or fear of rejection associated with ADHD. While it's not an official symptom in the DSM 5, it is recognized as a type of emotional disregulation and is considered to be a part of that. Viktor displays this symptom on a couple occasions: the first I think being when Yuuri doesn't want to sleep with him, and he goes to his room and cries silently to himself; When Yuuri declares pork cutlet bowl to be his eros, Viktor drinks heavily, implying this hurt his feelings, despite Yuuri not directly intending it to, and finally, when Yuuri says he doesn't want Viktor to coach him anymore, this is the only time we REALLY see Viktor cry.

At one point Viktor interrupts Yuuri's interview to declare that he "wants to get food instead, this is boring"

Viktor isn't particular considerate of other's feelings, steamrollering over Yurio, not really knowing what to do with Yuuri's strong emotions.

Viktor seems to channel most of his emotions into his skating. While not symptomatic of ADHD, anecdotally and personally, creative outlets, particularly highly physical ones, tend to be attractive to ADHDers.

Viktor's public persona is more reserved while his actual personality seems to be extremely goofy. Some people with ADHD learn to regulate in public/certain situations similar to masking in autistics.

Anyway, this is just my personal headcanons on the topic! Thanks for reading <3

#yuri on ice #yoi victor #victor nikiforov #viktor nikiforov #adhd headcanon #yuri on ice headcanon

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samwisethewitch · 4 years

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Communicating with Spirits

On this blog, we’ve talked about why witches might want to work with spirits, types of spirits they might work with, and the proper etiquette for establishing a relationship with a spirit. What we haven’t yet talked about is one of the most important, but sometimes most frustrating, elements of spirit work: communication.

There are several methods you can use to communicate with spirits, depending on your skills, preferences, and comfort level.

Signs and Synchronicity

The most organic way to receive messages from spirits is to wait for physical signs in your environment.

The concept of synchronicity was first introduced by Carl Jung. A synchronicity is a “meaningful coincidence” — a seemingly random event that feels meaningful to the individual. For example: crows have a lot of spiritual significance to me, and whenever I see or hear one it has a very specific meaning for me.

Another way a spirit might send you a sign is by surrounding you with physical reminders of them. I’ve most often experienced this with deities. If a new deity is reaching out to me, I’ll see images of them in places I wouldn’t expect to and may hear their name mentioned over and over again around me.

In her book The Angel Code, Chantel Lysette encourages readers to ask for physical signs when they connect with spirits, as a way to confirm that this is a genuine spiritual experience. This is something that has really stuck with me, and has become common practice in my spirit work. It can be very powerful to see signs in your mundane life that validate your spiritual experiences.

Divination

One easy way to communicate with spirits is to use your favorite divination method. (I’ve already done a whole post on divination, so I’m not going to spend much time on it here.) When using divination to communicate with a spirit, address your questions to them by name. From there, proceed as you normally would.

One thing to keep in mind when using divination to communicate with spirits is that the communication will be limited by the divination method you use. If you’re using a pendulum, you can only ask yes or no questions. If you’re using a tarot or oracle deck, the spirit will be limited to the cards in that deck when they’re trying to answer. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind.

Automatic Writing or Channeled Writing

This is a little bit different than other divination methods, because in this case you’re actually connecting directly with the spirit in order to write down messages from them. Automatic writing is the act of allowing your hand to write out a message without focusing on the words — the idea is that your hand will be guided by the spirits in order to write down their message for you. Some people believe that you should use your non-dominant hand for automatic writing, as this is your “receptive” hand. Channeled writing is the act of receiving a message through your psychic senses, which you then write down. Automatic writing is a type of channeling, but not all channeling is automatic writing.

I personally prefer channeled writing, simply because I find it more comfortable. Some witches prefer automatic writing because it bypasses your conscious mind, thus making it less likely that you’ll unknowingly “edit” the message. However, automatic writing can be a little bit harder to learn, so I’m going to focus on channeling here.

To channel a message from a spirit, you will need something to write with — a notebook and pen/pencil works, but so does a laptop with a word processor or even the notebook app on a smart phone. You will also need to enter a light trance state (this is the same state of consciousness experienced in meditation), so you might choose to use trance triggers like incense, shamanic drumming, or binaural beats. Begin by creating a protective space around yourself. (This is just to make sure only one spirit comes through at a time.) Invite the spirit you want to receive a message from into your space. Enter a trance and open yourself up to whatever it is they have to say. Don’t think about the words that come to you — simply write them down. You can analyze the message later, after your trance has ended.

Meditation

If you have a specific question you need an answer to, you can receive an answer to that question in a meditation. Likewise, if you want to connect with a certain spirit, you can do so through meditation.

This is fairly straightforward. Prepare for meditation in the way you normally do — light incense or candles and play music if you’d like, and make sure you have a comfortable place to sit or lay down. Before you begin to meditate, speak your intention out loud. This could be as simple as saying, “My intention for this meditation is to connect with [insert spirit’s name],” or “My intention for this meditation is to receive an answer from [insert spirit’s name] about [insert topic here],” or it could be an elaborate prayer.

From there, meditate as you normally would. Focus on the spirit you’re trying to connect with or, if you have a specific question, focus on that question. Whenever I do this, I often receive an answer in a sudden information download — suddenly the answer to my question is clear and obvious.

Pathworking

A pathworking is a specific type of meditation where you go on a psychic journey, usually with a specific goal in mind. I like to think of pathworking as the halfway point between meditation and astral travel. With pathworking, you are still anchored to your physical body, but your consciousness is able to make a journey into the astral world.

There are two important elements to a pathworking: a clear entrance/exit point and a way to retrace your steps. Pathworking journeys are typically cyclical — there is both a journey out and a return where you go back the way you came. This makes it easier to fully return your consciousness to your body, and failing to do so can cause you to feel disoriented upon the return.

A very common entrance/exit point is a door or gate which you use to enter and exit the astral realm. Sometimes it’s more of a home base — for example, my entry point is a rocky beach. I’ve also heard of people using a tree, or even The World Tree, as their entry point. Whatever imagery you choose, make sure you’re able to find your way back to it. If you’re worried about getting lost, author Thea Sabin recommends using “the Theseus trick.” Like in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, you can tie a golden thread or rope to your entry point and the other end to your astral body. If you get lost, you can follow the thread back.

If you want to try pathworking, make a rough “road map” of your journey beforehand. This doesn’t have to be super specific, but it should contain the following: a goal for the pathworking (such as to connect with a certain spirit), an entry/exit point, and a general idea for the route you’re going to take.

Astral Travel/Spirit Flight

Perhaps the most direct route, astral travel (also called “spirit flight,” “soul flight,” or “hedge riding”) involves sending your spirit or consciousness into the astral realm/spirit world. Astral travel is not a beginner technique. This method should only be used by witches who have experience with meditation, pathworking, and other altered states of consciousness. The major advantage of astral travel is that you’re visiting the spirits on their own turf, which means you can communicate with them much more clearly and directly.

I’ll talk about both pathworking and astral travel at length in my next post. In the meantime, know that it is an option but that I only recommend it for intermediate to experienced witches, and even then only after some serious research into how to do it safely.

Some Basic Precautions

No matter which method you use, here are some basic rules to keep you safe and comfortable during your communication.

Cleanse before you begin. The best way to make sure you’re talking to the spirit you want is to clear out any other nasties before you begin. There are lots of ways to cleanse your space, from incense to sound baths to sweeping with a ritual broom. Use your favorite method to energetically tidy up before you try to contact anybody.

Use protection. A few safety precautions never hurt anyone, and they’re a good idea if you’re going to attempt one of the more involved methods of communication, like channeled writing or astral travel. The salt circle is an oldie but a goodie — once you’ve set it up, only spirits you invite can enter the circle. (But please don’t sprinkle salt on the ground outdoors — this hurts plant life! Use another protective substance, like rosemary, to form the circle instead.)

Know who you’re talking to. It may not be in your best interest to chat it up with whoever presents themselves. Not every spirit has good intentions. I speak from experience when I say that opening the lines of communication to whoever is around is not the best idea. Be clear and specific with which spirits you invite into your space, and don’t open the door to spirits who make you uncomfortable. This is part of the reason that having an established relationship with spirits that you know and trust is important.

Don’t take things at face value. Something that doesn’t get brought up enough in the New Age community is the fact that spirits can and do lie. They can also be wrong, and may give you false information in good faith. Just because a spirit tells you something doesn’t make it true. Always do your own fact-checking outside of spirit work.

Don’t be the idiot in a horror movie. Use common sense when working with spirits. Use safety precautions (see previous notes about cleansing and protection). Don’t intentionally contact negative entities — don’t be that guy who buys a Ouija board so he can talk to Jack the Ripper’s ghost. If a spirit gives you bad vibes, tell them politely but firmly to leave. When in doubt ask yourself, “Would a character in a horror movie do this?” If the answer is yes, don’t do it. You’re smarter than that.

Resources:

The Angel Code by Chantel Lysette

Wicca for Beginners by Thea Sabin

Southern Cunning: Folkloric Witchcraft in the American South by Aaron Oberon

New World Witchery podcast (several episodes, including “Episode 164 — Irish Folklore and Magic,” “Episode 161 — Practicing Safe Hex,” and “Episode 152 — Honoring Ancestors”)

“My Goddesses: How and Why I Work with Mary and Hel” by Kelly-Ann Maddox

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recurring-polynya · 3 years

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Oh boy!!! Polynya I have a sudden ferocious hankering for Byakuya and Aizen being viciously passive aggressive to each other. Most of the time you write B he is in the company of his family or his loved ones. So clearly the ultimate way to bring out the knives is an AU in which all the captains are in the same Homeowner's Association. I have no preference for ships; I crave only drama, the pettier the better.

Alopex. Alopex. Why. Why u do this 2 me. You’re my favorite, tho, I cannot refuse you. I hope this is petty enough. I almost made this whole thing an epistolary fanfic that took place over NextDoor, the worst “social media”, but I think it worked better with everyone in person.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

🏠 🏠 🏠

“Gosh darnit, the only K-cups left are apple cider and pumpkin spice!”

“Oh, that can’t be right, I know I filled up the carousel just before the meeting! Retsu! Retsu, honey, we’re out of K-cups, and I bought a whole carton at Costco and I just don’t understand--”

Kuchiki Byakuya glanced up from the presentation materials he was reviewing for the six hundredth time. For starters, Byakuya wasn’t really sure anyone should be letting Hitsugaya Toushirou have coffee in the first place. It was 8p.m., and the child couldn’t be more than twelve. Byakuya had never been very clear on a) why the Seireitei Estates Homeowners’ Association let the child attend the meetings in lieu of his father (or possibly step-father?), a doctor who worked late hours, and b) why a young child would want to attend a Homeowners’ Association meeting anyway, but he had more sense than most of the other board members, so Byakuya didn’t ask questions.

Byakuya also wasn’t sure why they had to have “refreshment breaks.” Breaks were for quitters, in Byakuya’s opinion. Granted, the meeting was being held at Unohana’s house this month, which meant that the baked goods were impeccable, but Unohana’s high-strung wife tended to radiate so much nervous energy that Byakuya worried the woman was going to spontaneously combust.

“Oh, sunflower, I’m sure they just got pushed behind the croquembouche,” Unohana purred reassuringly. “I’ll help you look-- oh, excuse me, Mr. Ichimaru.”

As Unohana pushed past that weaselly shyster Ichimaru Gin, she swung her hips, knocking into him. Approximately thirty K-cups tumbled out of the pockets of Gin’s couture tracksuit.

“Oh, there they are!” Unohana sang innocently.

“How did those get in there?” Gin gasped, as though he were genuinely puzzled.

Byakuya shuddered. Ichimaru worked for the second biggest law firm in town, after, of course, Kuchiki and Sons. Byakuya dreaded the day he might find himself across a negotiation table from the man. Not that harbored any doubts about annihilating that idiot in a contest of the law, he just didn’t like being in the same room with him.

“Here you go, dear,” Unohana said, popping a K-cup into the machine and patting little Toushirou on the head. Toushirou was too busy glaring at Gin to notice.

“That looks like some presentation you’re givin' after the break, eh, Kuchiki?” Ichimaru drawled, selecting a bearclaw from the pastry tray. “Or didja bring home the paperwork from the Tsunayashiro merger?”

Byakuya sniffed and shuffled his papers back into their portfolio. “I approach all areas of my life with the same diligence as I do my professional work.”

“What a coinky-dink! I do, too-- I don’t work hard at anything.”

Byakuya had no interest in frittering away his preparation time to small talk with a moron. “I am going to set up,” he said coolly.

“Good luck!” Ichimaru trilled, giving a saucy little finger wave.

Byakuya returned to Unohana’s sitting room, where he had left his easel and poster board near the hideous faux fireplace with its tacky LED candles.

Aizen was sitting at the cardtable he’d set up at the front of the room, fiddling with his chintzy little gavel. “You look very prepared,” he said, in a tone of voice that was almost as insipid as the oatmeal-marl turtleneck sweater he wore. “Do try not to run too long, though. I’m only the substitute president, you know! I want to run a tight ship, ha ha!”

Byakuya narrowed his eyes. He was still slightly salty that President Yamamoto had felt the need to take a last minute trip on a “Single Seniors Cruise.” Something something about a flash sale and when you’re old you have to take advantage of the time you have left, etcetera, etcetera, but if there were anyone that Byakuya could count on take his side in the matter, it was that antediluvian rule-enforcer. For that matter, Byakuya wasn’t actually sure whether Yamamoto even cared about clipped hedges and shoveled sidewalks or if he just liked yelling at people and slapping them with fines.

Aizen was also a bit of a stickler for the finer points of home maintenance, but the man had no substance to him, with his floppy hair and his chunky knitwear and his horn-rimmed glasses.

“All right, everyone!” Aizen called in his stupid simpering voice. Byakuya had no idea what the man actually did, but Byakuya figured he was a preschool teacher or an art therapist or something equally touchy-feely. “Please take your seats! The next item on our agenda is a presentation on, uh, ‘A Secret But Important Topic, from our neighbor over at number six, let’s give a big hand for...Byakuya!”

“Hold the applause,” Byakuya said sternly, holding up a hand. “I come to you today to call for-- nay, demand the expulsion of one Zaraki Kenpachi from the Board of this Homeowners Association, and possibly also the entire neighborhood, if that’s possible.”

“We can’t kick people out of the neighborhood,” Aizen stage-whispered to him.

“Is he actually a member of the HOA Board?” Kyouraku asked, scratching his shaggy mane. “I’ve never seen him at one of these meetings.”

Byakuya turned to Tousen, the Board treasurer, who had taken his seat at the front table with Aizen and Ichimaru. “Mr. Tousen, did you happen to look into the dues records, as I requested?”

“I did, yes,” Tousen replied. “It turns out that Mr. Zaraki is excused from paying dues. There was a post-it note in President Yamamoto’s handwriting that said,” Tousen made finger quotes, “‘Zaraki fixed my car, excused from dues.’”

Byakuya scowled. “That doesn’t seem… sufficient… it is of no matter.” He grabbed the bed sheet covering his posterboard, and dramatically swept it away. It would have been more dramatic if the bedsheet weren’t covered in Chappy rabbits, but there was no way he was bringing one of his own 800-thread counts into a house that contained cats.

“I have been closely watching Mr. Zaraki’s residence for the last few months, as his rear yard backs to mine, and I believe he may be operating a fight club in his garden on weekends. They do move into the garage if the weather is unpleasant.”

A hush fell over the room, except for Isane and Ukitake Juushirou, who were discussing the merits of blind-baking pie crusts.

“Er, sorry, did I miss something?” Juushirou asked apologetically, after realizing he was the only person talking.

“Kenpachi seems to be running some sort of fight club,” his scruffy husband supplied, looking deeply confused, as usual.

“Goodness!” Juushirou exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

Byakuya cleared his throat. “Allow me to present the evidence I have gathered.” He picked up two large binders, and handed one to Soi Fon in the front row, and the other to Aizen, who immediately passed his, unopened, to Ichimaru. “There are about two dozen disreputable personages who are frequently found loitering about the premises. The first page of the binder indexes each of them by a descriptive nickname, including times I have seen them. Photographic evidence follows.”

“They seem to be washing cars in most of these photos,” Soi Fon pointed out, flipping a page back and forth. Or are they fixing the cars? I can’t tell.”

Komamura craned his head over, curiously. “Wow, is that a ‘73 Stingray? Nice.”

“Yes, they also like to get together to maintain and detail their vehicles,” Byakuya snapped. “Usually at ungodly hours of the morning. I am almost positive that many of those cars do not employ catalytic converters. In any case, it is easier to take pictures of them during the day.”

“Looks like they like to spray each other with hoses, too,” Gin noted, waggling his eyebrows. “Why are there so many pictures of this one guy with the red hair and tattoos? He sure doesn’t like to wear a shirt, does he?” Aizen appeared to be leaning to the side, trying to look at the book out of the corner of his eye.

“My dutiful sister did the photographic surveillance! She is very thorough, and I appreciated the help!” All these questions were knocking Byakuya off his game. He smacked his pointer against the poster. “May I direct your attention to Figure A, a bar chart of traffic on his street vs. hours of the day.”

“Tell us more about the fight club,” Soi Fon interrupted, shoving her binder over to Komamura. “Are there weapons involved, blunted or otherwise? How many people usually show up? Is it held regularly, or do you suspect there’s, say, an email list or something?”

“I think it’s some sort of mixed martial arts,” Byakuya said, rubbing his forehead. “There are often up to a dozen of them, but sometimes it’s as few as three or four.”

“You know, I’m looking through the bylaws,” Aizen said, turning pages in the bylaw binder without actually looking at them, “and I’m not exactly clear on whether fight clubs are actually… you know, forbidden.”

“They’re illegal,” Byakuya bit off.

“Per-haaaps,” Aizen drew out. “But what really constitutes… a ‘fight club,’ am I right? I mean, Dr. Unohana teaches kickboxing classes in her basement studio, is that a fight club?”

“No,” Byakuya replied.

“Exactly, and we wouldn’t want her to be painted with the same brush for just trying to teach other women the arts of self-defense, now would we?”

“It’s not for self-defense,” Unohana clarified.

“Or what about having a bunch of friends over and hitting each other with foam swords while you pretend to be werewolves?” Ichimaru broke in cheerfully. “That’s just our rights as citizens, to pretend to be werewolves in our basements with our friends.”

“It’s a tabletop RPG,” Komamura growled. “I am not a LARPer. There are no weapons. Also, you really do not need to bring it up every single board meeting. It is a perfectly normal adult hobby that I do to spend quality time with my friends.”

“Speaking of which,” Gin turned his binder of pictures around, “isn’t this guy in your group? With the sunglasses?”

“Hmm?” Komamura flipped a few pages. “Oh, huh, yeah, that’s Iba.”

“Surely a good friend of yours wouldn’t have anything to do with an illegal fight club, eh, Mr. Komamura?” Aizen suggested.

Komamura made a non-commital grumble. “I mean, I could ask him if it’s a fight club, if you want me to.”

“I have yet to hear any evidence that supports the existence of this so-called ‘fight club,” Tousen broke in.

“That’s because I keep getting interrupted, I have an audio recording and also some several emergency room admission records--”

“Mr. Zaraki is an upstanding citizen of our town and a devoted father,” Tousen continued. “Are you suggesting that Mr. Zaraki is not a responsible parent?”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Byakuya mused.

“Juushirou, you and Shunsui babysit for little Yachiru all the time, don’t you?” Aizen asked sweetly. “Have you ever seen any evidence that she isn’t the sweetest little girl in the entire world?”

Toushirou raised his hand. “Excuse me? She is a menace, actually?”

“Oh, no, Yachiru is always a ray of sunshine!” Juushirou beamed. “Very active child.”

“Eats a lot,” Kyouraku added.

The edges of Byakuya’s vision were beginning to bleed into red. “We are not talking about the Zaraki child--who, by the way, buried an entire ham in my prize tulip bed--”

“It sounds like you have a grudge against the entire family, Kuchiki,” Aizen replied mildly. “These board meetings are not a venue for airing your petty grievances.”

“You are not even listening! If you would just turn to page--”

“I think you’ve wasted enough of everyone’s time.” Aizen turned his doe eyes to the audience. “Is there anyone here who wants to invest any more energy listening to Byakuya’s vitriol?”

Byakuya looked out over his audience, looking for an ally. Komamura shifted in his seat uncomfortably. The Kyouraku-Ukitakes refused to make eye contact. Unohana was reading a magazine about decorative wreaths. Toushirou raised his hand again with a helpful smile, but no one actually ever cared what he thought.

“Soi Fon, you’re an actual police officer!” he begged.

“It’s just a fight club,” Soi Fon shrugged.

Byakuya was desperate. “Dr. Kurotsuchi?”

Kurotsuchi looked up from his phone. “Eh?”

“Have you been paying attention to any of this?”

“Of course not, I only come for the snacks.”

Byakuya gritted his teeth. “Zaraki is running a fight club and these fools wish us to turn our heads and look the other way.”

“Well, it’s not a very good fight club,” Kurotsuchi agreed. “I’ve been. They don’t allow poisoned weapons and the beverage selection is quotidian at best.”

“You see! You see, right there, Kurotsuchi has even attended! That’s proof that a) it exists and b) it defames the character of the neighborhood!”

“I’m declaring this issue closed,” Aizen replied breezily. “And Kuchiki, I really think you should try to get along better with Kenpachi. You are neighbors, after all.” He brightened. “Oh, I know! We’ve got the community yard sale coming up in June. Why don’t you go ask him if he wants to join the planning committee?”

“Byakuya… will...ask....Zaraki...to chair…the yard sale planning committee,” Gin read aloud as he wrote it into the minutes.

“I agreed to no such thing!” Byakuya howled.

“Onto the next topic!” Aizen chirped. “Trash pickup happens every Friday at 7am and a few of our neighbors have been leaving their bins out as late as noon.”

Later, after the meeting, as Byakuya was packing up his binders and his posterboard, Aizen walked up to him, munching on a rhubarb scone. “Really nice presentation, Byakuya. Good fonts, well cited, you obviously put a ton of work into it. Also, that Zaraki is a blight on the neighborhood. Ideally, he would be thrown in prison.”

Byakuya stared at Vice-Presiden Aizen, mouth agape. “Then why did you and your cronies ruin my presentation and shut me down at every turn?”

Aizen’s eyes narrowed. His mouth curved into a cold smile. Light glinted off his glasses. “You dared to usurp my rightful place as the winner of the Spring Spirit Most Beautiful Yard competition.”

Byakuya blinked at him blankly. “You cared about that? A man’s lawn is his pride. I keep my yard beautiful as a matter of principle, not for some silly competition.”

“You pay for a lawn service. You shouldn’t have even been eligible.”

Byakuya didn’t even recall entering, he’d just received a letter that he’d won, and a festive yard sign appeared next to his front walk, which he had immediately removed and thrown in the garbage. “The prize was a gift certificate to a miserable chain restaurant. I would give it to you, except that I already gave it to my sister to go out with her hooligan friends. They are perpetually short on funds. I could get you another one, I suppose. The amount was paltry enough, although I was given to understand that the place offers ‘unlimited breadsticks’.”

“It’s too late for that,” Aizen declared. “You have made a powerful enemy. You will feel my revenge in a thousand cuts.”

Byakuya wondered how much of a hassle it would be to just move. He’d heard there were some nice houses over in Karakura Acres.

~end

Shinigami’s Cup: GOLDEN!

“Do you think it would help if I infiltrated the fight club?”

“I appreciate your zeal, Sister, but, no, I do not think it would help.”

“Because I think I might have an in. I feel like I would be really good at going undercover. I could wear a body mic.”

“Rukia, you know I have the utmost faith in you, but are not even five feet tall. I do not, in any way, see how you could realistically ingratiate yourself to an organization populated by large, lumpy men whose raison d’etre is to clobber each other in the face.”

“I have cat-like reflexes! I am really good at dodging and weaving!”

“Rukia.”

“And I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos about muscle cars. Go on, ask me something about Dodge Chargers!”

“Rukia.”

“I even ripped the sleeves of an old t-shirt, I look super tough in it. Please, Byakuya, please can I?”

“All right, fine. But do not drink any alcoholic beverages that have ‘light’ or ‘ice’ in the title. It is against our pride as Kuchiki.”

“Thank you Brother, you’re the best!!”

#my writing #wacky au requests #is this...the first time i have written aizen?#wait i wrote some aizen in a flashback scene of a little in love #i do not write very much aizen #it was...kinda fun #the man is petty as hell and i am here for it

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gerrydelano · 4 years

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WEIRD QUESTION SRY but can u elaborate on the gerry using estrogen without a doctor? ive never actually heard that’s a possibility and google is not being helpful:(

not a weird question at all! it’s a topic that doesn’t get discussed as much as it should and there’s a lot of fearmongering surrounding it because people assume that the same risks apply to both T and E, when they don’t. under a cut just to save space!

long story short: testosterone is considered a controlled substance, but estrogen isn’t. at the end of the day, it all comes down to making sure that HRT is accessible to people who would otherwise face gatekeeping and denial when trying to go through a doctor. the risks of self medicating HRT are severely outweighed by the risks of never being able to get on it in the first place.

and after you get hrt prescribed, it’s all up to you to self administer anyway? there’s literally No Difference in this particular case, you just have to do your research and talk to other people who are already doing this safely to be sure you’re monitoring your personal reactions to whatever dosage you’re taking, etc. because yeah, everyone’s different and some things need to be adjusted, but y’know. it’s been done, it’s being done, and it saves lives.

this post points out how ridiculous it is to equate the risks between T and E, and how it’s more harmful to fully discourage trans people (transfems in particular) from taking their transition into their own hands if it turns out to be the best option for them. here’s another debunking some fearmongering.

and this post has some resources and links, including https://hrt.cafe/, which should give some more info on choosing a trusted provider. if you decide to go this route, it does go without saying that you do need to be careful, but like? anyone who goes this route is obviously genuine about it and is coming at it from a place of sincere desperation and there’s very little reason to just assume right off the bat that you won’t take as much precaution as necessary & that you won’t be taking it seriously.

overall, transfems are the people to ask about this. i’m transmasc and only JUST started hormones (which i got from planned parenthood, which is ALSO an option to look into for obtaining HRT or at the very least learning about it and asking questions about how to stay safe; they’re very good for just educating you in general, tbh, like i’d very much recommend that if you can stop by.) and by answering this i’m just boosting what i’ve seen transfem bloggers debunking & asking people to spread awareness of.

(and just ftr i’m not going to take any garbage in my inbox about how i’m playing doctor and encouraging people to be unsafe or something like genuinely just listen to transfeminine people & understand that navigating the medical field is a huge risk factor in and of itself.)

#not gonna bog this down with gerry hc talk #this info is important to take flat!#ronologues #sorry this took so long btw i got incredibly sidetracked #anon #asks

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iridescentides · 4 years

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hi again dia! happy first day of december ❤️💚 i wanted to ask you what, in your opinion, are the 5 most underrated dcoms? i remember you saying before that you've watched all of them so i'd love to hear your opinions 😊 - 🎅🎁🎄

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH secret santa you are so good! asking me all the best questions 💜

okay so i literally had to make a list of all the dcoms i consider underrated and then narrow down a top 5. theres lots of dcoms that i love, but that i think got the right amount of attention and care (like lemonade mouth and the teen beach movies, for example), so this list just focuses on ones that deserved more hype for their quality level.

5. The Cheetah Girls: One World (2008)

okay so even as i type this i feel like a hypocrite. i have only watched this movie one time. BUT i can acknowledge that its one of the most criminally underrated dcoms ever, tons of people didnt watch it simply because raven wasnt in it. thats why i avoided it as a child, and i didnt get around to watching it until i did my big dcom binge in 2016. and it was so good. theres a really long post floating somewhere around tumblr full of specifics on why its actually the best cheetah girls movie (my favorite is the second one purely out of nostalgia), so to paraphrase some points from that post:

its a solid example of cultural appreciation, rather than appropriation, as the girls go and learn about bollywood and indian culture together

the indian characters arent treated like props or unimportant sides, they get their own agency and storylines that are important

the songs are good!!!

basically this movie was overlooked and slept on even though in terms of role modeling and social value, and just like the first two cheetah girls movies it was important and impactful.

4. Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure (2011)

okay so as someone whos very neutral and occasionally negative-leaning towards the hsm franchise (mostly bc its overhyped and not really representative of all dcoms), i was pleasantly surprised by sharpays fabulous adventure. this is another one that i know lots of people skipped right over and dont hold with as much esteem as the main hsm franchise, and that doesnt sit right with me.

i do not agree with the “uwu sharpay was the real victim in hsm” arguments bc in their efforts to look galaxy brained the people who say that overlook the fact that she was a rich white woman who used her power and status to exercise control over opportunities that should have been fairly and freely available for all; they were not “making a mockery of her theater” in the first movie, they were literally just kids who wanted to try out a new school activity that everyone was supposed to be allowed to participate in; and despite allegedly learning her lesson and singing we’re all in this together with everyone at the end of the first movie, she literally showed no growth in the second movie as she fostered an openly hostile environment and favored troy so heavily that it literally cost him his friends, all as part of yet another jealous plan to take things away from people who already have less than her. she was NOT the victim in the main franchise, and she did not seem to exhibit any growth or introspection either.

and that!!! is why sharpays fabulous adventure was so important. in focusing on sharpay as the main character, they finally had to make her likeable. they did this by showing actual real growth and putting her outside of her sphere of influence and control. we saw true vulnerability from her, instead of the basic ass “mean girl is sad bc shes actually just super insecure” trope (cough cough radio rebel), and this opened us up to finally learn about and care about her character. throughout the movie we see her learn, from her love interests example, how to care for others and be considerate. she faces actual adversity and works through it, asking herself what she truly wants and what shes capable of. and in the end, when she finally has her big moment, we’re happy for her bc she worked hard to get there. she becomes a star through her own merit and determination, rather than through money and connections. this movie is not perfect by any means, but it is severely underrated for the amount of substance it adds to sharpays character.

3. The Swap (2016)

okay i know im gonna get shit for this but thats why its on this list!!! just like sharpays fabulous adventure, its not perfect and definitely misses the mark sometimes, but it deserves more attention and love for all the things it did get right!

the swap follows two kids who accidentally switch bodies because of their emotional attachment to their dead/absent parents’ phones. and while i normally HATE the tv/movie trope of a dead parent being the only thing that builds quick sympathy for a young character, they definitely expanded well enough to where we could root for these kids even without the tragedy aspect. we see them go through their daily struggles and get a feel for their motivations as characters pretty well. as a body switching movie, we expect it to be all goofy and wacky and lighthearted, but it moves beyond that in unexpected ways.

the reason the swap is on this list is for its surprisingly thoughtful commentary on gender roles. its by no means a feminist masterpiece, and its not going to radicalize kids who watch it, but it conveys a subtle, heartfelt message that deserves more appreciation. the characters struggle with the concept of gender in a very accurate way for their age, making off-base comments and feeling trapped by the weight of expectations they cant quite put their finger on. we watch them feel both at odds with and relieved by the gender roles they are expected and allowed to perform in each others bodies, and one of the most interesting parts of the movie to me is their interactions with the other kids around them. as a result of their feeling out of place in each others environments, the kids inadvertently change each others friendships for the better by introducing new communication styles and brave authenticity.

the value of this movie is the subtle, but genuine way it shows the characters growing through being given the space to act in conflicting ways to their expected norms. ellie realizes that relationships dont have to be complex, confusing, and painful, and that its okay to not live up to appearances and images. jack learns that emotional expression is good, healthy, and especially essential to the grieving process. one of the most powerful scenes in the movie comes at the end where, after ellie confronts jacks dad in his body, jack returns as himself to a very heartfelt apology from his father for being too hard on him; the explicit message (”boys can cry”) is paired with an open expression of love and appreciation for his kids that he didnt feel comfortable displaying until his son set an example through honest communication. this is such an empowering scene and overall an empowering movie for kids who may feel stuck in their expected roles, as it sets a positive example for having the courage to break the restrictive societal mold. for its overall message of the importance of introspection and emotional intelligence, the swap is extremely underrated.

2. Freaky Friday (2018)

this is my favorite dcom, and probably my favorite movie at this point. ive always assigned a lot of personal value to this movie (and i love every freaky friday in general), for the message of selfless familial love and understanding. i know i can get carried away talking about this topic; i got an anon ask MONTHS ago asking me about the freaky friday movies and i wrote a super super long detailed response that i never posted bc i didnt quite finish talking about the 2018 movie. and thats bc on a personal level, i cant adequately convey all the love i have for this movie. so i will try to keep this short.

first lets state the obvious: the reason people dont like this movie is bc its not the lindsay lohan version. and i get that, to an extent, bc i also love the 2003 version and its one of my ultimate comfort movies, and grew up watching it and ive seen it a billion times. i even watched it a couple days ago. but the nostalgia goggles that people have on from the early 2000s severely clouds their judgement of the wonderful 2018 remake.

yes, the 2018 version is dorky, overly simplistic plot wise, a bit stiff at times, and super cheesy like any dcom. the writing isnt 100% all the time. the narrative takes a couple confusing turns. the song biology probably shouldnt have been included. i understand this. but at the heart of it all, this movies value is love. and its edge over all the other freaky friday movies is the songs.

on a personal level, the movie speaks heavily to me. i cried very early into my first viewing of the movie bc i got to see dara renee, a dark-skinned, non-skinny actress, playing the mean popular girl on disney channel. that has never happened before. growing up, i saw the sharpays and all the other super thin white women get to be the “popular” girls on tv, and ultimately they were taken down in the end for being mean, but that doesnt change the fact that they were given power and status in the first place for being conventionally beautiful. so, watching dara renee strut around confidently and sing about being the queen bee at this high school got to me immediately. and in general, the supporting cast members of color really mean a lot to me in this movie. we get to see adam, an asian male love interest for the main character. we have a second interracial relationship in the movie with katherines marriage to mike. ellies best friend karl is hispanic. and we see these characters have depth and plot significance, we see them show love, care, and passion for the things they value. the brown faces in this movie are comforting to me personally. additionally, the loving, blended family dynamic is important to me as someone in a close-knit, affectionate step-family.

but on a more general level, this movie is underrated for its skillful musical storytelling and the way it conveys all kinds of love and appreciation. in true freaky friday fashion, we watch ellie and katherine stumble and misstep in their attempts to act like each other. its goofy and fun. but through it all, the music always captures the characters’ intimate thoughts and feelings. the opening song gives us a meaningful view into ellie and katherines relationship and the fundamental misunderstandings that play a role in straining their connection. ellie sings about how she thinks her mom wants her to be perfect, and her katherine sings about all the wonderful traits she sees in her daughter and how she wants her to be more open and self assured. this is meaningful bc even as theyre mad at each other, the love comes through. the songs continue to bring on the emotional weight of the story, as ellie sings to her little brother about her feelings of hurt and abandonment in her fathers absence. the song “go” and its accompanying hunt scene always make me cry bc of the childlike wonder and sense of adventure that it brings. for the kids, its a coming of age, introspective song. for katherine who gets to participate in ellies body, its a reminder of youth and the rich, full life her daughter has ahead of her. she is overcome with excitement, both from getting to be a teenager again for a day, and from the realization that her daughter has a support network and passions that are all her own. today and ev’ry day, the second to last song, is the culmination of the lessons learned throughout the movie, a mother and daughters tearful commitment to each other to love, protect, and understand one another. the line “if today is every day, i will hold you and protect you, i wont let this thing affect you” gets to me every time. even when things are hard and dont go according to plan, they still agree, in this moment, to be there for each other. and thats what all freaky friday stories are ultimately about.

freaky friday 2018 is a beautiful, inclusive, subversive display of familial love, sacrifice, and selflessness, and it is underrated and overlooked because of its more popular predecessor.

1. Let It Shine (2012)

this is another one of my favorite dcoms and movies in the whole world. unlike the other movies on this list, it is not the viewers themselves that contribute to the underrated-ness of this movie. disney severely under-promoted and under-hyped this movie in comparison to its other big musical franchises, and i will give you five guesses as to why, but youll only need one!

let it shine is the most beautifully, unapologetically black dcom in the whole collection. (i would put jump in! at a notable second in this category, but that one wasnt underrated). this movie was clearly crafted with care and consideration. little black kids got to see an entire dcom cast that represented them. the vernacular used in the script is still tailored mostly to white-favoring audiences, but with some relevant slang thrown in there. in short, the writers got away with the most blackness they were allowed to inject into a disney channel project.

the story centers on rap music and its underground community in atlanta, georgia. it portrays misconceptions surrounding rap, using a church setting as a catalyst for a very real debate surrounding a generational, mutlicultural conflict. this was not a “safe” movie for disney, given its emphasis on religious clashes with contemporary values. it lightly touches on issues of image policing within the black community (cyrus’s father talking about how “our boys” are running around with sagging pants and “our girls” are straying away from god), which is a very real and pressing problem for black kids who feel the pressure (from all sides) of representing their whole race with their actions. its a fun, adorable story about being yourself and staying true to your art, but also a skillful representation of struggles unique to black and brown kids and children from religious backgrounds.

on top of crafting a fun, wholesome, thoughtful narrative and likeable protagonists, let it shine brought us what is in my opinion the BEST dcom soundtrack of all time. every single song is a bop. theyre fast, fun, and lyrically engaging. “me and you” is my favorite disney channel song of all time due to its narrative significance; i will never forget my first time watching the movie and seeing that big reveal unfold onstage, as a conversation and a plot summary all wrapped into a song. the amount of thought and care that went into the music of this movie should have been rewarded with a level of attention on par with that of other musical dcoms.

if disney channel had simply cared about let it shine more, it couldve spanned franchises and sold songs the way that other musical dcoms have drawn in success. i would have loved for a sequel that explored and fleshed out cyrus’s neighborhood a little bit more, and maybe dipped into that underground scene they caught a glimpse of. i wanted a follow up on the changed church community once cyrus’s father started supporting his sons vision. i want so much more for these characters and this world than disney gave them in just one movie.

for its bold, unabashed representation of blackness and religion, subtle, nuanced presentation of race-specific issues, strong, likeable characters, and complex, thoughtful songs, let it shine is the most underrated dcom.

and because i made a full list before i started writing this post, here are some honorable mentions:

going to the mat (2004)

gotta kick it up! (2002)

tru confessions (2002)

dont look under the bed (1999)

invisible sister (2015)

#this took me embarassingly long to write #i cant help myself i literally think about this all the time #youre doing a great job with these questions secret santa!#dcoms #disney channel #answered asks #anons #gcwca secret santa #Anonymous

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contentbaer · 3 years

Text

How to build White Hat SEO Links for Contentbär SEO

So, how do you go about doing true White Hat SEO link building these days? This is perhaps the most often asked question of mine.

To be honest, there is a LOT of incorrect material on the internet about how to accomplish link building that isn't "WHITE HAT."

To be clear, requesting for links for the sole goal of getting them is against Google Webmaster Guidelines and hence not “white hat.”

The good news is that you may now produce a significant return on investment without manually establishing links. Today, I'm going to show you how I've been able to naturally grow links and generate cash without writing a single email, guest post, purchasing a PBN, or doing anything else that link builders do to build links, and how you can do the same.

Does that make sense? Let's get started.

Build Authority for Contentbär Contest Using Your Market's Vulnerabilities

SEO is marketing, not magic. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's not magic. Rankings for keywords and links are only a small element of marketing that will ideally result in dollar signs. So, if you could find alternative ways to get revenue outside rating a webpage, wouldn't you want to? The importance of competitor research cannot be overstated.

Here's how to spot flaws in your specialty, as well as how to turn those flaws into natural links and long-term advantages. Take a look at your top 3-5 competitors' platforms to discover where they perform the poorest and best. Determine what works and what doesn't for them.

Is it skyscraper (long form) content that they're after? Maybe 10 minute Youtube videos with unique layouts? Do they have a successful Twitter outreach strategy? and so on. The argument is that if you're just starting out and want links, don't reinvent the wheel; instead, concentrate on establishing authority. To put it another way, strive to copy what your competitors are doing first and then innovate, rather than the other way around.

Consider the following scenario: Because the market on YouTube was so undersaturated in comparison to Google when I launched my SEO service, I started developing big content there. I now have 25k subscribers and over 1 million views on my YouTube channel, and I generate clients, backlinks, reviews, and other revenue from that asset alone on a regular basis. That isn't all, though.

I'm able to divert traffic to new assets that I want to promote and make money off of, such as Facebook groups, blog entries, courses, and so on, thanks to the authority I've built on YouTube. And, if I choose, I can leverage the authority and viewership I've built on Youtube to build links simply by discussing the new assets I'm developing.

In a moment, I'll expand on this. Value is quite important.

If you're having trouble getting links, it's likely that you're not providing enough value for your audience to link back to or share the material you're creating. Alternatively, you may have no audience at all. That is why you must have a strong foundation.

Look, it may seem obvious, but figuring out who you're selling to and what they genuinely want in the first place, if you haven't already, is critical. At the end of the day, you must understand: There are two categories of users who will see your article.

People who are likely to purchase from you

Individuals who will link to you There are some similarities here, but for the most part, people who buy from you are unlikely to connect back to you. So, at first, your content and authority development should ideally be aimed toward the people who will connect to you.

Is that clear?

Doing a roundup or an interview is a great approach to gain links from these folks. Pitchbox is my favorite tool for this because it allows me to connect with some of the world's top experts in any subject with just a few clicks. Take, for example, a recent article I wrote about "the top SEO tools recommended by professionals." All of this outreach was automated, and it only took a few minutes to get the piece published. Every single one of these suggestions came from people with blogs and, in some cases, large social media followings. Not only do I get almost free content from people who know a lot about the subject I'm having them write about, but I also get the chance to gain a link from them in the future because they were mentioned in the piece.

Let's go one step further for Contentbär.

I also now have a direct line of communication with these individuals, so if any of them have unusually high authority in the industry, I could invite them to an interview on my Youtube channel, then give them the video and transcription to post on their site with a link back to me. Again, focusing on building connections and substance rather than going out to random website owners and asking for a link is a WAY better marketing strategy. Make something that people want to tell their friends about.

Figure out what your industry's true needs are if you really want to establish links. Some SEOs seems to only want to do the following:

Investigate keywords.

Find a keyword with a large search volume that appears to be profitable.

Create material based on a guess at the word count.

Inquire about linkages.

I'm hoping the page will be ranked.

For a variety of reasons, this is a bad plan.

If you want to rank for something, you should first check at what is already ranking well for that topic. It's possible that the content is already well-formatted, with thousands of words, video, photographs, comments, and so on, and in that case, simply putting words on a website isn't going to cut it.

You're trying to figure out why Google is giving that page such a high rating in the first place. It's usually because the post is something that people genuinely want.

After you've figured out these two things, you'll want to aim to beat the average user intent and go above and above in terms of not just word count, photos, video, and so on, but also in terms of beating whatever the average expectation for that post is.

If someone is looking for top gaming tips for "insert new game," and the best article on the market is some weak post about 3 strategies to win, which isn't even directly targeting what people are looking for, you could easily write an article on the top 5 gaming tips and rate it without a single link.

If you want to build links, though, you should aim to go above and beyond the average and make the top 50-100 gaming advice, and BOOM, you've got something special worth connecting to. In terms of naturally creating links, obviously you won't want to just generate content and hope someone reads it; instead, you'll want to use the strategies I outlined earlier to bring in more visitors. Here's how I'm going to promote the article you're reading right now.

Originally, I'll have it indexed by Google Search Console so that Google knows the stuff I'm authoring first appeared here.

After that, I'll make a video in which I read this article and add my own thoughts and observations. Once the film is released, I'll link it back to this page in the hopes of having it rank as a video in Google Search as well (making sure I add JSON-LD video markup to the post with a plugin I acquired).

Then I'll take the video and post it on my Facebook group, page, and personal profile in its native format. I'll publish the video to similar other SEO groups after I see how well it performs.

After that, I'll directly repost this post on Reddit. Then, to target recent visitors, I'll launch a remarketing campaign on Facebook advertisements.

Then I'll send an email to my 4k-strong email list, telling people to read the piece and watch the video. After that, I'll share this article on LinkedIn.

You get my drift. At the end of the day, my Youtube video or blog post may only receive a few hundred views and appear on Google's or Youtube's fourth page.

However, my article on various assets will acquire THOUSANDS of views before it even ranks, thus increasing the chances that I will obtain a link or a share.

So there you have it, that's how I develop links without going out and doing it myself, and how you can do it too. If anything was unclear, please let me know by leaving a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

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citrineghost · 3 years

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Can we stop romanticizing caffeine addiction?

I’m not saying people shouldn’t enjoy coffee. By all means. But, can we stop normalizing the reliance on caffeine to get by day to day? Can we stop pressuring other people to use caffeine to get by? I feel like this is something that has slowly become pervasive in, at least, American society.

I have a lot of important stuff to say on this, but I want it to be clear that it’s mostly observation and based on things I’ve heard with no source. I skimmed some articles for this to check if I was off-base, but most of them were about chemical effects, rather than social effects. If you follow me, you know I tend to have a lot of opinions about sociological matters, and that’s what this is. I don’t have a degree. I’m not a chemist or a doctor. Take what you read with a grain of salt. If anyone has further information or sources on these topics, I highly encourage you to reblog and share them, both for my own research and for others’ education.

Before reading, please consider taking this survey I made to further study how people consume caffeine. Every response helps! If I get enough survey responses, I’ll create an addition to this post with a breakdown of the information I’ve gathered.

Analysis under the cut

It’s treated almost like how young people treat alcohol.

You’ll see teenagers and college students who go out drinking every day they don’t have school the next morning, take shots on weekdays, and drink alcohol from water bottles when they’re stressed. As long as they’re not drunk 100% of the time - as long as they aren’t a 40 year old surrounded by empty beer bottles and a stack of divorce papers, they can’t be an alcoholic, right? While a lot of people might grow out of their abuse of alcohol, all of those teens and college students who don’t end up growing into those miserable middle-aged people that they felt so separate from - so superior to - as young adults.

The same way alcohol is treated as a solution to stress, caffeine is treated like a solution to fatigue. Again, I am NOT saying that drinking some coffee when you’re a bit tired is some kind of moral dilemma. What I am saying is that, while it doesn’t have the same effects as alcohol, caffeine is an active substance that affects how your body functions. It increases your heart rate. It makes you feel more alert. It is a stimulant.

To get an idea of how caffeine affects the body and mind, consider for a moment that people with ADHD frequently self medicate with caffeine without realizing that’s what they’re doing. The stimulant effects of caffeine do very similar things to what amphetamines do. For someone with ADHD, this can be helpful in focusing. Ask someone with ADHD if caffeine energizes them and many will tell you that it actually feels calming. I know, as a teen, coffee was a before bed treat for me. That’s because, with ADHD, the brain is understimulated and overcompensating for it. By stimulating it, it stops working overdrive and chills out because it’s getting the stimulation it should be producing by itself.

However, when non-ADHD people drink caffeine, it amps them up. It gives them energy and they become chemically dependent on it - i.e. addicted to it. You can see evidence of caffeine addiction by stopping drinking it. If you drink coffee every single day, try going without it for a week. You’ll probably start getting aching, throbbing headaches.

Don’t forget that caffeine is an addictive substance, even if it’s normalized.

“Oh, it’s just a caffeine headache. That’s normal.”

Caffeine headache. Do you know what that is? That’s the normalized term for withdrawal from caffeine. As in, the kind of withdrawals someone with a chemical addiction has.

Most things can be used safely in moderation. That’s the exact reason amphetamines, like Adderall, are safe to use in controlled doses, but methamphetamine is dangerous and becomes immediately addictive. For that reason, drinking caffeine and reaping the benefits of its stimulative properties can be fine if you’re doing so every few days to pick up some slack from a late night or to keep you alert during a roadtrip. However, when you get to a point of using caffeine every single day, or multiple times a day, you are reaching a point of abusing it.

Obviously, abusing caffeine is not the same as abusing something like alcohol or hard drugs. However, it does have negative impacts on the body and psyche. For one thing, your addiction to caffeine makes you dependent on it. Instead of being able to wake up and shake off a little bit of tiredness in the morning, you suddenly feel sluggish consistently until you ‘have your morning coffee.’ Your body has become so accustomed to having its stimulation delivered to it out of a mug that it has stopped doing the work to keep you awake on its own.

Your morning coffee turns into morning coffee, lunch break coffee, Starbucks on the way home, and an extra shot on days where you’re feeling a little extra tired. Again, this isn’t about shaming people for liking coffee. Coffee tastes great. Starbucks is delicious.

The point I’m trying to make is, are you consciously aware of what you’re doing to your body and mind? If you are, it’s your decision to make. But, I know there are doubtlessly countless people - teens especially - who copy mom and dad, buy coffee for the taste and don’t think about the caffeine contents, or rely on energy drinks to get through finals. For those who haven’t really thought about the extent of the effects of caffeine, I want to provide an opportunity to realize that it might not be just a fun, cool thing. It might actually be doing you harm.

How does caffeine cause someone harm?

When I say that caffeine can end up causing you harm, I don’t mean it’s going to cause liver failure or something. I mean that the way we have normalized caffeine addiction is inherently unhealthy. The way it has become something a large percentage of people have, rather than those who might genuinely need the assistance of caffeine and find the minor addiction worth it, is not okay.

Caffeine addiction causes harm by slowly reducing a person’s ability to sleep, long-term. There are some studies that suggest people with caffeine addiction can develop an inability to get the sleep they need over time. This may be caused by waking up too soon due to the body’s craving of caffeine or it can be caused by difficulty falling asleep from the residual caffeine effects.

Caffeine addiction causes harm by creating a disruptive habit. Consider: do you feel good about the fact that you can’t function without caffeine? Do you get frustrated by the fact that you have to spend money on your lunch break to top up or risk crashing in the middle of work or class? The fact is, the average person doesn’t need to rely on caffeine every morning - they have only grown to rely on it due to a routine that became an addiction.

Caffeine addiction causes harm by amplifying certain medication side effects, which makes getting a proper medication dosage impossible without the side effects taking over. This is true of stimulants, like those used to treat ADHD, among other things. Rapid heart rate, anxiety, and psychosis can be developed or amplified when taking both stimulants and overdoing it with caffeine.

Caffeine addiction causes harm by amplifying existing conditions, such as anxiety, psychosis, insomnia, and so on. If you have any symptoms of mental illness, you are likely making them more pronounced by drinking caffeine.

Caffeine addiction causes harm by permeating social environments. Back to what I said above about people treating caffeine the way young people do alcohol. There is a massive amount of peer pressure surrounding caffeine. And no, I don’t mean coffee in general, I mean caffeine itself.

People (in the US, specifically - idk about everywhere else) will mock people who don’t like coffee.

Teens form brand loyalty to energy drink companies and pressure friends into drinking the same things as them.

If you don’t drink coffee every morning, people act like you’re not really a working adult. There is something about coffee and caffeine that has become synonymous with maturity in our culture.

If you like coffee, but you opt for decaf or half-caf, people treat you like you’re pretentious, childish, or weak in some way, even if you do it for reasons other than an aversion to caffeine dependency. (like medical reasons)

If you go to a coffee shop with friends and order tea or something else uncaffeinated, you may become the butt of jokes. (“What’s the point of going to a coffee shop if you’re drinking hot chocolate?” /scoff/)

Teens are pressured by peers to drink coffee in the morning just like adults do. If your parents don’t let you drink coffee, or you just choose not to, your classmates think you’re lame for it, or some kind of goody goody.

The parallels to alcohol use are startling. Reread that list and imagine it’s talking about alcohol. Every bulletpoint in the list can be translated perfectly.

This social stigma around caffeine and the choice not to consume it is harmful to a person’s psyche and can lead to caffeine dependency that otherwise would not have developed.

And the ultimate question: Why do we feel the need to become caffeine dependent?

Is it all peer pressure and the joy of a hot cup of coffee? I don’t think so. If we take a look at the bigger picture, like most things, it can be blamed on living in a capitalistic society. Caffeine consumption is largely caused by the desperation to rid yourself of exhaustion - to give yourself an energy boost.

Why do we need to do that so much that we form an addiction and become reliant on caffeine? It’s simple: we are overworked, pushed too hard in school, and are forced to take on a fast-paced, stressful schedule just to keep on top of bills. Coffee becomes one of the only reprieves from a life of fatigue and burnout. If we don’t have the energy to spend three hours on that paper, we fail out of college and lose out on thousands of dollars in student loans - lose out on the opportunity to get a job that will pay enough to live on. If we don’t show up to work with a smile and a spring in our step, we get fired for not representing the company positively enough.

We aren’t allowed to be tired. We aren’t allowed to rest. It drives us to self-medicate with caffeine so that while we’re working ourselves into an early grave, we can at least ignore the exhaustion that comes alongside it.

The takeaway: Are you actually happy with how you consume caffeine?

Take a moment to ask yourself, do you drink caffeine because you need to to sustain your lifestyle (working night shifts, traveling long hours very frequently, etc.), or do you drink it because you started and you don’t know how to stop? If the answer is that you like the taste of the drinks or you’re not really sure, it’s time to consider healthier-for-you alternatives. You can:

Drink decaf coffee, decaf teas, decaf sodas, and replace energy drinks with something else carbonated that isn’t based around caffeine consumption

Give yourself a withdrawal break for a couple months to allow your body to get back to normal and then limit caffeine consumption to once every few days or less

Find other drink alternatives that don’t generally have caffeine to begin with

If you’re drinking caffeine to survive the type of life you’re forced to live under late stage capitalism, it might be time to start pushing back so that you can remain energized and happy without having to resort to self-medicating. We shouldn’t have to do that. We should be able to live happy lives without caffeine.

#ghostpost #caffeine #coffee #tea #bookblr #starbucks #winter #soda #energy drinks #monster #survey #research #opinions #food #substances #addiction #addiction mention

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unpopularly-opinionated · 5 years

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RE: My post earlier about the Ooblets Epic Games Exclusive backlash.

I’m not going to show the Twitter user, if you follow the indie game development scene on Twitter it’s likely you’ll recognize this tweet, either way that’s not who I am. The Ooblet’s account on the other hand is fair-game since it’s basically a product placement.

I feel it needs reiterating how utterly dense this kind of tweet is, and how completely skewed the narrative for this issue has gotten, so let me reiterate in obnoxiously large and emboldened font to try and get the point across:

THE GAMING COMMUNITY IS NOT TOXIC

“Honesty” and “transparency” are all well and good, but unless you’re honestly trying to drive away your own community, perhaps you should try being a little less honest and a little less transparent. No one (or I guess no one but this guy and the few who agree with him) is going to thank you for honestly throwing them under the proverbial bus after they’ve spent months, if not years, supporting your project; your dream.

I’ve heard from others that “this is just how they write” and “it’s meant to be funny”, and to an extent, I can understand that. But let me just include some screenshots from the post in question to reiterate my point, because I feel like my previous post didn’t quite get the point across:

(Context: What the Epic Games Exclusivity Deal means for you, the fan and/or financial backer of Ooblets).

I get that the Fortnite bit is the joke, ha ha, Fortnite used to be wildly popular, I get it, good meme. What isn’t the joke, and what was part of why people got upset was the first bit, specifically the “download the Epic Games Launcher and make an Epic Games account” bit, that bit.

Now, I personally have no qualms about having the Epic Games Launcher on my PC. I have long since looked beyond the ‘scandal’ of tech companies saving and selling my data to distant lands to be used for nefarious moneymaking schemes. Is it bad? Sure, maybe. Would I prevent it had I the chance? Of course. Do I have that chance? Not a chance in the world, so I decide to live with it.

That said, many others have not reached that point of fuck it, and understandably so. I hit that point because of my negative outlook on society as a whole but, praise be, there are in fact still some optimists out there who look at these shitty corporate tactics and say no to them, and good on them for that.

That is what I would say is the bulk of the primary issues people have with the Epic Games Store. The missing features bits aren’t terribly important, as even this post says, if you have a social life on Steam, then use Steam. The EGS does not need to be your do-all replacement.

This is where the post should have stopped. Here and now, had this post ended, any and all issues with this decision would have been but a whisper in the wind. As I said in my previous post, yes they undoubtedly would have received plenty of critical, and non-critical backlash for the decision regardless, but ending the post here would’ve 100% put the developers on the right side in this situation and I’d be right up there agreeing with that tweet.

(Context: Are you angry at Epic and/or us for this decision?)

Referring to earlier when I said that playful tone and humour are all fine and dandy, I understand that this is probably meant to sound playful and humourous, but it comes across as largely self-important and ignorant, and the bits that follow do in no way dissuade from that appearance.

While my response to this complaint was similar to their own, in that you should just use Steam for the features that the Epic Games Store lacks, they go on to essentially say that this is just baby EGS and that Steam used to be just like it and look at it now.

While they aren’t technically wrong, from a development point of view, the big thing they need to understand is how web standards have dramatically changed since 2003 when the Steam store launched. Launching a store, of any variety, without a shopping cart is a big no-no.

As far as missing features go, that’s not like missing a friends list or a IM feature, that’s missing a crucial part of a web-based storefront. Imagine going to a store and only be allowed to purchase one thing at a time, that would be ridiculous.

Their response to this was as corporate as any triple-A publisher, or really any corporation at all, from any industry. Just a complete disconnect from society that frankly is unwarranted from what is quite literally a two person operation. Not to mention, their response is quite literally what every parent warns their kids about at a young age. “But mooooooooooooom, everyone is doing it!!!!” Yes sweetie, but if everyone jumps off a bridge, are you going to?

Apparently, yes.

And not to discount the idea of making money, by all means make money, but let me put it this way, had they left this post exactly where I said they should have previously, all of the blame would be at Epic’s feet. Because at the end of the day, having your game be exclusive to one service does not make you money, it makes them money. So this whole “everyone is doing it” schtick doesn’t fly when coming from the developers. Had this been a post by Epic (and frankly with all the shilling I could be convinced it was from them) then this argument might have made just a tiny bit more sense.

Underlined in yellow are the jokes; the “playful” and “humourous” attitude I’ve heard so much about. Underlined in red however, are what the developers are actually genuinely saying with complete and utter seriousness.

“There are worse things in the world to be upset about.” I kid you not, that’s their argument.

Now, all of that reiterated, to get to the actual point of this post (wish Tumblr let you do multiple “Keep Reading” lines but I digress), the article linked in the tweet here is about the previous “non-critical” backlash I mentioned they’d receive, though multiplied exponentially by their horrendous blog post, and further community responses to said blog post.

I’d like to refer to a completely unrelated post I made quite a while ago that really needs to spread like wildfire if you ask me:

RECEIVING INSULTS, UNCRITICAL FEEDBACK, AND/OR DEATH THREATS DOES NOT INVALIDATE THE CRITICAL FEEDBACK NOR THE ISSUE AT HAND.

I am by no means wiping away death threats or mean words as things to scoff at, by all means take them as seriously as you will, but under no circumstances should 20+ people telling you to kill yourself invalidate the hundreds of fans and financial backers who are upset with your recent financial decision, or your response to criticisms to those decisions.

This happens time and time and time again. Someone of note does something bad, for one reason or another, and instead of responding to the completely warranted and justified criticism and feedback they instead play up the 15+ people who IM’d them to drink bleach and throw it up as “an example of the ever present toxic gaming community”.

More or less, the substance to this article is their “apology”, and I use that term very loosely but I’ll get to that, to the community at large for the recent events. The post summarizes the issue from their (biased) perspective, posts some screenshots of the colourful responses they’ve received, the usual woe-is-me schtick.

I’d like to highlight a few bits from it to further exemplify the continued mindset of these people:

I have given the full context to this next statement with these screenshots so that I can now take parts of these statements out of their context to, at least to my belief, succinctly identify the mindset of these folks:

“I understand the relationship people think they might be owed when they exchanged money for goods or services, but...we’ve never actually sold them anything and don’t owe them anything at all.”

I don’t want to get off-topic any more than necessary, but this, this right here is why fundraisers, Kickstarters, GoFundMes, Patreon subscriptions, or any other form of crowdsourcing platforms need to be handled with extreme care. I hesitate to say regulated legally, but I am by no means opposed to that idea.

I want to express this carefully and plainly: LEGALLY, yes they are absolutely right that they do not owe anyone anything. At least to my knowledge, they didn’t have a formal Kickstarter, their financial backing came primarily from whatever it is they do for a living AND the support of their Patreon backers.

And while I do not feel that it needs addressing, for the sake of consistency I will address it: MORALLY they owe the game to anyone who financially supported them with the express purpose of developing the game.

“We definitely owe all of you who supported us, but also fuck off you entitled cunts because we don’t owe you shit.”

When in the face of well-deserved criticism, deflect deflect deflect. As if a broken record, I’d like to again emphasize that yes, legally they owe no one anything. Morally, they do. Legally, they don’t. Morally, yes. Legally, no.

This, in essence, is a response to the majority of people who are like me, who aren’t screaming vitriolic personable attacks, telling them to drink bleach, long jog off a short pier, the works. Essentially: “If you aren’t with us, then you’re against us.”

Because apparently pointing out your blatant mischaracterisation of the gaming community, your outrageously awful personal relations skills, and most especially your morally bankrupt understanding of the relationship between you and the people financially supporting your passion project means we are, by their logic, on a level equivalent in nature to the 10+ people telling them to drink bleach.

Fixed for typos:

Remember how I said this was an “apology” in the loosest form, well what I was referring to was how in the beginning during their (totally unbiased) summary of the events, they more or less said “Sorry you didn’t respond the way we wanted you to.” Beyond that, yeah, it’s not an apology.

And why would we expect one? Nothing they have spat out in the face of their fans so far has even a hint of self-realization or self-reflection in it. Even their acknowledgement of their (horrendously under exaggerated) bad PR skills comes across as a hollow acknowledgement, if it can even be referred to as an acknowledgement at all, because if you truly truly acknowledged it, then this post wouldn’t exist.

As to this anti-Semitic fabrication making the rounds, I have not seen it so I will take their word for it that they did not make one, especially since I have seen fabricated evidence involving Discord messages rearranged out of order. What I feel needs addressing specifically in this chunk though is his reference to “my messages taken out of context to insinuate I don’t care about our patrons/fans”, because if you’ve seen my previous post then you’ll know no amount of context makes this statement look good:

Sure, it’s a true statement of fact now that they have Epic’s money, but it’s fairly obvious that it reads “We have Epic’s money now, we don’t need you anymore.” I’m sure they didn’t mean that, but that when combined with their other statements regarding how they don’t owe their patrons anything, what they are saying is clear as day.

But hey, credit where credit is due, at least with this we can agree:

But of course, as these people are now infamously known for not ending their posts where they reasonably should...

Now I know how much money goodwill, faith, and morals make, and again I would fully expect this kind of response from the likes of EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, or fuck even Amazon or Facebook to show that corporate greed has no industry bounds, but this is a two person team whose passion project is to make this game which is being financially supported by loyal fans and future customers.

And that’s just it, that is the mind-boggling part to me, that this is all just the self-important, mischaracterising, morally bankrupt, and childishly ignorant ramblings of a small little husband and wife duo.

In summary...

As was said in the blog post, I’m sure that looking from the outside in we don’t get to see the full scope of the vitriolic comments they’re receiving, so to that I give them credit, and the most sincerest of apologies. I’ve received a few death threats and vitriolic hate-filed messages in my time on the internet, and while personally I am unphase by them, I can fully understand that it can be damaging to one’s self-esteem and self-confidence, especially when it comes in relation to your passion project. I am sorry.

But unwarranted, hate-filled, vitriolic, suicide-baiting messages do not invalid those of us criticizing you for the things that you did do, the words that you did say, and the actions that you did take. I mentioned this in my previous post, but as it stands, the centerpiece to this issue isn’t even about the Epic Exclusivity Deal anymore, it’s about you. You and your treatment, of not just the community at large (for which, might I add, is your primary customer base), but of your treatment towards your loyal fans and financial supporters along the way.

You, for whatever reason, act as most of us have come to expect a soulless and faceless triple-A publisher would, when in fact you are just a two person team with public faces. You’re taking the shots that the likes of EA, Activision, or Bethesda would and have taken, but you’re forgetting that it is above and beyond easier to find you then it is to find them.

All we, but more importantly your fans want from you is for you to make the best game that we all know you’re capable of. And for those who supported you this far along the way to be given even an ounce of respect, despite you not needing their support anymore.

#long post #seriously don't click keep reading unless you really want to read this #it's stupid long #ooblets #indie games #indie developers #video game development #random rant

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sol1056 · 5 years

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multipart ask on Keith

I would honestly love your thoughts on Keith’s character development, specifically him leaving for the Blades in S4. Personally I’ve always been on a fence with how they wrote Keith’s character after that. For one, he started as a lone wolf and I always thought they would subvert that along the way with more character interactions and team building episodes like in S1, but apparently S4 throws all of that away. I thought him forcibly being the leader of voltron would be a great opportunity for development but Shiro takes his place in the black lion and Keith just leaves.

It really didn't help with all the signs pointing as him as the true leader of voltron when he barely even interacted with the team personally (except for shiro) after that point. To top it all off his “maturation” was a two year time skip montage with his mom and he suddenly became level headed and ready to fly Black. So when he finally returns and become the leader of voltron it felt a bit underwhelming and hollow. To be honest I also find his interaction with the team afterwards kinda out of character [...]

I just wanted to hear from a writers perspective if Keith leaving was a good idea for his character in general. He had some really good scenes in his time with the Blades but i personally think in exchange it took way too much [away from] his development with the others. I also wonder if it's even possible [to execute well] leaving for the Blades and then becoming the leader of Voltron.

Here’s a general rule: avoid leaving any of your protagonists at a bus stop.

A few chapters is already pushing it; the equivalent of 1.5 seasons is out of the question for all but the most superlative of writers. I’ve met superlative, and believe me, no one on the VLD staff qualifies. If they did, they wouldn’t have been writing for VLD in the first place.

The start of S4 will forever baffle me. Had S3/S4 been broadcast as a complete season, I might’ve assumed there was a technical error, and would’ve tweeted at Netflix and not returned to watch until I got word this really was the midpoint episode. No warning, no foreshadowing, not even a peep out of Keith, and suddenly he’s working with the Blades.

In an ensemble cast, the point is that it’s an ensemble; you don’t forget one of your core cast at the bus stop while the story-bus trundles on. If Keith were meant as a protagonist, then sidelining him for 1.5 seasons is an even worse crime. If the intent of the story, thematically, is 'stronger together’, shoving one of them out of the picture is pretty much the antithesis.

This is not to say you can’t do it; in hindsight, I think the clone should’ve been shelved and the real Shiro returned at the end of S3/S4. But that comes with the assumption that a) the team would struggle a great deal more in his absence, b) prompting development that would create a new dynamic once Shiro returned, and c) that Shiro himself would change in some degree, from/during his absence: one that, by definition, that would need to be complete.

In other words, if you’re going to remove a protagonist, two things must happen. One, they must be removed, which Keith wasn’t. The story checks in on him irregularly, and each time, he's treading water while the story moves on. Two, the absence must become a driver: in a sense, the absence is a presence of what’s missing, and regaining the character must be paramount.

VLD put minor effort into recognizing the impact of Shiro’s absence, limited mostly to the torture-porn of watching Keith isolated in (and by) grief. It couldn’t even be bothered to do that much, when it was Keith’s turn to fall off the team. No one missed him, no one needed him. The result was a clear message there was nothing Keith brought to the team that couldn’t be done by someone else. There was no presence in his absence.

Consider the few scenes in S4-S6 with anything of Keith. His storyline did nothing to push the main story forward. In S4, the Blades are focused on tracking a new quintessence, a subplot that discovers nothing, provides no twists, and goes nowhere. In S5, despite Keith being with the Blades, the two groups have dropped communication to such degree that neither is aware of the other’s participation in the Kral Zera.

If you’re determined to leave a protagonist in another castle, for heaven’s sake, use that distance to allow them to continue to impact the main storyline. Make their absence into a working presence that can link the two groups; the complete radio silence just underlines how meaningless the story considers Keith, in the overall plot.

In that light, Kolivan’s left-field decision for Keith to extract Krolia feels like VLD was grasping at straws, trying to find something to occupy Keith. Worse, that mission contradicts S4: the quintessence is no longer blue, no longer notable for its energy levels, and no longer transported to secret bases in massive quantities by major warships. It’s back to the usual maroon, carried on small cargo ships in limited quantities, and now a dangerous substance with questionable side-effects.

In a nutshell, VLD left Keith mired in pointless actions with no bearing on the rest of the characters (hello, suicide attempt never mentioned again). Late S5, VLD realized it needed to get a move on, if Keith was to get an upgrade. So it took the easy way out: an overload of exposition flashbacks that neatly evaded any emotional beats between Keith and Krolia. VLD had no idea how to get Keith from point A to around point K, so it settled for just telling us Keith had grown up. On a space whale.

Had we been given a better reason (or any reason) for Keith joining the Blades, had we been given a hefty sub-plot for Keith that led him back to the team in an organic fashion (or at least dovetailed with the main throughline), had the story used those seasons to show us Keith learning with the Blades in a way he couldn’t or wouldn’t with the team... well, for one thing, it’d still contradict the ‘found family’ and ‘stronger together’ themes, since it’d be even more clear that Keith was stronger elsewhere.

But setting that aside, at the very least, Keith wouldn’t have returned feeling he’d gotten a personality transplant. We would’ve seen his progression, such that any given point along the way would’ve been recognizably Keith, even if the starting and ending points were almost a one-eighty. It’s called character development; most stories do it as a matter of course.

I’m left concluding that the creators genuinely don’t grasp that characters will change per their experiences. It’s a crucial element in storytelling, because characters are the core of any story. If you can’t figure out what would make a character choose A this time and B next time, you’re failing on one of the most fundamental aspects of characterization. In fact, you’re missing the entire point of a story: character choices are the plot.

I do have to take exception to ‘signs pointing to [Keith] as the true leader.’ I’ve posted before about the mentor trope, and how Shiro’s S1/S2 arc contradicts Keith as Black Paladin. I suggest you read those before coming at me with the assumption VLD did any of the work required to establish Keith's leadership as inevitable.

It’s possible to have someone strike out on their own, learn valuable lessons, and return grown-up and able to handle the situation they’d originally fled. It’d be a very different story, though, one that isn’t focused on a titular robot, but on a single protagonist’s journey. It’d also be a story that has nothing to do with ‘stronger together,’ as the movement away (to learn) and back (to reclaim) means the protagonist only became stronger when they weren’t with the rest.

Keith taking command of Black in S6 should feel like a victory in terms of his arc: where once he’d recoiled, now he steps forward. But since we never saw how or why his perspective changed about leadership, all it would’ve taken is a subtle shift in Yeun’s delivery and we could be talking instead about how Keith returned and was still in his ‘you want me to lead, this is how I lead’ pique.

Shiro’s return creates another turning point where the question would be logically raised, and it’s almost as though (once again) there’s an episode or two we didn’t get. It’d be reasonable for someone to raise the question of whether the team now swaps again. Yet no one does, and we’re supposed to expect Keith --- who waved the little ‘Shiro is Black’ banner far more and for far longer than any other character --- is now content to command Black, with no need to even broach the topic.

That’s a radically different perspective Keith shows in S7 onward, and it’s a problem created by the lack of development for Keith, in S4-S6. In the course of a single episode, we literally went from Keith being his slightly out-of-his-emotional-depth awkward self, to someone clear-eyed and commanding almost to the point of arrogance. It’s not helped when his original characterization returns for the duration of his fight with Shiro --- only to blip out again as soon as Keith returns to the team.

And forcing that abrupt shift on Keith’s part meant the rest of the story (and the characters) got shoved around into their respective places and out of shape, as well. Stories are made of characters, and characters are dominos. You knock one over, and it has a cascade effect. Changing Keith from the character we knew to someone else wearing his face could not happen in isolation, and every character around him suffered as well.

Like Shiro and Lance, Keith had major potential to be a groundbreaking character. He was introduced as the kind of independent, socially awkward, spitfire character usually pushed to the forefront in American media, yet S1/S2 gave him a solid place as Shiro’s greatest supporter. Keith had all the makings of a hero we rarely see: someone who truly believes the title of leader is beside the point, that the team is what matters.

I’m used to Gundam, which almost always strives for a resting place of five (or four) protagonists standing shoulder-to-shoulder. There might be one among their ranks who gets the central position, but the narrative is firmly consistent that should the team lose any one person, it would fall apart. There’s no need to ever tell us the team is ‘stronger together,’ we can see that lesson play out, over and over, whenever the team is divided, split up, or loses someone.

AtLA followed a similar pattern; by the end, it’s obvious the strengths each person brings to the final battle. There’s no question that every single one is crucial for victory; there’s no point where someone leaves and there’s not immediate and significant impact on the remaining characters’ successes. Sure, Sokka may not be able to bend like the rest of them, but without his brains, they’d be sunk. Katara, Toph, and Zuko might not be able to bend every element, but if any one of them isn’t there, the team is going down. Aang may command the central position, but he can’t do it all on his own.

While AtLA shone in having characters who visually broke the mold of our usual white-dominated, male-dominated American cartoons, it also broke away from the lead hero + band of intrepid (but far less capable) sidekicks. Like Gundam, it presented a group of characters who grew into a true team. The pictures might show Aang in the middle, but every one else contributes an equal amount, in their own way.

VLD had the makings in its first two seasons to go that route. But its EPs wanted dark and edgy, a perspective too cynical to embrace the optimism inherent in a team-based story. Sure, their deconstruction of VLD’s S1/S2 trope-subversions brought the story to a point where Keith was declared the definitive top guy, the true Black Paladin, head of the paladins.

Thing is, pushing Keith into that position required altering his personality beyond all recognition, destroying the team dynamic, and gutting any chance of recognizing the other characters as equally integral to team success. In effect, making Keith the de facto leader required destroying the team: and what’s the point of leadership, then?

#vld #voltron #characterization #character arcs #analysis #sol thinks about stuff

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caritov · 5 years

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13 reasons why (Interlude)

Ok. One last episode to go. And before I hit play, just a few things.

I have a ton of work to do, but hopefully I’ll come back to the show in a while. There are some lovely moments that I’d like to gif, but those take time. And I was serious about doing a very detailed timeline. And I want to do some research and come back with numbers about the possibility of rapists rehabilitation. (And other things. I am, after all, a scientist. I need data). But it’s going to take at least a few weeks.

Second, this show means the world to me. I watched the first season and basically cried from beginning to end. Then I watched it again immediately, lol. It helps me cope with my job. I can cry and rage over fictional characters in a way that I can’t over my own students, because then I’d loose the ability to do my job. And I like my job. I’d like to be able to keep doing it. This show helps.

The problem with loving this show is that it’s even more controversial than Glee, lol. The thing is, I don’t believe in ‘responsible storytelling’. Don’t get me wrong, if they felt the responsible thing to do was to take away Hannah suicide scene (which I personally never managed to actually watch), then I am glad they did it. But I believe the job of storytellers is to tell compelling stories. And let the viewers decide. And think for themselves. And this show is fantastically compelling. They tackle incredible sensitive topics (just this season we had: abortion, deportation, class privilege and discrimination, suicidal ideation, rape recovery, male rape, childhood sexual abuse, sex work that implies lack of consent, female masturbation, enthusiastic consent in a kinky teenage relationship (among sexual assault victims, no less), drug addiction, substance abuse) in a, in my opinion, realistic and moving way. It doesn’t have to be responsible. It doesn’t have to give ‘the right message’. As viewers, we get to decide what the right thing is (can Bryce be redeemed? Is Justin’s background enough to forgive his behavior? Should Jessica still be in a relationship with him? Is Clay a good guy or should he tone down the savior complex? Did Chloe make the right choice? Is the sort of activism Jessica is doing helpful or harming? And a long list of etc.)

This is a show that presents us with issues and questions without giving clear answers. It doesn’t think for the viewer. And that bugs some people. I get that. But I, for one, really appreciate it. So I am not interested in reading awful things about how this show shouldn’t exist or how it glorifies suicide or how they white washed Bryce (no idea if that will happen, just a guess). However, it’s been difficult to avoid those kind of comments in the past (and I get them, like, I love ASOIAF, and for me it means I hate some of its criticism while I enjoy GOT negativity. I understand that you can get enjoyment or catharsis out of negative criticism, it’s just that for this particular show, I don’t and I don’t want to see it).

So, if anyone reading this has the same love for the show that I do and wants to discuss it without fear of been made guilty for liking it, do come talk to me about it! 😊 Or if anyone knows about a blog with positive 13 reasons why content, do let me know! Last year I managed to find a couple of lovely podcasts. Hopefully I can find them again. Also, hello 👋 new followers, I haven’t even gone into your blogs for fear that you post 13rw content and I’ll get spoiled. But I’ll check them out!

As long as it’s not about how this show should never have been made, I’m open to any views! Even if you think Clay is the worst (I mean, you are wrong, but we can discuss it), if we share the basic feeling that this is a well written, compelling piece of TV, I’d love to hear your views!

As I said, this show means the world to me. I might expand on my reasons why in the future (see what I did there?). For now, I am going to watch the last episode, cry for a while (I’ve cried less than the other seasons, only like 30% of the show, lol), then do some work. And if anyone wants to cry with me, my ask is open.

One last thing: I usually don’t tag, because I am just really lazy, but given the sensitive nature of this show, I will always tag it. Just a general 13ry tag, unless someone asks me to tag for more specific triggering content. If so, of course I will!

Ok, that’s it. Time to press play.

tl;dr: if you love the show, genuinely love it, and would like to discuss it with someone that is not going to make you feel like there is something wrong with you because of it, do come talk to me!

#13 reasons why #13rw

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agirlwithablog143 · 6 years

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Topic: Suicide and its team of Mental Illnesses Suicide is not a mental illness in itself, but a serious potential consequence of treatable mental disorders that include major depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders like bulimia and anorexia nervosa.

Depression People who don’t have it just don’t get how hurt we are and no matter what they say we will always have doubt in the back of our minds that they’re lying. The pain grows by itself kind of like cancer is uncontrolled cell growth this is pain that could grow just by someone saying hi to us. We break even though we are already broken. Everyday people with anxiety live in fear because they are scared of society scared of disappointing someone that they care about or sometimes a person they don’t even know and it is so scary but then again we get comfortable here in our hiding spot that the monsters find us in. I’m not scared of the monsters under my bed I’m scared of the monsters hiding in my head in a place where I’m supposed to call home i can’t because it doesn’t feel like home it feels like a place where I have been thrown into without consideration of how I might feel and you can ask me how I feel but I don’t know I’m not sure about anything anymore I’m not even sure if I’m actually alive and I think a lot of depressed people feel this way. People will constantly tell you it’s okay to feel this way but it is not and that is why change needs to start with us before anyone else. And it’s not like we don’t want help we do we are just scared you can’t help us the way we need to be helped which takes us back to step one. Trust, can I trust you to help me or will you hurt me like a lot of other people in my life? We really want to trust but the constant, what if and the reminders of the bad things done to us by people we thought we could trust. Living is just becoming harder each day for us because we are constantly worried about what society thinks about us and I feel like everyone is to blame somehow in someway. People still ponder about suicide, and most of us know who is going through depression but we won’t speak out and then what if the next day that person was no longer here. Now the depression passes on to family members and you and friends. It’s so sick how contagious depression is and right now I feel like we are all suffering from the side effects.

Anorexia Nervosa

Control? Do you possess it? If you do then have control over your mind. Don’t let Ana, Sue, Deb, Mia and Annie or Rex, Dallas, Dan, Bill, and Max control you. You have been aggressively fighting for all this control whilst the wicked demons and terrible illnesses have been taking control. You fight to be thin, but why can’t you fight to be alive? The unbearable pain is intense and every time you don’t eat you let them win while you’re undoubtedly losing. You’re losing to them and don't see it because you are worried about being perfect. You will never be perfect and do you genuinely want to know why? Because everyone naturally has their own definition of perfect and you can’t fit everyone’s ideal person. Not everyone is going to like you and there is nothing you can do about that at all. Anorexia can affect people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, races, and ethnicities. Historians and psychologists have found evidence of people displaying symptoms of anorexia for hundreds or thousands of years. (Https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.Org/learn/by-eating-disorder/anorexia)I know it hurts so much to the point where you want to end it all because everything is extremely hard and different now. Modern society has changed and so have we. When we were kids all we worried about was typically classic toys and delicious candy and as we grew naturally we sufficiently realized our parents and teachers lied to us. They said no scratch that they falsely promised us we would be happy, and unknown life was innocent fun they never told us about the heartaches and unspeakable misery we have to figure that out ourselves and sometimes I genuinely think that maybe some of our beloved parents failed us. I say that because right now we are unprepared and we’re fighting demons that we don't know how to fight that no one taught us how to fight and we struggle fiercely with self-hate because we look admiringly unto social media and see all the perfect thin models that we so desperately want to be. This fascinating world just seems so familiar because everyone is intentionally acting like someone else and if the influential person we are trying to act like is acting like someone else then who are we acting like now? Who are we? Who are you?

Bulimia Bulimia (boo-LEE-me-uh) nervosa, commonly called bulimia, is a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder. People with bulimia may secretly binge — consuming large amounts of food with a loss of control over the eating — and then purge, trying to get rid of the excess calories in an unhealthy way. To get rid of calories and prevent weight gain, people with bulimia may use alternative methods. For example, you may regularly self-induce vomiting or misuse laxatives, weight-loss supplements, diuretics or enemas after bingeing. Or you may use other ways to rid yourself of calories and prevent weight gain, such as fasting, strict dieting or excessive exercise. If you have bulimia, you're probably preoccupied with your weight and body shape. You may judge yourself severely and harshly for your self-perceived flaws. Because it's related to self-image — and not just about food — bulimia can be hard to overcome. But effective treatment can help you feel better about yourself, adopt healthier eating patterns and reverse serious complications.(

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/bulimia/symptoms-causes/syc-20353615

)It hurts and at the tragic moment you don’t have control you eat food back to back constantly and at the end you’re terribly disappointed in yourself you instantly take your dainty fingers and plunged them down your brawny throat sincerely hoping and humbly praying that all the sins you incorrectly think you have voluntarily committed will come back up and flow into the toilet then it becomes a terrible habit and every time you tear your throat apart with the hurtful enzymes in your upset stomach coming back up with the food but you don’t care, do you? You are only thinking about being thin, about being perfect.You got to find a way to let go of all those terrible thoughts that you contain and want to get rid of but you can’t and you feel stuck I say this from personal experience and I know every experience isn’t the same but I know it still hurts though, and that is what I’m trying to connect with you with.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality. Although schizophrenia is not as common as other mental disorders, the symptoms can be very disabling. Negative symptoms: “Negative” symptoms are associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors. Symptoms include:“Flat affect” (reduced expression of emotions via facial expression or voice tone)Reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life difficult beginning and sustaining activitiesReduced speaking( https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml )What you see isn’t real, but the pain is, and that’s all you need to know to drive you over the edge. Sometimes it genuinely feels like the fierce pain is intenser than what it really is. Pain is unfortunately apart of life and there is nothing we can do to change that. So you keep forcibly moving and willfully ignore the deepening shadows that with ease keep popping up out of nowhere like it’s Halloween; usually on Halloween we get an impressive trick and a delicious treat but I haven’t found the sweet candy that is allegedly hiding under the floorboards in my room. There are miles and miles of the floorboard in my room and I can never walk far enough to get to it but maybe I'm just imagining terrific things. What if there’s just a yard of floorboard and I'm not walking at all; what if the floor is actually covered in shabby carpet. I’m unsure what the floor is: I'm unsure of what I’m doing. I do imperfectly know I'm terribly scared. You ask yourself if you are real; you can’t feel the unspeakable pain or how scared you are. You start to feel numb, and you don’t know what to do. Then as you promptly enter the local store and anxiously watch as the shelves that pass you by but inevitably come across a razor but all you can undoubtedly see is the blade inside of it. Another remarkable thing you have merely learned from social media, where to get a cutting blade. Your body walks past it but your mind stays with it to engage in a silent conversation about something you can’t hear. Something you don’t want to hear. Talk to someone before your independent mind forcibly pulls you into the mighty deep and you question whether if you’re actually doing this. Because you are!

SuicideNow to thing that I have been avoiding, suicide! It affects a lot of families and even the U.S. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death; each year 44,965 Americans die by suicide and for every suicide 25 attempt. Suicide costs the US 69 billion annually. (

https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

)

Looking at the 2nd chart makes me think that it only gets worse as you grow older. People around me constantly tell me that things will get better! But when? Something has to change, and it has to start with society; society is so corrupt that it sickens me to leave the house or engage in activities with people. It sickens me to be around myself because of how ignorant I was to the situation from ages 4-8. For 4 years I was blind to these mental illnesses that have been silently taking over and now for six almost 7 years I’ve been suffering from some of the mental illnesses as well. At school, I constantly hear someone saying something bad about someone else and then I can’t help thinking that they are talking about me. The pain comes regardless of what you do to avoid it. I feel like the more you avoid it the harder it comes for you. Suicide is nothing to mess with, and I say this because a lot of people say “you are not choosing between depression and happiness you are choosing between life and death.” but I think we are choosing between depression and happiness because if we make the decision to kill ourselves that means we are no longer happy with life. Then there are unaware people around you falsely telling you to be happy but what if killing yourself makes you happy or not being alive. People constantly say we determine our fate but when we do we are constantly told that is not what they wanted us to do. You are not deciding our fate. My personal opinion is precisely that depression is a lot like tragic death: lonely, painful, numbing, and you sometimes don’t comprehend what is happening!

https://agirlwithablog143.tumblr.com/post/179452400269/schizophrenia

https://agirlwithablog143.tumblr.com/post/179419234664/bulimia

https://agirlwithablog143.tumblr.com/post/179385976189/anorexia-nervosa

https://agirlwithablog143.tumblr.com/post/179350522174/depression

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skeptical-frog · 2 years

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A Bit About Me (and Boundaries)

Welcome to the Skeptical Frog blog! Below the cut, I’ll be talking a bit more in-depth about who I am, but I recommend you read the pinned post on my blog first if you’re just looking for a quick overview.

Who is the Skeptical Frog?

Hello there! I’m Alistair, a.k.a. the Skeptical Frog. Go wild with the nicknames! So far I’ve come up with Ari, Frog, and Froggie, but if you've got something different, use it!

Quick & Fun Info!

Name: Alistair (Skeptical Frog)

Age: 18

LGBT? Yes! AFAB genderfluid and omniromantic/bisexual!

Pronouns: Any, including it/its and neopronouns. General preference for neopronouns and neutral pronouns.

School: Yes. Don’t worry if I vanish off the face of the earth for a while. Either school’s getting stressful or I forgot my password.

Favorite...

Color: Blue! Especially teal and very dark blues.

Animal: Surprisingly, not a frog! I find axolotls very adorable, especially the Minecraft version!

Book: Just one? I’ll go with Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede.

Movie: The Princess Bride. Hands down, my favorite film.

Profile picture is from @math_lis on Twitter! She has so many cute pride critters! Go support them!

Boundaries

Here comes the serious stuff. These may change over time.

First off: the no-no’s. Please refrain from submitting or asking about:

Extreme personal information. I’m trying to stay safe on the internet, and so should you! I will not give out my exact location, dead name, surname, or any information about my family or friends beyond the fact that they exist. Other information may fit into this list, and if I receive an ask or submission that crosses this line it will be deleted. I will not block a user for a one-time instance of this (unless it’s especially creepy), especially if it’s something that’s not on this list, but repeat offenders may find themselves blocked.

NSFW. I would like this space to remain free of NSFW content. Mentions of substances that affect a person’s brain are okay, as long as they are brief and not graphic. Gore, sexual content, and romanticization of minors are not permitted. Any asks/submissions with NSFW themes will be deleted and the submitter may be blocked.

Homophobia, transphobia, racism, ablism, etc. I am a member and proud supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. I also stand with marginalized peoples in their struggles for rights and equity. If you come into my inbox expressing clear homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc. beliefs, I will block you.

Trauma dumps. While you are welcome to send me a private message to talk, I would appreciate it if you would not send these into asks or submissions.

Slurs and offensive language. Swearing is okay, but I’d like to keep interactions between people here civil.

Content with restrictions: Topics and submissions that are okay to send in, but have a few rules to follow.

Triggers. If you are going to send in an ask or submission with potentially triggering content, you must add a warning before the content begins. If you fail to add these warnings, I will delete the ask/submission.

Politics surrounding the LGBTQ+ or other marginalized communities. I am willing to give reactions to laws and events that affect these groups, but I will not tolerate discussion about whether any group of people “deserves” certain rights or any questions of morality surrounding these groups. If you want me to give my point of view or explain something, I will do my best. I would love to be helpful to someone who is genuinely confused or misinformed. If you come in blasting your beliefs, however, I will not hesitate to block you.

Flirting/banter. I will only accept platonic flirting or compliments. Actual romantic flirting is reserved only for people who I know outside of Tumblr. Banter must be clarified as such. If you start sending messages that could be read as hateful or genuinely angry, your messages will be deleted and I may block you. When applicable, please use tone indicators. Here’s a few that are fairly common:

/j - Joking

/hj- Half Joking

/s - Sarcastic/Sarcasm

/srs- Serious

/lh - Lighthearted

/p - Platonic

/r - Romantic

/nm - Not Mad

/neg - Negative Connotation(s)

/pos- Positive Connotation(s)

/rh - Rhetorical Question

/gen - Genuine Question

/f - Fake

/g - Genuine

A-okay! Things that some people may question whether they can send in that I am good with talking about.

My experiences as a genderfluid/omniromantic/bisexual individual, or with the LGBTQ+ community at large. I’m absolutely willing to share what I’ve gone through, especially if it can help out someone who’s questioning, closeted, or just confused!

Claiming an anon! I welcome anyone who wants to stay private, just give me something to identify you with!

If you’re unsure if what you want to send in is okay, feel free to send it. If it crosses a line, it will simply be deleted.

#introduction #the skeptical frog #my boundaries

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digitalgrow100 · 3 years

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5 Best Professional Social Media Platforms 2021

In this article, we discuss the 5 Best Professional Social Media platforms in 2021 you can use all these 5 Social Media platforms to grow your business easily. #digitalgrow100

Quora

Tumblr

Youtube

Regardless of whether you are a prepared web-based social media advertiser, an advertiser hoping to wander into online media promoting, or an entrepreneur hoping to use via web-based media, it’s useful to realize the most well-known web-based media destinations around. This will permit you to augment your image reach via online media, draw in with the perfect individuals, and accomplish your web-based media objectives.

Obviously, it isn’t just with regards to the size of the web-based media destinations. It’s additionally whether the web-based media website is ideal for your business and you. Does it accommodate your image picture? Is your interest group utilizing that online media website? What number of online media destinations would you be able to oversee on the double?

To make things simpler for you, I did some examination and aggregated data about the 21 top web-based media destinations in 2021. Some will be recognizable to you, others may sound unfamiliar to you. It very well may merit perusing more with regards to the online media destinations that may be extraordinary for your image however that you have not investigated.

1 Linkedin

LinkedIn is an informal communication site planned explicitly for the business local area. The objective of the site is to permit enlisted individuals to build up and report organizations of individuals they know and trust expertly.

A LinkedIn part’s profile page, which stresses abilities, business history, and schooling, has proficient organization news channels and a set number of adaptable modules. Essential enrollment for LinkedIn is free. Organization individuals are classified as “associations.” Not at all like other free long-range informal communication locales like Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn expects associations with have a previous relationship.

With essential enrollment, a part can just set up associations with somebody he has worked with, knows expertly (on the web or disconnected), or has gone to class with. Associations up to three degrees away (see six levels of partition) are viewed as a component of the member\’s organization, yet the part isn’t permitted to reach them through LinkedIn without a presentation. Premium memberships can be bought to give individuals better admittance to contacts in the LinkedIn data set.

LinkedIn was helped to establish by Reid Hoffman, a previous Leader VP responsible for business and corporate improvement for PayPal. The site, which was dispatched in May 2003, as of now has more than 300 million individuals from 200 nations, addressing 170 businesses. As per Reid Hoffman, 27% of LinkedIn supporters are spotters.

2 Quora

As an entrepreneur, there are consistently questions that should be replied to. To assist with finding solutions to their issues, many go to the online website Quora to hear what counsel others in their industry have to bring to the table.

Dispatched in 2010, Quora is an online website where individuals can post inquiries they are experiencing difficulty repaying. Maybe then find solutions from one individual, the site permits all clients to say something regarding what they think the most intelligent answers are.

\”When you need to find out about something, Quora conveys you answers and content from individuals who share your inclinations and individuals who have direct information — like genuine specialists, financial analysts, screenwriters, cops, and military veterans,\” Quora composes on its site.

Quora for business

There are a few manners by which organizations can exploit the administrations Quora offers. The first is by finding solutions to questions entrepreneurs might have. On the off chance that they need assistance beginning, sorting out some way to value certain items or getting exhortation on which sellers to go with, Quora can help.

Regardless of whether it\’s perusing replies to questions that have as of now been asked, or asking them interestingly, entrepreneurs will hear a scope of thoughts from the people who have encountered similar challenges. Getting input from various sources, as opposed to only one individual who might have certain predispositions or loyalties, is a decent way for entrepreneurs to assist with settling on the best choices for their particular requirements.

Quora likewise permits entrepreneurs and different experts to show their aptitude in specific regions. By giving responses to questions that have been presented by others, they can assemble both their own and expert brand.

Quora can likewise help entrepreneurs and different experts with their systems administration and relational abilities.

3 Pinterest

Pinterest is an online pinboard, a visual interpretation of the social bookmarking website. Not at all like other social bookmarking locales, like Digg and StumbleUpon, content shared on Pinterest is driven totally by visuals. Truth be told, you can’t share something on Pinterest except if a picture is included.

Like each and every other web-based media website, Pinterest has its own language:

At the point when you share something on Pinterest, every bookmark is known as a pin.

At the point when you share another person’s pin on Pinterest, it’s known as a repin.

You assemble pins by point onto different sheets or pinboards in your profile. Each board mirrors a genuine pinboard.

You can share pictures you find on the web, or you can straightforwardly transfer pictures onto Pinterest. Utilizing the Pin It button, you can share straightforwardly in your program from any site page. You can likewise share your pins on Twitter and Facebook.

How Does Pinterest Work?

So — what is Pinterest and how can it function? Pinterest is an informal community that permits clients to outwardly share, and find new interests by posting (known as ‘sticking’) pictures or recordings to their own or others’ sheets (for example an assortment of ‘pins,’ for the most part with a typical topic) and perusing what different clients have stuck.

You can set up a record, sign in, and like other clients’ posts, or start your own.

Utilizing a visual direction, the informal community is especially centered around the idea of an individual’s way of life, permitting you to impart your preferences and interests to other people and finding those of similar individuals.

As of late, they have even added a “Pinterest Focal point” component to their application. The focal point allows you to find thoughts propelled by anything you point your Pinterest camera at.

Utilizing a visual direction, the informal organization is especially centered around the idea of an individual’s way of life, permitting you to impart your preferences and interests to other people and finding those of similar individuals.

4 Tumblr

Tumblr is a contributor to a blog and online media instrument that permits clients to distribute a \”tumblelog\”, or short blog entries. Tumblr\’s significant differentiator is the freestyle idea of the site and the capacity of clients to vigorously alter their own pages. This is the special case for the standard, as essentially any remaining interpersonal organizations have normalized profile pages with restricted plan adaptability.

How to use Tumblr?

Getting a page set up on Tumblr is like other web-based media organizations. Clients pursue a record by giving an email address just as making a secret phrase, username, and a URL for the page. URLs can be changed in interminability, yet this can prompt an adverse consequence on Website design enhancement — it\’s ideal to take the time and discover a URL that will work for a store right away.

The plan of a page can either be exceptionally constructed or looked over a rundown of previous subjects that can be found both on Tumblr and through external sites. Moreover, most of these premade subjects can be changed as far as edge size, shading, and numerous different factors. A variety of pictures, including an online business store owner\’s item photographs and logo, can be joined into the page. A store page should make the most of accessible freedoms to introduce these connected pictures and to connect to the real online business website.

The dashboard is the fundamental strategy for adding content to a Tumblr page. These capacities as a substance posting apparatus for essentially a wide range of messages just as realistic and video records. Clients can see their own posts in both the subject picked for their page just as in an editable configuration. Posts from Tumblr pages a client follows are likewise seen on the dashboard, where they can be enjoyed or reblogged. The number of different pages followed will straightforwardly correspond to the measure of content moving through the dashboard.

5 Youtube

YouTube is a video-sharing service where users can watch, like, share, comment, and upload their own videos. The video service can be accessed through PCs, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.

How Youtube Works

YouTube started in early 2005 and is growing rapidly. Every minute, people around the world upload over 300 hours’ worth of videos to YouTube.

YouTube has the second largest search engine in the world after Google (the owner of YouTube). This means that people are constantly searching for information and videos related to these topics on YouTube.

Youtube Videos

YouTube provides an easy way for people to store videos and share them with others. YouTube videos can cover any topic you want to upload a video on. These videos can be easily shared via other social media, email, and websites and can also be embedded on other websites.

In addition to each video on YouTube, there is a list of ‘recommended videos’ — the videos calculated by the YouTube search engine that will be of interest to the people watching the videos you see.

YouTube encourages viewers to comment on the videos they watch, then saves the videos they watch and shares the videos they like. You can make a video publicly available or share it privately with a select few.

Youtube Analysis

YouTube Analytics is a self-service analytics and reporting tool. It also provides data about each video you upload so you can easily track how many times it has been viewed, where people come from, and what kind of people watch it.

YouTube Analytics can provide you with information about:

‘first’ for video, first suggestion from related video, first suggestion from YouTube search (including search terms used), the first time the video was embedded in another website

How many views came from each referral source

What gender and age group are most popular in the video

video is very popular in any country

How many comments and ratings did you get?

For example, a YouTube analytics video on the Queensland government’s fisheries cult channel ‘Crab Rules in Greensland’ shows that it is very popular among men aged 55–64 in Australia. It also shows that 52.5% of views for embedded videos are videos embedded on their site via a commercial crab pot manufacturer’s website.

You can link all your videos and set up a YouTube channel for your business. This allows you to customize your channel with images that reflect your organization. Your channel has an ‘Introduction’ section that may provide a brief description of your business and a link to your website or contact details.

Your channel groups playlists of videos you create and upload, videos you watch and like, and videos you create.

Your channel will have a web address (URL) that you can advertise on your website or marketing products. People can subscribe to your channel. This means that your videos will be listed on their YouTube homepage when you sign in to YouTube.

You can create ‘playlists on your YouTube channel to organize your videos by title or category. For example, you might have a playlist of videos about each of your product types, or you might have a playlist of videos provided by your customers for a video contest you’re running.

Youtube Ads

YouTube has features where businesses promote their videos to interested people, targeting customers based on population, topic, or interest.

Advertisers pay for every time they watch their videos. You can choose where your ad will appear, how it will appear, and how much you are willing to pay per view (if you want to increase the popularity of your ad over your competitors). YouTube’s advertising guide explains how it works.

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