#so I want to do more uber-small-scale animations like this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stusbunker · 9 months

Text

Spotless: Rest

Chapter Three

Featuring: Dean Winchester/Reader

Other characters: Annie/Bobby, Sam, Charlie, Bela

Word Count: 3050

Warnings, etc: Mutual pining, allusion to Dean's bisexuality, mention of past drug related death, responsible alcohol consumption, buried feelings, Bela is Reader's longtime bestfriend. If you dislike her, please turn back now, she's around for the long haul, unbeta'd

Series Masterlist

Divider courtesy of @cafekitsune

Your Uber left you in Bobby and Annie’s driveway just after six the following evening. It was a casual invite for an otherwise wide open Saturday night. Just steaks on the grill and cheap beer, the promise of a Midwestern kind of night in the middle of Malibu. You’d been in California since college, but there was a part of you that needed to slow down and really connect with people. And of course Bobby and Annie got it, they were real people and practically your surrogate parents at this point.

Phone on silent, you walked around the house and let yourself into the side gate that led into the backyard. Which was small and more of a patio with a small pool and hot tub, but big enough for a grill and a set of lounge chairs and a small glass top table to eat around. Bobby waved at you as you arrived and you placed your cheek against his in passing, your usual non-business greeting. He twitched his mustache at you in his semblance of a proud smile and you headed inside through the French doors at the back of the house.

“There she is!” Annie greeted you, spinning to give you a tight squeeze as you dropped a six pack on the kitchen island to share. She had been a rockstar in her own right, an 80s sensation, but had left the stage behind when addiction had taken her bandmate before you had even reached elementary school.

“Hey, Annie. Thanks for having me over.” You beamed at the contact, as tough as Annie was she gave good hugs, nothing on Ellen back home, but you took what motherly affection you could get. It had been too long since you felt safe and welcome in that way.

“Are you kidding? Of course, girl, especially when you know to bring my beer and not surly’s.”

“Need any help?” You offered.

“Nah, just grab the plates and I’ve got the rest,” Annie pointed toward the small stack of plates with forks and knives stacked on top as she scooped up a bowl of fruit salad in one arm and a bowl of garlic mashed potatoes in the other.

You settled down with a beer apiece as Bobby finished on the grill, letting the darkness of an autumn night hover over their well lit patio. The food was delicious, but the company was better. Annie complained about her job at the animal shelter and you and Bobby griped about the label. It was cathartic and easy.

“So, spill. I can tell you got an idea about how you’re going to ‘sway public opinion’ and all, but I haven’t heard your pitch yet,” Bobby read you like a book.

You set down your beer and swallowed, looking at the former roadie and figured it was now or never. “I think— Dean needs a good woman to help him shape up.”

Annie chuckled.

Bobby scowled. “Something tells me you aren’t talking about yourself.”

You rolled your eyes. “No, nobody knows me and that would just be weird.”

You ignored the look Annie and Bobby shared. “I’ve got a friend who is semi-famous— was famous as a kid. And I think she would be able to help us sort of ‘rebrand’ Dean’s image.”

“Who is she?” Annie asked as Bobby watched you with growing suspicion.

“Bela Talbot,” you answered honestly.

“Bela Talbot? Why do I know that name?” Bobby looked at Annie.

“Like big eyes and pigtails Bela Talbot? From Red Sky in the Morning?” Annie guessed right.

“Yeah, I mean, she’s my age now. But, I figured she’d be wholesome enough on the grand scale of things.”

“Child actress, huh?” Bobby considered it.

“Yeah, she was my roommate at USC, wanted out of the limelight and has just done some modeling and fashion collabs since,” you explained, hoping neither of them had any legitimate reasons to shut you down.

“She cute?” Bobby asked after the plates were cleared and you had moved onto the beer they kept in a mini fridge on the deck.

“Gorgeous,” you replied immediately.

“But?” Bobby asked, knowingly.

You exhaled before replying, “she can be a bit testy at times. Though I know Dean would be able to keep up with her snark.”

“That all?” Bobby huffed.

“Do we need to pay her?” you asked warily.

“Anything official would come back to bite us in the ass— and I’m sure whoever is in her camp would want a cut. Even though by the sounds of it, she’d be benefiting from all the press too,” Bobby figured.

“Probably,” you agreed. “So unofficially.”

“Dean’s a big boy. Lord knows he can find his own arm candy if he wanted to. But I really don’t want to deal with asking him to start looking because you know what’s gonna crawl out of the woodwork,” Bobby said dejectedly.

“You think she would keep it civil, even if Dean is slow to come around?” Annie asked pointedly. “I trust you know what you’re doing, but we are kind of a tight bunch.”

“Not to mention overprotective,” you said, smirking at Bobby now.

“See what she says first, then we’ll tell him.”

“We will?” you asked hopefully.

“It was your idea, wasn’t it? I think it should come straight from the horse’s mouth. But I’ll back you up, don’t worry about that,” Bobby agreed.

You sighed. “Figured that was easier than I deserve.”

“You sure you’re gonna be okay plastering their faces everywhere and all the build up you do with your friend semi-dating your other—friend?” Annie made the last word sound like a slip of the tongue.

“It’s my job. Plus, it’s not like Dean’s gonna see most of it— dude hates social media,” you replied as if any of it were things they didn’t already know.

“Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t break another paparazzo's nose,” Bobby tilted the neck of his beer in your direction, a toast and almost wish in one.

“Here here,” you agreed and clinked his bottle with yours.

An hour later, after assuring Bobby you didn’t need a ride, you waited for another Uber with a tupperware full of leftovers in hand and almost an entire twenty four hours ahead of you without any real work to do. Besides your semi-regular brunch with Bela whenever the both of you got out of bed and bothered to meet up tomorrow.

As you waited, you checked your phone. And of course, it was full of texts, mostly from Charlie but Dean and Sam had texted too. By the time you read through them all, they had you suckered in for a night of Mario Kart, you just had to swing home to change before heading back out to Sam and Dean’s place in Laurel Canyon.

Okay, you didn’t have to change. You chose to. You wanted to be comfortable, because odds are you and Charlie were crashing on whatever stretch of couch you could find. Though, you didn’t want to look sloppy either, not that anyone there would even notice what you were wearing, but you felt better about yourself when you put some effort in. So, you went through your loungewear drawer and found an old USC hoodie and the leggings that made your butt look best.

You checked your hair and then grabbed a bag of kettle corn out of your pantry, knowing there’d be no lack of beverages at Casa Winchester. You climbed back into your waiting ride and settled on the fact that the radio was out of your control. Slowly you let the miles pass by in a somehow relaxing anticipation. You already had a good time at Bobby’s, now you got to see the rest of your people. And forget about the hows and whys of your latest business decision.

Because first and foremost, Dean and Sam (and Charlie) were your friends.

You stepped into Sam and Dean’s driveway behind Charlie’s rickety Gremlin, having tipped your driver well after the change of plans. Their attached garage was big enough for Dean’s inherited Impala and Sam’s newer Charger, plus all the crap Dean kept around to keep them both in the best shape. You punched in their security code, slid past their cherished rides and in through the mudroom after making sure the garage door closed behind you.

The sounds of the race were evident already and you couldn’t help but smile at their unabashed competitiveness as you walked through the house. There was a small entryway between the mudroom and the back stairway where you tossed your flip flops and your bag in a heap. You tucked your phone in your pocket and fisted the oversized bag of popcorn.

“Who’s winning?” you called out towards the living room as you made your way into the kitchen. A chorus of groans and greetings met you.

“Who do you think?!” Charlie beamed, snickering as she passed Dean’s Koopa on the track.

You chuckled as you plopped your contribution to the snack bar that Dean’s kitchen island had been transformed into. You popped open a container of grocery store cookies and stole one before heading over to watch the match wrap up. Dean, who was closest, was sitting on the longer end of the couch, his elbows on his knees, baseball cap backward and barefoot, heckling Charlie as he trailed behind her Peach on the last lap.

Sam was standing in sweats and an old Celine Dion tshirt Dean got him as a joke, but he always wore it with pride. He was barely hanging on, nearly an entire lap behind Charlie and Dean. Charlie was sitting crisscross applesauce in the corner with her specialty controller in her lap, her eyes never leaving the screen. You dared not interrupt and block anybody’s view of the obscenely large television above the fireplace, so you slinked onto the arm of the couch on Dean’s right, finishing your cookie and watching as Charlie took first despite Dean’s last second shell attack.

“EAT IT, DEAN! Bow to your queen!!! YEAH!” Charlie whooped, as Dean dropped his controller and stared at the ceiling, hands drooping in defeat.

Sam finally crossed the finish line and the standings were posted on the screen for all to see. “This is ridiculous,” Sam groaned, before turning to you and offering an arm up for a side hug. You fell against his muscular side and hugged his waist.

“How was Bobby’s?”

“Good, Annie says hey.”

Dean, turning his back on a gloating Charlie, asked “she tell you the news?”

You grew stiff and asked warily, “what news?” Sam patted your back in reassurance before leaving to grab a drink from the kitchen.

“She’s coming in to do a track with us. This coming week, I’ll get her in the box with me.”

“Are you serious?! Dude! I have only heard her sing on the radio, I didn’t know she still did,” you gushed, which was exactly what Dean needed to hear, apparently, because his face completely lit up talking to you about the new duet.

“She didn’t even tell Bobby until like Tuesday, when I sent the sheet music home with him,” Dean confided.

“So that means she’s gonna tour with you guys? God, Bobby is going to be fussing over everything,” you said, dropping onto the couch between him and Charlie. You smiled at your red headed friend and changed the subject. “Drink?”

“Please!” Dean begged. “Need something before I get my ass handed to me again.”

Charlie smirked and then batted her eyes at you. “You making? Or do I have to get up from my very comfy spot?”

“Fine! What is your highness drinking tonight?” You said as you stood and joined Sam in the kitchen, with Dean on your heels.

“Something with tequila!” Charlie shouted after you.

“Oh, boy, I’m not having what she’s having,” you muttered and made your way to the corner of the kitchen they had made into a wet bar.

“Why? Get too sloppy?” Dean teased.

“No, tequila makes me slutty, and I’m just not really dressed for that,” you said, playfully sad, even as the mischief sparked in his eyes.

Sam laughed and handed you a pair of pint glasses. “Yeah, that’s okay, I don’t think we need to hear you proposition Warluigi tonight.”

“Hey!” You laughed, hip checking him. “It would be regular Luigi at least!”

Dean sounded like he choked on his spit behind you. “Yeah, Sam, she’s got standards.”

You looked over your shoulder and tipped your head, “you’re damn right.”

Dean held your gaze and you instantly regretted the entire conversation, because his eyes were saying things you knew he didn’t really mean. He didn’t see you like that, to Dean, you were like a kid sister. But to you, Dean hit all of your standards and ruined them for everyone else. You rolled your eyes and sighed, turning back to the alcohol and tried to keep the mood light.

The heavy pour of rum in your coke, the palate cleanser you needed before the next three hours of high stakes gaming with the man you would always be in love with, his not-so-little brother and the friend you could always depend on. You fell asleep with your feet in Charlie’s lap, somehow better at the game than Sam but still not able to top Charlie’s experience. You woke just after nine with a blanket tucked around you and a glass of water left out on the coffee table.

“Then the little weasel tried to split an Uber, honestly!” Bela groaned, complaining about a bad date as you sipped mimosas in the Sunday sunshine. “What about you, darling? Please tell me you’ve at least entertained the idea of dating again. It’s been too long since you’ve had that well-fucked glow.”

You rolled your eyes, blushing, Bela’s bluntness was one of the reasons you loved her. “Tell me about it. But, its what happens when you’ve got no time or fucks to give. Um, I do have a potential target for you, though.”

“Oh? Pray tell, lord knows I need some fresh meat.” Her teeth gleamed and if it was anyone else you’d feel bad about throwing him to the lioness, but you knew Bela could be trusted with things that actually mattered.

“So, the label doesn’t trust Dean going into the current album, after, well everything,” you started, stabbing at your eggs.

“Okay?” Bela replied, unsure of where you were going.

“But I, genius that I am, assured them that I could spin his image, make some positive noise out there and all in all insure that the next tour is going to be huge. And to do that—”

“No!” Bela gasped, you smiled back at her apologetically, but desperate was probably more accurate.

You trudged on. “How would you feel about some social media smooching and public dates with a hot guy who is trying to rebuild his career?”

Bela composed herself, but the flare of her nostrils told you everything. She thought about it and let you simmer in your own anxiety as the waiter checked on your drinks. You smiled politely and sent him on his way.

“How is he doing, really?” Bela asked sternly, her eyes piercing into your soul.

You exhaled. “He’s good. It’s been a long year, but he has calmed down— left behind the bad influences. Hell, Sam’s even got him into meditation. Which is something I’d never thought I’d see. So, if you’re asking me if he is stable, the answer is yes. If you’re asking me if he’s on board with the idea—- I haven’t told him yet. I wanted you to make the first call, because no matter who it is, Dean’s not going to like it.”

Bela huffed.

“But I trust you. And I think— it’d be kind of fun to hang out more. Might even be able to tack another zero onto your follower count,” you pushed the sale.

Bela smirked, reading you and not bothering to deny the appeal. “He does clean up nicely, right? I’m not going to have to hire a stylist to keep up appearances or anything.”

You nodded, hope igniting in your belly. “I’ll talk to him, he’s got the closet he just needs to use it.”

She took a sip of her drink and looked around the patio, squinting as she drew out her decision. “Is he straight? Am I a beard here?”

“He likes girls. But I’m not entirely sure he’s completely straight, though,” you admitted, probably for the first time out loud.

Bela hummed in consideration.

“We can pay you, off the books. I’m not saying you need it, but it won’t be easy and—”

“I might be entitled to compensation,” Bela teased. “Look. I’ll think about it. But if you breathe a word of this to my mother, I will kill you. She would die before letting me date somebody as seedy as a musician. Let the old bat stay in the belfry.”

“Oh, yeah, good call, don’t want to send an old woman to the hospital,” you nodded, completely forgetting about all the people Bela would have to appease to make this happen as well.

“Y/N? Relax.” Bela eyed you. “I’m honestly considering it, if anything it would be a break in the monotony. And if I can make some idiot exes jealous along the way, all the better.”

You grinned. “That’s the spirit!”

“Another mimosa? I didn’t drive and I know you, it’d take a few more before you have to be careful,” Bela changed the subject and drew your attention back to the approaching waiter.

“Sure, why not?”

Just after eleven that night, Bela texted you that she was in. You don’t know if it was the loneliness of her apartment or the looming threat of another work week that pushed her over the edge, but you would take it. You thanked her and promised to touch base on schedules once Dean was in the loop.

You put your phone down and stared at your ceiling, it was actually happening. Something told you that Dean would go along with it, even if just for a little while. And with that thought, you slept soundly for the first time in ages.

Tagging: @deans-spinster-witch@mrswhozeewhatsis@cosicas-cuquis@fics-pics-andotherthings-i-like@suckitands33@ladysparkles78@deans-baby-momma@stoneyggirl2@sassy-pelican @leigh70

Chapter Four: Bravura

#spotless series #dean/reader #dean winchester fanfiction #spn fanfic #rockstar au #fake dating

47 notes · View notes

skyemisc · 4 years

Text

Silver Ceremonial Robes Translation

My translation may not be 100% accurate but it should give the general gist ;;;;

Under the cut!

EP1:

“I want to return their kindness”

Courtyard

Idia: Ahh~ I don’t wanna. Why does the magical shift tournament have to be on TV?

Idia: They show my face in some pretty shameful replays. I’d like to avoid that…

Idia: Right now is 7:00PM… The school store should just barely be open.

Idia: I’ll buy a welding mask, then tomorrow I can hide my face the entire day…!

(rustle rustle)

Idia: Hii!! S-S-Something moved--!

Silver: You there! State your name at once!

Idia: Hii?! I-I-I-I’m no one! Ah, Ahhhh, I’m not anyone suspicious…!

Idia: I-I-I-I’m Ignihyde’s I-Idia Shroud!!

Idia: So, please, put down that baton in your hand…!

Silver: Ahh… Idia-senpai. That would imply you are not anyone suspicious then.

Idia: (whisper) I-I think the one popping out of nowhere brandishing a baton is a lot more suspicious though…

Silver: Anyway, what are you doing wandering around here at this hour? Usually, you’re at your dorm eating dinner at this time right?

Idia: I-I was on my way to go buy a welding mask…

Silver: Do you need it for a mechanical engineering-related experiment?

Idia: Urgh… Well what about you, w-w-w-why are you walking around in ceremonial robes…!

Silver: These clothes are most suitable for slipping around during the twilight.

Silver: It inhibits my mobility, but due to certain circumstances I don’t have my dormitory clothes available.

Idia: Eh….Eh? Like a stealth move?

Idia: S-Silver, are you actually some sort of ninja?

Silver: Hmm…. What’s a ninja?

Idia: They’re rumored to come from a far East country. They are people who conduct covert actions, intelligence assessment, and other dirty work.

Idia: Have you never heard of shuriken or fire jutsus before?

Idia: It’s a popular theme for anime and in games their jobs are on-par with that of samurai!

Silver: Idia-senpai… You’re suddenly talkative.

Idia: Ah… Sorry ‘bout my otaku rambling…

Silver: I understand you explanation… But unfortunately I’m not this ‘ninja’ you speak of.

Idia: Seeing you deny that with such a straight face kinda makes me embarrassed on my part though…

Idia: Wait… Silver, what are you aiming at, wondering the courtyard at night…?

Silver: Tomorrow is the Magical Shift Tournament. The school will be open, and immoral people will be among the crowd of normal people from different countries.

Silver: Undoubtedly, assassins will take advantage of the crowds to slip in and look for any possible openings.

Silver: The safety of Malleus-sama is of the utmost priority.

Idia: That’s overreacting! Besides, Malleus has a strong high rank cheat, isn’t that overprotecting him?

Silver: I serve Malleus-sama, who will someday become king of the fairies and rule over the Valley of Thorns.

Silver: Before coming to this school, if he took one step out of the castle, he had guards with him.

Idia: Hmmmm…

Silver: If by any chance something happened to Malleus-sama, there would be diplomatic discourse

Silver: This is in no way overprotection.

Idia: W-W-What’s with this heavy scaled topic…

Idia: I’ve only heard about assassins and diplomatic discourse in games though…?

Silver: This is no game. This is our reality.

Idia: W-W-W-W-Wow…! There’s always, always been lines I wanted to try reciting during these times…!

Silver: …? If you want to say it, why not go ahead?

Idia: Nah, if you were to say it it’d probably fit but if I tried I’d probably look like some sort of wannabe.

Silver: I see… I don’t quite understand it all, but I apologize.

Silver: Well then, I will return to my station. Be careful not to get mistaken as anyone suspicious.

Silver: Currently, I, along with Sebek and Lilia-senpai are patrolling the school after all.

Idia: R-Roger… I’ll follow your example and use my stealth mode where I can. L-Later.

Silver: Yes, see you.

Silver: …I should meet with Sebek and Lilia-senpai and let them know about Idia-senpai wandering around the courtyard area.

Silver: It’ll be a huge commotion around the area if he runs into Sebek.

EP2:

Courtyard

Idia: *sigh*… Finally class is over. Really, today’s weather is too nice… It’s rough for a shut-in like me…

Idia: On days like these, I’ll quickly confine myself and return to my room and complete my daily quests.

???: ……

Idia: …Hm? Someone there?

Idia: S-S-S-S-Silver?! Why’s he collapsed in the courtyard?!

(leans in…)

Idia: Oh… maybe he’s just sleeping…? Sheesh, I was so surprised I took damage…

Idia: …Though, he’s got some good features. No doubt he’d be popular~

Idia: His face when he’s sleeping looks like that of a prince, so dazzling. There’s even small animals around him…

Idia: He seems so different now compared to the day before the Magical Shift Tournament

Idia: I was scared of getting hit with that baton too…

Idia: Now seeing him like this, I wouldn’t believe he would be the type who likes to get involved with anything.

Silver: Hm… Nn…

Idia: Hii! I-I-Is he w-waking up?!

Silver: *yawn*… I thought I sensed someone. It was you, Idia-senpai…

Idia: Y-Y-Y-Y-You got it all wrong! I wasn’t at all staring at you while you slept!

Silver: ? Please settle down a bit before you speak. Everytime we’ve met you lurch in surprise.

Idia: That reaction was more due to my anti-socialness…

Idia: B-B-B-Before you were brandishing that baton. Anyone would be shocked from that.

Silver: Now that I hear it aloud that sounds only natural… I apologize for my actions last night before the Magical Shift Tournament.

Idia: Urgh… I feel bad seeing you sit there and apologize so sincerely…

Idia: S-Silver, you’re a bit of a strange one… To have such students who are so straightforward and loyal…

Silver: …Is that so?

Idia: Y-Yeah. To go to such an extent to go on night watch for their dorm leader, the students at Ignihyde would not ever do that.

Idia: …Hwah! M-M-M-Maybe The Dorm leader Malleus at Diasomnia dorm is one to rule with an iron fist?

Idia: I-If that’s the case, I can understand. Are you forced to do stuff like the night watches?

Silver: Such acts of reign of terror is not necessary at Diasomnia dorm. Just as the other night, the night watches of are our own volitions.

Silver: I’m not sure what all goes on with the students at Ignihyde dorm but, I will do what I can for the one I’ve sworn my loyalty to.

Silver: Right now, the reason I am alive today is all because of my father and Malleus-sama.

Silver: I want to someday return their kindness towards me.

Idia: Ohhh… The expression on your face was so cool, and for an otaku like me, I could feel the passion from your tone.

Idia: I can kinda sympathize.

Silver: In addition, I prefer to avoid any trouble for Malleus if any conflict were to arise between the human land and Valley of Thorns.

Silver: My power is nothing fancy, but I want to do what I can.

Silver: I was told many times by my father to avoid any warfare growing up…

Idia: Ohh… Such profound words.

Idia: That ‘father’, he must be a strong man with a steel-like body and mind.

Silver: Yes. My father was a guard who served as a lord of the Valley of Thorns.

Silver: I’ve heard he earned the queen’s favor due to his ability to fight in battle.

Silver: At this time he is retired, but he was a warrior who has been rewarded medals due to his actions of throwing himself into battle multiple times.

Silver: I’m sure I cannot begin to imagine the harsh experiences he had…

Idia: W-What is this. This is starting to sound like an open world RPG…

Silver: Open world?

Idia: I-Internet thing. Sorry, it’s something you commoners wouldn’t understand.

Silver: No, I know about online games. My father often stays up late to play such games.

Idia: Hm?! Your father just suddenly turned degenerate?!

Silver: My father has always liked those sort of trends. Recently he’s been getting into MagiCam it seems.

Idia: E-Ehhh?! He just went from a retired strong Royal guard to crumble down from there…!

Lilia: Heeey Silver. What are you doing sauntering around there?

Lilia: You promised to accompany me after school for an uber difficult quest.

Silver: Fath… Lilia-senpai. Sorry. I’ll be there right away.

Lilia: Hm…? I was wondering who it was there, and it happens to be Idia. You two are a rare combination.

Idia: Ah, ah… L-L-L-Lilia, this is, uh…

Silver: I had dozed off here earlier and met him by chance.

Silver: Idia-senpai, see you around.

Idia: Y-yeah, see you…

Idia: …Talking with Silver about his dad was interesting.

Idia: Even though he was an honored warrior from the Valley of thorns he’s a heavy internet user and uses MagiCam lolol

Idia: If someone like him really does exist, even me, who hates people, would wanna see him with my own eyes…

Diasomnia Dorm – Hallway

Lilia: I’ve gathered materials to implement my new items. Next week is this season’s event. I’ll be so busy~

Silver: You really seem like you’re having fun when talking about those games.

Lilia: When I was a youngin we didn’t have these online games.

Lilia: Dwellers from all around the globe can cross borders for entertainment. It has become quite peaceful times.

Silver: That’s true. For you to live in a peaceful time where you can enjoy games…

Silver: We definitely must protect it.

Lilia: …Look at you talk so cheekily

Lilia: Now then, let’s ride on that sentiment there Silver and dive into my games to my heart’s content. They’ll be no sleeping tonight~

Silver: P-Please give me a break, father…

#twisted wonderland #twst #translation #silver ceremonial robes #silver personal story #omgliliaisagamerdadwtf

122 notes · View notes

jojostory · 5 years

Text

Artist Alley Tips: Flying to Conventions

Wanting grow your art business might mean you’re looking into travelling for shows! I did this for the first time at Anime Central in 2017. Read under the cut for my experience!

Choosing an Airline

Make sure to choose an airline that fits your travel needs! For example, Southwest is a favorite of many artists because they have free checked baggage. However, they also have an unusual boarding system (at least, I thought so) where the order in which you board depends on your check-in time and people get to choose whichever seat they want. If you really need an aisle or window seat, you might need a different airline.

Another thing to consider is whether you’re enrolled in an rewards program (say, for your credit card or airline miles) that allows you to get plane tickets more cheaply.

Choosing a Hotel & Roommates

Consider cost v.s. convenience! Hotels further from the convention venue tend to be cheaper (and Airbnbs are often even cheaper than that!). But honestly, I find it super tiring to lug myself between the convention center and a hotel that’s far away every day, even if there’s a shuttle (which can be unpredictable). I prefer to stay in a nearby convention hotel if I can find roommates to stay with!

Keep an eye out for “party hotels” that tend to attract people who like to stay up late and be loud -- and think about whether you want to be in one or not. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a good way to tell whether a hotel is one or not without just asking friends you have that have attended the convention before.

Places to find roommates: the convention’s website forums, Artist Alley Network International, through artist friends

Wherever you find your roommates, make sure to communicate beforehand and set expectations about rough times you’ll be sleeping and awake, noise, partying, etc.

Map out routes from your hotel to the airport beforehand! The hotel might have a free or cheap shuttle from the airport that you’ll definitely want to take advantage of. If not, check if Lyft or Uber is in the area (it tends to be cheaper than a taxi, but slower since you have to wait for your car to come pick you up).

What I Take With Me

(Caveat: I often travel to cons alone, so I limit the luggage I carry with me so I can actually manage by myself!)

Large luggage. For my first out-of-state con, I needed luggage that would be durable enough to survive being checked onto a flight but that was roomy enough to hold everything I needed. I also looked for a bag with an 80-20 split rather than a 50-50 split, making it easier to pack big items (like print boxes) in the suitcase. Finally, I wanted something with a lock, so I could keep merch secured at night after con hours. I ended up going with this Samsonite suitcase (affiliate link) and I love it!

Small luggage. I’m kind of a small person, so I can’t handle multiple huge pieces of luggage at once. I took my regular suitcase and filled about half of it with clothes/toiletries/other travel necessities and the other half with more merch.

Photography stand. This doesn’t fit in a luggage, I have to take this as a carry-on. (Read more about how to use photograph stands in your artist alley setup here!) For a while, I used the bag that the stand came with, but it started falling apart so I eventually bought a skinny golf club case (affiliate link) that has worked really well so far (and I can carry it cross-body so my hands are free to push my suitcases along!)

One backpack. Carry-on item, to hold stuff like laptop, phone charger, 3DS, Switch, and snacks!

One purse. Essentials like airline ticket, ID, wallet, and keys go in a cross body purse so I can get through the airport with as little stress as possible!

Packing Strategy & Tips

Like I mentioned above, using a 80-20 split luggage makes things so much easier!

In the 80% half your your suitcase, place heavy, large or tall-ish items first and pack them tightly as your can, tetris-style. Then, fit in more flexible things (like bags of charms) in the spaces in between (but make sure your merch won’t get crushed when your stand your suitcase upright).

In the 20% half of your suitcases, place flatter/softer items (like tablecloths, signage and display prints, art portfolios, etc.

Buy a luggage scale. I have this one (affiliate link), which I really like because it’s USB-rechargeable. For most airlines, the weight of each suitcase you check must be under 50 lbs. or you have to pay an overweight baggage fee! As I pack my suitcase, I take a couple times to check how close to the weight limit I am. If my large suitcase is too heavy, I’ll move a few things to my small suitcase or to my backpack. Make sure to take the luggage scale with you -- so you can check if your suitcase is under the weight limit on your way back, too. I do check both suitcases since I need to take my photography stand as a carry-on.

Estimate how much stock you’ll need and only take that much. If you have 30 copies of a print and you think you’ll only sell about 10, just take 10! This is a good way to reduce weight.

Reduce hard, rigid containers as much as possible. For example, I carry all my charms in large plastic bags, so I can kind of fit them in nooks and crannies in places in my luggage. Of course, rigid containers are definitely necessary to protect more fragile items like prints!

Practice packing a few days before hand! This way you’ll know if there are items that can’t fit or are too heavy -- and will give you time to figure out different containers or other ways to adjust before the day of travel.

On the Day Of Travel

Double-check you’ve packed everything!

Get to the airport early!

Check in your baggage. If you’ve practiced packing beforehand, you hopefully won’t run into overweight baggage issues.

Get to your gate! Get a snack and relax now that you’re not carrying your suitcases anymore :) Keep an ear open to see if the flight is full. If so, you might want to ask the gate attendants if it’s OK to gate-check or tag your photography stand because it might not fit in the overhead bins if they’re full. You’ll only want to do this if you have a carrying case for your photography stand that is hard and will protect your stand!

Settle in on the plane. If you are bringing your photography stand, wait for people to put their suitcases in the overhead bins near you. Then, you can shove your photography stand on top! This is usually not a problem unless you’re on a very small plane with small overhead bins.

Once you’ve landed, you hopefully know how you’re going to get to the hotel you picked out. If you do have to take a taxi, make sure you don’t take a flat-rate taxi (unless the convention center is extremely far away). It’s usually cheaper to take a fare taxi for shorter rides.

Other Considerations

Simplify your merch! Being able to offer a variety of items is great, but it also takes up a lot of space. In general (but especially for out-of-state conventions), my strategy is to bring lots of copies of items I’m confident are going to be successful. If I want to experiment with new items, I usually do that through my online store or through local cons.

Don’t buy more suitcases! Rather than buying more suitcases (and attempting to carry them all and pay more for checked baggage) I try to rotate out old merch so that I only bring things that I can fit in the bags I have.

Bring a friend! If you have a friend who is going to the convention too, see if they’re willing to travel with you! With extra hands and eyes, you can help take care of each others’ luggage and figure out how to get to places together.

Phew, you made it! Now go out and kick butt! I hope this post was helpful, and if you have any tips or thoughts you’d like to see added here, let me know!

#art tips #artist alley tips #tips #artist alley #how to fly to anime conventinos #how to fly to conventions #aa tips

171 notes · View notes

mysticsparklewings · 5 years

Photo

ToonMe

Yeah, yeah, look at me super-late to the latest popular Art Challenge as usual. :P In my defense, this challenge came at like the worst possible time, just after the whole drawing tablet fiasco, and so at first that combined with me not liking posting pictures of myself that often because I am uber paranoid about turning into a True Crime documentary subject, I was pretty convinced I wasn't going to hop on this particular bandwagon. But I kept seeing other people posting there's, and I noticed that quite a few used a few tricks to hide or almost disguise the photo/face part. And after a little while, though still mildly frustrating, I did get more accustomed to the new set up I have for digital art, and well...after more time spent trying to get just the right photo of myself than I care to admit, here we are. The #ToonMe challenge is unique in that it challenged me to find the right balance between my usual style and something more realistic. My proportions are usually very cartoony, borrowing heavy inspiration from Winx Club and Anime. Sometimes my coloring is softer and slightly more realistic, and sometimes I go for hard, cartoony cell-shading. And this isn't the first time I've been challenged with drawing myself, either. The main things I wanted to do/accomplish with my take on the challenge included: • A seamless, almost hard to notice transition between the Toon Side and the Real Side (as I'd seen on others' and taken a liking to) • Capture my physical, real-world style but also not over-complicate what I'd have to draw • Capture my drawing style accurately but without compromising too much of the look of the photo • Make it unique to me. Naturally, a lot of how this process was going to go relied pretty heavily on me getting the base photo just right. I tried a few other looks and some different angles before finally getting the photo I used here out of the mix. And yes, I could've just used a photo I already had on hand like I'm sure many other artists did without hesitation, but I wanted this to be fun and just in general when I take photos of myself I like them to be just so. It's very rare that I take photos of myself, let alone ones where I'm not prepared for the world to see me. I wanted to do this right. Once I finally had a photo I was happy with, then came the real challenge of toon-ifying half of it. (Well, probably more than half, but you get the idea.) Naturally, my used-to-be-bangs didn't want to cooperate with me when I took the photo, so my solution to that was to use my hair part/line as part of the dividing point. This also works out because I feel like dividing the hair more towards the center would've made the overall diving line more obvious. Using the part as a base makes the two halves blend together better when viewed from far away/as a thumbnail. Other than that, I kept it pretty half-and-half, including leaving one cat ear on the photo side and one on the toon side. (And ironically the cat ear and the shirt are the two most realistic things on the toon side.) I found the easiest way to do the toon-ifying was to start by just tracing the real lines for the toon parts, then going back and stylizing/adjusting them as necessary. The biggest adjustments I made were the very noticeable stylization of the eye and bringing my neck and shoulder in to more closely match my usual drawing proportions. And, technically the hair, but as I said I knew going in I was going to have to deviate from the photo to get the look I wanted, stylization aside. (My hair does cooperate and look like this sometimes, it's just when I was taking photos for this it decided not to and I couldn't be bothered to put off taking photos until a day where it chose to behave. If I didn't think it was authentic to me, I wouldn't have done it.) I do wish I had reconsidered my jewelry choices because it was only after I started working on it that I realized the extra challenge I had added for myself in choosing the necklace that I did. Likewise, I know very well the chain is not super realistic, but I could not be bothered to draw all the individual little chain circles by hand. So I took a short cut in drawing two lines, one relatively straight (following the non-existent curve of the necklace in the photo), one wavy, and then erasing the second one as necessary to create the illusion of a chain instead. Also, I specifically wore those earrings because I thought they would be cute and relatively simple to draw. And while I'm very sure I could've made much more complicated choices, I was still a little overly optimistic in just how easy these would be. One of the trickier parts of the lines was actually the lips. A lot of the time I skip drawing lines for the lips, because I normally do full-body drawings where the face is relatively small and it's hard to get the lines to look right on such a small scale, but if I wanted the seamless look from toon to photo, it was necessary here. I must've re-drawn both the top and bottom lines like ten times each before finally getting something I could live with. Additionally, while I could've gone back and added weight to the lines in some places, it seemed more natural here to leave them pretty much as-is. Anyway. With the lines done, I could move on to coloring and shading. And I was actually surprised by how relatively smoothly that process went. It did take a few layers and some back-and-forth, but it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be to get the semi-realistic soft shading I needed so the two halves would blend together nicely. Sidenote: You can hopefully see here that I try my best to be fairly accurate with my color choices when I draw myself these days, right down to the grayish-blue of my eyes. The main things with coloring turned out to be 1. getting the shadows in the right places and 2. getting the line art to be dark enough you could tell it was there without it being too obnoxious. And while I don't normally do this, I found the best way to balance out the lines was to use an airbrush to make the lines lighter in some places and darker in others. I actually had the .png file saved twice, thinking I was finished, only to end up going back and making small alterations to the shadows (mostly on the face) and the lines later. Which, it's kind of a good thing I had to do that because it wasn't until the second time I was doing revisions that I noticed I'd totally forgotten the shadow the necklace was supposed to be casting on the skin. It's very subtle even in the photo, but it would've driven me crazy had I noticed it only after it had been uploaded/posted. I also made a very conscious decision to have the eyelash/brow semi-visible through the hair. The eye is a large part of my stylization, and even though in a normal drawing I would've covered it up, it didn't seem right to just cover it up here. But it also seemed very wrong to leave it at full-color, too. So this was my compromise. Speaking of which, the eyebrow I wasn't really sure what to do with, since normally I either just do thick lines for eyebrows or if I do fully outline them, like the lips, they're usually far away and pretty small, so there's usually not a lot to do with them. Hence why that is easily the biggest and most obvious giveaway on the toon side. I was equally surprised at how easy it was to do sunglasses. I was expecting them to be trickier, being a reflective surface and all with a few notable tiny areas to worry about. But I think in the end they were one of the easiest things to color and shade. And that was pretty much all I was absolutely required to do for the ToonMe challenge. Me being me, though, I wasn't quite satisfied with just that. From fairly early on I had converted the background for the toon side into a digital flat color of my usual "mystic hue," which in reality is what the wall behind me looks like even though it shows as more of a baby blue in the photo. One of the first additions beyond that that I made was a few carefully placed sparkles for a little extra pizzazz, but that wasn't quite enough. I cycled through a few different ideas; making the whole thing into a Polaroid or setting it into a phone frame, etc. Just something to make it a little more special. Still, I ended up coming back around to one of my initial ideas: Wings. I am, after all, MysticSparkleWings. I do have a digital pair of wings closer to the shape/style I tend to use for my signature, but those aren't quite high enough quality for something like this. So I defaulted to the same pair of wings I used to make my icon/avatar ages ago, which were originally made based on a pair of costume wings I actually have in real life. And had I thought this whole thing through a little more, I could have worn them and had one real wing, one digital one. But alas, I didn't plan that far ahead and by the time I had this realization, it was very too late to backtrack it. It's funny. I made that other digital pair from my signature, hoping to make a new Eclipse-friendly icon with them, but they're too high quality (300 pixels) for that (Eclipse icons are 100 pixels, where the old dA icons are 50) and yet too low-quality for stuff like this. They're just not very good for anything, are they? Even after I added the wings and a few extra sparkles, I toyed with the idea of doing more, but I really couldn't think of anything else that I felt really confident would enhance the art rather than take away from it. So, I stuck my signature on the glasses lens (that seemed like the best non-intrusive place for it), and left it at that. I'm sure it's not as spectacular as it could be, but I think considering I originally wasn't even going to attempt the challenge that it's more than enough. I just wish this challenge has cropped up at a better time. Somehow all the super popular art challenges seem to appear when it's the least convenient for me and thus if I want to join in I end up doing so usually after everyone else has moved on. Ah well. Maybe next time. This one's done and I think it turned out okay. Back to my regularly scheduled non-challenge related art. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

#toonme

2 notes · View notes

bohrapbois · 5 years

Text

Full Marks

CHAPTER 6 Description - Ben just so happens to fall head over heels for a Mysterious Man who loves baseball and cracking terrible jokes. Mysterious Man also turns out to be the father of one of Ben’s students. Warnings - Full blown relationship Hardzello, with plenty of angst, fluff and future smut. Word Count - 1,712

The paramedics took another ten minutes to arrive, but Ben hadn’t moved much. Allen had helped him move to sit upright against the filing cabinet, and although he was breathing unaided, his chest was burning from a shortage of oxygen. Although he tired, he just couldn’t get enough air in.

He was lifted onto the ambulance trolley, kept in a sitting position but strapped down across his lower abdomen and legs to hold him upright. An oxygen mask was placed over his face, and Ben couldn’t get enough of the cold air coming in. His nose had clotted up and his mouth wiped to ensure he wasn’t breathing in any dry blood. They began to wheel him out of the class.

Headmaster May stood there waiting, tears in his eyes as he smiled softly at Ben. Someone in his family was hurt, and he couldn’t do anything to stop the pain. Annita stood at his side, holding her husbands arm in comfort. Ben raised a heavy arm to let him know he was alright. They continued down the hallway, and Ben heard a familiar voice call out his name.

Craning his neck, he saw Beth clinging to Joes neck, sniffling as she watched through tearful eyes as Ben wheeled past her. Ben felt his own eyes well up, and it wasn’t helped by the obvious tear tracks staining Joe’s cheeks.

As they went through the main door, Ben caught a glimpse of Rami rushing from the car park, probably coming to comfort his family, but what caused more surprise was Gwilym running from the same parked car.

“Ben!” The Welshman rushed to the trolley, grabbing one of the barriers as the paramedics continued to walk. Another set of eyes scanned his injuries, and Ben wasn’t surprised by the chocked gasp. Everyone had the same reaction. Allen couldn’t even stop from wincing at each wheeze.

Ben grabbed Gwil’s hand, still not willing to talk, and nodded slightly at the paramedics question if he was to travel with them. Gwil and a paramedic climbed into the back, the other paramedic moving to the front with the driver. They didn’t expect his condition to worsen suddenly, so there was no need to crowd the back.

Ben eyed the equipment shuffling to the side as much as the restraints would allow him. He wasn’t overly fond of needles or medicine, would much rather sleep off a headache or cold rather than take a pill. Ben’s heart rate increased as the male paramedic began rifling through one of the draws, not calming when Gwil held his shoulder. He sighed in relief once a heart rate armband was pulled out. The medic made swift work of getting his blood pressure, muttering to himself as he made notes when he tested Ben’s pupils.

It wasn’t long until they arrived at the hospital, and Ben was wheeled into the E.R. Gratefully, Gwilym was allowed with him as they wheeled him into a spare section, pulling the curtain around to offer privacy.

“When I got a phone call,” Gwil fell into the uncomfortable plastic chair next to his bed, “from school saying you got attacked, I was about ready to hijack a car”. Ben chuckled (which turned into a wince) at the mental image of Gwil breaking the law. “I started running there instead”. The house was close enough to Animal Ark that Gwil saw no need of an extra expense of a car to get to work, rather he just walked. “I just got to the end of the road when a car stopped next to me, and low-and-behold, Green Eyes from the other day was leaning out of his window and telling me to get in”.

Ben raised his eyebrows as he continued to stare at Gwilym. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“I don’t know how he knew where I wanted to go, but I didn’t even say anything as we sped towards the school,” Gwil fiddled with the sleeve of his jumper. The thread was beginning to become loose from his distracted habit, and the blue material took all the taller mans attention. Ben hummed next to him, eyes also focusing on the sleeve and the two sat there for a moment, comfortable with one another.

Gwil was used to Ben needed company, and understood that sometimes it worked better when they were both silent. Just having a familiar presence near him would sometimes be enough to calm the blonds nerves. Ben would take the weight of the world on his shoulders and would never burden anyone else with his own, pressing problems. If he was in a bad mood, it has been known for the blond to purposefully look for the worst to give himself a reasoning. It was bad during university, and he missed lectures and seminars due to it, and although it’s gotten better over the years, he still needs that calming mind in stressful or hurtful situations. So here they sat, two best friends on foreign ground, one in need of medical aid and the other there for support, doing what they do best: being there for one another.

--------------------

A nurse had come around and done a brief medical overlook, followed by a doctor and another doctor. They all were shocked at the scales of the injuries but were relieved at the lack of deep damage. “You’ll be fine within three weeks-” doctor Two had said, “won’t be any long term side effects”.

Ben was discharged seven hours after first wheeling through the doors after some observations and blood tests. The oxygen levels in his blood weren’t cause for alarm and the medical staff were happy for him to leave with some prescribed medication and a check up appointment scheduled for the following week.

It was only when Ben and Gwil blinked into the dark outside that they realised that they had no way of getting back to theirs. “Shit,” Ben croaked out, having begun trusting his vocal chords and throat when they had been there for hour two, and could near enough speak normally if he ignored the shooting pain of bruised muscles. Nothing louder than a stage whisper at the moment but he’d get there.

“‘Shit’ indeed,” Gwil mumbled before pulling out his phone and looking up the local taxi service. Uber and Lyft weren’t in use around these small towns, but there were plenty of other taxi services around that would be willing to come pick them up at nearing three in the morning.

Gwil wandered off a few meters as he talked to the driver and gave the address, but Ben was just focusing on how cold it was. Wearing a dress shirt was a good idea for the disaster of a parents evening but not so much for standing outside an isolated hospital in the middle of fucking nowhere. If it wasn’t for Ben’s anxiety surrounding hospitals, he’d suggest that they go and sit in the waiting room, but most of the red plastic seats of the small room were occupied and Ben didn’t feel like sitting in a room with people in pain or on their deathbeds. So, shivering outside was the option.

His taller friend returned, and gave the estimated time of five minutes to him. They both knew that five minutes was being optimistic, and they were correct, because seventeen minutes later, a little silver Honda civic pulled up in front of them and they climbed in. The driver eyed the hand-print bruise on Ben’s neck but said nothing as he began driving back to their house.

It wasn’t long before they scraped together the right amount of change (and a little tip for the late night) and climbed out the car, shivering their way up the front porch and into the familiar presence of their home. Frankie went ballistic, sprinting from Ben’s room and colliding into her owner at full speed. Ben stumbled backwards as he rushed to grab his dog launching herself up his body, and he collided with Gwil, who also then stumbled back out the house. Now holding a wiggling dog in his arms (who was both whining at the absence of Ben and the smell of him whilst also wagging her tail so much that it was hurting Ben trying to hold her), Ben turned and apologised to Gwil, who just shrugged and made his way back inside and into the small kitchen. He placed the bag of medication on the counter top, far away back that Frankie wouldn’t be able to get to them, even if she climbed up again, before making the two of them drinks. Lemon and a generous amount of honey were loaded into Ben’s cracked Jurassic Park mug, and once the steaming water was added, the two shuffled the short distance to the sofa. Found in a charity shop, like most of the rest of the furniture, the old sofa had stains and dog fur embedded deep into its material. Frankie stayed close to Ben’s side, tucked between him and the arm rest and her watchful eyes viewed Ben’s hand movements every time he took a tentative sip.

They didn’t talk about much, Gwil mentioning how Lucy was trying to convince her boyfriend to adopt the three legged, half an ear kitten which had been brought in the week prior, but mainly they watched some of re-runs of a show that neither of them cared about. The only light other than the TV screen on was of the lamp in the corner of the room, placed carefully between the TV stand and bookcase. The warm light reminded Ben of how tired he was, and with heavy eyes, an hour after coming home, Ben uncrossed his legs, wished Gwil a goodnight, placed his mug on the counter and shut himself in his room, Frankie weaving between his legs the entire time.

The blond shrugged off his shirt and dropped his slacks, toeing off his shoes and socks before climbing into bed. He shifted around under the duvet, body aching from the events, but eventually he curled up in the corner in a nest of pillows and blankets and settled down for sleep. It was only then, when he was alone, that he let the tears flow.

I’m so sorry you’ll had to wait so long but thank you for sticking around! Although I am back, I’m afraid it won’t be scheduled posting as I’m unsure when I’ll be having the free time! BUT it would encourage me greatly if you were to leave encouraging messages/reblogs/tags to remind me to keep going

#full marks #my work #my fic #hardzello #ben hardy #joe mazzello #gwilym lee #rami malek #lucy boyton #bohemian rhapsody #bohemian rapsody movie #bohemian rhapsody move #queen cast

32 notes · View notes

pearseoneill · 5 years

Text

Three Ideas

Knowing what kind of areas I am interested in for my Major Project I have delved into three possible ideas further to try and get down to one great one. I have followed Chris’ template to plan out how these ideas would come to life.

Idea 1 - Veplan

Overview

“I’m concerned my diet is having a negative impact on the planet, however I have no idea how to cut out animal products whilst maintaining a healthy and tasty diet”

GoVeg will be an app that educates people about the environmental impact of the mainstream omnivorous diet whilst offering helpful tips in regards to recipes, meal plans and budgeting budgeting assisting them gradually transition to a healthier diet with a much smaller carbon footprint.

A lot of people don’t know that animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change. This is partly due to this being well hidden by large corporations and partly due to the fact that a lot of media out there exposing this and animal cruelty is quite jarring and in your face. I’m hoping to produce a solution that will educate people about the impact their diet has on our planet in a way that doesn’t make them uncomfortable.

After these people have been made aware and are hopefully veering towards wanting to live a more sustainable lifestyle, I hope to provide them with the perfect resource for the transitioning vegan. Recipes, budgeting, meal plans. There would also be a premium service where users will be sent a monthly box of vegan treats and essentials, encouraging them to try new things and show that a vegan diet is not just eating lettuce.

Pros

* I’ve been vegan for 3.5 years so I know a decent amount about this subject area * Through spreading information with my friends a lot of them are now at least vegetarian so I know a gentler approach can produce results * I am passionate about this subject area so I would enjoy this project

Cons

* I will need to gather a lot of data to support the claims the app will make, this may include contacting health professionals and maybe people who have transitioned to a vegan lifestyle. * I will have to make sure I don’t over complicate this service, it should not be an information overload but a simple solution. * I would like to include educational animations, something I have only a small bit of experience in but I think it would be a fun challenge.

How might it be built

This service would be best served as an app. People will need to be able to access the information on the go, for example when food shopping so having it on their phone would be the most convenient option.

I think I will create this more as a very strong concept with a working prototype on invision. This will allow me to spend the majority of my time researching all the data I will need for the app and create a fully realised transition plan.

Who’s it for?

I see this app working best for 18-30 year olds. People of this age group are more likely to be willing to change their ways and will probably be somewhat aware already that they could reduce their carbon footprint through their diet and lifestyle.

However I would like this app to be inclusive of all ages and backgrounds, allowing people to make custom plans for themselves based on things like their income and family unit.

What’s the business model?

I would like this app to be free with added services that can be paid for, I don’t know if it would be a good idea to make people pay when I’m already trying to get them out of their comfort zone and change their lifestyle. These would include the monthly subscription plan to receive a box of vegan goodies and possibly a helpline with a health professional.

Idea 2 - Sustainable Delivery service.

Overview

More and more people are growing concerned at what state our planet is in and how long we can continue to recklessly live without a care for the environment. People are also growing more and more inclined to convenience with the surge of apps like uber eats and deliveroo providing meals from your favourite restaurant chains to your door.

I hope to provide a service similar to this with the inclusion also of grocery and convenience shops. I want to create an app that hand picks the completely “green” items from restaurants and retailers, these would be items that are for example, vegan, plastic free etc. The items would be delivered via bicycle so the service would be emission free.

People are sometimes put off by the convenience of having to search for items that are eco friendly. Making it as convenient as the like of food delivery apps would encourage more people to change their ways and become more eco-friendly.

Pros * This is a proven successful model not exactly groundbreaking but a sustainable spin on it. * Sustainability is a major topic of discussion in the world right now so this would hopefully be received well.

Cons

* Is basing this app on another maybe a bit lazy? * What exactly would be the rules around what is “green”? Does this cut out too much of the average menu or what is stocked in a store?

How it might be built

This would be an app and website. These would be conceptual with strong branding giving the user the full picture of what the business model is. I would create a prototype of the app on invision and could probably create the website with more of a coming soon arc on it rather than the finished product. A promotional video explaining the message of the service would be great too.

Who’s it for?

Younger millennials and Gen Z would be the target market. This age group of people are not only waking up to what is going on with our planet but also love the convenience of delivered goods.

What’s the business model?

Users will be charged for delivery which will pay the rider fee and also create profit for the business. There would also be a premium feature where users would pay a monthly fee that would cover them for delivery with each transaction.

Idea 3 - Irish Language/Tourism app Gaeltacht quarter

Overview

The Gaeltacht quarter is an area surrounding the falls road in West Belfast. The area aims to promote the Irish language and provide tourist attractions associated with it, as well as Irish Culture.

Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich is an Irish language cultural centre in The Gaeltacht Quarter. I would like to create an app for tourists in association with them to promote the rich history of Irish Language in Belfast. It would harness augmented reality to bring to life the story of the Gaeltacht Quarter alongside guided tours.

Harry Connolly, Chief Executive of Fáilte Feirste Thiar – which promotes tourism in West Belfast – said: “Some of our main tourist attractions are the Taxi Trax tours. They would bring on average 400,000 visitors a year, Coiste have had 180,000 visitors on their walking tours, the Cultúrlann had 95,000 visitors through their doors, Belfast Hills have had 200,000 walkers, Féile brought 120,000 people into West Belfast, Colin Glen has had 250,000 visitors. Walking tours such as Tom Hartley’s cemetery tours and peace wall tours have generated 2,000 visitors, while independent taxi tours of West Belfast have brought 54,000 visitors into West Belfast – that’s well over one million visitors so far in 2017.”

I would hope to help increase these numbers by providing an immersive experience for tourists visualising the Irish Language. The app could be a component of a taxi tour where tourists could see old buildings in their former glory annotated with Irish words teaching them our history and language.

Pros * West Belfast already has an excellent tourism organisation that I could use as a resource to gauge how to best cater to the tourists who visit Belfast every year. * Providing an insight into Belfast that does not revolve around violence will be refreshing and encourage more people to visit. * Augmented reality is something I have never explored before and would be a fun new challenge

Cons * This would be a massive project, I’m not fully sure how I would go about this at all, but maybe that is a good thing * I would need to get my head around augmented reality and what exactly I would be portraying for tourists, is it more an education piece on the irish language or the gaeltacht quarter or belfast in general?

How it might be built

This would be an app in association with Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich the Irish language cultural centre. Users would be offered the app along with guided tours. I have no experience in augmented reality so this would be a big challenge and may have to be conceptual for the final product.

Who’s it for?

This app would be for tourists visiting Belfast. I would guess that the majority of tourists in Belfast that would do the likes of Walking tours and Taxi tours are middle aged and upwards.

I want to excite these people about Belfast’s history and not depress them. Belfast is rich and culture and has an edge over a lot of cities with the many different arcs to its history, I would like to shine a light on The Gaeltacht Quarter and give it a new lease of life.

What’s the business model?

I think this app would need to be funded by Tourism NI or Tourism Ireland, it would be a large scale project that would require a lot of time and resource and would need an organisation like them to bring it to its full potential. I think another way of actually making money from this would be if it was made as a component of the likes of a taxi or bus tour, customers could pay extra for the augmented reality experience.

#ixd501 #majorproject

1 note · View note

josephhealan-blog · 5 years

Text

Hello, my name is Joseph and I’m a rideshare driver

Like a scared, timid visitor to their first 12 step meeting, I stand here before you reader and declare in front of my higher power and the rest of you my inclusion in the growing population of drivers in the ride share era. I’m not embarrassed by my participation in this new modern phenomenon but you’ll see later in this initial post why I have framed it this way.

I don’t distinguish which company I drive for to protect them from any story I might share that could compromise their reputation. I have personally found them all to be mostly reputable and sometimes a challenge to work with. My journey is what it is and depends very little on which of the firms I am currently working for. I plan on encouraging questions but that’s one I will not answer.

Driving strangers, except for the time I picked up a former boss of mine, around my favorite city has been an amazing experience. If there is a color, gender, profession, age or any other type of human on the planet I’ve had at least one of them in my car. For 47 years I have lived in Atlanta or her suburbs and every shift I drive down a street I’ve never seen before and explore a neighborhood I’d never heard of.

What’s the blog for? Why the introduction that intones embarrassment or shame with this noble profession? I’ll get to that at the end of this inaugural post and I hope to take a deep dive into that very issue over time as well as share some of the odd ball characters and adventures I’ve been on with my riders. I’ve even had nights where I damn near feel like a superhero and plenty of rides I’d consider as some of my proudest performances as a human being.

As of the date of this post I have given 2,623 rides. There’s no count of actual butts in seats but that’s at least 3,000 men, women, children and a few dogs. We are required to carry service animals but a few good old fashioned pets have been along as well. To some that sounds like a lot but to veterans and the earliest drivers that started as soon as Uber came on the scene it’s a drop in the bucket. There are drivers out there now with over 30,000 rides and counting. I share my number not as a brag but as a reference point that I’ll update with future posts. I’ve learned a lot from those veterans at the airport lot, gas stations and the streets of Atlanta. We are everywhere. Pay attention if you never have the next time you stop for gas or visit a busy shopping center at the stickers in the front and back windows of cars.

Why the shame? The shame comes from many places. From society and otherwise wonderful people and from terrible human beings I’ve had the displeasure of driving in my car. I am a mid 40’s white male with a conservative haircut and I look like a typical dad or boss that would be cast on a tv sitcom. In a crowd of rideshare drivers I stand out a bit. I get second looks from riders in West End Atlanta that are not expecting me to show up and I get this question several times a shift, “what do you do for your real job?”. Real job. Driving strangers to new locations in one of our countries worst cities for traffic full of aggressive drivers is a job and one that requires focus, attention and customer service all while making sure you and your companions don’t die. I myself have been a victim of being embarrassed about my side gig, removing my window stickers while visiting someone or going on a job interview. I do not do that anymore.

My “real job” is in Finance and Accounting. I’ve been doing it for over 25 years and I’ll be doing it again as soon as I start a new contract assignment in a few weeks. I’m good at what I do and proud of my career and I’ve had the chance to work for and alongside many amazing people. But compared to my side gig, my “real job” is a piece of cake. Indoors all day, bathroom right there on demand, usually a fridge with food and coffee service. While I am on contract I sometimes drive 2 to 4 nights per week to help pay down bills and between assignments I drive long shifts up to 6 days per week. I can’t sit around at home and drive my wife crazy and I need the extra income to bridge assignments.

One night not long ago I picked up a young woman south of Atlanta in the wee hours of the morning and took her downtown to one of our large hotels. Conversation is not a given, I have a plan for a rider/driver etiquette post in the future, but this young lady was delightful and I appreciated her energy at the beginning of her day to help me get through the end of my day. As we pulled up I inquired about her job there in genuine curiosity, and based on her uniform with the hotel’s logo, I assumed it was a safe question. She very apologetically and quietly told me she was currently working in housekeeping but hoping for a better position soon. Not wanting to let the moment pass but not wanting to slow down her walk into work I said to her, “please don’t ever apologize to me or anyone else about having a hard job. You are up before dawn while others sleep and not only do you have a job with a great well known brand in the hotel industry, you also have ambition and a plan to expand and grow your career.” She smiled very gently, touched my shoulder and said “thanks man”. I’ll probably never see her again but I hope she’s doing well. I took my own advice and stopped apologizing for my job too.

Georgia State University is my alma mater and when school is in full swing the current students along with the other students in Atlanta area schools are heavy rideshare users. Students, from Clark, Spellman, Morehouse, State, Tech, Emory, Gwinnett and even as far north as Kennesaw have been some of my most interesting riders and have renewed my faith in the next generation with their amazing plans for their futures and the unbelievable things they are working on. I believe I’ve probably had a future scientist that will work for NASA and a doctor that will save a child’s life and a teacher that will pass that energy on to another generation of riders, but they’ll probably be in an auto piloted helicopter that will force me to find a new gig.

But not all students have been my favorite. At least one of them is one of my least favorite humans and I hope she will mature and have some life experience that will smooth out some of her sharper edges. It was an after work shift while I was on assignment so I was dressed like an accountant. I picked up two female GSU students for a fairly long ride from their dorm to a restaurant outside of the perimeter, 285 for any non-Atlantans that may one day stumble across this story. They weren’t particularly talkative at first but we started talking about their classes and their dinner plans. As they mentioned their career ambitions after school I shared that I had once in a previous millennia graduated from their school. One of the riders made one more unremarkable comment to close the loop on our polite small talk.

Her friend, however, was apparently unimpressed with me and said in a tone that might have been intended as a whisper but rang through the car like a church bell on a clear afternoon, “went to state and can’t even get a real job”. Her friend audibly gasped at the rudeness that had just been forced on hers and my ears and she reached up and touched my arm beside the seat. Her touch lasted a little too long but did very little to tone down the anger and disgust I was feeling. I had just left my six figure job to drive her to dinner and her absolute dismissal of my side gig of choice was so ignorant and short sighted that it shocked me. I hope she never knows some of the challenges and hurdles that my own choices and the random life changing tornadoes that happen no matter how well you plan that have landed me in a place where one job doesn’t quite make the ends meet. And even in great times I have found myself driving a few times a week to buy something special or extra or just to feel useful while my wife was busy and there weren’t any kids at home. My personal reasons for driving are of absolutely no consequence in relation to her comment and I gave the one and only rating of 1 star to a rider I’ve ever given that day. It means nothing to her and won’t keep her from getting rides in the future but it will keep her out of my car.

As a contract worker I am regularly interviewing for assignments and I am keenly aware of my online reputation. I toyed around with making this blog anonymous for the same reason that rude student was dissatisfied with my career path. But I decided to use my real name for two reasons. For one, if I come to your office for an interview I’ll be rocking my window stickers and I’ll probably be giving rides 5 minutes after I leave. And second, if you share the opinion of that rude student I don’t want to work with you. And I don’t have to. The good people of Atlanta that need a ride will carry me, just as I carry them, until I land a new gig and scale back my shifts.

Enough heavy stuff for now. With so many rides done I have funny stories, scary stories, gross stories and a few that might even be a little R rated. If anyone except my poor wife actually reads this blog, I hope you take away something positive and find it entertaining. If not then thank you tumblr for providing me a space to offload a lot of mental baggage in a way I might share with others one day.

Adios for now. See you in my rearview!

1 note · View note

bridgeglobal · 6 years

Text

Flutter vs React Native - War of Tech Giants

Developing and maintaining an application for both iOS and Android was a pain a while back. You had to handle two code base, two teams, two pipelines etc.

The Entry of React Native and Flutter

Once Facebook realized this pain, they introduced React Native in 2015. It got a sweeping response from the app developers. The apps we use in our day to day life like Facebook, Instagram, Uber Eats, Discord, Walmart, Tesla etc. are developed using React Native. This shows how much this Framework is accepted over the past couple of years.

In 2017, Google also decided to join the cross-platform development party and hence Flutter was announced. Flutter comes with some really cool and handy features like fastest hot-reload and a handful of reusable widgets (every UI component is a widget in Flutter). Flutter also offers maximum native performance when comparing with its competitor by incorporating all critical platform differences such as scrolling, navigation, icons and fonts to provide full native performance on both iOS and Android.

Flutter is probably going to get its first stable release on December 4th 2018. After watching Flutter development in the past six months and playing around with it, I am trying to find out an answer for the most asked question: Flutter vs React Native?

Flutter vs React Native: A Broad Comparison

Speaking of under-the-hood activities of both SDKs, React Native uses the most popular programming language, i.e., Javascript. On the other hand, Flutter uses Dart, which is also developed by Google seven years ago. Flutter is a framework developed in Dart and if you are wondering why on earth Google opted Dart for Flutter, we will speak about that in a little bit.

Javascript was never developed for what React Native is doing right now. In other words, Javascript was developed for web essentially. Javascript in React Native is not fully compiled to native code but the UI elements are compiled to native code. However, in my experience, I have to say that Javascript turns out to be working very well regardless of the occasional issues that need some workarounds to achieve the desired result. Coming on to Dart, it is probably an Alien language for the mainstream development community. But Dart isn’t that hard to learn. It is a mixture of Javascript and JAVA and it is a strongly typed language which is great.

Dart was also not developed for mobile apps. But it got a clear advantage of being developed by the same company, which owns the operating system that powers 84% of smartphones in the world. Yes, Google and Android!

Google knows what exactly they are doing with Flutter. With my personal experience, I can say that it does the job really well, even better than Javascript on React Native. This advantage comes because Dart is being compiled directly to ARM C/C++, which will probably lead to better communication speed and therefore better performance.

React Native or Flutter - Who Will Be The Winner?

Predicting which technology will emerge as the champion is a tough task. In order to make the process easy, I would like to sum up the comparison to the following points:

Development Time

The biggest selling point of both React Native and Flutter is “write once use it everywhere”. Is this really true? Well, not really. Let me explain it in simple terms.

Imagine a line which has one end saying “write it once” and the other end saying “write it twice”. The place of Flutter stays close (but not too close) to “write it once” and React Native stays around 60% away from “write it once” or 40% near to “write it twice”. In other words, React Native needs more lines of code to accommodate different platform-specific features while Flutter has more reusable code.

The second most important element, which is directly involved in development time is, “learn once write everywhere”. Both React Native and Flutter stay at the same point here, i.e., ‘learn once and write everywhere’ despite the platform your code is going to run on. Speaking of learning, documentation plays the biggest key role. Even though React Native and Flutter are documented very well, Flutter’s official documentation stands out because of its code samples, detailing and animated examples.

Since the learning curve for Dart is more than Javascript, React Native is the winner here, at least for now. In addition, React Native has huge community support thanks to its presence here for four years compared to the two-year-old Flutter. It also reflects when it comes to third-party library support.

2. Performance

Performance of both frameworks can’t be compared with the performance of actual native code. However, React Native and Flutter really stand out when comparing with old school Ionic or Cordova. Because the code we write is actually getting compiled to native code. Between React Native and Flutter, honestly, it is hard to benchmark between the two because it depends on so many factors including target device specifications and the features you want to include in your app. Even though Flutter has a small advantage over React Native since the Dart code is compiled to ARM C/C++ as we mentioned earlier.

3. Clientele

The popularity of React Native does not need any business mention these days. React Native has enough components to carry out the development of an application on both iOS and Android on any scale. Besides that, React Native has proven coverage and many leading apps like Skype, Facebook, Tesla, Instagram are already using React Native.

Flutter is new. Flutter is still at beta. Google is using Flutter for some of its apps, but not as much as Facebook uses React Native in their own products (Google always does this, for example, Angular vs React).

Flutter is still trying to make its presence. As a framework, it is still making its base, it will take some time to gather the momentum. Adaptation rate and acceptance for Flutter in the developer community is really promising. For example, it was trending all over Twitter on the launch day and rate of increase in the number of stars to the git repository is also a good indicator that Flutter is in business. Also, Flutter takes care of IDE integration a step ahead compared to React Native. I guess this also has made developers to give it a shot and it definitely added more to the prominence of the framework.

Conclusion

Now we have seen a basic comparison between Flutter and React Native, it is clear that both have their own pros and cons. However, it is difficult to decide who is the winner. Flutter being new framework would take time to get stable and would travel miles to compete successfully with React Native. Looking at last two years of the growth cycle of Flutter, no doubt that Flutter is here to stay. It is capable to develop beautiful mobile apps in a small time frame which can help start-ups to earn well in less time.

1 note · View note

attina-the-responsible · 6 years

Text

Panic Button ~*~ [Coral]

In which Andrina explodes...[takes place after a series of texts back in July.]

@andrina-the-amazingsupergenius

[tw -- talk of suicide, self-loathing, Andrina being Angry and saying things she both means and doesn’t, lol]

ANDRINA: She didn’t know what came over her.

The anger had exploded out of her like shotgun pellets, all her words little burning pieces of iron-hot metal, going everywhere, hitting everything at once before the kickback. She’d blinked and pulled the trigger and didn’t even hear the noise. It was just over then: all her texts sent, the damage done, and her chest tight and pounding.

And when all the texts starting pouring back into her phone-- text after text after texttexttext-- it was like machine gun fire. Pingpingpingping. Her notifications bled red in front of her. Voices from all directions. Comforting sisters. Sarcastic sisters. Condescending sisters. Too many messages for Andy to track, but that was her fault wasn’t it? The messages were bleeding from the gaping wounds that she’d created.

She could already hear Daddy’s voice, chastising her. Andrina, you must apologize. Don’t upset Ariel, you know how fragile--

And her corpse-mother: You’re older, Andrina. Set an example.

So make a joke, Andrina! Crack a smile. Send an emoji. Send two emojis. Send five emojis and two memes and grit her teeth and text back Ariel that she was so, so, sorry--

She didn’t know what came over her. The tears just started bubbling up and pouring out, her phone slipping from her hands. She wiped at the tears, she pressed her lips together. A scream clawed in the back of her throat like some kind of wild animal that wanted to get loose. Her phone pingpingpinged on the ground, the messages piling upupup. She couldn’t answer a single one of them, she didn’t know, she couldn’t do it, she didn’t want to. One more message, and she felt like she was going to explode.

Her phone lit up again, Ariel’s name glowing bright: And I know no one wants to tell me how to fix it and everyone just wants me to figure it out myself but what if I never figure it out?

She envisioned herself smashing her fist into her phone, shattering the screen.

Andrina grabbed her phone, but she didn’t text Ariel back. She texted Tina. Her words blurred in front of her but she rattled them off and then shoved her phone away and waited, waited in her stupid, dark apartment. She sat on the floor, her back to the couch, her shirt pulled over her knees and her face hidden too, disappearing into the room’s shadows until the door opened and the hallway let in a swath of light across Andy’s body.

She didn’t look up, just curled her fingers into her shins as fresh tears pricked at her eyes.

ATTINA: Attina couldn’t say she was that surprised when her phone lit up with Andrina’s name. What she was surprised about was the content: can u come to my place / our place lol / can u tell everyone i need like five fucking minutes also and to stop texting me.

That was never Andrina.

Andrina lived on attention. She soaked in it. Most of the Tritons did. Attina did too. When you grew up with six sisters, it was hard to be introverted. Everyone was always bothering each other, spending time with each other. You were hardly ever alone. And Andrina was more often than not the ringleader. She stirred everyone up.

Well, she’d stirred everyone up, just--not in a good way.

And Attina knew that Andrina bottled up her own feelings more often than not when it came to handling the sisters. She knew this because Attina did it too, though not as well. She burst more frequently, but less...hazardously. The sisters were used to Attina exploding, being sensitive, getting her feelings hurt. Andrina wasn’t like that, though these arguments always wore on her the same. Attina knew this because she was the only one who ever heard about it.

She heard about it when Andrina complained that everyone was dramatic and being a big sister really sucked sometimes and why did she have to bottle everything up?

But, this was the first time in a long time (read: since their mum died) that Andrina had blown up at someone so hurtfully.

(Not that her points weren’t valid.)

Attina had known it was different, but it still left her unprepared and with a knot in her stomach as she caught an Uber over to their place. The sky was dark and gloomy, rain pattering on the rooftop of the car as they went. It seemed to take forever, instead of the usually fifteen-ish minutes.

She tapped her foot in the elevator and found the door to their fifth floor apartment unlocked, unsurprisingly.

When she opened the door, she heard Andy’s sniffling and her eyebrows went up. It was dark and she was tired, but that was definitely sniffling. Closing the door behind her gently, she locked it, just once, and set her purse down on the island absent-mindedly before moving towards Andrina.

“Hello, there, Mr. Yurtle the Turtle,” she said, making her voice all high and old-man sounding. She sat down next to her little sister (because even Andrina was her little sister.) Her back was to the couch too and she rested her arm around Andy’s shoulders, rubbing a little.

“Hey, it’s alright,” she comforted softly, “Ariel was being really unfair.”

ANDRINA: God, she was such a fuck-up.

That was the thought looped in her brain and one she couldn’t get out. No way she played this did it turn out okay. There was no joke she could make, no way to pass this off. She was going to have to apologize and that thought was its own kind of razor-bladed horror. She’d rather rip out her own tongue and throw it at Ariel like a fucking crazy person--

She felt like a fucking crazy person. She couldn’t contain her anger or her regret. They just kept flowing through her, one and then the other, never at the same time. She couldn’t fit them both in her at once.

When Tina showed up, it was the regret that she soaked in, that had her curl up small and then even smaller as Tina sat down next to her. A whimper crawled up to her lips. She bit at it, bit hard. She shrunk even as Tina put her hand around her shoulder.

In an ideal world, Andy would just slump against Tina and cry. She used to do that sometimes-- mostly with her mum.

The thought of Mum rushed through her like ice water, and a few tears escaped down her cheeks, hidden since her head was still under her shirt. Mum wouldn’t hold her now, no, not if she was alive, because she’d know that Andy was a fuck-up too.

Tina could hear her breathing as it caught, could hear as she sniffed. As much as Andy wanted to hide her tears, she couldn’t hide those things.

And when Tina finally spoke? She kicked in the hole in Andy’s damaged dam and the anger surged out.

Her head popped out of her shirt. “Yeah, she always fucking is, and we always have to just let her because if we say one fucking word against her, she’ll threaten to kill herself.” She meant to snarl the words but they came out broken and weepy as she wiped at her face furiously.

ATTINA: Attina frowned and moved backwards a little (mostly so she wouldn’t get smacked in the face) as Andrina poked her head out of her shirt. Though, poke was a soft term for it. She hissed and snapped like an eel coming out of its cave.

Attina’s lips pursed at Andrina’s words and for a moment, she didn’t know what to say.

Because, on one hand, Andrina was right. Ariel had taken to talking quite darkly as of late. It was...disturbing to Attina. She hated hearing her baby sister talk like that. She was glad that Ariel was going to therapy, because all of them had gone through dark times and shit situations, but no one had ever threatened suicide. It was horrifying to hear. It made every instinct and bone in Attina’s body grow so strong, she felt so dense--like she would sink like a rock into the water. When Ariel said things like that, Attina didn’t know what to say back. It completely derailed any other thought in her head. It was disarming. It caught her off guard.

On the other hand, she couldn’t--agree with Andrina, because Ariel was...she was in an incredibly dark place.

But--

Maybe Andrina was too?

Attina watched her little sister cry and her frown deepened. Out of all her sisters, Andrina was both the best and worst when it came to Attina’s scale of “being able to deal with it.”

Andrina didn’t normally cry. Andrina got angry. And it was always short lived. And sometimes, yeah, they both bitched about their sisters but this--this was different.

“I know,” Attina finally said, because maybe that was what Andrina needed--to feel validated. If anyone understood the burden of holding your tongue and making yourself small, it was Attina.

Her hand came back up to rub at Andrina’s shoulder.

“I know, it makes it impossible,” she said, her voice soft but not devoid of emotion or understanding. “It’s awful. I-I don’t know how to handle it either. It feels like no matter what we say or do, it won’t be right. Though--” she let out a huff, both of frustration and amusement, “--I suppose that’s how she feels too.”

ANDRINA: Yes, Ariel felt that way because Ariel had read too many romantic novels and imagined herself every fucking damsel-in-distress in literature and theatre and tv and beyond. She was Rose from Titanic: poor little rich girl, looking to jump out onto the ice rather than die without her beloved Jack. She was Cinderella from Into the Woods: trapped with a heartless family, a dead mother to give her character depth. Hell, Jim even called her Juliet as in Romeo and Juliet-- star-crossed lovers.

They thought themselves so tortured, so broken, so fake-deep. Well, Andy couldn’t speak for Chivalry Thy Name Is Jim Hawkins, but she could speak for her sister, since Andrina had been there since Ariel had been fucking born and knew that the worst things that had ever happened to Ariel had all happened to the other sisters too-- and they didn’t scream themselves into grown-up temper tantrums and then run away to their prince’s house for months on end. They didn’t treat perfectly reasonable curfew rules like methods of abuse. They didn’t treat each other like they were something to be scared of.

If Ariel had been Lana-- or Rissy or Q or Della or hell, even Andy-- she would’ve let Daddy puff up like a pufferfish, lay down his punishment, and then wait the appropriate week to let him cool off, before renegotiation of said Terms Of Punishment. Andrina could have told Ariel that if she had come to her.

Andrina could have told Ariel a lot of things, like, maybe they weren’t better off with their mother after all.

Maybe they’d still be fucked up. Maybe fixing shit sometimes meant fighting it out, until the dust settled and the answer was the only thing left standing.

If Andy said any of that to Ariel now, she knew she wouldn’t listen. She’d never, ever, hear what Andrina had to say, and so what was the point? Her phone kept buzzing, the sisters kept talking, but Andrina didn’t want to be part of the Triton Chorus anymore. Not today, at least.

She just grit her jaw and shook her head. “Whatever, we all know this ends with me apologizing anyway. I’m the one that went temporarily insane and bitched out poor baby Ariel.” She scoffed a wet, broken laugh. “Should just get it over with.”

ATTINA: It didn’t feel fair.

And Attina could be the queen of unfair. It’d been unfair when Daddy hadn’t let her go out after her first prom, months after her mum had died. She’d thrown a fit about it. One of the only times her and her father had ever fought. She had been so mad at him. It had felt so unfair, because everyone else got to go to prom, and parties afterwards. (Or ride off on motorcycles with boys.)

Attina had had to come straight home.

She had sacrificed a lot for her sisters—things they didn’t even know. Her own sanity. Her health. Her strength. All of the love in her heart. There was hardly room for others, though she always kept trying. But, she shouldered her burden so that Alana could get arrested and Daddy would just sigh. So that Andrina and Arista could hop in and out of school like they were playing hot-potato. So that Aquata could swim to her heart’s content, because Attina listened to all of Daddy’s fears behind closed doors and comforted him and said it’d be alright, Aquata was smart. She had sacrificed so that Daddy wouldn’t flip about Ariel having a boyfriend (Attina had a thousand boyfriends and they’d all been worse.)

It was so unfair. So much of her own life had been unfair. Holding her tongue. Learning that she came second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. Even if she was first.

And so, she knew better than anyone, how true Andrina’s words were.

“You’re obviously still pissed,” Attina pointed out. “And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be pissed. She’ll just have to deal with it for right now,” she said resolutely. “Everyone has their breaking point. Yours was just a little more…mmm…violent than most. Ariel was being an 18 year old shithead. She deserved it.” And that was the worse that Attina would ever speak of any of her sisters. And only ever to another sister.

Really, only to Andrina.

“And she can stew, like we had to sit and stew and wonder what we’d done to make her treat us like we are leviathans.”

ANDRINA: Violent.

The word made Andrina want to shrink and explode at the same time. That’s what her mum had said about Andy’s “violent little tantrums.” She’d had them since she was small, the kind of kid to kick and scream in a department store and wage war over the smallest of things. Her anger tsunamied out of nowhere like that, snatching her in its riptide. Then a second later, it’d be over; she’d be on the other side of it, not positive how she’d gotten there.

Older now, she could wrestle most of her temper tantrums down. She’d cooled off anyway and not much could upset her these days, not Bahama Breezy, Cool as a Sea Cucumber, Go-With-The-Flow Andrina. But that just meant she boiled and boiled until…

But that didn’t matter. Mum was alive, she’d tell Andrina that that was not appropriate behavior. What kind of role model…?

Soon as Daddy found out, she’d get the same spiel.

Andrina slumped against the couch, her face twisting as the tears pressed forward again. They gushed out of her eyes the next second and she pressed her knuckles against her mouth to try and stop. A pathetic gurgle left her lips anyway, like someone had pulled a drain out. She felt like she was being sucked down.

Andy curled her toes into the ground. “God-- Tina--” she gasped, then sucked in a sharp breath and looked up at the blank ceiling. “Daddy’s gonna be so pissed-- I’m such a fuck up--”

ATTINA: Attina’s heart twisted at the sound of Andrina’s gasping sob.

It was an awful sound, like she was drowning in her tears. Can mermaids drown? Melody had asked and Attina had laughed at her. But, they could drown in sadness, couldn’t they? They ached just the same as anyone else. Maybe they felt more deeply, who knew. No human cared enough to study it. Though, they studied dolphins for their smarts and whales for their emotional capabilities. Orcas could feel different emotions than humans, why couldn’t mermaids?

They had songs when their family members died. They had traditions. They mourned. They buried. They believed they became the sea foam. That they drifted along the surface, beneath the sun and the moon.

The grief and desperation was gravel in Andrina’s voice and Attina had to swallow her own tears. She hated that sometimes. She hated that she cried when others cried, because it wasn’t about her.

“Don’t worry about Daddy,” Attina told Andrina immediately, reaching her other arm around Andrina’s knees to connect with the arm already around her shoulders, so she encircled her, snuggling up. “I’ll talk to him.” She put her chin on her sister’s arm.

“You’re not a fuck up. You just—got pissed off. We all do, Andrina. I lost my bloody mind and went to a sea witch, alright? We all make mistakes. Besides, what, all you did was hurt Ariel’s feelings a bit? You hurt my feelings like every other day.”

That was a joke.

ANDRINA: She knew Attina was just trying to help. That’s what Attina did. Attina helped-- Andrina fucked up. Attina was responsible-- Andrina fucked up. Attina was a mini little Athena in the making-- Andrina fucked up.

Attina just couldn’t say it because it would break the contract between sisters, the one that said they had to love each other no matter what and support each other when they made shitty decisions. It was a stupid contract, but one that Andrina had followed to the letter until February, when Ariel broke it first.

She kept trying to fall back into rhythm. She kept trying to pretend everything was hunky-dory-a-okay, I-love-you-and-you-love-me but--

But Andy was a fuck-up. Andy was a fuck-up and she’d always been a fuck-up and she’d always be a fuck-up. It’s what she did best, she fucked up.

So Andrina was shaking her head, Attina’s words not penetrating. She couldn’t hear her above the din of her own brain. She couldn’t see her-- only their mother in the shadow of Attina’s faces, who might coo the exact same thing to her, while looking so, so disappointed.

Oh Andrina, she’d said, words disguised in sickly sweet honey, but they were poison. You’re capable of so much more.

“No, I am. I am. I know I am. Mum would hate me. She does hate me, I know she hates me,” the words blubbered out of her mouth before she could stop them, and then she broke down into another sob, and covered her face with her hands.

ATTINA: Out of all the things Attina could imagine Andrina saying (and there was a lot; Andy was always saying things, she went on Andy-tangents, about films and ridiculous scenarios and she talked, talked, talked—all the Triton girls were talkers, but there was no one who talked like Andrina talked, so you never really could tell)—

But saying their mother hated her?

That slapped Attina right across the face. She felt like she’d been smacked with a wave. The water filled up her mouth, sloshed into her lungs and down into her stomach.

Andrina sobbed and shuddered, Attina still had her arms around her, she could feel it. It jolted her out of her momentary shock.

Hates. Present tense. There was nothing that Athena Triton did anymore that was present tense. Except, love them. That love never stopped. Attina could feel it right now, in the room with them. She always could, when she was with her sisters. It felt suffocating sometimes, because it was so real and present to her.

“Of course she doesn’t hate you,” Attina said, the tears there in her voice now, she was still choking on all that water in her lungs. “Andrina, no. She—I know you and Mum used to fight, but that—she still loves you, just like how I still love you, even though we don’t see eye-to-eye on…well, most things really. That doesn’t make me love you any less and Mum just wanted you to be happy and succeed in whatever you wanted.”

ANDRINA: Andy wasn’t here anymore. She’d disappeared. She’d traveled back in time, actually, back to 15 years old, to the last fight between herself and her mother. Whenever Mum came up, that’s always where Andrina went. She was 15 and she was under her covers, her throat sore from screaming and her face wet with tears.

She was 15 now, she’d been 15 in the dream, 15 when she sat across from Mum and Mum said, without saying anything, that she was a failure.

It didn’t matter what Tina said. In fact, Tina just sounded like Mum: I just want you to be happy. I know you can succeed if you put your mind to it--

She wanted to let out a bloodcurling scream and shatter the bloody space-time continuum if someone said that to her. Why couldn’t someone just tell her, for once, it was okay? It was okay to land soft and it was okay not to want to be a mega-CEO of some company or an oceanic explorer or save the coral reefs! or become a famous youtuber or singer or actress--

It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to be perfectly, 100 percent, totally average, and to never go up from there.

No one would ever tell Andy that because it wasn’t acceptable and people didn’t get it, how she could just be happy boppin’ along at Whosits and Whatsits, letting her schedule ebb and flow around her. She was a slacker for wanting that. She was lazy and she was stupid.

Andrina thought all of these things and she sobbed and sobbed. Her head shook at Tina’s words, she wanted to squirm out of her arms. “No,” she said. “No, she does. I heard her, Tina. She basically said it herself. She hates that I haven’t graduated and no matter what I do, no matter-- she-- she hates-- she’ll never--” Her breath dragged into her lungs, the sound like something catching in a grate.

ATTINA: Attina officially was lost.

Andrina simply sobbed harder and Attina felt like her sister was breaking in her arms. It panicked her, just a bit, though, the only time she ever managed to swallow that panic down was when she had a sister falling apart on her. Though, that sister was hardly ever Andrina. Just like it was hardly ever Aquata or Alana.

She should know what to do. Andrina was more Attina’s twin than her sister. They were two sides of the same coin. Attina knew everything about Andrina—even the parts of her that Andrina didn’t really want to share. All the bitchy, flaky, ugly parts of Andrina. Attina knew them and she loved them all the same.

But—

This, she had no idea what to say to it.

What did Andrina mean, Mum had said it? Athena died way before Andrina and Attina had ever gone to uni. She had died before all Andrina’s big, big plans turned into smaller, easier to chew ones, the same way that Attina’s had.

It must be the dream. That blasted fucking dream. For Attina, it had bloomed like a bruise in her heart. An aching that was real and powerful in its tenderness. Apparently, for Andrina, it had implanted like a bomb.

Tick, tick.

Boom.

“Andrina,” Attina said then and she moved back so she could sit in front of Andrina, blue eyes meeting green. “Mum didn’t say any of that. Mum doesn’t get to have an opinion. She’s—dead.” Attina swallowed the bluntness of her words. They were Andrina-words, anyway, not Attina ones. “You’re not the only one who isn’t doing anything with their life. Remember, I was supposed to save the world. Mum just—she would be happy you are alive and safe and happy. I promise Andrina. And sure, maybe you would have fought. Maybe some part of her would be disappointed, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t love you any less.

The version of Mum you knew is from ten years ago, guppy, Mum could have grown too. Maybe she would’ve grown to realize you don’t—” Attina’s voice caught, tears shown in her own eyes, but she pushed them down, “—need to save the world to be successful. To be good.”

ANDRINA: Andrina had spat out the words as fast as she could-- vomited them, expelled them from her system like poison, like if she held them inside of her any longer she’d just start to burn up. She spat them and then they were gone. Out. She saw them hit Attina right in the face and how confused they made her sister. She looked at Andrina like she was crazy, and you know what, she definitely felt crazy.

Listen to all that-- she sounded crazy. Listening to demon hallucinations. Letting a dream drive her nuts.

There was no taking it back now though. Andy’s carefully hidden trauma was exposed. She’d ripped off the bandaid.

She shrank back into the couch, feeling so small and exhausted, there was nothing else to say.

Which meant that she could only listen now. Attina drew a little closer, her voice soft again. Andrina wanted to look away from her sister but she felt like a fish caught in a net. There was no where to look and anyway, what good would it do? Her lip began to tremble as her shame swelled around her like an incoming tide. It was about time for Andy to make one of her jokes. That’s what Andy did, when stuff started to feel like this: too big, too much, too serious.

But nothing came to mind. She’d cried out her humour apparently. Boo fucking hoo.

So Andrina just sniffled like that 15-year-old version of herself and rubbed at her eyes. “I know,” she warbled. “I know, I-- it doesn’t feel that way, Tiny.” Her voice was small now too, all reedy, a second from breaking. Whenever I think about her, I just see the dream. She-- she’s never gonna-- say anything else now. That--that’s it, the last thing I’ll ever see.”

Andrina ducked her head then and put her forehead against her knees, turtling up fresh. If only she could un-see that version of their mother. She would in a heartbeat.

ATTINA: Attina felt a flare of anger. It wasn’t at Andrina, but it was two-fold. Part of it was at herself, for not having noticed. For not knowing that Andrina had slowly, quietly been unraveling. She should have known. What kind of sister was she if she didn’t? She knew she had her own things going on, but those things never had, and should never, take precedent over her sisters. She felt like she had failed Andrina. It made her want to cry.

The rest of her anger was reserved for Ariel. It was Ariel who did this to Andrina. Even if she hadn’t meant to. (And Attina knew a thing or two about unintentional consequences—they were still your fault. You still had made the decision to follow them through to that end.) How could Ariel have done this to them? It was so—unfair.

There was nothing for it now except to deal with the aftermath. That, at least, Attina knew how to handle. For if there was one thing six sisters taught you—it was that cuddles were always a good way to solve problems when you felt like you were falling apart. At least…plaster them up, squeeze so tight and you could hold someone together for a little bit.

“I’m so sorry, Andy,” Attina murmured, scooching closer again and winding her arms around her little sister. She squeezed her tight. “It was just a dream,” she said, moving some of Andrina’s hair back and kissing the side of her head. “I’m so sorry. I love you.” She squeezed her tighter. She wished she was an octopus, so she could wrap all eight-legs around her and squeeze her super-duper tight.

This would have to do.

#bdrpandrina #coral #panic button #seesters

3 notes · View notes

coopdigitalnewsletter · 4 years

Text

10 August 2020: Is Covid-proof a marketing strategy?

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Beeple - see events, below]

Is “Covid-proof” a marketing strategy?

Will store safety end up being an essential “hygiene factor”? Will it be a marketing strategy in future? If a shop or a supply chain can be assured as “Covid-proof”, are you more likely to shop there? Or will you go back to shopping everywhere when everything “returns to normal”?

💥 Why this matters: the virus won’t be “solved” quickly and has sufficiently accelerated change, so there’s no longer a “normal before” to return to. So safety will remain an important consideration.

Two good quotes from that article:

"Cleanliness has moved from a compliance responsibility to something that is part of the customer experience."

“Previous to COVID, you would try to do a lot of cleanliness and janitorial practices out of sight of customers. Now you want them to be visible, because you want to send a message to customers that things are safer”

Managing queues inside and outside Co-op stores during the pandemic. That’s a great read about how the Co-op pulled a team together, researched remotely, planned, tested, iterated and ultimately improved ways to give shoppers useful information and to manage queues at shops.

There has been encouraging news on vaccines, but even so it looks like the coronavirus is a "around a long time, live with it" thing. So beyond the current social distancing and hand sanitation measures what might a COVID-proof shop look like, materially? Unfortunately, fears about the virus have driven shoppers back to single use plastic shopping bags, which sounds bad for everyone except the plastics industry. Similarly, delivered grocery uses a *lot* of single-use plastic bags. So perhaps there will be reusable bags and containers with anti-viral coatings.

Refitting is a longer-term option. You can imagine today’s self-serve sanitation stations becoming automated and permanently built into store thresholds and shelf displays. Perhaps some shops will refit for infection control, replacing plastic and steel door handles and work surfaces with copper, or refitting fabrics and materials impregnated with silver? There are some small-scale architecture ideas and set ups for outdoor eating (like Arup, Rockwell).

Amazon Go in the UK

Amazon will launch 10 or more checkoutless Go stores in UK by the end of the year, the first of them in London.

Sainsbury’s piloted a checkoutless store in London in 2019, but ended the pilot because the need to download and register on a dedicated mobile app discouraged passing trade.

💥 Why this matters: Amazon continues to experiment with retail formats. Go stores are a marketing beachhead for selling the technology to other retailers.

Also Amazon:

The 16% investment in Deliveroo is approved.

UK drone deliveries team grows.

Uber: moving meals not people

Ridehailing giant Uber has always looked like a next generation taxi service, with some incremental businesses (delivery) tacked on. But Uber’s second financial quarter results just saw food delivery revenue overtake ridehail revenue! Ride bookings were down 73%, food delivery orders (Uber Eats) were up 113%. This doesn’t mean that Uber’s main business is over: Uber will expand to 170 locations in the UK by buying Autocab. But the main thing and the side gig are swapping places. Or more accurately: Uber’s core business is moving vehicles around, not moving people around.

💥 Why this matters: the virus turns industries upside down and forces organisations to reinvent. Reinvention often looks like digital transformation but it feels scary if your organisation is really optimised for doing the thing that *used* to work.

Can machine learning write like humans write?

GPT-3 is a machine learning system which doesn’t understand language but does write it. It’s

“an auto-complete tool that is a skilled predictor of which word comes next. And yet it’s capable, to varying degrees, of writing music; playing chess; telling jokes; and talking about philosophy. This is surprising, since we think our own ability to do all these things is due to capacities that GPT-3 lacks - understanding, perception, agency.”

💥 Why this matters: When machines can generate content that is plausibly written by humans, and when the internet gives you infinite ways to publish that content (and even attribute it to others), there will be a crisis in trust. So you’d expect to see a lot of work in future on how content could be provably authenticated as “authored by this human”.

GPT-3 is sufficiently good at predicting the next word that you can make search engines with it. It had a clunky predecessor called GPT-2, which you can try out on the internet. If you give it the first sentence of this story, GPT-2 will write things like this:

“GPT-3 is a machine learning system which doesn’t understand language but does write it. This post explains what this machine learning system is, how it can be used and how it is going to help me to understand better how I ’ve been taught to write. Let me explain. There are some things that machine learning can't do. One of them is understanding how you write. We need to learn how to write something. This is the goal of machine learning. We need to learn to write something , so we will write about a system that can write that . What I will show you is a model which can make an accurate estimate of how you write”

If you were a human that made a living writing, you might find that reassuring, threatening and critical all at the same time. It’s not great writing, but GPT-3 is apparently much better. The “try GPT-3 out” websites aren’t often online because it costs the creators a lot of money just to let newsletter writers see if they’ve still got jobs. However there is a “friendly competition” online to see whether humans or GPT-3 can write the better performing headlines (further reinforcing the dispiriting view that click through rates should be the critical measure of online content quality! :( )

Signals/numbers

Procter & Gamble sales rise 4% as consumers buy more cleaning products.

WH Smith may cut 1,500 jobs after sales plummet.

'Staggering' levels of plastic pollution by 2040 - 1.3 billion tonnes.

UK electrical waste mountain growing - 1.45 million tonnes a year.

Various things

Bill English: Computer mouse co-creator dies at 91 - “In an experiment, the pair asked users to try out the mouse alongside other pointing devices such as a light pen or joystick - and found that the mouse was the clear favourite.”

Neobank Monzo’s annual report makes its community nervous - though accounting rules make expected losses look extra painful.

Entrepreneur's 'free rice ATMs' for Vietnam's poor.

After those poor Boston Robotics robodogs get rescued by the RSPCA from the people that used to kick them, they get jobs where they are loved. Like Fluffy, who now works at Ford, laser scanning its factories, and being loved by its manager. You could imagine that being used for gap scanning the aisles of a supermarket.

Co-op Digital news and events

Federation - free events:

Andy’s Man Club – Gentleman's Peer to Peer Mental Health Meet Up – Mondays 7pm

Self Care – Online Workshops – Various dates/times in July

Virtual Data Expedition – Online Workshop – 11 Aug – 10am

NW Drupal User Group – Meet Up – 11 Aug – 7pm

Beginners Guide to Retrofit – Webinar – 12 Aug – 6pm

Women in Tech – Networking – 13 Aug – 8.30am

Motion North – Animation & design Showcase – 13 Aug - 7pm. Motion North is an animation & motion design enterprise at Federation House. Their online event features not one but two stateside speakers! First up is GMUNK. A designer and director who uses a fusion of science-fiction themes and psychedelic palettes to produce enigmatic and atmospheric work. Following on is Beeple Crap, renowned for his “everydays” producing a piece of work every day with the purpose of developing and getting “better at different things”.

Meteoric Meters – Acoustic & Spoken Word Open Mic Night – 20 Aug – 6pm

LGBTQIA – Hackathon – 28-30 Aug

Paid for events:

Invisible Cities - Online Tours of Manchester or Edinburgh – Various Dates & Times

Mandala Yoga – Online Yoga Sessions - Various Dates & Times

Tech Ethics – Meet Up – Various Dates & Times

More detail on Federation House’s events. You can also see how The Federation is planning for a safe return to the co-working floor.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

0 notes

lgbt-teenager-support · 7 years

Text

Warning: Long post!!

@mercialachesis said:

Hey I was wondering if you could recommend some books or films with an agender character either main or side? Thank you !!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello! I'm sorry I couldn't answer your ask straight up, this post includes a lot of links.

I couldn't find very many books that describe the character as specifically agender, but there are a lot that use the words "gender fluid" "gender flux" "gender queer" and the like if you're ok with that! Summaries taken from Goodreads

Mask of Shadows - by Linsey Miller

"Sallot Leon is a thief, and a good one at that. But gender fluid Sal wants nothing more than to escape the drudgery of life as a highway robber and get closer to the upper-class and the nobles who destroyed their home. When Sal Leon steals a poster announcing open auditions for the Left Hand, a powerful collection of the Queen's personal assassins named for the rings she wears -- Ruby, Emerald, Amethyst, and Opal -- their world changes. They know it's a chance for a new life. Except the audition is a fight to the death filled with clever circus acrobats, lethal apothecaries, and vicious ex-soldiers. A childhood as a common criminal hardly prepared Sal for the trials. But Sal must survive to put their real reason for auditioning into play: revenge."

Symptoms of Being Human - by Jeff Garvin

"The first thing you’re going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl? Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. The thing is…Riley isn’t exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in uber-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley’s so-called “normal” life. On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it’s REALLY like to be a gender fluid teenager. But just as Riley’s starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley’s real identity, threatening exposure. Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in—or stand up, come out, and risk everything."

What We Left Behind - by Robin Talley

"Toni and Gretchen are the couple everyone envied in high school. They've been together forever. They never fight. They’re deeply, hopelessly in love. When they separate for their first year at college—Toni to Harvard and Gretchen to NYU—they’re sure they’ll be fine. Where other long-distance relationships have fallen apart, theirs is bound to stay rock-solid. The reality of being apart, though, is very different than they expected. Toni, who identifies as genderqueer, meets a group of transgender upperclassmen and immediately finds a sense of belonging that has always been missing, but Gretchen struggles to remember who she is outside their relationship. While Toni worries that Gretchen won’t understand Toni’s new world, Gretchen begins to wonder where she fits in Toni's life. As distance and Toni’s shifting gender identity begins to wear on their relationship, the couple must decide—have they grown apart for good, or is love enough to keep them together?"

The Tiger's Watch - by Julia Ember

"Sixteen-year-old Tashi has spent their life training as a inhabitor, a soldier who spies and kills using a bonded animal. When the capital falls after a brutal siege, Tashi flees to a remote monastery to hide. But the invading army turns the monastery into a hospital, and Tashi catches the eye of Xian, the regiment’s fearless young commander. Tashi spies on Xian’s every move. In front of his men, Xian seems dangerous, even sadistic, but Tashi discovers a more vulnerable side of the enemy commander—a side that draws them to Xian. When their spying unveils that everything they’ve been taught is a lie, Tashi faces an impossible choice: save their country or the boy they’re growing to love. Though Tashi grapples with their decision, their volatile bonded tiger doesn't question her allegiances. Katala slaughters Xian’s soldiers, leading the enemy to hunt her. But an inhabitor’s bond to their animal is for life—if Katala dies, so will Tashi."

Love Spell - by Mia Kerick

"Strutting his stuff on the catwalk in black patent leather pumps and a snug orange tuxedo as this year’s Miss (ter) Harvest Moon feels so very right to Chance César, and yet he knows it should feel so very wrong. As far back as he can remember, Chance has been “caught between genders.” (It’s quite a touchy subject; so don’t ask him about it.) However, he does not question his sexual orientation. Chance has no doubt about his gayness—he is very much out of the closet at his rural New Hampshire high school, where the other students avoid the kid they refer to as “girl-boy.” But at the local Harvest Moon Festival, when Chance, the Pumpkin Pageant Queen, meets Jasper Donahue, the Pumpkin Carving King, sparks fly. So Chance sets out, with the help of his BFF, Emily, to make “Jazz” Donahue his man. An article in an online women’s magazine, Ten Scientifically Proven Ways to Make a Man Fall in Love with You (with a bonus love spell thrown in for good measure), becomes the basis of their strategy to capture Jazz’s heart. Quirky, comical, definitely flamboyant, and with an inner core of poignancy, Love Spell celebrates the diversity of a gender-fluid teen."

Chameleon Moon - by RoAnna Sylver

"The city of Parole is burning. Like Venice slips into the sea, Parole crumbles into fire. The entire population inside has been quarantined, cut off from the rest of the world, and left to die - directly over the open flame. Eye in the Sky, a deadly and merciless police force ensures no one escapes. Ever. All that’s keeping Parole alive is faith in the midst of horrors and death, trust in the face of desperation… and their fantastic, terrifying, and beautiful superhuman abilities. Regan, stealth and reconnaissance expert with a lizard's scales and snake's eyes, is haunted by ten years of anxiety, trauma and terror, and he’s finally reached his limit. His ability to disappear into thin air isn’t enough: he needs an escape, and he’ll do anything for a chance. Unluckily for him, Hans, a ghostly boy with a chilling smile, knows just the thing to get one. It starts with a little murder. But instead of ending a man’s life, Regan starts a new one of his own. He turns away from that twisted path, and runs into Evelyn, fearless force on stage and sonic-superheroic revolutionary on the streets. Now Regan has a choice - and a chance to not only escape from Parole, but unravel the mystery deep in its burning heart. And most of all, discover the truth about their own entwining pasts. They join forces with Evelyn’s family: the virtuosic but volatile Danae, who breathes life into machines, and her wife Rose, whose compassionate nature and power over healing vines and defensive thorns will both be vital to survive this nightmare. Then there’s Zilch, a cool and level-headed person made of other dead people, and Finn, one of Parole’s few remaining taxi drivers, who causes explosions whenever he feels anything but happy. Separately they’d never survive, much less uncover the secret of Parole’s eternally-burning fire. Together, they have a chance. Unfortunately, Hans isn’t above playing dirty, lying, cheating, manipulating… and holding Regan’s memories hostage until he gets his way. Parole’s a rough place to live. But they’re not dead yet. If they can survive the imminent cataclysmic disaster, they might just stay that way…"

Black Sunrise - by Christina Engela

"When a single Ruminarii Hammerhead arrived to invade the small backwater Terran colony of Deanna, the people of Atro City went to meet them at the space port with open arms. (Perhaps ‘exposed’ is a better word?) Life as a private investigator, slash bounty hunter isn’t all Gary Beck wanted it to be. There weren’t any big mansions on a palm beach owned by an affluent writer generous enough to let him live rent-free and use his spare Ferrari. But then, you have to ask yourself, what could you expect living on a planet like Deanna? As a third rate colony in the Terran Empire, Deanna had more than its fair share of dull moments. It orbited a star called Ramalama. If you think that’s funny, Deanna’s two moons were called Ding and Dong, respectively. (This is a local joke.) Cindy Mei Winter hoped to put her violent and somehow depressing past behind her, but now it seemed her new beginning (and her holiday) were going to have to wait."

If Found Return To Astropop - by Lucas Hargis

"Unaware of one another’s gender or appearance, a poor, aspiring architect and a spoiled, free-spirited astronomy fanatic find themselves mutually smitten by reading each other’s journals. Genderfluid, sixteen-year-old Robin “Astropop” Chicory lost a journal three months ago. When a stranger (known only as Pippopotamus) secretly returns it, Astro discovers that Pip read their innermost thoughts and meticulously traced Astro’s past movements. Without meeting, Pip believes s/he is smitten with Astropop. Astro knows this because Pip wrote a heartfelt journal in response. Astro reads both journals side-by-side, amazed at how simple words on paper can exert a mutual gravity between complete strangers. As their tandem confessions and intimate stories tangle with the drama in Astro’s everyday life, Astro ends up hopelessly smitten with Pip, too. But because of distance, timing, and interference from the universe, it’s impossible for them to ever meet. When Astro flips to Pip’s last precious page, a supernova of hope explodes—a precise time and place where shy Pip will be waiting. Astro can finally meet the intriguing Pip, but fears their deep, inexplicable connection will be broken. And there’s the world-shattering chance the revelations of who they each truly are will eclipse their imagined versions of one another."

And here's the entire Goodreads list in case any books I didn't include speak to you! Hope this helped! For the life of me I couldn't find any agender movie characters :( If anyone knows of other books in this vein feel free to add!

-Mod Gaby

#goodreads #queer lit #books with agender characters #books with gender queer characters

29 notes · View notes

onlinemarketinghelp · 5 years

Photo

Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Entrepreneurship. https://ift.tt/307It0V

To be an entrepreneur is to be different. Ask any successful entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that they feel it every day. Entrepreneurs don’t want the same things everyone else does. The idea of a stable 9-5 office job? Just the thought would send a shiver down their spine.

Instead, entrepreneurs are driven by a passion to do something new, to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But often, entrepreneurs have trouble sticking to the rules. They might have struggled at school, forced to spend hours listening to teachers drone on about subjects they have no interest in.

In fact, some of the most successful entrepreneurs never made it through college. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Travis Kalanick of Uber were all college dropouts. Increasingly, high schoolers are choosing to skip university altogether, feeling that the education system hasn’t kept up with the pace in which new technologies and industries are emerging.

Larry Summers, the economist and former president of Harvard University agrees, “Not enough people are innovating enough in higher education. General Electric looks nothing like it looked in 1975. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford look a lot like they looked in 1975.”

Add the explosion of student debt, and the fact that almost half of millennial graduates feel that their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job. It’s no surprise then that so many young people are questioning the path they just assumed they’d be traveling down.

Emma Reid is part of that new generation. She’s one of many young entrepreneurs who are carving out their own path, outside of the expected school-to-university track.

I called her up to hear more about her story. She takes us back to her beginnings as an 11-year-old entrepreneur, hustling to make $100. Then she takes us through the journey to building a $500,000 ecommerce business that she later walked away from. Through honesty and vulnerability of the realities of what it takes to succeed, Emma shares her experience as an entrepreneur.

Emma Reid the Entrepreneur

When I first came across Emma on Instagram, I could tell she was different. The 22-year-old Australian has built a following around her ecommerce advice and mentoring services. Through it, she’s committed to sharing the reality of life as an entrepreneur, without the smoke and mirrors.

The world of ecommerce gurus is crowded, but Emma stands out. In a sea of gurus posing next to lamborghinis, Emma proudly displays her own – a blue 2004 Toyota Camry with sun faded paint. “Cars are not assets,” she declares. “That’s why I don’t need a fancy one.”

She doesn’t need to try to come across as the biggest, baddest ecom hustler. For Emma, entrepreneurship is natural.

School on the other hand? She hated it.

“It just didn’t interest me,” she says. “I wasn’t learning at my own pace, and I wasn’t learning things that I was really passionate about learning. But when I was learning online stuff, it just really excited me and I’d get obsessed. I could never do that with school.”

So at age 16, she decided she would skip university and devote herself to a different path. After all, she’d already found her passion online. Choosing not to go to university, Emma says, “opened up some doors for me and opened up my mind to other avenues. I realized that you can make money doing other things. And you don’t have to go and get like that piece of paper.”

Instead she credits much of her success to to video games, and the fact that she’s been at this entrepreneurship thing for a while now.

Beginnings of Entrepreneurship

At 11 years old, Emma started her first online business. Flashback to the pre-Facebook days, and Emma was spending all her time on the social networking game Habbo Hotel. The site allows you to create a virtual character, build your own hotel, and furnish it with little pixelated furniture. To build the lushest pixel-hotel, you’d need to have enough Habbo credits, an in-game currency that could be purchased with real-world dollars.

Sensing an opportunity, Emma found a loophole that allowed her to spend her pocket money on Habbo credit gift cards, buy in-game furniture, and then flip it when prices went up. Then she could then sell onto other players for cold hard cash. Each transaction, she’d make a small margin.

“I made about 100 bucks doing that, which was pretty fun at 11,” she says.

An avid gamer, Emma believes that video games are ideal breeding grounds for entrepreneurs. “I’ve met a few people that were really into video games that are entrepreneurs,” she says. “Often they’re successful because they’re used to leveling up, gaining experience, and the grind. Also when you’re young and you’re involved in online marketplaces with in-game currency, I think that can give you a different relationship with money.”

At 16 came her next business idea. Over the previous few years, she’d been spending her time building up followers on her Tumblr blog, and had amassed over 100,000. She installed advertising on her page, and as traffic grew, so did her revenue. She’d heard of affiliate marketing, and realized she could use the traffic on her blog to generate money through affiliate links. Soon, she was making thousands of dollars a month.

What she didn’t realize is this was a big no-no in Tumblrs books. She’d violated their terms of service. In one swift moment, all 100,000 of her Tumblr followers were gone. Ouch.

She immediately realized how vulnerable she’d been by having her whole audience contained on someone else’s platform. It meant she had to play by their rules, and in the end, they had all the power.

“I learned a lesson that you have to control the traffic. Otherwise if you’re just on someone else’s platform, then they can shut you down.”

She stored the event away in her mind, another business lesson learned.

It was some time in 2016 when Emma first heard about dropshipping. She’d come across a post on a forum detailing the process of running an ecommerce business without holding inventory.

Her entrepreneurship senses tingled.

“I spent probably 10 hours reading the entire thread,” she says. “Then I chucked up a store on WordPress on my new fitness blog, and got a sale that first day.”

Her first product? Bracelets with fitness quotes attached, a clever product match for her blog filled with stretching routines and fitness advice.

She was about six months in and her business was growing, to the point she was processing hundreds of orders a day. But then things came apart. Customers began to email her, asking where their products were. They hadn’t received them. She didn’t know what was happening, but reached out to her supplier that was handling the deliveries. “I had around 300 orders, and then the supplier didn’t fulfil any of them,” she says, sighing.

The situation quickly descended into a nightmare, as more customers complained that their order never turned up. “I had to process all these refunds. No other suppliers had it, and I just didn’t know what to do. It was too late.”

Pro Tip: Having a great supplier makes all the difference to your success. Check out our guide to finding the best dropshipping suppliers.

The Rise and Fall of the $500,000 Store

Then in May 2018, Emma decided to try dropshipping again. This time, she built her store with Shopify and used Oberlo to connect her store to suppliers’ products.

She began scouring Instagram for potential audiences to sell to. She already knew she wanted to focus on selling jewelry (more on her product strategy coming up), but she needed to find an audience to target. On Instagram she came across a niche community of animal lovers, and began interacting with them.

She’d spend all day and into the night working on the animal jewelry store. But it didn’t feel like work. The hours would happily melt away, as she entered a state of flow.

“I was working pretty much 100 hours a week. I was obsessed with it, and just testing everything and scaling.”

Her store began to pick up sales. Slowly, slowly, then all at once.

By early December, the holiday season was in full force and shoppers were purchasing more than ever before.

“Everyone was buying for Christmas, so I scaled up my ads,” she says. “I was spending over $5,000 a day.”

As demand for her products skyrocketed, her supplier began to fall behind.

“Everything was going crazy but my supplier was taking a while to send because they didn’t have enough stock to keep up,” she says. “I was trying to send to fulfilment centers at that stage, but I started a bit too late. The stock wasn’t arriving in the US fast enough.”

Customers were eagerly waiting on Christmas presents, but they weren’t arriving in time.

“I had to refund a lot of people, do a lot of customer service,” she says. “That was really bogging me down.”

Her store had made over $500,000 in revenue, but after spending all of her free time processing refunds and dealing with angry customers, she was burned out. History had repeated itself from her first store, but this time it was at a much bigger scale.

“I actually quit the store because I didn’t hire out, and I didn’t put systems in place.”

“I wanted to do it all myself because it was so fun for me. But eventually problems happen and you’re so focused on fixing your problems that you can’t hire out once it’s too late.”

So she turned off her ads, shut down her store, and stepped away. “I decided let’s just leave it there, try to recover a little bit and plan what’s next.”

Learning to Master Her Mindset

From the outside, Emma’s business looked like a success. After all, she’d made over $500,000 in revenue in less than a year.

But it left her feeling exhausted and altogether defeated. She needed some time away.

“I picked a few hobbies and read a lot of books and reflected and kind of figured out where I was gonna go next with this,” she says.

And as she read books like Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins and How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, she began to see how she was holding herself back.

“I realized that I was doing way too much myself, and that I needed to actually connect with people and work on myself,” she says. “I realized I needed to build up the foundations, build some confidence to actually go on camera, or go to events and talk to people or hire people.”

Ever since she began her entrepreneurship journey selling Habbo Hotel game credits, she’d been doing it alone.

“Now I’m starting to see that you definitely need to be in that environment where you’re around more people and brainstorming, throwing stuff at each other and improving on ideas,” she says. “That’s how you can really grow.”

So in mid 2019, in an attempt to push herself outside of her comfort zone and meet more entrepreneurs, she started publishing videos on YouTube and Instagram. She’s started a new store too, and has made over $30,000 in revenue so far. In her videos she proudly shares her successes, but more importantly, her failures.

“Showing your flaws and failures alongside your success is so important,” she says.

With a change in her mindset and her burgeoning new store, Emma has set her sights on something bigger than she ever imagined before. When I ask her where she’ll be in five years, she answers confidently, “I’ll be starting a multi-million dollar white-label brand.”

I can’t help but believe she’ll do it.

Unpacking the Four Secrets to Emma’s Success

1. Jewelry is a Winning Product

Since her first dip into ecommerce, Emma has stuck by one product type – jewelry. “It’s lightweight and small and you can price it higher,” she says. The weight of the product matters too, because you’ll be able to score free or very cheap shipping from your supplier. That means you can pass those savings onto your customers, making a more attractive offering.

But more importantly, jewelry isn’t just jewelry. “There’s lots of different niches that you can relate jewelry to,” Emma says. “So you can sell fitness jewelry to people who are really passionate about fitness, or animal jewelry to people who are really passionate about their favorite animal.”

Check out some jewelry product ideas you could target to animal lovers:

2. Look for Niche Communities

One of the best ways to set yourself up for success is to look for an audience that is deeply passionate about the niche you’re thinking of targeting. You might choose dogs, babies, fishing, or beauty. These are all things that people will gladly spend their time and money on.

To find these audiences, Emma first turns to Instagram. “I do a lot of research on Instagram using hashtags, you can find these small little niche communities on there,” she says.

Since you know yourself best, it can be useful to consider yourself as the ideal target customer, and to interrogate your own likes.

“It also helps to look at your own hobbies, and what kind of audience you’re in. Ask yourself what you’d be interested in buying. You could also consider your friends, what their hobbies are and what they’d be interested in buying. Actually show them a product and ask them what they think about it,” says Emma.

3. Try a 1+ Product Store

As a rule, Emma says, “I just don’t really believe in general stores.” Instead, she’s found success through setting up 1+ product stores. That is, creating a store where all your marketing focuses on one product, but within the store you also offer complementary products that you can use to upsell. You might sell different colour or design variants of the same product, or other products within the same niche.

In the end, you’re targeting the same audience with all your products, but offering them the chance to toss a few other products they’ll like in their basket before checking out.

“When you can really focus on one product and one audience then you can really dive deep into that and figure out exactly how to promote to them and create a brand around that,” says Emma. “But if you’re spreading yourself so thin on lots of different products, then you’re not going to go that deep and really make it work.”

4. Try Free Traffic Methods

Especially when you’re in the early stages of building your business and trying to test your products on different audiences, it pays to think about free traffic methods first. But as Emma warns, with free traffic strategies what you save in money you’ll pay for in your time.

“It takes a lot of time and energy, but anything free usually does.” she says. “But if you have a really limited budget, or are super new in the ecommerce space, then I highly recommend going this route.”

Emma shared her two most successful free traffic tactics.

Instagram interaction and comments: “I tried to figure out who my ideal customer was, and what hashtags would they be posting in, then I commented a lot on the pictures. In the early days, I was being pretty spammy by following everyone I could, and not leaving valuable comments. It wasn’t until I changed my approach that it started to get results. I began interacting like a real human and actually having conversations with people. I was building a community, not just an Instagram page. I would try to do 100 comments a day. Try to get to know your audience. Build up some sales, some pixel data, and some profit to use for ads later.”

Ambassador programs: “After commenting so much, people started to naturally reach out and wanted to be ambassadors for the products, so I made an ambassador program. I didn’t send out free product but the ambassadors get a 40 percent off lifetime discount, as well as 20 percent commission when someone buys through their 20 percent off code. This code is personalized, like NAME20. The real kicker is, I made a lot of initial sales from the ambassadors buying the product themselves. Since they got 40 percent off and wanted the product in their hands to create better content. And the more ambassadors you have posting about you, the more of their friends start asking to join. Then it snowballs.”

Want to Learn More?

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

10 Unique Dropshipping Products to Sell in 2019

The $0 Ad Budget: How They Grew Their Business Without a Single Advertisement

Dropshipping Niches That Are Steady, Not Trendy

The post Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Entrepreneurship. appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo