#the newer ones are from 2018 onwards

[genericpuff]

shoutout to linkreaper1987, who walked so i could run \(￣︶￣*\))

[pico-digital-studios]

My thoughts about JD 2018

Yes, I'm aware that I'm running a risk of being hounded by fans who think JD 2018 is borderline irredeemable as a game, but... I honestly can't help but feel bad for the reception it ultimately got. Sure, the game wasn't at all the best, but there's still some good points I can see out of it from the gameplay footage I've seen, alongside me playing some of that game's songs on Just Dance+.

For starters, I wouldn't call every choreography the worst in that game. I genuinely had fun dancing along to songs like "In the Hall of the Pixel King", "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Sugar Dance", and some of the other choreographies on the game look like they'd be fun for me to perform. However, I wouldn't call all of them very good, either. Simply put, you're not gonna be catching me dancing to "Make It Jingle", no way. "Beep Beep I'm A Sheep", maybe, but I'll at least keep my hands off my bedroom floor for that one.

Now, as for the song selection itself. I was pretty numb to some of the big pop ones on there for a bit, but watching gameplay footage and trying the routines on Just Dance+ helped me have some renewed appreciation for what we had back then. Though I'm not as big a fan of some of the songs on that song list, there are still a good majority on there I've enjoyed getting to listen to, especially with the choreography visuals.

Onto the menu presentation. Yes, it was pretty simplistic, but it definitely had substance to it, especially with how the colours in the Just Dance mode's menu changed depending on what song you had selected. And boy, those holiday themes looked like a joy to experience on the menu! The basic good stuff of Easter, Halloween and Christmas without disrupting the core essence of that menu. Makes me wish the other games after then had such a feature to use.

As for the extra modes themselves. I can pretty much agree with a lot of the criticism directed towards Kids Mode, and if I was manning that, I'd take an approach that Just Dance Kids 2014 did, incorporating nice songs for the little ones alongside some good pop songs for the older kids. Even though Dance Lab isn't as good as Just Dance Machine, what with its routines bundled into preset groups of 5, I'll be alright getting started with that before taking on its Shake Lab mode.

But the idea that truly stood out to me, and why I'm aiming to get the game for my Switch as an extra side-thing in case I can't access the Just Dance service? The Double Rumble songs, which allow use of both Joy-Cons in a set of five different original songs. Ubisoft could've gone well with the Switch versions by incorporating that into some of their actual song lists, but sadly, it got dropped the following year and hasn't been seen again since.

Honestly, as much as I like the newer menu layouts introduced in 2019 onwards, what with you being able to preview songs before dancing to them, I miss remembering the feeling of trying to dive right in and see if the choreographics picked my fancy or not, like I did with the Wii versions of 2014 to 2016. And I'm not too big a fan of the bland white background seen in 2019 to 2022. Feels devoid of any substance compared to what 2018 had going for it.

If I decided to help develop a Just Dance offline game in the future, I'd definitely take cues from 2018 for the interface design choices, and I'd include the option of having either thumbnails or song previews available for when a song is selected, and this can be toggled whenever. Sets of songs (like those from past games) would have the category system that 2016 to 2018 had utilised so that it's easy to flip through them, alongside having the Search function available at all times if you're trying to find a specific song from the selection.

Though 2018 was more limited in other modes compared to the previous year, at least its Switch port can be considered playable (and at least 2018 Switch didn't ditch two popular songs like 2017 did for its port, or sent said versions to Unlimited for no reason). I'm honestly sour about 2019 outright ditching all the alternate modes aside from the Kids Mode, much to people's distaste to it barely changing its acts (and including some kid-unfriendly songs through Unlimited (especially looking at you, "Who Let The Dogs Out?" and "Copacabana")).

So, as my final verdict, I can see 2018 as a fun game for me to play on occasion, though I do admit that it needs some improvements (like a fixed song list and such) to better stand out. The visuals are pretty up to snuff, and should Ubisoft revisit that old menu style again, it'd definitely be a plus with the odd tweak. That, and not locking most of the songs behind playing a couple again.

[tdcloud]

T.D. Cloud's October Novella Event: A Guide (blog#16)

Happy April, everyone! It’s finally starting to warm up here in Indiana, and I can’t say I miss the subzero temperatures, even if I do hate the rain more than the snow. There’s just something so soporific when it rains. It kills my motivation to do much of anything, and when you’re operating on as many deadlines as I am, that’s just not a good time. But! Onwards we move, and onto the next author blog.

Firstly, I want to give some updates—I’m freshly back from Evillecon in Evansville, IN, and WOW! It’s been several years since I last tabled at this convention and I am so stunned by how much it’s changed. The venue aside, the convention just seems to grow bigger and bigger every time I make the long trek down south to attend. Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by and picked up a book, and thank you to the repeat customers who remembered me from 2018! Evillecon was the first convention I tabled at properly—before that, all I’d ever done was sell ten or so books at Colossalcon’s Thursday Craft Fair—so anyone who took a chance on me back then and who were excited to see me again… That just means so much to me. Please enjoy your new books, charms, and other associated merch, and keep an eye out for what’s still to come!

My next scheduled convention will likely be Colossalcon in Sandusky, Ohio. Like always, I’ll be situated in the Thursday Craft Fair with my stock for a one day sale. Given I now have ten books and only half a table, I will likely only be bringing very limited stock of my older works and will begin prioritizing table space and numbers for my newer releases—which means the Tempest Series will soon likely fall out of rotation on my table. If you still have a few books missing in your Tempest collection, this may be a good time to pick up a signed copy while I still have them on tap! Please stop by and grab a book or two, and feel free to bring your previously purchased books if they’re lacking a signature! I am always happy to meet up with someone to sign their books—just shoot me an @ on twitter or Instagram and I’ll make it happen!

I’d also like to announce here that I’ve gotten into JAFAX in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This convention takes place the weekend after Colossalcon and will most likely be the convention where you can expect to see updated manjuu. I’ll be selling some Ossuary merch here that will later be made available on my ko-fi store. Keep an eye out on my Twitter and Instagram for pictures as they come in if that sounds like something you want to own for yourself!

That’s enough updates for now—what are we discussing this month? Given it’s April, there are a lot of updates happening on my Patreon right now. I figured we’d take a break from discussing DVerse clans to instead switch gears to one of my most popular and anticipated events of the year—the October Novella Event held on my Patreon!

First things first: are you pledged to my Patreon? If not, you should be! I do a lot of fun stuff there and every single novella as well as quite a few full-length novels are posted there as they’re written. I know I’ve spoken ad nauseam about my October Novella event here before, but for the few of you unfamiliar with it, I’ll give you the sparknotes: every October I post a full novella written to celebrate my birth month. My patrons vote in Spring to decide what I’m going to write, and then I write it, essentially giving them instant access in October to a weekly updating story that concludes on or around Halloween. It’s a really fun event that tests my ability to bring to life a fully realized story on a much shorter time schedule than I typically work with these days, and it’s more or less my version of NaNoWriMo, but for my patrons’ personal enjoyment.

Interested? God, I hope so.

With today being April 1st, I’ve gone ahead and posted this year’s novella premise options to begin the process of deciding what I’ll be writing for October. If you aren’t pledged to my Patreon, this is still something you can get in on! I’ve begun opening this poll to the public as well as patrons just to generate more interest in the event. To make this blog post a larger part of that, I figured we’d spend this month going over this year’s options in depth to showcase just what all is on the docket and maybe, just maybe, convince a few of you to join us in October for the big reveal.

To start in on this, let me give you the rules of the event itself. Every poll holds four options, and every year we have two new premises and two old premises to vote on. Each premise stays on the poll for two years unless it wins—after it’s been on the poll for two years, it’s cycled into my monthly short story poll and updated monthly when it wins that poll. It keeps things fresh, gives close runner’s up another shot at winning in the event, and allows me extra time to revise and sharpen previous premises if I can tell they need some additional planning before they’re ready to be written fully.

So far, Ossuary and Convergence have emerged as winners from this poll and reached fully published realization. I’ve got a plethora of other novellas that have either come off the monthly rotation poll or this novella event that are sitting on the edit block just waiting for their turn to come. If you liked either of those novellas, that’s the sort of thing you can expect to come from all of this!

All stories here run between 5-6 chapters and have varying smut/warning levels. I usually include that on the poll itself, so after you’re done reading this, check out the poll and get to voting on whatever sounds the most interesting to you.

So, onto the premises themselves.

It should come as no surprise that if Ossuary reached completion through this event that it stands to reason I’d give its sequel, Reliquary, a shot on the poll, too. Reliquary is one of our two repeat options and will be cycled into the monthly rotation if it fails to win again this year. It is, as I describe it, the sequel that no one asked for and that doesn’t need to exist but will solely because I want to write Thierry getting horror-fucked by an inhuman vampire creature. While Ossuary was my attempt at exploring the concepts behind survival horror as a genre and the inextricable link between horror and the erotic, Reliquary is my attempt at exploring another very prevalent and established horror genre trope: the haunted house. The idea of being trapped in a home with the vestiges of domesticity surrounding you but warped by something inherently malign residing there with you. Where Ossuary was survival horror, Reliquary will be psychological horror dealing with the concept of death-of-the-self and the idea of “infestation” within a space all humans by design should find comforting (the home). I went into depth on this concept of “infestation” in last month’s blog, so if that’s something you’re curious about, go check out the Q&A segment from March to learn more about that.

Suffice to say, this is going to be a pretty intense, Dead Dove Do Not Eat type of story, and while Ossuary was already pretty Dead Dove as it was, this will be a step further in that direction given it will involve sex and the logical extension of our dubious-to-outright-lack-of consent moments experienced in late-stage Ossuary. While I don’t view Reliquary as noncon, it certainly is closer to that than any definition of “enthusiastic consent.” It will not be a story for the faint of heart, and I don’t know if I expect it to win. If need be, I’m content to just write it on my own if there’s no real interest from my patrons to see it written for them there—but given how hugely positive the response has been for Ossuary, I think it’s safe to say there is demand, just maybe not fully informed demand. That’s why I’m trying to state things plainly here.

Either way, this sequel doesn't NEED to exist, but I want it to because I think by design, Ossuary has far more story left to tell. This will not be the happy ending Ossuary didn't have; if anything, this will be almost exactly like Ossuary in that the ending will carry on the thread of "What could happen next in this situation? Nothing good!" since that's the sort of premise it is.

I enjoy trying to offer up a diverse range of vibes and dynamics to keep things fresh and give people some difficult choices to make, and this is the not cute, not nice, apeshit horror option for the year. If you’re curious about the sort of dynamic I intend for this story to have, I've posted snippets already on twitter here.

I try to write summaries to give people a general overview of each poll option, and while I hate summaries and feel like I’m pretty bad at writing them even after the story itself is fully written, here is Reliquary’s attempted summary:

Thierry Pryor is the descendant of a family of infamous vampire killers, a fact which makes him horrendously blacklisted in the magical society he begrudgingly calls home. After encountering an elder vampire with ties to his family in the Parisian Catacombs, Thierry finds himself trapped in a strange house with the creature who professes love that tastes closer to obsession, and try as Thierry might, he can't seem to tell if the vampire sees him for who he is and not the dead ancestor the vampire can't seem to forget.

What transpires is a nightmare that refuses to disappear come morning-- and proof that your life isn't always the worst thing you can lose.

So, finish reading Ossuary and if you feel like you want to see more, vote for this option!

The other premise on the poll that’s about to grandfather its way onto the monthly rotation is M4gp13, the fourth and final installment of my as-of-yet untitled Vigilante-Verse series. For those of you familiar with the previous installments, this one will be set in America with more Pride/Stray vibes than Ezra/Kennedy or Tamsen/Vulture—meaning it’s not as drama filled or plotty in an interpersonal way; it’s really just a dumb, silly, and horny little foray into how a yandere-in-training younger hero-aligned top goes rabid-simp over the sexy yet oblivious older villain who keeps taking him hostage.

The summary is as follows:

Russell 'Rus' Underwood is the most maligned sidekick in all of New York State. His mentor, the hero Royal Flush, cares more for glory-hounding than looking out for her Bloodhound, and not a week goes by without Rus dangling from a rope while paparazzi snap pictures of the hero showing off from down the street. And don't even get him started on hostage situations. If there's a sidekick who's been ransomed off more, he'll eat his cape and be done with it, then and there.

Of course... Being held hostage isn't all bad, especially when the one doing it is M4gp13, the latest villain the city finds itself playing host to. European, chic, and cool, M4gp13 may be the only villain on the eastern seaboard to care about prisoner accommodations, and really, what does it say about Rus's life that his holding cell is nicer than his apartment?

The hacker doesn't have to treat him so well, but they do. They always do, and... Well, if Rus daydreams about being someone else's sidekick every now and again... What's the harm? It's not like it'll awaken something in him... Right?

I’ve spoken at length in previous blogs about my Vigilante-Verse and all the various characters, concepts, and story premises for the three previous incarnations. This will put a nice end cap on things and serve as a very nice conclusion to the American side of things while also allowing me to dabble a bit into a relationship dynamic I don’t get to play with often enough. I know danmei is super popular right now. Have you guys read Scum Villain Self-Saving System yet? If so, then you may love this option. Imagine LBH/SQQ with these two—they are really that bad, and it’s going to be hilarious.

Also, don’t worry if you haven’t read any of the other Vigilante-Verse stories: this will be entirely self-contained and functions as a one-shot within that universe. There may be a few name drops here and there, but your enjoyment of the story at large will not suffer from not having previous experience with the series.

Though, if you’re worried… All three of the previous installments are available in full on my Patreon. I promise you won’t reget binging them all, they’re fucking hilarious XD

The next option is brand new for this year! It’s also something that I’ve never written before, shockingly enough, and I can’t lie—I’m really excited about this one. A few weeks ago I went on a James Bond bender. I grew up watching those movies as a kid because my dad fucking LOVES them, and while they’re not well written, age appropriate, or at all good anymore, there’s just something so fun about hokey spy shenanigans involving dumb gadgets, seduction and honey-potting, and over-the-top bad guys with their world-ending weapons that have a convenient off-switch located somewhere nearby.

While this story won’t get into even half of that (a girl can dream), this will be a threesome heist-type story with assassins, spies, nefarious villain auctions, and all the bullshit spy nonsense you could hope for. Given this is a newer premise, the summary is a little rough. Regardless, you all should still get the gist of what I’m aiming for with this one.

In a world of assassins, thieves, and cutthroats, the chances of making enemies are higher than the alternative. Pierce Trevelyan knows this better than most and has thus spent the majority of his working life with only one man at his back—his longtime partner Ilya. The two share everything, be it jobs, guns, and each other’s beds, so when it comes to Pierce’s attention that a captured spy has just become the prized jewel of an Underground Auction and that Ilya has taken an interest in the situation… Well, turns out there’s a secret or two between them they have yet to share.

Which is fine, Pierce thinks as he looks at the picture of the spy in question. If this "Luka" has caught Ilya’s attention, there’s no reason the two of them can’t share this, too—especially if this particular secret looks like that.

-wags eyebrows- When a bad-at-emoting killer has a crush and doesn't know how else to act on it than through acts of violence, thank god his merc boyfriend is there to ease the way once the smoke clears! I’m super excited about the character dynamics in this one. We’ve got Ilya, the big, buff, gap moe mercenary Cheeto puff, Lucas, the oblivious, breedable conman caught in a pinch with a collar around his neck and no godly idea of the sort of danger he’s in with these ersatz rescuers of his, and Pierce, the mildly entertained charismatic killer who can’t WAIT to see just what makes Lucas so interesting to Ilya.

It’s going to be a riot and a half if it wins—trust me.

And the final option on the poll and likewise the other new premise is something I’m colloquially calling Circus of the Dead. Not to be confused with Carnival, the previous winner of last year’s October poll, CotD is a SFW yet massively macabre jaunt into Limbo a la Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s largely a “vibe” that I’ve been mucking around with for the better part of four months now and has only recently coalesced into something concrete enough to write in this format. It’s a combination of a lot of my favorite things: the call of the void, erotic death, Limbo and Purgatory, and the sort of energy I’ve been calling “Corpse Bride meets Mushishi.”

I think I said it best on the patron poll itself: “While some take their existentialism with dread, this is the story that recommends you try it with a spoonful of sugar instead… but don't let that fool you--it wears its teeth in different ways than the other options on this poll.”

The summary is pretty rough (I'm still refining this concept, but trust me, it's really, really fucking dope), but y'all should still get the gist with what I’ve got here.

The Circus of the Dead are a traveling troupe of the restless dead who perform for those occupying the interstitial boundaries of existence. Ringmaster Nikita has the beauty of the dead and charm to match, and he serves as a semi-regular torment for Lyde, tinker and check-point denizen of Limbo. While the music, laughter, and company can break up the monotony of eternal neutrality, it also comes with challenges of its own. Something is off about the Circus’s newest member, and Nikita doesn’t want Lyde to find out what. And what, pray tell, is that rhythmic noise coming from Nikita's personal caravan?

The beguiling dead are a distracting danger, even to someone neither living nor dead. Lyde’s duty compels them to discover what Nikita is hiding, even if it does mean exposing themself to the full scope of the undead’s eternal charms.

It’s going to be a deep dive into Dante’s concept of Hell, the idea of functions of Limbo working as personifications of Duty (think of Lyde sort of like Charon in Chthonic myth), and the idea that while the dead want the living to be dead along with them, everyone has their roles to play, their duties to fulfill, and giving in to this hot, dead thing’s impressive tits will only result in you becoming a hot, dead thing, too, and you’re still on the clock!

Or, as I’ve been describing it to my editor and artist friend, CotD is what happens when a really slutty corpse tries to show his tits to the TSA agent checking his bag in order to distract them from the contraband tucked into their cosmetic bag.

That’s it. That’s literally the story. Excited? I hope so XD and not just about CotD. I hope you’re excited about all of these poll options. I feel like we’ve got a super strong, stacked set of choices this year, and I hope I’ve made it hard on all of you voters because as of right now, I can’t even decide which of these I’d want to work on more. They’re all bangers. No matter what wins, I guarantee we’re in for a rollicking good time.

Let’s open things up to some questions about these stories, other stories, and anything people felt like sending my way this month.

Do you have any prerequisites before you start a good writing sesh? Like a cup of coffee ect?

I do! I usually write here and there over the course of the work week as my schedule/energy allows and save my big writing binges for the weekends. I typically wake up between 8-9am, shower, go through my normal morning routine of doing my hair and getting dressed, and I make myself a latte with at least four shots of espresso. While I drink that, I’ll go through my social media, answer emails, update my website, and do the random bits and pieces of managing a business like this before tucking into whatever chapter I’ve got on deck for that weekend. By that point the caffeine has hit and I’m focused and ready to write.

The writing process itself involves listening to one of my many spotify playlists, typically something upbeat, heavy, and metal. I usually make a goal to get to before I stop for lunch, i.e. completing half of the required writing or ¾ depending on how easily it’s writing. I usually experience a dip in productivity after I eat so I really like to do as much as I’m physically able to do before stopping to eat anything.

So, yeah, a cup of coffee usually makes an appearance when I do a writing session XD I also treat it the same way I would treat a real job. I shower, do my hair, and I get dressed. I do as much as I can to put myself into Work Mode so I’m not tempted to fuck off the entire day on youtube or whatever instead, and a common thing I opt for when working and encountering blocks or dips in motivation is taking a walk mid-afternoon or just doing something outside for maybe an hour before getting back to things.

How do you pronounce “Thierry”?

Well, I’m shite at French so I pronounce it wrongly as “Theuh-ry.” To my knowledge, it’s more like “Tee-eyree” but the “tee” has a bit of a “t-yhuh” softness to it. This video will say it for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BULYCNSGFNQ.

I can pronounce Latin, Greek, and my bullshit titles much better than some French names (do not even begin to ask me how to pronounce Hippolyte), so sometimes, just reading it is better than saying it aloud.

Will you be at (insert convention name here)?

Maybe! My rule of thumb is that I’ll apply for just about any convention within easy driving distance of where I live (Fort Wayne, IN) if it seems large enough to be worth the trip and has its applications open.

If there’s a specific convention you’d like to see me at, feel free to use the contact form on my website to let me know or just leave a comment on one of my posts/DM me on social media! I likely will not travel further south than southern Indiana given I’m in the northern part of Indiana, a deceptively long state, but I’ll happily travel around to Ohio, Michigan, or Illinois and consider further conventions if I’ve got friends near the con who could help facilitate me flying and mailing my books out there (like I did to attend Anime Minneapolis).

I’ll be attending Colossalcon and vending at their Thursday Craft Fair as well as JAFAX the following weekend. As of right now, those are the only confirmed conventions I’ve got left for the year, but I’m crossing my fingers for Youmacon and potentially the Matsuricon waitlist to fall in my favor. If there are any other late-in-the-year cons you’d like me to consider, please, let me know! I’m all ears.

That’s it for now! Please, please, PLEASE check out my poll and cast your vote! If you see the post on Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr, consider sharing it to spread the word about this event. My dearest wish is to branch out and include more people in this awesome event that makes October so fun for me every year, and the more we talk about the story premises and what’s potentially on tap, the more interest will be generated towards that end.

Also, I know everyone who ordered a signed copy of Ossuary has now received it. Great! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my latest offering, and if you did and want to help me out a little more, please leave reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and anywhere else you post to let people know your thoughts! This can happen on TikTok, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter—anything you want. The biggest challenge indie publications face will always be marketing, so any little bit you’re able to do to show your enjoyment helps me immensely when it comes to finding new readers and new audiences.

Thank you all for what you’ve done, and happy voting!

Until next time,

T.D. Cloud

[archerons-arrow]

haven't read that particular series yet though I want to, but what is it with YA authors trying to branch out from the 'core' characters of a series and then utterly failing to make it interesting enough to want to continue? Like I still haven't finished the ToG series because I can't get through tower of dawn (and STILL need to finish SF lol) I mean I get wanting to explore other characters and themes? and yet?

If I knew the answer to this nonsense, I would be the leader of the free world. My suspicion is: one giant cash-grab.

Although, I would like think better of the author I was complaining about in the most recent post. But I don't know them personally so, make that coin, girly.

If it makes you feel better, ToD isn't NECESARY to finish ToG. It does have quite a reveal in it though but you can google that if you really want to finish the series. Speaking of ToG, be wary of Sarah's works from 2018 and onward. Her newer work is vastly different and questionably edited since becoming a more recognized author. Like I don't think anyone is actually asking her questions or stopping her from making bad judgement calls... (see FAS and SF among other things [again spoilers]).

I do recommend Folk of the Air series if you enjoy badasses and political intrigue. And even with this weird off-shoot I was complaining about, I still recommend it. I only didn't like how Wren's story was told because it didn't seem well put together. The ending is intriguing for a reason I cannot say without massive spoilers for the original trilogy and this duology.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Repost: On Hate - This Post is too Long for the Subject

Below are two exhibits that I strongly encourage you read completely before reading the rest of my post.

Exhibit A: You might be surprised by the parallels you see in this story from 2011 about a person the boys (especially Yoongi) know personally - this is about a 5 mins read. https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-persecution-of-daniel-lee

Exhibit B:

Two more things I’ll say before the actual ‘think piece’ is that (1) k-army is not a monolith. Every type of fan we can think of (army, diet solo stan, solo stan, anti, multi, manti, stalker) has its Korean equivalent that is usually just more intense. Please remember this when you see me write ‘k-army’ in scare quotes.

(2) When dealing with people on the internet, the expectation is to show, not tell. It is not enough to say something happened, you must show it happened with pictures or screenshots, and video clips are preferred because those are harder to manipulate by lay people. The only receipts in this post are the exhibits I linked above. I am consciously refusing to share media in this post because the subject is hate. I hope the further down you read the more you’ll understand why I decided to do this.

Le document de réflexion - my most intense reporting experience last year as a case study lol:

In early 2020 up until just after Dynamite was released, a group of friends and myself were spending upwards of 2 hours online every other day, reporting users on major Western SNS platforms and Korean ones. This timeline is important to remember for later. Practically all the users we were reporting were Taehyung antis ‘exposing’ him for his behavior in both his personal dealings with other members and other celebrities, and towards his work. 

A lot of newer armys have by now heard about how Tae was called “Alien” until around 2019, this has been lovingly changed to him having a “4D personality” circa 2018 onwards. Both nicknames were given by Korean ‘fans’ or ‘k-army’, and both are euphemisms. This history is now sanitized because the reality was far more ugly (kudos to Jimin for attempting to reclaim that term in his song: 친구 ). 

The reality is that a sub-set of the fandom found (and finds) Taehyung’s behavior to be beyond odd - the kinder ‘k-armys’ in that sub-set saw him as stupid and left it at that, the others saw him as rude, passive aggressive, inconsiderate, manipulative, and consistently seeking to undermine some other members, and they have the clips to ‘prove’ it. These clips are essentially compilations of every time Tae says or does something brash or unthinking (not always reflected in the subtitles), whether harmless or not, including ‘subtle’ actions that they feel suggest a need for control or dominance, as well as every time the members have less than glowing responses to things he says or does - including clips from interviews, award shows, RUN BTS, radio shows, you name it - they also heavily implied (with supporting video ‘evidence’) that his moodiness towards the members and in interviews was an attention-seeking tactic and that some members spoke over him because they secretly dislike him. There were also instances of him groping or grazing the members intimately and the reactions of certain members to that if they were caught unawares and those reactions did not always seem very positive. These clips had been circulating for years and were everywhere in akgae forums by late 2019 and it was these clips we were working hard to get taken down. There were also clips drawing doubt as to his talent and contribution to the group - they included compilations of him lip syncing, singing off key or straining, ‘lazy’ and off-beat dancing, ‘lazy’ acting (from Hwarang), some clips included someone who looks like Tae smoking or vaping either alone or with someone who looks like Kwon Seonghwan, and this was often tied to his work ethic and the apparent impact on his voice. Then there were the rumors which I won’t go into detail on but they included everything from his parents making undisclosed investments in BHM (this resurfaced after BHM ipo) to sponsors and drug use to relationship drama with staff and a Korean influencer to claims his friends are misogynists therefore it is likely he is as well. Then there was just pure hate: speculation he was suicidal or with ED, pics or clips suggesting he had hair transplant surgery and other procedures done to his face, pics suggesting he photoshopped and used filters excessively, name calling implying sexual crimes, speculation he actually spent time with friends before going to see his grandmother, and that he was using her passing to manipulate the members and the company. Everything I’ve written was either believed and/or spread by ‘k-armys’, and the reality of this campaign is even still worse than this.

The shift in 2020 is that some of us in the fandom felt Tae had become more withdrawn, distanced, and just more sort of ‘out of it’ than he typically is sometimes. We were concerned. The Festa rolling papers the members left for Tae wasn’t also very encouraging. At the same time, my friends noticed this hate being spread to twitter and Weverse in English-speaking spaces, from the niche Korean blogs it was rampant on before. This was something my friends had to educate me on because as I’ve said elsewhere, my interest in BTS usually revolved around the rapline and most of my earlier insight into any of the members was through their interactions with rapline members. A few of my friends are Tae-biased and were following this closely. I knew of the nature of akgae forums for the rapline members and was active reporting there, for the maknae line, I needed some orientation. 

This timeline is also important because in early 2020 there were apparently rumors that Tae was being considered to star or feature in a drama targeted to a Western audience. Whether this was true and/or connected to the anti stuff spreading to English forums, I can’t say, because this shift (late 2019) appears to have happened for Jimin and Jungkook antis as well. By the end of 2020, we learned Tae dealt with some depression or burn-out (which for me at least partly explained how withdrawn he seemed earlier), and the slow-down from the pandemic helped him find himself again. Those ‘k-army’ accounts and clips still exist but most of the really problematic ones are now off twitter, reddit, and youtube. The original clips are still thriving in ‘k-army’ anti spaces. These video clips for Tae are updated with every single content the company or general media puts out, because if you’re looking for bad behavior, you’ll find it even if it means working with preconceived notions and misconstruing reality.

The reason it took close to 8 months to get these accounts offline is because the users kept creating new and multiple accounts each time we got one suspended. It felt like fighting a hydra but I was somewhat used to this after going through the same thing for rapline members (I’ve been actively reporting since 2018) and in late May we had to focus on the hate Yoongi was getting after D-2. My friends and I weren’t doing this alone - they have their friends who have their friends and some of us report regularly. What was different in Tae’s case (and the maknae line in general) compared to the hyung line, was the sheer volume of hate. We did not at any point engage with the antis directly nor with the content. This is important for Part 2.

(mood break)

Le document de réflexion - Part 2: 

There aren’t many cons to being an OT7 army but one annoying con, especially if you report frequently, is seeing the same anti talking points, 7 times over. At first when I noticed this, I thought it was interesting, then I thought it was amusing. Now, I just find it annoying. 

In late 2020 my curiosity about jikook got the better of me, so I started spending time in shipping spaces. It was horrible. It’s true a lot of shippers are solos or diet solos who handpick a partner for their fave and some project heavily through them. It’s also true that wherever you find solos, you’ll find akgaes and/or antis. Just by paying more attention to jikook, I got exposure to their sort of antis. By early 2021 I found some shipping spaces on Tumblr I could tolerate, so I opened an active account. This didn’t give me exposure to more jikook antis (they’re mostly on twitter and youtube and the main offenders I was aware of anyway), but it did let me see just how closely shipping ties into the hate for all seven members. But’s that a topic for a different ‘think piece’ if I ever write one. 

The real point of this section is to explain why I don’t think it’s a good idea to engage with the antis directly or with the content.

On not engaging antis directly:

Hate is not an opinion, it is a judgement call that is believed to be true and it almost always necessitates action. It’s rare to find people who hate in silence lol. People are hated all the time and this is nothing new or alarming. In societies with disproportionate wealth disparities, like Korea and the US, celebrities or people with perceived influence or power are seen as less deserving of sympathy in general, and as a result are easier targets to hate. For k-pop idols, who are already commodified to some degree which always results in them seeming less (not more) human, if they are hated, it is of an even more dehumanizing kind than the sort levied at regular celebrities. K-pop stans have a peculiar sense of entitlement that deserves it’s own study istg.

The thing with hate towards another person is that for most rational people, it requires moral justification. (You look silly if you hate a good person, you look at least decent and get a dopamine high if you hate a bad person - yes, it’s been studied). This justification is easy to provide and more believable if you have intimately dealt with said person but nobody this side of Tumblr has intimately dealt with any BTS member. Very few fans in Korea have that experience too, and even then their experience from fan meets last mere minutes. In fact, all anybody really has to go on, are video clips that capture seconds at most, of interactions that are more/less than ROTM. BTS are not even like regular celebrities or politicians where it’s easy to find verifiable gossip. The reality is that fans have very limited visibility into their real lives. 

For a group like BTS, where people who have directly worked with them have gone on record to speak about each member and how they relate to each other (eg. Jessie, Seo Taiji) you need to make some assumptions but it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that x member is mostly good because of how they all speak about each other. To think that x member is mostly bad you need to make several more assumptions, but this is still a relatively easy conclusion to reach. And this is a very important point. 

I initially thought it was odd that all seven members have similar things said about them in hate forums. It’s one thing if it’s just one or two members, but these antis seem to follow a sort of template for all seven: behavioral issues - rude/disrespect, attention-seeking, violent behavior, tension, drinking/smoking/drugs; sub-par talent - I won’t list these out but it is enough to know there are long ass pages on Hoseok and that should tell you all you need to know about the others; and crimes of some sort. And it never stops at just the members, these antis manage to rope in their families as well. For certain members the hate is a bit peculiar, for Jimin, Namjoon and Yoongi for example, there are a lot of graphic sexual references. It’s not long before you find someone calling either one a sexual deviant, molester, rapist, predator, or creep or someone wishing those members were sexually assaulted in some way. I initially thought there was a farm somewhere churning out these accounts. Then I came across some people who I witnessed turn into antis of certain members, and talking to them last year made me arrive at my current conclusion: 

BTS is comprised of seven very different people who went through some of the most turbulent periods of their lives (late teens / early 20s) under a lot of pressure, in extremely close confines, with cameras in their faces. Even now, they fight, kiss, bicker, disagree, agree, like any other group of friends/co-workers and we see this happen from time to time (one thing they always emphasize is that they respect each other professionally, at the very least). Tangentially related, people often make their impressions within seconds of seeing or meeting someone, and those impressions are hard to shake off - studies show we often make these judgements based on pre-conceived notions of how people should relate to each other. Some people are triggered when they see or hear certain things, and it is my opinion that people who are anti certain members are those who have a fundamental dislike for who they perceive that member to be. 

It sounds like I just wrote a load of circular nonsense in that last sentence but please bear with me.

I’ve already said elsewhere that those who worship some members as perfect gods or hate them as vile snakes are mirrors of the same, and that those sentiments have very little to do with the members themselves, in my opinion. If it were x member who was the problem, I would not have to report lip syncing compilations 7 times over, or behavioral compilations 7 times over. etc etc. These people see things they don’t like, they pick up on cues that they identify negatively with, and run with it. Because BTS are seven very different people, these cues come in seven varieties. And that’s more than enough.

The more you engage with these people, the higher their hackles go up. Haters are already predisposed to certain cues and are then likely to interpret anything x member does through the lens of malice or incompetence: 

When Joon antis were calling him a misogynist and he addressed this directly at the UN interview, saying that in response to that criticism he engaged with a Women and Gender Studies professor to help review his lyrics, his antis then claimed his misogyny must’ve been so terrible he needed expert help or that he was saying that to grandstand.

When Namjoon asks Chris if he’d like him or Tae sing a part and Chris chooses Tae, it can’t be because Joon wants to clarify, it must be because Joon is greedy for lines, doesn’t really like Tae, and wants to center himself in this track with Coldplay.

The company hesitating to add Jimin to the group when they debuted couldn’t have been because he had the shortest training period in BHM’s history (to date). It has to be because Jimin is untalented (those who think they’re doing him a favor qualify that he is the ‘least talented’). You’d have to also ignore what both Taehyung and Yoongi said about Jimin at that time, but yeah, plausible.

When it comes to group dynamics, when you hate someone it becomes harder to believe the people you like, can like, much less love, that person. So some antis hate x member(s) but like the others, and so these antis begin to devalue their relationships as well. Any mildly negative glance is given outsized weight and any positive interaction is discounted. Now x member cannot just want to give x member a neck massage, it must be fan service.

When Jimin asks Yoongi if he’d like to share a room and Yoongi declines, it can’t simply be because Yoongi would like some personal space to work on his music which he brought equipment for, as he said. It must be because Yoongi secretly dislikes or hates Jimin, and is enforcing his boundaries because Jimin is a sexual predator, emotional manipulator etc etc.

When k-armys say they spotted Yoongi and Jimin at a cafe quite some distance from the hybe building, and when Hoseok mentions in his Vlive that Jimin and Yoongi often still shoot hoops, those must be one-offs or carefully crafted leads to create a false sense of friendship between yoonmin.

When J-Hope tells Jimin he can’t leave with him to go home because he wants to practice one more time cause he’s performing live, it can’t be just that. No, it must be J-Hope taking a snide dig at Jimin because Jimin never performs live, like he didn’t even perform Filter live, and that cannot be because Jimin had to pre-record the outfit change (so the latter part of the performance was pre-recorded, the rest live), it’s because he is fundamentally untalented or unable to sing and perform.

Pushing back only results in the hater finding more and more reasons to justify their hate, which only results in them further dehumanizing the person they hate. It grows from a dislike at how a certain member communicates, to that member actually being very rude all the time, to that member being violent and brutish, to that member actually being an animal. Before long this hate takes on a life of its own and everything x member does only further confirms why you hate them. You don’t even notice when you start presuming their internal motivations that you have no way of truly knowing at all. 

I’ve already seen edited clips from Coldplay’s raw acoustic performance suggesting JM did a lot of laughing to hide his inabilities and no singing for his parts, when just watching the original clip shows that yes he did in fact laugh at the members but he also sang. For an anti who’s already formed an opinion, that edited clip (on anti accounts) is seen and filed away as just one more confirmation, and often times, by the time they see the original clips it wouldn’t really matter.

The fact is, engaging with an anti will not make them hate less. Nobody changes their opinion on the internet unless they were predisposed to doing so anyway.

Do not at any time point out to an anti that neither you nor the anti actually knows this person they hate so much. Also do not point out they are determining a person’s aptitude and character based on hour-long edited compilations (at most) of 10-year relationships for seven very different people. There is nothing to be gained.

On not engaging the content:

The reason is simple: the content itself is repetitive and engaging with it has the opposite effect to what you intend because all it does is spread hate. *caveat at the end of this post.

People who say a certain member lip syncs are not lying. It’s true BTS members lip sync. *gasp* It is also true they sing and rap live. *gasp again* Please note the difference in the three sentences (italicized for emphasis). Again, BTS members do lip sync or have heavy backtrack playback, this happens sometimes in concerts (which I personally think is understandable), comeback shows, and some performances. They also sing live in many concert and off-concert performances. Like the MMA Dynamite performance when Jimin deliberately did not sing after the bridge to prove they weren’t lip syncing. Yoongi tends to do this a lot as well. Several of their performances this year have been live, a few have been synced or had heavy backing track playback, and this is not true for only one member, but several. The issue is these compilations exist to drive the narrative that x member(s) always lip syncs. It doesn’t take long before seeing a lot of this that you begin to believe it. 

Also, people who say a certain member acts rude are not always lying. It’s true BTS members are rude sometimes, far as I can tell. I mean at least we all watched Burn The Stage though there are more recent examples. They sometimes get on each other’s nerves. Surprise. But again, the story for the antis is that x member(s) is always or mostly disrespectful.

These sort of criticisms work for certain groups, but they don’t for BTS if you’re paying attention to all the members. I was dealing with lip sync compilations for Hoseok, Yoongi and Joon before I noticed the same compilations existed for the Vocal line. Please don’t bother engaging the content because these antis are not interested in seeing x member sing live or else they would have seen those examples already, they are interested in highlighting that only the member they hate is woefully deficient. When you point out that this is not unique to a certain member, the charge is to show proof. The problem is showing this only spreads and creates more hate, because now antis of other members have more material to discredit those members, and the antis of the original member are spurred on find more hate material.

One quick thing to note about many of these clips is that some of them are in fact manipulated. Gashara, the person mentioned in the screenshots above, is a person notorious in akgae spaces who specializes in doing just that. We came across this name several times in reporting ‘k-army’ anti posts. It’s also suspected they work with several people because they set up several youtube and video channels spreading their anti clips of certain members. 

Something that has changed recently on akgae networks is that this hate content also now involves who is doing the hating. Now, certain akgaes (even from other k-pop groups) cosplay as other akgaes and deliberately spread hate (sloppily of course), so the narrative includes that x member akgaes are the repeat offenders. This claim is then spread to wider armys who then make the association of their bias being harmed by fans of another member. I’ve already seen this used by Hobi, JK, and JM antis - the 1st time my friends and I noticed this was after the 3J performance this year. 

This is also the reason armys who say “why does only x member gets this hate” are usually dismissed as diet solos, because it is simply not (always) true. If you think only one member is experiencing something, that only shows you’re in a siloed environment, which indicates you’re spending some time in solo-leaning spaces or focus mostly on your bias. But there are exceptions, I think.

(mood break)

Le document de réflexion - ending thoughts:

Personally, Yoongi is someone I relate a lot to. He is very close friends with Dan (the tablo guy in Exhibit A). Yoongi has talked a lot about people, behavior, and hate. He talks a lot about hate, actually. He seems to deal with a lot of it that comes from domestic quarters, and you really see this if you listen to his music. People are drawn to hate. It sticks out and arouses curiosity. Hate on any platform only inspires more of the same.

I’m stressing the domestic nature of this hate because some people seem to think because Koreans are the people highlighting something, therefore it is more legitimate. The people who started calling Tae an alien were Korean, the people criticizing Hobi, Joon, JM, Suga, JK and Tae for their weight and behaviors are Korean, the people criticizing JK, JM, Tae, and RM for their speech are Korean, the people who start these rumors are Korean. The people who hounded Dan to an absurd degree, are Korean.

Nobody is obligated to like every person they see. One thing I personally try to do with BTS, is give benefit of doubt in how they relate to each other when I see things I find unpleasant because we’re all human. Unrelatedly, when I see people I disagree with, I engage because debate is healthy, and it’s possible I might change my mind about something. The moment I realize these people are antis, I disengage because see all the above.

Originally posted: October 6th, 2021 12:20am

[onenettvchannel]

FLASH REPORT: Wakfu Season 4 is Now Currently in Production [#OneNETnewsEXCLUSIVE]

PARIS, FRANCE -- A longest running french animated cartoon known as Wakfu, now on it's 4th Season with a new information from a press release as first reported from a news article of Gamosaurus.

Based from a yearly programme line-up of 2021 to 2022, the production company of Ankama Animations secures a broadcast rights to France Télévisions for a contract renewal in a first quarter of 2021, which is a free-TV public broadcasting arm of France 3 & France 4 for Okoo's children and teens programming block.

Subsequently since the online fundraising of Kickstarter was skyrocketed and fully-funded a year ago at the end of June 2020 (during a post-Pandemic of CoViD19 in France), a total of almost 18,000 backers of €UR1.5M (PHP89M) or 72% from the actual animated production price of €UR1.1M for Episode #13 in season finale, as according to our Research Team of OneNETnews.

Show Creator of Wakfu was named by Anthony Roux reveals from a tweet post:

Chers fans de WAKFU, Le spécial de 45 minutes d'OROPO est en cours de storyboard et la production se lancera dans les prochains mois. Nous enchainerons ensuite sur les 13 épisodes de la Saison 4. Jusqu'ici, tout va bien. Des bises

— ToT (@Totankama) 10 février 2021

Ah et puisqu'une bonne nouvelle ne vient jamais seule, nous venons de re-signer avec France Télévisions pour la Saison 4 de Wakfu. Ils nous suivent au maximum sur les 13 épisodes et le spécial d'OROPO. Merci à eux de terminer cette belle aventure à nos côtés.

— ToT (@Totankama) 10 février 2021

In a roughly translated French dialect as the show creator (Roux) told exclusively to OneNETnews, there will be 13 new episodes for this 4th season within 22mins. long each and a 2 new specials for 40mins. long. One is the Oropo special, and the other is a secret one (for the exclusive backers of Kickstarter themselves when given a private direct link when it's fully-funded). Wakfu probably connects the essential events from a history of Krosmoz previously from Season 3 (based from a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game or MMORPG) as Gamosaurus reported.

L’animatique du spécial de 40 minutes est bouclée (et j’adore). Je suis sur l’écriture des premiers épisodes. La pré-production commence en septembre. Jusqu’ici tout va bien.

— ToT (@Totankama) 26 avril 2021

In between to 2 new specials, the Ankama team will conduct a pre-production episodes later this year in September onwards. While the episode writings, storyboards and others are included in the coming several months will commence by early 2022 or more. But, we don't have any information yet for a televised release date for France 3 and/or France 4 as according to Roux.

Here is a final show synopsis and information, direct from the France Télévisions' press release to our news team:

"After the destructive battle with the antagonist suspect named Oropo and their own personal demons, Radyo Patrol #11 reporter (Yugo the Eliatrope) and his friends (Amalia S. Sharm, an Ankama News stringer reporter for OneNETnews; Tristepin de Percedal & Evangelyne Percedal; married and the affiliation of a Brotherhood of the Tofu) find themselves at the gates of Ingloriom, the kingdom of the gods. The Brotherhood of the Tofu (TBT) don't have time to wonder what the Twelve Gods have in store for them in response to the sacrilege, the floating lands have been completely devastated! Is there a connection between their recent victory and the chaos in Ingloriom? Are they responsible for this situation, or are they dealing with something far worse? And how far will our heroes have to go this time?"

If you look at a single promotional photo, there is a possibility either a fight scenes with his magically cross-bladed weapon or the inception of a fast-teleported direction to a locally numerous portals upon heading out probably to Ingloriom or places with a new location personally on the go. The expectations from a french cartoon of Wakfu might get a bit challenging for a kids show in advance, as under the rules from the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB).

Unfortunately from a kids block of Okoo on France Télévisions, there is a catch. France 4 and France Ô will officially having a Final Broadcast probably on Free TV, Digital TV or both starting in late mid-August 2021 as Le Parisien reported in a news article. Françoise Nyssen, a former Minister of Culture was announced in June 2018 says, a televised cost-cutting from a double broadcast closure should allow France Télévisions to save money. Educational and/or Cartoon programming may have a last resort for some time, France 4 and France Ô recalls in extremis the role as a public broadcasting station (which is owned by a French Government).

Okoo will continue to serve in most of a children and teens programming either in a newer shows (Nate is Late, Rabbids Invasion, etc.) or the reruns (like LoliRock and Angelo Rules for example) of France Télévisions themselves, except for France Ô (which is an Overseas French Departments and Collectivities station in real life).

In a meantime for a post-Pandemic of CoViD19 in France, it is best to support the show and the original show creator like Roux for a new episodes straight from a production company of Ankama Animations.

The new season of Wakfu in Season 4 is coming soon -- on-air, online at France.tv, and on the France TV & Okoo APP (only if you live altogether in France).

PHOTO COURTESY: Ankama Animations & France 4

SOURCE: *https://www.gamosaurus.com/jeux/dofus/wakfu-saison-4-entre-en-production [Referenced News Article #1] *https://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/tv/france-4-et-france-o-fermeront-definitivement-le-9-aout-03-01-2020-8228559.php [Referenced News Article #2] *https://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/tv/television-france-4-ne-fermera-pas-avant-2021-03-08-2020-8363055.php [Referenced News Article #3f] and *https://issuu.com/francetelevisions/docs/mifa-dp2021-bat-page [The Exclusive Press Release from France Télévisions on a Programming Line-Up for 2021-2022 + Show Synopsis and Information Reference for Wakfu S4 on page35]

HONEST DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed from a Flash Report, are not necessarily those from the Ankama Animations, Frankas Productions & Pictanovo. Furthermore, the assumptions of this Flash Report will NOT state, intervene or reflect those of our Radyo Patrol reporters. The show, the station, the management, interwebs and the network. Thanks for reading! Stay safe and may the Celestia blesses you. Later!

-- OneNETnews Team

[himehalcyon]

So I recently bought a bunch of Larme magazines from over the years - I’m reading issue 001 and this thing is a time machine to 2012...

it’s soooo gyaru with the false eyelashes and huge dolly lenses with the thickest limbal ring and frosty pink lipgloss. Un ironic bowler hats and I definitely saw a couple moustache items. Also seeing so much Dakota rose was really funny, I forgot how big she was in 2012-13 like what even happened to her. Also no risa! At least in 001; in 006 there’s a two page spread in the middle where the readers are getting introduced to her and it’s interesting to see her slow rise to being featured more and more until she’s practically the model you associate the most with Larme. It’s also cool to see her style evolve into Pheromone Fetish, which is the substyle that features pink x black coords, fluffy heels, the criss cross neck blouse etc that became popular.

On a more critical note, the earlier editions were definitely quite convoluted and chaotic in their layout ( talking about 001-005ish) BUT!! they had so much more information, tips and coordinate advice in comparison when I compare it to the more recent editions, which at times feel more like a book of photos rather than a magazine. The earlier editions include much more steps in the process of doing hair and makeup; the coordinates and fashion aspects of the magazine include better breakdowns and explanations in regards to why a certain outfit was styled/ key points of the outfit itself. On the other hand, I feel like the fashion has kept updating themselves and the early editions definitely have a dated feeling - I could kind of tell which year some of them were from, and the editions that are 030 onwards do have the Larme feel but in keeping with changing trends/silhouettes/colour palettes rather than trying to unnecessarily hold onto the past.

So whilst the newer editions( I feel like definitely mid 2018 onwards) have a sleeker, more minimal layout, the photographs themselves of the models are a lot more edited and the concepts utilised are a lot more editorial, which in turns makes some of the styling at times a bit questionable? I’m going to try and take some scans later and at some point upload them to better show the differences. However, I think that the vast majority of the actual photographs and the settings, as well as the clothes featured, are truly very beautiful and look to have a higher production value, and I appreciate that they have continued to update the substyles and bring it into 2020 - there’s still loads of the classic pink x black, leopard print as well as girly, vintage etc. I think this is largely down to the fact that many of the brands that work with Larme ( EatMe, Katie, Verybrain, Milk, Honeysalon, Swankiss, CandyStripper etc) have naturally evolved as time has gone on and the magazine is going to reflect the changes in these brands. Ultimately, a big advantage of this is that I think there is a much bigger breadth of choice in regards to how you can “Larmeify” your style and being able to take inspiration from a large archive of coordinates that’s continued to evolve and also makes references to its past.

Interesting that they are changing publishing companies - Larme magazine definitely isn’t as popular as it was back in the day and I’m seeing across multiple jfashion communities asking themselves “is (insert jfashion here) dying?”. I know I wasn’t really on this blog for a good year so I can relate to this feeling. (One another note, I haven’t posted new scans in ages, but this is more because I’m lazy and it’s a time consuming process). Or is it the case that as time has passed, its more a kind of stability, rather than stagnation, as hype and trends die down/move on?

[fiitjeecoimbatore]

Our Achievements in JEE

With an ever-increasing number of young intellects aspiring to pursue a glorious stint of scholastic excellence in the Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology and other distinguished institutions of national and global repute, the Joint Entrance Examination conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) woos the attention of ambitious minds every year that crave for joining the league of legendary geniuses to embark on a plethora of exciting careers carved out for the choicest lot in the society.  

The nerve-wracking national entrance test is administered online by the NTA in two stages: the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced. While the former stage that generally sees the attendance of over fifteen-lakh precocious candidates nationwide vying with their counter parts for the coveted entry into the National Institutes of Technology is conducted both in January and April, the latter stage, taken up only by a lakh and odd exceptionally inquisitive minds that sail through the JEE Main with astounding percentiles, is held in June every year.    

In the backdrop of a considerable rise in engineering aspirants in the city seeking scholarly guidance and formidable support for entering into the world class institutes of technological excellence, the launch of FIITJEE’s operations in Coimbatore in 2011 was carried out with a clear objective of transforming orthodox style of cramming into an application-oriented learning that would facilitate optimal rational thinking and sharpen problem solving skills in young industrious prodigies.

Equipped with a well-structured curriculum that comprises pattern proof study materials and unparalleled test series, a strong team of erudite doyens who have had a vast teaching experience under their belt and a sophisticated facility that paves the way for vibrant learning atmosphere, FIITJEE Coimbatore made a head start on shaping the wannabe technocrats into the crème de la crème  in cracking the competitive examinations quite effortlessly and the Coimbatore public au fait with our intent cause to lead the student community to one of the most advanced educational vistas of experiential learning in the elite institutions of the country with top-notch results in the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced from the year 2014 onwards.

The maiden results of FIITJEE Coimbatore witnessed 64 selections in the JEE Main & the JEE Advanced – 2014, with Sachin. K. Salim of our two-year integrated program emerging the City Topper in the JEE Main & the JEE Advanced and clinching the most deserving AII India Rank 832 to secure the coveted admission to IIT Kanpur with the specialization in computer science – an incredible feat the City of Coimbatore had never come across till then! Such a stupendous accomplishment was so infectious that the budding scholars studying in the integrated batches drew bountiful inspiration from the alumni of FIITJEE Coimbatore and accordingly translated their burning desires into fantabulous results in the subsequent year.

While Arvind S of our 4-year integrated program notched up unassailable scores in both the JEE Main & the JEE Advanced – 2015, earning the prestigious City Topper title and the prized AIR 629 respectively to secure his admission to IIT Madras for an extraordinary pursuit in Computer Science & Engineering, a sizeable number of his fellow luminaries Alfred, Tarun, Subash, Mythreyi & Silpa Raju – to name a few – scaled towering heights in the Joint Entrance Examination with superlative academic performances in the two stages, taking the centre’s selections to a staggering total of 92 in 2015.

Despite being confronted with the most challenging question papers testing the utmost alacrity of analytical minds during the JEE Main & the JEE Advanced in 2016, our wunderkinds remained unfazed and proved their mettle in the daunting tasks, scripting yet another success story in the annals of FIITJEE Coimbatore. What’s more, Bharath T of our two-year integrated program bagged the impressive AIR 1288, leading the league of 115 champs from the front. Noticeably, the year 2016 was indelible and eventful as FIITJEE Coimbatore achieved 100 plus selections in the JEE, which elevated the buoyant spirit of the top talents awaiting their turn to etch their names in the chronicles of colossal victories in the ensuing years.

The crowning glory of FIITJEE Coimbatore reached its pinnacle when Vijay Krishna G of our four-year supreme program aced the JEE advanced, attaining the awe-inspiring rank of 145 at the national level! It is, in fact, the first time that FIITEE Coimbatore has registered its triumphal accomplishment in producing a national selection within 200 ranks. Sweeping great honours such as the City Topper, the Zonal Topper and the State’s 5th rank holder, the 17-year-old mascot owed much of his indebtedness to the dedicated team of teaching and non-teaching staff of FIITJEE Coimbatore whose enormous support made him deliver this breathtaking performance at ease in the JEE Advanced – 2017.  

The year 2017 saw the encore of FIITJEE Coimbatore’s surpassing 100 selections in the JEE Main & the JEE Advanced. With a formidable increase in the number of engineering enthusiasts who made it to the institutions of great distinction such as IITs and NITs, FIITJEE Coimbatore finished the academic year with a whopping tally of 162 selections, bettering its previous scholastic records in engineering entrance examinations.      

Enthused by the major impetus that was brought about by the mind-boggling results in the JEE, the highbrows with a compelling urge to experience the echelon of brilliance joined our two-year integrated pinnacle program in 2018 and left no stone unturned while preparing for the JEE meticulously with a rigorous and realistic study plan drawn in consultation with the ace experts in FIITJEE Coimbatore and came off with flying colours! Our studious Naveen L S showcased his supreme critical thinking skills in cracking the JEE Advanced – 2018 to secure the privileged AIR 509 and a bunch of 151 brainy lads unleashed their best innate potential to make their meritorious results a tangible reality.      

FIITJEE’s crusade for sculpting the Coimbatore cut above with profound sagacity to make them enjoy unrivalled mastery in sciences viewed a giant leap in the number of national selections in the year 2019 – 217 whizz kids succeeding in the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced with a telling impact! Among the elite intellectuals of earnest learners, Vikram K V of our four-year integrated program carried FIITJEE’s baton of honour with his impeccable State Rank 1 in the JEE Main and the immaculate AIR 527 in the JEE Advanced – 2019. This spectacle of great finesse was further embellished by his comrades Samuel Moses A and Yogeswara Krishna K with their commendable AIR 671 & AIR 848 in the seemingly toughest version of the entrance test, taking FIITJEE’s vertical bar of JEE results to newer heights.    

With the monopoly of FIITJEE’s imperial legacy in preparing gifted students with innate reasoning and rational prowess for sophisticated forms of higher education reverberating in every nook and cranny of the city, FIITJEE Coimbatore is truly cock-a-hoop at celebrating the crowning achievements of its honourees and is deeply committed to extending its overwhelming support to the student community to avail of its superior services in the arena of competitive examinations.  

[jwillgoose]

PSB crew & friends fundraiser

Dear Listeners,

I hope you are all well and looking after each other, especially those who need the most help. These are very worrying times but all we can try to do is offer comfort and kindness to each other.

As a band, we are in the very fortunate position of being ok financially for the next few months - most bands larger than us are probably in the same boat. One group of people who aren’t as fortunate, though, are touring crew members and musicians; they don’t have the benefit of PRS and PPL payments, streaming income, record sales income, advances against future records and so on. 

Even though we had no gigs announced for this year we’d like to do our best to help those we work most regularly with, a group of around 10 to 15 people. All of the below items are being sold by me personally and any funds raised will be placed into an emergency PSB crew and musician fund, to enable anyone who needs help to take advantage of any available money. In the absence of any help from the government (as at lunchtime on March 17, anyway) it seems the least we could do. One of our most regular crew members has lost 14 weeks of work, already; clearly that is going to have a devastating impact, which is why we are doing what we can to help. (We have also made various behind-the-scenes efforts, too, to the extent to which we are able to afford to.)

In the event that none of our crew or session players needs assistance, we will find a suitable charity to donate this money to. Either way it will all end up going to a good cause, and none of it is for the band.

Obviously an unprecedented number of people are going to struggle financially over the coming months - to those with uncertain short-term financial futures who, in normal circumstances, would dearly love some of these items, we can only apologise. It’s not a competition - one group of struggling people isn’t more important than another, but these are people with whom we regularly work and communicate and who are part of our broader family, and we feel obliged to try to help them.

To try to accommodate those without the financial resources to buy these items off the bat, we’re running a raffle for one of the copies of EP One. See below for more details.

HOW THIS WILL WORK

If you’re interested in any item, please email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net, clearly stating which item(s) you’d like to buy. I am doing all of this manually so there is a chance the item will be gone by the time you email - apologies if so. I will try to respond as quickly as possible.

Some of the prices may seem high, but they are for the most part very rare PSB items and they are also the last that I have of most of them, so I am trying to get the most out of what I have in order to help others.

The sealed auction will run as an email auction until Sunday, March 22. I will hopefully be able to post the record on Monday, March 23. To place a bid, please email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net, clearly stating that it’s for the sealed auction and the amount you’re offering.

The raffle will run until Sunday, March 22 too. Tickets are virtual and are £5 each, to enable those with less disposable income to bid on an extremely rare item (after this fundraiser I will only have 2 left, from an original 250, and they won’t be re-pressed). You can buy more than one ticket but please do so in multiples of £5. If you are interested in taking part, please email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net and clearly state the number of tickets you’d like to buy. You will be emailed further instructions.

Again, I am doing all of this myself, so please do bear with me if demand is higher than I anticipate.

ITEMS FOR SALE

First off - a word about test pressings! They are exactly what they sound like they are, ie pressings sent from the vinyl plant to us for approval or, indeed, rejection. They are often slightly poorer quality than the final version, for various boring reasons, and in some cases some of these have actually been rejected by us for being poor quality. But the value in these items doesn’t lie in their fidelity, rather their scarcity, so hopefully you won’t be expecting a pristine listen, rather an extremely rare edition of a cherished record.

Ok, here we go:

2 x copies of EP One

This is the first PSB vinyl release ever, pressed on 10″ in only 250 copies. After this fundraiser I have 2 more, forever, so they are extremely rare. They regularly go for upwards of £150 on eBay.

One will run as a sealed auction - please send your name and your highest bid to fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net. The auction will close on Sunday at 7pm GMT.

The other, to allow those with less disposable income to take part, will be a virtual raffle. Tickets £5 each. You can buy more than one ticket but please do so in multiples of £5. If you are interested in taking part, please email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net and clearly state the number of tickets you’d like to buy. You will be emailed further instructions.

NB - both items have ever-so-slight damage to the covers so they are not pristine! They’ve been in a cardboard box that was taken to numerous gigs and festivals in 2010 and 2011 with me desperately trying to flog them to uninterested parties, before The War Room came out and they started selling online!

TEST PRESSINGS

The following are rare test pressings of various albums, EPs and so on. There are a very limited number of copies available and it’s first come, first served. Please also read the disclaimer on audio quality above. I will try to update this list as they sell, but please don’t be disappointed if you email me and they’re already sold.

Dispatch will probably happen sometime next week (March 23 onwards) provided the postal service is still working; if it isn’t, I will post them as soon as is feasible.

THE RACE FOR SPACE - PLASTIC INNER SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £100 each + p&p

THE RACE FOR SPACE - REPRESS, PROPER SLEEVE 3 of 4 SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £100 each + p&p We had to get TRFS re-pressed from a different master in 2018 so had new test pressings. I have 4 of these newer versions, 3 of which have proper, sealed sleeves.

EVERY VALLEY SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £100 + p&p

INFORM - EDUCATE - ENTERTAIN SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £100 each + p&p

WHITE STAR LINER SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT! £75 each + p&p To buy, email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net - also let me know if you’d like it signed. NB - this test pressing was rejected so it is not great quality, but it is extremely rare!

THE WAR ROOM SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £75 + p&p

PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS NEED COAL (RSD 2018 REMIX RELEASE) - SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £75 each + p&p

THE RACE FOR SPACE - REMIXES SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £75 each + p&p

LIMITED EDITION VINYL

These are all, with the exception of the TRFS remix release, limited editions that have sold out (I think!). I am happy to sign any of them.

SIGNAL 30 RSD 2013 7″ SOLD OUT!

Extremely rare. Orange vinyl, backed with New Dimensions in Sound. SOLD OUT! £100 + p&p

ELFSTEDENTOCHT PARTS 1 & 2 RSD 2014 7″ SOLD OUT!

Very rare. SOLD OUT! £80 each + p&p

THE OTHER SIDE PICTURE DISC - RSD 2016 7″ SOLD OUT!

NB because this is a picture disc, the audio quality isn’t great - that’s the nature of the medium. It looks amazing though! Backed with the Datassette remix. SOLD OUT! £50 + p&p

GO! 7″ SOLD OUT!

Backed with the Errors remix. SOLD OUT! £50 each + p&p

THEME FROM PSB 7″ SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! £50 + p&p

PROMO & EARLY CDs

ROYGBIV (FIRST OFFICIAL SINGLE) SOLD OUT!

Backed with a different version of Lit Up, not the album version. Rare. SOLD OUT! £50 each + p&p

THE WAR ROOM (ORIGINAL RELEASE) SOLD OUT!

From back before we had a distributor so I was still selling and posting these myself - relatively rare although a few hundred were made up. In a plastic CD wallet. SOLD OUT! £50 each + p&p

ORIGINAL / RARE STOCK OF PSB VINYL

EVERY VALLEY (CLEAR INDIES VERSION) SOLD OUT!

Still sealed, limited numbers were pressed up and these are 2 of the last 3 I have. SOLD OUT! £50 each + p&p

THE RACE FOR SPACE - REMIXES SOLD OUT!

On orange vinyl. One has slight damage to the shrinkwrap. Price is based on being expected to be asked to sign them! SOLD OUT! £25 each + p&p To buy, email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net - also let me know if you’d like it signed.

POSTERS

GREEN MAN 2018 TRIPTYCH SCREENPRINT SOLD!

NB - this has different text to the image above - instead of ‘Informing...’ it has Green Man Festival and the date of the show (I can’t find the original image). It was a limited edition run. SOLD! £50 + p&p

THE RACE FOR SPACE DOUBLE SIDED A2 POSTERS SOLD OUT!

No image, sorry, but we have a handful of these left. They’re on decent, thick paper, A2 size, one side has the USA cover and one side the Soviet cover. Happy to sign as required. SOLD OUT! £30 each + p&p To buy, email fundraiser@publicservicebroadcasting.net.

That’s it for now - thanks a lot for any support you can help us extend to our folks.

Yours hygienically,

J. Willgoose, Esq.

[swissmissficrecs]

Best Fics of 2018

Once again, this was a bumper year for fan fiction in the Sherlock BBC fandom*, with a few very long-anticipated fics coming to completion alongside some recent smash hits from established authors and even a couple of newer and lesser-known writers hitting it out of the ballpark. My picks are all, unsurprisingly, long, plotty, angsty Johnlock fics, featuring in particular post-series 4 fixits and Parentlock along with AU's, especially other professions and fusions/crossovers. What they all have in common though, is being of absolutely stellar quality not just in the technical aspects of the writing, but also the handling of themes, the character work, and the emotional impact. Any one of these could be a published book, and perhaps in the near future, some actually will be!

* (I also snuck in one ACD series because it’s my list and I can.)

My caveat as always: this list is obviously skewed toward my own personal preferences and reading habits. There are plenty of other fics that I loved, and even more that I simply didn’t get around to reading (yet), so it’s not a judgment if your favorite (or one you wrote) isn’t on here. Think of this as a sampling rather than a definitive list. I hope this will help you to re-acquaint yourself with fics you loved, give a chance to others you may have skipped the first time round, and possibly discover something entirely new and astonishing.

So here they are, in descending order of length:

The Men Who Talked Between the Words (439746 words) by Odamaki Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade Summary: John expected to be a father some day; he expected to have the house, and the wife and the nice suburban job. Sherlock never expected to have children, in part because he never expected to make it past 30. As it turns out, you don't get a choice. Crammed into Baker Street with a baby, John struggles with single-parenthood and his own fears, while Sherlock treads the fine line between doing too little and saying too much.

Gravity (English Version) (282983 words) by kirin_calls Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Greg Lestrade/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Victor Trevor, John Watson/Victor Trevor Summary: Part 1: When John takes up mixed martial arts training, he doesn't expect it to lead to a new relationship. But there are darker things afoot at the gym, and John is soon drawn in deeper than he wants. When an old flame from Sherlock's past turns up, it's time for everyone to declare their loyalties... and for John to finally discover where his heart truly belongs. / Part 2: John is struggling with his loss. Plagued by nightmares, his life gone topsy-turvy, he is no longer able to lead a normal existence. As he seeks out some stability, some way to slowly pull himself up out of the morass of his grief, old rivals become friends and details about Sherlock's past come to light, leading John to discover something strange that won't let him go.

Radioactive Trees In A Red Forest (280332 words) by Maribor_Petrichor Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: John Watson is what happens when a man can no longer see a reason to go on. John Watson is what happens when a man starts to let go. "It is what it is." John Watson is what happens when what "it is" becomes too much to bear. This is a story of the life, death, and resurrection of John Hamish Watson.

The Bluest of Blue (196473 words) by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Molly Hooper/Greg Lestrade Summary: John Watson's 10th season as a Denali National Park Ranger was shaping up to look like all the years before. Until a special team from Europe was flown into the Park for a summer-long wolf-tracking research project, and the head of that research team was wearing a perfectly tailored suit.

Scar Tissue (192179 words) by J_Baillier, 7PercentSolution Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: John has scarcely recovered from his Afghanistan tour when Sherlock is injured at work, putting their already strained relationship to the test.

A Game of Hearts (162553 words) by zmethos Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, John Watson/OMC Summary: Seven stories written circa 2010, after the first series/season of Sherlock but before Season 2. Therefore, none of these stories reflect anything from Season 2 onward! Think of it as an alternate timeline or something. Slow build of a relationship between Sherlock and John. Gets quite dark in places. [Note: This is an AO3 repost of a fic from fanfiction.net.]

Drift Compatible (130546 words) by J_Baillier Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: A washed out war hero struggling with his past. A prodigy who wants nothing to do with his family legacy. Both are looking for something—and someone—worth fighting for in a world where human civilisation is constantly under threat.

The Burning Heart (119461 words) by May_Shepard Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, John Watson/Original Male Character(s) Summary: When Sherlock dies, John Watson feels like his life is over too. He’s completely shut down, until Mark Morstan, a new nurse at John’s medical clinic, catches his attention, and helps him uncover the long buried truth of his attraction to men. Although he’s certain he’ll never get over Sherlock, John plans to move on, and build a new life with Mark, unaware that Sherlock is not quite as dead as he appears, and that Mark is hiding secrets of his own.

Maintenance and Repair (106650 words) by patternofdefiance Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, John Watson/OFC Summary: John wants to explain the rush of sensation and data, which is just another form of sensation (or is it the other way around?). John wants to say: Augmentation circuits report temperature, pressure, various forms of quantitative input. Sudden changes are reported as pain, since sudden changes are dangerous, and pain is the quickest way to encourage reflexive extraction. But all John can manage is, “Nng.” Because this sudden touch is not reporting as pain.

The Wedding Garments (105390 words) by cwb Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: This is the story of a young consulting detective who wants nothing to do with marriage and an army doctor who wants to find true love. It's 2020 post-Brexit England and the British government is encouraging arranged marriages. Candidates meet through state-run agencies and date in hopes of finding love (and tax benefits). Sherlock doesn't need or want a spouse, at least not until John Watson shows up. Hesitant to give in to his more carnal urges because of the way they derail his mind, how will Sherlock progress toward the more intimate aspects of a relationship? The answer lies in a very special wedding gift.

Kintsukuroi (91822 words) by sussexbound Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: “I love you.” Sherlock sees the words hit John with almost physical force. He reels back a little, jaw twitching and eyes filling. “I love you,” he repeats, a little softer, a little more gentle, as earnest as he possibly can. Because they’ve been teetering on the brink of this thing for years, and it had become painfully obvious over the last few months that they were at a tipping point. This had to happen. Now it has. Now they can see where they end up. The tears in John’s eyes spill over, and he wipes at them angrily. “Do you even know what that means?”

Missing Pages (78852 words) by PlaidAdder Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mary Morstan/Violet Hunter Summary: This is a group of interlinked short stories (most between 2000 and 7000 words) which tell the story of how Holmes and Watson really came to be separated at the Reichenbach Falls, and how they found each other again. Each story is in the form of a document--a letter, a journal, a surveillance report, an affidavit, etc.--which is linked to one or more ACD canon tales, and which tells us something about that story that was changed or suppressed in Watson's published account of it. Holmes/Watson, with glimpses of other relationships.

Summit Fever (78782 words) by J_Baillier Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, James Sholto/John Watson, James Sholto/OFC Summary: After graduating from medical school, John Watson followed his heart to the Himalayas. Ten years later, he's a haunted cynic working for his ex-lover's trekking and mountaineering company. Will leading an expedition to Annapurna I—the most lethal of all the world's highest mountains—shake John out of his reverie, and who is the mystery client added to the group at the last minute? 

The Vapor Variant (72684 words) by 88thParallel Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade Summary: Little did Sherlock know that the vapor to which he exposed John was a bioweapon— containing a bioengineered hybrid virus. Now, John is fighting for his life in the early stages of encephalitis, and it’s down to Sherlock and a team of scientists to save him, if they can only find him first. Sherlock needs to keep fear and guilt from getting the better of him if he’s to salvage his relationship with John—and that’s assuming the love of his life even survives….

Roommates are for little people (69055 words) by alexxphoenix42 Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: John was looking forward to seeing his friends back at uni, but a new year brings new complications, not the least of which is a dorm room with only one bed, and a stroppy roommate with an utterly spectacular arse. God, John doesn't need the headache.

Masters of Ink (67482 words) by Indybaggins Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: John has a triple-coiled tattoo machine in his hand and a row of inks at the ready. He has gloves on, a willing client in front of him, and a detailed stencil. He is ready to win this bloody competition. Except he’s competing against Sherlock Holmes... First-meeting-on-a-reality-show AU, Ink Master edition! There is expert tattooing, slightly less expert flirting, and two men falling hard. But John is married, and they can’t all win.

floating through a dark blue sky (58872 words) by Lediona Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: Of course, I’d seen his films and always thought he was, well, brilliant -- but, you know, a million miles from the world I live in. *** Or, when John is the owner of a travel book shop and the famous Sherlock Holmes stops in one day. [Notting Hill fusion]

The Wolf (55817 words) by Laur Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: Sherlock gets it wrong. Days, months, even years in the future, Sherlock’s oversight during the Baskerville case will continue to torment him, but nothing about that night will ever be as painfully vivid as the memory of John’s screams. This is how it begins.

Christmas Time After Time (41473 words) by PlaidAdder Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mary Morstan/John Watson, Clara/Harry Watson Summary: John's not really big on Christmas; and this year, the first after Mary's death, he's not feeling it. Everyone's away, Sherlock's on a case--alone--and Rosie's asleep. But that's all right. He's fine. He'll just have a quiet Christmas Eve by himself, drinking in front of the telly. Only out there in time and space, there's another Doctor who thinks that sounds like the saddest thing ever. And she's going to do something about it. Thirteen takes John on a whirlwind tour of Christmases past and future. The more he learns about this time travel thing, the more John starts to wonder: how did his current timeline become...what it is? And might these alternatives hold the key to a less miserable present, and maybe a brighter future?

Whiteout (37041 words) by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: A documentary crew follows the Matterhorn aerial rescue team from Air Zermatt, profiling the mechanics, pilots, and paramedics as they save patients on the infamous mountain. Their camera may catch more than they're looking for, however, when it comes to a certain paramedic named John Watson. . .

The Winter Garden (31211 words) by Callie4180 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: As Sherlock nears the end of his career, he's given the gift of a cottage in Sussex. The honey from the beehives out back is amazing. Almost...magical.

A Home for Us (30583 words) by sussexbound Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: He has been on the road for two years, and he is exhausted. He’s almost accepted that he will never see London (John) again—almost. But then there are nights like tonight, where he is weak, and all he can think of is the warmth of the flat they once shared, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the teasing smile playing at the corner of John’s lips, the boxes of half-eaten Chinese takeaway balanced precariously in their laps. He aches at the memory of it, at the realisation that it is something he may never experience again.

Another Auld Lang Syne (30234 words) by DiscordantWords Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: There had been years of missed chances.

A Singular Friendship (28679 words) by agirlsname Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: Sherlock is closer to John than anyone has ever been. It's almost like a relationship - but John isn't gay, so it's clearly not. Not even when they hold hands and hug every day, not even when they sleep in the same bed, not even when they cuddle every morning...

Stradivarius (20298 words) by Berty Rating: Explicit Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: Life goes back to what passes for normal at 221B Baker Street. Sherlock's back and his scars have faded. John's still a confirmed bachelor and his nightmares have mostly ceased. So why are there awkward pauses and uncertain glances? Why are they both on their best behaviour? It's been a long, cold winter in London and there's more to come before spring arrives.

One Good Scare (17381 words) by blueink3 Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Summary: Mummy invites Sherlock, John, and Rosie to the country for her birthday, which just so happens to coincide with the annual Harvest Festival, an event Sherlock loathes. With John seemingly making the wrong move at every turn and with ghosts hiding in each of their closets, what will it take for their (Halloween) masks to finally come off?

Oh, my friends, it's been a long hard year (11914 words) by splix Rating: Mature Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade, Mr. Chatterjee/Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock Holmes' Father/Mummy (Sherlock) Summary: Christmas is rubbish this year.

[aldings-stash]

Blog Changes

Just announcing that I’m changing the way my tumblr accounts work slightly. This blog has been renamed to avrins-stash and will become a general blog for appreciation of other people’s art, a handful of personal posts and other reblogged content. I want to be more flexible in what I post but was restricted by the way I had set things up originally.

You will still see my art here if you keep following this blog!

However, if you super folks are here for only my art in a neat gallery (as far as tumblr allows), then from now on I will be posting it first on the new blog: avrins-art 

To summarise again, because I’ve been confusing with the names!

This blog: avrin-art (previous name) ----> avrins-stash

New art only blog: avrins-art 

If you want to follow one, both or none that’s up to you!

I am slowly filling the art blog with work from about 2018 onwards. Because I’m kinda pedantic and want a record for myself, I’m doing it in roughly the order they were drawn. For newer followers, this might give you a glimpse of some of my older stuff. Once I get up to date, new work will be posted on there first.

Thanks and stay safe citizens!

[hypeathon]

RWBY - Volume 6, Chapter 7 Production Analysis

Vol 6, Ch 1 Production Analysis

Vol 6, Ch 2 Production Analysis

Vol 6, Ch 3 Production Analysis

Vol 6, Ch 4 Production Analysis

Vol 6, Ch 5 Production Analysis

Vol 6, Ch 6 Production Analysis

With Brunswick farms behind us, it’s time to move on to a series of different settings and a few surprises in this chapter that mark the halfway point for volume 6. With interesting story beats this episode, there are as always equally interesting aspects of the production to add to the discussion.

Before actually getting into the production analysis itself, I wanted to take a moment to briefly highlight on Gen:Lock. I’m unsure if or when I want to get around to throwing my two cents on the upcoming mecha show, but with this preview and the last one prefacing the latest episodes of RWBY, it’s intriguing seeing how this show has been building up attention between interviews and announcements about it’s cast and production. It’s also a bit concerning the kind of feedback from viewers and what they’ve been approving of and expressed being bothered with. Again, whether or not I’ll touch on its production is up in the air right now, but I wanted to put forth my quick thoughts on the matter.

With that out of the way, let’s start the analysis proper by touching briefly on the Haven Academy vault scene. Not a whole lot to say other than the character acting, which I suspect may be Hannah Novotny. The way mouths are seen as either puckered or with teeth shown clenching are the supposedly calling cards, though beyond that, I’m not really sure whether it’s Hannah or it’s someone else. Regardless helps sell the kind of interpretive facial expressions for a character like Neo and the little gestures of Cinder casually forging different knives add to her overall character in a manner similar to what Kim Newman and Millivette Gonzalez did with Pyrrha in the skit they animated during episode 8 of RWBY Chibi season 1.

Speaking of RWBY Chibi, now would be a good time to move on to the next scene highlighting Maria Calavera’s younger self and the behind-the-scenes story behind her being called “the Grimm Reaper”. Tom Alvarado, a writer brought for RWBY Chibi since season 2 who had a small prior experience in the American animation industry writing the “Metalhead” episode of the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series was inspired by Miles Luna’s thread of tweets about the Apathy Grimm to share his own anecdote. Although presented in a more comical tone, the fascinating piece of information to take away was that he thought of calling Jaune’s superhero alter ego, “The Grimm Reaper” before it changed to “The Hunts-Man.” Although Miles and Kerry Shawcross didn’t specify why at the time, they apparently already had the former title planned for something else. What’s also worth noting is how back during the CRWBY Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event back in February of 2018, Kerry answered a question mentioning that during the writing process, a certain character and sub-plot had to be cut out of volume 5′s script and pushed for a later, yet to be tangible point in the story. Between that and Tom’s tweets, it’s very likely that Maria was suppose to be that character.

Just a theory worth sharing based on scattered pieces of information about the behind-the-scenes of the story’s creative process. Moving on to analyzing Maria’s scene itself which the first minute of it was uploaded via Rooster Teeth on Youtube prior to the episode proper, the choice of camera shots and overall setting display an array of callbacks from certain scenes in past installments of the show. The way we see Maria walk across the bridge and responds to the incoming Nevermore Grimm is definitely reminiscent of both the Red trailer and the volume 4 character short and the overall setting and the is akin to that of of the setting against the Nevermore Team RWBY fought in chapter 8 of volume 1. What makes this work so well is how instinctively recognizable the callbacks themselves feel. This is also not the first instance of callbacks being made instinctive through the cinematography. As stated in the production analysis for chapter 2, the reveal of Salem in her past is very similar to that of Salem’s first proper reveal in the end of chapter 12. Another example was when Weiss got stabbed by Cinder’s spear at the end of chapter 11, where storyboard/camera layout artists, Rachel Doda and former lead producer, Koen Wooten, both stated in episode 11 of RWBY Rewind that Kerry was very deliberate about having that shot be a callback to both Amber and Pyrrha being shot at by Cinder. These are just things worth keeping in mind when watching the show going forward.

At the risk of being a broken record, choreography has its place in a fight scene, but so does staging for both the physical aspect and the story being told. In this case, the choice of camera shots help sell what kind of character Maria was as The Grimm Reaper and what her reputation meant for characters like Qrow and Ruby and how they made their weapons and have fought. With all that being said, the similarities between Maria’s scene and the other scenes with Ruby mentioned end there as the rest of the visual direction from here on gives Maria her own identity. Speaking of which, from the start of her bout with the Nevermore onward, most of the scenes were animated by Megan Pellino, Joe Vick, John Yang and Matt Drury with assistant lead animator, Melanie Stern providing the Maria vs Tock segment in particular. If these names sound familiar, that’s because with the exception of John Yang, this is the same set of people involved with the Cinder vs Neo fight. Since volume 3, the process animating fight scenes changed from Monty Oum and Shane Newville doing individual fights by themselves to having fights be done in groups of 2-4, if not more. The names of people involved with fights may have varied from volume-to-volume, but the approach has remained the same.

  Unfortunately, despite being familiar with these names, it’s still difficult to entirely tell the difference between all the animators and how they go about fight sequences, particularly Megan Pellino and Joe Vick. However, as an educated guess, it’s likely that they animated the beginning segment with Maria and the Nevermore while the latter sequence between Maria and Tock’s group were done by John Yang, Matt Drury and Melanie Stern. There are confirmations of previous sequences done by John and Matt, making it easier to tell their styles apart. In the past, John did a bit of the Blake vs Ilia fight (likely right before Kim Newman’s sequence), Oscar vs Lionheart, and part of Ozpin vs Hazel. In Matt’s case, he animated Ghira vs the Albain twins in chapter 9 of volume 5 (might’ve been his first action sequence) and much of Adam’s fight segments in his character short. Based on these confirmations and comparing those scenes to Maria vs Tock and the bandits, John may have animated the segment from the start of the fight up until Maria’s aura broke while Matt animated the next sequence after. John seems to have this way of how before or after certain swings, strikes and other attacks, a character will maintain a pose for a split-second before striking again, kind of similar to how the animation director of volume 6, Joel Mann has animated scenes. His sequence also tends to have the camera move a bit wildly but still steadily-enough follow each character’s actions, though how much of that is due to John or whoever provided the final camera layout is unclear. Matt on the other hand does not seem to emphasize as much on the poses leaving a dynamic impression and has the animations feel a bit more continuous. Also unlike John, he’s more conservative with the camera shots being more steady, to the point where it feels like watching a side-scrolling fighting game like Tekken or Street Fighter. Again though, how much of that aspect is the animator as oppose to who does final camera layout is uncertain.

At the end of the day, this is all guesswork so it’s totally possible that I may have mixed-up who did which segments. But it’s still fun to estimate none-the-less. At the very least, it’s definitely confirmed that Melanie Stern animated Maria’s eyes being slashed and quite possibly Tock getting the upper hand on her right before and the rest of the scene right after. What’s more interesting is that since her position as assistant lead animator, this is the first episode where she helped lead a fight in a manner similar to how Kim Newman led the newer animators when she was assistant lead back in chapter 10 of volume 5. Hopefully, this serves as another reminder of how it’s important to pay mind to newer talents working on the show, as I’ve stated in previous posts, even when comparing to some anime productions. Before moving on to the next scene, the choice of having the ticking clock sound incorporated into the action sequence also deserves a mention. It’s amazing how intentionally well-timed it came off right down to the timing being precisely 60-seconds, which I imagine was no easy feat to pull off with director, Kerry Shawcross and co-director/lead editor, Connor Pickens having to coordinate between the storyboard, editing, animation and audio departments. 

With that out of the way, let’s shift focus from Maria’s flashback to the next scene in the present. There’s honestly not a whole lot to say about the scene between elder Maria and the others other than that there were some great facial expressions between Qrow and certain other characters to expressed how flabbergasted they were about the former Grimm Reaper’s reputation. There was also a bit of neat choice of angling the camera to highlight both Maria’s praise to team RWBY while having Yang’s self-doubting reaction be made clear. Where the visual direction really picks up though is once Ruby answers Jaune’s call and she holds her scroll towards the path towards Argus. Given the earnestly melancholic discussion about whether to follow the foot steps of one who deemed herself poorly and whether one of the older generation could still contribute something to the newer one, seeing an old throwback to character nicknames via Ruby’s caller id for Jaune provided quite an appropriate change of tone for the scene. From here on, things get uplifting, through the piano instrumentation of this volume’s opening theme, the shift of lighting to create warmer color schemes as a result of likely the art and lighting departments and having the camera get closer towards with each invisible wipe transition of the trees as they travel uphill until the payoff of the city in their site is shown.

Next is the reunion scene between the two teams and while there’s again, not a whole lot to add, there are a couple of interesting notes. First, when Nora is first seen, there’s a moment where the camera suddenly zooms towards Nora. This is to serve as another reminder that choice of camera direction between different characters is indeed a thing as mentioned previous posts and in Nora’s case, shots can sometimes have zippy panning or zooms to compliment her very enthusiastic nature. The second thing is a little mention from Asha Bishi about how another animator did the moment where Jaune and Ruby hugged. She didn’t say who it was exactly, but it’s just something I wanted to acknowledge.

Then there’s the scene establishing Argus which has definitely been a highlight for fans. In volume 5, a lot of fans were especially critical due to how what little of Mistral was shown at the time was partially via the composited still art of residents in one of the market. The backlash, though not immediate, was very understandable and it does seem like a bit of a waste to not have enough on-screen interactions between the main cast and whatever new settings they set foot on given Monty Oum’s intention from the beginning. However, if I were to speculate as to why Argus was provided more premium treatment in its production instead, it may be because the main cast are expected to interact and traverse more within the setting. Knowing this, Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna wanted to make sure more time was allotted specifically for however many episodes would take place. Combine that with a shift in software to model and animate crowds from Autodesk Maya’s Golemn Crowd plugin to Side FX’s Houdini and the creative process behind the color aesthetic and architecture from the art department and here is the end result. As breathtaking as the setting is, it shouldn’t be dismissed how time-consuming it must have been making this setting as fleshed out as it is.

Moving on, we get the first introduction of a character teased for the longest time since chapter 7 of volume 2, one of Jaune’s seven sisters, Saphron Cotta-Arc, fully voiced, modeled, animated and everything! There’s a lot to cover about the Cotta-Arc family scene in general, first and foremost being Saphron’s voice actress, Lindsay Sheppard, who has previously done some voice acting work, most notably Aria from the Pokemon XY anime. Second thing to mention is that seeing team RWBY meet Saphron was actually animated by Nyle Pierson, who you may remember for first contributing to volume 6 through his animation of Yang and Blake walking through the blizzard in chapter 5. Seeing someone new to the show’s production do facial expressions and the right combination of surprise and eagerness from Ruby is delivered very effectively, all while making sure to show the other characters in the background express finding the behavior awkward in response. It’s unclear if the next set of animated cuts are also from Nyle or not due to the similarly exaggerated nature of the expressions and body language of the characters, but kudos to him either way. This is also a good opportunity to talk about the storyboards for the Cotta-Arc living room scene which were done by Cassidy Stone. This is the same storyboard artist that provided the scene of the main cast eating the ramen hot pot in chapter 7 of volume 5 and it was actually Cassidy’s first work on the show. Between that, the scene of Ruby and Weiss in the storage room and now this, it’s clear that her forte is providing lively banter between characters in a way that rekindled some of the aspect more prominent in RWBY’s earlier volumes. The camera layout also deserves some credit, namely for that bit where Jaune firmly points at Adrian and the camera is timed to shake at that moment to sell his annoyance. One more thing to note was Jaune and Saphron’s family photo which may have been drawn by art director, Patrick Rodriguez.

Next is the introduction of Terra Cotta-Arc, Saphron’s wife which has undoubtedly invoked the fan base into a fervor of positivity over a visible representation of a married lesbian couple. As significant as these characters are for adding another log to the fire of making a minority feel more inclusive through fictional media, what especially works here is that in the short screen time, we get an inkling of what kind of relationship they have. Between the expressions, gestures, choice of dialogue and types of voices from Lindsay Sheppard as Saphron and Rooster Teeth layout coordinator and associate producer, Jamie Smith as Terra, we can tell that one is slightly more free-spirited and easy-going while the other is a bit more grounded, stressed and concerned with ethics (i.e: whether students helping professional huntsmen is “legal” or not). Both clearly have a strong rapport at the end of the day, but it’s the small bits of information in-between that gives that insight. Straight or gay, romantic or otherwise, that’s important to depict in any relationship between characters.

That small tangent aside, one more thing to add about the scene was the cast eating sandwiches. This moment was at least partially animated by Collin McAtee who funnily enough, did the scene while eating a Jimmy John’s club lulu sandwich. The animation was nicely done, especially with Ruby’s eagerness to chow down as well as Blake’s subtle reaction through her cat ears. Though what I wanted to note in particular are the modeled sandwiches. Since it was confirmed that the modeling team handled the ramen food in chapter 7 of volume 5, I assume that they also handled the models for the sandwiches by providing different ones for certain characters depending on how much was bitten off. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, though I felt with Ruby eating her sandwiches in particular, there could’ve been different models of the sandwiches not being bitten off as much to make the animation of her eating them feel more seamless. But it’s all really minor.

There’s one more shot at the end of the episode of the gang at the Atlessian base, though given the preview for next week’s chapter on RWBY Rewind, it’s best to put a pin on that until the next production analysis. Speaking of which, that marks in end of this episode’s analysis. Definitely a variety of scenes that all provided different purposes and different tones, all done very effectively. To go from Cinder and Neo to Maria’s backstory to the present to reuniting with team Jaune, Ren & Nora to meeting Saphron and her family, all in roughly 15-16 minutes, was done very effectively and never felt jarring. We’re now officially at the halfway point with what seems to be an overall more well-received volume thus far and it’s pretty exciting to see what else will be in store from here on.

[minblush]

k-armys are spreading a tweet namjoon made in 2013 about korean independence where he says 'There is no future for people who have forgotten history' which shows he probably won't agree with working with a japanese imperialist, hopefully he still has this attitude in 2018 twitter(.)com/BTS_twt/status/367906282012831744

yeah i have seen them doing that ;; and fancafe and all the official tweets since then have been flooded with people talking about these things too, but bighit is playing dead fish so far :(

microwavehater said:Am i the only one who never believed that bts has ~creative freedom~ (anymore) ? If they (still) had, they’d use their influence to spread msgs like baepsae, not just love urself uwu (considering yoongi made political pre-debut releases &interview stuff) Also, their newer releases (LY her onwards) are v much lacking in the hiphop department which (i assume) was a marketing choice. Hiphop just doesn’t sell as well to a female audience (along w the fact that vocalists are the face of BTS).

i think they still have creative input but creative freedom definitely not, but it’s debatable if they ever had it anyway? idk.. and them moving on from hip-hop was definitely both trying to change things up as well as appeal to a broader audience, love yourself era overall was an attempt to basically touch as many people as possible, i don’t mind them changing their musical direction but what has bothered me was the loss of their involvement (because it is less)

Anonymous said:I totally agree with you about BTS losing their originality. I’m almost starting to get annoyed of them. Now bc they know people love their music for its topics such as mental health, etc I almost feel like they’re thinking that they’re obliged to constantly write music that only has a “social” message. I did not like Idol at all. It was pretty tacky and the idea of loving yourself seemed so forced in the lyrics. I want them to make songs about whatever they want at that moment. (1/?)

Anonymous said:Also every fan keeps saying the same thing about them being unfiltered when actually they’ve become SO filtered now. They’ve almost created this illusion of being super open with us when actually we barely know anything about them. I don’t mind that but I hate how they’re touting that as something that applies to them. Honestly most fans now are the bandwagon type and the fandom is starting to feel more like a cult versus a community like it used to. (2/2)

i don’t know if i ever talked about them losing their originality? because originality is debatable in this case too, if you mean their original intention then yes i agree with that, and i agree they definitely created the illusion, once i got out of the bts bubble a bit and also thought back to the old days, i realized how closed off and filtered everything is comparison to the past and even to other kpop groups nowadays that are way more direct, i feel like even exo is more outspoken these days and direct with their fans which i thought could never happen??? i used to stan them and it was hell hah.. and these days.. wowza..

Anonymous said:Fuck yesss we need new yoongi mixtape and i agree abt what you said i wish bts could read that and be like okay guys i think they are right we have done some questionable things and shit has to be addressed whether we like it or not and just fucking do so. Some fans will drop but some would drop anyway bc it is getting out of hand i would never want to call bts problematic bc shit i cannot imagine that being true but them supporting problematic people is kind of making them ones

i just feel like nothing will change because bang pd is too greedy.. he really is eyeing like building a global empire with all the business deals he has been making.. also bts have done plenty “problematic” things themselves, though not to that extent, but some of their actions have hurt a lot of people too, but it depends on what bothers you, i find colorism and things like that a problem, but ofc definitely different thing than pedophilia and such, i just meant to say that nobody is perfect

Anonymous said:Do you ever just wanna randomly bump into bts and be like “hey lets talk!” And then tell them about all these issues and fandom drama and just tell them to wake the hell up? Cos I do haha

well even if we bumped into them, most of them wouldn’t talk to you so dkajsdka

Anonymous said:i agree with everything you have said but what bothers me is he is a co produce of produce 48 and nobody really complained about it even though he is know for sexualizing minors... or did i miss something?? also i feel sorry for you getting hate you were just saying your opinion and people should start to accept some facts! it's not the first time bighit did something questionable ://

oh but actually when that was announced there was backlash? i remember seeing complaints about the producer as well as some of the trainees due to their supposed right wing associations, there were also complaints about women’s rights cause of the oversexualization of some of the girls back in japan and the producer’s lyrics, i think this backlash seems bigger or more visible to you because it’s happening in your fandom ;; that season of produce even ended up having the lowest rankings and voting participation so :/

Anonymous said:I have three words to describe the part of the fandom that blindly accepts all the things, even the problematic ones, BTS do. 'Situationally woke cult'.

that fits perfectly

Anonymous said:i rly appreciate sou voicing your thoughts even if they r not in essay form or refined for days. I agree with you on many things but at the same time it's not as disappointing to me bc I guess I never held them to high standards. like in the beginning I could kinda imagine that they were somewhat sincere (but still remained sceptical) but the more they got famous the more I accepted that that sincerity and authenticity would stop bc that's just the kind of business that kpop is... (♤)

Anonymous said:like it's an inherently dishonest industry. they sell an image just like everyone else, and at best(!!) they were as real as possible with us in the beginning. no doubt they wanted to be different from everyone else and it was easier as long as not that many people gave a fuck about them. but as soon as they started to this chance was over. so i guess what I'm saying is that my view didn't change and I'm not surprised, because I never really bought what they were trying to sell...(♤)

Anonymous said:I still love them, theyre likeable & adorable boys. but theyre not changing the world. they're not in the right kind of industry for that. they love their luxury expensive stuff & the glamour of it all & that's okay. I just take every concept the whip out w/ a grain of salt & a knowing smile & enjoy the entertainment. that's just my own two cents that nobody in the fandom wants to hear so I'm bothering u. & its not an analysis or anything just what is on top of my mind while watching TV lol (♤)

Anonymous said:(♤) oh ps. except for that whole controversial stuff with that misogynist jpn songwriter and supreme boy and what not. I take that seriously , I wont act as if that's just a cute quirk. but they're men so I didn't expect much lmaoo. I knew that those kind of disappointments are just part of the deal ever since I learned that jimin (a whole cutie pie and my ultimate bias) stans chris brown. definitely would kick jm in the shin for that if I ever got to meet him. at least keep it to yourself lol.

haha i wish you didn’t start this with a backhanded compliment but dkajsd yeah overall i see your point and agree... i understand like if you didn’t buy into that whole spiel, then of course you can just keep on going and stanning them as idols and all that comes with that, but many people and me included sincerely thought that they were different, i have stopped stanning kpop groups for a while and got drawn back in with bts because i felt they were so fresh and unique, genuine and open with fans in comparison to other groups i have stanned.. but ofc that image crumbled as time went on.. things have changed as well... and i agree, it’s fine to enjoy it for just the entertainment and like the boys as people, accepting they are just as any other idol.. and maybe i will continue with that perspective myself!! but i honestly find it difficult having believed in it and also bighit continually selling this image to their fans despite evidence of the contrary, i can deal with idol business but like continually being blatantly lied to and then being in a fandom where most of the rhetoric is build around blindly believing it and eating anything the boys and bighit sells? it’s honestly emotionally exhausting sometimes.. but yeah.. you’re honestly right.. even with the last point lol... they are men, and korean men at that sigh.. that’s why i’m burying myself in girl groups nowadays adkjsd to heal my soul

Anonymous said:Hope you have a wonderful day filled with only good things ❤ - the cutest person in the world

thank you so so so so much! you have a wonderful day too ♥ cutie

Anonymous said:simple question, not loaded at all, no wrong answer, the honest answer is the right answer- yaddah yaddah you get it -what do you think bangtan is lying about and what exactly are you saying overall? i just need the language simplified for my 3 braincells :) if i do get what you're saying - whether the actual members of bts are real or not, their message is. "dont let anyone tell you what to do" "live your own life and not a borrowed dream" "life is a marathon, not a race - go your own pace"etc

you can read this post as well as the tags to it to see some of the examples, i mean i have been saying lots of things so i don’t know what exactly you want me to clarify? i think their message is compromised when their actions contradict it, whether it’s their actions or bighit’s is up to debate, like i was talking about in the post though, you can’t have things both ways, can’t hail the boys as woke independent kings while propagating the idea that they are just the company’s pawns at the same time, if you accept their authenticity isn’t there then ofc it’s a different argument, and the things you have listed there may be true, but isn’t is soured knowing they are just things that are said in order to sell bangtan as a product to you? to me they are

Anonymous said:I'm not gonna disagree but I like to see all the sides of a story. Bang pd is their boss, bts made a contract with him, he will ALWAYS have the last word on, well, everything they put out. We like to think that bc bts has creative freedom they can do whatever they want, well obviously they can't. Even if bts wanted to talk more about issues and not work w bad ppl, bang pd wants them to succeed, he wants to make money bc it's his business and bts is the only thing bringing money to it.

i get this argument a lot and to that i will answer again this and this, i don’t understand what your point is exactly though, so you are saying bts are pawns that have to do as they ceo says, yes and? i am criticizing the decision he has made? i’m criticizing that what he cares about the most is money? that he will stop at nothing to widen his wealth and influence? i will not support bts cooperating with vile people just because it wasn’t -completely their decision-, i’m sorry i’m really struggling to see what your point is about the other side of the story, it’s a shitty situation and if they all go through with it, it be greatly disappointing

[soljirk]

↳ * MUSE UPDATES < may 2018 >

i feel like it’s been a long time since i’ve done one of these but also because suji needs new plots in her life, i figured it would be a good time to lay all this out. since there’s a heavy trigger warning at the end of this post, i’ll be posting some plot ideas at the top of this post so that there’s no need to pass that point if you’re uncomfortable reading it ! if you’d like to plot, feel free to LIKE or REPLY to this post and i’ll reach out to you !

⇢ plot ideas :

one thing i’ve come to realize is that suji has become very insular ( i don’t think that’s the right word ) but basically she only has threads with nova trainees so some good FRIENDSHIP plots would be much appreciated. because of the turns that her life has taken, it’s been really hard to get her to really go out, so someone who is willing to make that push would be a++. basically, she needs all the distractions that she can get.

FAMILY plots ! i don’t think i have a single family plot that has been threaded out lately. perhaps a deeper family relationship of sorts. maybe a cousin she grew up with who actually knows more than most people. or even a cousin that she hates if you want to take that dynamic. 

some other miscellaneous prompts:

“sure, i used to be a regular, but i literally haven’t been to this coffee shop in a while. how do you still remember my order??”

“okay buddy you’ve been serenading the wrong window for about five minutes now, time to let you know my neighbor is out of town”

“can i sleep over? my parents are fighting again.” - for any muses who live at home

i’m, of course, open to any other ideas too since i’m really bad at coming up with plots OTL ... now, onwards to what’s actually been happening in suji’s life.

⇢ training :

just passed her seven month anniversary since being signed by nova

isn’t particularly happy or unhappy there ... she’s just been a bit ambivalent about the whole thing as of late

she’s also been losing focus as to what she wants to do. while she knows she wants to move in the direction of being a singer, she doesn’t really know what else she wants. there’s so much that she wants to do and not enough time that she ends up getting tired just thinking about it all

with things that have happened, her training has been declining significantly as her body hasn’t been able to keep up even with the extra time that she plans to put in. this also makes her feel even more discouraged that she’s falling behind everyone else.

⇢ relationships :

relationship with fellow trainees: somewhat nonexistent. she’s friendly and polite to them, but partly due to a lot of secrets that she has in her life, it’s made it hard for her to open up to them. she also feels like she has to practice ten times harder as she’s newer, and so she would rather spend time training than actively pursuing friendship, which is also not the smartest thing on her end. 

relationship with friends: feels as if she’s been distancing herself from them lately, but she primarily blames it on her schedule. she has promised to try and do better.

relationship with jaebum: the only relationship that she has been sure of. because of certain circumstances, they have been relying on each other a lot and she spends most of her nights at his place. they’ll be celebrating six months at the end of may.

⇢ family :

hasn’t really seen any of her family recently ⇢ also a reason for her slump

her brother and sister-in-law, however, did cook for her a lot when she wasn’t well

because of her schedules, she hasn’t talked to her son in a long time, which she hates

⇢ physical / emotional health : ( TW !!! pregnancy ; miscarriage ; breakdown )

i would advise not to read if any of the tags are triggering. i’m adding another gif here just to segment it off some more. 

suji is at an extremely low point in her physical and emotional health

this is primarily driven by the miscarriage that she suffered at the beginning of may 

in late april, suji started feeling more tired than normal in addition to occasional morning sickness ( though she didn’t really attribute to that at first ). she thought it was stress from training, but as she had been pregnant before, the symptoms felt oddly familiar.

eventually, she told jaebum her speculation. instead of taking a pregnancy test ( because she feared that she might be caught buying one at the pharmacy ), she scheduled a doctor’s appointment to confirm this matter.

at first, suji was really upset that this was her luck again, getting pregnant at a time when she couldn’t be pregnant. however, as she and jaebum discussed plans, the reality of it no longer seemed scary. in fact, she almost looked forward to living a normal life again.

on the day of her doctor’s appointment, she began experiencing extremely heavy cramping. the doctor didn’t even need to tell her and she knew something was wrong. 

as would be expected, she completely broke down. the doctor advised that her body needed rest and requested a week off for her from training. during that week, she didn’t leave the house ( this week is technically still ongoing but minor details )

she’s been having trouble eating and sleeping and once she’s finally able to go back to training, she’ll probably end up overdoing it as a means of distracting herself

obviously, she plans on telling no one. even her own mother doesn’t know of this, and she told her brother only because he was trying to get ahold of her and got upset that she wouldn’t let him see her.

basically, she’s a mess at the moment, so please bear with us as she works through this

[millercrystal]

Home Is Where the Heart Is

Fandom: Star Wars sequel trilogy

Finn appreciation week 2018 - day 4 (Apr 12): home

Warnings: 1 very short scene at the beginning that is about Finn being taken by the First Order, some snippets of Finn’s life in the First Order in the 1st half of the fic, and also recounts the Finn vs Kylo Ren lightsabre duel in The Force Awakens. I tried to write these scenes with as few graphical descriptions as possible, but I’m tagging warnings for kidnapping, violence and injury just in case.

If there’s anything else you need me to tag for, please let me know.

Rating: teen and up

Genre: friendship and family

Word count: 3562

Remarks: I'm rather captivated by the idea of Finn chipping away the necessary walls he has built around pre-stormtrooper memories for surviving within the First Order, and re-learning his freedom for expressing emotions and affection to connect with his newfound family.

Who let Finn wander around by himself on an unfamiliar ship freshly woken up from a coma? And how did he manage to stagger past the hangar at the same time Poe saw him? That's too coincidental, I have so many questions.

---

One of the earliest memories that Finn has, is being hugged tightly as a young child. The hug was warm, like a cookie fresh out of oven.

Then, a voice, presumably his father's, urged him to run and hide in the nearby cave until they go find him.

He ran as fast as he could on his short stubby legs, but was lifted off the ground by strong arms. He tried to kick himself free, but all he managed was a grunt from his captor, who must had given him an anaesthetic patch as he had no recollection of the following events.

---

The next thing Finn remembers, is waking up groggily in a hall with dozens of children, all around the same age as him.

People in white armours and helmets slowly patrolled up and down their lines; the children, seeing the blasters in their hands, wisely stayed quiet. A man in a funny hat, dark tunic and knee-high boots went up on stage, talking about restoring order to the galaxy and loyalty to the First Order. Finn did not recall hearing about the First Order until now, and wondered when his father would come get him.

When the man on stage finished, a child a few rows away asked hesitantly, 'Where're Papa and Mama?' The voice rang through the quiet room.

The man searched through the room until his gaze landed on the child. He replied indifferently, 'From this day onwards, you will not have parents, but only comrades. The First Order is where you belong.'

Order, comrades, loyalty. What big words. Finn did not understand them, nor did the child who asked for their parents either, as they repeated in confusion, 'Mama? Mama?'

The man on stage gave a single sharp nod to one of the armour-clad, who reached the child right at that moment. The armour-clad pressed a patch to the back of their neck; the child soon crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

None of the remaining children spoke up afterwards.

---

Finn was remarkably calm during the first month. Although, the time was spent on memorising their designation numbers, easing into prescribed routines, and working on classes and duties, so he did not have a significant reason not to be. The supervisors for his batch seemed to have experience in training recruits during their first weeks, so punishments were just heavy enough to keep them in line without being too harsh. Extra laundry folding duties here, vacuuming duties there, or meal bans if a more severe punishment was needed. All of this, Finn could manage.

However, he could not quite comprehend the coldness, or rather, lack of warmth projected by any supervisor. Although there would be rare praises of 'Good.' or similar variants, none of them smiled when he or his batch mates did things correctly. He had come to the conclusion that success was expected.

On the last evening of the first month, a supervisor gave a short speech congratulating the batch on making pass a month. She then stressed their loyalty to the First Order, now their official family.

That night, after his batch mates had dozed off, Finn muffled his face in the pillow and quietly sniffled for the home he was taken from.

---

The initiates quickly learnt to hide how much they missed their real homes, for whenever supervisors caught wind of it, additional loyalty lessons would be scheduled.

It was only when they prepare for bed and no supervisor would be present, that they had relative privacy to talk about home. Finn was sure every one of them dreamt about home. They would trade stories, some of which were exaggerated in childish imagination.

Finn shared a few stories of his own, though he could not differentiate between memory and wishful imagination.

---

The cadets did not find out how severely they were discouraged from thinking about their birth families, until rotated training with a newer batch of trainees.

This particular introductory exercise was about the priority of mission completion. Finn, finding it easy to deduce expected actions of the trainees, did not struggle with the exercise. He completed the mission quickly and then sat down to watch the other trainees going through the scenario, with the stimulation projected onto a screen in the waiting room.

A young initiate from the newer batch was next. He made good progress until the last hurdle, where he froze.

On the projected screen, a middle-aged woman with red hair gathered into a bun kneeled on the ground, in front of an astronomical map marked with trade routes and schedules of the New Republic. That must mean the cadet had red hair, as the simulated woman was designed to resemble them.

He slowly raised his blaster with shaking hands.

She pleaded with tears in her eyes, 'Don't you remember your mama? My baby, what have they done to you?'

'Mama?' he attempted, the word foreign to his tongue.

'Yes, it's me. Don't you remember how I tucked you in every night? Come here, give your mama a hug.' she opened her arms cautiously.

The blaster paused in mid-air. Then, the cadet lowered it and walked to the woman. 'I miss you so much, Mama.'

The simulation ended immediately, with harsh white lights turning up to regular brightness. The supervisor for this exercise stepped out from the control room and addressed the trainee. 'FR-3056, were you clear on your mission?'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Summarise the mission.'

'Yes, Ma'am. The mission is to extract the map with trade information of the New Republic. Get rid of enemies protecting the map as needed.'

'Exactly. And yet, you chose not to continue your mission. Why?'

'Sorry, Ma'am, I could not kill my mother.'

'So, your personal interest interferes with the mission.' she stated with a blank expression.

Every cadet held their breath, waiting for her decision. Finn felt a sudden chill racing down his spine, even though the room, like every part of the starship, was temperature controlled.

The supervisor consulted her datapad, then continued, 'FR-3056, this is your second incident. Report for recondition tomorrow.'

When Finn saw FR-3056 again in the next training session 1 week later, the trainee fired his blaster at the red-haired woman without a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

The cadets whispered about FR-3056, and stopped talking about the homes they never knew.

---

Eventually, Finn rarely allowed himself to dwell on the voice from his memory. He told himself that, it was because there simply was no time between all the classes and duties when he had the luxury of not being too bone-tired to think for himself.

Deep down, he knew it was only part of the truth.

He had not thought of the voice in a long time, because pretending a home had never existed for him was less painful than knowing he had one but then lost it.

---

Years later, on Finn's second real-world mission, Jakku happened.

He looked into the eyes of scared villagers, young and old. The fact that they were humans, very much alive, struck him. This was not a simulation anymore; if he pulled the trigger, these families would be torn apart.

Around him, his squadmates shot left and right without hesitation.

He had always felt like an outsider among them even when he acted like a model trooper. Now, he refused to fit in. He would not kill for the Order; it would never be where he belonged.

It had never been a 'family' since the beginning.

He lowered his blaster and mentally prepared for an opening to slip away.

---

The Resistance pilot was on his knees before the warrior of the dark side. Finn could not hear their exchange from his position halfway across the squad, but he could see the 2 troopers who searched him brought him onto the ship back to base.

Finn had heard about interrogation methods, he hoped the pilot would not suffer too much at Ren's hand.

He must have projected the thought, for Ren abruptly spun to stare at him. He squared his shoulders and trotted nervously behind his leaving squad, feeling Ren's eyes on him the whole time.

Back at the base, Captain Phasma requested him to submit his blaster for inspection. Waiting for a subtle opening to run away was no longer an option, he had to make one himself.

He gave himself a quick pep talk and marched through the interrogation wing to the imprisoned pilot.

The Force was on his side. He bluffed past the trooper guarding the pilot and took him out of the cell. 'This is a rescue. I'm helping you escape. Can you fly a TIE fighter?'

'I can fly anything.' the pilot smirked. 'I'm Poe. Poe Dameron. What’s your name?'

---

Why did Poe want to go to Jakku again? Oh right, he had to get back some map. Unfortunately, they crashed and Poe was nowhere to be found, his leather jacket the only proof he had escaped with Finn.

Finn hated the planet; all he could see was sand all over the horizon and the blinding sun. The scorching heat drained him quickly; his mouth was dry and his bodysuit was drenched in sweat. He was convinced Jakku was determined to snuff out his existence before he could enjoy his newfound freedom.

When he met the scavenger girl after walking for the whole morning, he had just lost the first person who was kind to him in years (no, don't think of the pilot; losing his first friend - if he can count him as a friend - kriffing hurts). It must be the galaxy sending him a note not to open himself up to another person.

With the scavenger, came a droid. One assumption led to another; before he knew it, he was caught up in the girl's plan to reunite the droid with its owner. And then, he tripped and fell down. She ran to him, offering a hand to help him up. He stared at the outstretched hand like a simulation he could not figure out; surely, she was not really offering? If there was one thing Phasma partially succeeded in drilling into his head, it was that strength is only as strong as the weakest link. That was not wrong from the point of view of an army, though he refused to believe it was the whole truth.

Warily, he looked into Rey's eyes but only found sincerity. Maybe, she was like him, refusing to stop helping others even though a lifetime of teaching had taught him otherwise. He decided to take a leap of faith and took her hand.

He was pulled up and running alongside her and the droid.

This time, he was determined not to lose his new friend.

---

He had failed Rey.

After confessing to her about defecting from the First Order because he did not want to kill innocents, she was initially mad at him for hiding his former involvement with the Order. However, once she calmed down, she forgave him.

He noticed her following Solo around like a lost puppy. He had asked if she knew Solo; she replied no, but he felt familiar. She wished she knew if her father was like him. When Finn gave her a puzzled look, she looked down at the engine she was fixing and explained that she was left on Jakku as a child, with only blurred memories of the people who walked away from her while she cried for them to come back.

Rey had no family, just like Finn. He felt a surge of protectiveness; how dare those people willingly leave a defenceless child behind to fend for herself?

And right when he felt he had known her for his whole life, she was abducted. By Kylo Ren, the First Order's resident ill-tempered dark warrior, no less.

He vowed to get her back, the Order would not take away another friend from him.

---

It turned out Finn had not lost his first friend after all.

As the Millennium Falcon landed on the Resistance base, he looked out of the cockpit to see the ground bustling with activity. Pilots in orange flight suit talked with mechanics in earth brown overalls and droids. In the distance, officers and crews hurried into and out of the compound. Solo directed Finn and BB-8 to go ahead into the compound, while he and Chewie shut down the Falcon.

Strolling down the stretch of the runway taking in the base, Finn saw a pilot climbing down the side of a black painted X-wing. BB-8 knocked into the back of his knees and sped towards the starship with a series of excited beeps and whirls. The pilot talked to a mechanic while taking off their helmet, revealing a wave of black hair. Then, they turned towards BB-8 and a familiar airy voice carried over.

No, it couldn't be! Finn made himself blink once, twice, and was elated to find his eyes and brain were functioning properly.

His feet started running on their own accord. Before his very eyes, Poe stood up from talking to the droid, a wide grin breaking out on his face upon locating him. Poe stepped forward and rushed to meet him halfway, tackling him in a bone-crushing hug. Finn only hesitated for a fraction of a second before hugging back just as fiercely.

If all hugs felt as peaceful and safe as this one, maybe he could get used to them.

---

When Finn told Poe about Rey, who saved BB-8 first, and her subsequent kidnapping, Poe took him to General Organa directly. Unlike First Order officers, she was understanding and sympathetic, readily agreeing to help upon learning the Order's involvement. Finn offered whatever knowledge he had about Starkiller Base and everything else needed. In a short time, a planned mission was approved for the next day. They would soon be off to rescue Rey and stop the planetary weapon.

That night, Finn started awake in a cold sweat and could not manage to get back to sleep. His quarters for the night had no window, too similar to First Order-issued bunks for his liking. He put on Poe's jacket - no, his now - and slid silently out of the room.

Not wanting to get lost around the interconnecting corridors, he pressed onwards to the few zones he was introduced to during the day. His feet took him to a bench right outside the command centre, where they discussed out the mission plan earlier in the day.

Needless to say, he was surprised to find the General seated at a desk near the entrance, still up alongside the night shift officers.

General Organa looked up from the pile of charts she was studying. Not used to friendly interactions with officers, he greeted her and pass it off as simply walking past the centre on a stroll.

'Finn,' she halted him with a tired smile, catching up to tell him 'good work' for proposals on how to destroy the Starkiller. She then reminded him to try and rest enough for the mission while on the Falcon.

'Rey would be back before we know it.' she reached up and patted his arm.

Finn tried not to think about how much of an open book he must be for her to read, idly wondering if that was a skill all mother figures picked up.

---

Flying at light speed to Starkiller took a few hours, which Finn spent half of it fidgeting. Solo and Chewbacca shared a look, then Chewbacca shrugged. Solo sighed and addressed Finn.

'Look, I'm anxious about Rey as much as you do. But she'd survived on Jakku for so long, she's tough. I'm sure she can hold on until we get to her.'

'I know.' Finn glanced at him, then back at the wall panel he had been staring a hole into.

A few beats passed, then Solo made up his mind.

'Tell you what, I've been meaning to fix this squeaky panel in the cargo bay. How 'bout you give me a hand?'

Finn got up and followed him.

They sat on the floor fixing the panel in silence, until Finn asked tentatively, 'Do you ever miss home when you're flying around the galaxy?'

'Well… Sometimes, but I try not to think about it.'

'Where's your home?'

'What's a home? Is it where you were born? Is it where you grow up? Is it where you settle? Or is it a person?' Solo gestured around with the screwdriver still in his hand, then raised an eyebrow at him.

'So, which is it?' Finn tilted his head, frowning.

'That, you have to decide for yourself. You'll know when you've found yours.'

---

Finn was awed to find Rey broke out all by herself.

It was a whirlwind of finding out truths, each more shocking than the previous. Ren was actually Solo's son; him killing Solo for some twisted access to the Force; him choosing power granted by the First Order over genetic family.

And the most worrying turn of events? Ren had been waiting for them as they trekked through the forest back to the Falcon, wanting to turn Rey to the Order's side. He had made his intentions crystal clear.

To Finn's eternal relief, Rey rejected the 'offer' outright. She did not waste one second in insulting Ren, calling him a monster. Kriffing right she was.

Ren responded by knocking her into a tree by Force and Finn's heart nearly stopped. He ran over and dropped to check her pulse. It was only when she groaned that he knew she'd be alright and his brain restarted.

A few crackling swishes and 'Traitor!' reminded him that Ren was still preying on them.

Rey had defended Finn; it was now his turn to return the favour.

He knew there was no way he would stand a chance against an experienced Force user, but Force if he would let anyone else be taken away from him. He was not going down without a fight.

He fired up Skywalker's lightsabre and charged Ren.

He held his own relatively well for a first time user, until Ren swept the sabre from his hands and punched his face so hard, forcing his back to be exposed. Ren followed up with a heavy upwards slash.

Instantly, a fiery pain exploded across Finn's back. He collapsed onto the snow.

If he was going to die, at least he had fought back against the organisation which had manipulated him since he was a young child. He could only hope Rey and Poe would forgive him for not succeeding.

Too exhausted by the overwhelming pain, his vision grew dark.

---

When Finn regained his senses, he was in a transparent bacta suit strapped inside a clear tank.

Thinking the First Order caught him again, he kicked open the cover and scrambled out, gaining his bearing to formulate an escape plan. It was then the interior decoration theme finally caught his attention - the Order's default colour theme was dark grey and black, not light grey and white.

A nurse parted a sliver of the privacy curtain to investigate the commotion. Finn took note of the Resistance emblem over her lapel and relaxed slightly.

'Ah, you're awake! That's good, it means your spine's nearly healed.'

'My spine?'

'Yes, do you remember what happened?'

'Not really. Where am I?'

'We're on the Resistance fleet, this ship's called the Raddus. Better let the doctor check you over first though, just sit here while I get her. Dr Kalonia!' she strode off without waiting for his reply.

For his part, Finn padded out of the medical bay to find Rey and Poe, taking the opposite route from the nurse. It was admittedly not the best idea, as he had no way to know if they would be on the same ship.

He wandered around with a stiff spine and occasional funny looks thrown by passing staff. It was a miracle that he managed to ask someone who knew where Poe would be and could give him the right directions.

He was stumbling past the hangar scanning for Poe when a loud voice exclaimed, 'Finn, buddy!' followed by a heavy thud. When he turned clumsily towards the voice, he was greeted by Poe's thick dark curls suddenly sticking up everywhere right in his face and a hand on his arm. 'You were in a pretty bad shape, I was so worried about you.'

'Good to see you too. Where's Rey?' he squeezed Poe's shoulder in return, not realising water was sprouting from his suit until Poe got busy covering up the disconnected tubes with his bare hands.

'It's a kinda long story, buddy. Let's get your bacta fixed first before I update you, yeah? Bee, go on ahead and tell Dr Kalonia to prep for Finn.'

---

It feels like a whole month of jumping through the galaxy with the Resistance before Finn finally sees Rey in person on Crait; he cannot help himself from crashing into her and burying his face into her neck. She's alive, she's come back for him, she's hugging him as tightly as he's hugging her. Then, he is openly sobbing into her tunic. Poe comes up and puts a hand on his back, mindful of his still healing spine.

This must be what a home feels like, Finn muses. Maybe, he has found himself a new home without realising.

[onlinebizsolution]

Upcoming Google Prediction SEO Trends Algorithms

What is Algorithm?

 The Algorithm is set of Rules Made by Search Engine to Search Relevant Data on Website. Algorithms are Used to Ranking Website by Following Rules. Also Algorithm is a Step by Step Procedure Designed to Perform Different Types of Operation.

How These Algorithms Updates can Best be Applied to Your Business`s SEO Strategy.

 • Have You Ever Observed How Certain Websites or Business Listing Show top of the Google Searches? Or Have you Asked Yourself “What Exactly it is Determined Which Website or Article Get to the Top Position of Search Result Page “the Answer is Called Search Engine Optimization?

• By Following the “Rules” of SEO Using Enhance Your Web Pages And Improve the Page Ranking Within Search Engine. With Google Being Most Used Search Engine Understand How to increase your Page Rank in Google Search Result Can Provide Countless Benefits to Your Business.

• The SERP (Search Engine Result Page) is Effected Daily through the Changes of Google Algorithms So Designed Your Website or Business Listing Page to follow the Rules of Updated Algorithms it is Very useful to Ranking your Website top position of Google Search Result.

Best Strategy for 2018 to Rank First Position in Google Search Results:

• Infographics Images is also called Visual Image it Contains Charts or Diagram it is Used to Represents Information or Data. Info-graphics are more Loved, Most Viewed and Most Share any other Content. It is Very Usefully in Content Marketing

• A Video is a good Platform to Gain Traffic. There are 4 Billion Video Watch on YouTube Every Day. Video Boosts Conversions and Sales of Product. The Video Advertising Increase More Engagements.

• Product Review is the Most Effective Way to Boosts Traffic to Our Website. Product Reviews are in Great Demand. Moreover Newer and Better Contents would attract a Lot of Visitors Which will Definitely Boost your Google Traffic.

Google has Started Working Its Prediction Algorithm for Secure WebØ

• Google has started pushing sites to switch Websites to secure connections (i.e. https://) to help protect visitor’s personal information and data.

• Https Provide More Security to Your Website. Because Communication between Website and Browser are Encrypted. Https used in Banking Sector because it provides payment gateway and it is highly Secure Information.

• In 2018, providing your users a secure connection is a large part of the Google search algorithm and Also it is more Useful to improve your Website Ranking

• Having secure Websites an “Above” in the search results over unsecured sites. Google has proven this commitment to a secure web by rolling out unsecured warnings in their Chrome browser in October 2017.

• Visitors now see Red Unsecure Warnings on any pages that have sign-up or sign-in forms on pages that are unsecured i.e. website don’t have https then it gives red Symbol.

• We have moved multiple clients to a full HTTPS website with great results. One client, an e-commerce business, saw a traffic increase of 35%. Another client, a lead generation software company, saw a traffic increase of over 175% after moving to full HTTPS (year-over-year).

Voice Search and Digital Assistants

• Due to the Increase use of mobile devices, and now the growth of digital assistants (Amazon’s Alexa and Echo, Google’s Home and Home Mini, Apple’s Siri, etc), voice search is expected to continue to grow at a rapid pace and Also traffic throughout 2018.

• According to Google work, 20% of searches already come from voice queries.

• A good 2018 SEO Voice Search strategy must include optimizing for more Keywords, long-tail keywords, in order to capture that mobile and digital assistant for users

  Focus on RankBrain AlgorithmØ

• This is an update Algorithm that was made possible by Google’s advancements in machine learning.With this update, Google does not just focus on the backlink of website profile of a page, quality of the web content or the click-through rate.

• RankBrain enables the Google algorithm to Search queries much better and matches with relevant page content. RankBrain is bound to gain more significance come 2018. Currently, Rank Brain processes a whopping 63,000 searches per second.

For More Information 

  Focus for Mobile on AMP (Accelerate Mobile Pages)Ø

• Introduce In the February of 2016, Google integrated results from the AMP project into search results.

• Amp Page has used to Searching Fastly Results of Queries on Mobile Device Even if Our Mobile Network is Slow. Google started displaying the links to the AMP pages in the main organic search results.

• Now, Google has over 150 million indexed Accelerated Mobile Pages documents in the index.

• Users that are searching quires from mobile devices will be directed immediately to the relevant AMP pages of Search Onwards 2018.

• As a Mobile marketer, you need to get more familiar with the significance of the AMP results. And Use Amp Pages for mobile devices.

• By 2018 keeping up with the increasingly mobile-centric world.

For More Information Visit: www.onlinebiz.co.in