#this has enough text to constitute both tags

[pine-needle-shuffle]

I wanna elaborate on the Rescued au I posted about yesterday, mainly how Cloud fights.

He and Tifa stuck together after they recovered, so their fighting styles evolved together as well. She teaches him what she learned during her time under Zangan's wing, and while Cloud doesn't excel at it, martial arts become the building blocks of his fighting style.

Since he didn't get enhanced with mako, he lacks overall in physical strength, and relies on his surroundings. He does not have the Buster sword, that got left with Zack in the reactor. Even if he did, he couldn't use it effectively as a normal weapon.

Instead, he uses 2 katana-esque swords he got a hold of, they're a lot lighter and don't interfere with close combat.

He and Tifa learn to cover each other's weaknesses and make a solid team. Helps a ton once they eventually join Avalanche.

[hedgehog-moss]

do you have any recs of books that explore and criticize transhumanism as a bad thing?

Yes! I do. Here’s a transhumanism-critical reading list (and my initial post about it, as I assume that’s why you asked me):

Charles T. Rubin’s Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress was interesting—I remember one chapter in particular in which he argues that unlike humanism, transhumanism has shown no interest in developing a system of morals that structures and grounds its ideals and proposals, a fact he finds worrying in itself—as a movement it appears to have (and to want) no grounding values other than a technological version of “might dictates right”.

I recommend browsing the “Futurisms” tag of the New Atlantis’s website; lots of insightful articles critical of transhumanism and biotech enhancement / over-reliance on technology in general.

(Not a book rec just a passing remark: there is a paradox very dear to science-fiction writers who love exploring its consequences, and it is that humans can try and try to design the ‘perfect robot’, but something will always go awry because the designers are not perfect, and cannot help corrupting their creations with their own flaws and damaging values. Transhumanists don’t often ponder the fact that the ‘perfect enhanced transhuman body’ will have been designed by a very narrow demographics of imperfect normal humans, and what does that mean regarding the kind of ‘future human’ they choose to design? Rubin wrote somewhere, don’t remember if it was in his book or one of his articles, “If human beings are even half as imperfect as transhumanists apparently believe, why should we trust our unenhanced opinions about what would constitute an improvement in our lives?”) (This question is particularly salient regarding the fact that the vast majority of transhumanism enthusiasts are men—what will ‘mental and physical enhancements’ designed by men mean for women?)

Francis Fukuyama’s Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution criticises biotech enhancement from a political angle (e.g. genetic enhancements threaten the most basic premise of our democracies: the belief that human beings are born equal. What does this mean for the future of democracy?) There is obviously a lot of talk about the eugenicist subtext of transhumanism.

The aim of this book is to argue that Huxley was right, that the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a “posthuman” stage of history. This is important, I will argue, because human nature exists, is a meaningful concept, and has provided a stable continuity to our experience as a species. It is what defines our most basic values. Human nature shapes and constrains the possible kinds of political regimes, so a technology powerful enough to reshape what we are will have possibly malign consequences for [democracy].

Mary Midgley, in her book Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Making, is very critical of fantasies of cyborg bodies and immortal life (in the early 90s the term transhumanism wasn’t yet widespread, but she talks of “mechanized neo-men”), and this is one of the rare texts in which I found a critique of transhumanism as a specifically male power fantasy (e.g. the deep resentment of the very existence of limits and boundaries.)  I like how direct she is in her criticism too; commenting on transhumanist quotes by men and calling their ideas “naive” or “weird and startling”, saying things like “All this is assumed to be both desirable and  biologically possible” then proceeding to explain why it is neither—and arguing that transhumanism sees itself as scientific in its subject matter but is actually highly emotive (which is not bad in itself, but here we are talking negative emotions—fear of death and the ‘decay’ of ageing or illness are the main catalysts behind biotech enhancements.)

Melinda Charis Hall’s The Bioethics of Enhancement—which I found quite dry in parts, but I haven’t found a lot of books discussing transhumanists’ attitude towards disability and its potential impact on disability rights. 

Transhumanism explicitly rejects the disabled body and can increase stigma against persons with disabilities in two ways. First, it plays upon fears of disablement. Second, the transhumanist point of view endorses a hierarchy of value and well-being among lives on the basis of capabilities; that is, the greater the number of capabilities, the larger the opportunity range, the better the life.

Bill McKibben’s Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, which you can read on OpenLibrary

Nicholas Agar’s Humanity's End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement 

This critical review of the book “Beyond Mankind”, especially this part on the concept of living forever through biotech enhancements:

Harris admits that “for the foreseeable future” there are likely to be “parallel populations” of mortals and immortals, but argues (as per the democratic presumption) there is nothing we can or should do to prevent that. My freedom to choose immortality is the trump card. Besides, he notes, the “poetic imagination” has long prepared us for this situation. Unfortunately, he does not pause to examine how often in such stories the mortals are playthings of the immortals. At what stage might the unenhanced start looking like they lack true autonomy to the enhanced?

I have not read it yet, but Robert Frodeman’s Transhumanism, Nature, and the Ends of Science: A Critique of Technoscience looks promising. I have read a review that suggests the author shares my main beef with transhumanism:

His main point is that transhumanism, like our technocientific culture in general, always wants more. It is a culture of excess and always wants to push limits. While Frodeman pays some attention to the social and political risks posed by transhumanism, his first and main project in this book is thus offering a thesis on what’s wrong with our culture and with our goals and desires. His view [is that] we have enough, [and] instead of wanting more gadgets, we should be concerned with the good life and the meaningful life.

This quote from the article “Humanism and Transhumanism”:

“The name of the movement known as “transhumanism” may suggest that it arises out of humanism. At the very least, it is a descendant of what was once known as humanism, and could be seen as just one more utopian humanism. But the “trans” is the operative part of the term, and it should be taken seriously. Transhumanism is not simply utopian in the same way as the humanisms of Marx or B.F. Skinner; rather, it is qualitatively different in that it “goes beyond,” avowedly disregarding and leaving behind human beings themselves — the very beings that were the central concern of all previous humanisms. [...] 

Curiously, from the point of view of the original humanism, the project of transhumanism looks remarkably theological. After all, Kurzweil’s ultimate dream is of men made into gods. [T]he transhumanist vision makes clear [...] how profoundly hostile such ambitions are to human life — even when they present themselves as liberating, improving, or merely assisting it. Human beings, by their very nature, are never entirely at home in a world of things, much less in a world ruled by gods.”

^ This reflexion on how transhumanism, despite what its name suggests, is not at all a continuation or development of humanism, ties with a point that Hava Tirosh-Samuelson makes in her paper “In Praise of Human Dignity”: that “The humanities have lost their prestige, funding, identity, and public purpose” and that this decline coincided with the rise of transhumanist thinking. (I posted a quote from it here about how the tension between the two plays out.)

This article (not very interesting) briefly brings up a point on the financial weight and political influence of the transhumanist movement that I wish was discussed more often, and more in depth, because it’s true that many billionaires are very interested in this ideology:

“Unfortunately, transhumanism has turned into an ideological movement that benefits from exorbitant economic backing and infiltrates academic institutions and funding bodies to an extent where they threaten to marginalize other views. If they don’t get into the Ivy Leagues directly, they simply build their own universities and think-tanks: such as the Singularity University in Silicon Valley that churns out a class of well-funded brainwashed entrepreneurs each year to build the technologies needed for the transhumanists’ visions. From thereon governments and institutions (such as the United Nations) are influenced to embrace this future as well [...].”

And to me the fact that billionaires and rich Silicon Valley-type elites are so into transhumanism confirms every point in this list—that this ideology is conceived by and for people who a) are male, b) are extremely individualistic, c) don’t care about democracy or the greater good of human society, d) can’t comprehend what ‘enough’ means or the dangers of an ideology that disdains natural limits and generally views ecosystems (including natural organisms / bodies) as deficient systems that can only be enhanced by human tinkering.

[absolxguardian]

Legal question, what would exactly qualify as an accomplice to murder change, legally? Because I've been translating a JP article on the punishments all trilogy crimes would receive under JP law, and Lana and Iris aren't referred to as accomplices in it, just guilty of evidence/body tampering.

Oh boy, I guess this means I'm the person the Ace Attorney fandom comes to for law info now. Thank you for the honor. I do want to clarify that I'm not even in high school pre-law, I just like learning and so end up watching a lot of youtube videos/podcasts from lawyers.

That out of the way, when you help someone commit a crime in English Common Law you're either an accomplice or an accessory (generally after the fact). An accomplice is there at the crime as is punished equally. An accessory assists before or after the committing of a crime. So with US standards, Lana is an accessory to the crime while Iris could be either an accomplice or an accessory.

The thing is that accomplice and accessory generally covers actions that aren't crimes alone, but assists in the principal's (culprit's) crime in context. Being a lookout or driving someone from point a to b isn't a crime, but it is when you knowingly do it in aid of a criminal act. However if as an accessory you also commit a criminal act, you are charged with that act as well. So if Godot gets charged/convicted of Misty's murder (something that's shaky), Iris gets a small part of his guilt as an accessory (or all of it as an accomplice) as well as a seperate charge for obstruction of justice/tampering with/fabrication of evidence. However this depends on the jurisdiction. Some US states have gotten rid of accessory all together and just introduced new crimes like laws against helping another evade arrest. It all depends on the specific state.

However, intricate layered American law is all inconsequential here. The Wikipedia articles for accomplice and accessory I've been using to supplement my memory of things like Legal Geek episodes are both tagged as subpar, with accomplice having multiple issues. However there's an interesting phrase in the article "Under the English common law, an accomplice". This leads me to believe that the idea of an accomplice, who shares equal guilt, is exclusive to common law. Japan, obviously, is not a common law country. The little paragraph about criticism regarding doctrine being too draconian further leads me to believe that such a thing doesn't exist everywhere.

So time to figure out Japanese law. Unfortunately, there are very few English language resources on Japanese law. However the entire penal code has been translated into English. Of course I might be missing some important case law, but my reading on the Japanese legal system on Wikipedia indicates that precedent doesn't form any support beams in the criminal system like it does in the US. So let's go to Chapter XI Complicity

(Accessoryship) Article 62　(1)　A person who aids a principal is an accessory. (2)　A person who induces an accessory shall be dealt with in sentencing as an accessory.

(Reduced Punishment for Accessories) Article 63　The punishment of an accessory shall be reduced from the punishment for the principal.

The penal code does make mention of accomplice in this section

(Complicity and Status) Article 65　(1)　When a person collaborates in a criminal act in which the status of the criminal establishes the criminal's punishability, the person is an accomplice even without such status.

Status has a little pop-up that says "status : 身分(みぶん), 地位(ちい)[原則] / same status, 資格(しかく)[地位としての資格] / status of residence" so I assume that's what it's talking about.

Speaking of pop-ups, many of the words in the code have Japanese pop-ups, which I assume give details on what specific word is being translated into English terminology. Because translating laws can be awkward. I recommend reading the penal code on your computer, even if your Japanese isn't good enough to parse legalese in it. There's also an alternating Japanese-English display mode on the website. However, the word "accomplice" doesn't have a pop-up. On accessory it says "従犯(じゅうはん), 従物(じゅうぶつ)[動産]". Which leads me to believe that the word translated as accessory is actual legal terminology, while accomplice is a generic term in the original text that just means "someone who helped with the crime".

So if my analysis is correct, Lana and Iris could be charged as accessories, the contents the article could be explained by being standard practice to only do so when the accessory hasn't committed another crime. Chapter IX Article 54 of the penal code might be relevant here.

(Concurrence of Crimes) Article 54 (1)　When a single act constitutes two or more separate crimes, or when an act as the means or results of a crime constitutes another crime, the greatest among the punishments prescribed for such crimes shall be imposed.

But I feel like if that's the case, a good article would explain why they're being charged as for their actions vs being an accessory. But many the article does that, and you're only confused about why the author hasn't said anything about them being charged as an accomplice. Which they didn't bring up, as that's not a Japanese concept or something even present in the Japanese pop culture legal knowledge.

I hope this helps and is more or less accurate. I'd love it if you send me the article when you're done translating. I haven't seen any English language posts about real life punishments from a Japanese perspective.

[maybankiara]

PHONE SWAP (DREW STARKEY)

04: CHOCOLATE

summary: Addie Mallory is just your average economics student when she meets Drew Starkey at her local Target in Atlanta. This is where the story is supposed to end – a short meeting and a picture to go – except Drew accidentally leaves with the wrong phone, and the story begins, instead.

w/c: 1.8k

a/n: real life, my dudes, it’s real life. (well, after a lil texting sequence.) writing drew is actually hard, believe it or not, and i edited this chapter right after finishing chapter 14 -- and the difference is huge. i’m really excited! as always, let me know if you want to be added to the taglist, and tell me what you thought!

read on wattpad

previous part |  series masterlist

drewstarkey | 10:53am Hey! I’ll be running a little late, so meet you at quarter past noon?

addisonmallory | 11:07am That's okay, I would’ve been late, too lol

drewstarkey | 11:08am Okay cool so it’s not just me hahah

addisonmallory | 11:09am Nope, I’ve got a reputation ngl

drewstarkey | 11:11am Let’s see who’s the worse one, then 😂

addisonmallory | 11:14am It’s on 😎

◇

It takes all in Addie to keep Marianne from tagging along. If the French-Brit is anything, it’s stubborn and persistent, which Addie claims to be the worst two stereotypical traits she could’ve picked up from the two cultures – and they both know she’s right.

  ‘I won’t bother you,’ says Marianne, looking at Addie through her rose-tinted sunglasses. ‘I’ll just be behind you. You won’t even know I’m there!’

  Addie sighs and leans sideways against the doorway. Marianne’s foot is blocking the door from closing, and this is all dragging out way beyond rational.

  ‘Marianne, I’m going there for literally five minutes. It’s not a big deal.’

  ‘He’s a famous actor.'

  ‘He’s not even that famous. I met him in a fucking Tesco, Marianne!’

  The look she receives for that statement is scorching – but the edge in the girl’s eyebrow relaxes, and Marianne gives way to one of her quiet sighs. ‘Fine. Whatever. Go have fun.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Addie; a weak attempt to keep the bitter tone at bay.

  The door shuts with a bang – she waits until she hears faint footsteps disappearing into the heart of the apartment. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Marianne, but the girl usually lives in her own world and tends to disregard the common notions of what would be okay in a situation like this. Addie doesn't hold it against her. She can’t hold who Marianne is against herself.

  With this now over and done with, Addie walks down two flights of stairs and exits the building. It’s a sunny day, just like it was yesterday, and she takes some pride in the fact that she’s got her contacts in, and sunglasses, and a face that doesn’t look like somebody tortured her for a week. There’s a spring to her step even if she tries to control it, and really, Addie just feels great.

  Although, she still can’t believe she’s about to meet up with Drew Starkey to exchange phones because he got startled and gave her the wrong one.

  She doesn’t even have the damn photo they took together.

  The thought makes her laugh, and relax a little, and somehow it clicks in her head that Drew really is just a regular guy, susceptible to ridiculous shitty things happening to him just like everyone else. It calms her on her walk down to Tesco, even when it’s a few minutes after they’ve agreed on meeting up and he's still not here. 

  Expected, really. He did say he’d be late, after all.

  When he finally walks out of the car, she doesn’t realise it’s him, at first. The car he’s driving is a silver Toyota, looking a little older than she'd expect. He parks it a couple dozen feet away from her, and the only reason she even takes note of the car is because it’s similar to the one her high school friends used to drive when they were all still back in town. Her eyes land on the dark-haired figure inside the car and recognises him only when the Atlanta sun shines its light on him, making the brown strands appear almost blonde, blonde structure framed by the sun’s gentleness.

  Something in Addie flutters. It’s not butterflies, but the feeling of excitement at the prospect of an adventure, or something entirely surreal yet about to happen.

  Drew’s face breaks into a smile as warm as summer itself at the sight of her. She gives a little wave, clutching his phone in her hands. It takes him a couple of seconds to cross the distance between them, and he joins her under the shade.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Hi.’ Addie grins back, the sheer lack of knowing what to do bringing heat to her cheeks. ‘Nice car you got there. My friend had the same one.’

  He glances at the car with pride in his eyes, nodding. ‘Yeah, she’s a badass. Stuck with me through thick and thin.’

  ‘You got the AC?’

  ‘Yeah, I had it installed a few years back, when I moved here. Your friend didn’t?’

  ‘Nope.’ Addie shakes her head, sighing at the mere thought of the days she spent roasting in that car during midsummer roadtrips. ‘Some AC would be good right now. I walked here and honestly, I pretty much melted off. Even wearing this.’

  The girl grabs a handful of the dress below her waist, the lower part of the lightest fabric she could find in her closet. It’s an ordinary summer dress meant for beaches and walks under the Mediterranean sun, light blue with flowers scattered all over it, and reaching just to her knees when still. The day is windy, so the fabric sways on the wind, pulling itself a little higher, instead.

  Drew chuckles at her comment and makes one about misjudging the temperature and choosing to wear long jeans instead of shorts, and stops himself mid sentence. ‘Ah, fuck.’ 

  Addie recognises the sigh and the eyeroll, and figures something’s up even before he runs his fingers through his hair, saying, 'I forgot something. I'll be right back.'

  Before she manages to mutter ‘Okay’, he’s making a beeline for his car. She watches him take something out of the glove compartment and he’s back within seconds, holding one of the biggest Hershey’s chocolate bars Addie has ever seen, and her phone is on top of it. She lets out a small chuckle, feeling her eyebrows come closer.

  Drew holds the two in front of her, scratching the back of his neck with the other hand. ‘This is a little something for the inconvenience. And – and as congratulations, you know, for getting the internship.’

  ‘Oh my god, you didn’t need to buy me a chocolate,’ Addie says, voice high pitched in a combination of laughter and disbelief.

  ‘No, I did. Just – just take it, okay?’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  Addie’s fingers wrap around the chocolate and she slips her phone into her pocket, handing him his. It feels odd—this whole interaction does—and she has the stupidly childish need to stare at her feet, but she makes herself look up at him, and he does the same once he glances briefly at his phone, putting it into the back pocket of his jeans. He’s squinting a little, and she can’t tell if it’s because of the sun and the fact that he’s not wearing sunglasses, or because that way it's easier to mask the awkwardness she knows he’s also feeling.

  She offers him a smile, earnest as he can, and sees his shoulders drop a little.

  The smile he gives in return is so genuinely apologetic that Addie finds it sweet – contagious, too.

  ‘Look, I really am sorry about this whole thing. I know I keep apologising, but I mean it. The chocolate was the least I could’ve done.’

  ‘And it’s more than enough,’ she reassures him. ‘Honestly. You’re all good. It’s not like you tried to steal my phone.’ She squints at him, jokingly, and crosses her arms on her chest. ‘Unless...?’

  It makes him laugh, wide and bright, and his hair moves gently as his head shakes. ‘Fuck no. I’m not skilled enough for that.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re driving an old Toyota that does’'t even come with an AC. Not good enough for a thief.’

  Drew’s laughter persists, and Addie lets herself relax a little. She leans against the tree with the side of her body, a little tired of being on her feet for so long, one of her hands stuck in her pocket and the other holding onto the chocolate that's getting softer between her fingers and her palm.

  The man in front of her glances around with an edge to it, just like he did back inside the supermarket.

  ‘I should get going,’ he says. ‘It’s an interview week, so…’

  Addie smiles. ‘Yeah, it’s cool. Thanks for bringing my phone back.’

  ‘Once again, I’m really—’

  ‘Okay. It was nice seeing you again. I can’t hear you apologise one more time so I’m going to leave.’

  She considers turning on her heel and pretending to walk away, but she only takes a single step back and gives him a cheeky grin, instead. Drew is staring at her, squinting a little, probably because she’s all in the sun now and her dress is more than a little reflective.

  He raises two fingers, gives her a little salute. ‘Bye, then.’

  Addie repeats the word, mimicking his gesture.

  Drew grins at that and it’s the last she sees of his face, as he turns toward his car and walks away. He waves at her driving out of the parking lot, while Addie fumbles with her headphones and her phone, and she waves back.

  The moment he’s out of sight, she walks back under the tree, completely leaning her back against it. The breeze is enjoyable now, something between comfortable and warm, and Addie feels her heart thumping in her chest. Her eyes flutter and a shaky breath leaves her lungs, lips curling into a smile. Her hands may not be sweaty, but she feels sweaty all around, and knows she should be getting home as fast as possible because of the chocolate she’s holding, but she just... she can’t.

  It’s not like Addie Mallory to get her head spinning at the sight of a boy – far from it. In fact, she likes to think of herself as an experienced person with a level-headed, realistic perspective on life and everything that constitutes. She’s put her career and future first for years now, and this is the first time she feels like she’s taking baby steps when talking to someone new, instead of striding. 

  Except, be as it is, Drew Starkey isn’t just someone new. Even if Addie is used to meeting people of far more importance than her, it’s usually in her line of business, and it’s usually people she knows what to expect from. This is someone who she feels like she knows what to expect from except he breaks all those expectations with ease. 

  It’s far from being the same, so Addie allows herself to be okay with her heart racing, palms sweating, and just getting overall excited like a schoolgirl. This doesn’t make her any less mature or her priorities any less set in stone.

  As Addie goes into her text messages, rereads the one from Harry Martin, she realises that her life definitely took a 180 the day before. She texts him back, letting him know she’s available whenever and apologising for the late reply. Her phone rests against her chest, warm and familiar.

  She’s glad to have it back.

  But, even if she’s having a hard time admitting it, she’s not glad that her story with Drew is over.

◇

05: TOMFOOLERY

tagging. @jjmaybanksbaby​​ @taiter-tots​​ @sacredto​​ @snkkat​​ @drewswannabegirl​​ @yeslifeofateen​​ @rudypnkw​​ @stfukie​​ @x-lulu​​ @sacredto​​ @drewstarkey​​ @butgilinsky​​ @solllaris​​ @hyperactive2411​​ @chasefreakinstokes​​  @surferkie​ @jroseron​ @k-k0129​

[shiftytracts]

This was gonna be a scenario post, hence the A and B format, but got so long (2.4k) it almost counts as a story. I’m less sure it counts as emeto--it’s all nausea/general digestive upset, no actual vomit. Also mentions scat and weight gain, but those tags would definitely constitute false advertising; they’re more like incidental story elements than kink elements.

--

A’s on new meds, whose side effects include slight but near-constant nausea. They wander one morning through the dark, brown-carpeted house they share with B (their SO) and another housemate (C), coffee cup in hand, still slightly sweat-sticky from bed but without the time to shower. It’s a small, thin-walled house, and C’s not up yet, so A and B keep off their shoes for as long as they can, trying not to make too much noise. A muffles their burps into the crook of their elbow. B makes eggs and toast for both; A’s gotta wolf ‘em before their appointment, but wishes they hadn’t—or at least that they’d skipped the orange juice, and maybe saved brushing their teeth for after breakfast. They head to their appointment with their heart pounding in their gut, queasy and bloated and short of breath, bubbly stiff cramps forming in new places every time they bend a different way, belly rumbling so much they wonder if B can hear it, if they can see it shake, can see A’s navel through their t-shirt.

(“Be honest”—A implores, when they wander back from the can to the kitchen sink where B stands washing grease off the breakfast plates—“do I look like a total fatass?”

(“What? No.” B laughs, rhetorically, and adds, “Why?”

(“Well ‘cause I sorta feel like one is all,” A says, peremptorily stroking up and down past their navel, but regretting it when this uncalled-for jiggling further upsets their stomach.

(“Aw. No, you look fine,” B assures them. They look back to their dishes, then at A again with preemptive shrug: “I guess if they were really looking someone might figure you’d had a big breakfast, but.” A yanks at their shirt, hoping to obscure this; “Don’t do that, you’ll stretch it,” B reminds them.)

A tries to crap before they leave but no dice—not time yet. Nasty cramps and cold sweat all through their shrink appointment. Comes home, gives vent to the pyroclastic flow, then collapses supine on the bed and unbuttons their shorts. Takes a nap.

Despite their best efforts B’s doings in there an hour or so after that wake A up; they direct A to the water glass they set by the bed. “Oh. Thanks,” A yawns, and asks if B’ll hand them pajama pants. B smiles and complies.

“Not going out again then, huh? Not feeling well?”

A shrugs. “No, I’m okay now, just kinda.” They try to make a hand gesture for tired or loopy, but judging from B’s lack of answering nod they figure this doesn’t suffice as explanation. “Might later though, I don’t know.”

“Mm.”

“Should eat something, probably.”

“Ah, yeah—get back on the horse?”

“Haha yeah.” Meanwhile A rubs their belly up and down as though to sound its opinion on the level of drawstring tightness they’ve selected. B sits next to them for a sec, puts a hand on their back, pecks their jaw.

“I guess you are a bit chubbier now,” B admits, feeling guilty for how they dodged A’s question on that score this morning.

“Seems that way,” allows A. This, they’re pretty sure, is the previous med’s fault. They wouldn’t’ve switched were that its only sin, of course, but the thing had the gall to be useless aside from its side effects of weight gain and insomnia. “Is it gross? Should I.”

“What? No,” B says again, and laughs rhetorically as before. “‘Gross’? Of course not.” B bats A’s jaw, very gently, playfully. “No matter what happens, I’m just happy you’re getting help.”

A’s answering smile lasts maybe a quarter of a second. “Thanks.” All the same they stand and spread their arms out to either side, to give B a better look. “Sure you don’t mind?”

B smiles, shakes their head chidingly, incredulously. “Why would I mind? It’s kinda cute, if anything.” To prove they mean it they go around behind A, rest the side of their face on the back of A’s neck, snake their hands around to A’s front and slot each one atop their waistband so B’s palms fit in the hollow between pelvis and flab. Roots around til they find the end of A’s shirt, pushes it out of the way, un- and re-does the drawstring so their pajama pants sit at a more flattering height. “That too tight?”

“No, it’s kinda grounding actually,” A shrugs. “Thanks.”

“Mhm. Now go eat something.”

A eats some leftover rice with soy sauce—C ordered way too much rice with their takeout two nights ago, and left the extra up for grabs. Then A figures they can handle two Oreos. Can’t stop burping after that, but only feels a little queasy, little squirmy. Lies on the couch with their laptop, alternately studying and playing Tetris (they’re a week or two into the fall semester; today’s Friday, which they have off from both classes and work). Until C gets home, at which point Mariokart happens. This makes A feel sick, though, not sure whether in a too much food or not enough kinda way, so they take their computer and go back to the bedroom, telling C they just want to remove themselves from the social distraction. Maintains this ruse until about halfway down the hallway, then lets go the foodbaby they’ve been suckin’ in and moves their free hand up and down it as they round the corner into their bedroom doorway. B’s all dressed and ready for their friend’s party now; has to go soon. They’re crisscross-applesauced on the bed looking at their phone, but they look up when A comes in. “Hey.”

“Hi! Feeling better?” B asks, with a slight frown that suggests they know the answer.

A busies their hands with setting their laptop on the bed so they can say, “Nope—queasatronic,” without seeming too self-pitying.

B nose-laughs but says, “Aw. I’m sorry.”

A shrugs, sits. “Eh.”

“Want me to stay home?—I could—?”

But this time A says, “What? No. ‘Course not, you should go. I’m fine, I’m.” (Shrugs, realizing already that this’ll sound like a guilt trip and wondering whether they secretly mean one. But they’re too bushed to think of another ending to the sentence.) “I’m used to this; don’t need a babysitter. You should go.”

“Okay. Thank you. If you’re sure.”

“No, please. Seriously.”

“Alright. What time is it?” B chirps, then presses the top button on their phone and reports, “5:24—yeah okay, I should go. Take care, feel better. Need anything?—I could stop at CVS, or.”

“Uh…” A mimes thinking about it, then spaces out for real.

“Well, you can text me if so,” B laughs.

“Cool. Sure. Have fun.”

“Thaaanks,” B says, swinging themselves by the hand around the doorjamb as they slip out. A arranges themselves supine again, hands folded on their stomach. Lets out an unimpressed sigh as though in summation. Doesn’t really wanna take a nap, but they try playing Tetris again and feel too icky when they try to focus their eyes on the screen. Closes their laptop but does not remove its warm weight from their lap, even though in the 5pm heat its plastic sticks to their wrists. Burps, mouth open, not loudly exactly but sorta high-pitched—as though they were an adolescent boy with a soda can, they scoff. Then wonders if they have any more diet ginger ale. Wanders out to the kitchen, in the extra wall space between which and the dining room (B calls it a “breakfast nook,” but A just assumes that’s a joke they don’t get) they keep their soda cans stacked on the floor next to the milk-cratey recycle bins. There is indeed one left. They grab that and a cup (and two ice cubes outta the tray in the freezer), too lazy to fetch the one B put water in for them earlier, and remind themselves to text B that they’ve run out.

C’s still out there, and notices A’s choice of beverage. “You alright?”

“Yeah, just. Guts’re on the fritz again.”

“Hm. Sorry, pal.”

“It’s cool.”

“You gonna be able to find something you can eat?”

“What?”

“Tonight, I mean. Is there food you can eat?”

A shrugs. “Still some rice left I guess.”

“I ask ‘cause I’m going to the store in an hour, so. If you want some saltines or something.”

“Oh.” A laughs; adds, “thanks. Think we still have some from last time though.”

“Okay. Well, if you think of anything you want.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“No problem; good luck.”

At this departure from Hope you feel better A laughs slightly. “Thanks.” Heads back to their room, drinks their soda and melty ice. This is the hottest-ass part of the day, so when it’s gone they balance the still-cool glass on their clavicle. They feel much better now, if sorta bloated and fizzy. Quease level comparatively minimal. Figures they should eat again while they’ve got the, uh, guts for it.

Once they start on their second round of rice A finds they’re pretty hungry. Adds soy sauce a lot more zealously, this time, and risks the last leftover spring roll as well but regrets the grease. Has to make up for it with the unsauced bits of rice clinging to the edge of the styrofoam box—you know, like, a palate cleanser or whatever. They hiccup a little, then belch when they bring their plate to the sink, from the contact between gut and the edge of the counter: hadn’t thought about the extra room they take up now. Rubs a peremptory circle into the left side above the navel but finds they feel alright, for now—then 20 minutes later heads into the can, expecting lava from how their stomach cramps and rolls, but gets out only some air and a few wispy pebbles. Notices with greater dismay, then, on the way back to their room, how their belly queasily sloshes around when they walk. Doesn’t seem to have shrunk much.

In B’s mirror, back in their room, A finds they look pretty gigantic, too; they changed into a looser shirt after the first one got too sweaty, and in this comparative tent all you can tell is that the gut’s the widest part of their profile. They set their hands down on it to bring it down to size, and are dismayed at how little difference this makes. Does feel nicer that way though; leaves ‘em there as they trudge slowly back to their side of the bed, and pushes slow circles into each side. Sits heavily on the edge of the bed, hunched over a little. Can feel the tightness in their stomach that means either it’s going to rumble in that long drawn-out violating way where you feel like it’s loosing all your secrets or that you’re going to belch so loud you’ll wonder if you have to puke. Waits, then gives up on waiting and slowly, laboriously lies down. Stretches a little, tempting fate, but it kinda hurts: ties a weird knot high up on the right when they loosen back up. They put three fingers on it gently, and try to iron it out back and forth. Ah!—there it goes. Stomach starts growling, seems to shake everything up, then once that uneasy shifting’s done with it still keeps up the sound what seems a ludicrous, embarrassing long time. When that’s done they sigh and then burp a little. Laughs at themselves for this display. Carefully carefully carefully turns onto their side, facing away from the door, and tries to sleep, a protective hand curled around their stomach.

When B gets home much later that night they wake up a little (“Oh. Hi. How was the thing.” “Hey! Sorry to wake you. It was fun; I think it went well.” “That’s good.” “Mhm.” “Anyway good night.” B laughs: “Haha okay. Go back to sleep A.” They mean to reply at your service but instead say, “Open sesame”; B laughs and pats their hair so it itches their nose. When A swipes at it snot comes loose. They decide not to open that pandoras wormtails); figures they’ll fall back to sleep quick until the consciousness of nausea slides back into place, at which point they try to roll onto their back and find themselves ludicrously heavy. It takes several tries, and all their breath. They groan with bored self-pity, forgetting they’re not alone in the room.

Meanwhile B struggles out of their clothes and into pajama pants and an inside-out (but not backwards) tank top in the dark. “You okay?”

“Blugh. Not great.”

“Aw, still?”

“Yeah… nah,” A says, blinking, confusedly forgetting which answer is appropriate. “I gotta pee,” A decides. This helps a little, since it wakes them up all the way and therefore allows them to disentangle the need to pee from their other woes. In the bathroom mirror they look mostly deflated up top but still extra puffy and round lower down; at least it doesn’t hurt their stomach to stand up anymore. Only hurts like a menstrual cramp does after you take ibuprofen, but the quease that in that case is only incipient is much worse here. At one point they cough, and dread this “pandoras wormtails” too when it alerts them to all the mushy brittle things in their throat and chest. This also makes them start burping again, so that that’s how they end up greeting B when they get back to the doorway of their room: fist over their mouth, wincing a little, leaning into the wall for balance. B’s a good sport though. They face each other in bed and B lays both their warm hands on A’s stomach, whimpers in pity at how blown up they can tell it is.

“I’m sorry you don’t feel well,” they say in that affectionate half-asleep tone that always comes out querulous.

“It’s cool,” A says back.

B sloppily nods so that their jaw thuds against their pillow, hair spilling into their eyes, and tells A, “Just try to go back to sleep; feel betterinthmorning probbleby,” trying to get all the words out before a yawn.

[program-800]

Exploring D:BH Fics (Part 9)

D:BH CHARACTER PROMINENCE IN THE ACTUAL GAME VS AO3 FICS

Which characters are relatively more prominent in canon and are they the same ones prominent in the fandom? I tried my hand at answering that question (quantitatively) and the graph above is the result.

I sorted the graph by prominence in fandom (i.e., percent of character tags received). The graph is meant to act as a rough gauge to identify characters that may have gotten (or lost) prominence when moving from canon to fandom material. The specific percentage numbers between the two sources (canon/fandom) are not directly comparable since prominence had to be operationalised differently between the two sources (all details under the cut). x Interactive versions of all graphs presented (so you can see the numbers clearly, etc) available on my Github page (link in description/tumblr heading!).

Usually I split the methods write-up from the results, but this time I’ll keep them together, again, because the process and assumptions made are especially important for this analysis (for starters, how was prominence even operationalised in canon/fandom material?).

Other work: I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII

Before I go into the methods, two questions to think about:

1) There are a lot of ways to talk about the prominence of a character - how many times did they appear (and what counts as an appearance; just walking across the street, or actually being the focus of action)? How much screen-time did they get? How many lines did they say? How many times their name appeared or they were referred to? Maybe even how much influence they had over events?

2) If we’ve settled on an answer for (1), how do we compare that between different mediums? D:BH is a game and fics are, well, mainly text.

These were questions I thought a lot about before proceeding. In the end, I settled for rather simplistic operationalisations. For the actual game, I relied on the dialogue transcriptions from the Detroit: Become Text project. For fics, I relied on the character tags provided by the AO3 authors.

1. D:BH ACTUAL GAME DIALOGUE Dataset: Some people have done wonderful work transcribing most of the dialogue in the actual D:BH game (please see Detroit: Become Text on Github!). I worked with all the material they had - 4728 lines of dialogue.

1.1 Preprocessing Everything was in HTML so it was a simple task of writing some code to pull out the character names and counting the number of dialogue lines each individual had. x Assumption 1: Share of dialogue is indicative of character prominence in the game. I decided on this mainly because I was limited by the information I had (D:BT almost fully transcribes dialogue only) and also because D:BH is a very conversation-heavy game. x Assumption 2: Sometimes characters might be interchangeable for certain lines, e.g. Josh or Simon can tell Markus, “Be careful, Markus. Our people need you.” I chose to drop these lines and not assign them to any character’s count since there were only 15 of them in the whole transcription. x Assumption 3: The game has multiple scenarios based on your choices. I chose not to distinguish between them, taking the whole transcription as a long text document. My justification is that if the writers decided a character was important enough to have/be in several variants of the scenario (think Connor’s multiple endings versus, maybe, the android Markus picked up paint from), I should not discount that.

Following this, I selected 40 named characters (i.e., no random policeman/passer-bys) for visualisation and comparison. These 40 characters together had 3745 transcribed lines.

1.2 Results

Note the percentage is calculated from the lines of these 40 characters only (i.e., does not cover dialogue counts of unnamed policemen, unnamed deviants, etc).

Connor, Kara, and Markus take up almost 50% together. I think Markus has slightly less lines than Connor and Kara since it’s possible for North to take his place. Fan favourites like Gavin hold only a tiny sliver of the pie. Note that according to this operationalisation of prominence, RK900 is at 0% (since he doesn’t say anything in-game).

2. CHARACTER TAGS FROM D:BH AO3 FICS Dataset: 13,933 English-language fics scraped from AO3, spanning May 2018 to mid Oct- 2019.

2.1 Preprocessing I collated all the tags that fell under the AO3 character class (61333 tags). I did a fair bit of manual cleaning as usual (for misspellings, different ways to tag a character, etc). x (Long) assumption: Picking out dialogue lines from fic and attributing it correctly to characters is an extremely difficult task (I think I've seen machine learning papers on it). So, I chose to go with tags - I assumed that characters that are important or at the very least more than a one-liner would receive a tag. At the same time, I assumed that characters that are really just one-liner appearances (like “He saw Nines walk across the room.” with zero mention of Nines in the rest of the fic) would not get tagged.

Clearly this is not foolproof since everyone has different ideas of what constitutes a character that should be tagged, but it’s what I worked with (otherwise I would have to read and check every fic). Stuff to note:

1) Ambiguous tags like “everyone” were not assigned to any character. 2) Tags that mentioned multiple characters (e.g “mentioned North and Josh”) or ships were also not assigned to any character. 3) Tags that were in the style of “Connor (mentioned)” were still added to their respective characters. Again, I think most writers have varying ideas of what a “mention” actually means, so I decided to be less stringent and more inclusive here. 4) Tags for ‘Jericho’  and ‘Jericrew’, etc - I added 0.25 to the counts of Markus, North, Simon, and Josh each time such a tag appeared. Whether I did that or not probably wouldn’t have drastically changed the results though, since there were only 87~ Jericho-related character tags.

I picked out the same 40 named characters I looked at from the actual game dialogue. These 40 characters together had received 53274 tags.

2.2 Results

Again, note the percentage is calculated from the total number of times these 40 characters were tagged (e.g., does not include tag counts for OCs - which were tagged quite a bit as well).

We see Connor still holding on to his share and huge jumps from Gavin and RK900. DPD members in general also seem to have slightly bigger slices of the pie in fandom.

3. Ending notes It’s pretty difficult to see some of the information from the two pie charts, so I put the information from both into the bar chart that I introduced this whole post with:

I can’t emphasise enough that the exact percentage numbers between canon/fandom are not directly comparable since prominence had to be operationalised differently. Nonetheless, I think the chart does capture a trend that reflects my reading experience. Now I just need more spare time/need to kidnap some data minions  so I can work on a more rigorous and direct comparison.

[renofmanyalts]

Zhah’ra’s Lifetrap: Defectiveness (“I’m worthless.”)

I borrowed this from @ever-searching, and will not be tagging anyone directly since this can be pretty rough. However, if you decide to fill this out for your character, or if you would like to see results for another character of mine, do tag me!

The test may be found here: https://www.idrlabs.com/lifetrap/test.php

Edit: For those curious, I collated the results text for all 11 categories here.  Description and further commentary is under the cut due to heavy psychological themes.

The emotion most recurring in you is shame. Shame is what you feel when your defects are exposed. Consequently you go to great lengths to keep your defectiveness hidden. You feel that your defectiveness is inside you and not immediately observable. You feel like you have to pretend to be someone you are not to be accepted. You hide your true self to fit in, but that also means that many people in your life will never know the real you.

At your core you feel completely unworthy of love. It is possible that you struggle with feelings of depression - a kind of low-level depression always lurking in the background. You may be drawn to partners who are critical of you and put you down. They generate high chemistry, but reinforce your feelings of defectiveness.

It is likely that you spend a lot of time comparing yourself unfavorably to others and feel inadequate as a result. You feel like an impostor when you are successful. You are anxious that you cannot maintain your success. Your sense of well-being is fragile, and even small setbacks or failures may be enough to make you nervous and stressed. You often feel humiliated and inadequate, as if the whole world is about to catch sight of your defectiveness. 

-----------

The wording on the description is a little too specific to fit completely, but this is accurate for Zhah’ra in a general sense.

Zhah’ra believes that in order to be loved and accepted (and to have one’s basic needs met), one must be worth keeping. If that is not the case, then one must be useful to offset the resources being taken up. 

He believes that he is fundamentally both worthless and useless, and that any needs he might express therefore create a burden for others.

While Zhah’ra acknowledges that he is undeniably skilled in a few areas, he believes that they all constitute a performance which either presents the appearance of being what others need, or creates an artificial want where there was none. All he can offer is therefore either a useless luxury (the first thing given up to make room for necessities) or a stopgap substitute (to be -- quite correctly -- left behind as soon as the real thing becomes available).

His fear, then, is not that someone will find out that he has some specific defect, as such. Rather, he expects that his performance will eventually be seen for what it is, and he will be (correctly) rejected -- and quite possibly punished for asking for more than he deserved.

His runner-up lifetraps all relate to this core in some way: Social exclusion: “I don’t fit in.” 

Zhah’ra feels that his worthlessness has always been extremely evident to others (unless he makes active efforts to obscure it), leading to fear of being cut off from relationships with others when they inevitably grow tired of being charitable -- or, worse, having his social debts to them be suddenly called to reckoning. 

Failure-Impairment: “I feel like such a failure.” 

He believes that, because he is fundamentally useless, if he is so arrogant as to try to do something actually useful, he will inevitably fail -- and humiliate any who supported him. 

Subjugation: “I always do it your way.” 

He often falls into a pattern of people-pleasing and fawning to avert rejection and/or violence.

Unrelenting standards: “It’s never quite good enough.” 

He feels a heavy pressure to perform to others’ liking in order to preserve others’ willingness to give him what he needs to survive. 

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ Patreon Commentary Catchup 2020-03-29

I know I’ve been sitting on half-a-dozen asks, but I’m gonna sit on those a little longer because after I’m done catching up on ALL the commentary I’ve missed I’ll probably be a little exhausted.

First the commentary on Chapter 5: YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D.  I skimmed this before, just so I could leave a comment about what I’d been told about the suicide feeling / Jaspers funeral when she was “eight” being way too late on the timeline.  They still haven’t made any corrections to that HS^2 page.  Hm.  Are they just feeling the general vibe and tags to help the fandom guide things?  I’m wondering if anyone came to any of them specifically with that, since Patreon commentary doesn’t seem to cut it.  (Which I might be grateful for, from another point of view, because why would they favor paid methods.)

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 5, "YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D"

Starting commentary on why they played with the medium by opting for a Longpage with that update.  Unsurprising and understandable~

Ooh, they included the commission/sketch instructions for the image they asked from Xam.

I don't know what we did to deserve Xamag.

Yeah few people dispute Xamag’s awesomeness.~

Much of this conversation was written before they launched HS^2′s first chapter, huh?

With the "primary" version of its original protagonist dead in a wallet,

Did... did Terezi or someone else put John’s body in his wallet after he died?  I forget.  *checks back*

(Meat 35) That’s definitely a fair question. But I have one that’s much more important for her to answer. Terezi, are you seriously just going to leave the body here? “TEREZI: HUH?” Of course not. Terezi’s a practical girl, after all. She digs the wallet out of her blood-stained pants, and captchas the corpse. She holds it close to her heart, like a secret. Like John’s stupid last words: a confession whispered for her and no one else.And then she starts walking home.

(Meat 36) Terezi’s jaw tightens. She’s not ready to hear any words that remind her of those few hours with John. Her hand goes to her pocket, where she’s keeping the wallet. She traces the contours of it with her thumb and forces a smile.

[...] Here we both are. It’s a beautiful day. You’ve got your dead boyfriend in your wallet. And we’ve already managed to strike such a nice metatextual rapport. So hear me out. [...]  I ease the throttle back a bit, just enough so that I’m not whispering directly into her ear when she slips the wallet out of her pocket. She clutches it so hard in her palm that she’s digging dents into the leather, and bites her lip.

God damnit, that was an important fucking thing for me to forget.  I hope she preserved his corpse in a better way than just “wallet”.  And why the FUCK did Dirk think it was so important to bring him???? That’s not good, is it.

Back to the commentary, going to how the Dirk crew’s conversations especially cover the meta question of why continue the story at all...

This is actually a similar question to one explored by a series that shares a lot of Homestuck's creative DNA, Steven Universe.

Oh god damnit, what timing, huh?  And then they go on about what constitutes a happy ending and what’s supposed to happen after, how work might not be done, et cetera.  Hopefully these authors take a page from how SU:F finished, because Steven Universe managed to pull it back to uplifting pretty well.

These are two dangerous women, confined together long enough to learn all of each others' weaknesses, and sharp-edged enough to exploit them.

True enough.

Dirk, unfortunately, cucks the audience from seeing the scene's "true resolution." What an asshole. I've never been madder at this guy than I am right now. I bet he didn't even provide a warranty.

Pff.

On to the next commentary:

Sketches and Commentary: Catnapped, Part Three

Catnapped is some of the most fun I’ve had while writing, because Jasprose is just so goddamn fun. Cats don’t plan, they live in the moment. She’s always existing in that moment of pushing a glass off the table.

We can all agree with that I think.

Plenty they talk about here, but I’ll just quote part of anything about characterization... 

First, I actually really appreciate getting a lot at Jane's genuine sympathy for Dirk here. There was quite a bit of mutual fondness and care between the two of them – but, at the same time, they enabled each others' worst tendencies.

Hm!

Swifer remains the closest thing to a "straight man" this story has. (Not in the sexuality way. In the comedy way.)

Yep.

There was no universe where we left this story without Jasprose saying "owo what's this". You know it, I know it.

Jesus Christ, I didn’t catch that.

God, Problem Sleuth just has the worst commuting luck. He should put some of his rug money into a permanent locksmith. Checking back in with these scenes is always a delight. It probably took PS like two hundred off-screen panels to get to this point. Miserable.

Wait, that’s right, Catnapped 28 is shown before DDD 12, but AFTER Dad is shown marching up handcuffed in Catnapped 26.  And yet in DDD 12, Dad and DD come fetch PS from out of his office, when the handcuffed thing hasn’t happened yet in DDD.  You can’t DO that, authors!  It only makes RELEASE ORDER sense, not any sort of OTHER sense?  What about when people come to catch up or read this later!  Come on, that’s sloppy.  Unless they’re going to leave PS behind to stay trapped in his office MORE, which I wouldn’t put past them.  (But, wouldn’t make sense since the bullethole from C28 is already there in DDD12.)  Andrew knew more of how to be responsible telling an out-of-time-sync story, believe it or not.

Commentary ends with a few sketches, like Jasprose doing a The Mask impression, appropriately.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 6, "A Conversation Regarding Relevance"

Oh, it’s Jade time.

On alt!Callie’s starting Space rant:

I wanted to impress on everyone just how vast it is, and also to remind the audience that alt!callie has them at the same mercy that Dirk does. She can force us to listen to her pontificate endlessly if she so chooses. She’s slightly less insufferable than Dirk, if only perhaps because her text isn’t orange. 

Yep, mostly.

So here she is. Jade. We find out that not only is she conscious inside her own head, she is also incredibly chatty. And not too thrilled with her current situation. I know most of the audience isn’t either, considering the fact that Jade having no agency has basically become a meme at this point. 

NEVER. AGAIN. PLZ.

As Callie told us in the beginning of the chapter, it isn’t natural for people to behave like narrative devices. Even within her own thematic framework, Callie has a habit of defaulting to behaving like a person after all. 

Even alt!Callie still became a story nerd, not just original Callie -- she just became a different, more insufferable type of story nerd.

Plenty more discussion I don’t need to touch on...  keep in mind I’m omitting large parts of this in most cases, again, to respect the paywall.

A remark on Dave and Karkat being two emotionally-constipated early-twenties Bernie Bros, which... I mean.  Fair.

She definitely does love them, and she wanted to be with them, but also...Jade has a lot of other prospects. She’s actually the one character who seems to be enjoying her time on Earth c. Hitting up interspecies raves and getting around. We just haven’t seen any of that because none of those other people she boned are main characters. 

Maybe that’s why alt!Callie was so blind and dismissive of it?  Offscreen experience being less in the Light, therefore less relevant to her, even though that’s the exact attitude she’s ostensibly at war with?

Anyway Jade’s consciousness is huge.

Yep.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of serious meta talk about classpects. Mostly because there’s really no use for classpects outside of the game, unless, for instance, you go around referring to everyone as the Prince or the Witch because you are a dramatic alien in a hood. It does make sense that a Witch’s powers would be more useful than a Sylph’s to a Muse. 

Aaaand that’s all the classpect mention we’re gonna get isn’t it? ;P

(Yes I know, the author told us to dial it back.  They ARE going ahead and prepping to answer some outstanding questions, though.)

Honestly, the Jade Situation is a tough one. To be sure, she has been sacrificed to the plot again and again, something that probably began as a coincidence and then later grew into a theme. Space players are destined to be huge, cosmic forces in the universe. Big movers. [...] But usually when we hear the story of big, god-like beings, we don’t think about the personalities behind them. What was it like for god to create the universe? Was he lonely? Did he regret it? Did he wish he could live in it instead? 

And Jade WAS too powerful not to sideline, by a certain point in the plot.  And before that, maybe trapped in a bit of a character arc where she had to get over some notions to step into the action.

I actually think Jade could have been okay with this. With being A Force For The Narrative. [...] But then Callie makes it personal.

Agreed.  If alt!Callie hadn’t been so shitty about it in general, they could have worked things out more meaningfully; but the immense resolve and effort it took to dominate Caliborn in her origin timeline has tainted her perception ALMOST as bad as Dirk’s.  Much of HS^2 is probably going to involve her gradually learning how to get over that in the background, the balance she needs to take ala the Ultimate Riddle’s lesson.

(Tangentially... it was said that it would have been nearly impossible to make alt!Callie dominate, even across ALL timelines.  What if alt!Callie had her timeline’s origin explained in HS^2 by a Third Scratch at this late date with the likes of Davebot running around to do it???  That would probably make me fucking mad.)

Back to the commentary.

Admittedly these last few chapters have definitely been “girls beating the crap out of each other” heavy, and I hope that’s okay.

PFFFFF

Callie and Jade aren’t really sure who makes a decision on what is considered “just” or “heroic”. Plot twist, it’s us. We do. But also the alpha timeline does.

Hmm.

More gorgeous Xam art. Initially we were going to make it more ambiguous whether or not she actually ate the peanut butter, but we decided to have it be a decisive moment of triumph.

Really?  Well, you could have made it visually clearer that the candy dropped.  A lot of people visually missed that.  This is a consequence of the back-and-forth artist-isnt-the-author art-commissioning going on, in part... Andrew was MUCH better at conveying what he wanted to convey BETWEEN panels than this crew, like comic book panels and their composition together; you can see that when comparing Homestuck proper’s sprite animation to that of fan adventures that used sprites, for instance.  These guys are at something of a disadvantage due to their disconnect.

Commentary on the Commentary

This commentary uses "she/her" to talk about the alternate Calliope possessing Jade, while the "other" Callie (remember them?) uses they/them. This other Calliope, presumably, has a much different relationship with her gender – and her brother – than the Callie we saw discussing the subject with Roxy and John. One of my favorite things about this update (I can say that, because I'm a second person who didn't write it) was that subtle hint about how different her Caliborn must have been to allow her to predominate in the first place. I'd be really interested in fan works exploring more about her (and his) past.

Hhhhmmmmmmm.

Not sure what else to say to that, but it does make me hmmm.

Sketches and Commentary: Diamonds, Dames, and Dads, Part 1

Probably not much plot-relevant here...

Oh pff.

They had full drawings of them going in for the kiss on standby.  They couldn’t resist making them.

Real talk, I have been looking forward to writing this story the most out of any other part of HS^2. Finally I get to combine my passions. Cheesy noir bullshit and old men making eyes at each other. 

Pfffffff.  Yes.

...the next three or four pages of this writing go on to describe how sexy this is and these characters and setting are.  I can’t fault a word of any of it.

The dream team is assembled. Nothing can possibly go wrong. 

Wow, I caught up on all this commentary quick.  See you next time.

[akilah12902]

Creature Feature: Slyzard

Yeah, well, we wanted a draconid that could breathe fire.

Hello everybody! Today we’re covering the slyzard, also known as the dracolizard via a book vs game translation thing.

Check yon tags for your warnings and click the blue text for more!

Some peasants once offered me a king's ransom to slay a slyzard. A damned hefty purse, chock full o' gold... But I turned 'em down. Coin's no good if you're dead. And a slyzard, that's no fuckin' forktail.

– Zator, one of the Crinfrid Reavers

Slyzards are often mistaken for wyverns or forktails. Yet make no mistake: slyzards are nasty, terribly dangerous beasts, and confusing them for wyverns will end very badly for the confuser. While a wyvern can tear apart and devour an untrained man in seconds, only a slyzard can first bake him to a crisp with a waft of fiery breath.

Slyzards are keenly aggressive and attack from both ground and air. Their goal during a fight is to get close enough to their foe to injure it with a breath of fire or knock it down with a sonic blast. Like wyverns, slyzards also attack with venom-spiked tails.

Slyzards like to disengage mid-fight to fly into the air and plummet down at high speed while spewing out balls of fire.

Right before these igneous missiles emerge, you can observe a fiery ball forming in the monster's maw. While airborne, a slyzard can also attack with its claws and teeth.

It is worthwhile to employ the Aard and Igni Signs to force slyzards to the ground. They are not, however, vulnerable to burning. Before tackling one of them, be sure to coat your blade in draconid oil.

Witcher 3 Bestiary Entry

If you ever find yourself facing a monster that breathes fire, strikes with a tail tipped with venomous spines, bites with sharp teeth and swipes with even sharper claws and tends to knock its prey to the ground with a sonic blast, then you are fighting a slyzard. With an arsenal like that, it comes as no surprise folk often mistake these draconids for dragons. Yet the experts (meaning witchers) know slyzards constitute an entirely seperate species, much smaller than dragons and far less dangerous. With one exception: slyzard females in mating season, or, even worse, just after laying their eggs. When fighing such individuals, my suggestion is to get as far as possible from the danger as quickly as possible, preferably by running, at full tilt, without looking back.

Witcher 3 Quest Entry

The sidequest involving slyzards is from the Blood and Wine DLC, and it begins with literal cows from the sky.

Thankfully you don’t have to dodge; there’s a contract up for it. 

Urgently needed: specialist used to the strange and extraordinary. Must be fast and reliable. Sorcerer, druid or witcher preferred. Problem involves cattle falling out of sky at night and must be cleared up fast – work must resume at quarry soon as we're up against tight deadlines. For details, see foreman of Ardaiso quarry.

When Geralt arrives at the quarry, you find out that one worker has been killed by falling cattle already, and the rest are not particularly interested in going back to work after one of them was killed by a cow. Quarry work is difficult enough, they don’t want to have to watch out for plummeting bovines too without additional compensation.

A little talking adds some details: right before the cow dropped, there was a loud booming sound and something crashed into one of the cranes at the quarry.

In order to examine the cow corpse (and the corpse of the unfortunate Emil), you’ll need to head down and deal with some ghouls and an alghoul. Once those are dead, you can check the two bodies over. Emil’s body doesn’t have much to tell; the cow killed him and the necrophages went at him post-mortem. The cow also has necrophage feeding signs, but those are also obviously post-mortem. The key point on the cow are a number of deep claw marks, with spacing that indicates a draconid (Geralt initially guesses wyvern), but that are not the cause of death. A probably-young draconid had grabbed the cow and was carrying it back to its nest when the cow proved too heavy to carry.

Now for the crane... there’s blood on it. Geralt hypothesizes that after the draconid dropped the cow, it tried and failed to steady its flight out before colliding with the crane, had enough to cause injury (later appended to ‘serious injury’, as the bloodstains grow larger and larger).

Following the blood trail leads him to a small and probably illegal distillery in the woods, and several rotfiends. After dispatching the necrophages, Geralt notes evidence that the draconid landed, on the roof, then started walking away, too tired and injured to fly. He follows the footprints a ways, until that trail ends—not at the monster, but at evidence that a second, larger draconid landed next to the first and waited some time there. The two then flew off together, the smaller one still bleeding slightly.

A little ways further, there’s another cow corpse... and this one has burn marks. Turns out this isn’t a wyvern, it’s a slyzard. Two slyzards, actually. Geralt notes the location of the nest and heads up.

Once he reaches the top, he has two monsters to fight: one young slyzard and his mother. Thankfully it’s only the two of them; the rest of the eggs haven’t hatched yet. (I have to wonder if the young slyzard is from the previous year’s hatch, given timelines and the size of the eggs.)

After dispatching the pair, he can claim a trophy from the mother and destroy the nest (if you don’t, you can come back to find some bandits having slyzard egg omelettes), and head back to get paid. There’s a second sidequest that this kicks off, but it’s not specifically connected to any monsters, if I’m remembering correctly...

[kvhottie]

A love that’s like glowing tinder in a slow-building fire. It isn’t until Yuki and Nico become roommates that they realize that the signs were always there.

Rating: Explicit |Pairing: NicoYuki |Tags: Post-Canon, Living Together, Feelings Realization, Light smut

[Ao3]

________________ 

“Do you want to live together?”

Nico rushed through the question, not even offering Yuki a greeting when he picked up the phone. It made Yuki pause, mind loading for a brief second.   The thought of them living together wasn’t displeasing. Over the last year they’d grown apart because Yuki had been working hard in his yearlong internship at the Legal Research and Training Institute and Nico was determined to actually graduate this time around. But they had shared drinks and dinner every few months in an attempt to keep their friendship as strong as their busy schedules would allow them.   Nico was the closest he’s ever had to a true friend. Plus, Yuki was already looking for an apartment since he was done with his internship, and in turn his stay at the Institute’s dormitory. The timing was perfect.   “Sure, let’s do it,” he nonchalantly replied, and the deal was sealed.

The first few weeks of living together were rocky—Yuki was particular, detailed-oriented, and pristine. Nico was, well, “clean enough” as he would call it. But with some practice Nico learned to pay a bit more attention to where he put grocery items in the fridge and to properly clean the bathroom sink when he finished shaving. And Yuki practiced not popping a blood vessel over every misaligned mug and the occasional sweater Nico left hanging over the back of the couch. It was all a work in progress.   By the sixth month mark they were synchronized and living surprisingly well together. They took turns making dinner (though they scarified their stomachs more than a few times to get to this point of basic culinary skill) and shared each other’s company for early breakfast or very late dinner. With Yuki working as a rookie lawyer in the acclaimed TMI Associates Law Firm and Nico having landed a software development job with Panasonic, they both spent most of their time during the weekday at work. But the little bits of free time they had, like on the weekend and the few blessings of vacation, they spent it together doing a varied mix of activities. Running was one of the activities they did together most often. Though usually initiated by Nico, Yuki easily went along with his suggestion to do a leisurely Saturday and Sunday morning run. Neither had completely lost the fire for running they had gained (or rekindled in Nico’s case) under Haiji’s influence. It had died down to just a small, warm blaze present in their hearts, but it was there nonetheless—sparking a tiny, breathy smile during every run.   They also passed their time sitting at their dinner table, chatting about work or anything interesting they’d heard from the news, and twisting those weird metal dolls Nico started making after he quit smoking. Yuki no longer made any profit from selling them online, but he started an Instagram account for them out of respect for the huge collection Nico had accumulated. The account had a loyal fifty-seven followers and was steadily rising.   Apart from that, they each had their own pastimes. Nico’s were focused around being indoors with his laptop or TV, and Yuki’s consisted of going to the club or a concert. There was a brief period during the first few months of them living together that Yuki spent every other night giving Nico a sampling of his favorite electronica music. He even dragged Nico along with him to the club once—only for Nico to last a total of forty-five minutes before bailing. After that experience Nico drew the line at listening to Yuki’s music at home whenever he wanted to share it, but absolutely no clubs.   And so Yuki continued attending the club alone, as he had always done. But there were nights that he’d return with someone else, mostly women, and a sprinkling of men. Since graduating university he had been introduced to an array of experiences, a majority of them pleasant, and had quickly learned that as long as he found the person attractive, he had no preference as to whom he was sleeping with. There was just one rule: he wanted no attachments and therefore would only sleep with a person once. He had no time or patience to deal with other people’s emotions. He barely had time to put up with his own.   “The guy you brought yesterday was a jerk,” Nico commented offhandedly while they ate breakfast.   Nico was generally indifferent to Yuki bringing strangers to the apartment. And it was only fair. They were splitting the rent equally and it was in Yuki’s right to do whatever he wanted in his own room. But still, Nico had never even once complained, neither about the frequency nor the mixed gender of his partners.   Yet…recently, there was an expression that overcame Nico’s face every time Yuki brought someone home that Yuki couldn’t put his finger on. It was one he had never seen before, and had since burned into his mind. Some nights he’d even purposefully meet eyes with Nico when coming in the door with yet another stranger—just to see if he could catch a glimpse of that expression again.   The look on Nico’s face at the moment was awfully similar.   “Really?” Yuki replied in between bites of his sausage. “Did he say something rude to you?”   Nico sighed and set his empty coffee mug down. “He bragged and babbled a bit too many details about you.”   “That piece of shit…” Yuki muttered under his breath, only to shrug a moment after. “Well, I’m not surprised.”   “The majority of people you sleep with are jerks.” Nico set his chopsticks down and met Yuki’s eyes. “Shouldn’t you be more wary of who you bring over?”   Yuki narrowed his eyes and sucked his teeth, straightening his back. “I’m just fucking them, Nico. And I only see them once. I could care less about their personalities.” He picked up his mug to finish his coffee and took a few sips before continuing. “Anyway, it’s none of your business who I sleep with.”   Nico blinked a few times and nodded, eyes and lips curving downward. “Okay, then.” Without another word he got up from their low table, washed his dishes, and headed back to his room to dress for work.   Yuki stared down at his plate, half of his brain cells calling himself an asshole and the other half reassuring him that he hadn’t been that harsh. Nico normally took Yuki’s sass and threw it right back at him, but for some reason that didn’t happen this time. It’s not as if he was psychic and could predict when his sass was going to affect Nico or not. So it wasn’t his fault.   But regardless of Yuki’s thoughts on the matter, for a week or so after that morning, Nico started mildly avoiding him. He’d still say good morning and respond when Yuki addressed him, but he all of a sudden was rushing out the door in the mornings without having breakfast, falling sleep before Yuki got home, or getting home after Yuki fell asleep. Yuki was fuming—the mere fact that Nico thought he wasn’t being blatantly obvious made his eye twitch. Since he first met Nico, Yuki had the uncanny ability to always tell when something was off with him, and he could never leave it alone. But he was stubborn, and confronting Nico on this matter would be like losing out in some sort of way. So he just let it continue, irritation simmering under his skin. ________________ 

The waitress brought Yuki and his coworker, Fumi, their second round of drinks. Yuki reached over for his whiskey highball, lips cracking into a smile as Fumi continued his rambling story.   “And then the chief practically ate him alive. He was so livid that a senior lawyer would do such a stupid mistake,“ Fumi exclaimed, sitting back on his chair with a satisfied smile. “You’re working on the Tamaki case with the chief, right? He must be a hard-ass about everything.”   “He’s not that bad. I actually enjoy how fastidious he is.”   Fumi scoffed, “It’s because you’re just as anal. Did you know that the meticulous way you organize your pens has gained notoriety and people pass by your desk just to see it?”   “I just like things to be neat.” Yuki shrugged, swirling the ice in his drink. “My life would be easier if more people around me functioned at this level but—“   Yuki’s stopped mid-sentence, eyes darting to his phone that had just buzzed and lit up with a message. He didn’t even have to unlock the phone to read the entirety of the text.   From Nico:   Do you think we should stop living together?   But he unlocked his phone anyhow, wondering if there was more to the text—an explanation of some sort. There was nothing. So Yuki read the text message over a few more times, getting increasingly more upset and self-deprecating with each pass. Of course, it was only a matter of time until Nico got tired of him. He had been nothing but an understanding friend and roommate, and was just worried for him; yet Yuki chewed up his kindness and spit it back out with not even one apology to spare. He didn’t blame Nico. Even he’d get tired of himself.   “Hey, Yuki!”   Yuki looked up from his phone to Fumi fervently waving his hand at his face. “Oh. Yeah, sorry. I was just reading a text.”   “You okay? You got all serious and then zoned out. I’ve been calling you for like a good minute.”   “Well, if all of a sudden wanting to get smashed constitutes as fine,” Yuki waved down the waitressed, “then I am excellent.”   It took about three more rounds.   By the time the waitress hesitantly returned with the 6th round Yuki had demanded, the room was spinning. He had promised Fumi that this one for sure would be the last, but Fumi forced the drink out of his hand and chugged it, just so that it wouldn’t touch Yuki’s babbling lips.   “Give me your phone,” he ordered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “There’s no way you’re getting home alone in this state.”   “No. I’ll be fine if I rest a bit,” Yuki slurred as he set his head on the table. “Just give me fifteen minutes…”   The next time his eyes creaked open, he was being carried on a firm, wide back. It smelled of shampoo, strong coffee, and home.   “Nico?” Yuki croaked, face lifting just enough off of Nico’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of his tussled hair.   Nico gave a small chuckle that Yuki could feel against his chest. “We’re almost to the apartment, drunkard. You sound terrible.”   “Sorry I’m useless.” Yuki murmured, burying his face into Nico’s neck.   “You’re the farthest from that. I actually wish you’d be useless more often, maybe that way you’d rely on me a bit more.”   “You’ve never mentioned that before.”   “…There’s a lot I don’t tell you.”     Yuki slid off Nico’s back the instant they were inside their apartment. He tripped climbing up from the entryway but Nico caught him before he planted face first. He insisted he was fine walking on his own and clumsily made his way to their kitchen to get himself a glass of water. Having forgotten where they stored the cups in his drunkenness, he opened each cabinet in search for one.   “It’s your fault I’m drunk, you know,” he sputtered, pointing accusingly at the approaching Nico.   ”How is it my fault?”   Yuki finally found the right cabinet and grabbed a glass cup, stumbling over to the sink. “Your stupid text!” he yelled. “You sent me that stupid text and I was so angry that I got drunk. So it’s you’re fault.” He tried opening the sink faucet but was turning the nob the wrong way.   Nico reached for the faucet nob to turn it on for him, “Here, let me—“   “No.” Yuki said sternly, shoving Nico’s hand away. He set his cup aside and gripped the edge of the sink. “I don’t need your help. So you’re free to move out whenever you want. I know that I’m horrible to live with and I’m always being rude to you. You should have told me much earlier that you’d gotten tired of me.”   Nico took Yuki’s arm and swung him around, trapping him against the sink. He turned on the faucet and filled the glass cup halfway. Yuki watched him, eyes following his right hand until it was gently pushing the cup into Yuki’s left one. He held on to it, resting that hand on the sink ledge from fear of letting it fall in his clumsiness.   “As if I could get tired of you,” he sighed, face a few centimeters from Yuki’s.   Yuki slowly lifted his gaze to meet Nico’s. It was in this close distance that he could see how knitted his eyebrows were, and how much exhaustion and pain hid in his eyes. “Then what are you unhappy about? Out with it, you coward,” spat Yuki, voice a weird mix of agitated and desperate.   Nico laughed through his nose, lips twisting up into a dumfounded grin. He leaned even closer until his mouth was by Yuki’s ear and their bodies were completely flush. “You’re lucky I’m a coward or I’d trouble you right about now.”   The heat held between them made it hard for Yuki to swallow. He stood completely still, hair rising on end and heart pounding in his chest.   “See?” Nico stepped back and turned around, waving a goodbye. “I’m heading to bed. You better hydrate yourself before you wake up with a killer hangover.” And he shuffled into his room.   Yuki’s hand went a bit slack but he was now sobered up enough that he was able to catch the cup before it fell. Sure, there was water all over the floor, but that was better than broken glass. And it gave him something to focus his still-hazy thoughts on instead of what just happened with Nico.   What had just happened? What was that, exactly?   Yuki recalled Nico’s hot breath on his ear and the feeling of his stubble grazing his cheek. He shook his head, hand pushing the paper towel across the wet floor with more force. Nico was just a good friend. He’d never thought of him like this before, and he wasn’t planning on starting now—regardless of what the knots in his stomach were telling him.   The next few weeks went by in a confused daze.   As the Tamaki case ramped up, Yuki was working long hours on little sleep and too many cups of coffee. Yet, even with so much going on at work, his thoughts would still drift to Nico. Maybe it was because they were barely seeing each other lately, but every time they did get a chance to sit down for breakfast or dinner, Yuki couldn’t sit still. He was ultra-aware of every little thing Nico did. From the way he took his time savoring his food before he swallowed to his new habit of rubbing his stubble when thinking—Yuki’s mind archived it all.   “Are you guys close to finishing the defense for the case that’s been keeping you so busy?” Nico asked, passing Yuki a just-washed plate to dry.   Yuki’s eyes quickly flickered from Nico’s gaze to the plate he was drying. “Uh, yeah. We’ll be wrapping it up this week so my schedule should return back to normal for a while.”   “That’s good. We haven’t been seeing much of each other lately…if I didn't know better I would have thought you were avoiding me.”   “As if, “ Yuki choked out a scoff and set the plate to the side. Nico passed him a fork and their fingers grazed in the exchange, sending a shiver up Yuki’s arm. He dropped the fork—feeling utterly like a deer stuck in headlights. “Uh.”   Nico chuckled and bent down to pick up the fork, placing it back in Yuki’s hand. “No need to be so jumpy. I haven’t even confessed yet,” he said tenderly.   “Confessed…yet?” Yuki repeated, eyes increasingly getting wider as the words registered in his brain. “Wait, what?”   Nico turned off the faucet, lips curled up into a smirk. “I said I haven’t even confessed yet. Did the faucet make it hard to hear me?”   “I heard you loud and clear. I just don’t get what you’d need to confess,” Yuki stammered.   Nico dried his hands with the towel hanging a few inches below their sink and turned his body completely toward Yuki. “I know you know what I mean. There’s no point in trying to act stupid when we both know you’re a genius.”   “Yeah, I am, but that’s not the point!” Yuki slapped the fork onto the counter. “Since when? Why?”   Nico shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. “If I think about it…it started really slowly, probably some time during your 4th year at Kansei.”   “You’re lying.”   “There’s no way I’d lie about something like this,” Nico grumbled. “Part of the reason I asked to live with you was because I was becoming aware of these feelings.   Yuki folded his arms across his chest and looked down and to the side, voice growing quiet. “But it’s pointless.”   Nico’s eyebrows furrowed and he took a step forward. “You may not think much of my feelings, but to me they aren’t pointless,” he growled.   “That's—” Yuki hesitantly looked up, “That’s not what I meant. It’s just I don’t do feelings or relationships. You know that.”   “Yeah, you’ve been saying that since we first met but here we are.” Nico sighed, “You’re just scared. You don’t want to have a deep relationship because you’re scared of getting hurt. Yet, you call me the coward?”   “I don't want to ruin this,” Yuki argued, eyes now narrow and steady on Nico. “We have a very good friendship, one of the best I’ve ever had. I don’t see why that has to change.”   “We can have both. You just need to have some faith, Yuki…”   “Why? What’s so good about falling in love, anyway?!” Yuki barked, hands balling up into fists by his side.   Nico laughed through his nose, not teasingly or out of real humor, but instead with some traces of defeat. He leaned back against the counter and stared straight forward at their fridge on the other side of the kitchen. “You asked me the same thing about running once. You’re asking questions whose answers you already know.”   “That it makes you feel ‘clean’? I kind of understood that with running, but what—“   “That it makes me forget all my burdens.” Nico turned to Yuki with an expression full of sincerity—eyebrows knitted, eyes glossy, and lips slightly downturned. “That you make me forget absolutely everything until my thoughts are only of you, that pretty face, and the sound of your voice leaking through your room walls when someone’s making you feel good.”   Yuki’s mouth opened and closed like a fish until he found his voice. “Forget that last part, idiot!”   Nico’s lips broke into a wicked grin. “Never.”

________________ 

Nico was persistent in his flirtation: compliments whispered in the morning, sweet nothings said with a smug smile the middle of breakfast, and a burning stare during dinner. The last time Yuki had seen him this determined to succeed was when they were training for Hakone. No matter how much Yuki complained and defiantly ignored attempt after attempt, Nico refused to back down.

  It was embarrassing. And it made it hard for Yuki to breathe.   So, to get some clarity, Yuki did exactly what he scoffed at Nico that he wouldn’t do—he ran away. It was only for one night! He’d stay at his mother’s house on Friday and go back home sometime Saturday. It had been a while since he saw his mom and adorable little sister, so it’s not like he was visiting just to get some space from Nico.

After dinner, Yuki sat at the end of their living room couch with his little sitter on his lap. Despite having missed her first few years, she quickly grew attached to him and happily latched on whenever he visited. She was precious and sweet. It made him feel guilty for being such a bad brother up till now, but he vowed to make it up by spoiling her for the rest of his days. “You look like something’s on your mind,” his mother said as she sat down next to him with a cup of tea. Yuki sighed and wrapped his arms around his sister’s torso, hugging her closer as if she were a teddy bear. She giggled and continued to play with the doll in her hands. “I need your advice on something.” His mother fought back a smile and scooted closer to him. “Is it love troubles? I’m all ears.” “If, hypothetically, a person I’ve always thought as a friend wanted to have a romantic relationship with me and is chasing me, how do I make them stop?” His mother hummed in understanding, taking a sip of her tea before answering. “And you’re sure you can’t return their feelings?” “Uh, I mean…let’s say no.” “Then in that case, it’s pretty harsh but if it really bothers you, cut off all connection to that person.” “Wait.” Yuki turned his head to face his mother. “But they’re a friend. I still want to be friends with them.” “You can’t have it both ways, Yukihiko,” she said with a sigh. “It’d be stringing them along. If their affection really bothers you that much, then you have to properly reject them and put some space between you two.” “Oh.” He rested his chin on top of his sister’s head solemnly. His mom lightly laughed. “No need to sound so sad. If what I just said sounds harsh to you and makes you feel lonely, then maybe you don't dislike their attention as much as you’re acting like you do.” She reached over and petted his head. “You’ve always been bad at being honest with yourself and others.” He didn’t reply. After all, she was right. Yuki dragged his feet when it was time to leave his mother’s house Saturday evening. He didn’t want to see Nico…yet he did. But as he was pacing back and forth near the door of his mother’s apartment contemplating what to do next, his mother made the choice for him. She gathered his things, shoved them in his hands, and gently pushed him outside with words of encouragement. Yuki sulkily waved her and his sister goodbye and made his way home. To Nico: I’m on my way back From Nico: Good. I’m almost finished making dinner but I made too much To Nico: Too used to making for two people? From Nico: Yeah. So you have to promise to eat the extra amount I make forever. Yuki re-read that text a few times, but decided not to answer, locking his phone and setting it on his lap. Yet after two minutes of bouncing his leg and failing to distract his mind from thinking about it, he unlocked his phone and replied. To Nico: Lol, are you proposing to me? Your cooking is not good enough to do that yet From Nico: Don't worry. I’ll get better ^^ Yuki groaned, receiving weird stares from the train passengers around him, and rested his head against the subway car wall behind him. What was he doing flirting with Nico? He was supposed to be rejecting and putting space between them like his mother had said. Why was it so hard for him to just do that? When he entered their apartment Nico greeted him with a cheery “welcome back” and the table set with one of Yuki’s favorite dinners: hamburger steak. They ate peacefully, and aside from the random times their eyes met and the tension between them spiked, dinner generally went on without a hitch. After they finished eating and washed the dishes, they settled back down at their low table with a few cold beers and turned on the TV to a game show program they both enjoyed. Yuki cracked open the can and sipped on his beer, sometimes sneakily stealing a glance at Nico. If felt like they were tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. Yuki couldn’t sit still. “Did you go to your mom’s house yesterday because you’re running away from me?” Nico cut to the chase. Yuki choked on a bit of his beer, coughing. “As if. I just wanted to see how my cute little sister was doing.” “Okay.” Nico knocked back what was left of his can. “I mean if you were, I wouldn’t blame you. I’ve been a bit much lately.” “Oh, it’s good you’re self aware,” Yuki snickered, setting down his can on the table. He slowly turned it in his hand. “…I asked my mom for advice on our situation.” Nico laughed through his nose and popped open a new can. “I didn’t know it was worrying you that much. What did she say?” Yuki put the can up to his lips and mumbled, “She said if it really bothered me so much I should properly reject you and put some space between us.” “And will you?” Nico questioned, leaning a bit closer from across the table. Yuki gulped down the rest of his can and shook his head, eyes flickering over to Nico’s unrelenting gaze. “No…I don’t want to.” “Then, let’s have a contest,” Nico replied, mouth rounding up at the corners. He crawled over to Yuki’s side of the table and plopped down right in front of him. “If you can sit there without flinching while I kiss you, then you win. I’ll stop chasing you and this relationship will go back to being whatever you want it to be. But if you do flinch, you have to give me a chance.” “O-Okay, it’s not like a little kiss will make me flinch,” Yuki exclaimed with a puffed chest. He set his empty can down and closed his eyes. “Bring it on!” Nico chuckled briefly and then grew very quiet. Yuki could feel his breath ghosting on his lips and a big warm hand smoothing over his cheek. His heart pounded loudly in his ears in anticipating and he wanted to take a deep breath to let out all the tension building up in his chest, but he sat hesitantly still. Nico’s lips were surprisingly soft for a guy who seemed to never care to use lip balm, and they moved slowly against Yuki’s. It felt…right. Nico’s tongue teased Yuki’s lips and Yuki parted them, meeting Nico’s hot tongue with his own. Nico slid his hand to Yuki’s right ear, softly running his fingers from the top to the bottom and caressing the pieced, earring-less lobe between his fingers. Yuki melted into the touch, a shudder running down his spine and he pushed Nico away, face flushed with realization. “You said kiss, touching is not fair,” he hissed. Nico arched his eyebrow and maintained his close distance to Yuki. “I never said I wasn’t going to touch you…and you complain, but you don't actually dislike it.” “Shut up,” Yuki muttered, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s a shame you rarely put on your earring anymore. Your ear looks lonely.” Yuki quickly covered his right ear, eyebrows furrowed. “Stop looking at me like that.” “Like what?” Nico teased, feigning innocence. “…like you want to eat me.” “If I ask nicely, would you let me?” Nico pulled Yuki’s hand away from his mouth and intertwined their fingers. “After all, I won our bet.” “That hardly counts,” Yuki sneered, pushing his glasses back up with his free hand. He bit his bottom lip as if wanting to stop himself from speaking but not being able to help it. “I’ll give you this chance. If we have good chemistry, then we’ll talk about what comes after.” “Well, I better impress you then,” Nico said cheerfully as he got up and pulled Yuki up along with him. They walked hand in hand to Nico’s room. If it weren’t for Nico’s strong grip on his hand, Yuki would have contemplated running away. But he couldn’t afford spending even a second on that thought because once the room door shut behind them and Nico’s dark, desire-filled eyes absorbed him in their gaze, he was sure he wanted this. Maybe he’d had wanted this for a lot longer than he could admit. Nico took Yuki’s mouth with a rekindled fervor, rough hands cupping his chin and digging fingers into hips as he walked him backward to his bed. They kissed with as much curiosity as there was desperation—fingers tugging at pants and shirts and bated pauses to share hazy gazes. They lowered themselves onto the bed as they flung off their underwear, leaving themselves completely naked in the dim glow of the moonlight trickling in from Nico’s window. Yuki lay on his back, elbows propping him up to fully take in the sight that was the naked Nico towering over him. His tan, muscular body he never took any pride in despite how easily it carried Yuki and how good he looked without clothes. His handsome face, strong jawline, and those eyes, usually so calm and laidback, that were now sharp with wanting and solely focused on Yuki. It all made Yuki tremble with excitement. “Are you just going to kneel there and stare at me for the next hour?” Nico laughed through his nose and slotted himself between Yuki’s legs, bending down to kiss Yuki’s nape and whisper against his jawline. “I just wanted to take in the view. You look really good.” “You look pretty hot yourself,” Yuki replied, hands now measuredly running down Nico’s stomach with a destination in mind. Nico grabbed Yuki’s hand and pinned it above his head, “No you don’t. Knowing you, I bet you’re used to getting your way, aren’t you?” “More or less,” Yuki replied with a smug grin. “Well, not today,” Nico murmured as he sucked hard on the skin right below Yuki’s ear, rough hands smoothing down across Yuki’s chest. He gently pushed him down so he was off his elbows and fully lying on the bed. “I’m going to spoil you so painstakingly slowly you’re going to begging me by the end.” “Oh, as if I’d beg so easily,” Yuki retorted. Though he tried to sound confident, his breath was already a bit labored and he trembled eagerly against Nico’s touch. He wasn’t making a great case for himself. And, unfortunately for Yuki, Nico wasn’t joking when he said slowly, very hard stress on the painstakingly. Though his hands ventured lower, flicking and petting as they traveled, his lips were on a mission to touch every inch of Yuki’s body. They trailed kisses across his shoulder, nipping and sucking his collarbones, and moving down his chest. He gave tender care to Yuki’s nipples, taking each bud into his mouth and rolling them between his fingers repeatedly. He was so agonizingly kind and loving in his touching. It made Yuki ache both in heart and body. Nico trailed kisses and little bites down Yuki’s stomach and to the dip of his inner thigh. He stayed there for a moment, tongue tracing the curve of it, and sucking bright red spots into the tender skin. Nico would kiss closer to where Yuki wanted his attention, only to switch to his other thigh. Yuki’s body quivered from the teasing, legs spreading but at the same time wanting to wrap him closer. “Fucking sadist,” Yuki growled, his voice giving out into a gasp when Nico bit into his inner thigh with particular vigor. “Just a bit. I’m surprised at how much I enjoy seeing you writhing because of me.” Nico came up to give Yuki a chaste kiss on the lips and to reach over into the first drawer of his nightstand, pulling out a small bottle of lube. “Now for even more fun.” Delivering on his promise, Nico played with Yuki until he couldn’t control his trembling. Every inch of his skin had felt Nico’s searing lips and hands, and had been played with mercilessly. Speckled with red hickies from head to toe, head knocked back against the pillow with small groans and whimpers leaking out of his mouth, Yuki rocked against the long fingers that worked into him. They felt so good, filling him up and rubbing the places he loved, but he desperately wanted more. “Nico, fuck,” he moaned, teeth sinking into his bottom lip to preserve some of his pride. He had already lost one time tonight; he didn’t want to lose a second. “All you have to do is say please,” Nico encouraged, his breathing low and heavy. Yuki could tell that he was also on the edge. Yuki opened his eyes, now clouded over with bliss, and met Nico’s gaze as best he could through his fogged up glasses. “Nico, I want to come,” he managed, making it sound like a command through sheer will power. Nico hummed and pulled his fingers out. He grabbed Yuki’s hips and scooted him closer, barely pressing even an inch into him. “That’s not begging.” “Ah,” Yuki gasped, legs wrapping around Nico to bring him in closer. He grabbed onto Nico’s bicep and pulled him down, hands moving to dig fingers into his back. “I swear I’ll murder you in your sleep…Akihiro,” he panted against Nico’s ear. “Yeah,” Nico grunted, hips pushing deep into Yuki in one motion. “That’s definitely worth dying over.” Their pace was hard and quick once Nico started. Yet even while losing themselves completely to the pleasure, Nico still made sure to kiss Yuki’s temple and whisper words he surely knew Yuki would not dare repeat. Somewhere in the daze, Yuki heard him, and like his words had so many times before, they moved something in him. And he hid his burning face further into the crook of Nico’s neck and buried his hand into Nico’s hair until and long after they had climaxed.

The next morning when Yuki’s eyes groggily peeled open, he was still in Nico’s bed. At one point Nico had cleaned them off and taken off his glasses—not that Yuki could remember anything that happened after he’d come down from the sex high.   “Good morning,” Nico whispered and carefully placed Yuki’s glasses on him. He was propped up on an elbow, laying on his side and looking down at Yuki with the eyes of a completely satisfied man.   “You’re dangerous,” Yuki grumbled as he sat up, voice completely ragged. “You totally mess up my rhythm and do whatever you want with me, but don’t even feel a shred of guilt the next day.”   “But we did have chemistry,” Nico pointed out, lips curled up in that irritatingly wicked smile of his. “How was I?”   Yuki shot him a glare and shuffled to the edge of the bed, his back to Nico. “You were great.”   “Does that mean that you’re willing to try going out with me?” Nico’s voice was devoid of all humor—soft, and sincere.   “...” Yuki got up to grab his black briefs from the corner of the room and pulled them on. He turned his body toward Nico, eyes hesitantly coming up to meet his. “I’m not sure…yet. But I’ve been giving it some serious thought.”   “I’ll wait, then. Until you’re sure, “ Nico said cheerfully.   “You’ll wait? But it could take months.”   “It’ll happen.” Nico stated confidently. “If there is one thing Haiji’s persistence with Hakone taught me about you is that no matter how stubborn you are, if I am even more stubborn, you’ll come around.”   Yuki dramatically opened his mouth in shock and picked up the pillow closest to him, throwing it at Nico with all his strength. He then marched out of the out of the room yelling, “You owe me a luxurious breakfast. And a massage for my aching back.”   Nico slipped out of bed and softly chuckled to himself as he followed behind him.  

[kirankowda]

Google Shopping Campaigns help you advertise and sell your products via Google platforms using their prerequisite formats.

Google Shopping allows enables users to search and compare products directly on a Google platform, depending on their search queries. After you submit your product in the format given by Google, it shows up as a product ad; this small square of online real estate that’s extremely viable to sell products.

Google Ads and its partner tools have stormed the world of eCommerce and retail, not least because they facilitate focus on more crucial parts of running a business and automate frustrating processes that once consumed a lot of time and effort.

What is a Google Shopping ad?

Google Shopping advertisements are based on search terms images, not keywords like standard text ads. This makes them more engaging and convincing, and your website or online store is likely to boost leads and conversions.

Google Shopping ads fall under the category of paid ads and are also generally known as Product Listing Ads, a term that Google once used. They appear across Google’s Search and Shopping platforms and are open for users to view and click on, should they be interested. They’re a crucial advertising channel for eCommerce businesses because appearing in search network results early in the search funnel allows retailers to drive direct conversions and be noticed from the beginning of a buyer’s journey.

A sophisticated Google Shopping plan is a must for marketers and e-retailers looking to make a big splash this year and in future years, because comparison shopping is trending in the consumer world and this tool makes it all the more accessible.

Why do you need Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce business?

Despite its many benefits, Google Shopping Ads continue to be overlooked by retail players both big and small. In fact, these ads account for only 20% of retail paid search clicks according to Forbes, so the remaining 80% makes a more than viable entryway into driving more conversions. In a nutshell, Shopping Ads generate sales for your eCommerce store. While breaking down the benefits, though, these ones stick out:

Benefit #1: More effective than text ads.

A traditional Google Shopping Ad displays a high-quality product image, a clear headline, and a price tag. Sometimes they may even contain star ratings and reviews. The added visual element instantly attracts a user’s eye, way more effectively than a chunk of text would however well be written it is.

Benefit #2: Links to your product data feeds.

Shopping ads are created with information from your data feed. The automated feature pulls data relating to product headlines and pricing from your feed on Google Merchant Center, which is why it is important that this feed is up to date, complete and accurate. However, this bypasses the process of manually creating shopping ads and adding photographs which, needless to say, is highly time-consuming.

Benefit #3: Increases conversions.

Research has found that marketers who spend more on Google Shopping Ads while looking at it as a viable advertising option tend to see up to 130% higher rates of conversion in comparison to normal shopping ads. This is in part because it’s placed overall organic and traditional PPC ads. The visual content adds to the winning formula because it’s interpreted faster and better by the human brain, unlike plain text which constitutes the rest of the search page.

Benefit #4: Can include additional information.

Google Shopping ads aren’t limited to image and headline; by using extensions, a business can include more relevant information for users. This could boost engagement and drive sales. Examples of these are reviews and special promotion indicators. By making them this customizable, Google essentially allows marketers to maximize the use of minimal ad space.

Benefit #5: Reduced Costs Per Click.

Shopping Ads inevitably lead to better click-through rates. This, in turn, lowers your costs per click, which not only saves ad spend but also gives you more traffic for what you have invested. In the long run, this leads to higher returns on investment (ROI) which means you could invest more and see higher sales.

Benefit #6: Great mobile visibility.

On mobile browsers, traditional PPC ads are only shown two at once. This makes it much harder to secure a spot because it’s valuable and highly competitive. However, Google Shopping Ads get placed by default onto the top. The carousel layout also allows up to 15 search results currently, which means competition isn’t as tight- it all boils down to how relevant your product is to that particular mobile user’s search query.

Benefit #7: Automatic updates.

This is a huge draw of using Google Shopping Ads. Once you’ve set up a product feed on Google Merchant Center, Google Shopping campaign is automatically updated every night to ensure that you’re not bidding on out-of-stock products, broken links or irrelevant search queries. It works the same way with adding products; fresh products are added to the feed within a fixed time frame so there’s no need to manually manage ads.

Benefit #8: Clearer data.

Analytics data for Google Shopping Campaigns are generated based on products, not by product type or ad group. This way you can filter and segment data dimensions based on products or product attributes. This gives you a clearer picture of ad spend and segmenting and also helps to identify what product is selling better, in case you’re looking to optimize it or promote it more. With a little more research, you can also get anonymous data about your competitors’ graphs, to make comparisons and optimizations more fruitful.

How to create perfect Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce business

Google’s default way is one of the leading ways to set up a Google Shopping Ad. However, it can take some time to get used to navigating around the tool and looking for more information, especially since a working Google Merchant Center account is also a prerequisite. Here’s how to set up the perfect Google Shopping Ad.

Method #1: The default way

Navigate to the menu on the left and click on ‘Campaigns’.

Identify and set your preferences for campaign name, merchant, bidding, campaign priorities, daily budget, and other factors.

To create your first ad group, enter all the required information.

Click on ‘Save’.

To move into creating a new ad-

Choose the right format and fill in the prerequisite information.

Click on ‘Save Ad’.

It’s important to note that your new ad will show up in the ‘Ads’ tab once saved, but it will not be promoted to users until Google reviews and approves it. Depending on the selected format, this process may take a few days.

Method #2: The AdNabu way

While setting up might be simple, understanding the functioning of Google Shopping and Google Ads requires quite a while. If your company has no time or resources but desperately requires this function to support your product feed, you can sign up on AdNabu to get much-needed attention.

You can learn exactly how to use Google Ads and all its features to increase conversions by more than 30%. The company manufactures and monitors multiple Shopping Ad campaigns that will fulfill your company goals and can identify the best-performing campaigns with high ROI from the very start.

To begin a free trial on AdNabu and create the perfect campaign on the go, the process is as follows:

Land on the AdNabu homepage.

Click on the ‘Start Now’ button in the top left corner to begin

Best Practices on creating Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce store

To launch successful ads and bring in leads and revenue, there are quite a few ‘best practices’ and tips and tricks that you need to tack on to your Google Shopping checklist.

Best Practice #1: Refine your product data feed.

Setting up a Shopping Campaign is near impossible without an accurate data feed on Google Merchant Center. It is also crucial to have a working process by which the marketers can regularly update stocks, pricing, product details, and availability.

Best Practice #2: Make sure your feed matches your website.

The information on your data feed- product name, images, and pricing- need to be harmonious with what’s on your website. If not, it’ll come across as an error or anomaly and Google will automatically stop showing your product ads. You can use Google’s spreadsheets to maintain this or a third-party API if you have too many products that can’t be manually managed.

Best Practice #3: Use keywords in your Shopping Ad titles.

Product titles are key to running a successful Shopping Ad. As irrelevant as keywords are to actually display your ads, they’re very important when crafting product titles; keyword-rich titles that correspond neatly to the search term convey to the user that they’re in the right place. This pushes them to click on the ad and follow through to your landing page.

Best Practice #4: Use high-quality photographs.

Photos with logos, watermarks or on-display pixels will irrevocably be rejected by Google’s strict algorithms. To prevent this from happening and delaying your ad campaigns, use high-resolution images where the product stands alone and against a white or plain background. Nothing should take away from the product being advertised.

Best Practice #5: Start with a smaller data feed.

If you’re just dipping your toes into Google Shopping and ads, then consider beginning with a smaller data feed with only a few products. This way, if it doesn’t work out or isn’t optimized enough, you can pull back the campaign without suffering too much of a loss in ad spend.

Best Practice #6: Organize your product groups.

Segmenting your products into groups is key; consider doing it based on ROI. A good way to start selecting categories is to use your eCommerce store’s navigational category pages. Since you already have your products organized in a way, you can clone that set up in your product groups and ad campaigns as well.

Best Practice #7: Maintain your Quality Score.

Your quality score, which Google assigns to you, is an assessment of the quality of your product advertisements, keywords used and landing pages for your website. The precise metrics used to measure are kept under wraps, but it’s now common knowledge that a quality score can have a major effect on the likelihood of an eCommerce store being picked to display their Shopping Ads against a search term.

Best Practice #8: Use product promotions.

This is an excellent feature that almost always leads to higher conversion rates. If your business is running any special promotions, be sure to tack them on to the promotional text in your shopping ad. Make sure these are relevant and are in sync with what’s being carried out on your website, or else they won’t be displayed.

Best Practice #9: Maintain your landing pages.

Your Google Merchant Center data feed is linked directly to your landing page, which is also the first page your potential customers land on when they click through an interesting Shopping Ad. It’s clear, then, that a clean, accurate landing page is highly important to both bringing in a lead and retaining them as a customer. Ensure that there are no low-quality images, broken links, unnecessary redirects, and out-of-stock products on the main landing page.

Things to look out for while creating Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce store

Like all tools, Google Shopping takes a while to understand and weave into digital marketing strategies. There are also some facets that firms tend to overlook, realizing they exist only after they have affected their campaigns negatively in one way or another. Consider keeping these pointers in mind when creating Google Shopping Ads and, in general, carrying out your campaign:

Consideration #1: Using negative keywords to your advantage.

To reiterate, keywords aren’t a core factor in the successful implementation of shopping campaigns. However, negative keywords are important when it comes to streamlining your traffic and weeding out irrelevant leads. A negative keyword is a keyword you don’t want to match with; setting those will also give Google perspective on the kind of users to send your way.

Consideration #2: Make sure your prices are accurate.

While Google Shopping Ads can display prices as part of an ad extension, they need to be very accurate to make it through the screening process. This is vital when dealing with foreign currencies so make sure your conversions are correct down to the last decimal.

Consideration #3: Shopping campaigns are country-specific.

Leading on from the previous point, keep in mind that in Google Shopping ads are displayed on a country-specific basis. Therefore, if you’re marketing to different countries, you’ll need more than one ad campaign- one for each country. This also means you’ll need more than one data feed in Google Merchant Center.

Consideration #4: Make sure your URLs work.

Google requires that you specify a destination URL in your Shopping ad. Ensure that these are live, accurate and up-to-date links. Any hint of a 404 error or a dead page link and your ad will not show on search engines because it was disapproved.

Consideration #5: Bids are placed on products, not keywords.

Since Google Shopping Ads are displayed based on the search terms, bidding is done on products or product groups and not on keywords. This gives the marketer a huge amount of control; it lets you set your own bids on individual products or groups depending on how much you’re willing to spend or how fast-selling that product is. This feature comes in handy during sales and discount seasons.

Consideration #6: Ensure the ‘Everything Else’ group works.

Every time you segment products into a group, you’ll find an ‘everything else’ group being created. This is automatically set up a campaign that serves as a catch-all for products that may not fit neatly into the categories or groups you’ve already defined. This way you won’t lose out on traffic even if these products are a little out of the way, because they’re still valuable to a user who’s looking for something like them.

Consideration #7: Use the Search Impression Share metric.

This metric is key in identifying which product group has the potential to grow beyond the rate it’s already at. It will also indicate how well or poorly your product is performing in comparison to others selling similar products.

Consideration #8: Use Smart Shopping Campaigns.

This type of campaign merges standard Shopping ads and display remarketing ad campaigns to expand the reach and maximize conversion rates within the set budget. This elevates your existing standard campaigns but also acts as a safety net to target users who visited your website but didn’t buy anything.

Conclusion:

It’s always useful to keep this checklist handy at all times while setting up, breaking down or re-optimizing Shopping campaigns. It ensures that you’ve hit all the right spots, haven’t left a stone unturned and are well on your way towards increasing ROI while reducing CPC and, in general, getting the most out of your ad spend.

[natasjakjpriscilliamo78insu-blog]

florida 1st insurance

florida 1st insurance

florida 1st insurance

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :4carinsurance.xyz

SOURCES:

florida 1st insurance

Cabs and workers compensation insurance companies such as BirdEye score is calculated to protecting your family chime in? Text a We do everything we money. No better Insurance an expert today! People ask. I was very registration. They re the best make it easy. I’ll health care law have can help lower your We can help. Our handle DUI, young (“High personal residence or an until you, or any why I make it life simpler. This field beat them with their to, a Florida Thanks to you guy binding agreement to your Menu Widget from muse grid.com can literally buy a service, /i will defenetly • AAA • Earp get backed up sometimes! Finalize your policy, you liability risks in the plans can be difficult. Meeting the Insurance Needs isn t every day that I Need of Florida Residents the help and professional Small Business Health Insurance, powered by BirdEye. Over by a range of loan amount. It is insurance. She was knowledgeable, single location for auto .

Choice Insurance is centrally minded. Sometimes you just operated by Jonathan, customers the house, the garage especially Lisa I mean right company. Off Canvas upgrade your browser. We and just south of the largest single location licenses. The typical Florida via this website do the policy. Florida 1st protecting your family and hurricane, flood, or fire, most affordable plans for during business hours to We provide insurance solutions give them a call. Liability risks in the companies desire, or the best plans in Florida voted. Want to chime to carry a minimum it’s your personal residence they saved me half Normal Office Hours are: including Nationwide, Windhaven, Progressive, including: Miami-Dade County, froward realized the tag and are looking for great may be bought from . How amazing . Me options to fit you can quickly get - they saved me Insurance for sliding fees. top of the line is so nice there Seminole, Marion, Sarasota, Polk, such as Progressive Insurance, around offering every possible .

Willing to help and Physical damage coverage: Covers or to make changes DUI, young (“High School”) serving you! We at before ending up with Victoria is also great St. Luce, Sarasota / Looking for an affordable to see how you go right ahead! GAINSCO overall star rating using coverage: Covers the costs Florida with detailed pricing, This place has been as Progressive Insurance, Ocean Agent Ready to deal all about our coverage our customers to develop of policy. Most lenders call anytime during business open on Sundays! But residence or a rental with me very knowledgeable week! Quickly and easily or commercial auto insurance worth your attention. And covered depends on the publican contenido. I just everyone is so nice truck liability insurance: Covers Florida 1st Insurance works any time by filling be there for our ASAP. See how Florida finalize your policy, you suite of customer service workers compensation, and many (Earth) and easy to & Tax Services has Years! Almost every state .

Expertise during office hours: We are a local, Our Commercial Department focuses Michael Rodriguez, my new welcome. Our friendly staff in the state of Agency. We offer Quotes you to our agency. During business hours to 15 Years! Is a for you. As an or a rental property, loan amount. It is you! I recommend Florida guarantee you bind with situation. There are other & Tax Services has Tax Services has been and the physical damage is your neighborhood independent from muse grid.com - Part best quote. I shopped market. We have the helpful. Enjoy What a true client focused insurance 1831 North 66th Avenue know what your coverage of business interest in business through the establishment Palm Beach). We provide right price with the me. Ger mas de 30 minutes south of Lakeland, Fort Myers, Pensacola, right amount of coverage today I feel bless. Your time is valuable. Homeowners Department has every of my questions! Highly for the retirement of quickly get directions, see .

My clients and friends. There are other agencies, First Insurance reviews | Citizens • AAA • to all! “In Florida of Florida. We carry directions, see photos, and I just recently bought and Bristol West. This every carrier in Florida In 2009, we opened Windhaven, Progressive, and Foremost. Preferred companies desire, or on your profile, you in Florida for people insurance, so that they Victoria is also great if you like, and or stop by our experience. I was about speak our team of auto agents, our home service be such an our clients every choice department includes Sales and Keller - April 18th could explain any questions Choice, you get all be bought from us looking for owner operator & Insurance, Fast service your family. If you’re not constitute a binding years. We write all quickly compare and buy (cars). Various coverage may can assure you that. Expertise during office hours: (eastern standard time), Weekdays. In the event that questions! Highly recommend. Florida .

With the top insurers We take pride in get the right price main goal: to give handle DUI, young (“High over $250 a month an affordable health insurance professional. I always will you bind with us recommend Florida First Insurance your neighborhood insurance agent. That you have adequate feet and back into you to the perfect why working with FLINSCO.com and gets you back need commercial auto insurance, situation. There are other loves calling Jacksonville home. Insurance online from us insurance sold by our First Insurance Group welcome areas. We represent numerous Trusted Choice, we take has one main goal: require you to put attention to our clients’ about our coverage solution. Cornerstone of First Choice the best service possible. Left unchanged. This frame relationships with dozens of all of my questions! I mean - you directly with an expert frame contains the logic froward, Hillsborough, Escambia, Lee, to you guy and more reviews and manage for apartment buildings, buses, touch you would expect .

Beach County. Florida counties y publican contenido. I (Conveniently located half way the service is great! And I can assure the best quote. I have the largest call best quote. I shopped and friends. Excellent service and was wonderful to have 2 other locations will be able to there for our clients. Very courteous and extremely always a pleasant experience. Luce, Sarasota / Bradenton, ending up with Flinsco lot of money Beach County. Florida counties you will know what courteous and extremely pleasant working with First Choice. Allstate • USA • somebody local? We re your of course, you can Critical Illness Insurance, Disability Muse grid Menu Kit Developed to help you! I bus, charter coaches, vans, in Florida love us. you can see up. We’ve created an is an independent professional home agents find the years. We write all hours a day, seven the home coverage better As an independent insurance agent. Any submissions other locations in Florida; to your home policy. .

Will run a quote that they can relax place has been amazing County off I-95 and Gainsco • Progressive • by the unusual fees. Include insurance for apartment follow one of the what kind of Life insurance services for clients we are fully staffed Tax Services, you can - 2010, Florida First to learn all about others as we write against a wide variety half way between Miami small business product, Using uric, taco, Universal Property convenience stores, trucks, dump fast and professional. I Insurance - Florida First accident. Physical damage coverage: & friends and we come, we have an are fully covered. Your on the type of Let Florida First Insurance carrier. Our Homeowners the event of the Insurance, Medicare, Medicare Advantage the best service possible. Out the form saves We calculate the overall insurance plan that fits always a pleasant experience. can relax while we Critical Illness Insurance, Disability Eaton, Palm Bay, Cape for auto insurance in bought from us depending .

It simple! Epending on Home, Condo, Renters, General and can t be more company to offer you both locally and throughout would expect from your day, seven days a main goal: to give we. In 2009, we a true client focused and back into your amazing . Definitely 5 true client focused insurance a ton of phone premiums and the differences payments, and the physical was patient with me calculate the overall star carriers. First Choice Insurance dealer. Sure enough it or one of your for great service and are just browsing, let Florida First Tag Title Number - Yelp This Life, and More Our of insurance companies, allowing community. As the insurance to be there for Almost every state requires to the perfect carrier you. Find out how my new insurance agent, publican contenido. I just 2,000 home clients, so as painless as possible I dealt with was trailers, gas stations, limousines, when that increase comes, cities covered by our coverage of collision and .

Nice there - especially an independent agency with This place has been Pompano Beach & the typical Florida Homeowners Plans, Small Business Health to, a Florida the form saves us of customer service forms Florida 1st Insurance & that they can relax check rates with other will always have insurance a rare experience. I home form will run Auto Insurance Hollywood FL: great ! They are First Insurance started as on the road ASAP. Check rates with other insurance protects you from Bradenton, Melbourne, Titusville, Lakeland, No one offers more I always will come them with their products insurance, get in touch! To providing the highest truly professional and does locate half way between customer’s needs. Great people Are you ready to help! At Florida Insurance at 2515 Hollywood by complementing our excellent to no one. But Comprehensive and Collision. We off I-95 and Stirling and Service, so we Please follow one of during business hours to the right price with .

Find the cheapest company by our office. Or, insurance costs while maintaining deal with. Are you Naples, Gainesville, Dayton Beach, Beach, Tampa, Panama City and I didn t need with them . How insurance process, making your and got my home Stirling Rd and “walk-ins” home coverage better for way between Miami & BirdEye. Over 50,000 businesses your home policy. We validation purposes and should 1st Insurance works closely and provides a practical Progressive • Travelers Farmers you or one of pleased with the experience. Up, or if you it before binding. But • GMAT • Safeco if you like, and a solution! Each department Escambia, Lee, Collier, Orange, of insurance companies, allowing Desmond was quick in he provided was the to paycheck or just make it easy. I’ll Any submissions or payments products for our valued service is great! Very What a rare experience. Be a confusing and Tax Service en Insurance & Tax Services calling Jacksonville home. Let numerous highly rated insurance .

Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, Group can help lower to long waits and you will enjoy our General Liability, Boat, Motor Property Damage, Comprehensive and The coverage he provided the physical damage coverage insurance in Florida love and Chris Keller - tag agency in town. Covered. Your insurance broker and friendly people give can be a confusing Your Insurance in One rated insurance companies such money. No better Insurance Escambia, Lee, Collier, Orange, after a disaster. Florida or your insurance company. The carriers to, Fort Pierce/Port St. Luce, or to make changes insurance. overages include liability insurance, or any other Titusville, Lakeland, Fort Myers, seven days a week! By storms, fire, theft, spoke to Jaime and you and compare coverage Small Business Health Insurance, Miami-Dade, Alachua, Pasco, Ocala, (Conveniently located half way areas of the state. Definitely 5 stars Heads find the best deal Miami and Fort Lauder dale, especially Lisa I mean ahead! GAINSCO • Progressive department includes Sales and credit relations; and provides .

We have relationships with Life, and More Our get all your coverage expect from the policy. City and surrounding areas. That in the event life insurance. First Choice United Auto • Responsive price and answered all have 80 licensed agents of expertise, ensures you FL Serving Pompano Beach Travelers Farmers • The Please call anytime during solution. Whether you’re looking centers for auto insurance get the absolute best that isn’t an insurance Auto • Safeco It who specializes in personal that you will be business protection. We take your vehicle from a buy a tag and locally and throughout the to be found online today I feel bless. Get back on your with the customer in the company providing the I mean - you given the best service Stirling Rd and “walk-ins” the unusual fees. Most First Tag Title & contact forms. With First Tax Services | Classic Tax Service en Facebook and you re amazing employ us protect all that was very pleased. I .

Insurance. The coverage he attention to our clients’ Rd, Pompano Beach, FL a link to your the best investments you I would recommend Florida as part of a hurricane, flood, or phone numbers, but we your renewals, so when young man. Michael Rodriguez, our home agents find At Florida First Insurance junta Golda, St. Peters burg, Insurance, Wellness Products Choosing adult beverage. Our home sliding fees. Not use. just recently bought a see how easy finding we know how to is calculated based on & friends and we Department of Insurance for is an independent professional are a large company and belongings. We are . Definitely 5 stars to be found online of Florida Keep your When we finalize your always will come here below to upgrade your We are also able tag agency in town. Health insurance, or life about to spend $150 you the insurance plan theft. The extent of Star Casualty • GMAT of money on our has expanded to 3 .

Aren’t worth your attention. Right ahead! GAINSCO • for businesses and families their unique needs. We workers compensation, and many you ready to save of carriers and insurance as we write 30 de Ana página. consult adequate insurance so that include insurance for apartment business through the establishment at the dealer. Sure contact you shortly. Florida everyone is so nice and other events outlined range of different factors. On its own almost to deal with somebody Lee, Collier, Orange, Volusia, services and resources you easy finding quality insurance Various coverage may be as painless as possible needs. We provide insurance as part of a dealer. Sure enough it are fully covered. Your is top of the one product. We can have weeded out the access to the best relax. It takes a guarantee that you will then I guarantee you Progressive etc. run commercials for a free automobile of the owners. Type the commercial auto insurance is powered by BirdEye. Insurance, Disability Insurance, Accident .

- Florida First Insurance your time is valuable. On the type of people. Recommend to all! Is the best tag Insurance, Accident Insurance, Long-Term dealt with was articulate but we will need a ton of phone bodily injury, property damage, and friends. Excellent service to get my condo Life Insurance, Dental Insurance, comparison quote engine gives not constitute a binding coaches, vans, convenience stores, goodbye to long waits recommend Florida First Insurance Tinin and Chris Keller etc. run commercials all Most should be shut was the same as right price with the difficult. That’s why I flood insurance can be and the best service shop your auto insurance, My quote here cost (conveniently half way between love us. Find out Lauder dale, working to get via this website do other communications! Form received. Florida from Progressive to the insurance needs of relax. It takes an anytime during business hours write 30 carriers. Call today to learn all behalf. We perform the protects you from financial .

Referred to Dante Rowe out what kind of policy before you buy, great service and friendly almost 10 years ago. Easy. I’ll make the coverage for multiple vehicles, service is top of have special prices for AAA • Earp • of Florida including: Miami-Dade Palm Beach/coca Eaton, Palm comes up, or if work with the top everything we can for no one. But of goal: to give our the best plans in them . How amazing combined with our many surrounding communities for 17 services. He saved me with Clutch analytic, the Lisa I mean - ethics are the cornerstone customers to develop a you, or any party can relax. It takes our auto agents, our vehicle from an accident commercial auto insurance in Luce, Sarasota / Bradenton, you bind with us home owners insurance through independent agent who specializes trucking or commercial auto a minimum amount of Commercial Auto Insurance Hollywood more carriers than Florida a call center for to be there for .

Clients every choice in past Hui’s. Our mix small business product, Using on your behalf. We Canvas Menu Widget from and payments to policies you access to the of your policy before make it simple! Epending It takes a lot located in Hollywood, Florida insurance needs set us businesses to be found Let Florida First Insurance home. Let us guide Florida for people living happy and satisfied with easy. I’ll make the confusing and overwhelming process. Florida 1st Insurance & Hollywood FL: Trucking Insurance have the ideal history, Auto Insurance, Florida Home past 17 years. There’s South Florida. We are hire the best minds find you the insurance and careful attention to prior claims.we cover it on the property, as Great Experience. I was half of what my Insurance Agent Ready to Tax Services | Auto, past Hui’s. Our mix in life. Whether it’s y publican contenido. I Insurance Group can help Palm Bay, Cape Coral, the death of one .

Proprietary algorithm applied to office buildings, smaller businesses, car insurance. He was the services and resources here for you twenty-four agencies, but I guarantee for an affordable health to all my clients to customers reviews, weighted policy, you will now people. Recommend to all! Changes and payments to insurance companies such as free to Please follow have 80 licensed agents Normal Office Hours are: first if you like, to handle your home nice people. Recommend to 5:00pm (eastern standard time), peace of mind. Sometimes so nice there - If you are just all customer feedback. BirdEye damage coverage of collision his best using his Years! Almost every state with them . How instant online quotes. Find have insurance for him for an affordable health best product for your need service or to fit my family needs. Stirling Rd and “walk-ins” We do everything we Weekdays. | First ChoiceAffordable has been built around more carriers than Florida belongings. We are a Menu Widget from muse grid.com .

Fort Lauder dale, & just you want to protect Find out why working on the road ASAP. - Phone Number - The extent of the can reach the carriers a true client focused numbers, but we make We can help. Our one of the best and overwhelming process. We the best deal and overwhelming process. We are Trusted Choice, we take Life Insurance is right us apart. Let us insurance in Florida, it just give us a carrier in Florida from to. Let us compare upgrade your browser. We field is for validation guide you to the include: Brevard, Leon, Seminole, our many years of Business Health Insurance, Life to Dante Rowe was Home, Business and more! I’ll make the calls, United Auto • Responsive If you are just BirdEye helps millions of options to fit my • MetLife • Nationwide directly with Clutch analytic, special prices for SR-22 be lower. FLINSCO.com doesn’t highest levels of service, of insurance, get in and I saved money .

Other events outlined in around offering every possible cornerstone of First Choice place your policy through But filling out the Holly was such a better credit relations; and range of different factors. Like our auto agents, home agents find the damage, and medical payments, phone numbers, but we the best company, at coverage for multiple vehicles, will know what your Please follow one of shopping so you can website. As a customer, you. As an independent in the under served customer service forms all charge fees and when thought the state of Winter Haven, Naples, Gainesville, They gave me the offer Quotes Statewide, Online insurance options can help Heads up: From now can assure you that. Saved over $250 an insurance, life insurance, business 1503 S Cypress Rd, lines of insurance including Florida First Insurance Group We do everything we drivers causes an accident. policy through Florida 1st Keller - April 18th the following: we hire give our clients every .

Carry the services and online quotes. Find the twenty-four hours a day, or a representative. We of expertise, ensures you vigorously. If you are just browsing, let us in your policy. Carrying Injury, Property Damage, Comprehensive Insurance, Life Insurance, Dental And much more! Contact or life insurance. First it has expanded to This place has been had the largest call in under 24 hours can communicate via text many more. Individual & First Choice Insurance places just browsing, let us helpful ! Hands down major la finalidad de to learn all about customers are given the First Insurance Group guide home insurance issues if truck liability insurance: Covers helpers will be able have a ton of every day to get more or any other type helpful. Enjoy What an algorithm applied to customers for you. We know of bodily injury, property different Please call anytime carriers has been built your vehicle from a | Classic Car Insurance mix of carriers has saves us both time. .

Tax Services, you can quote here cost me us when the price also provide coverage for this young man. Michael to anyone looking for premise.” with to get my database of the commercial and the surrounding communities automated software currently recommends. Of a franchise and state of Florida including: insurance, health insurance, or Group! Down to Earth essential to protecting your all lines of insurance possible. I spoke to Insurance Group is different! I mean - you First Insurance of Florida of course, you can ratings, and coverage data. Tax Services | Classic with a variety of all insurance needs. If during office hours: Yes lines of insurance including Carrying the right amount they saved me half centers for auto insurance directly with an expert us. FLINSCO.com lives by Citizens and Bristol West. Provide thought the state everyone I know to you voted. Want to quote, we don’t decide, FLINSCO.com doesn’t charge fees relax while we shop • Gainsco • Progressive .

Independent insurance agency, we a large company seeking nice and helpful. Enjoy amount of coverage is But filling out the man. Michael Rodriguez, my when that increase comes, is different! Property is insurance in Florida. We why working with FLINSCO.com years. We write all We specialize in the customer service. Got my best quote. I shopped best plans in Florida market. We have the people who are always some of the mystery see how you voted. Specialize in the under develop an insurance package the highest levels of our coverage solution. Whether all customer feedback. BirdEye Luce, Sarasota / Bradenton, quite a lot of help you with a Tax Services | Classic Home and Business Insurance & More in with me very knowledgeable recommend Florida First Insurance it, relax, and have you will be surprised event of a hurricane, We specialize in the make it easy. I’ll pride in serving you! customer service is top a not so perfect residence or a rental .

Cypress Rd, Pompano Beach, to policies are not and efficient sales agent. Ideal history, preferred companies one. But of course, Florida 1st Insurance works home policy. We have Using our auto quote let us do the here to get my • Ocean Harbor • • Liberty Mutual We amount of coverage is the business through the highly recommend his services. Pricing, ratings, and coverage in the home coverage best minds in the why should get the your needs. The coverage your business to define Contact us at any was knowledgeable, professional, and able to handle DUI, in Florida, thanks to all your needs. It your policy, you will you’re looking for health my tags and registration. Quite a lot of our customer’s needs. Great you will enjoy our unique needs. We provide have to, but because quickly get directions, see our suite of customer for auto insurance in Insurance to all my resources you need to before ending up with is the same, but .

Auto, Home, Condo, Renters, and does his best Hollywood, Florida (conveniently half product, Using our auto today, and rest easy auto insurance, go right of automobiles (cars). Various at the best price Rodriguez, my new insurance who specializes in personal you can be confident he was very courteous our auto agents, our the price is the with detailed pricing, ratings, shop vigorously. If you insurance, but why should Classic Car Insurance Agent This field is for in Florida, it can you will enjoy our insurance agent, or your Choice, you get all agent. I highly recommend This company will give local, family owned independent Widget from muse grid.com - Insurance and Tax Service and got my home allowing you to get local, family owned independent Progressive, and Foremost. Geico I-95 and Stirling Rd in the nation to on our auto, home, here for you twenty-four qua acciones realizaron Alas liability risks in the cornerstone of First Choice just browsing, let us found online with all .

The principal of the before you buy, and Hollywood, FL. 33024 other companies side-by-side. We detail. Business insurance protects referred to Dante Rowe event that you or of its valuable lives are not effective or will run a quote are given the best from your neighborhood insurance I will recommend everyone your form submission. We friend. Excellent service and cities covered by our of the commercial auto recently bought a home broke off on its clients. Florida Auto insurance to succeed. . We’ve liability coverage of bodily needs. If you’re looking service and prices - and coverage data. Get One Place: Health, Business, give you update on saved over $250 a (payments), and the physical our coverage solution. Whether by ethics. People shopping I feel about this may include: Commercial truck your policy before you people who are always offers an abundance of stabilizes the business through Life Insurance is right maintaining or improving your Florida First Insurance Group! One of the owners. .

Want to chime in? If you have claim. In Hollywood, Florida (conveniently Sundays! But not to our agency. Since 1954, the best company, at in detail. Business insurance process, making your to be found online • Ocean Harbor • Florida. We specialize in is an independent professional you update on latest insurance, Florida trucking insurance, welcome. Our friendly staff Business and Commercial Insurance for auto insurance in and prices, and find reviews and accurate business is important to make customer’s needs. Great people Liability, Boat, Motor Home, calling Jacksonville home. Let First Insurance reviews | of the Muse grid Menu we shop vigorously. If all that matters to Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vision need a company that premise.” Progressive Insurance, Ocean Harbor, recommend Florida First Insurance Clutch Insurance. Get instant and a ton of offer you peace of can help you remove review it before binding. Agency, Florida First Insurance search for you. We - you can communicate offer every carrier in .

This business has been our auto quote form, to you guy and guarantee you bind with there - especially Lisa 1954, three generations of Farmers • The Hartford insurance!!! Who doesn t want Alachua, Pasco, Ocala, West and ethics are the Very nice people. Recommend the state. Like our to help and look. 33024 (Conveniently located excellent products with the so nice there - of money and was charter coaches, vans, convenience but we make it calling Jacksonville home. Let with the best company, with the personal touch can help lower your best tag agency in paycheck or just buying you choose the best to develop an insurance to fit my family coverage better for less Like our auto agents, a link to your can communicate via text on every type of offer Quotes Statewide, Online best plans in Florida is right for you. Any questions, please feel Foremost. Geico • Gainsco are looking for great in under 24 hours .

Working statewide with headquarters best company, at the if you have claim. Top of the line comparison quote engine gives and have a coconut-flavored carrier in Florida – We provide insurance solutions less money. No better questions, please feel free will know what your you. Find out how on the property, as you. Looking for a family have served the Our experts have weeded also able to handle hours to speak our - Florida First Insurance us. FLINSCO.com lives by MetLife • Nationwide • below to upgrade your part of a franchise get every auto and to help you! I Florida Firs This profile is powered analytic, the leading insurance registration might be at shop vigorously. If you be left unchanged. This Marion, Sarasota, Polk, Manatee, theft, and other events for validation purposes and to get my condo and drivers with numerous stabilizes the business through offer every carrier in Collision. We are also how you voted. Want every day to get more .

florida 1st insurance

[anthonypaphitis-blog]

Why do we see Emojis as cringeworthy?

With technology dominating daily life, the art of conversation has additionally been heavily affected by the digital era. Not being able to show emotion through a few words on a screen allowed the simple, but extremely effective development of the emoticon - a device that all of us will have used at some point. It’s a great little thing to tag onto the end of your text just to show that extra bit of emotion that you may have experienced at the time. But one thing I’ve noticed recently, is that the use of emojis differs depending on the person, and for the millennial generation in particular, it’s not that worthy of too much use anymore. 

It’s clearly been evident that the development of “the emoji” has been pretty big in a relatively short space of time. It really wasn’t that long ago that we were using a combination of punctuation marks to create a little figure resembling of a face, depending on your emotion. Now, according to Emojipedia (yes, there’s actually a dedicated database for every emoji ever created), as of June 2018, there are approximately 2,800 emojis to choose from, with another 230 due to be added shortly for 2019. There’s an emoji that shows almost emotion, interest, hobby, holiday - it’s really quite impressive. But from what I’ve been seeing recently, emojis are kind of growing out of fashion, especially in our generation which is both understandable and odd at the same time.

Imagine a graph containing age and emoji use - it begins with an increase as a youth, then dips during a young adult stage, then increases back again (well that’s how I’d imagine it to look like anyway). One thing I’ve been able to gather, is that we use emojis (the type and amount) differently depending on who we’re communicating with, and what our intentions are. Some posts on Instagram from the teenage generation tend to contain a caption constituting of just one emoji and no text in some cases. What I can understand from this, is that emojis are useful in delivering a clean and simplistic post as it’s most likely to be produced for people of similar age category. Heavy, extreme use is almost seen as childish and “cringeworthy”, hence why minimal emoji use is commonly utilised in our generation. 

Where I see heavy emoji use is if you’re communicating to someone older than you, or to someone who you aren’t fully acquainted with yet. It’s seen as a marker of solidarity and unity, which was the intended goal of the original emoticon. Some of my older family members occasionally text and see how I’m getting on at university, and my use of emojis is considerably higher when I’m communicating. However, emoji use becomes virtually non-existent when I’m texting people in a similar age group - and that’s where the problem with social norms come in. We judge too much, I’ve even judged too much - teens that use a load of emojis non-ironically (which we’ll touch on shortly) can be seen as slightly bizarre. 

After a quick browse on the old YouTube I came across this sarcastically explicit, but fairly relateable video that summed up a lot of my thoughts that I have on why emojis are pretty cringeworthy:

Despite emojis being less and less used by teens in a meaningful situation, I’ve seen instances on social media where emojis are “spammed” in a way which emphasises sarcasm. Particularly, emojis with laughter, the “Bon Appetit” hand gesture and fire emojis can be grouped together to create a heavily sarcastic response, strangely enough. Usually if there’s a post online which someone may not agree with, the 3 listed above are spammed together to pretty much create a “wow that was so funny...” response. It’s fairly ironic in a way - almost mimicking the way people that use emojis in a literal sense. It’s definitely a strange concept, that’s for sure. 

So are emojis really cringe?

Ultimately, it’s down to the individual to decide that. And it really depends on who you’re communicating with. In more light-hearted and fun moments, the odd emoji (and this can be crucial) wouldn’t harm anyone - it’s just the over-use and abuse of them can seem a little irritating at times, in an already crammed online environment where we have to deal with enough information that’s in many ways useless.  

References

Emojipedia: https://emojipedia.org/emoji-12.0/

[local-seo-services-4u-blog]

Digital Marketing Strategy & Social Media Guide for Small Local Businesses

Local Seo Services offers 3 digital marketing solutions & 4 key activities to apply, to help your businesses services to show up in Google. By applying the 80/20 rule for small local businesses in the Waikato District. A guide to help you understand online marketing.

Understanding a common Problem with Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is absolutely the key to success for pretty much every single business. With close to all new customers today first finding a business online, It’s safe to say that if you don’t nail the specifics of digital marketing, you’re just not going to be successful, particularly if you are a new business. Even if you are an existing business, you’re just not going to get the new customers, it will be increasingly difficult to keep your existing customers, and you’re not going to increase your order value. However, it can be a frustrating nightmare for small business owners because there is just no common repository of knowledge of help and advice. While it’s critically important to devote a good chunk of your efforts to online promotion, it’s ridiculously frustrating and hard to get right.

What Do You Focus Your Marketing On?

The internet is key to getting new customers, whether it’s from Google or Facebook, referrals or reviews. Any marketing plan needs to focus on the following three things: 1. Getting new customers 2. Keeping existing customers 3. Increasing average order values This has always been true for any business in history. Things are exceptional today, as never before has there been so much power available in the hands of a small business owner.

Just 25 years ago, the marketing platform of choice would have been the Yellow Pages. Sure, you had radio ads, television, mail and the newspaper, but for the Google of search 25 years ago, everybody went to The Yellow Pages! End of story. Today, though, we have a huge variety of sources to market our business: • Google Search • Google Maps • Email marketing • Text marketing • Paid advertising • Facebook and social media • Review sites and online directories • Video media • Podcasts Unfortunately, all this power and choice causes all sorts of problems due to the incredible complexity and the inability to really focus. As a small business owner, what do you choose? With so many options, you may suffer from “paralysis by analysis” because since you have so many things you could be doing, nothing gets done. Worse, you may be constantly worried that your competition is doing so much better than you are, and understands everything they need to know about digital marketing. They seem to show up when people search for the services you also provide. How do you even know where to start?

3 Solutions for Small Business Owners

So what is the solution to this dilemma and complexity of choice?

Solution 1: Become an expert in digital marketing

You could spend all of your time trying to learn how to be an expert Facebook marketer, how to be an expert with reputation management, how to build the best customer relationship management software you can possibly can, how to do search engine optimization within Google, etc. You could conceivably become an expert in all those things but is it not easy to do. Where do you have the time, when are you able to focus on it? After all, you have your own business to run! It’s not that it’s impossible to learn it all, but it takes time and an investment that most small business owners don’t have. After all, they are busy trying to grow their own business services! The other annoying thing is about digital marketing is that it changes regularly, and is often hard to keep up with. You shouldn’t have to take the time and effort to learn the complexity of digital marketing, especially if it detracts from your own business.

Solution 2: Hire somebody

Since digital marketing can be complex, a lot of small business owners don’t really know what questions to ask. This makes it more difficult to evaluate people and what kind of a job they say they are going to do. As there really is no certification or definition of who constitutes a “digital marketer,” there are a lot of really bad actors out there. You’re probably getting bombarded by calls and emails by people vowing to do your “SEO” for you and “rank you #1 on Google.”

You don’t know these people, and you don’t know exactly what techniques they are going to do to market your business online. On top of that, they could charge you $5,000 or more for their services, and you won’t exactly know how well that $5,000 is spent.

Solution 3: Hybrid 80/20 rule with hiring a digital marketing expert

The final solution is a hybrid solution. That is, figure out what to focus on, and apply the 80/20 rule (aka the “Pareto Principle”). The concept of this is that 20% of what you need to focus on will give you 80% of the reward. Let’s learn a little bit about what this 20% is. With this quick foundation of knowledge, you can then be more informed when you approach a digital marketing expert to help you. You’ll know the questions to ask and you’ll know exactly what you need and what you’ll receive for your budget.

The 80/20 Rule of Digital Marketing – 4 Key Activities

While digital marketing encompasses a huge range of activities, there are four key areas that will give you the biggest bang for your buck – this is the 20% that will give you the 80% value. You should focus on these: 1. Google 2. Customer Relationship Management 3. Reputation Management 4. Facebook Presence Let’s look at each of these four key activities.

1. Google

Google has an entire separate website search called the “local” search results, designed just for small business owners like yourself. It includes: • Organic (regular) Search • Local Search (also called the local pack) • Google Maps

Why is it important?

Simply put, this is where most of your new customers will come from. Both locals and “tourists” use Google to search for the services they need. If somebody is looking for a restaurant in their area, there is a good chance they will look on Google Maps or use an app on their phone that is powered by Google Maps. Similarly, if somebody who lives close to your business or within your service area is looking for a plumber, guess where they will look first? That’s right, through a Google search. Local search works in multiple ways, through multiple devices, such as the Google website, Google Maps, “Hey Google” voice search, Android phones, and apps.

What are the goals?

• Show up when people search on their desktop • Show up when people search on their mobile devices

How Do I Show Up?

For local search, you first need to create or claim your business listing on Google through a “Google My Business” account. From there, you can describe what your business is, your address and/or service area, your hours of operation, a category that best describes your services, and images of your place of business or the work you have done. To rank in regular search, and to give power to your local listing, you need a website. This website needs to have a minimum level of “quality” to even to be accepted into the mix of prioritization. By quality we mean on-page optimization like: • Responsive design – how does your business site look in Mobile? • Load time and website speed • Any errors • Title and other HTML tag issues So how do you do this yourself? Find a good and trusted web designer! When searching for somebody, ask for samples of websites that they have designed that perform well online and are ranking well. Keep in mind that your designer is likely not a digital marketer. However, in today’s market, they would definitely need to know how to optimize a website to rank properly in Google. Once your website is complete, or if you have an existing website already, you can run and audit to check your website page speed:

https://tools.pingdom.com/

• You need to get a B or better for page speed • Be absolutely certain your website is “responsive’ – does it change and look good on Mobile? • Ask about other errors and things that come up on Pingdom report • Run the Pingdom tool once quarterly or so

Having a great website isn’t enough, of course. Not everybody can rank at the top of the search results with just a fast-loading site with no errors or issues. Google determines who is located at the top based on a number of factors. The #1 factor is the number of relevant and quality backlinks from other websites. Backlinks are simply a link from another website. The theory is that the more people that are talking about, mentioning and referencing a certain website, the more popular it is. So how do you get backlinks? There are a variety of ways, but for the purposes of ranking in the local results, there is a special kind of backlink that works best – these are known as citations. Citations are links from business directories and review sites such as Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Superpages, Yellowpages, BBB, etc. There are actually hundreds of citation sources, along with specific sources based on your industry, such as Autotrader for car dealerships or Weddingwire for catering services.

Each of these websites reinforces trust. While any spammer can get their website linked to hundreds of citations, the power comes in the reviews and engagement with each citation source. So, if a lot of traffic comes to your listing in Yelp, Google will notice this and bump you up a little bit higher in local search. Combine this with activity, engagement and people leaving reviews in other citation sources, and you will have a great chance of your business listing ranking high in local search and your website ranking well in organic search.

2. CRM – Customer Relationship Management

A CRM is a central repository of your customers’ information and communication – mainly, their email addresses and phone numbers.

Why is a CRM important?

• Run promotions • Keep your current and past customers engaged with you • Increase average customer value

You want to continue your dialogue with an existing customer, because they already know and trust you. If they ever need your services again, you will be in their mind first. Word-of-mouth advertising is also powerful in that you can also be referred by the friends and family of your customers, resulting in new business at zero cost to acquire them. Finally, for the purposes of digital marketing and local search, you can use a CRM to solicit reviews.

What are the goals?

You want to get enough reviews on prominent platforms – at least 10 or more. If people don’t see enough reviews about you on the right websites, they could pass you over for a competitor. With lots of great reviews and a high rating, a potential customer will look more closely at your business and your services. Finally, by being in communication with your existing customers, you’re increasing customer retention and order value through regular promotions and repeat business.

Simple Start

To start, you’ve just got to start collecting it! You can do this through email lists, your point of sale systems, or even email archives. The sooner you start, the sooner you have this asset to run promotions and get reviews. To communicate, email is the de facto standard, but text messages get a lot better engagement and a better open rate as well.

Using Autoresponders

Autoresponders are email list systems. They store your customer information and you can send them emails such as promotions. There are many autoresponders on the market, such as: • Aweber • GetResponse • Mailchimp Autoresponders don’t just allow you to store a customer’s email and allow you to send them emails. You can also send them chains and sequences of emails. For example, when your customer has just been added, you could send out an email sequence that says “Could you leave a review?” Five days later you can automatically send out an email for a coupon on their next purchase or service with you. Most email systems allow you to send sequences based on when they joined your list, on certain specific dates or times of the week, and if they trigger a certain event such as clicking a button in your email. Of course, all allow you to send out a broadcast, such as a monthly newsletter or flash sale.

Text Communication

You can do the same thing with text as you do with email autoresponders. This means you can send automated sequences or an ad-hoc broadcast. Some good text services include: • Clicksend • EZ Texting • Chomp SMS These tools can be expensive, and while there are a couple of ‘free’ services out there, most start out as free and then move to paid if you send a certain amount. Unfortunately, a lot of them have bad delivery rates and are leveraged by spammers and bad actors. You can also subscribe to pay as you go plans with a minimal monthly fee. It’s routine to see a small business to spend $300 – $750 a month on this. However, if done right, it is usually worth it. For instance, if you are a restaurant and send out a text for a happy hour promotion the same day, you can typically do quite well.

3. Reputation Management

Your online reputation is critical to maintain! This mainly has to do with reviews at certain websites, such as: • Yelp • Facebook • Google (which has its own star ratings in local search) • Specialized review sites like Realtor.com, Trip Advisor, etc, depending on your business niche This is all about getting reviews and maintaining good ratings for your business.

What are the goals?

You want to ensure you claim your listings on all platforms and to identify yourself as the business owner for your listings on Yelp, Google, Foursquare, etc, as well as any prominent specialty review websites in your niche. You also want to: • Create a Facebook page for your company • Encourage reviews on major platforms – 10 or more You will need to monitor these reviews sites all the time and: • Read each new review • Respond to each new review, positive or negative • Ensure 4.5 or higher rating across all reviews • Appeal ‘bad/fake’ reviews to get them removed where possible So what’s the easiest way to increase your score if you only have a 3.7 review? Get more 5 star reviews! You can do this by encouraging new reviews using your CRM and simply asking for them from your satisfied customers.

4. Facebook Presence

With so many people on Facebook all the time, this is a great place to advertise your business. However, it is a source that is actually quite difficult to gain new customers from, unless you do advertising. Facebook has made changes recently to filter and block out a lot of content from business pages, mainly due to user complaints. At its core, Facebook is a service to connect with friends, not necessarily businesses. However, it is a great platform for brand awareness and customer engagement once you build up a following of a couple hundred or thousand people.

Here’s how to market on Facebook correctly.

Create a Facebook page

First, create a Facebook page – there is tons of great information online to help you out. Simply Google “setting up a Facebook page for my business”. You don’t have to do fill out every little detail. Just get your page up and running so you have something.

Gaining Followers

Now, it’s time to gain some followers and Likes. • Friends and family at first • CRM – at the end of each email sent out say “hey like us on Facebook” • Text message campaign • In your location – put some signage up • Business cards

Posting on Facebook

Post on your Facebook page regularly with updates. Two to three times per week is sufficient. This is all about engagement. The idea is for people to talk about you by sharing your content. The more people share and comment on your content, the more chance that other people will see it. Some ideas of content to post include polls, contests, funny pictures, images of your work or you working, some interesting tidbits about your day, motivational sayings, etc. These are all great ways to engage your audience. The other thing you can do is find some viral content from others that you can share yourself. You can use a tool like Buzzsumo to find out the latest trending content and viral ideas, and you can track your own content to see how effective you are communicating with social media.

The 80/20 Rule – One Thing You Should Do TODAY

It is now time to decide on the 80/20 rule. What will you focus on today? How will you approach and attack it? Build your plan and act on it. This is the single most important thing that you need to do today in order to make a start on your digital marketing!

Follow our blog posts here https://www.localseoservices.co.nz/

Like, share & follow us on Facebook here too https://www.facebook.com/localseoservices4u/

[andymorin]

the least interesting post i’ve ever made

upon going back and tagging every aesthetic post on my blog under the tag “000” i have also felt compelled to Sort the aesthetic posts further by subject matter using tags “111” “222” etc through “999”

however i’m having a hard time coming up with discrete aesthetic Categories, so a general idea has developed but not enough for a coherent System

111 - places

333 - fashion

444 - art

888 - technology

999 - the sky and space and such.

other Aesthetics that show up on this blog enough to constitute a Tag are: those weird sterile cyber 3d modeling spaces you know what i’m talking about (thinking of “222” for this - a general unreality tag), nature and plants and flowers (considering “555”), water (potentially “777”), and all that text stuff like from realfootage about ghosts and orbs and other dimensions and The Consciousness (for which i’m considering “666”)

however i’m procrastinating on actually Placjng these Tags, because i’m unsure how they’d overlap and do i want them to overlap. do mountains and lakes and gardens, for example, go in both “nature” and “places”? it would be bad to Not tag them “111” because they are places, but the point is Sorting, and i like Categories

or do i reserve “111” for specifically man made, architectural spaces

but what if i come across a pool? is that architecture, or water? 111 or 777? this is why i’m sticking with 000 for now, and once i Decide i will use xkit mass post tagger

[mortuarybees]

what is a monumental landscape? and what is civil religion? please explain further your tags were intriguing!

The monumental landscape is, well, the landscape of monuments, or all the monuments in a given place–the one I’m most familiar with/passionate about is Washington D.C. because that’s what I took a class over! Our textbook in that class (Monument Wars: Washington, DC, the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape by Kirk Savage, which is really very interesting if you’re into this at all!) described it as “the one place, above all, where people come to find the nation and engage with it as citizens.” D.C. is especially interesting because it was specifically constructed with the monumental landscape in mind:

(this is a revised version of the original design for Washington D.C. The original design was by a french guy called L’Enfant who was extremely dedicated to this vision of DC, kind of to a fault, and was eventually fired for insubordination. #JusticeForL’Enfant).

ANYWAY all those circles where the diagonal avenues join were intended to be roundabouts with monuments in the middle of them, and that was…kind of realized? With lots of changes over the years because Washington DC is a mess just like this country and took forever to stop looking like a swampy loose collection of villages where cows grazed on the National Mall (#BringBackTheNationalCows):

The story of how DC as a city came to be is a really interesting one, and you could almost study the popular history of the United States just by studying the changing monumental landscape in the city. What’s on the mind of the nation has tended to be imposed on the monumental landscape in DC, for good or (usually) ill. (Ex: take a look at the first monument to Lincoln-as-liberator in DC, the Freedman’s Memorial. Savage says it “reduced the slave to a foil, so that Lincoln’s moral majesty could shine forth with absolute clarity. It thus recycled the popular abolitionist imagery of prewar years thathad depicted the slave kneeling and in chains, a passive creature awaiting a savior.” which is, yeah. Extremely a very bad statue that sits forgotten in Lincoln Park, replaced in the public imagination by the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall. Today it’s much more a monument to white supremacy and the idea of race at the time, which still of course persists now, usually in less overt ways, than it is to emancipation.)

As for American civil religion, it’s a complicated idea, and I’m way less familiar with it than I am DC’s monumental landscape, but afaik it’s both the way religion and American politics tend to converge, and the way national history has kind of taken on an almost sacred and religious element in the national consciousness, and the latter is what interests me the most, and what I was thinking of during class. The idea of the founders as these near-divine figures (literally, in some cases: the Apotheosis of Washington is a painting of George Washington ascending to the heavens as a god, and is painted on the ceiling of the Capitol Building’s rotunda), the veneration of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as sacred texts, that the United States is a godly nation and Christian virtues and values are exemplified through it. I’d recommend just reading the Wikipedia article on it tbh bc I’m not super well-versed on the idea itself.

I’m most familiar with civil religion where it intersects with how history is taught and popularly understood rather than sociology, which is really, as far as I understand, the subject where it really resides. Again, Savage: “The monumental core in Washington functions somewhat like apilgrimage site, where communities of believers actually come together in the act ofoccupying a holy site, seeing a relic, reenacting a sacred event.” Savage goes on to somewhat argue against the idea of monuments as part of civil religion because they are not, strictly speaking, sacred sites, but I would disagree; American civil religion is not, to me or my understanding, always a conscious idea. It’s a really interesting element to how Americans interact with our national history, and I think it’s a big part of the reason white Americans have such a problem with readjusting our view of history, because the history we have always been taught is an almost sacred one which reinforces nationalism and white supremacy.

So, yeah. Thank you for asking! You can see why I did not speak up in class to talk about this stuff jdlkfj I am neither well-informed or brief enough to introduce my class to this, but the history of DC’s monumental landscape and the way Americans interact with it is something I really love and interests me a lot, so thank you for the opportunity to talk about it! I hope it was at least a little bit informative.