#we need a full analysis on these screenshots. we need them so badly

[ravenbrookz]

redraw of one of the s2 previews!!!! hello to the exactly 10 fans of tricky. we've won (delusion) (something bad is going to happen to them)

+ doogles

[shihalyfie]

An analysis of Iori and his character arc

Iori has a particularly interesting position in 02′s narrative (and, even more widely so, in perhaps all of both Adventure and 02) in that his base profile is rather unusual-looking even from the get-go -- the youngest child in both groups, yet with a (seemingly) mature demeanor that surpasses even his seniors. On top of that, Iori ends up having a very deep relation to 02′s themes and plot itself in a way that isn’t initially apparent, but actually makes him a very vital centerpiece of 02′s story.

Before we get into Iori’s role in 02′s actual plot, it needs to be established that a very, very large amount of Iori’s character is heavily shaped by his family background and upbringing. Prior to the start of the series, the Hida family had a large void in it, with Iori’s father Hiroki having been killed in the line of duty. Being a mere five-year-old child who had lost his father barely into actually being sentient and basically had to live the following three years going off hearsay on what he was actually like, Iori ends up raised by his mother Fumiko and his paternal grandfather Chikara.

While not in exactly the same way as the Takenouchi family (which is literally working in cultural preservation and study), the Hida family is very traditionalist Japanese -- Fumiko makes traditional Japanese food and snacks like kanpyoumaki and ohagi, and a lot of attention is given to the butsudan altar in their house where they honor the late Hiroki (also note the tatami flooring). That, combined with Chikara’s naturally strict personality, led to Iori being raised with “very strict manners”, and by a set of very firm guidelines on honor, respect, and the like.

Having been raised into this kind of formality, Iori speaks almost exclusively in polite-form Japanese. This happens to initially make him come off a bit like Koushirou -- likely a deliberate parallel, given the Knowledge connection between the two (being the kind of person who admits that you don’t know everything and wants to know more requires a bit of humility, after all). That said, Iori’s way of doing this has some key differences from Koushirou:

Unlike Koushirou, who was largely polite out of an attempt to keep distance from everyone and thus had a streak of being somewhat non-confrontational, Iori is perfectly willing to say harsh or critical things -- in other words, his way of speaking is formal, but it’s not necessarily polite, and in fact Iori is probably the single most passive-aggressive person in this cast. He has absolutely no qualms about dunking on whatever he feels truly deserves the dunking, and he’ll certainly do it with a lot of grace, but he is very capable of being extremely cold when he wants to be.

Koushirou stuck to formality out of detachment and intimidation, to the point that, as per Adventure episodes 38 and 54, he was compulsively unable to bring himself to speak casually unless he forced himself. Iori, on the other hand, often “slips” -- on top of willingly defaulting to casual form whenever he’s talking to himself or (occasionally) to the Digimon (who are outside Japanese levels of propriety), he also has a tendency to start using casual form whenever he gets particularly emotionally compromised. (While it doesn’t quite come off in the translation, the above screenshots from 02 episode 10 are an example of this, with Iori losing his temper at the Kaiser and slipping into casual form -- and a bit of fun foreshadowing, guess who’s the one to successfully calm him down? Takeru. Remember this for later.) In other words, Iori’s formality is not compulsive, but a conscious thing he tries to maintain as he holds himself to high standards, and is unable to completely uphold during times his emotions get the better of him.

Ultimately, Iori may come off as “mature and composed”, but he’s still an impressionable nine-year-old child, who’s effectively parroting the rules his grandfather instilled in him because he sees it as The One and Only Guide to Living Life. In trying to figure out the right thing to do in any situation, Iori ends up constantly trying to fall back on “this is the right way to do things!” and taking it rather badly whenever things start falling outside of the expected pattern. Despite being the one responsible for Iori’s tightly principled life to begin with, even Chikara himself comments that Iori’s not being flexible enough in his thinking in 02 episode 5 -- because it’s not like he’s expecting Iori to be like this, but Iori is simply having a hard time applying these principles practically when he’s working with the limited range of being a nine-year-old child.

And as much as it may be tempting to see Iori as stoic, watching his expressions and way of emoting throughout the series, he does very much have the full range of emotions and curiosity and even cheer of a nine-year-old child -- it’s that he’s just constantly holding himself back for the sake of being principled and well-mannered. This has the unfortunate side effect that Iori is, as the Animation Chronicle calls it, “clumsy at expressing himself as a child”. Because he’s constantly restraining himself like this, he has a hard time expressing himself or letting himself enjoy things in the way a normal child would.

It also goes a long way in explaining why Iori is never seen hanging out with any other peers his age, and is exclusively depicted in the company of either the rest of the 02 group, or his own family. While part of it is simply because (as per Japanese school procedure) he’s too young to be formally enrolled in any clubs, 02 episode 3 goes out of its way to show Iori being left alone in the classroom with only a teacher stuck supervising him, as he tries to force himself to finish his lunch due to his stubborn adherence to principle (even though he seems to hate tomatoes). In other words, it’s heavily implied that Iori’s own behavior ended up isolating him from his peers. Considering that the 02 group is generally made up of kids who are socially displaced in some way, it naturally follows that, despite being significantly older than him, they end up welcoming him into their friend circle and treating him as an equal.

When the series starts, Miyako and Iori seem to have gotten a certain degree of closeness (with Iori as one of the only people Miyako drops honorifics on). It stands to reason that Miyako, being open-minded towards people and rather aggressively friendly, would be willing to befriend her neighbor despite the three-year age gap between them, and so they already seem to have developed a rapport where Miyako’s willing to come over to his place to help work on the Hida family electronics in exchange for food.

So, you know, this and that happens, Iori becomes a Chosen Child, and this is the start of where Iori’s “principles” start coming into conflict with each other. The nature of the Digital World crisis is a no-brainer -- the Kaiser is doing terrible things, and Iori’s just been given the tools to do something about it, and so for him, upholding his principles to do the right thing means proactively doing something about it. But getting involved in this territory war will mean “fighting and hurting other people” (bad) and “hiding things from his family and sacrificing obligations to them” (also bad). Chikara advises him in 02 episode 5 that he still needs to be the one to decide what he wants and needs to do at any given moment, but it’s clear that this is still a new concept for Iori to swallow.

It’s also important that 02 episode 5 is also the episode that introduces Jou, who very much understood the dissonance between “adhering to principles in spite of how practical that may not actually be”, which means the two of them end up bonding over...ditching real-life obligations to come to the Digital World. This bonding happens despite the fact that they have the largest age gap out of any two given kids out of the Adventure and 02 group (Jou is 15, and Iori 9) -- and yet, they’re able to bond over being like-minded like this. And while they come from different contexts, there’s also a parallel drawn between the two on “the importance of personal choice” -- because back in Adventure, Jou’s story involved channeling his desire to help others in a way different from his usual expected path as a doctor or as a Chosen Child, and, likewise, it will be up to Iori to find his own way towards what he thinks is right.

Iori’s “adherence to principles” also needs to be distinguished from Jou’s in that Jou was someone more likely to be stuck to “practical” rules (one might call him Lawful) such as waiting for adults to help them with things, or what to put on eggs. Iori, on the other hand, has self-enforced rules that are far more ideological -- he doesn’t actually care that much about institutionally-enforced rules (note how he has absolutely no issue with sneaking into school with his friends in 02 episode 6) as much as he enforces a moral code on himself about “the right thing to do”. For instance, that he has to show his respect to Jou by formally finishing his introduction, even if it’s clear they know each other by now already.

But, again, it bears repeating: Iori is a nine-year-old child. The rest of the kids respect him enough to not treat him like a younger child -- other than a brief moment of emotional compromise that Daisuke quickly apologized for, the group is never really depicted as paying particular mind or care to the fact that Iori is so much younger than them, and for the most part treat him like an equal. But Iori himself is conscious of this -- after all, it’s why he’s constantly speaking politely to everyone all of the time, but 02 episode 16 also implies he’s very self-conscious about this. The plot of the episode kicks off when Iori momentarily gets caught up in his excitement about potentially getting a new Digimental, and, once things start going south, he starts blaming himself for causing all of this and lashing out at the others for (at least, in his mind) singling him out to be the one to escape on the grounds of being the youngest. After all is said and done with the incident, Submarimon lets Iori have a moment of something Iori really does need: a bit of a chance to actually get to enjoy himself as a young child instead of restraining himself so much.

Speaking of 02 episode 16, this is also where we first get to see how the pressure of maintaining Iori’s moral code starts to emotionally tear at him. It’s the first time we see Iori lose his composure this much. To everyone else here (and, perhaps, the audience, to some degree), Iori’s making a mountain out of a molehill -- he’s calling himself an unworthy person for telling a lie that even Jou himself clearly didn’t mind. But remember, Iori is someone who’s still learning a lot about how the world works at such a young age and is inclined by default to fall back on whatever his grandfather’s told him (to a point that even said grandfather considers to be overdoing it). Right now, Iori has basically built his entire view of morality based on this kind of thing, so putting a dent on it is like encouraging a slippery slope of potentially falling into moral depravity.

The reason why I say Iori’s character arc has a lot to do with Adventure and 02’s storytelling itself is that it’s a surprisingly pragmatic series when it comes down to it -- “it’s okay to lie, sometimes” is not exactly the kind of moral you’d expect out of your average kids’ show, but, perhaps a bit unusually, this series prefers to skip all of the preachiness and focus on pragmatics. (After all, back in Adventure, a lot of the final arc revolved around the question of “is fighting the right thing to do when there might be casualties?”, with the probably-kind-of-uncomfortable-but-frankly-very-practical answer of “it certainly beats having more casualties that would happen if you sat around and did nothing.”) Iori’s character arc is, effectively, this in a nutshell -- what’s the “right” thing to do when following principles alone doesn’t seem to be doing it? In the end, both Adventure and 02 are big on this -- preachy words and moralistic principles mean nothing in the face of striving to practically minimize damage and help others.

And so, Jou -- who himself grappled quite a bit with the dissonance between principles and pragmatism back in Adventure -- is the one to successfully reframe it in a way that Iori understands: most of all, Iori doesn’t want to see people get hurt, and whether “lying” or “not lying” is the right thing to do is not as relevant as “whether people are getting hurt”. Iori not lying would have caused a great deal more of hurt than lying, and it’s through understanding this kind of principle that Iori accepts that he still has a long way to go in terms of exercising his duty to others. The secondary Digimental arcs have a heavy theme of “acknowledging your deficiencies and resolving to improve”, and in the case of Iori and the Digimental of (this thing has been translated half a dozen ways, but, effectively, honoring your obligations to others), it involves his first major moment of coming to terms with the idea that the principles on paper he’s been stubbornly following aren’t going to do it by themselves.

Once the Kaiser arc concludes and the group is posed with the question on how to handle Ichijouji Ken, Iori’s reaction to him is the most infamously extreme: Ken is a Bad Person who is completely beyond forgiveness, and Iori wants nothing to do with him. It probably needs to be made clear that Iori’s stance on not wanting to forgive Ken is not inherently unreasonable. Ken really did some awful, horrible things in the first half of the series, and it is completely within Iori’s rights to decide that he doesn’t want to forgive or like Ken thereafter.

The part where Iori’s behavior starts posing issues is not the part about whether he likes Ken or not, but rather that Iori gets so hung up on that lack of forgiveness that he becomes very bad at observing the practical reality in front of him. Or, in other words, Iori gets so fixated on the principle of what happened in the past that he’s unable to make good judgment calls on what should happen going forward. It is abundantly clear to everyone by (at the latest) 02 episode 26 that Ken is not going to easily lapse back into his old ways and would like to make an effort to repair the damage he caused; regardless of whether they like him or not, it’s in their best interest to cooperate with him and let him help out (and even keep an eye on him to make sure bad things don’t happen again!), especially when the factor of Jogress comes into play and turns out to be a very valuable asset in the fight ahead. But Iori has a a rather squeamish, petty response when he tries to claim that they shouldn’t need Jogress (in the midst of everyone else being excited about the possibilities it poses, even without Ken in the equation) in 02 episode 28, and even when he does go along with everyone working with Ken in 02 episodes 28-29 during the Giga House Incident, he approaches it like he and Ken are bartering favors and that he’ll have to “repay” Ken before he can properly return to pigeonholing Ken as an Unequivocally Bad Person.

And so the issue here is: Iori being so determined to fixate on trying to stuff Ken into a neat box of a Bad Person isn’t good for himself, either, because it basically means he’s going out of his way to run pointless mental loops and maintain the feeling of stewing in a grudge against him, even when it’s helping absolutely nobody. Note the metaphor drawn when Iori practices kendo with Chikara in 02 episode 24 -- he keeps doing the same motion over and over again despite the fact it’s clearly not going anywhere, and Chikara has to warn him that doing nothing but aim for the head isn’t how you’re supposed to do it. Right now, Iori is having a hard time parsing things in ways besides shoving things in neat boxes of black-and-white morality, and this lack of flexibility is severely restricting his ability to be productive.

What starts to really cause Iori to make a major shift in his thinking process is none other than his connection with Takeru, a subplot that had already started kicking off all the way back in 02 episode 19, when Iori witnesses Takeru suddenly taking a violent shift in mood against the Kaiser to the point it scares him. Iori, of course, considers Takeru to be a “good" and “kind person”, but someone like that should (in his mind) logically not be making sudden, violent outbursts like that -- and especially once he starts advocating for BlackWarGreymon to potentially be killed if it comes down to it, going very against Iori’s fundamental principle that killing anything that’s sentient is unforgivably immoral.

This “contradiction” is what leads Iori to realize that he needs to do much more if he wants to understand Takeru properly, and it’s also the start of how Iori grows into the trait of his first Digimental, “Knowledge” -- or, more specifically (as defined by Koushirou in Adventure episode 24 and 02 episode 2), “curiosity and a drive to know more”. In the case of Iori, this manifests in “I want to know more about other people.” It’s Iori effectively understanding that his very limited view of the world and how people work isn’t sufficient in itself, and this concept becomes the crux of his character arc for the rest of the series.

After tussling around and getting increasingly confused about Takeru’s seemingly paradoxical behavior, Iori finally goes directly to Yamato to consult him about it in 02 episode 35, and Yamato explains the backstory behind Takeru’s trauma from losing Angemon back in Adventure episode 13, as well as a reminder that as much as it may have been his own fault, Ken technically went through some pretty similar trauma, and everything that’s happened since his fall from being the Kaiser hasn’t exactly been sunshine and roses for him either. Iori reflects on this as he goes home, with the important statement attached: he understands Takeru’s feelings. He’s now able to understand why Takeru acts the way he does, not on the grounds of principles of what’s right or wrong, but based on the fact that Takeru’s simply a very messy human being who’s not handling his own tendency to suppress his emotions well.

Because Takeru is such a convoluted person, and because Iori’s fundamental issue with approaching things involves unraveling some very deep-seated tendencies in his mentality, the way the two finally connect in order to properly Jogress requires something a lot more convoluted than just happening to clash in a single magical moment like Daisuke and Ken or Miyako and Hikari did. Iori starts off the episode catching himself when he’s about to fall back into “principles over practicality” again -- he starts railing on the others for (in his mind) taking the impending BlackWarGreymon fight too lightly, before Armadimon reminds him that he’s hungry, and Iori realizes -- again -- that he cannot effectively enforce “the right or wrong thing to do” without taking other people’s feelings properly into account. Realizing that this is is a barrier between him and the others, especially Takeru, Iori tries to adjust his thinking pattern and even becomes the one to advocate that everyone get some proper food and rest instead of charging into the fight unprepared.

The meal results in Iori getting yet another rare moment of letting himself truly enjoy something without restraint, and is also followed by Takeru speaking openly to him about their potential Jogress -- openly, honestly, not covering it up, not even with the same light playfulness he would usually put on (including what he had with the very same topic at the beginning of this episode). It is an acknowledgment from Takeru’s own part that he’s been watching what Iori’s doing and also wants to connect, and an open and serious statement from someone who had constantly tried to cover up everything with a smile up until that point, and, with the two reaching an understanding, they finally achieve their Jogress at the end of the episode.

This connection with Takeru, and the understanding that came from it, is what allows Iori to start applying a bit more flexibility towards approaching other situations. 02 episode 38 has him finally accepting Ken’s invitation to his Christmas party, after so many episodes of despising so thoroughly -- because now that he’s taking Ken’s position and feelings into account, he’s able to properly recognize him as someone doing his best to make amends going forward and be friends. Later, in 02 episode 44, despite having originally been the one more staunchly against it on principle, Iori handles the shock of having to kill an enemy with somewhat more grace than Miyako does, because not only had he already started considering the difficulty of fighting an enemy that cannot be reasoned with and wants nothing but wanton destruction (back during the end of 02 episode 29), Takeru is there to remind him that their priority must, first and foremost, be “saving lives” -- like, for instance, the girl in a wheelchair in front of him.

And so, the final episodes of 02 put everything Iori’s learned to the ultimate test, when he learns that the major perpetrator behind it all is none other than a friend of his departed father.

Up until this point, much of Iori’s mentality had been shaped by the rather saintlike image everyone had put up of Hiroki -- it’s almost certain that he must have had his own flaws as a person, but the resistance to speaking ill of the dead, and the generally positive influence he’d had on his friends and family and his untimely death by “protecting someone”, painted him as effectively a perfect, impossible ideal for Iori to strive to. Much of Iori’s justifications for his own behavior had consistently been reliant on “my father said this” or “would my father would have done this?”, such as his reason for forcing down his lunch in 02 episode 3, or using him as a mental model in 02 episode 44. For Iori’s former mentality of “good person” and “bad person”, this is the ultimate contradiction that threatens to rip apart everything Iori had built his own values system on -- that someone so incredible and saintlike and virtuous would be friends with someone so unambiguously doing horrible things like Oikawa. Iori, taking this as an awful emotional blow, parses this with a desperate desire to understand the motive behind why someone would do this, because it’s not enough for him to continue until he does.

And in 02 episode 49, we see Iori effectively forced to confront the fact that he can’t keep relying on the model of his father anymore as the sole basis for his way of life when, in the end, his father will never return. Iori doesn’t even know him that well; he can’t conjure up an image of him talking, or anything beyond just a flat, serene smile. And when the image of his father finally disappears, Iori almost immediately accepts it, as if he’d known the whole time.

It’s also significant that Iori declares that what he’ll do next is introduce Armadimon to his mother -- because, in the end, Iori is at least now capable of “moving forward”. He can’t get his father back, and the best thing he can do is make use of his existing support group and keep pushing forward with the people he does have in his life -- quite the opposite of Oikawa, who responded to the loss of that exact same person by clutching onto the remnants of the past they shared, and never becoming able to move on.

Hence, 02′s finale ends on none other than Iori, and when you think about it, this is actually a pretty unusual position to be in for someone who’s not the lead protagonist (Daisuke) nor the most prominent focus of the story (Ken)! But it’s a testament to just how important Iori is to this narrative on a thematic level -- all of the struggles about the morality of fighting and the disparity between principles and practicality (which dated all the way back to Adventure), and 02′s prominent theme of coping with loss and regrets and figuring out how to best move on, are all tightly entwined with the character arc of this nine-year-old child. (If you want to take the parallel between the Adventure narrative and Iori even further, Iori and Armadimon sharing the same voice actress is possibly one of the most prominent ways of indicating how a Digimon partner is fundamentally meant to express one’s inner self.)

And especially since Iori is the person who should have been the most vehement about having any kind of sympathy or compassion towards Oikawa -- just remember how determined he was to be cold towards Ken only half a series ago! -- and it leaves a strong impression of the huge, huge journey Iori had gone on through this series. Iori’s arc closes on him understanding the nature of what Oikawa had wanted this whole time, and understanding exactly what it meant for him to make that sacrifice right after finally meeting his partner, and ends the story the most emotionally affected by it -- because, after all, that’s the sort of truly kind person Iori is.

Iori after 02

By the time of Spring 2003, when Iori’s had some time to reflect on it, we learn from Iori that he still does not forgive Oikawa. That in itself is fine; remember, Iori is perfectly within his rights to not do so after all that he’s done. However, again, a distinction must be drawn between whether Iori forgives him, and whether he still considers it to be important to understand the mentality behind why Oikawa did what he did, and to reflect meaningfully on that instead of running himself in circles fixating on a grudge. Again, it’s about going forward with what he knows and has, instead of getting fixated on past deeds -- and with that, Iori resolves to “study”.

In The Door to Summer, we also learn that Iori allegedly has a “girlfriend” -- or, at least, someone Daisuke calls his girlfriend (Daisuke is a bit of an unreliable narrator here, given he’s also totally blown Hikari’s “rejection” of his beach hangout offer up as if it were a full-on total rejection of him completely). It is, perhaps, interesting that Daisuke is capable of getting this impression about Iori’s relationship with someone outside the 02 group, given that he’d been rather isolated from his peers all the way back in 02 episode 3...

Iori occupies an interesting position in Kizuna, because we only have one point in time where we got to intimately know him, and that was back when he was only nine years old -- and between that and Kizuna, there is a massive eight-year timeskip. He's 17 now, and we don't get any kind of catch-up period in the middle like we did with Takeru and Hikari in 02, and that is a time period where a lot of changes in demeanor could have happened with him compared to all of the others.

At first glance, it seems that he’s gotten much more stoic -- but this is actually something that should reasonably be expected, because now that he’s a teenager, it stands to reason that he would be much better at actually controlling his emotions and not necessarily get overwhelmed as easily. Plus, it’s not like he’s shown to be completely emotionless throughout the movie; he’s just doing a much more graceful job of holding himself back (look carefully at the credits and you can see him sweatdropping at Armadimon barging in on his practice), and moreover you can still see him deliver some pretty direct bluntness about the ramen in New York. Still with formal language, but nevertheless, no flattery is to be had here; Iori will dunk on you if he thinks you deserve it (even if it’s to do with mediocre ramen).

But there are some other interesting observations -- for one, the official website profile states that he’s actually settled on his future career in law at this point, and has made himself extremely busy in order to do so. (On top of that, he at least seems to be on friendly enough terms with his peers at school that they’re happy to greet him on their way out.) The drama CD indicates that Daisuke considers him the busiest out of the entire 02 group -- yet he and Takeru went out of their way to pick him up from school, because he’s that important to them. (Think about it -- how often do you see university students going this far to go retrieve a high school kid to hang out with them?) And likewise, Iori doesn’t even hesitate to state that he’ll make time for them, and throughout the movie he’s conspicuously seen in his school uniform, implying he really is moving things around to make it happen, because they’re that important to him.

He also engages in the single most chaotic action from this group, which is getting Armadimon to break into Menoa’s lab. It’s not that he’d inherently been against this kind of thing before, especially for something important (recall that he’d been happy to sneak into school for Golden Week with the others back during 02 episode 6), but it does beg the question of where and how he got this information that Armadimon could break electric locks. Perhaps he’s become a bit more, ah, pragmatic of a person since 02...

So, in the end, Iori does become an attorney, and specifically a defense attorney (the Japanese law system does draw the distinction). The person who once wanted to stick people he considered to be doing wrong into a “bad people” box and call it a day eventually came to embrace a career that involves understanding people and advocating for their perspective, or at least bargaining for something other than defaulting to the harshest assumption and a solution that allows all of the parties to best productively move forward.

He also has a daughter, who seems to have been raised to be as well-mannered and formal as he was. But, thankfully, he himself is there to help raise and guide her as she grows up.

[margarethx]

I have some slightly controversial take about Sam Wilson fandom here, so maybe don’t reblog this post... Comment if you want, but I really don’t want to start arguing with anyone. I just need to vent and will probably delete the whole rant later.

So...

I know that Sam’s fans complain a lot about the treatment he gets in the fandom... I still do that from time to time and I probably will continue doing it in the future. But I’m starting to feel very, very tired with the people who act like their love for Sam can only be expressed through:

1) criticizing other people’s content,

2) hatered/dislike for Bucky or Sambucky,

3) complaining about other people in the fandom.

It’s so weird. We criticize the people who make Bucky-centric content with barely any mention of Sam and tag it with his name, because it’s annoying, but at the same time there is quite a big number of fans, whose posts in Sam Wilson tag are basically:

“omg he never gets recognition”, “MCU fandom hates Sam”, “Everything is about Bucky, where is Sam?!” “some of you only like sam when he’s with bucky :/”

And... sure. There’s a lot of truth to these statements. But saying that over and over again won’t fix the problem, especially if you yourself don’t do ANYTHING to remedy the situation. You’re flooding the tag too... Just in a different way. A few months ago I had this habit that I liked to follow people who wrote posts like these. Because I had this assumption that: if you complain about Sam being treated badly you probably love him a lot, so we should get along. I love him too!

But I realized that a lot of those people literally complain for the sake of complaining and than don’t even try to post Sam-centric content on their own. Why not??? You don’t have to be an amazing creator to make a good post. It’s not just about realistic fanart and 30k words fanfic with a complicated plot. You might write some weird HCs about Sam instead. Or a joke. Incorrect quotes. Ideas for fics you’ll never finish, but might inspire other people. Doodles that took 2 minutes of drawing. Edited photos. Favourite screenshots. Prompts. Learn to make poor-quality gifs of Sam’s cool fightigh style. Write a short scene analysis. Or ask other people how they analyse some scenes to start a discussion. Link some edits from YouTube.

And if you cannot think of a single thing to make on your own? Well. You can always promote art made by other people. Go through the tag and reblog things you loved. Find a good blog and search throught their archives to find older content. You can compile a post with fic recommendations so other people read what you enjoyed and see how good the content about Sam might be. Or recommend your favourite creators in general. Send encouraging asks to artists who you love so they feel motivated.

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But these people do none of that. I can scroll throught their blog for 10 minutes and everything about Sam Wilson I see is complaining that people like Bucky more. Or that Sambucky is popular. (As if all the best Sambucky stories aren’t just fans expressing their love towards Sam through Bucky’s eyes...) I’m not trying to say that you have to be a creator to criticize the fandom, but it’s weird when you only yell at others for not posting enough about Sam when you didn’t post anything about him either unless it’s complaining. Kind of ironic...

Also! If you don’t promote other people’s content they get discoraged from posting. It’s a fact. I have probably over 80 different half-made and finished drawings with Sam Wilson on my tablet, but I have zero incentive to post any of them, because every attempt in the past ended with these posts getting 4 notes. Or 10 at best. So why bother? I can look at them alone. And I don’t remember these people who complained about the lack of Sam content supporting my Sam-centric art with nice comments.

You cannot expect the fandom to mass-produce content for you if you don’t encourage it. I got no feedback, so now I just sort of... write or draw for myself, because I enjoy it and have no incentive to publish any of that when no one’s interested. Instead I just make writing prompts or analysis of tfatws, because there’s a bigger chance I’ll have an interesting disussion with other fans in the comments or I’ll inspire other creators to make more art by posting that. I enjoy both of those things very much, but one evokes a reaction I want and the other just... doesn’t. (It’s not even about validation... even if it’s nice to get compliments. It’s just: “when other people are clearly not interested, why make the art public at all?”.)

--- ----- ---

Like I said. I’m not going to call out any specific person here. But there were a few people who harshly criticized me in asks or in private messages for “pretending to love Sam” just because I like Sambucky too. But if you scroll through my blog you’ll find that at least 95% of the posts are about Sam. And if you scroll through theirs it’s 3 posts - all of them about fandom not loving Sam enough. (I just checked.)

But I guess I’m a “disgrace to the fandom”, because I acknowledge that Sam might have a love interest while you said you hate Bucky, so... Apparently your love for Sam Wilson is more real if you despise more popular characters he interacts with. ...Be honest with yourselves. Some of you just like to whine and complain, but prefer to disguise it behind love for Sam, so it sounds justified.

And yes. There should be more content that is only about Sam. Or about Sam’s non-romantic relationships. Sure. But if my two choices are: “get a Sambucky fic about Bucky loving Sam very much” or “get a post where someone cries about Sam not being loved enough for the 10th time”... then pardon me for preferring the first option.

If any of you spent half the energy you waste on complaining on making a single post about your supposed love for Sam the tag would be much more full of good content. But it seems like making actual content requires more effort and talent, so you just stay there whining that other people don’t provide you with what you want and demand. And give zero encouragement and promotion to those who do the work.

So continue doing that if you wish. But I won’t waste all my energy on making my weekly “this fandom fucking sucks” post. I prefer promoting cool art other users made (now or years ago) and creating my own posts that might not be always 100% about only Sam... but are still focused on him. Because I like this fictional little guy. I’m not going to let this weird purity tests ruin my enjoyment. If the pretty drawing of Sam has Bucky on the other side of the canvas I still have a cool drawing of Sam to admire. So it’s a win for me.

--- ----- ---

[Reminder: please don’t reblog this. I really just need to vent. Comments are okay, I can discuss this. I just don’t want some peope to see that and go yell at me all over again. I was already harassed for allowing Bucky or Steve on my mostly Sam-Wilson-centric blog...]

[Also... if you think this is hypocritical of me to complain about complaining... Maybe. I don’t think it’s comparable here, but whatever.]

[sepublic]

Happy Birthday to The Owl House!

           Honestly, I’m… REALLY shocked to think back on how it’s been a year? It’s been a full, actual year, since that first episode?

           I remember when The Owl House was first announced around early 2018. Something about it, the premise, the characters from that one poster we got; It really drew me in, and I kept track of the show’s progress in eager anticipation. Whenever Dana released art of Luz, Eda, and King, I was ecstatic- And when the show was delayed to 2020, I was dismayed.

           Then we got our teaser trailer; The opening them, the end credits, even a little sneak peek! I remember speculating a lot about Luz and all of the other new characters we were introduced to, such as Willow, Amity, and Gus- And then we got more and more trailers in the days leading up to the show. I wondered about Luz’s home back on Earth and where her family was, I listened intently to the Hooty and the Parliament music video, finding an almost melancholic, weirdly nostalgic (despite having never watched the show yet) vibe to it- Whilst also avoiding looking at the screen and seeing all of the various clips it offered, because I wanted to be surprised! It was two years of anticipation, two years of wait for this show- I’d never looked forward to a series before like this, last I can recall… So having this content FINALLY come out, seeing these characters in animation, hearing their wonderful voices! My soul was vibing, it was time, it was coming after all this time…!

          Eventually I finished Infinity Train Book 2, the same day that The Owl House premiered… I was blindsided when I woke up to the first episode’s release online, in full- I was already planning to wait until later to watch it on television, so having it permanently accessible from the internet was such a pleasant surprise! And the show… The show, man- That premiere caught me off-guard with how much I enjoyed it! I knew I was looking forward to this show, but still…! It blew away my expectations, and even now, has continued to; It was like my personal investment and attention had paid off so patiently well! I even got a DisneyNOW subscription so I could watch each new episode ASAP, the day it premiered, hours before it aired on television!

           I remember scouring Tumblr before the show officially premiered, and there was understandably very little- A few pieces of fanart here or there. And when the show DID premiere, for a while there wasn’t really much of a fandom- There was barely anyone, in fact! But I can remember a few notable blogs who have been around since the beginning… Me, I got invested into this show. I found myself really enjoying Lumity as a ship, especially since I resonated with both characters in it; Luz was such a ball of sunshine that brightened my day, and Amity really spoke to me with her more introverted, top-scoring personality. When the show hit its mid-season hiatus, I remember not handling it too well, as I got impatient and frantic in my speculations- I wanted so badly to learn more about these characters, see what happened- Get a look at Emperor Belos (then known as Bellows by the fandom), etc.

          I wrote my Bile Coven piece in preparation for Halloween, even got to know a mutual or two over shared theorizing! I kept track of Dana’s updates, and even had people come to my blog, of all places, to send asks! It was and still has been such an engaging part of fandom for me… I recall impatiently waiting for the Owl Pellet shorts and freaking out over them- And when Adventures in the Elements leaked early? I LOST MY MIND, I remember postponing something I was supposed to go to, just so I could watch the episode- And it was so good! Then I started wondering and hoping the rest of Season 1 would come out, and well- It took a while…

          And when Season 1B’s trailer came out, I was all over it; Scouring every possible frame, freaking out over the Grom screenshot, and appreciating the influx of new fans! It was amazing to watch The Owl House go from a relatively minor and obscure fandom, to becoming so much more mainstream and populous! I got into Rebecca Rose’s channel, I began writing more meta and posts about the show, as well as little recaps for each new episode. I feel like my blog really took off from here, as I got to interact with more and more people who shared this mutual love of The Owl House, and I was so ecstatic to see more content and buzz about it!

           My mind was solely focused on The Owl House, it was one of my huge hyperfixations, even moreso than during Season 1A’s run- I remember being anxious about Enchanting Grom Fright, wondering if we’d get queerbaited… But NO, Amity was in love with Luz! She canonically had a crush on her, a girl in love with another girl- And I loved it because Lumity was a special comfort ship of mine! Then Amity was confirmed lesbian… It was amazing! And I found myself SO invested, so inspired by the show and its characters, and all of the little allusions to things, the foreshadowing, the moments here or there that made so much more sense after a new episode.

           This show inspired me creatively- It got me to write some of my personal favorite fanfics, and I was and still am so touched by whatever feedback I get from them! The Owl House really got me to write, to obsess over characters and analyze them, to look at motifs, to think about worldbuilding… It’s been such an artistically enriching experience, both the show and the fandom! I remember despairing so terribly when Agony of a Witch came out, the genuine betrayal I had when Lilith revealed the truth- Because I’d been legitimately endeared to her character beforehand, even formed a sort of ‘trust’ in a sense… And like many others, I agonizingly anticipated the season finale, the much-needed emotional reconciliation!

           I remember how the episode titles were revealed, bit by bit, and how I and others speculated on what they’d spell out! I remember when the fandom obsessed over the Witch’s Apprentice game and its relics, for clues and new lore after each episode, the little hints here or there! I was freaked out by characters like Belos, who lived up to my hopes and expectations- First being alluded to by name, then his amazing appearance… And then his voice and mannerisms and everything about him! And when the Season Finale came out…

           Well, there was relief. But there was a bittersweet emptiness- That it was over! The first season was over! There was a celebratory triumph, of course- We finally wrapped up the first, major arc of the show, the first batch of episodes that had been worked upon, the whole thing now unveiled and appreciated! But I was a little dismayed because a part of me KNEW a hiatus much longer than the previous one was ahead of me, and I did not handle the mid-season hiatus well. Of course, then Dana had her Reddit AMA, and the charity livestream; Both of which NOURISHED me creatively, and have helped to fill out the wait! To carry out my momentum, to not flounder about in hiatus; I invested myself into more meta, into various posts, etc. I read fanfiction that genuinely floored me, obsessed over fanart, etc.

           I supported the show’s release on Disney Plus, ecstatic to get this kind of ready access. I revisited past episodes and characters, looking at them in a new light, appreciating things; Like Luz’s relationship with fantasy… King’s surprising development, all of Eda’s little hints and clues. There’s been an emotional catharsis with these characters for me- And I genuinely feel like I’ve been a lot happier lately because of this show! I’ve met so many other blogs and gotten to know them, seen their ideas and displayed mine as we appreciated one another… I even remember doing another blog’s fanart prompt prior to the show’s release, in preparation!

           I feel like The Owl House has genuinely given me a new appreciation for meta, for fandom and analysis… For headcanons, for writing my own stories and contributing my own ideas and speculations, etc.! It’s contributed SO much joy to me as a hyperfixation, and rapidly risen through my blog as my most frequent tag! And even as I explore other fandoms and hyperfixations, both then and now, especially to pass on this crippling hiatus… This show holds a VERY special place in my heart for me. It’s really made me feel for these characters, the love and sadness, the excitement and sense of comfort… Its love and emotions, angst and found family, lore and speculation, it hits so hard to me in a way that other media hasn’t!

           It’s provided representation- Such as canonically queer characters, or protagonists who speak so well to the neurodivergent experience for many people! I’ve had delight in seeing people suggest Amity as autistic, when before Season 1B, I lowkey headcanoned and saw her as such- So seeing more evidence for this resonated deeply in my heart! I remember all of the discussion about King as a character, the confusion and talk about whether or not he WAS a King of Demons, when that first announcement in 2018 had made a similar claim… I looked forward to Eda and Lilith’s relationship, speculated on who cursed Eda, and remembered when I’d considered the Blights as a potential culprit! I remember thinking about Hooty, wondering what his deal is- And thinking then and now about that Owl Deity mural in the Owl House! Watching Luz’s development as a character and as a witch, seeing her become more proficient with magic until it finally pays off with her squaring up against Belos, and wounding him- I’d never felt so proud of a character and their progress before!

           There’s still so many more questions and mystery, lore… as well as just genuine character interactions, to look forward to! I think The Owl House is one of my favorite shows of all time… It’s deeply touched me as a person and creator, and I genuinely strive to create something even close to this one day. This show has inspired me, made me laugh and cry, compelled me to creatively make content; It’s introduced me to a wider fandom that I genuinely feel like a part of, had me meet other mutuals… It really is something special to me. And while I am eager for Season 2, I also want to appreciate what Dana Terrace and her crew have already established. I love this show’s art style and animation, the designs and overall weirdness of its characters- I love speculating and thinking about them, getting more and more details, and so forth.

           If it’s for a better product, I’m fine waiting for Season 2. And honestly, I love what we already have, and I’ve done a lot with so many people. I’ve even looked over supplementary materials and stuff posted by the crew or news articles, in my need for content… And I love every bit of update, art, and/or acknowledgement of the show’s hiatus, and Season 2’s development! There’s so much to look forward to… And there’s so much that I’ve enjoyed, after plenty of anticipation!

           Thank you @danaterrace, and everyone who worked on this- For everything. It really is crazy to reflect on this entire year, to realize it’s been a full year since that first episode, since that first premiere that lit up my world like Luz’s light spells; And it feels like such a milestone that we’ve reached! I look forward to what comes next, and I also intend to keep appreciating and cherishing what we’ve already gotten. Here’s to this show’s second year, people- It’s been such a journey to look back on and remember each step, each phase, each particular moment and stage… And I can only imagine what will come next! This show has SUCH a special place in my heart, and has made me feel in so many ways I haven’t before!

           Happy Birthday, The Owl House! You’ve earned it!

[go-diane-winchester]

If you don't like Misha, this post might make you smirk.

I did this post yesterday and then deleted it because the OP made me feel sorry for her.  Luckily for me, someone reblogged it and my momentary stupidity is now remedied.  This whole scenario makes me smirk. 

Yesterday's post:

Doll face found @dean-supernatural-akf ranting in the main tags, including the Jensen tag, which is why she forwarded this biased drivel to me.  Thanks sweetie.  I scrolled though OPs blog, trying to figure this person out, because she ships wincest and destiel, apparently.  And she hates the haters.  It is convenient and dismissive to label those who don’t agree with you, don’t you think?  Label them rather than proving them wrong conclusively, because that would be difficult and you might lose the argument because of a lack of intelligence.  So call them names and be done with it.  Her rant is in italics, and my rebuttal in bold.

Rude and Missunderstood.

I CAN LIKE MISHA COLLINS AS AN HUMAN AND ACTOR WITHOUT BEING ONE OF HIS MINIONS.

Shocking right?

Here have a seat and lean back.

Very recently i got heavily missunderstood, and i’m making this post so it won’t happen again.

I asked someone if their blog is real . Because it was so full of hate against this actor named Misha Collins.

This guy right here, and I bet when you are one of the anti misha people then you even share the same look on your face right now, congrats.

Listen… I love JENSEN and i love JARED. And yes i love MISHA too.

But i don’t follow him around like a dog, i don’t kiss the ground where hes walking on.

AND i also don’t do this with J2.

Why is it that when there is an entire blog dedicated to hate for Jensen or Jared, there is no bleeding heart rant like this about that blogger?  But if you write a blog about all the mean things Misha and his fans do, you are a “horrible human being” with “toxicity and hate in your heart”.  No, I would prefer to call it discernment.  I wont like someone just because “it SPNFamily darn it, haters don’t belong”.  So if Misha gives me consistent reasons to hate him, I am still not allowed to hate him because I will be ejected from SPNFamily?  What is this?  A communist fanbase?  Nobody is allowed to have their own opinions?  Everybody must think the same way and feel the same fairytale happy feelings?  Which dandelion world did you pop up from?

I fight for all of them, i fight against the hate that all of those three get and Misha gets more hate then J2 and thats a fact.

Misha gets more hate?  Really?  You mean like death threats?  Like people tweeting him directly that they wish he was dead?  That kind of hate?  Please, show me where the hate is.  Bring me your receipts.  I want to see all the hate that Misha gets. 

And it’s so fucking unfair, i have seen blogs and people that wish that he would die, a man with two children and wife.

This is so sick and it’s so not okay.

Prove it.  Screenshot and show me where all these horrible people are.  I will put it in a post.  I always do.  The death threats and death wishes for J2 have been screenshotted and are on my blog.  So I have proof for my claims.  Bring the proof for your claims.  Its called making mature statements.  Quantifying your claims.  So please, set me straight.  Show me all the nastiness poor Misha gets.  I would like to see it. 

About the Misha minions, MISHA ISNT THE ONLY ONE WITH MINIONS.

Shocking again, right ?

From under which rock did you emerge?  Misha named his fans minions.  Very disrespectful.  No other actor has ’‘minions’’.  Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t like his fans referring to themselves as Cumberb*tches.  I respect him for that.  Misha did the opposite.   Shocking, right?

The people who only love J2 hate on Misha. And the people who love all of them hate back against the anti Misha people.

That is an incredibly simplistic way of putting it.  And it gives me the impression that this rant was written by someone who is young and idealistic in their notion of how the world works.  How come you don’t talk about the people who like Jensen and Misha and therefore hate Jared?  You cant.  You cant because that would be problematic to the narrative you are vomiting right now.  Those cockles perverts are the ones that tweet him, telling him that that they cant wait for him to die.  Receipts on my blog. 

The way you support J2 is the same way that Misha’s people support him.

Actually no, J2 fans don’t get angry when Misha is interviewed for Elle magazine, yelling “where’s J2”.  They don’t ask “Whose line is it,anyway?” why they excluded J2.  They don’t threaten to burn Misha alive in his house for being anti-destiel and/or making a joke about Jensen.  That happened with Jensen.  I have the receipts.  The same group were discussing kidnapping Jared’s kids.  That group was made up of 3500 people.  So many haters slipped up your radar?  Well, now you know. 

Minions and bitchy people are EVERYWHERE.

It is such a useless fight, don’t like someone?

THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

Yeah, take a page out of your own book.  If you don’t like the “haters”, as you dismissively call them, then don’t put this incorrect, unsubstantiated, unquantifiable rant in the main tags.  In fact, keep your uninformed opinion to yourself. 

What you do when you hate someone so badly and make a whole tumblr Blog about it then you are not better as those highschool bullies.

Dealing with the entire subject of hate, in the most abstract manner, without any analysis into your darling actor’s bad behavior and without taking into account the nasty behavior of his fandom, shows that high school is all you know.  Hopefully, one day you will grow up and think on broader terms. 

Cyberbullying is a serious subject, and thats exactly what you do with Hate Blogs and Hate tweets and Hate comments.

Keep using the word “hate”.  It will abrogate all the legitimate anger that the J2 fans have against Misha and his hellerminions.  Hellers are the biggest cyberbullies in fandom.  They sent hate directly to J2.  Some of the things they write will shock a person who has a real disdain to hate, not a daffodil like you who thinks Misha is infallible and doesn’t deserve an anti tag.  One said that she couldn’t wait for Jared to die.  And she tweeted that directly to Jared, along with a praying emoji.  Oh, you don’t know about that?  Well, then I guess you are not an authority on who is SPNFamily and who is not, now are you? 

You want to be a bully ? You love spreading hate ?

THEN JUST FUCKING BLOCK ME AND DON’T REPLY TO THIS.

Don’t reply to this?  Then why put it in the main tags, as well as inappropriate tags, and still hope that nobody disagree with you.  Aren’t we childish? 

What happened after the post was put up:

She DM's me and says that she has since changed her mind because she did another post about the hate that J2 get, and if I could please remove my post, because she was suffering panic attacks over it.  I said I would, but she is going to remove the above misleading post and provide me with proof that Misha gets death threats.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, she said that she came across the death threats on two blogs, that had blocked her for some mysterious reason, which is why she couldn't screenshot the evidence.  I found what those reasons were, when I went to those blogs: 

@castiel-needs-2-go

@destiew-must-go

I searched through their blogs, and found nothing.  No death threats.  They just point out the truth about Misha.  That is it.  She accused them for nothing.  Of course, that didn't occur to me until today, because I still felt concerned for her because the poor kid was suffering panic attacks.  So I deleted the post.  Today I find this message from her:

''So i asked like 10 different people Misha stans and Misha haters about those things you said he did. Nobody has ever heard of it, no one. You are telling your lies man, i aint stopping ya. But you are a horrible person if you need to attack a 19 year old on the Internet and 'Call me out' just because it gives you a kick. And just because you disagreed. My post will stay deleted because it wasnt up to Date anymore, but it wont be my last one. People like you need to be stopped, people like you are the reason why this fandom sucks so hard. Bye Bye. You are the sick one here .''

The weird thing is she attached this gif:

I don't know whether she thought it was going to hurt my feelings or something but, it actually helps to show her true identity.  She is not a wincest fan.  She is a Sam-hating heller in disguise.  Who would have thunk it? 

[cvickery-blog1]

WR 303 Network Analysis

The following has been created for the Oregon State University online class WR 303: Writing for the Web:

Within the past thirty years alone, the world of digital communication has become not only a fun and integrative way of communicating with family and friends, but a vital component of some of the largest global corporations in history. Digital communication comes in almost too many forms to count; advertisements in which companies large and small can reach potential clients and customers, platforms like Facebook Messenger, and even “comment” sections below everything from YouTube Videos to your favorite website full of funny cat pictures are all ways that we can now communicate what we like and don’t like, what we want and don’t want, and why. Today, platforms of digital communication, specifically social media platforms, dominate the digital world with the way that they incentivize their users. Becoming a YouTuber is now an actual career in which someone can make more money than the best doctors, Facebook and Instagram rising stars are essentially worth as much as a major startup company, and platforms like Vine and TikTok have become so lucrative that users are quitting their jobs to achieve the dream of making more than a living wage off of ten-second videos. However, all of these platforms have been developed to tailor to different audiences and provide different routs of generating revenue for both the company itself and the creators of the content. Even the smallest variations in how digital communication platforms function and portray the content that is uploaded to them can mean the difference between a successful and user-friendly way of communicating and an unsuccessful startup that crashes after only a few months of being online. By analyzing the data that I’ve collected by posting regularly to a Facebook group with a specific audience in mind, I’ve been able to delve deeper into learning about how various platforms function and how even minor changes to a post can determine the popularity and circulation of a simple phrase or photo.

           The differences between various digital communication platforms can be startling if taken at face value, but the foundational idea of all of them remains the same: to generate income, and a lot of it. This is the case for every social media platform, every blogging website, and every video sharing community that exists on the Internet today. Even if the communities didn’t initially begin that way, the influence of the dollar has become so potent that platforms are being created faster than could’ve ever been predicted in an attempt to obtain just a fraction of the global wealth that circulates among the popular ones. One such platform, which was the primary component of my research, was Facebook. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University Student, in 2004 when he was only nineteen years old (Brügger). The platform was originally meant to be only for Harvard students, but over the course of only a few years, it exploded in popularity beyond the University and became one of the largest and most well-known social media platforms to ever exist. For this reason, I chose to focus my research around Facebook and how it and its users function. There were other things that drew me to Facebook though, including my own familiarity with it and how its algorithms track the users’ usage and interests.

           Before I began my research, I knew a few different things about Facebook and how it functioned, but there were many things that I discovered along the way. “Social network sites deeply penetrate their users' everyday life and, as pervasive technology, tend to become… widely adopted, ubiquitous, and taken for granted” (Debatin, et. al.). This was one of the most obvious things that I’ve noticed about Facebook. It has become an integrated part of every user’s life, whether they know it or not. As a regular user myself, I’ll see advertisements or other information presented to me that relates to things that I’ve searched for on Google or Amazon, even if they have nothing to do with different pages or groups that I’m a part of on Facebook. However, I did notice that many of the advertisements and other pages that would be “suggested” to me had hundreds to thousands of “likes” or similar “reactions” to them. I wanted to know; how do pages gain so much popularity? How is each individual post crafted to gain the most attention from the widest-spread groups of people? These were all things that I experimented with during this project, and the results yielded results that were a combination of expectations and surprises.

           In choosing a Facebook group to post to, I knew that I needed to choose a group that was relevant to my interests and contained people with similar backgrounds and knowledge. As a bearded dragon owner, I chose to contribute to the Facebook group “Bearded Dragon Fanatics”, a collection of individuals based out of the United States and Canada who were bearded dragon owners, experts, and newcomers alike. This diverse group of over 8,500 members contained contributors of every age and race, making for an excellent runway for my social experiments to take off from. This group also has rules and restrictions which prohibit its members from posting grotesque content or inappropriate language, as well as several unofficial, unspoken rules, such as not speaking (too) badly of the animals to which the group is dedicated. My first post was published on Saturday, October 12th at 11:40 AM. It contained a photo of my most recently purchased juvenile bearded dragon, and two short paragraphs asking for advice with the temperament of my reptile. Here is a screenshot of my initial post:

(Vickery, “Post 1”)

The feedback that I got was relatively surprising, as I thought that I would be getting advice from members left and right, but instead I only received a total of thirteen comments and a total of three “reacts” to my photo. Little did I know that this would be the most reactions that I got to any post that I would publish for this assignment. Over the next two weeks, I published two more posts and expected more reactions as I tried different strategies to gain more attention. Here is my second post, originally published on Wednesday, October 16th, at almost 3:00PM:

(Vickery, “Post 2”)

           My strategy for my second post was slightly different; I changed the way that I formatted the questions, added “emojis” in an attempt to focus my audience’s attention more on the topics at hand, and published my post on a weekday rather than a weekend. This yielded negative results, with only one person within the entire online community commenting on my post, and a total of four “likes” for my two photos. The next week, I attempted to change my style again.

Here is a screenshot of my final post, published on Friday, October 22nd, at 5:38PM:

(Vickery, “Post 3”)

           When it came to my final post, I realized that it made no difference whether I added emojis or didn’t, and I tried to be much more direct by asking only one question but providing a little bit of detail. However, there were several small things that I tried to change in between each post, which allowed me to discover a few valuable components that are key in creating a successful publication. First of all, I realized that the time and day that a publication is made public is key in gaining immediate feedback. The first post that I published was created on a Saturday morning, a time when most people are off of work and able to relax and enjoy browsing their social media pages. The least popular of the three posts was my second one, which was posted in the middle of the week during a time at which most people are at work. This tells me that, in order for any kind of post to be successful, it needs to be published at the right time of day, on the right day of the week, and I would argue that even the time of year is important. Another thing that I noticed with each post is that if too many questions are asked, readers could get lost and not answer all of them. It’s important to keep posts short and to-the-point, as I tried to do in my first and third posts. Furthermore, the posts should be eye-catching. I think that the photos that I included in my posts may be one of the only things that kept my publications afloat, especially my second one. If it has been a post with only words and nothing to immediately catch readers’ attention, I doubt that I would’ve ever gotten any feedback at all. Finally, and most importantly, I’ve learned that your audience and their interests matter. While all of these posts were seen by everyone that I’m friends with on Facebook, I’m the only reptile owner that I’m aware of, and not a single person that I’ve met offline commented on a post or “reacted” to a photo. Only those who are members of the Facebook group to which I posted seemed interested enough to “react” to a publication or even go so far as to comment on it.

           There are so many things that social media users can learn from interacting with networked communities. After seeing the results of my experimental posts, I truly believe that people who spent several hours every week on any form of social media have more skills as a media marketing manager than people who have a degree in it with no experience at all. Hundreds of factors affect the popularity, and therefore marketability, of a published work, and learning what to add to a post or leave out could truly mean the difference between a post to be buried and never see the light of day, and a photo or video that could circulate the entire globe within a matter of hours. The world of digital media has become a global component in creating thousands, if not millions of networks which people are a part of. They can connect the furthest reaches of the planet with just the press of a button or the swipe of a finger, all while allowing us to share our information and interests, likes and dislikes, whether we realize it or not. In an ever-changing world where a new age of technology is evolving right before out eyes, it’s more important than ever to understand just how these networked communities tie us all together in the grand scheme of life, especially since life may soon revolve around technology as a whole.

                                                  Works Cited

Brügger, Niels. “A brief history of Facebook as a media text: The development of an empty structure.” First Monday, Volume 20, Number 5 - 4 May 2015. https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5423/4466

Debatin, Berhnard, Lovejoy, Jenette P., Horn, Ann-Kathrin, Hughes, Brittany N. “Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences”. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, Volume 15, Issue 1, 1 October 2009, Pages 83–108

Vickery, Caleigh. “Post 1”. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1840692722621659/search/?query=Caleigh%20Vickery&epa=FILTERS&filters=eyJycF9jaHJvbm9fc29ydCI6IntcIm5hbWVcIjpcImNocm9ub3NvcnRcIixcImFyZ3NcIjpcIlwifSJ9. Saturday, October 12th, 11:40 AM. Facebook update.

Vickery, Caleigh. “Post 2”. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1840692722621659/search/?query=Caleigh%20Vickery&epa=FILTERS&filters=eyJycF9jaHJvbm9fc29ydCI6IntcIm5hbWVcIjpcImNocm9ub3NvcnRcIixcImFyZ3NcIjpcIlwifSJ9. Wednesday, October 16th, 2:52PM. Facebook update.

Vickery, Caleigh. “Post 3”. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1840692722621659/search/?query=Caleigh%20Vickery&epa=FILTERS&filters=eyJycF9jaHJvbm9fc29ydCI6IntcIm5hbWVcIjpcImNocm9ub3NvcnRcIixcImFyZ3NcIjpcIlwifSJ9. October 25th, 2019, 5:38PM. Facebook update.

[katatty]

Moving In

Part 6 of my Custom Neighbourhood Guide

I wasn’t sure what to call this part of the guide, it’s very much a bunch of miscellaneous tasks concerning memories, family albums, family trees, debugging… all that good stuff which ties everything together.

If you’ve been following my steps in order (which you don’t have to do, of course, some creators will prefer a less structured approach) then at this stage you have your terrain, your lots, a bunch of families in the sim bin. If you haven’t already – move them into their houses! If they can’t afford them you can use the familyFunds cheat or SimPE to give them the desired funding.

Back up your neighbourhood at this point! Now, more than ever, you are going to want to be creating regular backups so that you can easily revert to an older version if you make a mistake, or change your mind about any of the story direction.

Once all your sims are moved in you’re going to want to set up the storylines and situations you’ve planned out. There are two main ways to go about this: actually playing the game and editing memories and relationships manually in SimPE. I’ll be covering both methods here and listing the pros and cons of each. You’ll probably find yourself using a combination of the two depending on the situations you’re setting up.

Playing the Game

This is the easiest way to set your families up! Simply play the game as normal, possibly using testing cheats and modded objects to speed things along. With these you can quickly change relationships, age sims up, kill sims, etc. 

When I set up Europa, I had a backstory in mind where a schoolteacher and a priest had an affair and a kid together – so when I created the sims I made father Theo an adult rather than an elder, played out their entire affair including the birth of their son, and their subsequent breakup. I also aged the kid up, had Viola manually teach him his skills, aged Theo up… strictly this wasn’t necessary, but it was easier than messing about with SimPE and also let me take in-game screenshots along the way which I used for their storytelling albums.

Penni talked about this too, on her commentary on my last post, and I’m going to paste what she said directly as its also insightful info:

“If you play through a full day of your old, established family, they won’t have a welcome wagon when the player starts the game, which makes sense. Play time also allows you to take advantage of the “training mechanism” to create sims with habits, and allows the sims to give you Better Ideas.  Woody’s refused first kiss with Virginia and Candy’s affairs with both Mann men were situations that came up during play - the sims’ ideas, not mine. Developmental play also doubles as playtesting time for your lots. The more real memories your sims get naturally, the less time you have to spend tediously manufacturing them in SimPE. And you can get any storytelling pictures you need.”

 As she mentions, actively playing is useful so that you can get welcome wagons out of the way, and let the future player take control at the best possible moment. Both Europa and Widespot (if I’m remembering correctly) start the game on a Friday morning so that downloaders can play out a standard week-day and then have the weekend to play about a bit more. If they start their day in their bedrooms players can also quickly tell whose room is whose! (Don’t have them actually sleeping, though. When opening a neighbourhood for the first time players will usually experience a jump-reset, so it’s best to have your sims standing idle when the neighbourhood is first loaded.)

If you want your storylines to create maximum impact, consider the timing of the events. One family in Europa contained a widower, Ronnie. I wanted his wife to have recently passed away and for the memory to be fresh when the game was first loaded so that the family would cry regularly and seem affected by her death. However, I killed off Viola right at the beginning of my gameplay, and by the end of the week the family seemed somewhat over it. I tried fiddling around in SimPE to change this later but didn’t have much luck - working with the game is a lot easier than working with SimPE, I find! I had to settle for using storytelling images and putting him in aspiration failure. Learn from my mistakes.  

One other thing to keep in mind when playing is to avoid corruption at any cost. Read the Wiki guide on avoiding corruption thoroughly and regularly check your game with Hoodchecker. Keep creating those backups!

Game guide: Avoiding corruption

In theory you could set up everything this way without even using SimPE, but it might not always be practical, especially if there are multiple generations to consider, all with their own backstories... you would have to create the founding elders and play out the entire family history! Penni details a few more potential pitfalls:

“But developmental play is time-consuming, can get bewilderingly complicated, and inevitably risks the accumulation of the grit-like minor corruption and/or serious glitches with which we are all so familiar. It might also involve the spawning of NPCs you may not want, or the creation of complications that go against the Vision, requiring quitting without saving or reverting to one of your numerous backups. Only you can do the cost-benefit analysis here.”

 Editing & Adding Memories

So, this is where editing memories manually in SimPE might come in handy. It’s good for adding all the standard family memories (toddler training, growing up well/badly, etc.) I’m going to be honest here - I found this a real pain and it took a lot of trial and error to get it right! So keep using those backups. I’ll link the the tutorials and resources I used below:

Memories - Changing and removing {tutorial} 

Game guide:Adding memories in SimPE 

List of Memories 

One really cool thing about editing memories manually is that you do stuff that wouldn’t be possible with normal gameplay, like changing the colour of a memory from the usual way it appears! Katrina Fusilli dislikes her daughter-in-law, and has a negative memory of her son marrying. Stuff like Olive Specter’s memories with the Grim Reaper would also fall under this category! Take a look at the full list of possible memories and see what you come up with. 

If you give a memory an unexpected subject instance (possibly like “going steady” with Grim although I haven’t checked this) the Hoodchecker will flag it, but as far as I know it’s not harmful to the game. There’s one of these in Widespot concerning Skye Weiss’s abduction. 

Family Trees

If your families are all set up  in-game tools with CAS or during developmental play, your family tress are probably going to look fine. But if you’re adding family relationships between households manually, you may find they don’t show up correctly on family trees. I encountered this issue when trying to make all my NPCs related. 

The only way, as far as I know, to directly edit family trees is using SimPE! It’s been a while since I did this, and I could only find one tutorial on it, but editing family tress was something I found pretty easy once I knew the correct place to look. I’ll link to the tutorial I used below:

SimPE Family Ties Tutorial

Photo Albums 

More storytelling stuff! Each household has a family album composed of in-game snapshots taken with “C”. There is also a neighbourhood album, which will pop up when a neighbourhood is first loaded! You might want to include a quick summary of each household here. 

During development play you’ll want to take pictures along the way of critical moments in the story. If you’re trying to avoid actually playing your neighbourhood too much for fear of corruption - no problem! You can stage scenes, take snapshots and then quit without saving. Your gameplay won’t be saved but the pictures will!  For Europa, I staged a few family photos using poseboxes I temporarily added to the game.

You can choose which pictures to include in a family album, which order to have them appear, and there’s also an option to include captions. I like imitating the Maxis story albums and leaving the pictures caption-less so that the player can use their imagination, but Maxon used photo captions to great effect in Polgannon! 

It’s also possible to use photos taken or edited outside of the in-game camera tool, as Maxon does above and as Maxis does! I know this is done by renaming and re-sizing the files accordingly, but I haven’t ever tried this before and can’t find a full guide on it! If anyone has any insight let me know :)

Biographies and Descriptions

Along with photo captions, you have a few other places you can write! The neighbourhood description itself, the neighbourhood story, household descriptions, and of course sim biographies! It’s up to you how much detail you want to go into on these - you might prefer to keep them vague or to go into lots of detail. 

You can also choose whether you want them similarly themed, or more varied in tone. In Veronaville, for example, almost everything is about the family feud, particularly the Juliette/Romeo love affair. Even Tybalt’s biography is about Juliette’s storyline:

The Capps and Montys have been feuding for years, but that hasn't stopped the younger generation from crossing boundaries and falling in love. Will their actions lead to ruin or bring the families together? - Veronaville’s  neighbourhood description

Juliette Capp has fallen for Romeo, golden child of the rival Monty clan. Can the Capps set aside their grudge and put Juliette's happiness first? -  The Capp household description & neighbourhood story 

Juliette loves her family and wants to please them, but her feelings for Romeo are undeniable. Can she make her family proud and make herself happy as well? - Juliette’s bio

Outspoken but surly, Tybalt is proud to carry the Capp name. Will his pride and hatred of the Montys ruin his sister Juliette's chance for happiness with Romeo? - Tybalt’s bio

For a bit of contrast, let’s look at Strangetown! The neighbourhood description is a lot more vague and nonspecific, hinting at the storylines rather than outright stating them. The household descriptions detail the family story, but character bios include fun tid-bits rather than spelling out their role in the story. 

Truth-seekers move to Strangetown hoping to discover the secrets the town holds. Do aliens live among us? Do missing Sims mysteriously appear here? In this town nothing is what it seems. - Strangetown’s neighbourhood description

In search of truth and mystery, the Curious brothers got more than they were "expecting." Can Pascal, Lazlo, and Vidcund cope with their new roles as cosmic parents? - Curious family bio & neighbourhood story entry 

No matter what happens, Pascal believes there is a logical explanation for everything. In his free time, he practices home psychoanalysis and collects conspiracy theories. - Pascal’s biography

Serious and exact, Vidcund strives to fit the universe into a nice tidy package. He has an unnatural fondness for African violets. - Vidcund’s biography

Juliette’s biography is all about family and forbidden love, but Pascal's make no mention of aliens, abductions or pregnancy. Tybalt’s bio talks about his hatred for the Montys, but Vidcund’s makes no mention of his feud with Loki Beaker or his romantic history with Circe. 

I’m being a bit roundabout here, haha, all I’m really saying is there are a lot of ways you can approach descriptions like this! Maybe you have a strong theme or storyline you want to get across to players, or maybe it’s made up of lots of little storylines. 

Playtesting & Debugging

The final stage, and most likely not a fun one. Now that you’ve finished everything up, it’s time to playtest it a little. You may do this yourself, or enlist others to help! I’m not very good at spotting my own mistakes, so I created a beta of Europa and sent it to a few playtester-volunteers. 

Things you and/your testers will want to be looking out for:

Bugs

Building issues

Playability

Signs of corruption

Spelling and grammar mistakes

Anything that seems missing or wrong

Draw up a big list of all the issues you/your testers encountered and then slowly work on fixing them. If you think you’ve solved the problem, double check it is fixed in your game, and maybe even send an updated version to your tester to verify it’s now working correctly. Don’t cross off issues as “solved” when you haven’t double checked! Some of my playtesters noticed my maid NPC had alien eyes and I never properly checked if I’d fixed it properly, so this glitch is still in the final version, hahaha. Again, learn from my mistakes! 

You may also want your testers to offer impressions of the characters and stories, opinions, & suggestions. Be sure to get across to your play-testers the sort of feedback it is you want! Perhaps you just want technical feedback and aren’t interested in any sort of critique. Being open to critique will work in your favour though, and help you make your neighbourhood as good as it can be. At the same time, don’t feel obligated to change things if they feel wrong or don’t match your vision! Ultimately you’ll never be able to please everyone, but you can certainly take their opinions on board :)

Releasing for Download

Not much to say here, really! To share it, all you need to do is compress the neighbourhood folder itself into a RAR or ZIP file. When you put it up for download you’ll likely want to list compatibility info, installation instructions, known bugs, recommended or required downloads (if applicable) and some previews of neighbourhood! 

How much information you want to give is up to you. You might want to keep things vague so that there are more surprises for the player, or you might want to give them the full facts. Pictures are always helpful, and can entice more players. Here’s Europa’s download post, for reference.

That about wraps things up, I think. I’m sure I haven’t covered everything as there is no end of stuff you can do, methods you can use and ideas you can have - you might even have thought of things I never even considered! But hopefully this guide proves useful to a few people. 

Once again, let me know if there’s anything else you’d like information on - I’ll happily edit these posts and might even make new ones if there’s demand. But for now, thanks for reading :) 

[eenefangirlanalysis]

Luck has not been on anybody’s side today.

The Eds duck boat has crashed in swamp like area. 

I have been waiting months to analyze this scene! I am so excited! I hope all of you are too. This is one of my most talked about scenes in the movie. 

The swamp scene is one of the first eene scenes I have ever analyzed. In total I have analyzed the swamp/fight scene three times. Each time I find a new observation. That was two years ago. If you go back to that analysis and compare it to how they’re set up now you’ll see the evolution.

The duck boat’s beak is bopping up and down in the water imitating a Drinking Bird.

Edd and Eddy are standing off to the side on a log. How they’re not wet, I’m not sure. Eddy’s shirt doesn’t appear to be wet. So, why is it off?

Hmm, maybe he’s trying impressing Edd?

Eddy asks, “Where’s your fauna now, Mr. Duck Boat?” Once again he is blaming Edd for yet another mishap. He not going to blame himself. Eddy has already silently blamed himself for many other situations.

Edd rather calmly states that the collision was unavoidable. He claims that the current is what caused them to go off course. The water doesn’t appear to be moving in rhythms like a stream at all throughout this scene.

I have a different head canon on how this crash happened.

As we find out later they’re very close to a road. And Edd also knows that there is a dock close by when he walks away from his friends. Edd took hold of the wheel believing they could take another route. Eddy disagreed. Eddy faught with Edd over the wheel knowing a faster route to Bro’s place or was only trying to slow them down once more. They must have fought over the steering wheel until they hit the tree.

Edd is just repressing the argument. He doesn’t want it to happen knowing things will end badly. Edd is always letting things go making him a pushover. Ed and Eddy, and other members of the cul-de-sac, end up taking advantage of this throughout the series. I never understand why Edd takes that because he doesn’t deserve it. 

He doesn’t know how to stand up for himself. Ed and Eddy have showed him how to a degree. His parents were the ones who should have showed him how to be aggressive.

“Unbelievable! All I know is that we’re stuck in a swamp in the middle of no where!”

Wow, look at this location. It actually looks as if the Eds are lost in another part of the world. The artists are amazing when it came to drawing new scenery for the movie. Take a moment to appreciate this whole background of the swamp. It’s a place where nobody wants to be with murky waters, animals lurking in the shadows, and possible bogs.

When I found out that the Eds only walked three towns over I found it quite unbelievable. Then again, we have do idea what the Eds world looks like as we have spent the most time in their neighborhood.

None of the kids took the opportunity to explore. Their parents didn’t encourage it either. Kids don’t have a sense of direction.They rely on their parents to take them where they’re going. No adays people have been relying more on technology to get them where they need to go. 

I never started driving until I was twenty years old. Although I waited to get my license I never took the time to study towns or the highways near me. I have encouraged you all before that if you feel scared to drive it’s okay to wait. Study maps! You need to know where you are going so you don’t stay stuck in one place. 

For all the Eds know maybe they have driven through this area before. Look off to the left at those trees. They’re not in as bad of a predicament like we think. 

Still, this area could be dangerous. The murky water, the forest of animals, and it could be polluted as well.

AND IT’S RIGHT NEAR THE FACTORY!! I just realized this the other day. Kevin and Nazz fell into the pipe and then they’re shot out into the swamp!! I have no idea how I didn’t realize this until now.

The sky plays such an important role in this movie. The evening is crawling closer. The Peach Creek streams must lead into this murky area. They’re still in Lemon Brooke. One town over from Peach Creek.

“Big Bro ain’t gonna be impressed.” Eddy remarks as he ties his shirt around his head. He’s turning himself into a safari warrior.

Eddy wants to impress his brother by showing him how he became a great mirror image. He has been doing this the whole series and maybe even beforehand. Eddy has no idea if Bro is coming back. And he’s never wished for Bro to come back. 

Ed... Pass it On was such an important episode. Eddy created that ruse in order to get respect. But, when asked if his brother is ever going to arrive Eddy is silent. And when he believes that Bro is standing before him he is scared out of his wits. 

Eddy never thought about his past or the relationship he had with his brother until this past year. He’s thirteen now. Eddy is at that age where he is growing up and trying to figure everything out. The Bro situation does come in at a perfect, yet unrightful time. Eddy has been in denial for years about who is brother is. This inner predicament delays Eddy of trying to figure out who he is. If this journey never happened, who would Eddy be? 

In season 6 Eddy had a full turn around caring more about his withering friendship that almost came to an end. He forgets scams entirely. I know something must have happened within the season 6 episode which were scrapped. Eddy is going through yet another identity crisis fearing that he fails Bro.

It’s mainly due to turning thirteen.

Edd is stunned at what he just heard.

This screenshot is cute. Eddy whacks the second mosquito away from him.

Honestly, I think Eddy was saying this comment more to himself. Since Edd was named the leader in finding this ambiguous being he is done with all the questions. 

A few seconds ago he was feeling guilty over letting Eddy down. That’s one of his worst fears. And whenever he lets someone down he hates upon himself. We all know how Edd’s parents have been affecting him. And Eddy’s constant nagging, badgering and dragging his friends all around have not helped matters.

Ed and Eddy are the only ones who take notice of his achievements. His parents never seem to acknowledge Edd. Their relationship is suggested to be at a worse. The sticky notes have been increasing. 

Edd relies on his friends for advice and to know that he is doing the right thing. Edd starts to rely on himself during season 5, but he realizes it takes him in a negative direction. He almost abandoned his friends because he was going to take advice from the kids.

He doesn’t have the confidence to rely on himself. The dodgeball incident ruined his mindset. He doubts himself because of how one of his inventions hurt people and made his life change.

Edd gains confidence throughout this scene which leads to his stand up against Bro at the end of the movie.

Edd confronts Eddy, “Is that what you think? That I'm here to impress your brother? That I would forsake my home and family for something as trivial as–"

I notice whenever Edd is giving Eddy a lecture he tends to tower over him. Yeah, Edd, you be aggressive. Don’t let your friends walk all over you.

Edd has bitten his tongue so many times throughout the series, but here he is done. He is finally standing his ground. He believes the only reason Eddy keeps Edd around is so he can track things down.

Meanwhile, Ed is having his own fun and jumping off the rocks into the murky water. 

“BUTTERED TOAST!”

Although it seems like Ed is having his own fun and slacking off I think he is trying to distract Edd and Eddy. He notices their bickering and has been nonstop throughout the movie.

He worries of their friendship coming to an end. Ed is the reason why Edd and Eddy have stayed together. He has stopped their bickering before. The sad truth is that there is always going to be tension gloating through the air. Edd and Eddy are the ones who need to make amends, not Ed. Ed is the one who just has to see through to it in order to make sure they will talk things out.

The distraction does little. Although Edd and Eddy’s facial expressions are similar for a few seconds. 

Is Ed really swimming in this murky water? Edd and Eddy have a lot more in common then one thinks. Even when it comes to hygiene.

Eddy smacks another mosquito away.

They only come after him while they’re in the swamp.

Ed’s distraction brings up another lecture Edd wants to discuss about Ed and Eddy’s immature behavior.

It’s true that Ed and Eddy have been having their own fun while on the journey, but they have been wasting time. Edd wants to find Eddy’s brother, but Eddy hasn’t been making an effort to find his idle.

Edd never says anything about this. Things are always flying over Edd’s head. Post BPS, he is going to realize how many signs he missed about Eddy mentioning his brother in the past.

Edd feels as if he tagged along only to be constantly ridiculed. The movie is where Edd feels as if has been used his entire life. Eddy uses him to find their way to Bro, which miraculously happens, and he and Ed are constantly teasing him because he is naive.

“I’m sure your brother would like to hear about that.”

Oh, if only Edd knew.

Look at that angered face Eddy gives Edd.

Bro never cared about behavior. Eddy is still in denial, but he knows that Bro was a bad person in the past.

When wanting to find Bro a part of Eddy believes that he has changed. I don’t blame Eddy for thinking that because it’s been years since he last saw him. 

And Eddy really doesn’t want anybody else talking about his brother. He wishes that he could have told people the truth a long time ago instead of taking the path where he lied about everything. It resembles the scene earlier in the cow field where Edd was speaking highly about Eddy’s brother. Eddy has to keep a straight facing fully knowing all these facts are not true.

[mobappdevelopmentcompany]

Key Considerations for building your dream eCommerce app!

Call them Fashionista or Shopaholic or whatever! People love to shop on-the-go! Irrespective of the time and place! At the very comfort of their homes or during the office breaks or while traveling back to their home from office! And that’s why eCommerce apps have been one of their favorites. Amazon, Flipkart, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Groupon, Aliexpress, just name them!  They have already created their success stories.

ECommerce solutions have literally been the game-changer for both, customers as well as the business owners. It’s no surprise that businesses are increasingly investing in eCommerce mobile app development. But the question is how to go about it?

In this blog, we have outlined essential steps needed to architect an alluring eCommerce app, along with the development mistakes that can badly affect the app.

Essential Steps to Create an Amazing eCommerce App

Before knowing these steps, it is of utmost importance for the business owners to do thorough research on multiple factors that are mentioned below. Market research will help you to set better business goals, lower business risks, boost customer satisfaction, improve decision-making, outsell competitors, and ultimately make more sales.

Now, let us have a look at the crucial steps that must be followed to create an impeccable app.  

Come up with an idea

The first step in this process is to decide the idea and the goals for the app. What do you want your eCommerce app to look like, what should be the overall concept of the app? How will you measure the progress of the app? What are your KPIs? Do you first want to develop a Minimum Viable Product? Using a Business Model Canvas (BMC) can help you understand some important aspects like value prepositions, revenue, customer segments, etc. So having a well thought out idea in place is very important to avoid unnecessary expenses later.

Decide your target audience

· For whom are you creating this app?

· What is their average age?

· What are their interests and preferences?

· Which products do they like and have already bought?

· How will they find us?

· Is your service B2B or B2C? Accordingly, the choices of the target audience will change.

· Look at which mobile and web eCommerce platforms are being used by your target audience.

Answers to such questions will help you to streamline your development process, shape your eCommerce app correctly and even improve the app marketing.

Also, studying the buyer persona is essential to know your ideal customers. It includes needs and preferences of the potential customers, their motivations and similar data which will influence every factor in the eCommerce mobile app development journey.

Know your Competitors

List out your competitors and do a thorough analysis. Look at their products and services and see what attracts the buyers. Study their business model. However, don’t duplicate their features, business models, etc. Competitor analysis will help you to enhance your research, navigate different challenges in the market, improve your products and services and stand out amongst them, giving a competitive advantage.

Must-have app features

The next step for an eCommerce app development company is to determine the feature requirement of your app. A few of the must-have features that you should include in your app are:

· Product List and categorization

· Search Bar and Filters

· Push Notifications

· Multiple Payment Options

�� Wishlist

· Look-books

· Easy Checkout

· Social Media Integration

· Review and Ratings

· Business Intelligence Tool

· Ratings and Reviews

· Synchronization across apps and websites

Decide technology based on budget

To determine the process and the budget, ask yourself the following questions:

· How much time and resources are you willing to invest in?

· Do you want to create an MVP model with the least features or want a feature-packed full-fledged eCommerce mobile app?

· Do you want to develop native apps for both Android and iOS platforms? Or want cross-platform development? Do you also want a PWA?

· Do you want an expensive backend development with low maintenance or high maintenance third-party APIs having a comparatively low budget?

· Are you looking for hybrid app development for better time-to-market or native app development for better sustainability?

· Do you want to make a bespoke app by hiring a brand new team or go for a SAAS solution?

Once you decide on the above questions, there are different pricing models available to choose from. They are scope based, time-based, fixed price models, or you can opt for dedicated resource hiring.

 App development

After doing the thorough research on the above enlisted points, you can now finally start the design and development of your dream eCommerce app.

Follow these tips for a good end result and unparalleled experiences to the users:

· Ensure that the app has user-friendly navigation

· Remove the excess clutter from the app

· Incorporate app templates to speed up and streamline processes

· Focus on personalizing the customer experience

· Give a personal touch to the app with Live Chat support.

· Use alluring images and animations for better impact

· Avoid using contrast color combinations, fonts, layouts, etc.

 Market your app

Marketing the app is equally important as its development is. After all, getting more downloads, views, purchases is the final aim of the app development. One can create buzz about the app even before the release of the app. Some of the strategies used for successful marketing of the apps are content marketing, SEO optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertisement, app marketing, etc.

 Publish the app

Finally, you are all set to publish the app on different mobile app stores like AppStore and Play Store. You can go on the app stores and sign up on their accounts, pay their registration fees, write the description and privacy policy for the app, upload the screenshots of the app interface, upload the app, specify the pricing of the app and your app will be published after it meets the set standards.

Final Words

Architecting a fully functional eCommerce app out of an idea is quite challenging. It requires considerable planning, time, efforts, finances and most important of all, commitment. In the complete development journey, greater focus must be given to the target audience. Along with the incorporation of interesting features, optimal design, exhaustive testing, powerful marketing, etc. are the factors that can lead to a roaring success.

Was this blog helpful in your venture to develop your perfect eCommerce app?

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No?

Still in doubt?

We would love to know your thoughts on this. Please feel free to comment here or mail your inquiries to us @sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com

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FA Cup 2018/19 Tactical Analysis: Swansea City vs Gillingham

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FA Cup 2018/19 Tactical Analysis: Swansea City vs Gillingham

Artwork by @chapulana

Swansea City continue to go from strength to strength in 2019 as they maintained their momentum with a convincing 4-1 FA Cup 4th round win against Gillingham. The victory sees the Swans reach the FA Cup 5th round in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1965.

Gillingham manager Steve Lovell returned to his birthplace hoping for more cup success against South Wales opposition having got past Cardiff City in the previous round, but it wasn’t to be. Had they done so, they would have been only the second team in history to eliminate both South Wales sides in the competition since 1975-76.

With Tuesday night’s home Championship match against Birmingham City in Graham Potter’s sights, the Swansea boss made four changes to the starting XI that beat Sheffield United last weekend. Some of those changes were forced due to injuries. Joe Rodon’s broken metatarsal saw Tottenham Hotspur loanee Cameron Carter-Vickers drafted in alongside former Ajax defender Mike van der Hoorn.

Alongside the American was left-back Declan John who replaced Kyle Naughton which meant that Connor Roberts could return to his preferred right-back position. In midfield, Potter kept faith in the Leroy Fer, Matt Grimes and Bersant Celina trio. Courtney Baker-Richardson and Barrie McKay replaced Wayne Routledge (calf) and Nathan Dyer (benched).

After switching from a 4-2-3-1 formation to a 4-3-3 during his side’s win against Sheffield United last Saturday, Potter stuck with a 4-3-3. Celina was dropped back as Potter looked to Barrie McKay to link up with Baker-Richardson as Oli McBurnie also dropped back to link up the play between midfield and attack.

For the Gills, they made three changes. Max Ehmer, Regan Charles-Cook and Tom Eaves replaced Alex Lacey, Callum Reilly and Josh Parker. Gillingham boss Steve Lovell adopted a 3-4-1-2 system with Charles-Cook playing behind the forward duo of Elliot List and Tom Eaves.

Swansea fly out of the blocks

Swansea City manager Graham Potter has established a new and improved blueprint since the turn of the year and so far its record speaks for itself. That blueprint involves attracting the press and playing vertical passes to make use of the space behind it.

Two wide players moving inside to occupy the half spaces as the full-backs ensure width, added with good movement, creates problems. The opposition defence is often stuck between sitting in a compact, narrow shape and looking to shift out and close down the attacking full-backs.

Swansea City defender Mike van der Hoorn was often able to play forward passes to players who could turn into space ahead of them, thus bypassing Gillingham’s ineffective press.

Unbeaten with two league and two FA Cup wins, their direct style and ability to play long vertical passes to break opposition lines has been key to that success. Preston – the only side to avoid defeat against the Swans in 2019 – adopted an effective and well-structured press but the likes of Reading (4-1), Aston Villa (3-0) and now Gillingham (4-1) all suffered heavy defeats as a result of getting their press badly wrong.

Swansea City were often able to play long, vertical passes forward that bypassed Gillingham’s press with ease. This allowed their backline to get the ball quickly into the feet of the attacking players. Receiving in space, they had plenty of time to turn and progress the attacking move forward into the opposition’s half.

Mike van der Hoorn has a good eye for picking out a pass from deep that can break through Gillingham’s lines and get the ball into the likes of Barrie McKay and Oli McBurnie.

Gillingham’s failed press: Swansea take full advantage

Gillingham’s press was ineffective throughout the game, particularly in the first half. It lacked energy and good structure. Both Grimes and Fer were not closely marked while Bersant Celina also dropped deep into wide open space to receive the ball and start quick attacks from inside his own half.

The obvious problem below for Gillingham is that their front two split. There’s a huge gap between the two. Matt Grimes drops in between the two centre-backs, while Celina can also drop back to receive.

With Gillingham’s front two splitting wide to mark Swansea’s centre backs, they could easily pass through them as Celina here receives in space

Time and time again the League One outfit left huge gaps right across the field, allowing the Swans to dominate the opening 14 minutes with 80% possession.

Below shows another example of Van der Hoorn’s ease at making a forward pass into the feet of Barrie McKay. McKay took the role of the benched Nathan Dyer as the right-sided attacker who drops deep into these positions to start the second phase of the attack.

Van der Hoorn can play another forward pass into the feet of Barrie McKay. A Gillingham player approaches him but doesn’t block the passing route.

McBurnie, on the left of a front three, dropped deep when needed to help link up the play. The main central striker Courtney Baker-Richardson stayed furthest forward at all times, looking to make runs in behind the last defender.

Swansea City were essentially setup in a 4-3-3 but with good rotations. With the likes of McBurnie and McKay dropping deep, it also morphed into a 4-3-2-1 with the full-backs always bombing forward in an effort to stretch the opposition’s defensive line.

The amount of space Swansea City could work with was no different in their opponent’s half either. At times, these long vertical passes from the defensive line were bypassing four or five Gillingham players and pretty much their entire midfield.

With no pressure on the ball, Matt Grimes was allowed to move into Gillingham’s half to pick a pass.

The spaces between Gillingham’s lines were far too large. As we see above, players like McKay, Celina and McBurnie could receive passes in space, turn and run at the opposition’s defence after just a few passes. Midfielders were able to make runs through as Gillingham’s midfielders split wide having been attracted to the two players occupying the half-spaces.

With two Gillingham players keeping tabs on the two Swansea players occupying the half-spaces, this gave Leroy Fer a route through the middle. The screenshot below shows a typical example. Five or possibly six Gillingham players are bypassed with a simple forward pass, Oli McBurnie receives the ball near the halfway line and he’s now able to run forward against the opposition’s defence.

Gillingham’s lack of a solid defensive structure and an ineffective high press allowed Swansea to get in behind on many occasions. Quick give-and-gos and third man runs got them in behind the opposition’s defence.

Striker Baker-Richardson moves out into a wide right position in an effort to stretch and expose gaps through the channels.

Swansea open the scoring

It was a relentless opening 10  minutes from the home side and they took a deserved lead in the 11th minute. However, it wasn’t a goal that you’d expect from this Swansea side. Goalkeeper Erwin Mulder aimed a long kick for Barrie McKay to chase. A Gillingham defender, unaware of where the ball was, saw the ball come off his back and into the path of the Swansea attacker.

It looked like an opportunity to make use of the space was lost as Barrie McKay had to hold the ball up to wait for support. Bersant Celina is racing forward through the left half space but McKay decides to wait for Leroy Fer to enter the picture.

McKay holds the ball up which allows Gillingham to get players back in support. He has Celina running through as an option but he wants for Fer to move forward. In the other half space, Leroy Fer has time and space to pick out his man.

He crosses in for McBurnie to easily head home as he runs through a gap in the Gillingham defence. Baker-Richardson is tightly marked but the defender next to the one marking him is ball-watching and doesn’t track McBurnie’s run.

Leroy Fer, unmarked in the right half-space, puts in a cross for McBurnie to run through the middle to head home. The second defender is too busy ball-watching to track the striker’s run.

Swansea City make it 2-0

Gillingham made efforts to tighten things up through the middle third as we can see in the screenshot below. Nevertheless, Matt Grimes was able to switch the play across to right-back Connor Roberts to help start the attacking move for the second goal just after the half-hour mark.

Mckay makes a good diagonal run out to the right flank and takes a defender with him. This opens up the half-space for Oli McBurnie to run straight through as Roberts plays the inside pass to the striker.

Barrie McKay makes a good dummy run out towards the right flank sending a defender with him, giving McBurnie a free route through Gillingham’s defence.

Unchallenged, McBurnie makes it into the penalty area to fire past the goalkeeper for his second of the game.

Gillingham problems and how they looked to fix them

After going 2-0 down within half an hour, the visitors needed to change a number of things if they wanted any chance of staying in the game in the second half. Their press was completely ineffective and Swansea City found it far too easy to play through it. Time and time again they were able to make just two or three passes to approach the final third of the pitch.

If they couldn’t stop passes coming into the middle third from Swansea’s defensive line, then their second best option was to drop deeper and plug the gaps. Below shows another typical example of Gillingham’s ineffective high pressing from their front two.

Matt Grimes drops in between the two centre-backs gave Swansea a numerical advantage from deep. Without a third Gillingham player pushing forward, Matt Grimes or Bersant Celina could bring the ball out with ease.

In an effort to stop getting caught out through the middle, Gillingham ditched their 3-5-2 system in favour of a 4-5-1 in the latter stages of the first-half.

They also dropped further back and looked to get five across the midfield to limit the gaps through the channels. This helped to ensure that 2-0 didn’t become 3-0 before half-time. Below, McBurnie has less space to work with and can’t turn and make forward runs towards the final third.

As Gillingham drop back, allowing Grimes to bring the ball out, he no longer has multiple passing options in front of him. There isn’t a clear passing route through for McKay inside the centre circle, and McBurnie is also covered alongside him.

Gillingham were barely able to get forward in the first half such was Swansea’s dominance and control. When they did, it was always after playing long and direct balls to chase down the flanks.

Too often they attempted to play patient passing football when regaining possession in their own defensive third. Against a forward-committed Swansea side however they needed to play quick long balls forward on the counter-attack.

There was a passage of play lasting around 30 seconds during the 27th minute that perfectly summed this up. The below screenshot shows the start of it. Gillingham have regained possession but they miss an opportunity to hit Swansea on the counter-attack.

There’s a free player in space in the shaded area that the player about to receive the ball could pass to. Alternatively there’s the option to hit a ball over to the far side for a player to chase in behind Swansea’s midfield duo.

Instead, Gillingham played passes across their backline and took around 30 seconds to finally break into Swansea’s half before losing possession in a wide right area. When doing so, Swansea could play a simple pass forward and they were back on the attack.

Gillingham changed their approach in the second half and they got their rewards, getting a goal back within just six minutes of the restart. It wasn’t only their shape and tactics that needed changing, but their energy levels too. There was a clear improvement in this department after the break.

It looked as though Gills manager Lovell wanted his side to increase their intensity and energy levels and look to play the ball more quickly and directly into wide areas.

Gillingham make a faster start to the second half and they have the option to release a player down the right flank

Gillingham get a goal back

After the ball is stolen from McBurnie just inside their own half, the visitors waste no time in playing the ball forward for Elliot List to run forward through the right half-space.

Carter-Vickers appears to have marshalled him out towards the right touchline but he doesn’t do enough to limit the threat. List is able to turn back to feed a team-mate who’s unmarked in the half-space. The cross comes in and similar to McBurnie’s opener, Josh Rees can get in between two defenders to head home with relative ease.

Gillingham continued to play more direct football, often looking to get balls quickly into wide areas for crossing opportunities.

Celina’s wonder goal ends Gillingham’s hope

With the score at 2-1 and Swansea City previously cruising, Gillingham suddenly had some hope as they managed to keep things relatively tight for the next 25 minutes. From Swansea’s point of view, they should have been out of sight at half time, but they easily allowed Gillingham back into the game with their first real chance to make it 2-1.

However, Gillingham would have been disappointed to allow Swansea to restore their 2-goal cushion after somewhat easing the onslaught of pressure. It was an incredible 30-yard strike from Bersant Celina but from a defensive point of view, he should’ve been closed down to prevent the shooting opportunity.

Before Celina’s strike, both Leroy Fer and Matt Grimes were allowed attempts on goal from similar positions. Fer mishit his effort but Grimes managed to force a decent save from the goalkeeper.

Bersant Celina receives the ball, makes a quick move inside before firing the home into the top corner from 30 yards

There was no stopping Celina’s effort however as it arrowed straight into the top corner.

Swansea add a fourth

Swansea City didn’t want to rest on their 3-1 lead and brought on Leeds United target Dan James in the 69th minute, four minutes before Celina’s goal. Like it had against Sheffield United the previous weekend, the flying winger’s pace caused Gillingham all sorts of problems down the right flank.

His raw speed meant that the Swans could simply play a ball down the right and it was likely that James would get on the end of it and get into a promising attacking position. As well as chasing balls, James was also able to touch balls past his opposing full-backs and race onto them in space.

On one occasion, he was able to provide fellow substitute Jay Fulton with a scoring position but his headed effort was saved by the feet of Tomas Holy.

Swansea’s fourth goal came from another quick move that started with James in his own half playing a ball ahead to Celina. Celina then quickly plays a ball ahead to George Byers who plays a first-time pass for James to chase. He gets to the byline, pulls the ball across and McKay is waiting just a few yards out to touch the ball into the net.

Conclusion

It was another convincing and impressive performance from Swansea City who are enjoying some good momentum in 2019. They were another level above Gillingham and at times they could and should have done more with the positions they found themselves in inside the final third.

A soft goal gave Gillingham hope. The visiting side fixed their problems in the first half and played more to their strengths, but Swansea’s quick movement and direct passing play just proved to be too much too handle in dominant spells in the first half an hour and the final 20 minutes.

If you love tactical analysis, then you’ll love the digital magazines from totalfootballanalysis.com – a guaranteed 100+ pages of pure tactical analysis covering topics from the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga and many, many more. Buy your copy of the January issue for just ₤4.99 here, or even better sign up for a ₤50 annual membership (12 monthly issues plus the annual review) right here.

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Write Reviews and Turn Your Opinions Into Gift Cards on G2 Crowd

Have you ever wanted to get paid in mocha Frappuccinos? G2 Crowd can help with that. Well, sort of.

G2 Crowd is a business software review website, and it wants your opinions badly — so badly that it’s willing to pay for them with gift cards. Each review will typically net you a $10 gift card to Starbucks or Amazon. Sometimes you can get more. For niche software, the company can pay more than $25 per review.

And if you don’t like those two gift-card choices, you can use our guide to sell gift cards for cash or exchange them for better ones online.

How to Get Paid to Write Reviews for G2 Crowd

Writing reviews for G2 Crowd is fairly straightforward. You follow the corresponding link for an Amazon or Starbucks gift card (see below), select what software or app you use for work, then rate the software and answer a few short questions about it.

Be honest in that you actually use the software. Provide a screenshot of you using the software with identifiable information, where possible. This will speed up the verification process.

For example, you can log into many software services with your Gmail, LinkedIn or Facebook account. For my reviews, I logged into the software using my Gmail account, and my email and avatar were visible in the corner of the screen, making the screenshot easily verifiable.

If you can’t provide decent proof that you use the software you’re reviewing, G2 Crowd will probably reject your review. That means no gift card.

Here’s what you’ll need to start reviewing:

A LinkedIn account or business email address.

Corresponding promotion links for Starbucks and/or Amazon.

A screenshot to verify that you use the software or app.

About five to 10 minutes to complete the review questions.

If you don’t have a business email address or LinkedIn account, no worries. Making a LinkedIn account is easy and free. You can follow our guide to make your LinkedIn profile shine.

Be aware that if you go to G2 Crowd’s website and start reviewing products without following the promotion links, your reviews won’t qualify for the gift cards.

  The company will pay for the first five verified reviews. After that, you can gain points or other incentives for additional reviews.

What Is G2 Crowd, and Is It Legit?

G2 Crowd is a popular software review platform. Five former employees from BigMachines, a customer relationship management software company, founded G2 Crowdin 2012. Since then, the company has reached a reported valuation of nearly $500 million, according to TechCrunch.

So the business is doing well. And in short, yes. It’s legit.

I maxed out my paid reviews in one day, totalling $50. The website says it takes 48 business hours for the digital gift cards to appear in your account’s reward section. I got all the gift cards within a few hours. Some came the next business day.

By offering people gift cards, G2 Crowd is actually solving a problem with online reviews: polarization. An analysis published by Harvard Business Review states the reviews are typically biased, meaning people don’t often take the time to review things they don’t love or hate.

Think about it. What was your last online review for? A so-so experience? Not likely.

You were probably elated (five stars) that your server at Texas Roadhouse was hilarious and comped your dessert, or maybe you were furious (one star) that the courier left your package from Aunt Lisa outside in the rain.

So, hopefully, a few gift cards to Amazon or Starbucks can get you to give a more honest review and a rating somewhere in between that evening at Texas Roadhouse and the package-delivery debacle of 2017.

Adam Hardy is a staff writer on the Make Money team at The Penny Hoarder. He lives off a diet of stale puns and iced coffee. Read his full bio here , or say hi on Twitter @hardyjournalism.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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