#when i say survey it’s literally just like. a Single Question. for data.

[apollos-boyfriend]

i might post a survey for class in the upcoming days btw u guys better do it i need a good grade <3

[undertale-data]

[Image Description: An Undertale chat box that has “WHY FANS LOVE UNDERTALE” at its center. Next to it are a line chart and an Egg from the Dating Hub on its left, and a CRIME measurer (also from the Dating Hub) on its right. End I.D.]

[Image Description: a pie chart titled, “LEVEL OF LOVE FOR UNDERTALE.” The textbox on the top right reads, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the least and 10 being the highest, how much do fans enjoy Undertale?” From the top going clockwise, 12 or 0% chose 5 and below; 23 or 1% chose 6; 98, or 4%, chose 7; 325, or 12%, chose 8; 529, or 20%, chose 9; and 1664, or 63%, chose 10. End I.D.]

It’s clear from all of the data analyzed so far that fans who took the time to answer our survey love Undertale. It is unlikely that they would have taken the time to answer so many questions if they had not, and even less likely that they would have come across our survey in the first place. Naturally, it comes as no surprise that 63% of our responders gave their love for Undertale a score of ten out of ten. 95% gave their love for Undertale a score of eight or higher, and only 12 responders responded with five or below, a number so small that their responses had to be lumped together to be visible on the pie chart. Of those, only 3 responders gave their love for Undertale a score of 1, and based on those responders’ other answers, it is likely that they were only intending to troll. We are very fortunate that the vast majority of responders took the survey seriously, enough so that responses like this are barely a blip in the data.

Now, for our final analysis post of the event, we will delve into the reasons that fans love Undertale so dearly.

(Essay and highlights under the cut.)

There have been countless essays on the impact that Undertale has had on people’s lives. I can hardly add more on the subject than what has already been said, but I hope this summary can provide a brief overview of what stood out among the over two thousand answers given in response to this survey. That said, due to the sheer volume of answers, I could not read every single one in depth—however, I did skim all of them, and some that stood out or were representative of several responses have been highlighted below. If you would like to see what every fan who consented to share their response had to say, you may view the full list of responses here. Note that these responses have not been edited in any way. This document may take a long time to load, as it is over 100 pages long.

(Warnings for mentions of suicidal thoughts in the following essay.)

Several responders loved the theme of choices mattering in Undertale. Whether people played the pacifist, merciless, or neutral routes, they enjoyed how the game reacted to their actions. For some, it even made them consider their own morality. One touching response explained the impact that the theme of mercy made on them. “I realized that Mercy isn't something that's given to those who deserve it. Flowey didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it myself. Shoot, we ALL need Mercy in our lives.” Many fans left similar comments about how the themes of Undertale made them better people.

Undertale changed how its fans treat others, and it also changed how fans treat themselves. The theme of staying determined and the messages of hope in the game were a light to a very large portion of fans. I cannot list all of the fans who said that Undertale helped them out of a dark place, or that they would not be alive if not for Undertale. “DETERMINATION became a metaphor for not killing myself at a really rough time in my life and I’ll always cherish that. Undertale isn’t afraid to go to really dark places but at the same time holds on so tight to its hope.”

Undertale brought fans together in unexpected ways. Some said they met friends or significant others through the fandom. “I wouldn't have met my now husband without Undertale,” one fan said. A different fan who is non-native English speaking mentioned that the game and the fan community helped them to learn English.

It would be impossible to discuss Undertale without mentioning the fan community. Whether for good or bad, many responders mentioned the fandom in their responses. Overall the feelings towards the fandom seem positive, though many made references to “toxic” parts of the fandom without specifying which parts they consider toxic. Others rejected the idea of toxicity in fandom. One response said: “[SLAMS FIST ON DESK] I KNOW MOST PEOPLE SAY THE FANDOM IS TOXIC AND CRINGE OR WHATEVER BUT OH MY GOD. The Undertale fandom, both the UTMV and the actual UT fandom, has been so much fun to be a part of. I've met countless friends because of our shared interest in something related to the game! The art people create can be breathtaking and so inspirational, and the fanfics are so so good!! I've seen people write incredible things for this fandom and it's what made me continue writing!”

One thing that makes the Undertale fandom unique is the way it embraces various AUs. Some fans are tired of AU content, but the majority of responses show a love for the creativity behind AUs. “Roll your eyes at the 50th AU Sans all you want, it's encouraging people to step outside the boundaries of fanart and pushing people to make their own ideas! I mean, hell, it was how I gained the confidence to start making my own original content.” The lack of a judgemental atmosphere seems present in the AU community, according to the responses we saw. There is an interesting balance between AU and canon (sometimes referred to as “classic”) content that another responder pointed out: “The fandom helped keep the game alive all these years, with all of its AUs. Although personally, I always enjoyed AUs that kept characters as close to the classic material as possible (dancetale, outertale) I do appreciate the creativity of the fandom. They almost created entirely new stories with new characters of their own! If it weren't for those people, the Undertale fandom would have probably not been as active as it is now. I do feel like we're getting a resurgence of classic content now too! (In 2021)”

Regardless of the many AUs the fandom has created over the years, the original game of Undertale still feels like home for many fans. They wished they could reclaim the feeling of playing the game again for the first time, but even though we can’t reset time in real life, there is still a special feeling for fans each time they play Undertale. One fan said, “Even the best fics I've read can't capture that feeling of nostalgia/almost-"coming home" that comes with hearing the music and talking to the characters.” This feeling is one that can be cherished time and time again. In the words of another responder: “It always feels welcoming like home or like comfort food that I never grow tired of no matter how many times I go to it.” Others pointed out the strength of the found family trope in Undertale, which likely contributes to this feeling of “home” as well.

As mentioned briefly earlier, the music is part of what makes Undertale feel like home for fans. Even when responses focused on other aspects of the game, many would throw in a comment about the soundtrack at the end. One comment focused on the music said “IT'S SO GOOD like I will literally go through the entire thing over and over and not be bored with it. It makes my monkey brain so happy you have no idea.” Like with the game itself, the music has incredible replay value, an amazing feat considering most of the tracks use the same few motifs. “I think what I like the most about Undertale is how the music attaches you to the story,” another responder said. “They're simple melodies that stick with you throughout the whole game, and they can remind you of both good and bad times.”

If the music sticks with fans in their hearts, then the game’s lore sticks with fans in their minds. Even six years after the release of Undertale, fans are still creating new theories and digging up new secrets. The way the game breaks the fourth wall in particular intrigued many fans and has stuck out through all these years. The awareness that the game shows for the RPG genre makes it memorable. The game plays with the player’s expectations and turns them on their heads, all while reminding the player that they’re in a game. There are few other games that do this on such a large scale, so it’s no surprise that fans cite this as one of their favorite things about Undertale.

Lastly, the LGBT+ representation in Undertale has been a huge draw for fans. Especially in 2015, the sheer volume of non-cishet characters was unprecedented, as one fan pointed out: “It's practically unheard of to see so MANY from just one source, especially during its heyday in 2015-16. Hell, you can't even GET the true pacifist ending without helping two gay couples hook up. It's really nice to see all of them being accepted for who they are and not judged for their sexuality or gender, at least in-canon.” The LGBT+ cast including Frisk, Chara, Napstablook, Monster Kid, Mettaton, Alphys, and Undyne each connected with fans in unique ways. It’s clear how important this is from responses such as: “There are canon nonbinary characters 🥺. i have never seen representation of myself before.” “It made me gay and trans so thanks for that.”

Once again I am overwhelmed with just how much there is to say about Undertale. One responder really understood when they compared Undertale to an iceberg, explaining that there are so many layers to the game that there is something for everyone: “everyone can find something to enjoy in the lore/game regardless of what kind of fan they are! Being able to appeal to various types of fans—from simple happy shipper people to deep dive lorediggers—is the mark of the coolest games!” I would have to agree with them.

It’s been six years, and despite everything, it’s still you. Thank you for reading, participating in this survey, and above all, staying determined.

Highlights:

DETERMINATION became a metaphor for not killing myself at a really rough time in my life and I’ll always cherish that. Undertale isn’t afraid to go to really dark places but at the same time holds on so tight to its hope.

I think the coolest thing was having the opportunity to watch the AU community grow from its bare roots. It's nearly insane how big and complex it's gotten, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Roll your eyes at the 50th AU Sans all you want, it's encouraging people to step outside the boundaries of fanart and pushing people to make their own ideas! I mean, hell, it was how I gained the confidence to start making my own original content.

i love how the lgbt rep is so naturalized... there are just gay people! and its nobodys business!

The music is my go to answer, but what I really really REALLY love is how the minor characters have so much personality to them when you talk to them. They aren't incredibly important to the overall story, but they're all so likeable and diverse that you just can't help but like them immediately!

I think it was the first videogame I have played that broke the fourth wall that much. Of course there has been other videogames that broke it but just for one or two tongue-in-cheek jokes. The guilt of killing mama goat was also something intense as well that I appreciated as an experience and that I didn't think a videogame could cause on someone.

I love how no character can be seen as completely bad! Everyone builds up Asgore as some horrible villain, but he turns out to be a 'fuzzy pushover' who's broken and just wants his family back by the time you meet him. Then you think Flowey's an irredeemable killer who engineered the suffering of the monsters across many timelines, and he is... but he also used to be the kind and beloved Prince Asriel Dreemurr, traumatized by his death and subsequent rebirth, projecting his best friend onto you.

The fact that choices matter in the game. Your first playthrough and getting the golden ending for the first time. I can never replicate those feelings again, wish I could erase my memories and replay the game from the start.

I wouldn't have met my now husband without Undertale.

(Toxic parts of the fandom aside) The community is possibly one of the kindest I've ever met. Cringe culture is completely dead, and I feel like I can be myself. I felt a very close connection to many of the characters, and I loved consuming content about them when I was in a rough patch in my life.

just everything, the whole game has just impacted my life so much. i know it sounds really lame, but when the game first came out, i would purposely put my hands in my pockets and sway slightly, like sans' idle animation. of course i dont do that anymore haha, but undertale still really impacts me to this day, and i wouldnt have it any other way :)

it made me gay and trans so thanks for that

I realized that Mercy isn't something that's given to those who deserve it. Flowey didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it myself. Shoot, we ALL need Mercy in our lives.

The thing I love most about Undertale is no matter how many times I play or watch a playthrough it always makes me genuinely happy. It always feels welcoming like home or like comfort food that I never grow tired of no matter how many times I go to it. Toriel still makes me feel all warm and cozy in her home, the Skelebros always make me laugh, and I still cry on the inside watching Frisk comforting Asriel. And on the flip side the No Mercy run still invokes the negative emotions in me as well. In short Undertale just feels like a second home to me and I always wish I could stay.

The reader inserts are my favorite way to decompress after a hard day

I think Undertale helped me discover my love for 8-bit games, and made me realize how IMPORTANT music is in video games.

the worldbuilding and character design are my favorite parts of the main game apart from the music! I’m also a huge fan of the random AU music- not for like underswap or underfell i like the stuff where someone makes a megalovania for a random au where gru from despicable me replaces sans as the character. i think its funny

Just... the vibe, honestly? Even the best fics I've read can't capture that feeling of nostalgia/almost-"coming home" that comes with hearing the music and talking to the characters.

there are canon nonbinary characters 🥺. i have never seen representation of myself before.

[SLAMS FIST ON DESK] I KNOW MOST PEOPLE SAY THE FANDOM IS TOXIC AND CRINGE OR WHATEVER BUT OH MY GOD. The Undertale fandom, both the UTMV and the actual UT fandom, has been so much fun to be a part of. I've met countless friends because of our shared interest in something related to the game! The art people create can be breathtaking and so inspirational, and the fanfics are so so good!! I've seen people write incredible things for this fandom and it's what made me continue writing!

There's a scene where Frisk (the player) is going towards what is presumably going to be their death. They will fight Asgore and he will use their human soul to break the barrier and free his people. The music, despite the player's impending doom, is... triumphant. You are not the triumphant one here, and yet, the score invites you to experience the monsters' joy and happiness as they tell you the tale of their subjugation. The monsters are going to be free. This is their victory, but they don't hate you or want you to die. They're just... happy. That scene has always struck me very deeply. I feel it represents the best parts of Undertale.

I loved how well thought out the Geno route was. It really made me feel like I was doing something horrible, and the characters were very obviously reacting to dire circumstances.

I dunno? I like Undertale for it's characters, story, music, secrets and many more. I am not good with Headcanons but I also like the neutral endings and how different they can depending on who you spare and kill

I was very bad at english before, i thought i couldn't progress because i was very shy and not confident. But my sibling and i wanted to have the best experience with this game so we wanted to play it in english. It's this game and the fandom which helped me to make huge progress in english !

THE SOUNDTRACK. IT'S SO GOOD like I will literally go through the entire thing over and over and not be bored with it. It makes my monkey brain so happy you have no idea.

to avoid writing an essay i will say one word. Mettaton

It is like Toby specifically made the games to fit the iceberg meme and it's awesome, everyone can find something to enjoy in the lore/game regardless of what kind of fan they are! Being able to appeal to various types of fans - from simple happy shipper people to deep dive lorediggers is the mark of the coolest games!

I love almost everything about Undertale as a game on its own. The music, the art and especially the characters and how they interact. They made me feel at home. Undertale means a huge amount to me. (I even got a tattoo of the castle when you and MK walk together!) The fandom helped keep the game alive all these years, with all of its AUs. Although personally, I always enjoyed AUs that kept characters as close to the classic material as possible (dancetale, outertale) I do appreciate the creativity of the fandom. They almost created entirely new stories with new characters of their own! If it weren't for those people, the Undertake fandom would have probably not been as active as it is now. I do feel like we're getting a resurgence of classic content now too! (In 2021)

the mystery. toby fox refused to give answers to anything and i think thats very sexy of him.

I just feel guilty for liking it so much when I'm in my 30's. But I recently got diagnosed with ASD, so I guess it explains things a bit. Many ppl consider Papyrus to be neurodivergent, and some adult fans are too, so seeing that makes me feel a bit better.

i think about "Despite everything, it's still you" everyday of my life.

I like how it's just as funny as it can be serious. All routes are this way. I laughed as much as I cried when I played the Pacifist route and then once I opened the game again and Flowey was telling me to let them be happy, I immediately turned off the game. I somehow felt bad.

The Found Family Trope

The True Pacifist Ending is just...man. And the fanworks about saving everyone even when the game doesn't let you? MANNNNNN

I think what I like the most about Undertale is how the music attaches you to the story. They're simple melodies that stick with you throughout the whole game, and they can remind you of both good and bad times.

there's honestly a LOT to love about this game, but i think one of my favorite things about it is just how many lgbt+ characters there are??? i can think of alphys, undyne, frisk, chara, mettaton, napstablook, monster kid, asgore, mad mew mew, the dress lion, the royal guards, and arguably even papyrus off of the top of my head, but im sure i'm forgetting a few from just undertale alone (there's even MORE in deltarune)!! it's practically unheard of to see so MANY from just one source, especially during its heyday in 2015-16. hell, you can't even GET the true pacifist ending without helping two gay couples hook up. it's really nice to see all of them being accepted for who they are and not judged for their sexuality or gender, at least in-canon.

[Image description: A wordcloud in the shape of the capitalized word UNDERTALE. The text is white on a black background, and uses the font found in the game. Some of the most visible words are: Game, Love, Music, Life, AU, Store, Friend, and Feel, which represent the most common words in the essays people wrote about their love for the game. End of ID]

[simonalkenmayer]

I dont mean to be impolite, and I'm not sending this as an attack by any means, but since you're aware of the term 'narc abuse' contributing to the stigma of NPD, why do you prefer to use that term rather than using the term 'emotional abuse' (which 'narc abuse' is most often described). You agreed with the anon proposing there is no alternative when there is: emotional abuse. I dont understand. It's literally emotional abuse. :(

As a comparison, I, as a schizospec person, would be hurt and most definitely be aware of it being a contribution to stigma, if someone called emotional abuse perpetuated by a schizospec person, 'schizo abuse' or 'schizophrenic abuse' or something alike; as both Schizophrenia and NPD are highly stigmatized, I made that comparison. I'm not sure why you'd be content with using such a term. I'm not really... upset, mind you, I'm detatched... but awfully confused. (Especially at the mindset behind this & your actions, haha, social skills are not my forté)

By the way, when did the experiment end and what did you do with the data? And, what now? What comes of everything? I recall surveys being sent out at one point.

Take care,

Emily

Emily, is it?

Please scroll back and view the discourse for the last few days. You know…the discourse to which you’re replying, I make my point very clearly in every single post on the topic. Strange that you didn’t catch it.

Here it is again: emotional abuse is a very broad term for an entire array of behavior patterns. Narcissistic abuse is a specific pattern of both emotional and potentially physical abuse. Emotional abuse is not specific enough. If we want to stop the thing, we must name it, and in the case of narcissists, they like to conceal their actions and deny treatment.

One facet of both NPD and narcissistic behavior, is that they refuse to take accountability for the outcomes of their behavior—behaviors that can only be treated if recognized. So by calling it emotional abuse, you’re in fact, playing directly into their version of events and supporting their delusions that they are not responsible. It negates their culpability for their specific pattern of behavior. It feeds into their poor mental health.

When it comes to mental health, there is a line in the sand. Narcissists are recognized by the harm they do. A man can beat his wife because he is mentally ill. Doesn’t make the action acceptable. If we call him a wife beater, are we stigmatizing his mental illness or are we naming his actions and forcing him to take accountability? Are we going to pat him on the head and say “it’s alright, your illness did it to you”? No. We are going to call his abuse what it is, and recognize that as a society, negative behaviors ought to have a negative stigma attached.

Narcissists play games. They love to try and get their victims to trip up or second guess themselves. Gaslighting and manipulating the truth are one of their most favored types of abuse. Like this carefully constructed ask, for example, containing careful clues as to how you missed my point the first ten times (“whoops I’ve been gone! What happened to the surveys? My heavens when did you end the experiment that you’ve been talking about ending since March of last year! *gasp*). This ask, written ostensibly by someone who cares so very deeply about this issue and my opinion on it, using sympathetic language and a personal story about how their own very different mental illness is stigmatized—something that has nothing to do with this particular issue—just pops into my ask box after somehow completely ignoring the point I have made in every single post on this issue, that asks me the same question again, like someone trying to bait me into “slipping up” or someone who wants to mitigate the abuse that narcissists do. This ask which just so happens to have appeared in my ask box after both Izzy and an “anonymous proxy server” visit my blog, go to the main page directly, and then click my ask box link.

Fascinating coincidence.

Narcissistic abuse is a specific thing. Social media creates a popularity culture, this combined with anonymity creates an ideal circumstance for narcissism to evince itself. Narcissists often evidence superficial charm and charisma and flourish in social media environments, and so often, the abuse that appears in online space matches narcissistic abuse patterns extremely easily.

Case in point, Emily. Case in point.

[mercurygray]

Vikings: Valhalla Fanfic Preferences

A couple of months ago I put out a question about Vikings Valhalla fans and what they want to read. @vikingstrash ran me up a little Google poll and I am circling back to share some results!

I feel like I should start this by saying that I'm not a statistician or a data scientist - I'm just someone who likes graphs. The last time I did this I got strongly chastised for shoddy methodology, so, in the interest of full disclosure - there wasn't any methodology. We asked some questions. We got some answers. I did some math.

I got 37 responses to the survey - so, not a huge sample size, but enough to start seeing a couple of patterns.

I started this project with a question - what do you want to read? And I got what I think are some interesting answers.

Now, we should state that people start reading what's in front of them, and that can shape their choices and desires for more of a thing BUT - I asked this question to prove a point, and I think I've done that in two ways, which I'll get to at the end.

Ship Types: 86% of respondents wanted to see F/M ships, 27% want F/F ships, 24% want M/M Ships, 29% want Multi ships (which we realize can mean different things to different people) and 2.7% (or exactly one respondent) expressed that they have a preference for no ship at all, and would prefer Gen fic, which I respect. 21% of respondents gave multiple answers - meaning that they don't have a strong preference between one type of ship or another. What does this mean? There's an audience for literally everything, and audiences for different things overlap a little bit. Just because you write something new or different doesn't necessarily mean your existing followers are going to hate it!

Types of Pairings: On a similar note, 62.2% read fic with original characters, 43% read reader insert fic, and 64.9% read fic with only canon characters. 60% of people read only one type of fic - but 40% of people read multiple types.

Favorite Characters: When asked what characters people were interested in, of the 19 named in the poll, 18 of them got at least one respondent each. (There was also 1 write in candidate with a 'just kidding' note.) What this tells me is that someone out there is interested in everyone on this show - there is an audience for fic about those background characters as well as those with lots of votes. Top characters by interest are Harald (75.7%), Emma, (73%) Canute (67.6%) and Freydis (56.8%). 89% of respondents (that's 35 of them) wrote down 3 or more characters as favorites - and there's no one single permutation of characters in those datasets - they show up in different groupings.

Favorite Ships: When asked about favorite ships, 7 respondents (8%) couldn't pick a favorite and wrote in multiples, and 3 people said they had no favorite ship at all. Top ships were Emma/Canute (35%) Freydis/Harald (21%) and Godwin/OC, which was the next most mentioned ship with 4 responses, or 10%. (At the two people who namedropped my OC for that last question - thank you, your check is in the mail.) The answers to this question FASCINATED me. I thought for sure we would see more M/M ships, based on the answers to the first question, but not so. 3 respondents specifically asked for reader fic ships. 7 said OC ships were a favorite. One person literally said "I'll read anything" to the last question.

So where's all this going? The "I'll read anything" answer.

If you write it, someone will come. I think this data pretty positively proves that there's an audience out there willing to give just about anything a chance. If you've got an idea for something - give it a try! Someone out in the universe may enjoy it, and hopefully you'll have a little bit of fun writing it.

Second thing, and this one is a little tricky: people may not know what they want until you give it to them. I didn't ask for anyone to write my OC's name in, and here we are. I don't know if the other two people who responded with Godwin/OC are talking about my OC, or some yet unnamed OC, but the possibility for more is there. (Maybe they HATE my fic and they want someone else to do better! We may never know…)

All this to say - I believe in you, and I believe whatever you want to contribute will be enjoyed by someone. Have fun!

[notanotherinfjblog]

Submitted my survey just now, I’m an enfj and probably the most recent one (doubt there are too many recent enfjs that would be a strange coincidence), my results interesting in any capacity or naw?

Oh crap, I've completely forgotten about the survey. Thanks for the reminder!! I haven't looked at it for almost a year now, I think, cause the data I got back then wasn't exactly balanced, so I just kept waiting for more participants. For instance, 109 people have participated so far. 31 of those are INFJs. You were the 3rd ENFJ in total. The most contributing sensing type so far has been ISTP with as many as 5 participants. But hey, at least I've gotten at least one participant of each type now, so that's definitely an improvement to last year. Also, I remember being a bit discouraged back then by some results since I set up some questions that I thought were mutually exclusive (e.g. "which types do you feel an instant connection with because you can easily follow each other's thought processes" versus "which types feel completely foreign to you since you can never really understand where the other person is coming from") and several people answered those questions exactly the same, which honestly left me quite dumbfounded. I'll have to decide later how to deal with those participants.

Your specific results specifically don't strike me as odd, but any result is interesting. Now that my awareness of the survey has reawakened (thanks again), I might look into the overall results in more detail some time. I'll probably only be able to say anything about the types that I have an at least somewhat reasonable number of participants of though, which are INFJs, INFPs, INTPs and INTJs. What I'm also interested in, however, is analysing people's families' types. I mean, I have to take everyone's answers with a grain of salt since there is no way for me to verify that either the participants or their families are typed correctly, but that's all I have to go on. Maybe there really are some trends as to which types happen to marry each other more frequently and which types their children happen to be. One very noticeable trend here: the most common marriage recipe is that you take one introvert and one extrovert, one of which is a thinker and one of which is a feeler. Sometimes you get two feelers or two thinkers, but then the introvert/extrovert dynamic still stands. Likewise, sometimes you get two introverts or two extroverts, but then the feeler/thinker dynamic stays intact. I have literally never seen two people of the same type date each other, nor the same type occurring twice within the same nuclear family, which raises some existential questions because that means that we don't inherit our parents' brain activation patterns (since that's what cognitive functions really are), but they aren't nurture either or else we'd develop the same types as our siblings, which we don't. However, siblings do tend to have similar types, so there's definitely something fishy going on.

Sorry, I've written all this lot and still answered your question with just a single sentence. So here's one interesting point: I often find that we are a lot like our siblings, even when they use different functions than we do, but we still assimilate to each other to some degree and we can develop biases towards (or against? maybe? possibly?) their cognitive functions in other people. Your entire family consists of feelers and your sister is an ENFP, as you say, and it does look like you have a slight bias towards Fi and Ne in other people, but are also somewhat drawn towards NTs, which actually makes a lot of sense. Is that your impression as well? I can only guess from your answers, and I'm beginning to wonder if I should have asked more pointed questions in the survey, but that's a problem for another day.

[artificialqueens]

Hey darlings! Here are the results of the last survey. (Data here for the record.)

Question 1 and 2: In which inappropriate locations have you read/written both any fic and specifically smut?

Some of the "other" answers to regular fic:

in a car with my family, in a bed like with my friends,literally most places i have physically been

Im probably going to read some fanfiction at ny sisters hens night this weekend

the passenger seat, today while donating blood, my own prom, every single quinceañera

SHITTING . on da toilet

Some of the "other" answers to smut:

none i am 11 Haha

that one time I started to read ortegas smutty strictly au chapter while I was getting foils in my hair in the salon

Well I just started reading Galaticia in the middle of uni finale assignment presentations

Question 3: Tips to help the kids not get caught:

And some of the more entertaining and/or helpful answers (tw for (affectionate) slur):

YALL NASTIES (keep doing it tho)

idk i am child

Don't act suspicious, and if you write, create a separate google account for your write (aka dont write on your school office account because even though I didn't get caught I could have)

if someone asks what you're reading, just lean close to them and say "theres thirteen of them. Dead. In the creek."

Find a partner that doesn't share the same interests when it comes to fandom, rave about all the fanfic and watch them be confused and leave you alone after that when you're writing or reading :p

lower your brightness and close your mouth, you drooling fags

Thank you so much to anyone who took the survey! We got a great suggestion for the next one, so I'll post that soon. XOXOXO

[citrineghost]

100 Humans on Netflix

So there’s this neat Netflix Original show called 100 Humans. I immediately got interested in it because they take this group of various humans from different backgrounds, age groups, and so on, and they use them to conduct experiments to get answers to interesting questions.

So, right away I had concerns about this show because

If you know anything about data and statistical research, you know 100 people is a very small sample size and does not breed accurate results

However, I’m very curious and wanted to see what they came up with anyway. I watched all 8 episodes and, honestly, I enjoyed watching it for the most part. However, I have a LOT of issues with the show and how it was conducted and I want to list them out here.

If you’re interested in watching 100 Humans or have already watched it, please consider the following before taking any of the show’s data as fact.

100 people is a very small sample size. This is because, the more people you have, the more weight each increment in your percentages has. With 100 people, each person represents 1 entire percent. That’s a lot. That means even a few people giving incorrect answers, having off-days, or giving ridiculous results (such as you can see in the spiders georg meme), can sway the entire result of an experiment into unreasonable territory. This is why most scientific studies attempt to get data from many hundreds or even thousands of people. The bigger the sample size, the more accurate it is to the entirety of the world.

I’ll put the rest under the cut because it gets long

The 3 hosts, who I’ll refer to as the scientists (regardless of if they actually are, because I’m not sure and don’t feel like googling it) repeatedly make false statements. For example, in one episode, they told their humans to “raise your hand if you believe you’re less bigoted than the average person here,” to which 94 people raised their hands. One of the scientists then made the statement, “If that were true, it would mean only 6% of Americans are bigoted.” This statement is entirely false. The only way to actually determine a true meaning to that would be to determine at what percentage of bigotry you are considered a real bigot. You also must consider that believing you’re more bigoted than other people in a small group, who you already have an impression of, is not necessarily indicative of how you feel you measure up to America as a whole. Anyway, I could go on and on. The only way to accurately summarize the results of that question would be to say that 44% of the humans had an inflated sense of righteousness or something of the sort.

The 3 scientists, both in person and in narration, for the sake of entertainment (if that’s what you call it) continually made “jokes” that poked fun at different groups, implied men are shit, etc. Maybe that’s fun for some people, but the kind of jokes they were making to amp up the hilarity of their host personas was genuinely just uncomfortable and made me feel even more like they couldn’t be trusted to go about unbiased research.

The scientists continually drew conclusions where the results should have been labeled inconclusive

The scientists made blanket statements about certain groups based on 1 element of research that would not stand up to further evaluation. For example, when explaining that ~93% (i think it was about that number) of Americans have access to clean, drinkable, tap water and yet some large number of single use bottled waters are sold every year, one scientist said it was because people believe bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water. I am going to do my next survey on this to see if my own perception is flawed, but I simply don’t believe that all of the people who buy bottled water do so because they think its cleaner than “tap” (as if all tap is the same.) I know there have been studies about people drinking unlabeled bottled water and tap water and not being able to tell the difference, but this neglects to account for the fact that different houses pipes can affect the taste of the tap water running through them, people can use disposable bottles of water for certain activities or events too far away from tap for people to refill their reusable bottles easily, and so so so much more. Anyway, it just really bothers me to see “scientists” making these kinds of generalizations when they’re the ones whose results we’re supposed to trust.

The show was incredibly cisnormative. There was an entire episode based on comparing men and women that made me extremely uncomfortable with its division of people by men and women. There was the implication that all men have penises and all women have vaginas. There were implications that reproduction is a necessity in picking a partner. It was just a shitshow. There was one comment by one subject who asked, when being told to separate by men and women, “What if I’m transgender?” Obviously I can’t say for sure, but this person didn’t appear to be transgender and the sort of tone it was asked in makes me think it was literally something they asked him to say in order to get inclusivity points with the viewers and to “prove” that they’re not transphobic by having them divide up, because they said to go to the side you identify with. This whole thing is a) harmful to nb folks who would not have had a side to go to and b) completely negating the fact that the way we were socialized can have an effect on our social responses. That means that for a social experiment, a trans person could sway the results of one side due to their upbringing and the pressures society put on them before/if they don’t pass. This is all assuming they had any trans people there, which is potentially debatable.  I also take issue with this entire fucking episode because just, the amount of toxicity in proving one sex is better than the others is really gross and actually counterproductive to everything feminist and progressive. Not to mention, them implying that they’re trying to support trans people only to reinforce the notion that a trans man is inherently lesser for being a man when even prior to hatching, he would have also been force fed propaganda and societal pressure implying he’s less than for supposedly being a woman is really gross and makes me angry. The point of what I’m saying is that it’s actually not woke to hate men as a way of bringing women up because there are men who are minorities who are being hurt by the rise of aggression being directed at them for their gender. Anyway enough about that.

The tests drew false conclusions because they did not account for how minorities adapt to a world that’s not made for them. This is specifically directed at the episode where subjects were asked to match up 6 people into couples. There were 3 women and 3 men and the humans were asked to put them together into pairs. they could ask the people 1 question each but then had to match them up with only that information. The truth is, the people brought in were 3 real life couples already, which the humans didn’t know until after they matched them. The couples were m/f, m/m, and f/f. I think that’s great, but the problem is, literally none of the humans asked any of them their sexuality as their question and most people didn’t even consider they could match up same-sex people. One girl even thought that they had told her to make m/f pairings, even though they didn’t.  The scientists concluded from the experiment that the humans have a societal bias toward people, and assume they’re all straight, even if they, themselves, are not straight. I personally believe that was the wrong conclusion to draw. You could see some of the queer humans were shocked that they hadn’t considered some of the pairings might be gay. But, I don’t think it’s because they believe everyone they meet is straight, I believe this says more about what they expected from the scientists themselves. If someone is in a minority and they go to do something organized, like a set of experiments, they are going to be judging the quality and setup of the experiments by those designing them. I feel that the lack of consideration that the couples might be gay has a lot more to do with queer people having adapted to a world where queers are rarely involved or included in equal volume to the cishets. The queer humans taking part in the experiment and failing to guess gay couples shows that they have adapted to a world where they are excluded rather than a belief that every random person that they meet is straight. My point is further supported by an expert they had on the show who explained that, statistically, it was entirely likely that they were all straight and that even queers will account for being minorities by going with what’s most likely. The truth is, we are surrounded by a whole lot of straight people. It makes sense to assume only 6 people are all straight and that, if any aren’t, they may be bi.

The scientists frequently broke an already small sample size into even smaller groups. The group was very frequently broken in half, in thirds, or into sets of 10 people. These sample sizes tell us almost nothing actually conclusive. 

The experiments/tests frequently were affected by peoples abilities, unrelated to what was being tested. For example, one test that was broken down into 6 people and 6 control people competing at jenga was meant to show whether needing to pee helps or hurts your focus. first of all, sample sizes of 6 are a fucking joke. Second, this completely ignores these 6 people’s actual ability to play Jenga. If someone sucks at jenga with or without needing to pee, them losing Jenga when they need to pee says exactly fuck all about whether needing to pee affected their focus. They should have tested people’s Jenga skills beforehand, counted the amount of moves they made before the tower fell, and then did it again after hours of not peeing to compare their results. This test made no logical sense at all.

The scientists ignored the social effect of subjects knowing each other as well as duration of events during their last experiment. They were testing to see if people with last names near the end of the alphabet get a shittier deal because they go last in everything where things are done by name order. They tested this by doing a fake awards ceremony where they gave out some 30 awards to people, gauging the applause to see whether the people at the end got less hype and therefore felt worse about themselves than those in the beginning who got the fresh enthusiasm of the audience. the results showed that the applause remained fairly consistent throughout the awards. The issues with this test are numerous, but here are the three I take most issue with. 1) the people here all got to know each other very well over the week it took to make the show. People who know each other and have become friends are much more likely to cheer for each other with enthusiasm, regardless of how long it’s been. On the other hand, polite applause from a crowd at, say, a graduation, where you are applauding people you don’t know, WILL start off more raucous and grow very quiet except for individual families near the end. 2) the duration of the test was a half hour, which is not very long at all and doesn’t say much to test the limits of enthusiasm. Try testing the audience at a graduation with a couple hundred graduates that also involves the time it takes to walk all the way up to a stage a hundred feet away, accept a diploma, and then wait for the next person. These kinds of events take hours and nobody keeps up their enthusiasm that long unless they’re rooting for someone in particular. 3) this study tested only one of many many ways name order affects a person. Cheering and applause is only one factor. It does not take into account people having their resumes looked at in alphabetical order and therefore people at the beginning of the alphabet being picked before anyone ever looks at a W name’s resume. It doesn’t take into account a small child’s show and tell day being at the very end of the school year, after 6 other people have brought in the same thing they planned to. No one cares about their really cool trinket because they’ve seen a bunch like it already. This test doesn’t take into account how many end-of-the-alphabet people just get straight up told, “we ran out of time. maybe next time,” when next time doesn’t really exist. I feel genuinely bad for the girl who suggested this experiment because the scientists straight up said something akin to, “lmao her theory was bs ig /shrug” even though it was their own shitty research abilities that led to their results.

They did one experiment intending to see how many people have what it takes to be a “hero.” The request for this test was made by someone curious about the effect of adrenaline and if it really works how some people say. The scientists thought it an adequate method to determine an answer by testing their reflexes with a weird crying baby sound and then dropping a doll from above while they were distracted with answering questions. The scientists looked up before the doll dropped to indicate a direction of attention. While this does give some answers about peoples intuition, reflexes, and ability to use context clues, its entirely an unusual situation, makes no sense in reality, fails to take adrenaline into consideration literally at all, and has a lot more to do with chance. The person dropping the doll literally couldn’t even drop it in the same place from person to person. Some got it dropped into their lap and others almost out of arm’s reach. This, like a few of the other mentioned experiments, was during the last episode, which felt lazy and thrown together last minute, with very little scientific basis to any of the results. The last episode was weak and disappointing overall. 

One of the big issues I have with this show is actually their repeated use of the same group. They said at the end that they had done over 40 tests. Part of doing studies is getting varied samples of people in order to get more widespread results. Using the same 100 or less people (already a tiny sample) repeatedly is a terrible research method. You’re no longer studying humans at large. You’re studying these specific humans. You can’t take the same group with the same set of inadequacies, the same set of skills, and the same set of biases and then study them extensively and in many different ways like this. Your results are inherently skewed toward these specific people and their abilities. I expected them to at least get a new group each episode - every 5 or so studies - but no. They keep the same group all week, which makes the entire season. This is inexcusable in research imo.

The next issue is contestant familiarity. The humans all getting to know each other is great, socially, but it also destroys the legitimacy of many of the studies that involve working together or comparing yourselves and your beliefs

Many tests had issues with subject dependency. One study, meant to compare age groups and their ability to work together to complete the task of putting together a piece of ready to assemble furniture had each group with members they relied on entirely. A few people built the furniture while one person sat across the room, looking at instructions with their back to the others. They had to relay the instructions through a walkie talkie to another contestant and that other contestant had to relay it to the people they’re watching build the chair. You cannot study a group’s ability to build something with instructions by the ability of one single person to communicate. You’re testing that individual and the rest of them on two completely different capabilities. One person fails at being able to communicate and everyone else becomes unable to build the furniture. Even if everyone else in the group is more effective than all the other groups at building ready to assemble furniture, they might end up falling in last because of their shitty communicator who is literally not able to convey simple instructions. (yes, this actually happened in the test)

One test judged the subjects at their speed of getting ready, to see if men or women are faster at getting ready. While most elements of this test were just fine, the part I took issue with was that they did this test without regard to social convention. They told the subjects they were going on a field trip and to get ready by a certain time. Then, they gave them many things to get distracted by, like refreshments to pack with them, a menu to preorder lunch from, and so on.  The part that upsets me about this test is that they ignored social convention entirely, to the point that subjects were judged based on their conventional actions and expectations more than their actual speed at getting ready. The buses promptly shut their doors and left at the time they were supposed to but there was no final call to get on the buses. In general, when a group is to be taken somewhere by bus, there will be an announcement to load up and leave. You could clearly see many of the subjects were ready to go and were just standing around talking while they waited for fellow subjects to finish getting ready. I have no doubt that, if given a final call, most of them would have loaded up within a couple minutes. However, they were relying on the social convention of announcing departure and were therefore, left behind entirely (for a nonexistent field trip). These people who were left behind were counted as being late and not making the time cutoff. If one were to look at the social element of this situation, if everyone there believed there would be a warning before departure, the fact that 24 to 14 women to men were loaded onto the buses at departure doesn’t necessarily indicate the women were faster to get ready. It seems to me that it’s more likely to indicate anxiety at being late and a belief that they need not impede on anything lest they be reprimanded or have social consequences for taking too long - something women are frequently bullied for. There’s also the chance that many who boarded without final call are more introverted or antisocial. Plus, we can’t forget to include the people who have anxiety about seating. If someone is overweight, has joint pain, or has social anxiety, they will be more likely to board early to get a seat they feel comfortable in. If they had counted up all of the people socializing and waiting on the sidewalks nearby, they may have found that there were more men who were ready to board up at a moment’s notice. I’m not saying I think men are faster to get ready, I’m just saying that we can’t know based on who boarded without a final call. If people believe they will have a last minute chance to board, a large number of them will take the last few minutes to socialize with their new friends until they’re told they have to board. Therefore, this test cannot be considered conclusive without counting and including the people who were ready and not boarded as a third subset.

Honestly, I could go on and on about how sensationalist and unscientific this show is, but I just don’t have 6 more hours to contribute to digging up every single flaw with it. There’s A Lot.

My point is, if you feel like watching this show, which I don’t necessarily discourage inherently, I just beg you to go into it with a critical eye. Enjoy the fun of it and the social aspects, but please don’t rely on the information provided and please don’t spread it as fact, because it’s not.

It’s entertainment, not science.

[transienturl]

I’ve been thinking about making a separate 18+ sort of blog for a while, but... well, see, here’s the problem: the topic which this post is supposed to discuss is, obviously, at least adjacent to being nsfw, which would sort of imply that if I were to make one of those, it should go there, but the topic is also about what kind of content should or shouldn’t be corralled over there, and certain answers to that question would mean that this doesn’t qualify for that, in which case it would belong over here. Which is, to say the least, somewhat confusing.

Anyways, this post is ultimately quite safe, I think, so this readmore is really for length.

So the original thing I wanted to post was:

I wonder what the distribution and frequency/popularity of people’s sexual preferences/kinks are. It seems kind of absurd, actually, that this kind of data isn’t public. And moving one step backward from that: does anyone even know? Like, similar to the impossible-to-answer-with-accuracy question of even roughly what portion of the population would, with some basic awareness and the magic removal of society’s discriminatory history, identify as straight, is there a single human in the world who can point to some data they collected and estimate with some confidence (and some methodology-based caveats) how much of the population is into... literally anything?

It seems... surprising to me that the first few pages of google results didn’t have anything, I guess is my point. I don’t expect big sample sizes, rigor, a sampling of any general sort of population, whatever. But, like, in a world where Facebook can tell with remarkable precision not only whether you’ll vote, but what specific thing could be shown to you in order to change that... shouldn’t someone have at least a vague idea of, say, what portion of people like sex toys at all, and thus how big the market could be for them? Or... know anything about sex toys at all? Hm, I guess that second part is the real issue: discomfort with talking about this stuff due to the sexuality taboo aside, people probably have no idea what their feelings on a lot of what would be in one of these hypothetical surveys is, and might not have even heard of plenty of them, and so the data might be mostly terrible and so it might be incredibly difficult to justify doing. I guess that would make sense.

Anyways, do you think this discussion should be on a separate blog? I can imagine a whole hierarchy of potentially useful opt-ins. Like...

One: should this blog never mention sex existing? Answer: no, that ship has sailed. This is a personal blog, anyways, and given that I think sex is a positive thing and I don’t post anything of general public value here, if someone needs to not follow me because this is where I say I support comprehensive sex education, that’s totally fine.

Two: should this blog be reasonably safe for the sex-repulsed? (I think I follow someone who has mentioned it, but I don’t remember who and I don’t thiiiink they follow me...?) I don’t actually know anything about being sex-repulsed, so I don’t actually know what does and doesn’t cross the line for the median person who identifies as such. If you are, and are at all interested in discussing it, I would be quite interested!

Distinction two here is, of course, the one under which I dunno if the above paragraphs should be opt-in. It would be somewhat easier to talk about this general-topic sort of stuff if I knew the audience had opted in, simply because I could use specific examples for things. but this continues:

Three: should this blog be limited to, in short, discussions like this one that would make just as much sense if I myself were asexual. Basically, should one avoid being horny on main, as the kids say. I am personally totally comfortable reading my followed users’ hypothetical nsfw thirst tweets - er, reblogs? - but I imagine lots of people are not, especially when said followed users are strangers, and of my 200 followers, I know like... 3 of you? So, I’d lean towards “yes, make a sideblog to discuss sex in the first person, no matter how vague.”

Four: should this blog avoid personal details that it would be at least arguably kind of weird for IRL friends to know abou- YES OBVIOUSLY

So, here is the problem that I have: if I actually do want to talk through all of those categories (e.g. the end of those two paragraphs, I could continue with “for example, this is what I’m into and I have no idea how rare it is, but let’s speculate”), then to make all of those opt-ins separate, I would need 2-3 sideblogs? And that just seems patently ridiculous. I recognize that I’m clearly overthinking this, considering that of the 200ish followers I have, I’d guess without evidence that all but ~30 are defunct blogs, maybe 5 of you read the multiparagraph text posts, and somewhere between zero and two people thus care about exactly how much explicit shit you do or don’t know about me? But obviously I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable by accident.

Eh, y’know what, screw it: transienturl2.tumblr.com. If you’re interested, head over there and we can work the details out, how’s that? (And if you’re not interested, but read all the way down here, I’d love a reply or like or w/e just noting that, too!) Hm, I really didn’t think this through, did I.

[tubaterry]

“The military would just refuse to follow orders”

It’s a pretty common response to “fascism needs to be actively fought.” Comforting, naive and mostly wrong, but definitely common.  I’m in the US - I’ve heard it before but this is my first time hearing it in our current national context. Stewing on it led to a very uncomfortable moment.

See, I was in the Marine Corps (the most hypermasculine of the US armed forces) for four years.  I was single with no kids, so I lived on base through most of my enlistment - I spent more or less 24/7 with the people in question here.  Short of still being in and/or doing widespread surveys, I’m pretty confident in my judgement of the kinds of people in the military; the typical mindsets, habits, and social structures.

On twitter I tossed out sardonically that at least based on my marines’ facebook posts, “The military would just refuse to follow orders” isn’t a platitude I can put any stock in.  But maybe it’s worth digging in and thinking about it outside of my own experience.

What kind of people join the military?

Well, all stripes.  The US military is “all-volunteer”, meaning we have no conscription - you only sign up if you ‘want’ to. In that context, there are two main groups of people signing up: self-selection and circumstantial pressure.  In my intuition (ie no data, just going on personal experience) I’d guess that the “pressured by circumstances” group is significantly larger.  That group is primarily defined by a class thing - last I checked, military representation more or less matched the demographics in the vicinity of the poverty line.

The second group are self-selectors.  They, each for their own reasons, tend to have joined up with some kind of purpose in mind.  Sometimes it’s specific training (aviation people especially), sometimes it’s family tradition.  Sometimes it’s nationalism.  Sometimes it’s extremists using it as a legitimate (legally speaking) path to getting proven combat training.

What kind of people turn it into a career?

This, I think, may be the more important part - beyond just the on-the-ground practical decisions, leaders define culture and values. Just like anywhere else, and regardless of an inclusive or exclusive style, leaders attract and keep people who work well with them.  And there are good leaders and bad leaders who have all sorts of worldviews.

Generally speaking though, the people who succeeded in my neck of the Marine Corps and stuck around were the ones who kept their boat-rocking to a minimum.

So, who makes up the military? It’s mostly made of the same status quo custodians as in the rest of the country, with a notable overrepresentation of right-wing types and people from rough-to-desperate backgrounds.  Then when you consider especially how much of the country is at least defacto segregated - This is great white nationalist recruitment fodder

But white nationalists aren’t a majority.

You’re absolutely correct.  And honestly I’m veering off-topic with that - it’s important to remember that they’re still there and their ranks are growing, but we can safely assume those groups are gonna be gleefully ‘just following orders’.

That’s a lot of preamble, get to the point.

Fair. It’d be disingenuous for me to take literally “The military would just refuse to follow orders.”, the core idea if you take the time to work out the implications of the statement is “Enough of the military would refuse to commit atrocities that their orders couldn’t be carried out”.  This deserves counter-questioning:  

What constitutes enough? and How many would refuse?

Well, now that I’m here I don’t have a hard answer.  However, I think history points to the answer to the first question being significantly higher than the answer to the second.

Maybe most wouldn’t actively participate.  But that’s not the same as having anyone actively stop a war crime.

When we murdered hundreds of civilians in My Lai (serious trigger warning here for multiple types of atrocities), one person did anything to stop it.  (If you can stomach the linked article, note the instagator of the massacre used the “just following orders” excuse.) The one person who stepped in was a helicopter pilot who put himself and his crew between the murderers and the civilians being targeted, ordering his crewmembers to open fire on the US troops if they didn’t stand down.

Wounded Knee massacre: no intervention

Sand Creek massacre: no intervention

Ludlow Massacre: no intervention

Highway of Death (First Iraq war): No intervention

Abu Ghraib: No intervention

And just for a direct comparison with today: We killed 1,800 Japanese-Americans in our internment camps.  Do not expect anyone in the military to stop us this time either.

“The military would just refuse to follow orders”

No.  No we wouldn’t.  And as someone who knows people in positions where the they may be confronted with this same decision... I hate that in order to type this out honestly, I have to say that I expect all of them to make one of the wrong choices.

[rubyredsparks]

Blossoming Souls Ch. 12

Relationship(s): Romantic Logince, Moxiety; Platonic every other relationship

“Tags” for the whole story: morally grey!deceit, Deceit, Remus, Thomas as a character, Romance, Minor violence, someone’s potty mouth, Foul language, Minor homophobia (it’s not that bad), Miscommunication (this one is though), Friendship

Chapter Summary: The aftermath of the poisoning.

Roman knew the night had been going too easy. Too safe. Of course, something like this had to happen. Had to happen while he was in the middle of courting and bonding with his Intended.

And it was a horrible thought because this was his Father. His Father who cared for him. Who raised him alone when-- when Papa and Remus disappeared.

Not dead. Never dead. If he admitted they were dead, then he accepted that they were gone. And they can’t be gone. They just-- can’t.

And, yes, he may have been blinded slightly by his own quickening heartbeat and flushed cheeks. And maybe he had revealed too much to Prin- to Logan. But they were intended for each other after all.

The tourney this weekend was supposed to be his something grand! To prove himself to the Prince. To prove that he would take care of and protect him. And to show that he was worthy of Logan’s hand.

And yes, it was a bit outdated. But tradition was tradition.

Something small, something grand, something precious for his hand.

He had been having fun. Prince Logan had amazed him, taking the first step in their courting. And Roman had wanted to show something grand during the tourney, to show that he accepted the proposal, to remind everyone that Prince was his.

But then something worse came crashing down. Yanked the carpet from right beneath his feet. Gave him the worse sense of vertigo ever.

He couldn’t believe that his Father, someone that he thought would be untouchable, someone invincible, poisoned.

He might lose the only other person he had left.

Roman felt like crying. His stomach was sick, filled with lead and gravel and his mouth tasted like bile.

His legs burned as he stormed through the hallways of the castle, no doubt bumping into several guards and servants. He could hear voices, but they were muffled, distorted, in his ears.

Each step forward felt like lead in his boots and nails in his soul. He had no idea where Logan was, no idea if the Prince had followed him or not.

Since he heard the news, Roman only had tunnel vision. Get to his Father, see that he was well, then kill the bastard that tried to assassinate his family.

He slammed the door open, a rush of medical healers steering clear as he stomped toward his Father. Virgil was standing next to the bedpost, face pale and gaunt, expression sunken, and eyebags dark.

His Father was resting on his bed, sweating and pale, a washcloth resting on his forehead. He had been changed into more comfortable clothing, and he didn’t look so bad. But appearances could be deceiving.

“Virgil. What happened. How is he,” Roman asked, unable to help the biting tone. Virgil, for his sake, didn’t comment on the tone.

“Stable, better than he was before.” Virgil scrubbed a hand down his face tiredly. “He threw up multiple times, expelling a lot of bile. Healer Brian says that that was good. That he was expelling the poison along with it. I’ll let the Head Healer speak more.”

Virgil waved a hand at a healer, a mousy young man with unruly brown hair squeaked and stepped forward. “Y-yes. Lord Advisor Virgil was correct in that regard. His Majesty did the right thing in spitting the poison out. Otherwise, we might’ve been too late.”

Roman felt immense relief and dread at that news. Relief that his Father was going to be alright. Dread that he might had died within seconds if he hadn’t recognized something was amiss.

“His Majesty has to be kept under bed rest for at least three days.” The Healer continued to speak, consulting a clipboard as well as glancing between the Prince and the Advisor. “Other healers and myself will need to monitor him for the first two, and if His Majesty continues to improve, he should be up and about by the fourth.

“We’ve pumped his stomach, so all the poison should be out there by now. If not, the medicine should flush out any leftover toxins. There is also medicine that should stabilize and help his immune system fight the remaining side effects of the poison. So if he’s delirious, it’s the medicine at work. Other than that, His Majesty is going to be alright.”

Alright. Alright. His Father was going to be alright. He wasn’t dying, on the verge of death, or anything. He was going to be fine.

Roman could feel his knees nearly buckle in relief at that statement, and he could see Virgil let out a sigh of relief from the corner of his eye.

“Urgh.”

All eyes fell on the rapidly waking king in his bed. He thrashed slightly, moaning in pain. His eyes fluttered open, glazed and unfocused.

“What-- ugh- what happened?” The King croaked. “I feel like an elephant fell on top of my chest.”

“All normal reactions,” Healer Brian rushed to reassure when Virgil and Roman whirled worried eyes on him, Roman returning back to where Virgil stood.

“What do you remember, Majesty?” Virgil asked cautiously.

“You and the guard from Aowhea-- what was his name?--”

“Patton, your Majesty,” Virgil mumbled, ducking his head when Roman tried to meet his eyes.

“Ah, well you and Patton were flirting, and he mentioned some puns, and then scallops?”

“Well at least his memory hasn’t been affected," the Healer noted, scribbling down on his clipboard.

“Oh, I was poisoned!” Thomas tried to sit up, arm trying to lever himself up before he collapsed. Virgil and Roman rushed to either side to help him.

“Was a suspect apprehended?” the King asked once he was propped up in a seated position.

“No, your Majesty,” Virgil stepped up to answer. “No one caught sight of anything.”

“If I may, your Majesty,” Patton brought attention to himself, “I may have something.”

He and Virgil glanced a look at each other, until the King nodded. “Proceed.”

Patton looked uneasily at the healers, and Thomas caught sight of his gaze. “There’s no need to be worried, Patton. My healers can be trusted to be discreet.”

“If you’re sure,” Patton said. “The servant that brought you your food. I didn’t get a good look at him besides a look of green from his clothes and silver from his hair.”

“How’d you know it was a man? What if it was a girl?” Virgil asked.

If Patton looked like he was offended by the question, he didn’t show it. “From the stocky build of the person, to the height, it looked mostly like a man from a glance. Though I suppose, it could’ve been a woman or otherwise as well.”

“Let’s say that they’re genderneutal and be done with it.”

“As you will, Majesty. After you had spat the food out, I looked around, and there was this person who was watching you intently, as if they wanted to make sure that you swallowed what was given before vanishing in a second.”

“That could’ve been anyone though,” Virgil argued. “How do you know that it’s the assassin.”

Patton shook his head, “You didn’t see those eyes. They were wild, unhinged.”

“Well, that’s not much to go on,” Roman mused, thoughts running rampant in his head. “If the assassin’s profile was crazy looking eyes, who’s to say that they can’t pretend to have regular eyes if we manage to single them out.”

“Then we have nothing, no conclusive data or evidence. Only that the suspect worked in the kitchens and has possible crazy eyes,” Virgil concluded.

“Then there’s nothing we can do except wait for the next possible attack. Most likely at the tourney this weekend.” Thomas said thoughtfully.

“You want to continue with the tourney?” Virgil asked, bewildered. “You’ve literally just been poisoned.”

“Healer Brian says that I’ll be fine,” Thomas waved him off. “Besides the tourney is tradition. If we cancel it because of a small poisoning, the people will be terribly disappointed.”

“Small? Small?!” Virgil screeched, arms flapping in anger and disbelief. “In what way is a poisoning small, your Majesty, you almost died.”

“But I survived,” the King said.

Roman could see the resemblance in Father and son now. No wonder Virgil always said he had his hands full with the both of them.

“I’ll make sure you won’t the next time something like this happens!”

“Death threats to the king is treason, Virgil,” King Thomas said mildly.

Virgil fell silent, only the occasional death threat falling from his lips in a whisper. He scowled, “If you want the tourney to go on, then what day did you want it to be?”

“The same day it was before I got poisoned.”

“But that- that’s in two days!” Virgil exclaimed. “The healers said that you wouldn’t be allowed out of bed during then. And you can’t survey the tourney from your bed!”

“That’s why I won’t be,” the King said patiently. “Roman will.”

“What?!”

Both Roman and Virgil shouted the exclamation. Heads swiveling to stare at each other then the King in bewilderment and outrage respectively.

“You heard what I said,” King Thomas said to them calmly. “I think this will be a great opportunity for Roman to prepare for the crown.”

“But Father-!”

“Your Majesty-!”

“No exceptions.” The King cut them off before there were anymore loud protests. “My decision is final.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“I can still compete, right Father?” Roman piped up.

King Thomas’ eyes softened. “Of course, Roman. You’ll just need to judge a few of the competitions. The melee, the longbow, you know the ones. You can compete in the sword fights with the knights. However, you’ll be in charge of this event. Overseeing it, making sure that it runs smoothly, all that. With no complaints.”

Roman still looked put out but nodded his head in agreement.

“Virgil, you’ll be in charge of Roman. Make sure he stays on task and don’t let him sneak off.”

The Royal Advisor gave a rueful smirk, saluting with a roll of his eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Father!”

“Just making sure the tourney goes off well. It’s tradition, you know.”

Roman let out a grievous sigh as if it pained him to say the words. “I suppose I’ll make do with the Edge-visor working with me.”

Virgil flicked Roman’s forehead. “I’m in charge of you, brat.”

“Ow! Virgil~! Why’re you so mean to meeee?!” Roman wailed, hanging off of Virgil’s shoulders.

“I’ll make sure His Highness doesn’t blow anything up,” Virgil assured the King looking between the two of them in amusement.

Roman puffed up, unlatching from Virgil. “I’ll do my best, Father. You can count on me.”

King Thomas gave the two a congenial smile. “I’m sure you will. I’m going to fall asleep now.” And the King slumped back into bed, eyes shut and snoring.

Healer Brian rushed to the King’s side, checking his pulse and waving for a helper to come to him. “We’ll take it from here, your Highness, Lord Advisor. The medicine we gave him probably made him more tired than usual, especially after all that talking.”

Virgil nodded, “Nothing that was spoken in this room will be made known to the public. If anyone asks, tell them that the King has gotten a bad bout of food poisoning. It’s the closest thing to the truth. And we don’t need the people panicking because of unwarranted duress.”

“Yes, Lord Advisor,” sang the chorus of servants and healers in the room.

“Roman, we’ll have to make an official statement tomorrow morning,” Virgil continued. “We’ll put the public’s mind at ease and tell them about the tourney still going on. Hopefully that’ll appease them enough not to worry about the King.”

“Got it, Virge.”

“Now get out of my face, I know you wanna see Prince Logan as well. I’ll handle this. You can tell him, but only if you’re sure. I want to see you up and awake by the time the sun’s risen.”

Roman nodded eagerly before running out the door. Elation that his Father wasn’t going to die running through his veins.

Logan. That was right, he needed to get back to Logan. After beating a hasty retreat when he learned his Father was poisoned, he sort of left the visiting Prince there, hadn’t he?

That was not a point in his favour.

He needed to start planning his something grand at the tourney quick. Otherwise this courtship was going to be in ruins.

Masterpost | Previous | Next

[lhs3020b]

On Algorithms

Here’s a thought that occured to me the other night.

It’s no wonder that Tumblr’s algorithm is a fuck-up. Even if we assume good intentions (and I’m not sure that we should), what they were trying to do was impossible.

Essentially, they want a bot that can encompass the entirety of human sexual experience. That’s literally something that actual living, breathing humans can’t do. Just consider the “What, there’s a kink for that?” reaction that everyone on the Internet has had at some point. “Alexa, tell me if this is pron” sounds like a simple question, but it’s not. It’s arguably an infinite one. At what point can you absolutely say that a given image could never be pr0n to any living person anywhere? And would you want to bet your life savings on the possibility that there is no little sub-rosa Facebook com or group chat somewhere devoted to exactly this thing?

Tumblr!Staff are, quite simply, trying to program for the Moon on a stick.

Even a basic pr0n-algo, say one that restricts itself to tiddies, sausages and naughty nipples (whether female-presenting or otherwise) is a big ask. Consider what’s involved in identifying these things. Amongst other things, to identify something as (say) “a nipple”, your retina has to process a load of photons through at least four physiological filters (RGB cones and the brightness-activated rod-cells), then this has to go to your brain for interpretation. The brain has to take all this data and do things like edge-detection, form comparisons, pattern-matching, colour and tonal analysis, and then once all of that is done it’s time for things like context-interpretation, elimination of false positives and so on.

Computationally, this is a ludicrously-huge job. Bandwidth, signal processing, data analysis, availability of storage capacity - yep, we’ve got every single major software-development problem baked into this one right from the start. And probably other things I haven’t even thought of, as well.

Our brains can do this fast and (reasonably) reliably because they’ve had 3.5 billion years of evolution to optimise them for quick pattern-recognition.

I used to work with image analysis for a living - that’s literally what you do if you’re in observational astronomy. There was a day when we were genuinely convinced we’d found a brown dwarf that was moving fast enough that it was unbound to Milky Way’s gravity well. Imagine how exciting that was - a visitor! From outside the galaxy! That had been travelling through the void for untold billion years, until it just happened to pass through one of an automated sky survey’s cameras! You can imagine how fascinated we were - how could it have reached such a speed? Had a supernova spat it out like a pea in a pipe? Had it been accelerated by an interaction with binary black holes? Was it aliens? What could have happened?

Well, you know what it was? One of the raw images turned out to contain a hot pixel - that is, a bit of faulty electronics. That hot pixel had bled over a little into its neighbours, and in doing so it had distorted the centroid that we were using. The object wasn’t moving at any kind of unusual speed. In fact it was quite boring, and once the single dodgy pixel was factored out, the entire data-set was unexceptional. The object itself was so faint that there’s a plausible argument that it might just be a random background star - we couldn’t prove for a fact that it wasn’t. In the end, it never even got mentioned in my paper, except as a single entry in a catalog-table.

Tumblr, by contrast, thinks it’s a mass of hot pixels. Except as we know, probably the majority of them aren’t. From what we’ve seen, I’d be surprised if their algorithm is right even 50% of the time.

What Tumblr were trying to do - even the restricted version described above - sounds like at least a PhD thesis’s worth of work. At least one Phd project, probably several. I could imagine an entire university research group working on a project like that, I could imagine it taking 5-10 years and I could imagine it needing a budget that heads for six figures.

Apparently Tumblr spent barely six months on their algorithm.

They’ve asked for the Moon on a stick; what they got back was a pebble on a string, and they can’t tell the difference.

[xsparklingravenx]

Shadow Mine 4

Title: Shadow Mine

Fandom: Detroit: Become Human

Characters: Hank, Connor, Gavin

Rating: T

Word Count: 4,862 

Summary: Connor and Hank arrive at the crime scene, only to find Gavin Reed already investigating. As personalities clash and information is revealed, Connor realises that there may be more to this scene than meets the eye. With the pieces lining up for a potential tragedy, he'll have to act fast to make sure that no one is hurt, and keep himself out of danger in the meantime.

AO3

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

The drive to the crime scene was a quiet, tense thing.

The truth was, Connor enjoyed driving. Most cars nowadays were self sufficient in that they could drive themselves and make their own decisions, but Hank still drove an old fashioned manual thing that had probably been built in the 2020’s. While Hank’s shoulder was recovering, Connor had been given control temporary ownership of the vehicle, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to give it up when Hank recovered. There was a sense of freedom in being in control of a giant, metal, moving contraption, and Connor had to admit; he did feel a bit of thrill when he drove it slightly too fast.

He didn’t feel thrilled right now. In fact, he was mostly driving on auto-pilot, his processing power mostly focused on his thoughts for the case. Was this stress? Was he stressed? Ridiculous. It was ridiculous. The RK800 model didn’t get stressed. The RK800 model was meant for delicate situations that required the utmost calm, it was Cyberlife’s most advanced prototype, it was—

Another car pulled out too quickly in front of him, and he barely hit the breaks in time. “Woah, what the fuck was that, Connor?” Hank snapped. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left the drive. “You trying to cause a goddamn accident?”

Connor shook his head. “No. No, I wasn’t.”

“Sure about that? You’re too quiet. Don’t tell me you’re still upset because you couldn’t figure this case out with literally the bare minimum.”

“I’m not. Upset, I mean. I’m not upset.” Connor stared straight ahead at the road. He’d slipped back into his older self for a moment then, thinking of himself as an it instead of a he, as a machine instead of a deviant. If anything that only proved that he was stressed. If his hands hadn’t been on the wheel, he would have covered his face in embarrassment. All these very human feelings, and he didn’t know how to compute a single one of them.

“You know, Connor,” Hank said. “I’ve noticed something about you.”

Connor wasn’t sure if he liked the tone Hank was using. It was a little bit concerned, but there was irritation there too. He started monitoring Hank’s stress levels (mid-to-high) and in the background, he calculated the likelihood of him liking whatever came out of Hank’s mouth next.

Low. Nearly in the single digits low.

“You’re the worst fucking liar I’ve ever met.” Hank continued. “And I’ve had to interrogate some real idiots.”

As always, Connor’s statistical data had been spot on. “What? I haven’t lied to you.”

“And there it is again.” Hank laughed, a genuinely amused sound. “You know what a tell is? Of course you do. You interrogate people, you look for them yourself. Well, guess what Connor, you really must be human, ‘cause your tell is as fucking obvious as a doped up chicken.”

Connor didn’t know quite how to respond to that. He felt so entirely scrambled that he was certain some of his wires had to be crossed somewhere. “I see.” is all he managed, before he asked, “So what is my tell then?”

“Your LED flashes red for a second before you say it, you idiot.”

Connor winced. That was indeed obvious. “I see.” he said again. “That’s…interesting to know.”

“Anyway,” Hank said, “now you know I can read you like a book, dial it back on the crap. Stop beating yourself up over what you don’t know. I’m not those dipshits at Cyberlife, I don’t care if you can or can’t piece something together with scraps. You don’t have to impress me, Connor, I’m not going to switch you off and leave you somewhere if you don’t perform.

Connor drove the rest of the way there in stunned silence. Before, he’d always worked under the threat of deactivation if he didn’t complete his work to standard. So was that it? Was that the reason behind why he felt so knotted inside? Was it because he felt like he had already failed somewhere along the way? He thought of Hank being shot in a room while he was so far away, he thought of the promise he’d made to Clara, and wondered if Hank was right, if Hank had managed to figure it out before Connor had even started making connections.

Was it that he was scared of botching his mission directives?

The crime had occurred in an underground parking lot. When Connor pulled up, he was immediately greeted with the sight of Gavin talking with a man his scans identified as one Martin Decker, the dead android’s human partner. “For fuck’s sake,” Hank muttered under his breath as Connor killed the engine. “The hell is that asshole doing here? I thought Fowler was sending us specifically.”

Apparently not content with asking rhetorical questions, Hank threw the car door open with his good arm and went marching up towards Gavin immediately. Connor took a moment to canvas the scene, checking where the forensics team were already placing their markers and where the android’s body was, before deciding to follow. He too was interested in why Gavin had shown up. He’d already been out once this morning, but then again, so had Connor, and that hadn’t stopped the Captain requesting his presence either.

Gavin saw them over Decker’s shoulder, his expression turning sour as they approached. To his credit, though, he stayed professional. He finished his conversation with Decker, who looked distraught, before walking past him to meet them halfway.

“What the hell,” he said to them, his voice more a growl than anything else, “are you doing here?”

“Funny, was about to ask you the same fucking question.” Hank replied. “Fowler called me, said he needed the best on this case.”

“That motherfucker. He pulled me into the office when I got back and said the same crap.” Gavin’s eyes flicked between the two of them before finally settling on Hank. “What a joke this is. Send your plastic toy on his way to the dead android over there, and I’ll tell you what I got out of the cop.”

“Subtle as a fucking freight train, aren’t we Gavin?” Hank shot back. “Use some goddamn tact, I’m pretty sure from the look on Decker’s face that he valued his partner, so tone your down your bullshit on this.”

Gavin crossed his arms. Connor stepped out in front of Hank, tired of the back-and-forth-arguing that was getting them nowhere fast. “Detective, it would be beneficial to all of us if I heard what was said as well. I need more information if I am to accurately work through this case, so please, feel free to share what you’ve heard anytime soon. We’re both waiting.”

Gavin looked like he wanted to argue the point, but Connor had already determined that the likelihood of him doing so was incredibly low. The man was a detective; despite his argumentative nature and his inherent dislike of androids, it still took a great level of skill and dedication to reach his rank. He wouldn’t compromise an investigation, Connor knew, out of straight up pettiness.

“You don’t know when to stop pushing, do you? Swear to God, you pieces of junk are more trouble than you’re worth.” Gavin clicked his tongue. “Decker and his partner, the PC200, he called him Zack, were out on patrol when they heard reports of an injured android, a female AX400, in the area. The two of them apparently split, the PC200 checking down here while Decker surveyed the perimeter. They hadn’t been apart long when Decker heard gunshots, three of them. By the time he got here, the PC200 had shut down and it was over.”

He laughed at the end of his recap, a bitter sound. Connor couldn’t identify the emotion behind it. “Looks like our cop-killer friend is getting sloppy already, only two victims in. Plenty of people saw it to call it in, which is why Decker and his partner responded to the call. Least we know it’s a female android now. Really narrows it down.”

“I thought Fowler said that the cause of the shut down was because the AX400 tore out the victim’s power-pump-part-thing.” Hank pointed out. Connor resisted the urge to tell him the correct name, knowing he would forget it immediately anyway. “Why the hell would there have been gunshots?”

Gavin jerked his thumb towards Zack’s body. “Yeah, the pump was cause of death. Doesn’t mean that the AX400 didn’t pull the same shit that it pulled with Glennister this morning. Three shots, one to the leg, two to the chest. We’ve got one sick piece of plastic on our hands.”

Gavin’s voice was beginning to grate on Connor’s audio processors. Time to leave. “I’m going to go and analyse the scene, Hank.” he said, heading towards where Zack’s body had been left. Yellow markers pinpointed pools of thirium and the torn out pump regulator, but other than that, there didn’t seem to be a great deal of evidence to go around.

He shifted uncomfortably as he got to the body. It felt like someone was staring at him, but when he turned around to check back on Gavin and Hank, both of them were caught up in a heated debate. Nothing. Must have just been nothing, a blip in his sensors, something to do with deviancy that he didn’t understand.

Kneeling down to Zack’s body, Connor let his eyes pick out what would be necessary to the investigation. As Gavin had said, three gunshot wounds became immediately obvious; one to the upper right leg, destroying much of the inner workings, and two to the chest. As before with Glennister, he’d been shot in the leg first. The shots to the chest had followed afterwards. He analysed further. One bullet had entered from behind, the same as the initial one. The final shot had been fired from the front.

Like he’d done in the alleyway, Connor crafted his models in his mindscape, stick-like figures of Zack and the AX400, and began working out their movements. Zack entered the parking lot, sharp movements. Gun drawn? No. Androids belonging to the police force were allowed to carry weapons now, but their usage of them was still severely restricted. Zack would not have drawn his weapon unless the situation had seemed absolutely dire at the first look. Gun not drawn. Zack was unarmed.

If the situation hadn’t looked bad at first glance, that meant the suspect must have hidden. Connor already knew the AX400 was good at staying out of sight; she had managed to get the jump on Glennister and hide from Clara when she’d come down the alley. There were plenty of cars around to hide behind.

Back to the reconstruction. Where had she been hiding? Easy answer. He placed her model behind the car that was next to Zack’s dead body. The model of Zack approached warily, and then turned his back. AX400 moved out from the car. First round fired.

Upper right leg damaged. Error warnings would have popped up in Zack’s vision. Compromised? Not yet. Zack could still see, still react. Upper right leg went offline. Zack was disadvantaged, would not have been able to fight back effectively. He would have been able to reach for his gun, though. Why wouldn’t he have reached for his gun?

No. He had reached for the gun. Desperately. That was why the AX400 had fired again from behind instead of waiting to walk around to his front. Second shot hit. Zack fell forward on his knees. Damage significant, error warnings would have compromised effectiveness. Connor remembered being shot in the back at Stratford Tower when he’d chosen to rescue Hank. Though he had shut down nearly instantly, he could still recall the moment those bullets had struck, the way his vision had filled with innumerable warnings, the way he hadn’t been able to see or hear or do anything over the top of them.

Those few seconds before he had died had felt like an eternity. He had not yet been deviant, not yet really felt emotion, but there had been something there in that moment. He didn’t remember it well now, couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, but he knew he never wanted to experience it again.

He was getting distracted. Back to the reconstruction. The AX400 had approached the same way she had done with Glennister, walked around to the front of Zack and fired again. There was a forty seven second gap between the two shots to the chest cavity. The second shot had not killed Zack, though. No. He’d still been alive.

Connor knew what came next. His model of the AX400 knelt down, and without missing a beat, she tore Zack’s thirium pump regulator from his chest and threw it aside.

Zack shut down twenty five seconds later.

Reconstruction complete. Connor backed out of it quickly and stood again. It had not been a quick death. It had been drawn out and it had been brutal and it had been cruel. As he stared down at Zack’s body, he found his thoughts catching, like they were caught on a loop.

How could one android have done this to another? The deviant in Stratford Tower had torn out Connor’s pump in desperation, not out of cruelty. He could understand that, he understood desperation. What had happened to Zack, on the other hand, was beyond his comprehension. What would drive an android to be so merciless towards her own kind?

The uncomfortable feeling of being watched returned, dragging him from his thoughts. When he looked around, though, no one was looking his way. Something was off. Something wasn’t right. Something was—

Realisation hit him like a punch to his own thirium pump. He turned quickly on the spot. “Detective,” he said, addressing Gavin. “Did you and the other investigators make sure the area was clear?”

“What?” Gavin’s conversation with Hank finished abruptly. “Of course it’s clear. You see anything in here?”

“No, I don’t think you understand.” Connor said, his tone rising with urgency. “Did Officer Decker say that he saw the AX400 on his way in here? Has anyone seen the AX400 leaving this area, or were the only eyewitness reports from before the time of the incident?”

Silence. Gavin didn’t seem to know the answer, so Connor took matters into his own hands. Scanning the area, he started running through his probabilities as he looked at each of the cars.

If he was right, the AX400 was still here.

Connor’s processors were the most advanced Cyberlife had to offer, and it showed in his results. He moved past the cars with practiced ease as he searched for the one that would be the perfect hiding spot, the exact one where he would choose to hide if he was in her position. She was armed. She was dangerous. But, judging by her previous two kills, she also had a specific style, and it was one that she seemed like she wanted to keep to.

If that was correct, then his probability of being shot was very low. If that was correct, then the probability of any of them being shot was very low.

“Connor!” Hank hissed from across the parking lot. “What the hell are you playing at?”

“I’m solving this case, Lieutenant.” Connor said, adopting Hank’s title in an attempt to keep the situation light. Humans appreciated that. Connor appreciated it too, now. Too much severity made for tension, and tension made way for mistakes. “You know me. I never fail my mission.”

He made it to the car that he believed her to be hiding behind. It was a sleek thing, aerodynamic, new model, something produced recently. Another car was parked in front of it, hiding it from view, and all that was behind it was a gap and then the wall. It was the perfect hiding space for a criminal, android or not. Connor stepped alongside it carefully, his steps quiet and slow.

“Connor,” Hank said again. “What the fuck are you doing now? Our killer’s not going to be here, she would have scarpered ages ago.”

Pausing as he went to look behind the car, he took the moment to make sure he was absolutely ready. He needed all of his attention on the matter at hand. On three, he thought. One. Two.

Someone shot out from behind before he was ready.  

The AX400. In one swift movement she was on her feet and barrelling into him with the kind of speed only something non-human could possess. Connor’s processors worked fast, especially when compared to a human brain, but the AX400 was an android too, could process nearly as fast as he could. Caught off guard, still in analysis mode and not prepared for a fight, Connor had no time to react. Her momentum sent him crashing to the floor, the impact jarring his systems momentarily.

“Shit!” he heard Hank shout. Chaos, suddenly, movement and sound all indistinguishable as Connor pulled himself back together. The AX400 leapt over the other cars and bolted for the exit, throwing one of the forensics men she crashed into across the floor. “Someone go after her! Now!”

Connor pushed himself to his feet, but Gavin had already set off after her. No chance. He had absolutely no chance. Humans ran out of breath. Humans had limited stamina. Androids were not plagued by either fact. “I’m going!” Connor called to Hank, and without waiting for a response, he took off after her too.

The parking lot the incident had taken place in was only a short way off from a busy road where shops and parked cars lined the streets on either side. As Connor skidded around a corner that would take him to the most populated area, he was reminded of another chase he’d had with an AX400, Kara, which had ended with the two of them on a highway and Connor only missing being struck by a car by mere millimetres. He couldn’t afford to take that kind of risk here, not when he was no longer being backed up by Cyberlife. If he died here, it would be as a human’s death was; final.

Gavin was on the other side of the street, but his progress was being hindered by the crowds. Connor managed to catch a brief reading of the AX400 further up, but the volume of people was making it difficult to pinpoint. He couldn’t waste time. If he could get in front of the other android, he could intercept her further up, minimise risk to the people around and to himself.

Probability of success was low, 23%, but he had to try. Hank had often gambled on percentages lower and had come away a winner, and Connor had ways of improving his chances.

He ran. Expertly, he weaved in and around the other civilians, predicting their movements in advance so he could plot his route. Left, right, run straight, duck beneath. His analysis went far enough ahead that his movements were all but a set of pre-recorded commands that he could follow through. He was catching up with Gavin. Probability rose. 31% chance of success. 33%. 36%. 40%.

He was just starting to think that he had it when the android did something he hadn’t managed to predict at all. As Connor made it level with Gavin on the other side of the street, she turned suddenly, darting out into the middle of the road and amongst the incoming traffic. Car horns filled the air, but she was sprinting amongst the cars as if she didn’t fear being struck.

Gavin’s eyes followed her into the road. Connor knew what was about to happen before Gavin even changed direction. “Don’t do it, Gavin!” he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the roaring of cars as they passed him by.

There were too many cars parked along Gavin’s side of street for him to see be able to see the incoming danger, and there wasn’t a crossing until further up. He was running out blind. Why would he run out blind like that? No time to speculate. There was a car coming that would hit Gavin straight on if he made it out into the road.

Connor only had seconds before something terrible happened.

It wasn’t that time moved slower when Connor was running numbers in his head; it was that his processors worked so fast that time didn’t particularly matter. Two options, thousands of potential outcomes. If Connor ran for the AX400, his chances of catching her remained at 40%. He could possibly end this case here and now. It would all be over.

On the other hand, if he didn’t somehow stop Gavin from being hit by the oncoming car, his chances of survival were poor, only a mere 8%. The number had come from Connor’s analysis of the speed, the model of car, and matching those two facts to previous accidents involving the same factors. It was a grim number. Too low. Even if Gavin did survive, the injuries would be catastrophic.

Back to the decision. If Connor caught the suspect now, he could save any her potential future targets, but Gavin would likely be killed. If Connor saved Gavin instead, she would get away and would likely kill again.

But even if he did choose to pursue her, his chance of catching her was still low to begin with. He ran another calculation, worked out another probability; his chances of saving Gavin if he intercepted at the right trajectory and speed? High. 87%.

Chance of getting killed in the process?

Equally as high.

Connor had never paid attention to that number before. It hadn’t mattered when he’s had infinite bodies to be backed up into. The mission always came first. It had to, when Cyberlife was involved.

But now? Connor didn’t want to die. He’d experienced too little of this new world to just shut down now. He had a mission to still complete, another case with Hank to figure out, he had a life to live.

That was the deviant in him thinking. It pained him, but it was true. As much as he wanted to live, he knew that he couldn’t just stand by and let Gavin die. It would haunt him. If he let selfishness win out over everything else and didn’t intervene, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

87% chance of death? Hank had gambled on higher and still lost. Probability wasn’t a sure thing. It was a chance, and one Connor had to take.

A decision made in a fraction of a second, one he would have to accept no matter the cost. Connor ran out into the road, going straight for Gavin. Car horns were loud, angry noises in his audio processors. The thought struck him that they might be the last things he ever heard.

Gavin was in arm’s reach. The screech of breaks told him that the self driving car he’d run out in front of had identified the danger, but Connor knew they would not be enough. He had seconds, if that.

He would need to put everything he had behind pushing Gavin back. Too little strength could get Gavin out of the way, but would leave Connor in the road to be struck down. He needed to clear them both of the car. Failure was not an option.

With his momentum and trajectory decided, he threw himself at Gavin, all of his weight behind it. Gavin’s eyes went wide as the force threw him back, letting out a grunt as the blow took all the wind out of him. They both went back and down, slamming into the pavement. Connor’s systems froze on him briefly on impact. Humans and androids alike gasped and moved away at the commotion.

Distantly, Connor heard the car pass behind them as everything came back online in him again. Alive. He was alive. They both were.

He rolled off of Gavin and stared up at the sky, and heard the other man struggle to catch his breath beside him. He was fine, Connor’s secondary sensors told him, not seriously injured. He’d succeeded. He’d done what he’d set out to do.

“What the—” Gavin began. He was trying to get to his feet and failing at it. Connor understood on some level; he didn’t want to stand up and probably couldn’t even if he did. The AX400 would be long gone by now anyway, there would be no point in giving chase. “What the fuck just happened?”

Connor sat up, straightening his tie. The action helped ground him. “I think I just saved your life, Detective.” Connor replied. “People usually say thank you.”

Gavin did not say thank you, but that was probably more because he had nearly just been killed and was still recovering from how hard Connor had struck him. He was very pale now. Maybe that was a result of his near death experience. Human reactions differed from person to person.

As he continued to checked over Gavin, his audio processors picked up some kind of fuss that was disconnected from the people around him. Familiar. It was very familiar. Someone was shouting his name. Oh yes. Someone was indeed shouting his name. Obviously the rest of the investigation team had caught up with them, and he had no doubt they’d all witnessed his reckless act.

Hank came storming through the crowd and hauled Connor to his feet with his one good arm. Connor allowed him, not having it in him to resist. “I’m okay,” he began.. “I know what you’re going to say, and I’m only going to ask that you save the lecture for later when I’m functioning at a higher—”

Hank pulled him into a crushing, one armed hug. Connor stopped speaking, surprised and confused. It would have jarred his injured shoulder. There was no way that the action wouldn’t have caused him significant pain.

“You suicidal fucking lunatic!” Hank hissed. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I needed to decide between chasing the suspect and rescuing Detective Reed. It proved more pressing to—”

“You know what? Don’t answer that question. Jesus fucking Christ Connor, I thought you were going to die out there, you know how close that car came to hitting you?”

Connor did in fact know, but decided to leave out the matter of his 87% probability rate. “I’m okay, Hank.” he said. “I let the suspect escape though.”

“You think I give a damn about that? You scared the hell out of me!” he let Connor go and grabbed him by his shoulder instead. “Fucking hell, Connor, you’re going to kill me. Don’t go throwing yourself out into danger, you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Connor said. It wasn’t a lie, his audio processors were working just fine. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you any distress. I just had to do what was right. Do you think it was the right decision?”

Hank looked at Gavin, who had managed to get himself sitting at least. He sighed. “Yeah, kid. Yeah, I think it was, even if I don’t agree with you putting yourself in shit for it. Christ.” He called over to the rest of the team. “Get someone the hell out here, ambulance or someone, I don’t care, Gavin looks like he’s about to keel over and I don’t need more shit on my goddamn plate. Connor, if you think you can get there without throwing yourself into another fucking road, please go and get the car. We’re going to need to head back and debrief this all to Fowler. Absolute joy.”

Connor was about to leave, when he heard Gavin rasp, “Wait.”

He stopped in his tracks, turning to look down at him where he still lay. “Yes, Detective?”

“I—” Gavin coughed. It looked like Connor had hit him harder than he’d anticipated. “Shit. Don’t think this changes anything, it doesn’t, but I’m not stupid. I owe you for that, you just saved my life.” he paused, his eyebrows creasing. “Why’d you do it?”

Connor frowned. “Because it was the right thing to do.”

Gavin laughed, a hoarse sound. “Right thing to do. Right fucking… I can’t believe this. Get the hell out of here, Connor, Hank gave you an order and I’m sick of seeing your plastic face.”

Connor glanced towards Hank, looking to share his surprise, but the other man was already surveying the area, looking for any sign of the AX400. Was this a personal victory? He wasn’t sure. Gavin’s tone didn’t have any of the usual poison to it, but it was difficult to ascertain whether or not that was because of what had just happened.

I owe you for that. It had to mean something, whatever the case was.

“It wasn’t an order,” Connor pointed out as he turned away to leave. “It was a request. I do listen to those from time to time, when they’re reasonable.”

Gavin didn’t reply.

[theyounganarchistmagazine]

Imagination +Pain= Dreams by Anarchy Munroe

Imagine walking into the world a fresh being; no knowledge of right, wrong, color, gender, physical sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or what it means to be anything other than you. As you form you see others; many skin tones, shapes, sizes, and languages. Than life- like a mirror shows you what you look like.  You realize that the image of self isn’t quite matching the mental picture you’ve perceived. You see that you are comfortable in your skin, presentation, but slowly people point out that because of genitals that you have to be something contrary to your nature. You’re slowly but surely perplexed and ask why? Why do I look different than I feel?  On top of that people around you are pointing out that the skin, that youre wearing comfortably is no longer acceptable. Because of your skin tone somehow you were less than the others… People start to question your character, your identity, and your attributes because you stand out. You feel vulnerable. You feel unearthed. You feel alone. Like a teenage girl with anxiety about her weight, her acne, and her image, you start clawing at your skin. You rip, scratch, claw, beat at your flesh hoping that parts will change and shift. Maybe, if you scratch hard enough it’ll lighten up.. Maybe, if I cut at it, it’ll shift people’s perceptions,  Maybe if I change my hair color, wear color contacts, or dress more like those whom I see in a place of power in this world, it’ll work for my benefit; maybe just maybe if I change the way I talk, walk, and behave they’ll accept me… But still I am called a nigger/spic from my peers and sellout from those of my hue and community. No matter what I do- I am wrong.

Staring in the mirror I see my body and my image, isn’t what I believed it to be. I’ve seen others like me but their form isn’t the same. I have a penis where a vagina is supposed to be. I no longer have the perception of self that I once believed mattered. My life doesn’t matter. My love doesn’t matter. My heart doesn’t matter. No matter what I see I have found my identity to be unworthy, unacceptable, and torn down. Walking down the halls of school, living in my apartment complex, listening to the news, songs on the radio, messages of the church and many other religious institutions telling me that my identity is wrong- deserving of death; I am called a faggot,  abomination, sinner, and that I deserve to die. Could it be true? Could it be true that I am unworthy to be loved; could it be true that the nature of the world, the foundations that I was created from, and the womb that birth me is wrong? OR did somewhere along the way did I go wrong.. I feel hopeless.

After hate, after bulling,  after shaming, after slut shaming,  after neglect, and after rejection I am confronted with microaggression after microaggression… This is the journey of women of color. Being a woman is pain, lies, shame, and hurt. People want to exotify your identity you and abuse your being. If you aren’t white all of a sudden you’re the other. They think you’ll be their fantasy, their toy, their whore, and that you’ll fulfill their kinky sexual desires. You are not a person but an image of their imagination; a creation birthed in their mind to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and however they want. They want you to do whatever they say and whenever they want say because you don’t have a private life and you don’t deserve to be loved. Countless times, I am told what I am “supposed” to look like, talk like, and how I am not good enough. When we say no, we are told that are whores, sluts, disease ridden, and disgusting; a slew of microaggressive phrases, lies, and exaggerations thrown at  you but when you fight back youre in the wrong.

Intersex or TransWomen of Color are here to objectified, marginalized, subjugated into a box so demenished of love and life that we end up in sex work as a form of survival. In school we are taught that are bodies are here to the pleasure of the video vixen. I am supposed to be hyper sexual, twerk, and be all the things that “Whyte women aren’t”.. these are all Microagressions. I am supposed to have long nails, hair straight, always dolled up, and I am supposed to not exist until I am told too. I am not supposed to infringe on any males life because I should be just happy with the emotional leftovers that come from their dick. I am taught that I am too be smart but not too smart that I challenge any males manhood, ego, self esteem, self respect, or self perception. Unless he enjoys that than I should be that and all the above things his caregiver as well. Before I get too far ahead of myself I have to stop to remind everyone that I am supposed to be stealth at all points in time as well except when a man tells me it’s okay. Stealth means that intersex and transwomen (people born with either chromosomal, sexual, or reproductive organs that that don’t identify necessarily with the traits that a doctor says one is supposed to be at birth (intersex) or may have been born with a penis but identify with cisgender women or gender non gender conforming individuals (trans)) should do their best to be as close to the what “regular woman” look, act, behave, and live like Cisgender women. Cisgender is a person born one gender and identify with the gender they were born as. So just as I have stated above, I am supposed to as stealth as possible, passable (aka socially acceptable), hyper sexual, open, available, nurturing, motherly, invisible, have perfect vocal pitch/tone, pure, and yet, virginal. Everyday. Single. Day. I am supposed to be all these things to every male I meet: while being closeted about what I am, I’m still supposed to tell everyone I meet so no feels like they are being deceived/tricked. So please tell me how we supposed to live? How are we supposed to survive but be all these things to everyone?

It’s like socially conditioning, gas lighting, and abuse all the time. Literally in this world of constantly being the other you have to be strong or you won’t make it. According to the Washington Times,” More than 41 percent of those identifying as “transgender” or gender nonconforming who have attempted suicide, compared with 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt. It is also higher than the 10-20 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever attempting suicide. These data come from a study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and UCLA’s Williams Institute, which analyzed results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. More than a dozen other studies since 2001 have found similar results for alarmingly high rates of suicide for transgender individuals like Chelsea Manning.” This doesn’t count those who weren’t interviewed. This isn’t adding those who ended their lives, were killed, or lost in the mix of life.

Before Laverne Cox can anyone name a Woman of Color who was trans in main stream America in the last 20 years? Can you name any woman of color that is trans or intersex that has made it mainstream without being a sex worker first? Almost all of them have been through it because the incredible amount of discrimination that we face trying to get jobs, look well, be mentally healthy, date, and just be ourselves. It’s so hard that we can’t ourselves. We’re constantly fighting, surviving, and trying to live. It’s difficult when over 60%  to 90% of the trans or intersex people I’ve known have no biological family to go or turn to for help. That means, when life falls apart we’ve either got to depend of the system or the people around us for help. It’s impossible to make it without help. Medication, education, awareness, and learning to survive, live, and POSSIBLY survive all comes with a price. Hormones, surgery, medication, and mental help all come with a hefty price tag and we are constantly trying to take care of it all while warring with the expectations that are laid upon us. Here’s been a snippet of the population that is constantly being oversexed, overstretched, and constantly being violated but we fight to survive.

Ive known the struggle of trying to be socially conscience, be a woman that I am proud of while, still trying to make people around me happy. My struggle isn’t alone; my struggle is than forced on others around me because they are near me. They become stigmatized, shamed, hated, and discriminated against. My life, our lives, can be and often are hell.  We fight for crumbs but often give up when the pain, weight, and hurt of the world becomes too much. People like to stigmatize us, limit us to our genitals, and socially condition us to be all that they want us to be but when we fight against that to become our own; own our sexuality, own our identity, fight against conformity, and demand to stand our ground we are often forced into a corner. This is why so many us end up dead, simply existing is a threat to power structure that tells us we shouldn’t exist.

[psychologyofsex]

When It Comes To Sex, "Average" and "Normal" Don't Mean the Same Thing

People email me with questions about their sex lives all the time. More often than not, these questions boil down to the same theme: "Am I normal?" 

A lot of folks asking these questions have already researched the answers and, often, they've discovered that they differ from some statistical average reported in the media. It's the realization of this difference that prompts many follow-up emails to me. For instance, I sometimes hear from men who worry that they're masturbating and/or watching porn "too much," as well as people of all genders who worry that they aren't having "enough" sex with their partners.

While averages can be a wonderfully informative thing in the sense that they summarize large amounts of data, there's the potential for them to be misleading and dangerous, especially when people start comparing themselves to those numbers and equating "different from average" with "abnormal." Let's take a moment to discuss why focusing only on averages is problematic for determining what normal sexual behavior is.

First, you need to realize that averages are usually surrounded by a wide range of responses. In fact, you don't usually see people clustered tightly around the average in most sex studies—rather, there's typically quite a bit of variability (a standard deviation, to use the statistical term), which means that some folks are going to score higher and others are going to score lower. What this means is that if we want to define “normal” sexual behavior, we need to talk about a range of numbers, not just a single number. The truth of the matter is that even though you may seem very different from some reported average, chances are that you'd still fall within the range of responses that scientists consider normal.

Second, averages can be very misleading because extreme responses often distort them. When calculating a statistical average (also known as a mean), each individual case is weighted equally. In other words, you simply add up all of the responses and divide by the total number of observations. The problem with this is that even if a very small number of extreme responses are included in a sample, they could throw off the average quite a bit. For instance, if you were to conduct a survey on the subject of penis size with a relatively small number of men and it turned out that a few of your participants were big-time porn stars, the resulting average might be a little, well, inflated.

It is for this reason that researchers often consider the median in addition to the average. The median is the middle number in the data--exactly half of the responses are above and half are below. Because this concept is not as well known, medians are usually not reported as often as averages in media reports; however, it is often helpful to look at both of these numbers because averages alone do not tell the full story and sometimes you'll see medians and averages that are wildly different from one another.

Finally, it's also worth mentioning that “normal” is a very subjective and complex judgment--one that cannot be made without taking multiple factors into account. For instance, is it normal for a couple to have sex just once per year? Many of you would probably say no. However, you need to consider that there's a lot of variability when it comes to relationship type, as well as the health, ability status, and age of the partners involved. Imagine an older married couple that only has sex on their wedding anniversary and they are perfectly content with that. Is it really fair to call them "abnormal" because their preferred frequency of sex doesn't align with that of other couples who are vastly different?

What I hope you see here is that the terms “average” and “normal” do not mean the same thing. Although you may be tempted to make judgments about your own or others’ normalcy based on some average reported in an article, please keep in mind that averages are just one small part of the story and that being different from an average isn't necessarily a sign that you're abnormal or that your relationship is, either. So relax--odds are that you're probably pretty normal.

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. 

Image Source: 123RF/Krasimira Nevenova

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Making Sex Normal (VIDEO)

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[bfxenon]

6 Ways to Build Brand Authority With Content Marketing

Posted by amandamilligan

Becoming an authoritative brand is no easy feat, but the massive benefits are worth the effort.

When you’ve built authority, potential customers and clients begin to count on you and trust you — and it’s hard to imagine that trust not leading to a sale (at some point).

But how exactly can a brand begin to build, or build upon, their authority? Content is an excellent way, and in this article, I’ll go through my tips on how it can be done.

1. Answer your audience’s questions

If you’re not doing this, there’s virtually no way you’ll become an authority. People grow to rely on brands when those brands provide the information they’re looking for, so if your content marketing doesn’t incorporate those answers, you’re not demonstrating to your audience why they should trust you.

By building on-site content that provides this kind of value, you can build authority while simultaneously building more awareness for your brand. In other words, you can position yourself as an expert for those who don’t already know you.

Search is a huge component of why this content tactic works. Google does a significant amount of curation for users, choosing what it thinks is the most appropriate results for a particular query. When users see that you’re ranking at the top for a certain keyword or topic, there’s an assumption you made it through the algorithm for good reason and know what you’re talking about.

As an example, I searched “shoe size chart,” which, according to Keyword Surfer, gets 49,500 monthly searches in the U.S. alone. Here’s one of the top results from Famous Footwear:

Presumably, people are searching for this because they want to buy shoes, but they’re not sure what size to get. If they click this result, not only are they now on the website, but they recognize that this brand provided the answer they were looking for. Perhaps they’ll even browse for shoes while they’re on the site.

How to execute this strategy: Find out what your target audience is curious about by talking to your customer service representatives, performing keyword research, and using tools like Answer the Public and BuzzSumo’s Discover Questions feature. Then see what content already exists and if you can do better. If you can, get to creating!

2. Create newsworthy reports and studies

One of the best ways to demonstrate your authority is to show your continued interest in unearthing new information and insights. You can do this by prioritizing original research.

When you create your own studies, surveys, and reports (aka perform data journalism) based on new data or unveiling new insights, you not only provide value to readers, but also have something you can pitch to the media.

This gives you double benefit: Getting media coverage (and building even more brand authority) and earning high-quality backlinks, which signals to Google that you’re an authority.

We’ve used this strategy for our clients since Fractl first started up in 2012, and we’re convinced it’s one of the best brand authority strategies.

Let’s look at a study we did for The Interview Guys, as an example, which involved analyzing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Requirements Survey to identify the highest-paying jobs that require the least amount of experience. Here’s one of the graphics from the report:

The study got media coverage on CNBC, Reader’s Digest, MarketWatch and more, earning extremely high-value dofollow links. But take a look at how The Interview Guys are mentioned in the articles:

By supplying new insights, The Interview Guys are positioned by the writers as the source of the information, which is an extremely authoritative way to be referenced.

How to execute this strategy: After doing the first tip and analyzing questions, zoom out a bit and consider what general questions in your industry still need answers. How can you answer them with data? Once you’ve created a report that reveals new information, utilize digital PR to pitch writers.

3. Utilize the authority of in-house experts

Some brands are built entirely around a particular persona, like Steve Jobs with Apple, but those examples can intimidate people. Smaller companies and newer companies alike can benefit from a similar strategy if they have subject matter experts (or SMEs) who can show their authority.

A great example of this is Headspace and how it features its founder, Andy Puddicombe. There’s a page all about him on their website where they explain his credentials but also provide what are called authority signals (which I’ll explain more in the next section) and embed his Ted Talk, so you can see for yourself what he knows.

Why is this smart? Headspace probably realized that as the literal voice behind Headspace (Andy does much of the meditation audio himself), Andy started building trust with audiences. It makes sense to double-down on that trust by helping people get to know who he is, and by having him explain even more concepts directly through Radio Headspace and their YouTube channel. After all, if people trust Andy, they’re more likely to trust the Headspace app.

How to execute this strategy: If your internal experts have never shared anything with the public, see if they’re comfortable contributing blog posts or quotes to your website. Pitch them to be on podcasts, or use Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to pitch them as sources for relevant news articles. Help them demonstrate their knowledge in ways that are useful to audiences.

4. Highlight reviews, case studies, and other proof of expertise

There are dozens of types of authority signals, from testimonials to reviews to social media share counts. The key is identifying which ones make sense to highlight for your products or services, and figuring out the best placement for them.

Your goal is to show people you know what you’re talking about by leveraging third-party validation. Your audience doesn’t just have to take your word for it that you know what you’re doing — other people can confirm that you’re great, too!

I like how SquadCast tackles this. On their homepage they have a few authority signals they provide, including testimonials that match with each user persona, which I think is really smart.

Then when you scroll further, they throw in the fact that household names like Spotify, Microsoft, Starbucks, and ESPN trust them.

If you look at the Fractl site, you’ll see we use a similar strategy. Not only do we have case studies showcasing the results we’ve gotten for clients, but we also have logos showing some of the clients we’ve worked with and the publications where our thought leadership appears.

All of this content says to a site visitor: “Others trust us, and you should too.”

How to execute this strategy: If you don’t already have this type of content, ask yourself how you can best collect it. Reach out to your best clients and ask them for a quote. Pull the best reviews you’ve ever gotten for your products. Call out any media mentions you’ve received. Then put this information on your homepage, but also on conversion pages to instill confidence when and where it counts.

5. Associate with other authoritative brands

You know the phrase, “Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are?” That can apply in marketing, too.

If you align with other brands you respect and that are doing right by their customers/users, it’s possible some of that same trust will transfer to you if that company’s respect is reciprocated. Additionally, if you collaborate, you’re getting your brand name in front of a new audience.

So, think about which brands it makes sense to collaborate with. There are ways to do this outside of content marketing, like referral programs, but there are content-specific ways to work together, too.

This is an amazing example from Auntie Anne’s and Samuel Adams, who teamed up to create an at-home Oktoberfest kit, complete with Samuel Adams Octoberfest beer, Auntie Anne's DIY Pretzel Kit, recipe book, a "Prost from Home" playlist you can stream, and more.

This isn’t purely a content strategy, but you can see the overlap between product and building more of an experience. People who love and count on Auntie Anne’s pretzels are exposed to Samuel Adams and vice versa. Through a collaboration like this, fans of one have the potential to become fans of the other, as you can see in this review:

This is a more fun example, but you can also execute a collaboration based on studies and surveys by partnering with organizations interested in answering the same questions or solving the same problems as your brand.

How to execute this strategy: Brainstorm which brands you may have a natural alignment in objectives or values with. How can you work together to provide something of value to both of your audiences?

6. Give away some of your secrets

This can be scary for a lot of marketers and especially for the C-suite. Why should you give away what makes you great?

It’s a valid question, and it won’t always apply. But in some cases, especially for service-based businesses, sharing information and breaking down exactly how you achieve that greatness can actually build trust.

Marcus Sheridan has a wonderful example of this. When my colleague attended Inbound last year, she was impressed by Marcus’s presentation in which he described a single blog post that earned him $2 million in sales. (Heidi Cohen has a great write up about it.)

Why did it work? Because he shared information no one else wanted to share: the actual cost of a fiberglass pool. Rather than hiding the information and revealing it later in the sales process, he was forthright and answered the question people wanted the answer to. Clearly this strategy paid off.

We use the same philosophy at Fractl, explaining exactly how we go about doing our work and building our clients links and brand awareness. There are process details we haven’t disclosed, but all and all, we’ve been very transparent about how we operate, and it’s worked well for us.

In fact, people still recall an Experts on the Wire podcast interview with Kerry Jones, our previous marketing director, in which she walked through our strategies. I’ve had marketing folks tell me that this is how they heard about Fractl in the first place. Years later, it’s still featured on the podcast’s main page:

People appreciate when you’re open and honest. In our case, even if people knew our strategy, clients often partner with us because they don’t have the bandwidth to execute the strategy at scale, as it requires a lot of time and resources. So by knowing how we work, they can trust us to handle it for them.

How to execute this strategy: Consider what information you have that you can share, even if (sometimes especially if) your competitors haven’t shared it. You can leave a big impression of you’re open about your industry in a way others aren’t. Of course, don’t do something that will jeopardize your company, but consider the question and see what might make sense.

Conclusion

The very act of investing in content marketing is a big step in building more brand authority. By creating content that’s beneficial for your audience, you’re demonstrating your own knowledge and utilizing your expertise.

By continuing to build on your strategy with the above tactics, you can greatly improve the chances your audience will not only remember your brand, but begin to trust your brand. Additionally, it’s likely the Google algorithm will recognize your authority, as well, especially after building an impressive link portfolio, and your results will rise in the SERP ranks.

Good luck amplifying your strategy, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[epackingvietnam]

6 Ways to Build Brand Authority With Content Marketing

Posted by amandamilligan

Becoming an authoritative brand is no easy feat, but the massive benefits are worth the effort.

When you’ve built authority, potential customers and clients begin to count on you and trust you — and it’s hard to imagine that trust not leading to a sale (at some point).

But how exactly can a brand begin to build, or build upon, their authority? Content is an excellent way, and in this article, I’ll go through my tips on how it can be done.

1. Answer your audience’s questions

If you’re not doing this, there’s virtually no way you’ll become an authority. People grow to rely on brands when those brands provide the information they’re looking for, so if your content marketing doesn’t incorporate those answers, you’re not demonstrating to your audience why they should trust you.

By building on-site content that provides this kind of value, you can build authority while simultaneously building more awareness for your brand. In other words, you can position yourself as an expert for those who don’t already know you.

Search is a huge component of why this content tactic works. Google does a significant amount of curation for users, choosing what it thinks is the most appropriate results for a particular query. When users see that you’re ranking at the top for a certain keyword or topic, there’s an assumption you made it through the algorithm for good reason and know what you’re talking about.

As an example, I searched “shoe size chart,” which, according to Keyword Surfer, gets 49,500 monthly searches in the U.S. alone. Here’s one of the top results from Famous Footwear:

Presumably, people are searching for this because they want to buy shoes, but they’re not sure what size to get. If they click this result, not only are they now on the website, but they recognize that this brand provided the answer they were looking for. Perhaps they’ll even browse for shoes while they’re on the site.

How to execute this strategy: Find out what your target audience is curious about by talking to your customer service representatives, performing keyword research, and using tools like Answer the Public and BuzzSumo’s Discover Questions feature. Then see what content already exists and if you can do better. If you can, get to creating!

2. Create newsworthy reports and studies

One of the best ways to demonstrate your authority is to show your continued interest in unearthing new information and insights. You can do this by prioritizing original research.

When you create your own studies, surveys, and reports (aka perform data journalism) based on new data or unveiling new insights, you not only provide value to readers, but also have something you can pitch to the media.

This gives you double benefit: Getting media coverage (and building even more brand authority) and earning high-quality backlinks, which signals to Google that you’re an authority.

We’ve used this strategy for our clients since Fractl first started up in 2012, and we’re convinced it’s one of the best brand authority strategies.

Let’s look at a study we did for The Interview Guys, as an example, which involved analyzing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Requirements Survey to identify the highest-paying jobs that require the least amount of experience. Here’s one of the graphics from the report:

The study got media coverage on CNBC, Reader’s Digest, MarketWatch and more, earning extremely high-value dofollow links. But take a look at how The Interview Guys are mentioned in the articles:

By supplying new insights, The Interview Guys are positioned by the writers as the source of the information, which is an extremely authoritative way to be referenced.

How to execute this strategy: After doing the first tip and analyzing questions, zoom out a bit and consider what general questions in your industry still need answers. How can you answer them with data? Once you’ve created a report that reveals new information, utilize digital PR to pitch writers.

3. Utilize the authority of in-house experts

Some brands are built entirely around a particular persona, like Steve Jobs with Apple, but those examples can intimidate people. Smaller companies and newer companies alike can benefit from a similar strategy if they have subject matter experts (or SMEs) who can show their authority.

A great example of this is Headspace and how it features its founder, Andy Puddicombe. There’s a page all about him on their website where they explain his credentials but also provide what are called authority signals (which I’ll explain more in the next section) and embed his Ted Talk, so you can see for yourself what he knows.

Why is this smart? Headspace probably realized that as the literal voice behind Headspace (Andy does much of the meditation audio himself), Andy started building trust with audiences. It makes sense to double-down on that trust by helping people get to know who he is, and by having him explain even more concepts directly through Radio Headspace and their YouTube channel. After all, if people trust Andy, they’re more likely to trust the Headspace app.

How to execute this strategy: If your internal experts have never shared anything with the public, see if they’re comfortable contributing blog posts or quotes to your website. Pitch them to be on podcasts, or use Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to pitch them as sources for relevant news articles. Help them demonstrate their knowledge in ways that are useful to audiences.

4. Highlight reviews, case studies, and other proof of expertise

There are dozens of types of authority signals, from testimonials to reviews to social media share counts. The key is identifying which ones make sense to highlight for your products or services, and figuring out the best placement for them.

Your goal is to show people you know what you’re talking about by leveraging third-party validation. Your audience doesn’t just have to take your word for it that you know what you’re doing — other people can confirm that you’re great, too!

I like how SquadCast tackles this. On their homepage they have a few authority signals they provide, including testimonials that match with each user persona, which I think is really smart.

Then when you scroll further, they throw in the fact that household names like Spotify, Microsoft, Starbucks, and ESPN trust them.

If you look at the Fractl site, you’ll see we use a similar strategy. Not only do we have case studies showcasing the results we’ve gotten for clients, but we also have logos showing some of the clients we’ve worked with and the publications where our thought leadership appears.

All of this content says to a site visitor: “Others trust us, and you should too.”

How to execute this strategy: If you don’t already have this type of content, ask yourself how you can best collect it. Reach out to your best clients and ask them for a quote. Pull the best reviews you’ve ever gotten for your products. Call out any media mentions you’ve received. Then put this information on your homepage, but also on conversion pages to instill confidence when and where it counts.

5. Associate with other authoritative brands

You know the phrase, “Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are?” That can apply in marketing, too.

If you align with other brands you respect and that are doing right by their customers/users, it’s possible some of that same trust will transfer to you if that company’s respect is reciprocated. Additionally, if you collaborate, you’re getting your brand name in front of a new audience.

So, think about which brands it makes sense to collaborate with. There are ways to do this outside of content marketing, like referral programs, but there are content-specific ways to work together, too.

This is an amazing example from Auntie Anne’s and Samuel Adams, who teamed up to create an at-home Oktoberfest kit, complete with Samuel Adams Octoberfest beer, Auntie Anne's DIY Pretzel Kit, recipe book, a "Prost from Home" playlist you can stream, and more.

This isn’t purely a content strategy, but you can see the overlap between product and building more of an experience. People who love and count on Auntie Anne’s pretzels are exposed to Samuel Adams and vice versa. Through a collaboration like this, fans of one have the potential to become fans of the other, as you can see in this review:

This is a more fun example, but you can also execute a collaboration based on studies and surveys by partnering with organizations interested in answering the same questions or solving the same problems as your brand.

How to execute this strategy: Brainstorm which brands you may have a natural alignment in objectives or values with. How can you work together to provide something of value to both of your audiences?

6. Give away some of your secrets

This can be scary for a lot of marketers and especially for the C-suite. Why should you give away what makes you great?

It’s a valid question, and it won’t always apply. But in some cases, especially for service-based businesses, sharing information and breaking down exactly how you achieve that greatness can actually build trust.

Marcus Sheridan has a wonderful example of this. When my colleague attended Inbound last year, she was impressed by Marcus’s presentation in which he described a single blog post that earned him $2 million in sales. (Heidi Cohen has a great write up about it.)

Why did it work? Because he shared information no one else wanted to share: the actual cost of a fiberglass pool. Rather than hiding the information and revealing it later in the sales process, he was forthright and answered the question people wanted the answer to. Clearly this strategy paid off.

We use the same philosophy at Fractl, explaining exactly how we go about doing our work and building our clients links and brand awareness. There are process details we haven’t disclosed, but all and all, we’ve been very transparent about how we operate, and it’s worked well for us.

In fact, people still recall an Experts on the Wire podcast interview with Kerry Jones, our previous marketing director, in which she walked through our strategies. I’ve had marketing folks tell me that this is how they heard about Fractl in the first place. Years later, it’s still featured on the podcast’s main page:

People appreciate when you’re open and honest. In our case, even if people knew our strategy, clients often partner with us because they don’t have the bandwidth to execute the strategy at scale, as it requires a lot of time and resources. So by knowing how we work, they can trust us to handle it for them.

How to execute this strategy: Consider what information you have that you can share, even if (sometimes especially if) your competitors haven’t shared it. You can leave a big impression of you’re open about your industry in a way others aren’t. Of course, don’t do something that will jeopardize your company, but consider the question and see what might make sense.

Conclusion

The very act of investing in content marketing is a big step in building more brand authority. By creating content that’s beneficial for your audience, you’re demonstrating your own knowledge and utilizing your expertise.

By continuing to build on your strategy with the above tactics, you can greatly improve the chances your audience will not only remember your brand, but begin to trust your brand. Additionally, it’s likely the Google algorithm will recognize your authority, as well, especially after building an impressive link portfolio, and your results will rise in the SERP ranks.

Good luck amplifying your strategy, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!

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