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xxairo-dev · 4 years

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Next Log

So I started making a 2D pixel art game. Welcome to my new Dev blog!

No official name, but the unofficial name is Bowfish.

(TLDR and Dev log with pretty gifs at bottom)

Hello internet, friends, and 2020 -- those of you that have been following me all this time know that I’ve been doing art for a loooong time. Even before I got into digital art in 2010, I’ve been drawing with paper and pencil for as long as I can remember and probably started playing video games right at the same time. For reference, my earliest memories of video games consist of Lemmings 3D on PS1, followed shortly by Rayman and Spyro the Dragon.

I’m still a big Spyro fan, also pretty sure this is how I became obsessed with dragons in general.

Science based dragon MMO girl, wherever you are -- I feel you, I am you.

Basically, I’ve been playing video games all my life (to the detriment of my parents) and I owe it to gaming for igniting my early artistic ambitions. In fact, I remember learning how to draw by copying the character art of Neopets and Sonic Advance before one day stumbling upon one of my dad’s Game Informer magazines and being blown away by the art that I saw in there (particularly the WoW art). I’m pretty sure that was when I was first introduced to Big Boy™ game art and instantly thought, “Whoa, I want to be able to draw like that”.

Later, when I got my first drawing tablet and started making digital art, it became “I want to draw for a video game”.

Even later, when I learned that being a video game artist was not a very realistic career path and opted to pursue a bachelors degree in biology instead of art, it became “I want to draw for a video game... on the side”.

Even later-er, when I got my degree in 2017 and started working full-time and realized that work saps you of all energy and motivation to work on projects at home, it became “I want to draw for a video game... some day”.

Well, today here we are in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, I got furloughed from my biology job due to the quarantine. I spent four months passing time, thinking that I’d go back to work soon. But by the end of July, I was at wit’s end of what to do with myself after getting burnt out on a number of hobbies, games, shows, books, etc. without spiraling into some very expensive hobbies (hello aquariums) with the money I wasn’t making. I badly needed to find something productive to do that I thought would also benefit me in the long run i.e. post-quarantine, and unfortunately I couldn’t work on wet lab techniques at home.

“Learn to code” is what my parents have said to me about a thousand times for the past 5 years. “Learn to code” is what I did try for about two weeks with Code Academy a few years ago before realizing that none of what I was learning was going to stick because I wasn’t programming in any part of my daily life. As a biologist, in evolution we like to call this “if you don’t use it, you lose it”.

I know all too well about how coding is one of the best skills you can learn. However, I also know myself all too well to know that learning code for the sake of learning code wasn’t going to work for me. I wanted to wait to learn when the right situation presented itself, ideally when I would have an opportunity to use it almost every day at like a job or something.

Well, one of my good fellow artist (and biology) friends had recently taken the plunge into creating his first video game Meganura earlier in the year. I was (and still am) seriously -- and I cannot emphasize this enough -- impressed by his progress, dedication, and ability to learn coding for this game. Or more frankly, I was seriously impressed by his dedication and progress in to learning how to code for this game.

Meganura in all it’s crispy pixel-y goodness. Man, my friends are talented.

I dwelled on this for a while.

I always considered making a game to be out-of-reach because I absolutely could not muster up the motivation to learn a single drop of code without being paid to do so after 1) being beaten over the head by “learn how to code” for so long and 2) having already tried and given up in the past.

But as it got harder to sleep well, eat well, and feel happy during the quarantine, I feel like I hit a rock bottom where I felt like if I didn’t make a big effort to find a new purpose, then I was probably going to become depressed. To preface this, I have experienced depression before, and ever since I got out it has been my goal in life to never experience it again.

The only way I was going to survive this quarantine was to give myself a new “job”.

I already had a creative mind and the skills to create art and animations for a game. I already had a lifetime of game playing experience that had formed a detailed list of specific mechanics and visual details that I knew I wanted or didn’t want in a game. I already had an analytical and detail-oriented mind (thanks biology... or thanks videogames?) that liked to plan and build things.

All it would take is just a little bit of code...

If you’ve read this far, thanks for listening and I hope some of you hear yourselves in my story.

TLDR;

I am just a daytime biologist and hobby digital artist with zero coding experience.

I’m extremely proud to say that since 07/29/20, I have been successfully developing and coding my own 2D pixel art video game in Unity and am in full swing!

This is the start of my dev blog, where I’ll be logging my progress and thoughts throughout this journey for like-minded and aspiring individuals.

My Goals:

- To create everything from scratch -- art, scripts, etc.

- To create a game about bow hunting with intuitive drag/release controls

- To create a game that has cooking and campfires

- To create a game with pretty water graphics

- To create a game that has sushi and cats

- To have a playable demo by mid 2021 (my guess for the end of quarantine)

How I’ve been learning C#:

I have been following along with YouTube tutorials to create a base script and then looking up things in Unity’s scripting documentation to expand and modify my code to achieve exactly what I want. I’ve been learning C# and how to read documentation through almost entirely pattern recognition (e.g. mimicking and experimenting with code I’ve copied from tutorials and recognizing keywords in documentation) and turning to Google or my Tech Career Peers™ for help when I get stuck or to clarify things.

The key thing is that even after copying some code, I read the documentation and figure out how every line of code in my script works before moving on.

This is because after spending a few days of looking up YouTube tutorials, I realized there were no tutorials for the exact bow controls that I wanted. Instead, I ended up watching multiple tutorials and learned how all of their scripts worked before combining and modifying pieces together. Then, I started relying entirely on documentation to write lines of code.

I don’t know how many original lines of code I’ve written so far, but there are so many now and I am so proud of all of them.

So anyway, here’s what’s happened over the past 2-3 weeks.

Dev Log:

7/29/20

- Came up with an idea for a game

7/30/20

- Installed Unity and started watching Unity tutorial videos

7/31/20

- Created water shader via shader graph (no coding required!)

- Created a basic background, player sprite, bow sprite, and arrow sprite in Photoshop

08/03/20

- First time coding in C#

- Struggle to code in Notepad++, switched to Visual Studio Code

08/06/20

- Created physics based slingshot controls for the bow and arrow with a line renderer bowstring

- Colliders!

08/09/20

- Unable to find a way to pull arrow back horizontally (-X) regardless of mouse Y movement (OnMouseDown)

- Decided that slingshot controls are for slingshots, not bows and arrows

- Scrapped physics based slingshot controls due to overcomplication (rip)

08/10/20

- Created new projectile based controls that still include drag/shoot physics

08/11/20

- Limited rotation of the bow while aiming to max 45° and min -45°

- Developed distaste for vector algebra

- Made it so that if you don’t drag far enough, you won’t release an arrow

08/12/20

- Created a trajectory line coming off the bow

- Made arrows fade away after colliding

- Created git repository to keep all project files backed up on github (Don’t wait to do this! Should’ve been done on day 1)

08/14/20

- Added physics and collider to player

- Allow you to face and move left/right with the A and D keys + updated bow controls to match

- Created left/right movement while aiming + updated bow controls to match

- Created mouse drag line for development use

- Created waterline

- Made it so the bow resets to it’s default position if you haven’t used the bow for over 2 seconds

08/15/20

- Updated Player sprite in Photoshop

- Obtained Asesprite

- Created walk animation

08/16/20

- Created bow walk, bow equip, and bow unequip animations

Next Log

#game design #game dev blog #game dev #game dev update #indie game #pixel art #pixel animation #bowfish #meganura

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espytalks · 4 years

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ive been drawing for quite a while. and looking through my old art, i found ive been drawing online for a whole flippin decade. wow.

so here’s 10 drawings ive done over the last 10 years, with commentary. it’s a long one, though, so be careful.

2010:

I had to dig through my deviantart for these first two. This pikachu is the first thing i ever posted online! i remember drawing this in ms paint with a mouse. i remember being very proud of this, and in a way, i still think it’s cute. it has a “drawing my kid done that i hung on a fridge’ vibe.

i didn’t do much around this time. i barely knew how the internet worked, and i mainly read instead of drawing. i did some pokemon sprite edits though, for some reason. i remember really liking doing that.

2011:

i’m pretty sure i drew this mew in gimp. also with a mouse, because i had no idea tablets existed. ive always been super into pokemon, and around this time i think i was watching a lot of mickey mouse cartoons? it’d explain the weird style.

i’m impressed with the shading, though. i did the best with what i knew, and what i could figure out on my own. not pictured is the hundreds of mickey sketches i did around this time, or the self insert oc i made lol.

2012: oh no it’s pony time. i spent about 5 years drawing primarily these things. kinda wish i hadn’t in hindsight, but ah well.

i had this program on my ds that i could draw and post my art on, and i was using it a lot around this time. a lot of my art has this sketchy look to it, because of that. i remember i had quite a few followers on it, or at least i think i did. i dunno if that website still exists, or if anyone even uses it anymore.

but anyways, this drawing is super cute. ya can’t go wrong with a sleeping pone. i forgot the cutie mark, tho. i always forget minor important details like that. either that or i drew her as a filly. can’t remember.

2013: yeah, i think this as vent art? can’t remember, but i drew it on that same program. i put a lot of effort into the perspective. this was based on my room at the time, btw.

2014: i believe this was for a new artist’s training grounds on eqd. i must’ve had a tablet by now, cause i can see tapering in the lineart. it was a big deal for me, and it sucks that i can’t remember what the first ting i drew with it was. i think it was some sketches.

but you can definitely see some improvement by now. i was really getting used to drawing this one thing. but a lot of people following me seemed to like my art back then. it was called cute, and expressive and cartoony.

i think this was around the time i was at my best, as far as notes and interaction goes.

2015: *megalovania intensifies*

i was super into undertale at the time. and 2014-15 was when i started to try and draw other things aside from ponies. you cal tell my poses and anatomy is mega awkward and kinda bad here, but this was a major improvement for me.

2016: i was a fan of steven universe since it first aired, but i very rarely drew fanart for it. but as i was getting more comfortable with drawing peole, i got more ambitious with the characters i tried to draw.

i also from around this point on tried to get better at traditional art. and i think this was the first inktober i tried, but i don’t think it was the first i finished.

i really liked this drawing. and i may or may not have a wip redraw of this going on right now. wish me luck!

2017: KNOOOOOXXXXX I LOVE YOU, YOU PRECIOUS BOI

this is my favorite drawing. i peaked here and i will never be as good and pure as this single icon i did. it’s purple, he’s happy, it’s PASTEL AND SPARKES!!!!

i also got super into bendy and the ink machine this year, which sparked a renewed interest in trying to improve in drawing, and also led me to create my favorite oc ever.

i think i improved a lot around this time. my shapes and anatomy became cleaner and more consistent. on a technical level, i think this is where i started getting really good as an artist.

2018: i don’t think i improved a lot this year. i honestly feel like ive stagnated since then, and depression hasn’t helped.

it’s a tough choice between this and the hollow knight drawing for best drawing of the year, but this is my personal favorite. sorry, mm, but mickey will always win out in my opinion. i know ya liked the other one though, and it’s also really good.

i like how this turned out, and i’m so glad it’s got the most notes of anything else ive drawn. it’s pretty, and i love the style. this is how i wish i drew all the time.

2019: and finally we have this.

i don’t care how poorly this did. i was proud of myself for doing this. it’s cute and pretty and i like it. I created a vague story where she’s a little astronomer who’s like, caged for some reason, but now she’s free.

in hindsight, i think i coulda done a lot better, but i still like it. it’s one of my favorites that ive done this year. i wish i drew more this year, but the last few months ive been super depressed. it’s been hard to want to draw anything, and i feel so uncreative and mediocre.

i’m hoping next year i’ll be better, and i’ll have stuff in my personal life more sorted out, and i won’t feel as bad.

this was nice, though. i’m glad i looked through my old art. maybe i’ll figure out what i’m missing, and get back on track. and maybe i’ll finish these wips i have going on lol. we’ll see.

happy new year, everyone. and may this next decade be even better for us all as creators, and as people.

#espy talks

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theonyxpath · 5 years

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The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter launched last Thursday and we would have loved it to fund in 24 hours, but it was actually closer to 25. Possibly every backer was pranking us, but in the end it’s cool- we did fund, we’re gonna get this newest Chronicles of Darkness game into retail stores, and we’re moving into building additional books with the Stretch Goals!

So basically, the Deviant KS is doing great! Come join us!

Links for the Deviant: The Renegades and the Creature Collection for Scarred Lands 5e Kickstarters are below in the Blurbs! section.

We have had some folks, who I’m guessing have not backed any of our last few KSs, write to tell us that they’re taken aback by the listed international shipping costs. Yep, we are as miffed at those costs as you, and as I posted here a month or so back, we have chosen to go ahead and still ship internationally and post the costs, rather than stop shipping internationally as quite a few of our fellow TTRPG publishing have chosen for their KSs.

I figure it’s better to let prospective international backers know the cost upfront so they can make the informed choice that makes the most sense to them.

Usually when I explain this, I also let folks know that behind the scenes we have tried and are continuing to explore alternative shipping options. With Deviant‘s KS, we are still using our previous methodology, but with the concurrently running Creature Collection for Scarred Lands 5e Kickstarter (also doing nicely, thank you!) you can see one of the options we’re exploring.

In CC’s case, we’re working with Handiworks Games not just on the art and writing and design and Kickstarter for the book, but also with printers and fulfillment based in the EU. We’ll have a bunch of books sent over to the US for those backers, and then we hope that costs to ship from the EU for our international backers will be more reasonable.

Like I say, it’s an experiment that we think will work in a good way, but that’s never a guarantee in the rapidly shifting cost-structures of international shipping. And we’ll have to see if it is repeatable for other projects, too.

VtR2 Spilled Blood art by Michele Giorgi

But enough about Kickstarter, let’s talk about me.

Well, pretty much about how I spent my weekend, but it will circle back around to general topics about our hobby.

Have you ever had one of those time-frames where it seems that everybody you haven’t been able to get together with all want to hang out at essentially the same time? Well, that’s what happened to me, and for a twenty-four hour period I had three get-togethers (one was virtual) with old gaming buddies.

The first was an invitation from two high-school friends for dinner on Friday night which of course turned into talking about how my one buddy Johnny, aka Shithead the Dwarf, and I first met during our first D&D games as sophomores in HS. That’s the gaming club where when we started, we had the first four little D&D booklets and were waiting for the fifth booklet, Blackmoor, to be released.

It just so happened that my English class (that’s what we called Language Arts then, kids) had assigned me a journal to write, and in it I chronicled those first D&D adventures, so even now through the mists of time I can read all about how we’d stir through piles of mud with 10′ poles, and get attacked by 11 Stirges, and lose our Cleric to being swallowed by a Giant Frog.

The first few months we played with our very first DM, Robert, but then he had to get ready to graduate, and both Johnny and I stepped up as DMs. Johnny continued to run and play games until he graduated, and I did same but returned to our HS to run games for a couple of years since my art college wasn’t that far away.

When Johnny came home for break, and later when he was on leave from the Navy, there was always a seat at our gaming table for him, and some of his “temp” characters lived on as famous NPCs. Which was easier because my setting, my D&D “world”, has been the same since I first stepped up to DM as a sophomore.

(I share all this about my friend both for context and because I’ve known this guy for over 40 freaking years and that amount of time boggles my mind.)

And we weren’t the only players who ran games too, most of our players did both – which makes me wonder what we could have done with Community Content sites for all of our many worlds? Getting into Dragon Magazine was some folk’s goals, but if we could have published our stuff? Wow!

Of course, we probably would have needed the internet to make it happen, and we were just getting desk-top computers at that time!

BTW I just listened to the recording of our “What’s Up With Onyx Path Community Content?” panel from Gen Con on the Onyx Pathcast from last Friday, so Community Content might be on my mind. It’s a good panel if you’re interested in exploring publishing your own material for our games, so check it out on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue.

Dark Eras 2 art by Alex Sheikman

Then, Saturday all day was board games with the old gaming crew from both HS and the college years: Elmer the Troll, Thock the four-armed well, Thock, D’Gr’Gr the Duergar, and Ish, the gender-neutral Deep Gnome jester.

Obviously, those are their character names (from one campaign I ran), but in real life they are old friends and we’ve tried to get together once a quarter to play games, or go to the movies, or whatever, and this was one of those occasions.

We played Terraforming Mars and Blackbeard, and had a fun time learning the former while grinding our teeth trying to figure out what the hell the rules were so desperately trying to say with Blackbeard. Granted, it was an old Avalon Hill game, but seriously, these things were contradictory in the same paragraph.

This is one of the reasons I take the errata phase of our Onyx Path games seriously – can the audience understand and implement your text in the way you intended when publishing it? It’s sometimes hard to tell until you get it in front of that audience, so that phase for us gives us that feedback.

Then Saturday night, after our guests left, I raced upstairs to join our ongoing D&D 5e game on Roll20. It had been quite a while since we could get our schedules to line up (and of course it had to be this self-same day), and we were shifting from Justin running it to Oscar. So big change, although they had decided to keep our current characters and storyline with Oscar stepping in to add to our ongoing saga, and Justin could join in as a player.

So I had to play if I could swing it timing-wise. Turns out I could, and did, and a good time was had by all. What’s really interesting is the contrast as I look at the playing experience Johnny and I were reminiscing about, and the one I had on Saturday night.

Still playing D&D (from 1e to 5e!), but there’s our group doing collaborative world building as DMs. Not done by me and my HS friends in those early days; everybody was more about presenting THEIR world, that melange of influences and tropes that they wanted everyone to play in. The chance to tell the stories they wanted to tell. In a way, it was very personal, and it was how we all expected was just how it was done.

I do think part of opening up how and why we create and run our settings is the ensuing decades of game design that have experimented with more innovative ways to play. Not all the avenues that have been explored have worked long-term, but the accumulation of trying different things has enriched our hobby overall.

And, of course, there’s the huge difference that we played on Roll20. We had players on the West Coast US and on the East Coast, and we’ve had players coming in from London, places in Canada, the EU, and Micronesia previously. Being able to pull your group together from all over the world is such a boon when I remember worrying if all of our group would make it just from all over Philadelphia for our weekly session.

What I’m saying with these comparisons, is it’s a great time to be a table-top RPGamer!

DR:E Jumpstart art by Sam Denmark

Final thing about me – I’m going to do Inktober again this year. That’s the challenge to do one drawing in ink every day for the entire month. Any kind of ink. Last year I depicted characters that were all from the MithraukoQuest storyline of my old game world. This time around I’ll be doing characters and creatures that are part of the world, and from different gaming groups’ adventures, that weren’t part of the years the players fought against Count Mithrauko – so look out for my drawrings on social media.

All this, all these years of playing, and the years of reading genre fiction and comic books, the years of TV and movies, of studying fine art and graphics, all go together so I can decide what games we’re publishing, and what seems like it’ll play well at the table, be characterful and immersive, will look really cool, and have visual hooks like page layout and symbols – all of it comes to together and powers up my ability to make sure you have:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Our Creature Collection Kickstarter for Scarred Lands 5e is skittering on creepy-crawly legs towards the next Stretch Goal to add more monsters – that the backers vote on – to the book! The first group of creatures to be added by backer voting are:

Flay Beast

Fleshcrawler

Gray Lancer

Hellfire Bloodshark

Iron Tusker

Love-Scorned Soul

Mist Murderer

Night Tyrant

This book was designed with amazing art by our friends at Handiwork Games, and they’re running the Kickstarter for us on our brand-new Onyx Path Kickstarter page! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/scarred-lands-creature-collection-for-5th-edition-rpg

And, we’re running this Kickstarter, too!

The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter launched last Thursday and we funded in just a tad over 24 hours and are vengefully slamming through Stretch Goals now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features an interview with Red Moon Rising, one of our favorite actual play groups! Go to https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ or to your favorite podcast venue!

This week should be the last one where the Onyx Path News goes directly onto YouTube, as soon, Matthew will be streaming directly to Twitch! In this week’s news, Matthew discusses Deviant: The Renegades, Scarred Lands, Vengeance of the Shunned, freelance writer tips, and more! Check out this week’s news here: https://youtu.be/Zf-YB2drW54

Speaking of Twitch, please follow our channel if you haven’t already done so! Our schedule is filled with games including Vampire, Scarred Lands, TC: Aberrant, Pugmire, Scion, Mage: The Awakening, and Hunter: The Vigil, as well as videos on Storytelling advice! Visit www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath and give us a follow, and if you have an Amazon Prime membership and haven’t already subscribed to a Twitch channel for free using it, just type Amazon Prime Twitch into Google and please use it on our channel! The first season of our Scion story is coming to a close this weekend, so thank you to David for running it, and please check out any parts you missed on our YouTube channel

Look forward to October, because we’re going for a special Character Creation Month, where every Saturday we create characters for different games, including Scarred Lands, Deviant, Scion, and more! Remember to find us on Twitch!

Remember, if you miss any content on our Twitch channel, some of it finds its way to our YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/user/theonyxpath Don’t forget though, that some of that content is Twitch exclusive or belongs to the Storytellers running their games, so don’t miss out and remember to follow us!

The ENnie award winning Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of The Sacrifice, from V5 Chicago by Night, with Klara Herbol as the Storyteller and Matthew Dawkins as a player! Please check them out on www.redmoonroleplaying.com

This week, the Story Told Podcast have created a Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition primer: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-36-geist-the-sin-eaters-2nd-edition-primer

And here’s the newest Occultists Anonymous content right here, for you Mage: The Awakening fans: Episode 45: Get Out Within the lair of the Seers, the cabal strikes while they still have an advantage. Mage-on-Mage combat! The most harrowing experience the cabal has had yet, threatening mind and body. https://youtu.be/kvTU3Wp8KEs

Episode 46: A Deal Is Struck The cabal recovers from battle and deals with the decision Wyrd made without consulting Songbird or Atratus. Emotions are ragged but there is still Mysteries residing in Lynnewood Hall.https://youtu.be/o5HR_Oj3cjk

If you’ve not been keeping up with our TC: Aberrant actual play, please do give it a look here on our YouTube channel! Collateral Damage is a superb way to introduce yourself to the Trinity Universe through an Aberrant lens: https://youtu.be/WFBBZrUZVkE

And here’s Paws & Claws, our Pugmire actual play! Lots of content for you to watch and interact with: https://youtu.be/ga7wb3ESdEA

It’s been a while since we last promoted them, but Devil’s Luck Gaming are embarking on Season 3 of their Scarred Lands pirates campaign. As one of the best actual play shows around, do yourself a favour and start watching from Season 3. You will not regret it: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re releasing the EX3 Dragon-Blooded Screen PDF and two more of our monthly Adversaries of the Righteous!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Manuscript Approval

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Indexing

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution core (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Sam on the fulls.

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted. More sketches coming in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – LeBlanc on this.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Trinity RMCs – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Contracted.

Chicago Folio – Sending contracts and art notes out.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Characters being worked on, fulls next.

Memento Mori – Contracted.

City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Dark Eras 2 – Files with Aileen

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – In progress.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

W20 Art Book

DRE Screen

Geist 2e Screen

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

M20 Book of the Fallen – PDF back to Phil for review.

DR:E Jumpstart – Sent to Eschaton for approval.

At Press

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

Trinity Aeon – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

V5: Chicago – Files sent to printer.

Aeon Aexpansion – Backer PDFs out, errata.

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel – Backer PDF out to backers, errata gathering.

Signs of Sorcery – PoD proofs ordered.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

And so we now are in Autumn! Falling into fall! Let’s celebrate the season that starts today where things get really colorful and then die! (OK, nature is just sleeping…really.) And Saturday was, I hear, Batman Day, which works well, especially if you recall the first drive in the Batmobile to the Batcave in Tim Burton’s Batman with the low angle shot up the road with swirling dead autumn leaves in the car’s wake. Lovely, just like the season.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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scullyeffect · 5 years

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how do you feel about younger people in fandom? like the youngest side that are probably on tumblr i.e 13/14ish?

i don’t know if you mean in the x-files fandom, or just younger people getting involved into fandom stuff online nowadays so i’m just going to go with a generalization.

i’m nobody’s mother and interests are healthy, and honestly i’m 23 so i don’t know anything about anything yet, but i will say that i live with a 15 y/o girl, a 13 y/o girl, and an 11 y/o girl, and i find myself very sad when all they want to do is go on a phone and watch youtube videos and be online instead of doing something more creative or intellectual.

we had a birthday party for 11 last night, and we had to take phones away from like six 10-11 year olds, which is ridiculous. i do understand that we live in a big city (paris, which isn’t exactly the safest) and lots of kids do things independently (walk to school, walk to friends’ houses, take the métro) so sometimes i worry about 11 (who doesn’t have a phone) if she needs to take the métro alone or walk somewhere alone, and i wish she did have some way to reach me if ever she got lost or something, but 11 is so young.

i think in a world that’s become so increasingly digitized and almost making it necessary to be connected in some way, kids are growing up faster, and some of the posts online and on tumblr talk about things they might not understand yet, and cause them to form opinions based on a text post some 18 y/o wrote. i’m even guilty of this. i’ll get too lazy to keep up with the real world and get my politics from tumblr sometimes, and that’s probably not good, even though mainstream news sources can do the same thing. my mom worked for the washington post, and that’s pretty much the only place i get my news from.

i probably got my first tumblr account when i was 15, and honestly i regret it. i was a pretty sheltered kid/teenager who really enjoyed reading, doing art, writing, and watching sad european dramas about dead sovereigns and suffering artists. i somehow discovered pro-ana blogs (blogs that share and encourage eating disorders to the point where healthy people can begin to actively attempt to follow insane tips in order to lose weight), and since i actually had been having trouble with my own eating habits but never really known that those behaviors were bizarre, i self-diagnosed and was part of that “community” for awhile.

i was interested/ in love with lots of actors and actresses, and as i made it out of kind of the pro-ana area which i realized which was unhealthy lol i found out about stan culture and just real obsession with movie stars/celebrities. when i was a younger teen i was “obsessed” with meryl streep, which at that time meant that i watched all her films repeatedly. i didn’t realize people cared about the actors/actresses’ personal lives until i got on tumblr, and at the time it was really exciting to discover things about my favorite celebrities (i mean, being a fan of someone obviously isn’t new, but it was to me). now that i’m 23 i find it very invasive and somewhat creepy that we’re so interested in someone’s life, sometimes even more than their body of work. we’ll probably never meet that person, and if we do they’re not going to think about you or remember you forever, because there are thousands of other people out there who feel the same way, and they just can’t keep track (at least the huge stars).

on the flip side, i think it’s good to have role models and people to look up to, but sometimes there’s a thin line there. i’m blonde, but i dyed my hair brown in my first year of high school because i was obsessed with marion cotillard and wanted to look like her. i kept the brown throughout high school because i liked it, and sort of forgot i ever did it because of her, but now i’m blonde again and it looks so much better haha. ALSO i got really interested in france/speaking french because of her (and juliette binoche), although i had a fantastic and enthusiastic french teacher in high school to help fuel my desire to speak french. and now i’m fluent in french and live in france. wow. so, if there are people you look up to in the public eye and they’re influencing you in positive ways, that’s great! i do get suspicious when very influential celebrities share their political views, though. i think we have a tendency to follow in people’s footsteps either subconsciously or in full awareness. that could be in any field. i like certain authors, and sometimes my own writing is heavily influenced by their work. it’s a natural thing that happens. but voting really should be an informed decision...just my opinion.

let’s talk about “just my opinion”. online bullying is real and can sometimes be rampant if there are dividing views on someone and their perceived private life. for example, in the x-files fandom we will, for the most part, absolutely convince you that mulder and scully are fucking like bunnies, when the show’s own creator won’t lol. but there are also people who think that gillian anderson and david duchovny (the leads) were/are/could be at some point in a romantic relationship with each other. they (anderson and duchovny) even cater to the fans a bit, but at the end of the day that’s their business and they don’t owe us an explanation, and a lot of people in fandom sort of act like they do. the point of this example was that because people in fandom are divided about this point of view, if you talk about one side or the other, there are some people who will come at you and say mean things for not agreeing with you, and try to convince you of a truth they have no real authority to speak about. this is obviously just an example, but online bullying is rampant and is often taken personally and can really affect the person being bullied, especially someone younger who may or may not be already facing that in real life at school lol.

i think tumblr is a good place for people who suffer from mental illness to come together in a healthy way to talk through their problems (god i hope i’m telling the truth), and there’s definitely tons of awareness and support that you’ll get on tumblr that you may not find in the real world. for example, i don’t know anyone irl who has epilepsy who i can talk to about mine. on tumblr i’ve talked with people who understand what i’m going through. i think that self diagnosis online, just as much on tumblr as it is when i cough and search “signs of throat cancer or tuberculosis’, read up on web md, and immediately fear my days might be numbered, is a problem. on tumblr i think we’re introduced to concepts and can sometimes treat mental illness lightly, when it shouldn’t. if you’re suffering from a mental illness, the online world isn’t going to be the place that can completely help you (says the girl who refuses to go to therapy and instead complains online about how she’s not getting any better).

being online immediately takes us out of life and into a different world. we become observers instead of experiencing the world. there’s good stuff about observation, but being online and attached to a website that is more or less just a vice for people will often make us choose to be on our phones instead of doing stuff in real life.

all of these points being said, i’m guilty of a lot of the “bad/unhealthy” facets of tumblr, but as i’ve “grown up” (unfortunately still staying on tumblr for a good portion of that time) i’ve grown out of a lot of these things and can see the good and the bad that the online world has to offer, and know which parts to stay away from. i can recognize that spending too much time on here does nothing for my desire to stay inside and not experience the real world. it also makes me think a lot more about tv shows/films/celebrities than i need to. but i’ve also made great friends from being on tumblr over the years, and gotten support i definitely wouldn’t have gotten in real life.

back to my real life. do i encourage the girls i live with to be interested in certain media? yes, especially stuff i feel has a good message. i basically sat the two older ones down and showed them the pilot of the x-files. do they experience the same high level obsession i do with tv shows/movies? no. and i’m glad for that. they like to lose themselves in certain tv shows, but when the tv is off they don’t really talk about it. do i introduce them to things i’m interested in media-wise? yes. do i introduce them to books and music i was/am interested in? yes. have i told them about tumblr? no. they don’t have any access to my online “presence” (they don’t know my instagram, twitter, etc), and i don’t talk about it. when my computer is out and they’re in the room doing homework, i’m usually writing. granted, that’s usually fanfiction, but at least i’m writing something.

one of the boys i tutor is writing a book (he’s 11) which is basically a self insert that takes place in the harry potter universe. he doesn’t know what fanfiction is, and i haven’t told him (although he’d never type it up and put it online lol he barely knows how to turn the computer on), but i’m so thrilled he’s even writing that i make him sit down and write for 10 minutes before we ever start watching a movie (in english).

ANYWAY. i’m nobody’s mother and at the end of the day i’m posting this online on my stupid blog where nothing i say matters or has any influence anywhere, but i think kids should be able to enjoy a non-internet related childhood as long as possible. some of us on tumblr are old enough to actually have children that age, and as much as we like having an account on this site, if asked this same question we might not as readily say ‘yeah it’s great! i want my teenagers to have the same experience as me!’

there’s my two centimes. hope i answered your question. JuST MY OPINION.

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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How SparkNotes' social media accounts mastered the art of meme-ing literature

Most millennials know SparkNotes as the ultimate no-nonsense study buddy, but today’s students not only receive help with schoolwork from the website, they get high-quality entertainment, too.

SparkNotes remains a crucial tool for text comprehension — full of study guides and supplemental resources on english literature, philosophy, poetry, and more. But over the past two years it’s also become a source of some of the internet’s most quick-witted, thought-provoking, and ambitious memes.

SparkNotes' Twitter and Instagram accounts have carved a unique niche for themselves online by posting literary memes that find perfect parallels between classic works like Macbeth, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Frankenstein, and present-day pop culture favorites like The Office, Parks and Rec, and more.

It may come as a surprise to those who once frequented the site for the sole purpose of better understanding Shakespeare plays before a final exam or catching up on assigned chapters of The Catcher in the Rye before the bell rang, but SparkNotes is cool now, and absolutely killing the social media game.

SEE ALSO: The magic of Book Fairies

As someone who spends the majority of her workday on the internet and splits her leisure time almost exclusively between reading books and re-watching episodes of The Office, I fell in love with the account's near-perfect meme execution after mere minutes of scrolling through posts.

In a world with so many bad brand tweets and tone-deaf memes, I felt compelled to seek out the well-read meme masters behind SparkNotes' social media to learn how it is they manage to make each and every post so good.

How SparkNotes' social media became LIT ✨📚

Chelsea Aaron, a 31-year-old senior editor for SparkNotes, is a huge part of the success. She started managing the site's Instagram in September 2017, and her meme approach has helped the account grow from 5,000 to 134,000 followers.

"When I first started managing the account, I tried a bunch of different things," Aaron explained in an email. "I ran illustrations and original content from our blog, and I also borrowed memes from our Twitter ... The memes seemed to get the most likes, so I started making and posting those on a regular basis, and now I try to do four to five per week."

Image: screengrab / Instagram

Aaron discovered the account's recipe for success by not only making memes about some of SparkNotes' most popular, highly searched guides — which include Shakespeare's plays, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice — but by mashing them together with a few modern television shows that she's personally passionate about, such as The Office, Parks and Rec, Arrested Development, and John Mulaney's comedy specials. She's also known for hilariously retelling entire works (SparkNotes style, so, abridged versions) using the account's Highlight feature.

Image: screengrab / instagram

The brilliantly sharp, comical posts seem effortless, but Aaron explained the process takes some serious concentration. Essentially, she stares at a large collection of collected screenshots "in a state of panic" until an idea strikes. "It's wildly inefficient and incredibly stressful, but I haven't figured out another way to do it," she admitted.

Luckily, Aaron always has the SparkNotes Twitter account to turn to for inspiration, which is managed by Courtney Gorter, a 26-year-old consulting writer for SparkNotes who Aaron calls "a comedic genius."

Gorter has been managing the Twitter account for about a year and a half now, and joined the SparkNotes team because she utilized its resources growing up and wanted to help "make classic literature feel accessible" to others.

"I wanted this stuff to seem slightly more fun (or, at the very least, less intimidating) to the average stressed-out student who's just trying to read fifty pages by tomorrow and also has a quiz on Friday," she said. The memes definitely help her achieve that goal.

Scrolling through the SparkNotes Instagram account, you notice it generally uses a recurring but reliably satisfying meme format. Most of the posts consist of a white block filled with introductory text and a screenshot from a television show, like so.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SparkNotes Official (@sparknotes_) on Apr 16, 2019 at 10:25am PDT

Gorter, on the other hand, ensures the Twitter account showcases a far more widespread representation of the internet. She posts everything from out-of-context screenshots, GIFs, and videos, to altered headlines from The Onion and trending meme formats of the moment, like "in this house" memes, "nobody vs me" memes, and more. The account is full of variety and gloriously unpredictable.

Hades: Orpheus I’ll let you bring your wife back from the Underworld, but if you turn and look behind you she’ll be lost to you forever. Orpheus: pic.twitter.com/FWD9P2nO0m

— SparkNotes (@SparkNotes) April 16, 2019

Normal heart rate: /\⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ /\ _ / \ __/\__ / \ _ \/⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ \/ The old man you just killed, whose heart lies hidden beneath the floorboards yet continues to beat: ⠀/\⠀ /\⠀ /\ _/ \ /\_/ \ /\_/ \ /\_ ⠀ \/⠀⠀ \/⠀⠀ \/

— SparkNotes (@SparkNotes) April 12, 2019

Gorter, who describes herself as "constantly on the internet" feels a lot of her ideas are the result of "cultural osmosis ... our collective tendency to consume references and jokes without realizing it just by being on the internet a lot."

"Sometimes I’ll be reading a book, and I’ll remember a joke I saw earlier that fits. Sometimes a new meme format will crop up over the weekend, and I’ll think, 'That could work for Macbeth,'" she said.

Though the two accounts are clearly distinct from one another, they both give off the same hip English teacher energy and running them has become a truly collaborative effort. "I constantly send her [Gorter] emails asking stuff like, 'Can I still say 'big mood' or is that over?' and 'What's the deal with this whole 'wired vs tired' thing?'" Aaron said.

Together, the two women spend their days discussing iconic works of literature, making pop culture references, and keeping up with the latest memes. (A dream job.) Their separate styles fuse together to make each other's posts the best they can be.

The meme approach works wonders

One might not initially think that Boo Radley and John Mulaney have much in common, or that Michael Scott could effortlessly embody Romeo, Julius Caesar, and Holden Caulfield if you simply alter your perspective. I certainly did not.

But Aaron and Gorter's work will convince you. Once you start merging the worlds of classic literature and modern television series, you won't want to stop.

The SparkNotes instagram is my favorite thing pic.twitter.com/FCc6sXjJly

— Jessie Martin (@jessie_martin97) March 29, 2019

Fun fact, the official Sparknotes Instagram account is probably the best one: pic.twitter.com/sIR6tsw7ZP

— Tommy (@tommy_jacobs92) February 28, 2019

When describing why the posts work so well, Aaron explained that Hamlet, Mr. Darcy, and Gatsby — three of her favorite characters to meme — have super relatable personalities, which makes the process so simple.

"They're dramatic, and awkward, and obsessive, which makes them identical to about 97% of the people on The Office," she said. "I've learned that you can use Michael Scott as a stand-in for pretty much any classic lit character, and it isn't even hard. (That's what she said)."

What wow the @SparkNotes Twitter is extremely good???? It all appears to be this good!!! https://t.co/PyEqTdQ3Ly

— Rachel Kelly 🥛 (@wholemilk) May 2, 2019

Why is @SparkNotes's Twitter so good it has no right to be this good https://t.co/eFBQpLMpe3

— Kelsey [Version 2019.05] (@flusteredkels) May 2, 2019

Gorter thinks the accounts are so appealing because they create a deep sense of community — an online space that isn't so isolating, rather a place where where bibliophiles, television enthusiasts, and meme lovers can all come together and geek the hell out. There's really something for everyone.

"When Steve Rogers said, 'I understood that reference,' I felt that deeply. I think people enjoy being in on a joke, especially when the source material (classic literature, for instance) isn’t particularly hilarious," Gorter said. "There’s a delicious juxtaposition there. I know that I personally get a secret little thrill when I understand something as contextually layered as a really niche meme, and a slight sense of frustration when I don’t."

Engaging followers and changing with the times

SparkNotes as a whole has come a long way since it was launched as TheSpark.com by a group of Harvard students in 1999.

What started out as a budding web-based dating service quickly transformed into a trusted library of online study materials, and over the years, as the publishing industry, technology, and the internet evolved, so did SparkNotes.

Like the social media accounts, SparkNotes' SparkLife blog — full of quizzes, artwork, rankings, advice, and trendy posts like "How To Break Up With Someone, According To Shakespeare" and "Snapchats From Every Literary Movement" — perfectly encapsulates the site's commitment to catering to its audience.

Whoever runs the Sparknotes twitter and Instagram pages deserves a raise

— louise🌻 (@_Fallxn_) February 21, 2019

SparkNotes does a remarkable job of shifting with the times to stay relevant and interesting in the eyes of its readers — and the quest to balance fun and education really seems to be paying off. Recently, the Instagram account tested out a post that called upon students and teachers to request custom-made memes by reaching out via email with the title of a book or subject they want meme'd, along with a message for the intended recipient.

"The response was amazing!" Aaron said. "We got almost 250 emails, and it's so great to see the genuine affection and admiration that teachers have for their students, and vice versa."

Thanks to the social media accounts, SparkNotes is not only helping students learn, but helping entire classrooms bond with their teachers. (And hopefully teaching educators who follow a thing or two about good memes.)

Print isn't dead, it's just getting some help from the internet

Aaron and Gorter are having a blast running the accounts, but ultimately, they hope their lighthearted posts will inspire people to pick up a book and read.

"I hope what our followers take away from this is that classic literature doesn’t have to be totally dry," Gorter said. "If our memes encourage our followers to engage with classic literature and be excited about reading, that's so rewarding," Aaron added.

The present-day approach to selling classic literature is undeniably unconventional, and the crossovers are absurdly ambitious, but they work so damn well. What's great about the memes is they're created in a way that doesn't diminish the literature plots, because in reality, one would have to have such a comprehensive understanding of the text to make such good jokes.

The memes are actually pretty high-brow when you think about it, sure to delight intellectuals with great taste in pop culture. I have no idea how the legendary writers would feel about their greatest works getting the meme treatment, but people online are definitely loving it.

It's refreshing to see a brand account succeed at such a genuinely funny level, but perhaps even nicer to see it thriving off of wholesome content that doesn't drag other accounts or get its laughs at the expense of tearing others down, as we've seen accounts do in the past.

SparkNotes social media accounts are genuinely just nice corners of the internet dedicated to making people laugh and hopefully igniting a love of literature.

WATCH: Steve Carell to reunite with 'The Office' creator for Netflix's 'Space Force'

#_uuid:9b22ebd8-ea58-31ce-9978-8521a7e4e858 #_category:yct:001000002 #_author:Nicole Gallucci #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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josiebelladonna · 2 years

Text

ooh wow, shots fired.

…

right into her own foot.

“always on my mind, always there...” apparently there’s another chapter in that dreck called “stay out of my dreams” and i guess it was published right after i started dead man walking.

good. i hope i keep on haunting you.

it’s one thing to be all like “sharing is caring”. but when you take something from me that i made, and don’t even acknowledge my existence, that’s where things muddy and you fall right into the trap of plagiarism.

that’s always been my thing with all of this, too: you think it’s okay to take from other people and then gloss it over with “sharing is caring”. you want everyone to like you: you might not admit it, but that’s your shtick, though, daveigh. life doesn’t work that way. there’s always going to be someone along the way who’s going to call you out on your bullshit. i said this when this whole thing started between me and you: you’re going to come across someone who’s going to make you wish you had listened to me. but i doubt it. 9 times out of 10 when someone’s acting like an asshole, they don’t even realize it nor do they realize that what they’re doing is wrong. listen, if i went on record to say “feel free to share this”, i would’ve said it. that’s just how it is with me. the way i say things is very concise: there’s no subtext here, it just is what it is. but i didn’t, did i? what the hell is my signature doing on any of my art or any of my edits? why do i go to all of that trouble then when someone like you renders it meaningless in the end?

you know, now that i write this, i actually really find it hard to blame her for it. the problem is the fact that stealing is utterly rampant in fanfic spaces. like i mentioned the other day, i discussed this with someone years ago. the problem is the fact that big sites like tumblr and wattpad literally allow plagiarism - for example, go through the tag “heat waves” on wattpad. heat waves, the most read fic on ao3 right now, a dream/georgenotfound fic (i’m not into video blogging so i’m not too familiar with the lingo over there) and i remember it crashing ao3 last january, too: i couldn’t get on there to update the dead of night for a few hours. the author actually had to buckle down and make her own wattpad account for the official posting of the fic because so many people were reposting it despite it being locked onto ao3.

this cannot continue. authors, artists, anyone who makes something has so little power over what we control on the internet. and moreover, you have people like her who thinks it’s okay to screw someone like me over and call it “sharing” when that’s not even close to what sharing is. she is clearly clueless about this whole thing and how this has worked out in the past, so i can’t entirely give her hell for it. this whole thing stopped being about me and her a long time ago. call me greedy, given i have 120 works on my archive right now and i finally said “hell with it” and restarted wattpad for my testament fics, including my two monsters fever and dead man walking. but the point is i made those fics. i wrote them from the ground up. they have my name on it. i’ve been seeing a lot more female testament fans crop up and i know they’re going to want content.

wattpad, being as shit and annoying as it is and as much as they screwed me over in the past, still has a readership. to see someone repost something i made, whether it’s something i wrote or a piece of art, would kill me. i have a right to protect my art. i’m a clown: i want attention. i want to connect with people. i’m done making things for myself: i want to serve a community.

if anything, i’m the one who doesn’t want to fight. i’m just trying to write and create and live my life: people like this are the ones making the whole experience hell by taking and expecting me to just be okay with it. i get off on drama, sure, but it’s only because i like the rush of things. i’m energized by the rush of life: that’s another problem i see a lot, too, people let drama get the best of them and they wind up feeling drained out of it. rather, it should motivate you. it should motivate you to be a better person. you should learn from it rather than let it drag you down. thus, that’s why we all have to get obnoxious with it: make your watermarks huge. make your signature part of the art so it’s impossible to differentiate from it. get big and loud with your name.

it’s yours, damn it. you made it. let them wither away in their own passive-aggression, their bitterness, their anger until they get it. that is, if they do.

i would like to top this whole thing off with a quote that i learned about ten years ago when my parents split. i’m not one to hold a grudge but i needed this reminder, though, and i doubt she’ll see this, but it’s worth saying, though, especially since i see so many people on here upholding the whole “why would i forgive and forget” mantra at an alarming rate: “holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” if that’s not good enough for you, here’s a quote from a wise, very sweet old man named alex skolnick: “life’s too short for grudges.”

nope, sorry. we all can’t “just get along”. not when you refuse to let it happen and you refuse to be done with it: i was done with all of this when i wrote my dead trilogy in late 2020, a couple of months after this whole thing started - why do you think i tried to make amends with you last summer? and you know... further taking my words out of context is only going to reinforce how right i am about all of this.

#rants n rambles #fanfic woes #text #wattpad #ao3 #ao3 writer #xxgreendruidessxx #daveighmustaine

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ilosttrackofthings · 6 years

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I was tagged by @gettothestabbing

Tag up to 10 people

1. What are the pettiest things you do on the internet?

Thanks to my shipping habits I’ve been blocked by a fair number of people and every so often I’ll like a post only to stop and wonder if the OP’s name seems familiar because they’re one of those. I’ll then check my likes in another tab and if the post isn’t there, I’ll unlike it on my dash. Even though technically the liking never went through in the first place.

2. Do you watch reality TV?

Amazing Race and Survivor are our family night shows, but I can’t handle much else, too much second-hand embarrassment.

3. Do you think it’s fair to not hire people with tattoos or body mods or who dress differently?

It honestly depends. That’s definitely a topic that would have to be brought up at an interview if it was something dramatic; a big arm or neck tattoo might be balanced out by professional clothing, for example. At the same time it isn’t up to the company to accommodate what was ultimately a decision that this person made. That’s on the (potential) employee. They’re the one who wants a job and, while on the job, it will be their responsibility to represent the company in whatever way the company expects. If that means covering up or, sadly, that whatever they’ve done to their body takes them out of the running, them’s the breaks.

As for dressing “differently” there are employee dress codes for a reason. As long as you abide by them, HR’s not gonna have a problem with you.

4. Would you ever tell stories about famous people you know to the tabloids for money?

If there was some story they wanted out there, I might help them by ~leaking it, but I also might pass the buck to another friend. The pressure of being friends with a famous person would be bad enough but I imagine once you slip up and spill to the reporters once, they’ll be constantly coming back.

5. Do you think modern-day royal families that have a limited or nonexistent role in actual government should keep existing?

I don’t really see any harm in it, at this point aren’t they basically just born celebrities? But I’ve never lived in a country with any sort of monarchy, so I really couldn’t say what damage that might do. (But also how are you gonna get rid of them? These are actual people. Are we gonna forcibly castrate them to put an end to the line or something?)

6. Do you think music keeps getting worse as years go by?

As an art form I think music hit its peak a good while ago, but that doesn’t mean what there is now isn’t worthwhile. In every generation you’re gonna find completely empty songs - I mean I’ve got “lollipop” by the Chordettes open in another tab, there’s really not much to that song, but there were plenty of good, meaningful songs written in the 50s.

7. What caused the worst physical pain you’ve ever felt?

A few weeks after we got Rover, it was raining and I let him out into the back yard. He started sniffing around the pool gate and he was still small enough then to fit through the bars, and also we hadn’t had him in summertime yet so I didn’t know there was no force on this earth that would compel that dog into a giant pool of water, so I was worried he’d go out there. He hadn’t learned to come when called so I went out to get him. Two steps down, the water from the rain plus my worn down crocs saw me sitting hard on the brick steps.

I cried for hours. I kept telling my family it didn’t hurt that bad anymore, I just couldn’t stop crying. Also it did still hurt, just not nearly as much as that initial pain had been. It was very likely a broken tail bone and the weeks of recovery were not fun.

8. Do you give money or food to homeless people?

No. Maybe it’s because I’m terrified of social interactions that don’t come with a script. Maybe it’s because of that time my grandma was volunteering feeding the homeless and left me at a table with the expectation that I, a very small child, would somehow entertain a bunch of homeless men through their meal. Who’s to say?

9. Who do you think should run against Trump in 2020?

I honestly have no idea. Nothing makes sense anymore, predictions are meaningless.

10. Do you think humanity will survive to explore the universe?

Maybe? I think humanity will survive, surely, but I don’t know how far we’ll go. All that beauty isn’t there for us. If we’re meant to enjoy it that’ll be amazing.

11. What do you think of society’s attitude towards animals?

Well that’s ... a question. There’s honestly too many possible attitudes to tackle them all. But l do think it’s important we remember that animals are not people. A human is more important than an animal, full stop.

12. Do you think a person can truly be happy without close relationships?

No. We were made for relationship. A life without that is empty.

13. What do you think are the ideal times to go to sleep and to wake up?

I’d love to go to bed at ten and wake up at six but wow that does not work for me. Here’s hoping tonight I can pull off nine and six doesn’t come too early.

14. Top three worst “classic” or very popular songs?

“Happy” by Pharrell Williams; “Let It Go” - it’s not the song’s fault but Frozen is the worst so there you go; aaaaaand “Do You Hear What I Hear” which makes NO SENSE in any context (suggestion: let’s stop singing dyhwih in church and start singing “God Bless America” on appropriate holiday-adjacent Sundays again. Much better. Everyone is happier.)

15. Do you think “follow your dreams” is good advice?

Yes, but I think the problem is in the idea that a dream has to be outlandish in some way. When we tell people to follow their dreams it’s always something big, even something reckless. Small dreams are good too.

I tag...

@safelycapricious, @shineyma, @sapphireglyphs, @batsonthebrain, @daisyfitz, @meghan84, @duxbelisarius, and ... and ... I DON’T KNOW DO IT IF YOU WANT TO I’M ALREADY FAILING AT NUMBER 13

#talkytalktalk

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mcjour · 3 years

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so the other day was the anniversary of my friend’s death and i realized there was so much i didn’t process there like at all.

i can barely even remember what our relationship was. he definitely wasn’t a close best friend or anything, at least. but the line between acquaintance and friend is blurred. like, i didn’t exactly hang out with him. but it’s not like i was really hanging out with anyone at that point lol.

so i see his closer friends (also my friends) post something on facebook sometimes and i am like huh am i entitled to that? was i close enough to him or would posting be attention seeking?

i mean there isn’t anything i need to post or anything but thought that was an interesting thought. especially knowing my friends who knew him really wouldn’t even be the type to gatekeep grief anyway but like i said just a thought

gosh i barely even remember him and that’s so awful. like the day i found out he died, we all posted about it and so my memories are only the ones i wrote down in that post. they were nice memories, but i hate that my brain has deleted so much of my life

anyway can’t believe it’s been 5 years!

i think about him a lot, actually. not all the time, but more than i would expect

one thing i thought about this week was how traumatizing finding out was. because we all found out through a mass email to the entire campus. heartbreaking, probably the worst way to find out. i don’t really blame the school for that or anything, it’s not like they have a roster of all your connections or anything lol. but that doesn’t make it any less sucky

i remember i was texting a friend and maybe she was the one to read the email first? but either way i remember us being like, hold on, are we reading this correctly? our friend had a decently common name, so on a large campus, could there have been someone else with his name? but no. he was ours.

i remember i was in the dining hall getting food right before work. i was in shock. i don’t remember if i cried then and there, but i definitely cried at work. i don’t really know why i didn;t just not go to work. probably i didn’t even know who i would talk to about it. besides, what else was i supposed to do? it’s not like there was a guide to how to react when you find out your friend is dead via campus email.

i remember walking to my dorm after my shift. for some reason i worked on the opposite side of campus than i lived lol. i was probably cold and tired and dirty and wet from working in the dish room. i was listening to music as i walked. as i walked up the steep hill (almost home!), the song lifegoeson by noah and the whale came on shuffle. there’s a verse about the singer’s “last night on earth” and having no regrets or something. and wow i think i probably just bawled right then and there knowing that it had literally been my friend’s last night on earth the night or 2 before.

when you looked at his twitter, that night (or sometime in the days before), he had retweeted a bunch of tweets saying “i could really use a hug right now.” i don’t think i had seen it at the time, like i don’t think i used twitter every day or anything. but to look back at that is so stinging. like, one of those cliche moments wondering if you could go back into the past and change something. like if i had seen that and reached out to him, would he still be alive today? and really who knows. and who knows, maybe other friends DID see, and DID reach out. it’s not really something i spend a lot of time guilting over or anything. but it still is really something to look back at, the cries for help immortalized on the internet.

his twitter account was later hacked and became like a porn bot account which was also just devastating. luckily i think those tweets got deleted, but the profile picture and the bio still remain. and his old tweets too, like i said.

there’s also a message he sent me a few months before he died inviting me to a party, which was so kind. and literally the day before he died, he sent me a cat video. or maybe it was the night he died. the link is dead now, so i don’t remember what the video was. there’s no response. i don’t know if i ignored it or if i just didn’t check twitter.

maybe he was trying to comfort us through his death. in retrospect, i guess i really was a friend if i was one of the people he reached out to in those final hours

his death was right before finals too. which meant we were all totally fucked, i was already tanking a lot of my classes as it already was. i ended up taking an incomplete in one and finishing the next semester. i am sure many of my friends were in similar boats. the friend who passed was actually about to graduate. he was 24. i must’ve been 19 at the time, almost 20. he seemed so much older. i am 24 now, so lol.

the reason i was struggling so much before this was that my cat had died about a month prior. he was my entire world.

i couldn’t imagine life without my cat. i can’t remember when i started feeling suicidal myself, but my friend’s death definitely exacerbated that feeling. i think i felt like he beat me to it. and i didn’t want people to think i was a copy cat either. but every time i cut through the fine arts center i’d stand and look over the edge and wonder if it was high enough. i really don’t think it was LOL. but i was in so much pain.

what helped was my advisor slash professor. i had emailed all my professors about the deaths just to give them a heads up if i was missing class or assignments or whatever. and i remember i typed something like sorry, i am just having a really shitty semester. and she replied and was like yeah no that’s an understatement. and she invited me to like hang out and chat and eat donuts and i felt super awkward and anxious about the whole thing but she was so kind and helped me get through some of the professor issues i was having. plus the donut. that ended up really jumpstarting our relationship and she was so important to my college career.

i knew another person from that same group who also died. i was not as close to her, but was of course still sad to hear of her passing. and it really speaks to how trauma can kill you, i think. most college groups do not lose two people. while they are still in college. there’s a photo of us from a house party and it’s weird that there’s i don’t know 10, 15, 20 people in the photo and 2 of them are dead.

these are things that i haven’t told anybody. because who could i tell?

like i could talk about my friend with our mutual friends, and we did right after he passed and stuff but like at some point that ends. and then i’m not really in close contact with any of them anymore. i would be happy to talk to any of them, don’t get me wrong, but i’m not about to contact these people out of the blue.

and anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t know

and my cat too. i feel like that’s not as shareable of a grief. like society says that’s just a cat. and it was only a month after losing him that i lost my friend, so i was still grieving my cat when it happened. but now my friends all had their own grief and i didn’t want to divert the focus on my friend to be like hi i also am sad about my cat? that seems weird. the word that came to mind was selfish, and i don’t think that’s the correct word in this context. but it does just feel inappropriate.

then to go home at the end of the semester to an unsupportive household while weighted down by two huge deaths. i think i told my mom i wasn’t going to talk to her about my friend (what could i really say anyway). idk she’s the last place i would go for comfort.

and she made grieving the cat horrible. i don’t remember but i think she made it all about her somehow. like how she found the body and bla bla bla. i don’t remember.

the grief of both of these deaths has been bottled for 5 years.

something else i remembered: they set up group counseling for me and my friends. and so i went. i wasn’t too keen on counseling, but i think i was just in shock still and figured it would be good for me. and good to be with friends, whether for my sake or theirs.

so it was run by this lady. this horrible lady. the lady who sent me to the hospital for no fucking reason. so i was like holy fucking shit!!! but once again i think i was kinda in shock, like wtf was i supposed to do, just walk out and make a scene? so i sat there. and she sucked lol. i smiled at one point. i have no idea why i smiled. it was unconcious. maybe i remembered a happy memory, maybe it was just a nervous response who fucking knows. either way she called me out on it and was like why are you smiling? now i think it is rude in general to just call someone out like that LOL but this just so happened to be a very specific trigger of mine from high school days. so i think i literally ran out of the room. one of my friends followed me and talked with me out in the staircase. i know i didn’t go back, but i can’t remember if my friend went back or not. i think i felt bad having her comfort me over some dumb thing, instead of getting counseling herself, but she was definitely like nah that lady sucks. someone i think said the lady made a comment about me leaving too. idk. anyway she’s an ass.

unrelated, kinda, this lady taught the intro to social work class which i really wanted to take but i was like hell NO. luckily one semester they got someone else to teach it. it sucked in a totally different way LOL.

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briefpainfulandfullofgarbage · 7 years

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#cluecrewquestionnaire

I was tagged by @hotchkiss-and-tell ten years ago and I’m just doing this now ahhh (my keyboard is broken typing take years :/ )

rules: copy and paste, answer the questions, tag 10 mutuals to do the same!

1. What is your favorite Nancy Drew game and why?

As a kid I really liked DDI, SHA, and CUR but I haven’t played them in years

2. Have you played all 32 games in the series? If not, which ones haven’t you played? If yes, which one did you play first?

I’ve played all the games except WAC and TOT. I really wanna play WAC but I don’t have a PC :/ (I heard there’s a way to make the PC games work on a mac but idk I’m bad at computers) I could play TOT but it doesn’t look that exciting tbh lol I will play it someday tho

3. What is your favorite line from any character in the series?

The one that’s referenced in my url cuz it’s just like.... so true. But also the part in TMB when Nancy asks Jamila what she thinks of Dylan and Jamila says “did I have to have an opinion on him?” and Nancy says “I guess not” and Jamila says “oh good that’s a relief.” And also like anything Joe has ever said

4. If you could change the ending to any game, which one would it be (no spoilers, though)?

Mmmm... idk about a specific game but I liked how in SAW and GTH you had more than one option for what Nancy could do and I wish more games had multiple endings

5. Which game is your least favorite, and why?

tbh RAN but I feel like that’s too obvious an answer?? but it’s true??? Other than that I guess I don’t like CLK much? I just don’t like driving or mini golf

6. Which character is your favorite? Why?

Of the mains Joe cuz he’s hilarious and Bess cuz I really liked her in MED. She was just really hashtag relatable?? Of the others Zoe Wolfe (SPY) and Dagny Silva (SEA) cuz I’m bi af and my type is girls who could kick my ass apparently. I like Henry (CRY) cuz he’s super depressing and funny. Also Gray (DED) cuz his whole existential crisis thing is too real. As an adult I have a newfound appreciation for Emily (CLK) cuz I too never leave my room unless the house is currently on fire. Also Jamila (TMB), Grigor (LIE) Colton (GTH), and Alexei (ASH)

7. Which character is your least favorite? Why?

Richard Topham (CLK) is the worst. So is Red Knott (DOG). And Tino Balducci (TRN), Colin (VEN), Toni (ASH), Lisa (TRT)

8. How do you feel about the whole Nancy/Ned vs. Nancy/Frank situation? Do you ship her with someone else? Who, and why?

Unpopular opinion but I don’t actually have an opinion?? I’m not really upset either way. I’m also here for aroace Nancy who’s in a committed relationship with adventure. (I did tell Ned I loved him in SEA tho cuz I just like... can’t make characters sad??)

9. Do you have any fun headcanons about any of the games or characters?

Mmmm not really tbh I’m boring. But Nancy is aspec, George is gay, and Joe is bi. That’s all I got rn idk about the others. @harpersthornton inspired me with their sims posts so I made sim versions of some of my favs. I’m not quite as good as they are at making them look accurate but sometimes my sims will do things and I’ll be like you know what I bet Frank does that

10. If you could visit any of the locations of the games, which ones would they be and why?

I’ve been to a few but Japan has been on my bucket list forever cuz I’m half Japanese. I really wanna go to Iceland to see the northern lights. Also New Orleans cuz it looks cool and I wanna go before global warming does its thing.

11. Did you read any of the original Nancy Drew books? If yes, do you like them? If no, would you consider reading one?

I read some of them when I was a kid but I haven’t since so I don’t really remember if they were good or not. I liked them at the time tho

12. What is one thing any good detective can’t live without?

Koko kringles? Lack of tact and boundaries? Kleptomania? A Mary Poppins bag to carry all the stuff you took cuz it’ll ‘come in handy later’?

13. Which game had the best soundtrack?

Ohhh... tbh I don’t pay as much attention to the soundtracks as I should... I thought the SAW soundtrack was really cool tho

14. What is one thing you wish HER would’ve included in any of the games (a conversation, interaction, location, feature, etc.)?

Hmm... more diversity I guess? More lgbt+ and poc characters? Also in GTH I wanted an option to not ask super invasive questions about Colton’s mental health but I guess it’s not really a Nancy Drew game if Nancy doesn’t ask tactless questions

15. Do you have any ideas for a future game? What is it?

MID

16. How long does it take you to finish a game from start to finish?

I try to take at least a few days to finish each game. If I know I’m almost at the end I’ll try to do anything but finish the game lol

17. Did any of the games scare you? If yes, which ones? If no, why?

OMG anything with alarms gives me hella anxiety. Anything that’s timed and idk how much time I actually have. I always made my mom do those parts when I was a kid. Tbh they still make me anxious but I’m an adult so now I just suffertm

18. Why did you join the Nancy Drew fandom here on tumblr?

I got back into the games when I was in college and had no friends and hella free time. I lurked for a while before I finally pulled the trigger piglet

19. What is your favorite Nancy Drew joke (from in-game or even floating around the internet)?

How salty everyone is about her’s terrible marketing decisions

20. Who is someone in the clue crew you’ve always wanted to get to know?

Hmmmm.... everyone tbh?? but i’m gonna tag @hotchkiss-and-tell cuz they tagged me

21. What are three unpopular opinions you hold about the games?

1. I don’t like TRN as much as everyone seems to?? I haven’t played it since I was like 10 but I remember not liking it much. Idk maybe I’d like it now?

2. I thought LIE was pretty fun? Like I know the puzzles make no sense but some of them are just like kind of relaxing? Like the pomegranate puzzle and the art puzzle on Xenia’s tablet

3. I read one (1) Joe/Sonny fic and now that pairing owns my ass but I’ve never seen anyone else ship it

22. Do you have any fun theories about any of the games?

Uhhhh my un-creative ass doesn’t have anything original but this theory about GTH by @nancy-who is my fav

23. Who was your favorite animal character featured in the games?

Tumi (SEA) is the cutest

24. Do other people in your life know about your love for Nancy Drew?

A couple, not really. I did get one of my friends to play one tho! she played CRY and she thought Henry was super hot but the game glitched and didn’t let her finish it :/

25. How long have you been playing these games?

I got FIN for christmas when I was 8 so it’s been... wow 14 years

I did this like super late so idk who has/hasn’t done this... if you see this and you wanna do it consider yourself tagged and @ me in your questionnaire :)

#me #clue crew #cluecrewquestionnaire

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sho5gummmylife · 6 years

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Tagged by @misstheatricality

Thanks for the tag! I’ve never done anything like this before so yeah!

1. Name/nickname: My name is Laurel, but my internet name thing is Rin

2. Gender: I am a fee of the male (Don’t ask lol)

3. Star Sign: Libra

4. Height: Last time I checked I was 5 foot 1 1/2..?

5. Hogwarts House: I am a hufflepuff

6. Favorite Animal: ALL CATS

7. Hours of Sleep: I get 9 hours of sleep. I prefer to stay up until 11, but I have school.. ugh

8. Dogs or Cats: Umm... what do you think?? (Cats)

9. Number of Blankets: I sleep with one or two. It depends on the temperature of my room that’s either Antarctica cold, or Hell hot

10. Dream Trip: I would like to go to South Korea, so I know what it’s like and know more about my dad’s family even though he doesn’t know them....

11. Dream Job: Uhhh... something involving art? Either dance, photography, or drawing

12. Time: 9:23 pm (I need sleep or I’m gonna be tired tomorrow.. ughh)

13. Birthday: October 5th

14. Favorite Band: BTS, dude!!

15. Favorite Solo Artist: I don’t know, but lately, I’ve been listening to Selena Gomez’s old music

16. Song Stuck in My Head: Kill Yourself my Bo Burnham or Go Go by ma 7 boys

17. Last Movie I Watched: Selena. We’re watching it in Spanish class

18. Last Show I Watched: Kekkai Sensen & Beyond

19. When Did I Create My Blog: uhh... it was sometime last year.. I don’t remember

20. What Do I Post/reblog: Basically BTS and SasuNaru things because I have no life

21. Last Thing I googled: What the zip code of Des Moines is for a friend

22. Other Blogs: @naru-rants where I get mad at things and review Boruto episodes that make me want to die.. I need to rant more there lol

23. Do I Get Asks: Only by my friend when I ask her to because I’m lonely and bored

24. Why I Choose My IRL: Well, I was really bored one day and made a Tumblr account for my wattpad (It’s gone now). So when I went to change my IRL for this account, I couldn’t use “rin_is_cat” So yeah

25. Following: 152 and I see the same blogs everyday, but I don’t mind it ^-^

26. Followers: 42... I’ll get more soon... once I get more creative in life

27. Lucky Number: Well, when I have to pick a number, I choose 2 for some reason.. I don’t know why

28. Favorite Instrument: If this is musical wise, uhh... the guitar seems cool? I like listening to guitar covers

29. What Am I Wearing: The clothes I went to dance in AKA a random shirt and leggings THAT HAVE POCKETS

30. Favorite Food: One of them would have to be ramen, but I haven’t had it in a while.. I like orange chicken though..

31. Nationality: I’m half Korean and half white?

32. Favorite Song: DO I HAVE TO CHOOSE?? Well, one of them is Death of a Bachelor by Panic! At the Disco, and I also like Avalanche by WALK THE MOON.

33. Last Book Read: The 4th Percy Jackson book. (Not to brag, but I started reading the series two weeks ago)

34. Top Three Fictional Universes I’d Like To Join: Naruto, any of Rainbow Rowell’s universes (specifically Carry On), and Seven Tears at High Tide BECAUSE I WANNA HAVE A WISH GRANTED AND BEFRIEND A SELKIE

Tagging:

@em-fujoshi-queen

Wow.. such a small list when only one of my friends has a Tumblr and I don’t know if my other mutuals did this or not... and I’m really shy to just tag random blogs I’m following because ANXIETY

#tagged #about me

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barduil · 7 years

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So… I have to get this out of my chest, and I’m going to be honest about it. Sorry, it got pretty long.

I’ve worked on Forgotten Roads for over two years. It’s a fic that means a lot to me, that has been building in my mind for a long time. A bit more than a year ago, I finally started publishing it.

For a while, I got at least 10 comments per chapter. Which, let’s say it, is a pretty darn amazing average number, and I couldn’t be happier and thankful that my dear story got so much attention!

But then came the 5th chapter. It didn’t go very well at all compared to before, so I panicked a bit. Okay, a lot. Because it got 2 comments. Two when I was used to get at least ten. Ten days later, still nothing. I made a post on Tumblr saying that wow, what went wrong, I’m heartbroken, and no comments meant I wasn’t willing to continue because obviously pretty much no one cared anymore. Surprise, I got a bunch of comments in the next few hours (some from the same person I believe but anyway.) Of course I kept going, because I loved the story too much, and hey, maybe it was just the low chapter fics usually go through.

The next one, I got 9 comments, which is below what I was used to, but so I didn’t worry about it at all, because 9 comments is amazing and after the previous one it was really a lot, so I thought things were going up again!

But then, again, came the next chapter. The next chapter was a bit special. It was the chapter I’d been most looking forward to write, playing the scenes in my head over and over again over the past year, so I was extremely excited to share it. Naively, I thought that leaving my usual “please leave a comment if you liked this chapter, it means a lot to me” or the like wasn’t necessary because people would react to what happened in the chapter, right? They remembered how upset I was when no one commented, right? Well no they didn’t. The hits kept rising and rising, I even got a few new Kudos, but I was stuck at ONE comment for two days. You have to know that usually, you get most comments in the first three or four days because for some reason after that many readers think commenting is not worth it anymore (which isn’t true, it’s never too late to comment) or I don’t know. So before three days went by I edited my end notes and begged the next readers to comment. Surprise surprise, I got comments over the next days.

Next chapter, I was two months late because of my Big Bang. So, expecting everyone to be gone, I anticipated and once again I begged for people to comment, because it had been a while and I needed to know they were still there to carry on. And, thankfully, people commented! So I was relieved, they were still there, I could keep on giving this fic my time and my love and my sweat.

Which brings us to the latest chapter. And I’m sorry for the spoiler for those who maybe meant to read it, but this needs context. In fics, there’s usually a little (or big) peak of comments when the characters kiss for the first time, particularly if it’s a slow burn. Because hey, that’s what readers have been waiting for, right? So, thinking my begging in the previous chapter fresh in people’s mind, and knowing people usually comment on such chapters, I went back to my usual end notes.

What. A. Mistake.

Because despite all of the troubles with the previous chapters, despite some readers who commented on every chapter not reading anymore, I still got at least ten comments on those in the end, I guess mostly thanks to my begging.

But for the latest one, I got 5. It’s been almost three weeks now, so yeah. Five. I’m going to tell it straight away: I’m heartbroken. I’m upset and bitter and heartbroken. This chapter meant a lot to me. On top of their first kiss, which I worked hard to make worth the wait (over a year and almost 50k words! hell, I made a post about how I was writing it once, and got a bunch of notes on it which like, never happens on posts about my writing progress!) there was also a scene that I cared deeply about. So, seeing only half the number of comments that I usually get, on a chapter that was so important to me and that was supposed to get a bit more than usual because of its content, well, it did break my heart and it still hurts today.

It’s been three weeks, so I don’t expect any new comments until the next chapter. But will there be a next chapter? You know, I was so convinced this chapter would do well, I was so excited to share it, that it gave me the push to write the next one in just a few days. I thought “yay, I can update in two weeks! They won’t have to wait a month or more like usual!” But people weren’t there. I fell from very high. So now that chapter is just there taking the dust in a folder, because I don’t have the heart to reread it, correct it, and send it to editing. I’m two chapters from the end and I just don’t have the will to write them. I’m tired of the general mentality surrounding fanfiction. I’m tired to see writers kudosing my work but not leaving a comment when, as writers themselves, they should know better. I’m tired of people reading my end notes and/or my many reblogs about comments but not commenting anyway (this does not concern people with social anxiety or the like, I know it can be hard.) Same goes for artists, really. I’m tired because thanks to all this, I learned that it seems it takes BEGGING to get comments. Doesn’t that sound wrong to you? That writers have to beg to get some feedback on AO3?

Now, let’s be clear, in my case this isn’t about the number of comments. I know very well I get more than average. That I should be ‘thankful for what I get compared to others.’ The thing is, if I was used to get six comments on this fic and only got, let’s say, two or three, I would have made the same post. It’s like, I would never complain that my Emmett/John fic from The Raven got four comments, I never complained that my longest Russingon fic got 5 comments, because that’s to be expected. I know how to relativise depending on the fandom, the characters, etc, of the fic. But when it comes to Forgotten Roads, what was to be expected was ten comments because that’s what the chapters always got, even if twice, it was after I begged. So of course I’m going to be upset when a chapter gets much less than that, and such a chapter in particular.

Please, don’t give me the ‘you should write for yourself’ speech. If I wrote for myself I wouldn’t put it on the internet for everyone to see. I write for myself when I write my novel. When it comes to fanfiction, I write because I love the characters I write about, and because I want to share that love. You have to remember I’m not a native speaker. Writing is hard. It takes me days, often spread over weeks, if not months. Editing takes hours and I’m so thankful for the hard work my betas put into my stories. Writing is an awful lot of work. I need to feel like that awful lot of work that you guys get for free is worth it, and right now it doesn’t feel like it is.

So, I’m going to put Forgotten Roads on the side. That chapter was the last straw. I can’t carry on like this because it hurts me too much and I care too much. You might say I shouldn’t put so much importance into fanfiction, but you need to know writing is all I have. Along with my friends, it’s one of the only things that make me happy. It’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m not a failure. It’s the only thing I can get validation from. But now fanfiction is not helping me anymore, it’s hurting me. So I’m going to focus on my novel, like I did a bit more this past month. I know it’s not fair on the people who do comment and who do care, but I need a break. Just a break. I’m not giving up on fanfiction completely, but yeah. I just need a break. Maybe it’ll be two weeks, maybe two months. I don’t know. It’s not like I have many ideas right now anyway (nothing except Forgotten Roads for Barduil, just one for Gafou but given how my latest fic is doing I’m not sure I’ll ever give it a go, and birthday short fics (those I will do of course but I still have more than three months until then.))

I’m putting this in the tag, because this is important: the Barduil fandom is a dying fandom (and the Gafou fandom seems to be sadly already on its way there.) There’s no more art, and barely a few fics/updates per week. Most fics don’t require an AO3 account to comment. So, I beg of you. Comment on the fics you enjoyed. Simply say you liked that one shot very much, no matter how old it is. Simply tell the author you liked their update and can’t wait for the next one. Simply say you binge read that old long fic and loved it. We don’t need much. We don’t ask for much. Just a few words. Just ten seconds of your time. Just a voice. Please. What do we have to do to make you understand?

#barduil #tbh all i have the will to write right now are fics that i know won't get much attention because they're for rarepairs or tiny fandoms #i'll immediately block anyone who'll send me anon hate or the like #you're allowed not to understand how i feel #and/or not to agree #but then i don't need to know #and you can just unfollow me instead of hurting me further #i'm so gonna regret posting this but i needed to say it #thank you to everyone who's been supportive though #you're angels #you're the reason i kept going #but right now i'm tired

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theinternetinterviewed · 5 years

Text

Ben Harvey, An Architect Who Puts His Life On The Line

The most popular video game to come from Slovenia is Line Rider. The object of Line Rider is to design a track for a boy on a sled to ride. In doing this, players becomes architects. Released in 2006, there are thousands of Line Rider tracks and the longest ever is titled This Will Destroy You, 50 minutes long with 2.7 million views. Ben Harvey, its maker, is a man whose sense of sight is influenced by what he hears and he therefore is able to translate musical tracks into Line Rider tracks. To watch two minutes of the video is to see a series of satisfying, sight-to-sound synchronizations. To watch twenty minutes is to narrow your attention in such a way that the boy’s experience become your own and to watch the full thing it to live the definition of the word ‘journey.’

A: Is this Ben?

B: This is Ben. You’re two hours early. A: Am I really?

B: That’s okay though.

A: Are you sure?

B: Its 1. But that’s okay though.

A: You’re cool to jump into this early?

B: We can jump into it now.

A: Cool. My name is Austin. Nice to meet you.

B: Nice to meet you. My name is Ben.

A: Hi, Ben. I have a blog called The Internet, Interviewed. It’s where I interview people who do cool things and you are one of them.

B: That sounds very broad.

A: Oh, it’s the most broad thing. Have you been interviewed before?

B: I have been interviewed a couple of times. I don’t think any of them are going to take the format that you’re doing here.

A: As in, on the phone?

B: On the phone and *pause* most of the people who have interviewed me before were in the scene of Line Rider. You’re more on the outside, if that makes sense.

A: I just like the videos.

B: *laughs*

A: I’ve seen your essays and very little of them makes sense to me.

B: *laughs*

A: This will take about 60 minutes. I have a bunch of questions. Some are funny, some nostalgic, some serious. Answer however you like. I know you’re a thoughtful, articulate guy so if you digress or tell a story, that’s fine with me. This is an interview and you’re the subject.

B: Great.

A: My first question: how did you find Line Rider and how old are you?

B: I would have been, let me do the math, I would have been 14 and I was making computer games with Game Maker [software] and trying to find where I can put them on the Internet. I found Line Flyer which was a rip off and made something in it and sent it to one of my friends and he was, like, “That’s not the real Line Rider.” He sent me a link to LineRider.com. Then I was off to the races.

A: When did you become more serious?

B: It depends on what you mean by serious. I started working seriously on a large project a year after I discovered it. A year to two years. I don’t remember. It’s been a long time since like 2008. I was 15 at the time. The Line Rider Community was something I found early and got heavily involved in. I wrote a bunch of reviews for Line Rider tracks. I didn’t start treating it as an art medium until about 2015. I went to a liberal arts college and ended up creating my own major call Electronic Artistic Design. For my last year of college, I had not been thinking about Line Rider because I was focusing on my school work. When I came back, I had a slow, rolling epiphany about how Line Rider could be treated like an art medium and how a lot of the things that I studied, I could apply to Line Rider. I’m not sure I answered your question. What was it again?

A: That was on the nose. I wanted to know when you started to look at it seriously.

B: I started putting a lot of time and effort into Line Rider in 2008 and I started looking at it as a medium for art creation in 2015–2016.

A: It amazes me that at 14 you were interested in writing reviews.

B: *laughs*

A: The game must have struck you.

B: I’m trying to think …back 12 years ago now. Getting closer to 13. I just found myself wanting to watch all of the tracks and then I realized that a lot of people were spending a lot of time on these tracks and then they would get comments like, “Cool,” “8 out of 10,” [boring voice] and I wanted to give some real feedback.

A: That’s a noble response for a young person to have.

B: Another part of it was…I was also a little bit of an outsider in school and I found a community of peers in other people who were interested in Line Rider. A big part of it was that, finding a community of people who were interested in the things that I was. Also if you’re hearing purrs it’s because my cat has decided to sit on my chest.

A: If the cat says anything, I’ll make sure to include it.

B: *laughs* Excellent.

A: Can you remember the first track that wowed you?

B: There were lots that I really liked. The first that really impressed me was a track called Discarded by TechDawg. I saw it when it came out and it was sort of the first example of a Line Rider track that someone had made where they were using scenery lines to add texture and detail to the ground so it looked like this cool, rocky landscape. It was like he was painting a picture. Instead of, “Here is a rock shape,” it was, “Here is a rock-shaped drawing and a whole bunch of cracks and crags.” He would shade the rock. That was the first one that really impressed me.

A: Did you write a review about it?

B: I did. It’s not worth much but, yeah, I did. *laughs*

A: When someone sees your work for the first time, what do you hope they think?

B: My hope is that they’re not thinking about how I made it. My hope is that they’re letting the visuals wash over them and having an emotional response — whether that’s reflective or joyful or harrowing or trippy or whatever.

A: How big is your body of work?

B: It depends on what you include. Do you include the things that I've produced or directed? Within the things I’ve made, there are shitposts I made in an hour.

A: *laughs*

B: Those take as much time to watch as something that I worked two hundred hours on. There’s maybe 10 to 20 projects that I’ve poured a lot of time into and there are 10 to 20 projects that I remain proud of today and those overlap and there are tracks that fall into one or the other only. There are a couple dozen projects that I've directed or produced or facilitated in some way, even if I only made a small fraction or even none of the actual track. There is the writing I’ve done about Line Rider which ranges from crappy reviews I wrote when I was 14 to video essays about the nature Line Rider that I’ve done more recently. There is the Line Rider Archival Project which I can’t forget. It started ad hoc a long time ago but in the last few years I’ve formalized my attempt to archive as much of Line Rider on the internet that I can so it doesn’t get lost. On top of that, there are dozens of projects that were experimental or low effort or just memes or shitposts. I’ve had a lot of conversations with all sorts of people who are making Line Rider tracks and while that’s not really part of a body of work, it’s had a lot of impact on my work.

A: If you took the courses you made and the ones you produced and directed and played one after the next, how long would that be?

B: It would take a few hours depending on what you include.

A: More than six?

B: Six would be on the high end. Oh gosh. *laughs* There was an 18 hour marathon in which I watched a lot of Line Rider track and gave live commentary on them, so if you exclude all of that and focus on the raw footage of Line Rider then it would probably be like three hours?

A: Like an unabridged order of Lord of the Rings with all the extra scenes.

B: Something like that. If you add all the video, it would be a few days.

A: When having a conversation with someone, do you sometimes drift off and create Line Rider tracks in your head? Or when putting away dishes? Sometimes does Line Rider just happen?

B: It usually happens when I’m listening to music. Music is the spark. That wasn’t always the case. The first few years…excuse me if my voice sounds weird. I’m getting over a cold…. I was imagining these two dimensional spaces with three dimensional objects in them that the sledder was moving through. I thought about the projects I was making and how I wanted to make them look. Nowadays, I find myself daydreaming about Line Rider when I’m listening to music. I think, “Oh. I know how I would visualize this piece.” Most of them will never come to fruition because I lack the tools to create them without immense amounts of work.

A: Music predates the course? You have music that attracts you and then you create a course according to it?

B: As of the last, ten years that’s true. The first maybe three years it was not about the music but in the last decade it’s been about the music. Music creates the course. I hear a piece of music and I go, “Oh. I know what I can do with this.”

A: Are you a big music fan?

B: I am a big music fan. I’m super into post-rock. Which is how This Will Destroy You got created but lots of other types of music too.

A: When you have a Line Rider session and you’re going and everything is clicking, you’re inventing things spontaneously and they’re working out, what does that feel like?

B: I have two answers for that. One is, if you have heard of the concept of flow — it’s an artistic creation mode where you’re totally focused on what you’re making and everything else fades away. And another thing relates to my autism. I am autistic and so I have this thing where I hyper-focus. That means basically the same thing. But it’s something that I can control and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I wind up hyper-focusing on things before I know it’s happening. Other times I want to hyper-focus when I want to make something but it’s difficult. But it’s a great feeling. Sometimes I make Line Rider tracks for eight hours in one sitting and other times it’s a struggle to work on it for an hour. It varies. What was that the question? I’m not sure if I answered it.

A: You absolutely illuminated it. I’ve never made a Line Rider so it’s interesting to know what it feels like to do so.

B: I can speak to that. Making a Line Rider track is a lot more like making pointillism then it is making a watercolor. *laughs*

A: How so?

B: It’s tedious and slow going. Generally, the lines are drawn one at a time and erased one at a time. They’ll get drawn and may be adjusted and erased if they’re not working. That’s been changing recently. There are new tools with copy and paste features. There are fill tools. There are all sorts of things that are new and changing that workflow. But, historically, lines are drawn one at a time, very slowly, one after the other.

A: Jeez.

B: Another thing is, you’re making a track and especially if it’s the track that’s focused less on the visuals and more on the the movement, you can’t go back and change part of the movement early on in the track because that would affect everything after it so you have to make every second of track in order one, after the other, and that can be a challenge.

A: You can’t skip around if you’re stuck on something. You have to go straight through.

B: *water drinking noises* Exactly.

A: Do you use a mouse or a drawing pad?

B: Sorry. I need to have a little more water. This cold as persistent. *water noises* I use the mouse for the entirety of the time I’ve made Line Rider tracks, so far. It’s a standard mouse. More recently sometimes I use a trackpad on my MacBook Pro. Going forward though, something I’ve been debating getting for a year now is a one of those touchscreen displays that hooks up to your computer.

A: Can you write your signature really well with a mouse?

B: *laugh* No. Not at all. You know those things where you have to sign your name on an iPad? I’m horrible.

A: Then how are you able to make courses that looks so great?

B: By drawing them one line at a time. I use the straight line tool. With the tool, you click and draw and release and that makes one line. I do that thousands of times.

A: When you plan to work on a project for the day, do you have a schedule? Do you work a certain amount of hours? Or do you throw yourself at it and get done whatever?

B: It can be a struggle to find time to work on Line Rider tracks because historically they’ve been more of a hobby than a profession. In the last year that I’ve been getting commissions, if I have a deadline that’s coming up, it’s easy for me to sit down and start working. I’m in the state of, “Ahh. I have to get this done.” If I don’t have a deadline, sometimes it’s just a matter of getting everything else in my life cleared off my plate so I’m like, “Alright. What’s left to do is the track.” Then I can sit down and not think about if there’s anything else I should be doing instead. That helps me focus.

A: What is there to be said about flying at high speeds to the sound of music? Do you have any insight into what that feeling is?

B: Yes. I’ve known for most of my life that I have synesthesia from music into visuals. Sometimes those are colors, sometimes shapes, and sometimes a movement and that can be more of an auditory-to-kinesthetic synesthesia. I get an actual sense of movement often times when I’m listening to music. It’s like the music is moving or I’m moving because of the music. Often times the most intense feelings are feelings of flying. I translate that into Line Rider. Maybe that’s what people are picking up on. I take for a lot of people it’s something that they don’t necessarily feel vividly but if you’re watching something where there is a figure flying through the air and it lines up with the music really perfectly it’s sort of this thing where people don’t get it at first and then they realize it’s lining up with the music and I feel, “Oh. I see it’s lining up with the music.” Some people react with “Oh. That’s it? That’s boring.” Other people start feeling it. It’s like they can feel the music physically. Which is really fun. It’s a thing I’ve noticed only some people experience. I thought all people experienced it until This Will Destroy You went viral and I got comments from some people who are like, “All it is is movement music synced up to music.”

A: *laughs*

B: And I’m like, “So fascinating!” There are people who don’t feel anything from that inherently.

A: Another thing I noticed was that I was watching one of your tracks and I started to do my grocery list in my head but I didn’t realize I had done it until afterwards. I realized I was thinking clearly. It put me in a zone where my mind was flexible.

B: That is interesting. Sometimes when I watch Line Rider synced to music it feels like a cleanse. It might be a vicarious experience of, like, the feeling of going on a rollercoaster, a little bit. I feel more free afterward. I’ve also noticed people experiencing that themselves. It’s good to know the feeling is widespread.

A: If Line Rider had not existed, would you have invented it?

B: I don’t think I would have invented Line Rider. I don’t know what I would have spent my free time on in 2007, 2008, and 2009 but I know I would still be doing some kind of auditory, music, or sound visualization. I was drawn to that in college and one of the big final projects I did was, I visualized a piece of music with these lights and colors in After Effects. I’d still be doing stuff like that, it just wouldn’t be with Line Rider.

A: For those of us who are not a part of the Line Rider community, can you summarize it?

B: Oh, boy.

A: What is it?

B: The simplest definition would be: a bunch of people, maybe a few dozen people, that hangout with each other on the internet and get really into discussing and creating extremely intricate Line Rider tracks. If you went into the Line Rider community, the average person would be totally confused about what people are talking about because, at least nowadays, which means in the last few years, they’ve been very very focused on the intricacies of the original physics engine and how it can be manipulated to get the sledder to do bizarre erratic movement. Sometimes these things are used to create things that can be impactful to the average person. But if you just walked into the Line Rider community and poked around you would think, “What are they talking about?” *laugh*

A: Can you rattle off a bunch of terms that I have no idea the definition of?

B: Some early ones are gravity wells. Then there ares flings of gravity wells. Then there are variation on flings. So flings can pull different parts of Bosh. Do you want me to come up with the most complex stuff I can?

A: Spit ‘em out.

B: You can make an inverted hand and tail ASDF which stands for an Alternating Single Direction Fling. We could do a Dual Alt Flanual. That would be fun.

A: *laugh*

B: You can have an all blue ten point cannon. Those are interesting.

A: *laugh*

B: Let’s see. Then you have an inverted cranual lock. How’s that?

A: I love those.

B: These are actual terms.

A: When did you make your Patreon? When did you wonder, “How can I make a living, if any?”

B: The shift turned when I was thinking about it as an art medium. Where I was like, “Oh. What if instead of playing this like an open-ended game, why don’t we try to make things that are going to appeal to people who might not even know what Line Rider is?” So, thinking about it as art that’s going to resonate with a general audience and then thinking about how I was going to do that corresponded with thinking about, well, maybe I could make this into a little hobby or a side hustle. It took off very suddenly, much faster than I expected.

A: Yes. How do you feel about your success so far?

B: I have a lot of feelings about success so far. It’s weird to have — sorry, kitty.

A: The cat jumped?

B: I got up to get water and then I was pacing around the room and I tripped over the cat.

A: Son of a gun.

B: Let’s see. How do I feel about my success so far? It’s complicated. I’m a bit estranged from the Line Rider community as of the last couple years. Three years or so. Prior, I was the administrator of the main Line Rider community and I had been running everything in the community so it’s complicated because when I retired from my administrative duties was when I went back to making more Line Rider tracks myself. When This Will Destroy You went viral, it created buzz around Line Rider and funneled people into the community that I had become estranged from. It was this awkward situation where I was reviving this community that I was no longer really as in as I used to be. I have mixed feelings around that. Those feelings standard in contrast to the feelings I have about the comments I’ve gotten on This Will Destroy You. It’s far and away the most wholesome Line Rider YouTube comment section I’ve ever seen. I’ve had people talk about all sorts of mental health issues and how the video has helped them. I’ve had people write basically a story of someone’s entire life to go along with the Line Rider track. I’ve had people being open about how it made them cry. It’s been wonderful to see how much of an impact that has had on people. It’s been great to be able to have an actual audience outside of the Line Rider community, a general audience of people who are interested in the stuff I’m making. So a lot of mixed feelings, but very positive. Is that the question that you are asking?

A: Yeah.

B: Cool.

A: You might have caught on by now that I’m asking broad questions that have no right answers. Feel comfortable as you are. These are some things you might be thinking about and putting into words for the first time ever so you’re doing great.

B: Yes, great.

A: How do you feel about your success on Patreon?

B: The Patreon started out small. And then it grew. It grew suddenly after This Will Destroy You went viral and it slowly but steadily has been growing since. I was surprised by the ratio of how many people were leaving glowing comments and how many people were sending me a dollar on Patreon. It seems like .01% percent of views and then .1% of positive comments got transferred to giving me money even though it’s just a small amount of money every time I release something. I was surprised that that didn’t translate. I think the thing is that on YouTube, people who make a lot of money on Patreon are talking to the camera a lot and so they’ll be talking and talking and talking and at the end they’ll be like, “You should pledge to my patreon.” And that brings people’s attention to it. People aren’t used to having to go look for it. They’re used to be told about it. I think it would be weird if my head popped up at the end of the Line Rider track and I was like, “Hey. Thanks for watching. Check out my patreon.” And they’re like, “Who are you?” I think that’s a big reason why it hasn’t been as successful as I would have hoped it would be with having a track going viral. It is at a point where it is starting to feel like real money and that is exciting. [$144 has been pledged to Ben by patrons per release.] Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons I haven’t been able to make something that I can release on Patreon. I took a break from Line Rider and then I had commissions and then I flew to Slovenia…anyways...

A: That’s a good segue.

B: Oh?

A: You gave a lecture in Slovenia about the history of Line Rider.

B: I did! I’m good friends with the current developer of the build of Line Rider that is on LineRider.com right now, David Lu. The original creator of Line Rider, Boštjan Čadež, (pronounced like Bastian Cah-dez) lives in Slovenia and was looking for people to curate Line Rider videos that would be included in an exhibit. He reached out to the community, got in touch with David, David sent him over to me, and I pulled together a list like, “Here’s a smattering of Line Rider tracks from across various styles and years, and a wide variety in content.” That’s how I got involved in the art exhibition. Then the curator of the art gallery reached out to me and invited me to come to the exhibit in Slovenia and said, if I can get myself there, they would provide me with lodging and give me a tour of the gallery. I managed to find a cheap plane ticket that fit with my schedule. After that was nailed down, he asked me, “Since you’re coming here, do you want to give a lecture?” He said I could choose the topic. I decided to use the opportunity to put together a lecture about the history. It got thrown together quickly though. I had about two weeks notice to know I was flying to Slovenia and giving a lecture. Given that small amount of time, it turned out well. It was good to get something about the 12 year history of Line Rider out into the world. A lot happened in 12 years and most of it was underground, obscure.

A: How did it feel to put it together? Was it easy to recall?

B: I had already done a fair amount of writing on all of the different aspects. I had already done the Line Rider archival project. I had lived a lot of the history. But I'd also done research into the various development builds. These were on the old internet forum that I used to administrate. I compiled lists of prominent Line Rider track releases, lists of different Line Rider builds and the features that they added and the people that developed them. It wasn't so much that I had to sit down and find out all this stuff. I had generally knew it. I just had to put together, “Did this happen first? Or did this happen after that?” And then package the important things to a general audience.

A: What was this exhibit for? What was the nature of it?

B: The exhibit was about Line Rider. The exhibit was titled Line Rider. The original creator of Line Rider put it together, an exhibit where there were different builds of Line Rider that people could play. There was a room with tracks projected on the walls playing on loop. There was a documentary that was created about the creator of Line Rider and and the history of how it was bought by the company InXile Entertainment. There was there was also a new virtual reality Line Rider that the original creator developed for the exhibit. There are some other things like the Game Developer Conference trophy and fun Line-Rider-themed sleds.

A: What was the cause of this exhibit?

B: The curator of the art gallery, Jani Pirnat, and Boštjan were on an artist retreat. Jani found out that Boštjan was the creator of Line Rider. Jani was like, “Oh, that's so cool.” Bosh was like, “I have a lot of negative memories about Line Rider because it got bought out by this company that was going to make a game and I was going to get a share and the game didn't do well financially so I never got any money. I don't have the rights anymore. They basically abandoned it. There are a lot of bad memories.” Jani was persistent and said, "No, no, we should look into getting the rights back. You should do this exhibit."

A: How did the creator feel about the exhibit when it finally happened?

B: He was really happy. He was also happy with the VR Line Rider that he developed, the videos on the documentary. I think he's really excited about continuing development of the VR Line Rider. I also think it's helped him work through the negative stuff that he had surrounding Line Rider. He's been active in the community since the exhibit. That's good to see.

A: What is the documentary called?

B: The documentary is called Line Rider: A Documentary. It's unreleased. In the exhibit, there was an excerpt of it shown. I might be involved in the full documentary release, which should be.... I don't know. I don't know what's going on with it right now.

A: That would be amazing.

B: I'm excited for it.

A: *pause* Who is the little boy on the sled?

B: *laughs* In the earliest builds, the sledder is referred to only as the sledder. He was given a name and personality and story in Line Rider 2 Unbound though if you watch The History of Line Rider lecture you know that Line Rider 2 Unbound has a question of… is it canon? It is officially Line Rider material but the community uses the old physics engine from before Line Rider 2 and up until recently used a modified version of the last version Boštjan developed. In Line Rider 2 Unbound, this sledder is named Bosh, after the creator. I like to think of the sledder as a universal stand-in for the viewer. I try not to focus on who is the sledder. There are people who do that in the community and it can be really fun. My favorite example is... Dangerous Cargo has a thing where, a story-focused Space Operetta, of the sledder on this little journey. But I like to think of him just as a stand-in. I want you to empathize with this sledder.

A: How many times have you dressed up as the sledder for Halloween?

B: Oh. I have never dressed up as the sledder. The most dressed up I've ever got is wearing my Line Rider t-shirt which is now signed. I actually have, through a series of events, ended up with a whole bunch of Line Rider t-shirts that I've been sending off to people who want them over the last few years. At one point, I had 16 t-shirts. But, no I've never dressed up as this letter. I don't have Bosh cosplay materials. I know the creator has dressed up as Bosh for the art gallery and some publicity material. It has him in the Line Rider hat and scarf. He also dressed up to get the Game Developers Conference award in California in 2007.

A: What are some of the funny or strange or memorable comments you’ve received on YouTube?

B: There are so many. When I scroll through my web portfolio there's a whole bunch of comments that I've just saved on there. Probably because then people can see all the nice things people have said about the track but mostly because I like to save them so I can look through them later. One that stands out to me most because it got me to reflect a lot on the impact This Will Destroy You has on the demographic that's most likely to be watching a Line Rider video is, “Is it okay to cry?” That was the whole comment. *laughs*

A: Did you not expect anyone to cry?

B: I did not. It had been years since I'd had a video that had gotten more than a few hundred views so I thought maybe a thousand people would see the video. Within a week from posting it, it went viral on Reddit, got a hundred thousand and that was more than almost any other Line Rider track I had ever made. I was over the moon at that. A couple months later, Mountain King was released by Doodle Chaos and that generated a ridiculous amount of traffic for Line Rider. My video was the one that was often recommended next by YouTube. That put it up to a million views in a very short amount of time. 100,000 was wild to begin with. *laughs*

A: How did that feel? That must have been amazing.

B: It was amazing. It was also unexpected. I found myself being overwhelmed with the comment section. It wasn't just people saying, “This is great. Nice job.” It was people reflecting on their lives. *laughs* That was really impactful. I was not expecting it to resonate that hard. I think part of the reason might have been that when making it I was in a reflective and somewhat depressed state of mind for the year and a half. I think it ended up coming through and people resonated with that.

A: It took you a year and a half to make?

B: It did. It sounds more impressive than it is. It took me about 250 hours, a little more. If you are working full time on a project, that's about two months. For me, it took 18 months. If I do the math, it averages to half an hour a day. There were days where I worked eight hours and there were months that went by when I didn't touch it at all. It varied a lot. The reason I got it done is because I kept coming back to it and being like, “Do I want to finish this? Yes I want to finish this."

A: Were people in the community expecting it or was it a secret?

B: Before This Will Destroy You was released, anything over 3 minutes was considered very long for a Line Rider track. Part of the reason I was able to make This Will Destroy You as long as it was was because of the newer builds that allowed you to scrub ahead in the timeline. They didn't used to be any timeline scrubbing so it was obnoxious to watch two minutes of track just so you can pause it and work work on the next bit. The new tools made it possible but also... I just forgot what the question was.

A: Whether it was a secret or if people knew it was coming.

B: Right. People knew I was working on a track and it was really really long. In the community, I updated people like, “I've made 5 minutes,” “I've made 10 minutes,” “I've made 15,” “I've made 20, 30.” I released a little trailer once I reached 35 minutes. But the Line Rider Community was very small. They were maybe 20 people who knew it was coming and were excited or at least curious. Most people were probably just like, “Why is this Line Rider track so long?”

A: Would you ever make another feature-length course?

B: Yes. But not soon. I have some ideas four things I would like to make eventually that are similarly long but I want to focus on some more experimental things that are shorter. I want to work on ideas I have before I tackle another long project. I could keep making projects like This Will Destroy You that are similar in structure and style but I feel like it wouldn't be as good if I tried to copy the formula.

A: Going back a bit, you said that you went to school and created your own major. For anyone else who is artistic, how would you say school has helped you?

B: The big thing was resources. I had access to software. And also physical things like lighting. I had the space where I could go to, a building and go to a room in that building and sit down and be like, “Okay. This is my space where I’m art making.” It's a little more difficult to get into that when it's my apartment. I sit at the same place to do my taxes as I do my art. It's a little more difficult to do that so it's nice to have studio spaces. Another big part of it was having deadlines. Like, “You have to make this project and it needs to be done by this day or else bad things will happen.” *laughs* That was helpful. It was also helpful to be around lots of other people that we're doing things that were somewhat similar. Someone to bounce off ideas. I could show people what I was making. All of those things are big parts of it. I also appreciated being able to take classes on the philosophy of art. I appreciated being able to work in collaboration with people. There are a lot of things. Amusingly, the classes we're probably one of the things lower down on the list.*laughs*

A: What will you be doing in five years?

B: Oh boy. Well, my day job is in technical theater. I imagine I'll still be doing that in five years. Even if Line Rider became a full-blown career and I didn't need to do it anymore, there are still things I would want to do in that.

A: What did you say the job was?

B: Technical theater. Lighting and sound and video for theatrical productions. I will still be doing Line Rider. I don't know what it'll look like in 5 years. There are things in flux right now in terms of the features being developed. I have no idea. That's all I can say. I don't want to plan too far into the future. I don't want to plan too much of my life. I want to see how things go.

A: Ben that was my last question for you.

B: Oh. That's not a question. *laughs* Alright, wonderful.

A: Thank you very much. That was awesome.

B: You are a wonderful interviewer.

A: Thank you. I'll type this up, transcribe it, make it look nice, and I'll send you a link shortly. Hopefully, within two weeks.

B: Sounds wonderful. Thank you so much.

A: Thank you.

B: Great talking to you.

A: Same. Talk soon.

There was Ben Harvey, in the midst of his life, the line he is riding. Lines tend to be everywhere. Lines are in plays, lines are in supermarkets. You have a line of work where you line your pockets. Some things are divided by a fine line, others by a dotted line. Occasionally, we draw lines in the sand. It’s difficult to keep track of them if someone’s blurred the lines. It can be fun to get out of line, feel the sensation of crossing the line, and of beating someone to the punchline. By the end of our life, we have lines on our face. And when we are online, it’s good if we can fill our empathy meter to the top line. This allows us to join the timeline of art history where many millions of people have stood in line in order to see further down the lines. When we see the end of the line, we have arrived at a point. That’s the whole point. To be pointed in a direction, ride the storyline to that point, and feel something poignant. Line Rider epitomizes this and shows us that even if you forget your lines, you’ll never forget how those lines made you feel. That’s the bottom line.

Interview conducted on 5/26/19

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willowdidnothingwrong · 7 years

Note

answer ALL THE QUESTIONS

sharanya there are a hundred!! but ok

1: is there a boy/girl in your life?

No!

2: think of the last person who hurt you; do you forgive them?

I’m really fortunate that no one has really hurt me since, I guess, high school! And I definitely forgive high school shenanigans because wow, I thought my friends and I were mature then but this was not true!

3: what do you think of when you hear the word “meow?”

nyan, nyan, nyan! nihao nyan~~~~~

4: what’s something you really want right now?

a really awesome nerd dance party!

5: are you afraid of falling in love?

No!

6: do you like the beach?

I used to love the beach, or any water, a lot! But I had some weird ear injury, and now it’s hard for me to swim much without getting ear problems. So I still really like the beach, but it makes me feel a bit wistful.

7: have you ever slept on a couch with someone else?

Yep.

8: what’s the background on your cell?

An aesthetic shot of Bay-Enterprise train station, in my hometown of Edmonton!

9: name the last four beds you were sat on?

My summer housing bed, a hotel bed in hartford, my bed at home, my bed at school last year.

10: do you like your phone?

Yes. It cannot successfully type ‘t’ or ‘u’, but this adds to the charm! also I’ve gotten really creative at using words which don’t have those letters so that’s cool

11: honestly, are things going the way you planned?

I didn’t plan, I guess!

12: who was the last person whose phone number you added to your contacts?

I think… a model united nations conference help staffer’s number?

13: would you rather have a poodle or a rottweiler?

why have either when you could have MY DOG. Which I can. (And you can’t.)

14: which hurts the most, physical or emotional pain?

Emotional pain lasts longer, I guess?

15: would you rather visit a zoo or an art museum?

Art museums, because zoos are nice but they also make me sad when animals aren’t well cared for or don’t have enough space! It would be so sad to live your life on display. That said a lot of zoos care for their animals in an amazing way – unfortunately too often, it seems like this isn’t the case though :/

16: are you tired?

No!

17: how long have you known your 1st phone contact?

As in, my first one to ever be added? I guess my parents, so my whole life. As in, the person I’ve texted the most over my entire lifetime? Since high school. As in, the person I talk to most over the phone now? Also since high school.

18: are they a relative?

For the first of my three alternatives.

19: would you ever consider getting back together with any of your exes?

No! They’re all great people but our relationships ended for good reasons. I hang out with all of them though.

20: when did you last talk to the last person you shared a kiss with?

Wednesday?

21: if you knew you had the right person, would you marry them today?

No, well yes, depending on what ‘knowing’ means! If a 100% infallible oracle told me that this was the right decision, I guess! But if it’s just the ‘knowing’ of the moment, no! It’s good to have a time-distributed sample of ‘knowing’.

22: would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

No!

23: how many bracelets do you have on your wrists right now?

zeeero

24: is there a certain quote you live by?

“Je pense, donc je suis.”

25: what’s on your mind?

my head. But also my physics research, and thoughts about people! Mainly about how lucky I am to have acquired Amazing Summer Friends, which reminds me to tell them about why they’re great. **does so **

26: do you have any tattoos?

No.

27: what is your favorite color?

Red!

28: next time you will kiss someone on the lips?

When it happens, I guess!

29: who are you texting?

sharanya it’s you!

30: think to the last person you kissed, have you ever kissed them on a couch?

Yes.

31: have you ever had the feeling something bad was going to happen and you were right?

Roughly as often as chance predicts.

32: do you have a friend of the opposite sex you can talk to?

Honestly… almost all my friends are nonmale? I have like, one, maybeee two male friends I can talk to about serious stuff? But I am in the process of acquiring a new male friend and I’m Really Excited about this!

33: do you think anyone has feelings for you?

Maybe? Unclear!

34: has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes?

On occasion.

35: say the last person you kissed was kissing someone right in front of you?

I would be surprised! But good for them!

36: were you single on valentines day?

Yep!

37: are you friends with the last person you kissed?

Yes!

38: what do your friends call you?

By my first name. or sometimes nerd

39: has anyone upset you in the last week?

I guess, but the perturbation led to me reaching a higher energy state!

40: have you ever cried over a text?

Six years ago.

41: where’s your last bruise located?

I don’t think I’ve had a bruise for years honestly.

42: what is it from?

Hence I forget.

43: last time you wanted to be away from somewhere really bad?

Hmm, probably not for three years, when I accidentally wandered into an unfamiliar and possibly sketchy part of Edmonton at midnight through a long and curious chain of events!

44: who was the last person you were on the phone with?

My mom!

45: do you have a favourite pair of shoes?

I love converse more than my own sole. (hahaha.) But they break pretty frequently, so whatever pair of converse I’ve had for longest that hasn’t broken!

46: do you wear hats if your having a bad hair day?

No, I only wear one hat and only when I’m feeling cool enough for it because damn it’s way cooler than I am.

47: would you ever go bald if it was the style?

i really like hair for dramatic dance moves;;;;;

48: do you make supper for your family?

Sometimes when I’m home, but honestly my mom does way more of the cooking work even then! The balance is slowly shifting in my favour as I learn better to make things my mom likes and get less lazy!

49: does your bedroom have a door?

Yes.

50: top 3 web-pages?

mspaintadventures,metafilter, wikipedia!

51: do you know anyone who hates shopping?

Most of my extended family!

52: does anything on your body hurt?

No!

53: are goodbyes hard for you?

Hmm. Usually they’re really easy, but when I’m hanging out with really cool people I’m always so awkward about it because they’re like ‘Bye’! and I’m like “bye…” but I’m really thinking “WAIT BUT YOURE SO COOL WHY NOT JUST KEEP HANGING OUT”

54: what was the last beverage you spilled on yourself?

Green tea!

55: how is your hair?

Wet post-shower!

56: what do you usually do first in the morning?

grumble, pull my blanket up, attempt to get into a comfortable sleeping position, decide I oughtn’t sleep, turn on my phone, log on to metafilter

57: do you think two people can last forever?

Yes!!! Of course!

58: think back to january 2007, were you single?

I was 10.

59: green or purple grapes?

I’ve never given it thought, I just eat them!

60: when’s the next time you will give someone a big hug?

this reminds me that I have not given a big hug for a long time! so whenever I have the chance!

61: do you wish you were somewhere else right now?

I wish cambridge ma were magically transported into canadaland because canada’s great! But Cambridge is nice and I’m happy to be here as it is.

62: when will be the next time you text someone?

Hmm, likely the next five minutes.

63: where will you be 5 hours from now?

Sleeping!

64: what were you doing at 8 this morning.

Reading differential geometry;;;

65: this time last year, can you remember who you liked?

My then-girlfriend!

66: is there one person in your life that can always make you smile?

Tons of people! My friends K and X and S. B., for a start!

67: did you kiss or hug anyone today?

Non non mon ami

68: what was your last thought before you went to bed last night?

“Zeta functions…. or hater functions”

(my brain’s dumb thoughts inevitably involve math. im sorry.)

69: have you ever tried your hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end?

Not really! Not that everything has been Successful, but a lot of it has and when things haven’t, it’s let me move onto other things which it turns out are hella cool and I really like so **happy shrug**

70: how many windows are open on your computer?

Seven!

71: how many fingers do you have?

ten

72: what is your ringtone?

The default one… but I’ve never turned on my volume ringer, like, ever?

73: how old will you be in 5 months?

74: where is your mum right now?

In Edmonton, Alberta! I’ll see her in three days and I’m excited!

75: why aren’t you with the person you were first in love with or almost in love?

We lived 9 timezones apart with limited internet access, then turned out to have very different attachment styles! But we’re still like. almost best friends! And it turns out this is a much better dynamic for us!

76: have you held hands with somebody in the past three days?

Non non!

77: are you friends with the people you were friends with two years ago?

Yes! Almost all of them, though since I’ve moved countries sometimes not in the frequency I would like. Like I really wish I could talk to my friends B.D. and T.J. more! But they’re both in California time.

78: do you remember who you had a crush on in year 7?

A., who was one of my best friends but in retrospect I was definitely gay for;;;; (A. is most definitely Very Straight.)

79: is there anyone you know with the name mike?

Yes! My cousin! He’s a great guy and has two AMAZING AND CUTE KIDS who I really wish I could spend more time with!

80: have you ever fallen asleep in someones arms?

Yes!

81: how many people have you liked in the past three months?

Definitely one, maybe two?

82: has anyone seen you in your underwear in the last 3 days?

No!

83: will you talk to the person you like tonight?

No current crushes!

84: you’re drunk and yelling at hot guys/girls out of your car window, you’re with?

Yelling at people from car windows is not ok and very objectifying! I am not doing this and if my friends are they’re getting a stern talking to!

85: if your bf/gf was into drugs would you care?

Yes, it’s probably not a for sure dealbreaker but it is almost certainly a dealbreaker.

86: what was the most eventful thing that happened last time you went to see a movie?

THE MOVIE HAD AMAZING BABY SPIDERMAN and I got to get really excited with a friend about cute. baby. spiderman. who i love deeply.

87: who was your last received call from?

My mom! Honestly I only call my mom.

88: if someone gave you $1,000 to burn a butterfly over a candle, would you?

…no.

89: what is something you wish you had more of?

…knowledge of algebraic geometry? Ok, on a personal level, I wish I was better at talking to friends about personal issues? I used to be really good at this, but over the past few years I just have been really fortunate and I haven’t really had many personal issues at all! So I’ve become used to dealing with them myself, and I haven’t been very good at this at all.

90: have you ever trusted someone too much?

People have betrayed my trust, yes. But I’m happy I trusted them because even if it didn’t work out, the alternative of being suspicious seems too dark!

91: do you sleep with your window open?

Yes! the outdoors is nice and i want it in me!

92: do you get along with girls?

Yes! most of my friends are women!

93: are you keeping a secret from someone who needs to know the truth?

No!

94: does sex mean love?

They’re definitely distinct concepts! That said, I would find it pretty impossible personally to consider sex without love! Definitely that isn’t true for other people and that’s cool!

95: you’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed, is that a problem?

No! Except neither of us are good at breaking locks oops

96: have you ever kissed anyone with a lip ring?

No!

97: did you sleep alone this week?

Yes!

98: everybody has somebody that makes them happy, do you?

So many people in my life! My mom, my dog, my friends are all so awesome! I’m super happy and fortunate.

99: do you believe in love at first sight?

It can probably happen! But people are deeper than their appearance, and I think most successful love probably does not rely on first sight!

100: who was the last person that you pinky promise?

Probably a drunk dutch girl in hong kong who wanted me to pinky promise swear that we’d hang out more?

#ask #questions #self #self post #@shanakin

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krestmarketinggroup-blog · 7 years

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Overcoming Corporate Roadblocks for Enterprise SEO Efficacy

Posted by jaredgardner “You don’t have an SEO strategy problem. You have an organizational efficacy problem.”

That is typically what I tell our new clients at Red Door Interactive (RDI). Poor organizational efficacy can be caused by several things, most commonly a lack of labor, a lack of knowledge, or a lack of senior executive buy-in and direction. Many people would say “efficiency” is a more accurate term than “efficacy,” but I like to remind people that you can do ineffective SEO in a very efficient manner. If the work doesn’t move the needle, then there’s a fatal flaw in your SEO program.

At RDI, we specialize in marketing services for mid to large enterprise clients with annual revenues of our ideal client ranging from $50M/year to $20B/year. The size of clients that we work with have 50+ person marketing departments, and some with more than 1,000. Implementing profitable and evolving SEO programs is much more difficult for non-agile companies and those with marketing that predates the internet. Despite having more resources and built-in topical authority, enterprise SEO can be much harder than SMB SEO — not only because the SEO challenges are greater, but because it introduces another layer of organizational challenges.

What is enterprise SEO? This same question was on a slide at a recent SEO meetup lead by Ratish Naroor , Director of SEO at Overstock.com. Ratish’s opinion of what constitutes enterprise SEO differed from mine in a few areas. Ratish’s main qualification was that the site in question had one million organic landing pages. At RDI, we work with companies that drive hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue through organic search. Often these sites have less than 5,000 pages, yet their digital marketing departments are twice the size of many marketing teams at e-commerce-first companies. In my opinion, there’s more to consider than just the number of pages. I like to focus on the organization itself and not the size of its site; organizations whose website is its product take SEO more seriously. E-commerce retailers like Overstock, real estate sites like Zillow, and travel sites like Trip Advisor or Expedia all invest heavily in SEO programs. Many times, “old companies” that have been around 40+ years will have “old management” stakeholders who are a little late to the digital marketing party and more resistant to change. Does this late adoption of SEO and digital marketing make the organization itself any less enterprise? I don’t believe so.

If it’s not just page count that matters, where do you draw the line for “enterprise SEO”? Here’s how I classify it:

Corporate team structure, budgeting, and approval process. There’s no hard number here, but typically 20 or more people are involved in taking web pages from an idea to a 200 status code. Some companies are so lean it will blow you away, so think more than just the total head count.

Organic search as a channel can drive realistic business. SEO isn’t for every company, so it’s crucial that the company can drive top-line revenue growth through organic search.

Unique and difficult SEO challenges. This may include large page counts where scaling on-page changes and crawl control is important, competitive industries where search terms have high paid CPAs, or international SEO operating in multiple languages and countries.

How do you succeed at enterprise SEO? When working with an enterprise organization, there are three major areas to address in order to minimize internal SEO challenges and to see real follow-through in implementing high-value SEO ideas, strategies, and tactics. 1. Create a culture of SEO through visibility SEO can’t succeed in a silo. To get your strategies implemented, you will need full participation and cooperation with content producers, developers, legal, and department heads. It’s important to remember that companies of this size will have an established culture. Sometimes this culture is dysfunctional, and overcoming it will be an uphill battle. Tom Critchlow recently described this culture as a “grain.” The direction and depth of this “grain” is going dictate how much time you spend on this step, and the best way to get people involved is to keep your work visible to the decision makers:

Automated reporting: Focus on showing each team/person metrics they can control

Dev teams: Technical crawl reports with issues such as internal redirects or 404 reports are relevant things that they can control. We like DeepCrawl for crawl reporting.

VPs and directors: High-level performance reports like M/M and Y/Y traffic and conversions give them a bird’s eye view of the site and the effects of your SEO efforts. Tying this data to a dollar figure will help make your case. This can include simple analytics data from Google Analytics, or more advanced tools such as our favorite BI tool, DOMO , or its competitor Tableau .

Product owners/business units: Keyword-level data and traffic to a specific site section that a team works on. An enterprise SEO tool like BrightEdge or Conductor can make these reports easy to manage.

Pro tip: Include the email of the SEO lead on these reports and encourage questions.

Trainings

Many marketers still think SEO is something you sprinkle on at the end of a content project, or “something our IT team handles.” It’s up to you to break down those assumptions and educate their team on the idea that that SEO is symbiotic with every marketing channel and department. These trainings can vary quite a bit, so find what works for the company you are working in/with. We have seen success with the following formats: lunch and learns, video recordings for SEO suites mentioned above, team-specific trainings focused on the area the team controls such as development or content research. While I’d love to say that we turned all the marketers into great SEOs, that’s rarely the case. What we typically see — and are thrilled when it happens — is an email from a product manager that says, “Hey, we are launching a new product next quarter and you mentioned it’s good to do keyword research for new pages; can you help?”

Open brainstorms

Share your knowledge and promote contributions to the program. When I started at RDI 2.5 years ago, our SEO program was good, but it was siloed. We had 3 people working on their own projects for clients and not really collaborating with each other. To share ideas between the (much larger) SEO team and other teams, we started hosting weekly meetings called the “SEO Brainshare.” Each week, one team member picks a topic or challenge and we workshop it with whoever wants to participate. We typically see 5–10 people from other teams at RDI join the meeting, which increases SEO knowledge and keeps our department top of mind. After a year of hosting these meetings religiously, we have seen a large influx in SEO work being incorporated into new and existing client programs, as well as a more multi-channel approach to everything we do at RDI.

2. Teamwork and navigating a political environment

As an agency, we have to be clear with our main point of contact: “You can’t change your SEO results without changing your site. We need you to be the driver of change at your organization. RDI will arm you with the ideas, rationale, and detailed instructions, but you have to get the people in your organization to act.”

While my experience is very agency-focused, in-house SEOs will have to explain a similar scenario to their managers, and the managers of the content, creative, and development teams. The best way to enable yourself for success is make sure you have access to all the players needed for SEO greatness, and they each know what’s at stake and have a certain degree of ownership from their managers. If the product owner doesn’t have a KPI tied to organic traffic or conversions on their pages, it’s highly unlikely they will prioritize and take ownership of organic traffic to those pages.

For a real-world example, I’ve presented challenges and opportunities to Senior VPs and CMOs at Fortune 100 companies where executives have said, “Wow this is a huge opportunity. Why haven’t we done this yet?” and our main client contact responds, “Because XX department hasn’t been tasked with supporting us from their management, so this isn’t their problem.” That’s where the politics really start to come in. You typically need to go high enough up the marketing department ladder to convince someone with power to back your initiative and direct people outside of your department to support you, holding those other people accountable for the results of the team.

3. Don’t get lost in the noise — focus on return This is undoubtedly the hardest to nail. SEO results by nature are highly ambiguous. There is a constant flux of right vs wrong, causation vs correlation, and my least favorite, the best choice between two “good” options. I recently listened to a podcast where Bill Hunt (an OG of SEO, BTW) said, “If you can’t put a dollar number on it, you won’t get a dollar for it.” The hardest thing for me to do as I grew my SEO strategies from local businesses to enterprises was to eliminate SEO busy work. I needed to move away from tasks like updating ALT tags because a crawl tool flagged them as “errors,” and start focusing on projects that would have a monetary impact — like creating new site sections, reworking high-ranking titles for CTR, and consolidating competing content.

There are a few ways to estimate the impact of a fix. Most involve some form of search volume X expected CTR X conversion rate. Here’s the formula in theory:

(Expected click-through rate at current position X search volume for that term) X (conversion rate of site section) = Current non-brand conversions for a keyword

Now you need to see how many non-brand conversions you would get if you achieved the rank you feel is plausible (this is more of an art than science; I like to use the rank of the top competitor as “achievable”): (Expected click-through rate at target position X search volume for that term) X (conversion rate of site section) = Target non-brand conversions for a keyword

Then run a percent change for delta for those two numbers and you have the amount of new conversions for your project.

Ideally you want to do this at scale, since you want to look at more than a single search term for a site change. Here is the excel formula for that:

=IFERROR(B3*(VLOOKUP(G3,’Rank CTR’!A:B,2,0)),0)

For this you’ll need to have a CTR curve table in a table labeled “Rank CTR.” We used the CTR table from AWR for unbranded search , but feel free to use any CTR curve you feel is most accurate for your industry. You can even build upon your own data in Google Search Console.

You will need to do this once for current estimated traffic and again after you have set your target rank numbers, then run a delta to get percent change. (The above formula and CTR curve can be found in the Content Gap Analysis template on our site.)

Working in the agency world, the pressure for our recommendations to have a return is extremely high because those recommendations are measured against the cost of the retainer, even when the project might be something that tends to have a negative impact, like a domain migration. At RDI, the closest thing we have to a secret sauce for this is our Content Gap Analysis . Here’s a sample of how we present findings to clients:

You can grab the Excel template from our site linked above.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In the Content Gap Analysis we look at what competitors are doing, then measure the estimated traffic for a topic area. This kind of analysis looks for gaps on our client’s site where competitors have content and we do not. We can examine the likelihood of us being successful in our next content endeavor and to put a number on the estimated traffic a competitor’s site section or page is getting. Once you find opportunities with a forecastable impact, prioritize them in content or site projects and try not to juggle too many balls at once — at least until some content projects have shipped. Don’t forget to quickly communicate the success of a project to accelerate the two factors mentioned above, even if it’s just a quick email with a screenshot from Google/Adobe Analytics.

Focus on the needle-movers and communicate the value of your ideas clearly Enterprise SEO is great because it allows you the opportunity to work on sites with serious impact and serious challenges. Sometimes you must take the good with the bad, and in enterprise SEO the bad is typically the bureaucracy that comes with large companies. Focus on what matters, don’t piss anyone off, and don’t relent on the need for progress. Happy optimizing! Please share how you have conquered organization challenges in your work in the comments below!

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