Good tip with the cap, thank you. No I did not do that myself, I cut it out of an image, edited it and put it into my stats footer.

No, I didn't know that it calls valkyries but it makes sense.

Creating trending posts gives you more visibility aka more upvotes, followers etc.

To increase your reputation you have to get upvotes, the higher your reputation is the more upvotes you need to reach the next level.