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careeralley · 1 year

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5 Careers in the Entertainment Industry

Working in the Entertainment Industry sounds glamorous, and many times it is. There are many rewarding jobs in Entertainment that play supporting roles, without which the actors and actresses who perform in TV, the Film Industry, and Broadway could not perform. For those who are artistic, there are many jobs that allow you to express yourself but also pay well. Many of these jobs are behind the scenes (such as lighting, makeup, cameras, costumes, etc.) and provide key support to performers, directors, and producers. Fortunately for those looking for a career in Entertainment, there are many options. Working in the Entertainment Industry sounds glamorous, and many times it is. There are many rewarding jobs in Entertainment that play supporting roles, without which the actors and actresses who perform could not perform. Click To Tweet Leveraging the "Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations" category from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median salary in the industry is $46,000 and the top 10% earn more than $100,000 per year. Obviously, much depends on the specific job role, where the job is located, training, and the number of years of experience. If you are considering a career in Entertainment, consider one of the following: Makeup Artist For actors that have risen to meteoric fame by way of one character, in particular, it can be near impossible to rid themselves of that persona in the eyes of the viewer, and avoid the stagnant world of typecast roles. Near impossible yes, but thanks to a little something every makeup school grad learns to master - facial prosthetics - not completely impossible. According to BLS, Makeup Artists earn an average salary of $53,000 per year and the top 10% earn in excess of $122,000 per year. How to Become a Professional Makeup Artist $17.68 This guide will assist you in building a lucrative and fulfilling career as a professional makeup artist within any sector including the television and film industry, bridal, editorial, and more. Buy on Amazon We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. 07/25/2022 02:59 am GMT Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators If you enjoy painting, drawing, or working on animated films or cartoons this may be the right career for you. People who work as illustrators in the entertainment industry get to collaborate with writers and directors to help transform stories with art. Sculptors are sometimes called upon to create miniature models of cities or scenes using clay or wax or graphics. Working in the world of cartoons, artists may get the opportunity to prepare sketches of cartoon characters. The compensation varies, but concept artists can earn an average of $81,000 per year. Screenwriter Screenwriters create screenplays for films or TV from original storylines or sometimes written by others. Screenwriters work with a script development team to create a finished product. Screenwriters are typically freelancers (they don't work for a specific company). Sometimes they are hired by a Producer to create a screenplay from a true story or from a novel. The compensation varies wildly, depending on the experience and reputation of the screenwriter. The Screenwriter's Bible, 7th Edition, A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script $23.95 Among this book's wealth of practical information are sample query letters, useful worksheets and checklists, hundreds of examples, sample scenes, and straightforward explanations of screenwriting fundamentals. The 7th edition is chock-full of new examples, the latest practices, and new material on non-traditional screenplay outlets. Buy on Amazon We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. 07/28/2022 12:13 am GMT Camera Operator (Cameraman) A camera operator (or cameraman) is usually part of a camera crew who works closely with directors and other production staff to help record events (scenes)for movies, TV, and sporting events. A cameraman is a professional operator of a film or video camera who generally shoots raw footage on "location". How to Become a Cameraman: Learn How to Become a Professional Cameraperson $2.99 Learn all the Tips and Tricks to Become a Professional Cameraman.Written by professional Cinematographer Harvey Glen, learn loads of industry TIPS and TRICKS, all about the career path options, how to start your career, the skills you need to be successful, technically how to operate a camera from exposure, focusing, colour temperature and technical information, what mistakes to avoid and more. Buy on Amazon We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. 07/28/2022 02:53 am GMT Becoming a cameraman does require some education and training. Becoming a cameraman requires a bachelor’s degree in a field related to film or broadcasting, cinematography, or video editing. Additionally, they must have a good understanding of digital cameras and editing software. According to BLS, the median salary for cameramen is $49,000 per year. Costume Designer Costume Designers design and fit costumes for film, television, and stage. They work closely with the director so that they can understand the storyline and can draw sketches of potential costumes. Depending on the story (time, place, and characters), they will need to suggest and agree on costume materials and accessories with the director. Costume designers generally have to work under tight deadlines and may need to work on or near the production site. According to BLS, costume designers earn a median salary of $36,000 per year and can go as high as $85,000 per year. ZipRecruiter Never miss an opportunity. On ZipRecruiter, top companies reach out to you.There's no need to look anywhere else. With over 9 Million jobs, ZipRecruiter is the only site you'll ever need to find your next job. Get Recruited We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Read the full article

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wavebiders · 3 years

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One thing I really love about the Life is Strange games is how arguably the happiest endings for the PC's can only be obtained by letting them make the selfish choice in the end

#idk it's just nice that with how much a lot of media still comes down to the characters having to do the selfless thing #that these games instead let these traumatized teenagers decide that they don't have to give up their own hapiness to 'do the right thing'#and obviously the story varies wildly depending on how you play it #but i feel like that can easily be seen as the point of Max and Sean's character arcs?#they go from being these kids that feel like they have to be selfless and sacrifice so much #to learning that it's okay to look after themselves too #and they don't get punished for it either! the endings are still bittersweet sure but they do get to have the thing they want #and i think that's beautiful #life is strange #lis #max caulfield #sean diaz #pricefield

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creation-help · 2 years

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do you have any tips on crafting good comic relief characters?

What makes a good comic relief character can vary wildly, so I usually follow a few hard rules on what doesn't make a good comic relief character. Firstly here's some things to avoid!

- This character is funny because they're fat and/or ugly and stupid. Stupidity can work as a good driving force for comic relief, but pairing it with the character being portrayed as "ugly" or having them be fat simultaneously just hits as demeaning a group of people. Fat people have been the butt of a joke for way too long and way too often, and it's never been funny. Avoid making the humor of your character based on them being fat or otherwise deemed as "undesirable". Be especially careful if this coincides with traits associated to certain ethnicities and stereotypes regarding them. Just be aware of stereotypes and don't punch down

- If the audience finds the character annoying it's not funny. Characters who are made to be unwatchably annoying are rarely very popular, you can usually tell. Of course, what is and isn't annoying can be very subjective but generally speaking, it's funnier to have the character be annoying to the other characters, than to the audience. I know this is a very vague piece of advice, but try to stay within reason of what makes a character funny instead of just outright insidious

- Coinciding with the previous point, keep a level head on what's actually harmless fun and what gets destructive. I've seen way too many sitcoms attempting to be funny or have a purely comedic character, only for it to get extremely twisted when you actually think about it. Either by way of "Is it actually funny to be laughing at this character for reasons x y z" or "This character is actually a horrific asshole when you put their actions into perspective but the narrative plays them off as funny so they get off the hook constantly". Discrepancies will create unease. It's a different thing for someone to be just sassy and make mean jokes in good faith (especially if it's between people who are close and know it's okay to joke about) vs being actually offensive

I think with all that considered, my main point is to make them an actual character most of all. Comic relief characters work best when they're supported by a fun and engaging story, and I'm not saying the character should be gritty or have tons of stuff put into them, they can definitely just be a jokester, but make sure it's also just an enjoyable character in general. Using a character purely for jokes kinda just makes them a narrative tool, which, I guess is fine but doesn't make them terribly engaging. Give them a role and relationships, maybe good banter and fun dynamics ykno, and be aware of what they contribute to the story/group. Maybe if they're a moderator/tension diffuser type, use that to your advantage, or if they're a foolish and arrogant jokester, show the consequences of that.

Obviously you can make your comic relief be a terrible person but consider that depending on how far it goes, you need reasonable comeuppance. I think a very engaging comic relief arc or storyline could be about someone who starts off as a casual funnyman but over time gets carried off and eventually finds themself in a low dark place, or maybe getting in trouble and ending up corrupted. And they can still be humorous! Ykno, a wisecracking antagonist/villain would be fun!

If you wanna go a lighter route, maybe someone starts off as standoffish and offensive but through their actions or other characters, realizes that it's hurtful and changes their ways to become more considerate. Wholesome funny is also nice!

My last tip is to not gender-lock this character type (I always see it being a man in popular media). Women can be funny. Genders other than man and woman can be funny.

#Writing tips #Help #Ask #Character help #Comic relief #Character tropes #Character types #Original story #story advice #writer advice

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wolfandwild · 4 years

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My Shadowlands Wish List

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to pre-patch and the inevitable launch of the expansion, I thought I’d rattle off a wish list of things I hope we get to see in Shadowlands, largely from a lore/story perspective. (Or rather, my stupid foot was hurting so badly I couldn’t concentrate on writing my fic properly, so I decided to ramble off some not-so-hot takes, honestly they’re pretty mild in the grand scheme of things). I was in the first alpha wave, so I’ve had a pretty good opportunity to play the game as it is thus far, and I did want to make it clear up front that I’m fully aboard the hype train. Shadowlands is looking like a great expansion for a number of different reasons, and while I do have a few areas of concern, on the whole I am currently feeling very positive. Please also note these are just my random, late-night personal musings - your mileage may vary, and that’s a-okay. Mild Shadowlands spoilers below the cut.

You Get A Customisation! You Get A Customisation! Everybody Gets A Customisation! This one is pretty much a no-brainer. I don’t necessarily think Blizzard need to have absolutely every possible character customisation ready to go before launch, but I’d like them to continue adding further options over time. I move in a couple of different circles in Warcraft - I’m obviously involved in the writing/lore/character aspect of the game, but I’m also GM of a raiding guild and closely follow the gameplay/competitive side of things too - and customisation is one of those few things that gets everyone excited, regardless of their reason for playing the game. I’m looking forward to seeing a much more vibrant, unique and diverse Azeroth come Shadowlands pre-patch. (Mostly irrelevant side story - when Wrathion returned in the Patch 8.3 cinematics, my Twitter and lore Discords were basically going berserk with excitement, meanwhile there’s a hundred very confused dudes in my raiding guild who don’t read quest text being all, “What the hell is a ‘Wrathion’?”. I live in two different worlds, honestly). Another reason I’m excited about customisation (and I’m probably in a very small minority on this one) is because I actually really dislike allied races, and I think it gives Blizzard an option to add more flavour to character creation in the game without always having to cobble together a new race. I honestly think they should have simply gone for sub-race customisation from the beginning, to avoid having to ass-pull allied races out of nowhere. Using customisation over allied races also makes it far simpler to give something to both factions (e.g. high elves), or to add something for one faction without necessarily having to always add something to the other faction to keep things in balance. Giving an extra hairstyle to humans but not orcs generally isn’t going to cause that much of a fuss, but if one faction were given an allied race and the other wasn’t because there wasn’t a logical racial option, there would be a shitstorm of epic proportions. So you end up in a situation where one faction* gets saddled with a really random, sucky allied race just to be ‘fair’. *The Alliance. It’s the Alliance. Leave Britney Arthas Alone Arthas has never been a personal favourite of mine, but I respect that he has a fantastic story, and that he’s a cornerstone of Warcraft lore. His story is both satisfying and complete, and that’s exactly why they should leave him the hell alone. I don’t mind if he’s visited in flashbacks (like the Bastion cinematic), or if we explore how he affected still living characters (e.g. Jaina, Sylvanas, Bolvar), but I think it would be a mistake to try to make him a central character in the expansion. In contrast, someone like Kael’thas is an excellent choice for an additional arc, because his original story was a bit all over the place and there is still plenty of room for his character development. Arthas doesn’t need it, and I don’t think the minute potential gain is worth the risk of retroactively making the rest of his story worse. On a similar note... Warcraft III Was Released Nearly 20 Years Ago, It’s Time to Move On The Warcraft RTS was a landmark series of games, and was obviously without them we wouldn’t have the World of Warcraft. However, I think the future health of Warcraft’s lore depends on the ability of the writers to grow the story outwards and upwards, not to always default back to the same handful of characters for nostalgia’s sake. While characters like Jaina, and Thrall, and Sylvanas are great, they can’t carry the narrative forever. Shadowlands represents a unique opportunity to build up the next generation of characters and to blow the cosmology of the universe wide open. From what I’ve seen on the alpha/beta, Blizzard are definitely taking a step in this direction, and I’m hoping that’s what we get instead of Patch 9.2 - Oh Look, It’s Thrall Again. On an additionally similar note... Sylvanas Is Crazy, And She Needs To Go Down (I don’t actually think she’s crazy, but one should never miss the opportunity for an Avatar reference). One of my complaints about the recent lore developments in Warcraft its that it’s starting to feel a lot less like the World of Warcraft, and more like the Sylvanas of Warcraft. She’s playing 469D chess; she’s behind everything; she’s the sole driving force of the narrative. I don’t think that works in an MMO that’s meant to tell the story of an entire expanded universe. It makes things feel small. And before I get eaten alive, I want to be clear that I don’t dislike Sylvanas as a character - in fact, I think she’s very compelling and on a night when my foot wasn’t killing me so much I’d be happy to get into an argument as to why she’s actually one of the most consistent and well-written characters in the World of Warcraft. I don’t necessarily think she needs to die, either, but I think it’s time for her narrative to come to a close to make room for other characters in the story, and I don’t think Blizzard are going to get a much better opportunity to give her a satisfying ending than in a death-themed expansion. Justice for Tyrande (Or Vengeance, Whatever Uther Wants to Call It) Tyrande got done dirty in Battle for Azeroth, probably more than any other character. I’m not a massive night elf fangirl by any means, but their entire race was basically used as grist for the mill in Sad Orc Dad’s story, with no next to no narrative follow-up besides a cool cinematic that went absolutely nowhere in game. Outside the game, her character then got subjected to the cacophonous misogynistic crowing of the fanbase that occurs whenever a female character dares to be angry in the World of Warcraft. Much like Jaina, she’s decried for being ‘crazy’ or ‘irrational’ for, you know, being pissed that her people and her homeland were wiped out in an act of wildly disproportional aggression. I don’t know about you guys, but that would tend to make me a wee bit testy, but maybe I’m crazy and irrational too. In any case, I want to see her go off in Shadowlands. Fuck ‘em up, girlfriend. You Get One Villain. If You Drop It, I’m Not Buying You Another One I think most people will agree with me that the two weakest expansions (at least from a narrative perspective) were Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth. There are a few reasons for this, but for me one of the biggest issues was that they were chop-and-change expansions. Both were advertised and started off with narratives and themes that were wildly different from where they finished up. Warlords was part Iron Horde expansion, part Legion expansion; BFA was part faction war expansion, part Old God expansion... and that’s exactly the problem. Both times, I felt like we got two half-done expansions, instead of one single, cohesive narrative experience. If you look at expansions like Wrath of the Lich King and Legion, both of which were very well received, a lot of their success hinges on their presentation of a consistent narrative with a clear goal for players within the story. The Lich King, for example, was a consistent and very present villain. He menaced you throughout your entire journey, and so his eventual defeat on top of Icecrown Citadel was meaningful and impactful. Defeating N’Zoth, by contrast, felt pretty hollow, as we hadn’t had enough narrative build up to really care about taking him down. Part of the reason I’m excited for Shadowlands is it looks like we’re getting a nice, focused story development that builds up to a logical and satisfying villain in the Jailer. Why Can’t We Be Friends? Look, I bleed blue. I love the Alliance... but the faction war should not continue to be a driving narrative element in the World of Warcraft. I don’t want the factions to be removed, I think they’re a core part of the Warcraft experience and I’d be pretty sad to have to let them go entirely, but the cycle of hating one another then teaming up in an uneasy alliance in order to defeat a bigger bad, only to go back to being at one another’s throats the next day is... tiresome.

Ideally, the war would have ended after Legion - it was the most logical place to do so, and I think it was a big missed opportunity that they ran with Battle for Azeroth immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, I think this means the Alliance is going to just have to forgive and forget, which doesn’t really make a lot sense at this point given everything that happened in BFA, but for the sake of the overall story, it might be a necessary sacrifice. That said... I Am Once Again Asking for Alliance Narrative Agency I know there are a lot of (valid) complaints to be had about the Horde storyline, but the one thing the Horde has always had over the Alliance is that they actually get to drive the narrative forward. The Alliance are pretty much exclusively reactionary, and in a lot of ways are side characters to the main Horde storyline. I’ve made this argument elsewhere, but it honestly wouldn’t be too hard to remove Anduin’s part in Saurfang’s storyline in Battle for Azeroth and have it turn out more or less exactly the same way... which says a lot about the importance of the Alliance in the overall storyline. In short, the Alliance are secondary players at best, and downright irrelevant at worst. One of my biggest hopes for Shadowlands is that we’ll actually get to see some Alliance narrative agency. To be clear, however, this does not mean a simple rehashing of Horde conflicts with a blue coat of paint. Alliance stories are not Horde stories, and nor should they be. Having an Alliance leader turn into a genocidal despot is not the only way to create conflict or agency in the story - there are plenty of opportunities for character growth, development and conflict on the Alliance side without having to have one of our leaders do a heel turn (e.g. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, Anduin dealing with his experience in the Maw, Jaina confronting the fates of people like Kael’thas and Arthas, Taelia meeting her father, etc.), and I really hope we get to see some of those narrative threads come to fruition. I Want to Mount Everything Add a hundred new mounts. Two hundred. A pot plant with googly eyes, the four hundredth Alliance horse, your mum. I’ll ride anything; I don’t even care. (Please note this is the most important opinion I have).

#world of warcraft #shadowlands #shadowlands spoilers #battle for azeroth #lore #turns out i had a few more opinions than i originally realised #anyway shadowlands looks cool guys y'all should check it out #but i would always rather have some warcraft than no warcraft #so take that how you will

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zenosanalytic · 5 years

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Theorizing Role: Seer of Life

strongman-freakshow:

Hey there! I was trying to look for some specific posts of yours and was having a bit of trouble. Do you have anything on the seer of life, specifically?

Hmmm, Not much, but I think Seer of Life is an interesting one, so I’ll give it a go.

Ok so a Seer of Life seems kind of tricky to me. Life tends to concern itself with practical matters(Biology, Wealth, Physical Ability, Acquisitiveness, Agency, Creativity) which don’t immediately lend themselves to precognition the way Aspects like Light, Mind, or Time do. According to Aradia’s formulation, a Seer of Life would be one who “Knows Life Comprehensively”(with Certain Important Provisos for how that might work, and for how one might Perceive of that working, I’d argue), and combining that with the concepts above certainly suggests a wide utility, but the primary Role Seers fill is identifying incoming threats and directing their team through or around them; where’s the foresight in “Knowing Life Comprehensively”? We haven’t seen many Life-powers in action, but Life has, on top of those already mentioned, all manner of Associations; it’s a rather abstract Aspect that seems at its core to most directly be about “The Ability to Do”[1]; though “Comprehensive Knowledge of Nebulous, Open-Ended Practicality” sounds like a fun approach to it, to me, in its own way :p Agency obvsl plays an important role in ”Doing” and, as a result, in Life-Hero stories[2]. Life-Players tend to be good Problem-solvers with a particular knack for thinking outside-the-box, and in-even-MORE-particular with finding ways to continue life, in some form or another, through any trial, even death; giving them a bit of a Sleeping Beauty/Orpheus&Eurydice/Persephone vibe(and I’d argue you really shouldn’t ignore the mythic aspect of Homestuck Titles u_u).

So, given all that, I think one clarifying way of conceiving this would be to render the Aradia-description from “Knows Life Comprehensively” to “Knows Doing Comprehensively” thence to “Knows Solutions Comprehensively”. “Comprehensive Knowledge of Solutions”(or, for the Colloquially minded, “How Do”) probably sounds really straight-forward, so let’s complicate it :p :p

Solution/=Good. The morality of a particular “Solution” lies in what it entails and its outcomes, not in its nature AS a “Solution”. The Solutions a Seer of Life Looks for, Sees, Chooses, and Directs others towards will depend on the Life-Seer’s own moral compass, and Life-Players haven’t exactly proven themselves conscientious in the maintenance of that particular piece of personal metaphysical kit(with the exception of Feferi, who was never but a Most Excellent and Totally Righteous Dude u_u u_u But that’s 1 out of 3 which is Not Gr8 Odds :T)

Solution is Big. Most problems can be solved, conservatively, in about 16 Million way, Most of them only minorly different, yet still distinct. The answer to “How Do?” can often approach a practical infinity. This seems both Overwhelming and Monotonous to me

Solution; Then What? Terezi can see vast webs of Decision and Causality; Rose the Objective “Fortune” value of any particular chain of events; but “Solutions” end at the problems they solve. As Above, so Below: Whar Foresight; Whar?

At the same time it also sounds a bit limited, so let’s expand it :p :p

Sight Bleeds. Rose isn’t limited to just knowing how “Fortunate” a plan will be, nor Terezi to only the “Choices” involved; they both See some varying level of detail of the specific events and those leading up to them, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to advise about and intervene in relevant events. So in all likelihood, a Seer of Life WOULD see both the specifics relevant TO, and probably those events immediate(and possibly circumstantially simultaneous) Of, said events and their Solution.

Aspects are Broad. Terezi can also effectively read Minds(because, you know Mind). Rose can look through solid objects(probably because visible or optical light isn’t the only KIND of “Light” out there. Emanations be both Numerous and Numinous u_u u_u u_u). All Aspects, regardless of what sources professing to be reliable in canon have claimed as their Boundaries, have displayed a vastness of meaning, ranging from the mundanely literal to the abstract, esoteric, and even mythical(which is to say: Wildly Subjective[early HS occasionally lampshades this subjectivity with variants of the phrase “personal mythos”]). So Life-Sight would probably cover all sorts of other stuff, connectable to “Doing/Solutions” but not immediately apparent as such. Most basically, the ability to See the Lifetimes of particular individuals or groups of individuals, which would effectively allow Seers of Life to See the future of those individuals(at least until they die), and necessarily the after effects of any particular Solution upon them. Not to mention the connections to Death, Life-After-Death, and Resurrection which all Life Players have shown, and how THAT, through ideas such as History, can apply to the “Life and Death” of ideas, events, and outcomes(not to mention their connection to temporally non-linear Dream Bubbles, and how that could be used for future-seeing).

“Know Comprehensively” is Big. What does it mean to “Know”? What does it mean to be “Comprehensive”? Early on Seers struggle to answer these questions without really realizing it, and plenty of others, as they struggle to master their Title, but successful Seers, unlike displacer beasts, don’t deal in approximate knowledge. If a Seer of Life’s Knowledge of How Do(and Life, and Wealth, and Agency, etc etc)can be said to be “Comprehensive”, then it seems very unlikely to me that their Sight, when mastered, wouldn’t given them some sense of(and thus control over) the ultimate outcome of the Solutions they choose. And as an aside, I’d bet they’d also be absurdly skillful in general(since Comprehensively Knowing a Solution means knowing how to carry it out), and just absolute Gangbusters at figuring out Alchemiter recipes.

On top of Title-development every Player faces personal challenges, of course, and these tend to share similarities between Classes and Aspect. Seers often struggle with self-confidence and self-worth, with maintaining Perspective on themselves, and issues of achievement(failed perfectionism in Rose and Terezi, and perhaps over-estimation[in response to fears of not fitting in or being excluded] with Kankri? It’s difficult to say given the limited material) often simultaneous to significant personal losses(Mom Lalonde’s murder; feeling compelled to kill Vriska for Terezi; again it’s difficult for Kankri, but how he pushes away Porrim may be his example). Aspect is frequently tied to all of this(I discuss how in This Post on Seers of Heart). So something tied to Life(perhaps the Seer’s own privileged position or, in a more Feferi-like take, the restrictive cloistering it brings) would cloud the Seer’s Perspective on events, and promote a crisis of confidence(most likely self-doubt, but given Kankri it’s possible OVER-confidence could also be a problem, particularly given the natural gifts and material condition Life-Players tend to possess), at a time when, due to the loss of relationships and people, they would be in a stressful and emotionally vulnerable place. And always, as mentioned above, there would be the temptation of taking the “easy” way; of putting themselves First, dismissing the equal being of others, and manipulating their friends into circumstances the Seer prefers, without consideration for their consent or well-being.

So Seers of Life would face a tough row to hoe. They’d have to learn how to sift through a staggering number of options to find the 8est(as they define it) Solution, with limited knowledge of where it could lead, all while being aware of how their own desires and moral flexibility can undermine the whole project while seeming to advance it and bring harm to the people they care for. But this isn’t really new. Perspective, Judgement, and Self-Awareness are vital to ALL Seers using their Sight effectively. While these challenges may be more vast and immediate for Seers of Life, they wouldn’t be fundamentally different from what all Seers struggle with. With time and focus and the patience to consider others instead of taking the quickest and shiniest roads, a successful Seer of Life would learn how to achieve clarity of purpose, and refine and focus their Sight with Knowledge of other facets of their Aspect. I think a Seer of Life is no less likely to be useful, and even game-breaking, than any of the more obviously Oraclely Aspects.

Ok that’s my general ideas about a Seer of Life; what about some specifics?

Aggrieving Anatomist

Let’s Take This Early Discussion on Seers of Life as inspiration(h/t to deliverusfromsburb and thegrimsqueaker ^v^ these are mostly their ideas). You could have a Seer of Life interested in Anatomy and Biology/BioChem, who likes martial arts movies and who, as a Life-Hero, is both preternaturally strong, and headstrong(and, tbf, given the 3 canon Seers, “Headstrong” could very well be a Seer trait as well :T). Based on their interests, they’d have a tendency to envision Solutions that involve the body and biological or chemical processes, and their personality would tend to bend this towards combat; either by seeking out combat theirself, leading others IN combat, or trying to teach others their ridiculous, biomantic fighting techniques(which, given how alchemiters allow Players to lend and merge their powers with those of their Friends, ought to be possible). I DO NOT think this would necessarily be a bad thing, both Rose and Terezi mix it up in HS, but this sort of Seer might have trouble letting themselves(or learning how to) delegate to others, and direct them along their own quests. Given the tendencies of Life Players, they may even go so far as to have a hard time conceiving of their Session as being bigger than their own Quests, and thus struggle with tunnel-visioning(though, given how The Game’s very structure interweaves Players’ quests together, there’d be plenty of stuff working to counteract that).

Their powers could start as an encyclopedic and precise knowledge of anatomy, eventually developing(ala Rose and the 8-ball) into an x-ray-vision like ability to See anatomy directly, allowing for improbably devastating(and cinematic) blows in combat. Terezi’s Sight takes the form of interconnected Neurons stretching into infinity; Rose’s, what little we see of it, of and bursts of Revelation, Enlightenment, and Emanation; This Seer’s might eventually manifest as a vast system of Temporal Veins and Causal Nerves, as if they were Seeing the body of the Universe Frog itself from the Inside. They could trace each Vein to see where it blocks and withers(what events Doom that TL) then, working back from the Event-Clot, develop a Solution to clear or bypass it. By tracing the Nerves they could see how events outside the timelines interact with and direct the shape, direction, and operation of each Vein, and work out ways sever, limit, counteract, or manipulate that influence in what they consider a useful or “Healthy” direction. Through this Awareness of how those around them relate to the inner-workings of the Vast Croaker, they could identify which actors in their story play the role of “Antigens”, harming the Body-Realistic, using that knowledge to direct and counsel teammates, and plan their strategies.

Chess Doctor

A Seer of Life interested in Medicine could share that sort of Life-Sight while having a totally different personality and approach. Meenah, Feferi, and Jane saw their cloistered lives as oppressive, but maybe this Seer isn’t really all that social or adventurous to begin with, and so doesn’t mind. So long as they have any book they want, the best tutors to teach them, and immediate easy authority, they’re perfectly fine with taking on the restrictions and responsibilities that go with them. This sort of Seer of Life would take naturally to the Role of strategist, observer, and advisor, focused less on personal combat than understanding the challenges facing them and developing solutions, but along with that could come a casual, condescending arrogance, and tendency for viewing others as instruments for their plans rather than people in their own right, which could cause just as many problems. Whereas the last Seer struggled with seeing the larger picture, this one would struggle most with understanding that THEIR views aren’t the only ones out there, nor necessarily the most important, nor the “right” ones.

Endless Observer

Another approach might be a more literal one; a People-Watcher. This Seer’s main interest would just be People, as a subject; the things they do, how they think, how they go about their Lives. While somewhat detached by their station and socially awkward as a result, they’d be filled with an infectious ------Enthusiasm for everything even vaguely anthropological: history books and films, documentaries, works of psychology, How-To Shows, ~Reality Television~, National Geographic; you name it. Maybe they’d have an EXHAUSTIVE LIBRARY, exhaustively read, of these SEMINAL TEXTS ensconced safely within the heart of their TASTEFULLY HUMBLE SUBURBAN MEGAPALACE 0u0 Whenever a problem comes up, they’d immediately have the know-how to solve it(and the best tools to solve it with, cost irrelevant). As an expression of this maybe they’d start with a maxed-out strifedeck and Robust, easily navigable Sylladex, or maybe they’d have a special Debit Card Sylladex Mode which stores only currency, but allows it to be converted to any item on request :p :p Or maybe(!) rather than a Sylladex Mode, they’re Strife Abstrata would be Cardkind and, like a suped-up version of Kanaya’s lipstick, their Card could be converted to a whole host of items on command.

This Seer’s powers might start off manifesting as having “coincidentally” just looked up a relevant subject right before the problem it could help solve arises. Rose’s viewing orbs expressed her interest in the occult so maybe this Seer would alchemize a Book or card-catalogue or How To Video which could provide information on any topic(or possibly a FLASH CARD TAROT, filled with detailed solutions). Perhaps the visualization of their Sight would be different, too; rather than Seeing through an anatomical model, they’d See a chattering ocean of flashing images or monitors containing every possible “life” branching from that point, which they could resolve, through concentration, into a picture of the problem they’re trying to solve, and the solution to it they like best. Maybe the very volume of their knowledge would begin to make it difficult for them to choose a solution, causing bouts of indecision(or physical pain). A fun branch from this idea could be having the Seer create a clone of themselves, or maybe some animate agent, to attempt alternate solutions or do the Seeing while they do the Doing, who eventually gets out of hand ala The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I could also see a Seer like this, so used to dealing with people as objects to be watched rather than equal people, developing problems with listening to and considering the needs of others, despite a friendly and positive demeanor.

Ok; I think that’s all I’ve got in me for a Seer of Life right now. I Hope it helps ^u^

[1]all the Life Heroes we’ve seen have been physically quite gifted, Convincing speakers, and born into Influence and Wealth

[2]Fef’s desire to be free of her hemocaste role, choosing of Sollux over Eridan, and negotiation with the HTs; Jane’s subliminal schooling by Condy, forced cyberization and mind-control, her inability to tell Jake of her romantic&sexual interest, her mistreatment of him while CrockerMaid; Meenah’s desire for power without responsibility, basically Everything she seems to have done in their Session(including the Cake and secretly murdering everyone so they wouldn’t be erased), and there’s def a discussion to be had about age and consent re: her rom with Vriska

#strongman freakshow #Theorizing Role #Seer of Life #Seer Class #Life Aspect #Homestuck Role System #Homestuck Titles #analytic posts

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aethernoise · 5 years

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I haven't done much RP in FFXIV, but I'm curious (at least from your experience) do most people tend to use/prefer Chocobos as their mounts (for RP, at least)? Most of the fanfiction I've read actually doesn't mention the WoL's trusty steed, whatever it may be, probably for ease of writing. I know a good deal people who went collector's edition for Heavensward and got Griffins, et cetera, and I'm wondering if people tend to use/"have" them, or stick with ol' reliable. Odd ask, I know haha

Hi anon! I may not be the best person to ask but I managed to ramble quite a bit anyway.

SO. While I do write fanfic I do not consider myself really ~*part of the RP Community*~ bc I am pretty private with my own RP? In terms of firsthand experience beyond a fairly small circle I am largely ignorant of the practices of others in terms of how they write their OCs and their steed of choice (if any!)…

From what I have simply read and observed here on tumblr alone I can say it seems like lots of folks make use of a chocobo as their mount and companion…. how much involvement said chocobo has in the story varies wildly from one character to the next! While chocobos are definitely the most Easy Mode Lore Appropriate IC Mounts available–in terms of what is necessary to offer lots of extra reconciliation for–I am sure there are some who have become attached to other mounts and maybe created stories for them to weave into their RP or fanfic…

If you care about me personally: I do choose not to dwell on it much, for ease of writing, as you guessed. In my own mind Alyx has her chocobo, Dog, but more frequently rides her Flame war horse (no I still don’t have a name don’t look at me). Why? Part of it is because I personally love horses, part of it is I worked really hard to obtain the mount IG and am proud of it. The more I used it in-game the more I started to build a story around it. (That said I’ve also loosely established a connection with a rose lanner as well as a wyvern–and Midgardsormr, to a certain extent, though that one is tricky because I prefer to imagine him in his smol form.)

A lot of this depends on the OC in question and whether or not they are played/written as the WoL. I’m one of very few writers/RPers I know who actually write/play a canon™ Warrior of Light. Obviously those who do will have some different built-in opportunities and excuses that others may have to come about a bit more creatively (like Midgardsormr, or a Manacutter). Or not, because whatever!! It’s RP! Have fun!

I really feel like I failed to make a real point anywhere in here and I’m not sure if any of this has been helpful, but whileI’m nowhere near the kind of eyes and ears of observation of the community that would yield more accurate answer to your question, I think I can sum up as “yes, kind of.”

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allbeendonebefore · 7 years

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@ask-aph-acadia, @lilcutiebear, I’m making a new thread to reply to you both here p:

lilcutiebear: I took French immersion from k-12 so I’m very much in support of learning a second language and not monolingual. Personally I think there are two big factors in animosity towards French immersion in the west that have nothing to do with dislike of francophones. One is that I have seen articles complaining that it is like having a private school within the public school system (I’ve seen articles like that from basically every part of the country not just the west). More particular to the west is that many ppl here aren’t French Canadians or English Canadians and think it would make more sense to teach another language like German or Ukrainian or Chinese or Cree since more people here have those kinds of ancestry. So sometimes it feels like the east is pushing its linguistic divide onto us. I also feel like Anglophones here are different from Anglophones out east because a lot on Anglophones here are only Anglophones because their ancestors were forced to attend school in English rather than their native language. (I.e. My grandpa’s first language is Polish and even though he grew up in a community that was evenly split between poles and Ukrainians (with most kids understanding at least part of both)and his teacher was Ukrainian she wasn’t allowed to teach in any language other than English).

yes absolutely, this is another aspect of the issue that gets totally glossed over in the anglo/franco division. I don’t know about my personal family line but certainly people with my ancestry were discriminated against, forced to learn English, and also put in internment camps for their heritage and speaking Ukrainian. Canada making everything into a Catholic/Protestant or a French/English binary really does not evenly apply to the history of the West in particular but also can cause similar rifts elsewhere. Like we recognize bilingualism is good but 1. our educational systems are often garbage and 2. finding exposure to a native speaker of a target language can vary wildly, and learning French across Canada can be difficult if you are learning International French at School and Quebecois, Acadian or backwater prairie French at home. and 3. it’s always been grating that French (and English) are always prioritized over languages people already speak- we recognize Canada is a bilingual country, but there is not enough motivation or access to materials or native speakers in all locations unless you’re Really Super Determined to get a government job and can afford to move to a city with the programs. Canada is also a country of immigrants, and multilingualism should be celebrated beyond French and English.

ask-aph-acadia: For the criticism: I do remember seeing a few people draw the territories with darker skin, but since I couldn’t really see a big difference in their traits and the other provinces’ in the old art, I really had a hard time seeing if they were white or not, even though I know that First nations and Métis can have paler skin ( One of my characters is actually Métis and has pale skin, but I tried to make it easier to see with the other traits. ) I should maybe watch more of the ProCan videos though, just to make sure I don’t say things that were changed.

Lol i mean good luck, we basically do one video every three years and the projo has come to a standstill but yes Attempts Were Made

I think that if PEI didn,t exist as a province at all I wouldn’t have had that much problems with NB and NS being a couple. I remember thinking that making it this way was excluding PEI from Acadia ( I can’t really say the Maritimes for this situation, since Newfoundland doesn’t have much to do with all of that ), forgetting that it’s been a part of NS too, maybe for a smaller time, but it still happened and gets forgotten a lot in designs for Acadia. PEI was also there when NB and NS talked about becoming one colony, so again seeing them as a couple made me feel like the smaller one was being kind of forgotten. I usually see people making PEI Nova Scotia’s sister/brother, while leaving NB and NS as a couple and I’ve always wondered what made them that different from Prince Ed for other people.

Obviously I’m not a Maritimer, and I do tend to have my reading of the history shaped by what people have done in the past so I can absolutely see that there’s ambiguity in those relationships. I can’t speak for Sherry’s interpretations, I can only attempt to justify them in my own readings. I did get the sense that PEI has a very strong little sibling vibe i.e. the strong independence streak without wanting the responsibility, but I can read NS as the long suffering big brother figure for either of them. I think it’s the strong Scottish heritage that tends to tie NS and PEI together more than NS to NB, but I could be wrong.

As for Alberta and Saskatchewan, I think a lot of people see them as “sister provinces”, me included, and that’s why we usually see them as siblings, without mentionning the project of “Buffalo” ( I think that’s what it was called? Correct me if I’m wrong ).

Buffalo is correct: nowadays we tend to see each other as sister provinces but it can also depend on the reading of the history- Wilfrid Laurier dividing the provinces up can be seen as completely arbitrary with little regard for the people already living there, as an eastern imposition etc, but it rubs me the wrong way to just throw them together because they share a birthday (because I’ve got a personal Dislike of using Confederation as a literal birthday rather than a symbolic birthday and I really don’t like AB/SK portrayed as identical and interchangeable twins (even though lately our politicians have been playing that game loll a story for ANotHER Time). It’s definitely a close relationship that I tend to at least read as adoptive siblings since I’m Not a fan of literal biological relationships- they are definitely the closest out of the former Rupert’s Land territories fam.

For Poutines: I can tell you that when the cheese curds are fresh from today, it’s even better. I live in an area where the milk industry is very big and we’ve got that company called Chalifoux that makes the best cheese curds I’ve ever tasted. A lot of our restaurants use them in their poutines and it’s amazing. I know a few people that prefer shredded cheese but they obviously didn’t taste the best poutine in the region.

Another day another reason to be sad and lactose intolerant ToT and yet i regret nothing

For Alberta: I see that Quebec and Alberta have a very different version of the story. Honestly, I never saw Quebec as a province that tried to bother Alberta, we’re so concentrated on our own politics that we hardly notice what happens in the rest of the country most of the time. I think the last time I heard about Alberta in the news was during Fort Mac’s wildfires, and a lot happened since it started. But again, we’re so focused on complaining about Phillipe Couillard that we don’t even see what he does, for the most part ( Doesn’t change that he’s a shit PM to me, but that’s a story for another day. ) The only other time I’ve heard about AB in the news was for the pipeline and I can say it’s at that moment that I’ve heard the most people going against the prairies.

That’s regionalism for you, most of us tend to only focus on our own affairs until the minute someone releases some bad poll data about how much one hates the other online and then everyone goes ballistic. p: Pipelines again are a nuanced issue and while I personally am anti-pipeline i understand the reasons AB doesn’t see it that way, again we just got over a long 44 year political dynasty headed straight towards economic dependence on a single resource that our current government is trying to undo, and frankly it’s overly simplistic to just paint us as the bad guys because we’ve made some dumb decisions and backed ourselves into a corner here. We’re dumb, we get it, but don’t say it to our faces lol. Again if you are interested in this stuff I try to reblog news articles frequently on my personal blog under the yeah y yeah alberta tag (my political bias is Obvious)

The other part of the story is the federal government is built on pitting regions of Canada against each other, and right now the West is the favourite scapegoat. Former PM Harper did not help our image at all in the 2000s-2010s and I take IMMENSE satisfaction knowing that he’s now got to answer to a Muslim mayor and a New Democrat premier, you have no idea. But it’s fear mongering like that where ohhh the west is all about oiiillll and then ignoring the history of Eastern Canada literally just taking it from us and the federal government making it our current major export etc etc is really hypocritical at best (the scapegoating Alberta for the oil and saying ohhh it’s so baaad and unenvironmental and then wanting to live off the profits is something that really is an easy way to piss us off, and the federal government does it all the time.

We really saw Alberta and Saskatchewan as the big bad guys and a girl I knew started to DESPISE the provinces, even though she also hated Quebec? ( She’s the one we had drama with when creating our version of the provinces, she hated Alberta so much that she wanted my character to die… That’s a lot of hatred, but that is also a story for another day. ) I think a lot of Quebeckers are not over that yet, it’s probably time for us to go complain about something else than that ahah.

This is one of those touchy subjects and it Really Pisses me Off when people like to use aph Alberta OCs as their stereotypical villain character without ever considering our perspective or history, it’s happened enough that I’ve not been seeking out ocs for my province anymore for that reason. We already get that enough in mainstream politics, and all it does is make us angrier and act even more out of spite. I’ve seen Quebec and Ontario both treated the same way, of course, but QUON is such a popular pairing that more often than not its just Oh here is Loud Obnoxious Alberta Here To Ruin Everything for Us Once Again. They’re all such good and nuanced characters that it makes me real sad to see them reduced like that. I’ve always seen the relationship as playful banter/teasing between the three of us (and really four because BC is up there with us) and I kind of feel partially responsible for my adlibbing in old IAMP episodes being taken Too Seriously.

Also hating a character is once thing, hating them to wanting them to die is beyond rude, and hating an aph oc for representing a place with real people is Beyond offensive to me, sigh...

For French: I can get why a lot of people complain about having to learn it, it’s a hard language, even for native speakers. We’re also guilty of blaming the “anglos” for making us learn English. I do see how Quebec and Ontario look like they have been working together, but we don’t see it from inside Quebec, since we complain about Ontario as much as we complain about the rest of the provinces ( Ontario is actually our biggest target, it’s easy to do, since we’re so close. ) I don’t mind people complaining about French outside of Quebec, but it’s when people do it inside the province that it bothers me. I already see so many people choosing to speak English instead of French, thus loosing what’s supposed to be their native tongue that I and a lot of other people get on the defensive when we talk about language issues, like when we don’t know what language to speak in in Montreal. Remember when I talked about Phillipe Couillard? Well, he recently asked for English people to come back in the province and I can tell you that it wasn’t welcomed as a good thing by most Quebeckers… ( I could rant about Couillard for hours but I think it’s better if I stop it there) We’re welcoming of tourists but when we hear them complain about how everything’s written in French, it’s at that moment that we get a lot more like the stereotype.I would love to visit one day, and maybe these English class will finally be useful somewhere else than on the internet ahah

(of course once again see Amy’s response above for the western perspective on this issue)

there’s a lot of common jokes that the only unifying thing about canada is everyone’s hatred of ontario and that the best thing to solve everyone’s problems would be if ontario were to separate and leave the rest of canada alone xDD but of course at the end of the day it’s still nothing personal and as much as I can’t quell the Stereotypical Albertan gut reaction to shake my fist at all things Ontarian, I am very fond of this place and have been treated exceedingly well whenever I’ve visited and I hope my good fortune will continue. But of course I understand wanting to protect French within Quebec, and I do really wish it was a more accessible language in other parts of Canada. But yeah, travel, education, all that gives me hope for the future (too bad Canada is so Damn Big or I’d be all over it already).

#hapo replies #lilcutiebear #ask-aph-acadia

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everythingisgreenandsubmarine · 7 years

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"It" (2017) Review

SPOILERS FOR IT (2017) BELOW

It is a mammoth novel. At over 1100 pages, containing a huge assortment of characters, and spanning over 200 years of mythos, you can imagine just how hard this novel is to adapt. It's not just an issue of plot, it's an issue of time. While King has over 275,000 words to tell his story (the equivalent of a 4,500 hour film, if 1 script page is equivalent to one minute of film time) Andy Muschietti has given himself roughly four hours -- around 240 pages -- to adapt both halves of these novels.

The 1990 miniseries showed that this novel is both incredibly hard to adapt, and impossible to water down. While Tim Curry shines through, in that adaptation, as Pennywise, the rest of the film around him is rife with bad acting, poor writing, stilted dialogue, and cheesy effects. This miniseries covered the entirety of the novel, but even its three-hour runtime wasn't enough to effectively adapt King's story. Additionally, this adaptation avoided almost all of the violence, sexuality, and dark humor that made the novel unique, and memorable.

Andy Muchietti's It suffers, too, from this inability to capture the temporal expansiveness of King's novel. The first chapter of the film, clocking in at a little over two hours, covers the majority of the plot points contained in about half of King's novel. However, it fails to capture the depth, and the intricacies contained within those pages. Furthermore, its horror is executed in the most lazy, and frustrating, way: jump scares.

Let's begin with the writing, though.

This adaptation of It was originally written by Cary Fukunaga and Chase Palmer. Fukunaga was originally attached as writer/director for a long time. You may know Fukunaga from his directorial efforts on films like Beasts of No Nation and Sin Nombre, along with his directing work on the first season of the HBO show True Detective.

Fukunaga was fired from the project after it had been mired in development Hell for quite some time. After being fired, he shared some details about why he was given the boot, and what the producers wanted his film to be.

"I was trying to make an unconventional horror film. It didn’t fit into the algorithm of what they knew they could spend and make money back on based on not offending their standard genre audience. Our budget was perfectly fine. We were always hovering at the $32 million mark, which was their budget. It was the creative that we were really battling. It was two movies. They didn’t care about that. In the first movie, what I was trying to do was an elevated horror film with actual characters. They didn’t want any characters. They wanted archetypes and scares. I wrote the script. They wanted me to make a much more inoffensive, conventional script. But I don’t think you can do proper Stephen King and make it inoffensive. The main difference was making Pennywise more than just the clown. After 30 years of villains that could read the emotional minds of characters and scare them, trying to find really sadistic and intelligent ways he scares children, and also the children had real lives prior to being scared. And all that character work takes time. It’s a slow build, but it’s worth it, especially by the second film. But definitely even in the first film, it pays off. It was being rejected. Every little thing was being rejected and asked for changes. Our conversations weren’t dramatic. It was just quietly acrimonious. We didn’t want to make the same movie. We’d already spent millions on pre-production. I certainly did not want to make a movie where I was being micro-managed all the way through production, so I couldn’t be free to actually make something good for them. I never desire to screw something up. I desire to make something as good as possible. We invested years and so much anecdotal storytelling in it. Chase and I both put our childhood in that story. So our biggest fear was they were going to take our script and bastardize it. So I’m actually thankful that they are going to rewrite the script. I wouldn’t want them to stealing our childhood memories and using that. I mean, I’m not sure if the fans would have liked what I would had done. I was honoring King’s spirit of it, but I needed to update it. King saw an earlier draft and liked it." -- Cary Fukunaga

Ultimately, Fukunaga and his producers were trying to make two different films: Fukunaga wanted to make something akin to The Shining, or Rosemary's Baby, whereas his producers wanted him to make the next Conjuring film.

When Fukunaga was booted from the project, the producers hired writer Gary Dauberman (writer of Annabelle and Wolves at the Door) to make extensive changes to Fukunaga and Palmer's script. They also hired Andy Muschietti, writer/director of the 2013 film, Mama, to replace Fukunaga in the director's chair.

Sadly, what Fukunaga divulged in that interview is completely true. While some elements of his script has been kept, much of it was re-written to fit Muschietti's vision (which, in turn, fit Hollywood's vision). By this I mean to say that Muschietti's It is full of poor dialogue, jump scares, and very flat characters.

Part of this stems from what I mentioned above -- trying to adapt a huge novel into a relatively short script. Supporting characters, like Henry Bowers, or Beverly Marsh's father, are fleshed out in the novel, and given compelling backstories. In the film, they are defined by very rigid, and thin motivations. Henry Bowers, for instance, is a bully because his father is a violent drunk. That's it. That is the entire motivation behind this bully's extremely violent, and destructive tendencies. Beverly Marsh's father has no motivation, nor any backstory. He's just a looming, abusive figure that is shrouded in darkness.

The real issue with the writing of this film, though, is the depiction of Pennywise the Clown. Obviously this character is essential to the novel, and to the overall story.

Bill Skarsgård is fine as Pennywise, though he is very forgettable. His performance can be summed up as "forced" -- a combination of whisper-talking, and overacting. Pennywise's horrific actions are augmented by poor CGI, which takes away from both the character, and the Skarsgård's performance.

Furthermore, this Pennywise never feels like an organic part of the story. Pennywise is an old entity, spanning well beyond the lifespan of the children. Yet we never get a feeling for that age beyond some vague dialogue which speaks to it. Furthermore, because of all of the jump scares, Pennywise never feels scary. In fact, all of the scares in the film feel very forced, and inorganic to the atmosphere Muschietti attempts to set up.

The main cast is good, though, and they are the saving grace of the film. While Pennywise, and the fear surrounding him, feel inorganic and forced, the interactions and chemistry between the core characters is strong. They are funny, endearing, and realistic.

The real standout performance in this film comes from Finn Wolfhard, who plays Richie Tozier. Carrying the majority of the comedic relief on his shoulders, Wolfhard is able to punctuate each scene he's in with authenticity and endearing realism.

The rest of the cast works well, even if they don't quite fit the character descriptions we remember from the novel. In this respect, while they may not replicate the characters we have envisioned, they certainly embody them. The performances are all solid.

In fact, ironically enough, the younger performances are much better than their adult counterparts. Part of this could be from the shallow writing, or the stilted dialogue the adults are often stuck with, but it is worth mentioning.

The real issue with this film comes from the jump scares, though. Jump scares, by themselves, are not inherently evil. They are most certainly lazy, but they aren't the worst thing ever. A horror film can still be very good if it has a couple of jump scares in it. However, like many other things in the filmmaking world, less is more.

Muschietti does not abide by this adage, as everything from Pennywise's interaction with Georgie to the climactic third act are rife with forced jump scares, grating musical cues, and dramatic lighting.

That first interaction with Georgie helps set up the entire film, both in terms of tone, and in terms of scares. The script has jarring shifts in tone, which are best exemplified by Georgie chasing his boat down the street happily, running into a road block, and then meeting Pennywise. In a matter of a minute or two, we change the entire tone of the film three times, and without warning. This happens throughout the film continually, with varying degrees of success (blending horror and comedy can work, it just depends on how you do it).

My opinion of Skarsgård's performance is complicated, and this scene perfectly encapsulates why. There are fleeting moments where he captures the essence of Pennywise as a character -- this lure for children that is used so he can feed -- and there are moments where he feels like he is trying to be scary (which, as we all know, generally doesn't work; just like when someone is trying to be funny, it comes off as forced).

Skarsgård oscillates between these two positions frequently throughout the film. When he releases some balloons to reveal his face to one of our core characters, it feels forced. It's supposed to be scary, but it isn't. When he is playfully tortures Eddie, who has broken his arm, he inhabits the comedic, and terrifying, nature of Pennywise as a character. I don't know how much of this is Skarsgård's performance, and how much of it is the writing, but Skarsgård as Pennywise is wildly inconsistent, to say the least.

I guess those are the two terms I would use to best illustrate my feelings about this film: forced, and inconsistent.

None of this is to say that the film is unwatchable -- if you don't mind jump scare horror, similar to what James Wan provides (though Muschietti is not nearly as skillful as Wan when it comes to delivering said type of horror), then you will probably like this film.

However, from my perspective, as a filmmaker and a film lover, Muschietti's It is the kind of film that exudes all of the issues the horror genre currently has. It's full of forced scares, and light on depth and characterization. That doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed, nor does that mean it's devoid of any quality; it just means that, as an adaptation of its excellent source material, and as a film, it fails in a number of capacities.

#review #it #stephen king #film review #movies #horror movies

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create-ninety · 5 years

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Wednesday 20th February, ’19. 10am.

There’s nothing quite like going to a gig at a small venue in a trendy part of town to make you feel like a geriatric.

While I was getting ready for the event, I was wondering if I was going too casual – I was wearing a plain t-shirt with black jeans and an oversized floral blazer. Turns out I should have gone in what I normally wear as pyjamas! There were kids (I say kids, because while there were definitely a few ‘older’ people in the crowd, the majority looked like they were born this side of the century) wearing what I can only describe as their dorky mum’s clothes from the seventies. It was bizarre. Lucie and I stood to the side in a somewhat demure fashion by comparison, me sipping on non-alcoholic beer, and Lucie overheating from a temperature brought on by a nasty cold.

We both agreed that, if we were born when they were, it’s this kind of crowd we probably would have found ourselves in. Perhaps it’s because they were wearing exactly what we were wearing, once upon a time. I can imagine this isn’t a unique experience for people who find themselves looking over their shoulder at the next generation and wonder what the hell is going on.

The show itself was great – the band were amazing. I’ve seen them three times now and each time they’ve got better. The audience loved the performance and it was actually quite inspiring to see people passionate about their art in action. And it was obviously the kind of crowd that didn’t bat an eyelid that I was draped over completely over Lucie, which is always a plus.

When we got home, we lay awake talking about it the performers. I wondered what the process is that gets a person to the point where they feel confident enough to get on stage and perform in front of others. Essentially saying, “I am confident enough that my work is good enough to not only subject you to, but I am compelling enough to perform it in front of others.”

That’s a pretty brave thing, for anyone to do. To be inviting open criticism and to stand up and project vulnerability. I do, genuinely, marvel at musicians and stage actors who have to suspend what can only be described as ‘normal reality’ to sing, move about, and create a large amount of sound – something that in any other situation would be wildly inappropriate and strange. And yet there we all were, gathered around a stage, making noise for individuals who were inhabiting that space of vulnerability. I’ve decided that, for me, it’s actually less about hearing the music of the artists when I see the live show, and more about watching and observing the emotions that they’re going through, as they do it. And you can see it on their faces. The nerves, the little shakes, the awkward chatter between songs when the polished performance of practiced routine is paused.

Lucie pointed out to me that writing a novel isn’t so different to that.

In some ways, perhaps not, but by and large I think there are some key differences.

I think that if you’re a creative person by nature, then creativity has the opportunity to express itself in several key ways: as an actor, a musician, a visual artist, or a writer. Each of those could be called spheres with smaller subsets breaking off (stage actors vs film actors, painters vs photographers, poets vs fiction writers, and so on). I suppose it just depends what vehicle you ultimately are drawn to and prefer as your mode of expression. Because ultimately, the point of anything creative is fundamentally the same: it’s just that, expression. You are expressing something emotive, experiential, a message, something others might relate to. And each of those spheres give you the option to do it, but with completely different methods of execution.

When I was growing up I played with all of the different spheres and I can see them all, now, as different sizes and at varying distances from me. At certain points in my life I’ve actually valued them and explored them in different orders. Some have increased in resolution and texture while others have stayed smaller and smoother.

The smallest of my creative spheres, the one most under-developed and child-like, is visual art. I’m not bad at basic sketching or copying something. And I can stare at a piece of art and try and pull out its meaning. But when I was young, the pleasure I’d get from mixing paint or translating an emotion onto a canvas or something else just wasn’t very high for me. So I didn’t spend time doing it. There were moments where I’d develop a surge in interest (this still happens) – I’d go and buy watercolours and start painting for fun, or I’d be obsessed with sketching raccoons or something. But it’s always fleeting, and ultimately, not really something that I have been able to use as the best means of my expression.

I found a lot of joy in stage acting and performing when I was young, right up to my teenage years. I would include public speaking in this. I found it exciting. I liked playing characters with interesting stories, and I liked to turn different emotions on and off to create scenes with others. I liked finding mirrors of myself in characters, and ‘becoming them’, for a short time, was a small reprieve from myself. But sometimes it was hard to occupy the emotions of a character when my own were trying to take centre stage, so to speak. In my last year of high school when I was arguably involved in the most theatre I’d ever done – I was the lead role in my drama class’ final show, I was in a speech finals competition, I was sitting a speech and drama exam that had multiple theatrical components, I was in our school production, and in an improv team – I was stressed as hell. I realised, ultimately, I didn’t like standing up in front of others to be scrutinised as a version of myself that wasn’t me. I didn’t like that there was a ‘right way’ to act, and a ‘wrong way’. Because, well, there’s a director telling you what to do and how to do it. And so when I left school, I stopped any form of acting. I thought about joining a theatre company but I didn’t. I almost studied Theatre at uni, but I didn’t. It just wasn’t the creative vehicle for expression for me and I dropped it all together. I think, as a result, that acting is now my least valued and explored sphere.

Music, on the other hand, was something I discovered in my late teens. I’d tried piano earlier but didn’t like it, because I was taught classical, which to me was basically mathematics with your fingers. I wasn’t good at translating the written music to something that requires you to be so profoundly dextrous. Years later I would discover tab, and learn the general principles of music accidentally. I realised that chords are the foundation of all music, and that chords translate across all string and wind instruments, including the piano. Once I understood that, and once I was able to master basic dexterity and rhythm, music became the most wonderful tool of expression. I was able to write lyrics, write melodies, and then later on, piece them all together to make a song on my computer. I must have made hundreds. I did struggle to ‘finish’ one, though, and my desire to perform them never became overwhelming enough to take it to the next level. For me, it really was just means to express something. I liked the personal nature of it. I liked the different emotions that could be conveyed through the different sounds and instruments. Sharing the songs with anyone was always a profoundly terrifying experience: the music was an extension of myself, as if I had translated my own identity and ‘suffering’ into sound – and for others to hear it, and to judge it, would be for them to judge me. And so the music sphere for me has grown large, but it has stayed at the same size for some years now. I pick up the guitar when I’m feeling emotional. Or when I want to put music to a poem. And when I see musicians perform, I see love for the vehicle. I often dream about writing an album to compliment a film. I suppose that now, there is actually the option to actually produce music without having to perform at all – you can do it all digitally. But I don’t think that I love it enough to put it out there. There is so much music available. I don’t think that what I create would be contributing to anything other than my own creative expression. And so, it’s for that reason, while it’s fun to dream, I think – unless I suddenly have unlimited free time and money – that it’s something I’ll never take further than just tinkering around when I fancy.

Writing, for me, is the perfect mode of expression. It’s a completely internal process. With music there is this external component, which I think is ultimately what turns me off about it, but with writing, it can be done completely behind a veil. When it is released into the world, it’s consumed by a reader internally. You are not the work. The work is as separate from you as possible (perhaps in many ways like visual art). This is what appeals to me so deeply. That I get to have a personal, raw, emotive and transformative experience writing something and exploring it in a depth that has so many layers of meaning. And when someone reads it, the work becomes a personal experience for them. You are just a a vehicle for the expression. My physical form, my personal likes and dislikes and expressions, are not relevant to the ideas being put out into the world. And I love this. Writing also carries with it the highest possibility for profound connection: books take a long time to be read, and upon each separate reading, new meaning can be found and uncovered. The same can be said for all the spheres, absolutely – I’ve certainly spent hours listening to the same song and attached various meanings to it, and felt connections to musicians I’ve never met – but there is something unique about a narrative with a character who goes on a journey. I would argue that in a book you can still experience all five senses, but in an abstract way.

I don’t like the thought of who I am as a person getting in the way of the message. I want to place the art and the ideas at the centre of the experience. When you involve yourself – in a way that musicians and actors have to do – then you become consumable. And that is a scary concept for me. One could argue that the person performing is actually, themselves, part of the art - I would imagine this to be true - but I think this is what differentiates the spheres.

And, more than anything, writing is as automatic and as essential to me as breathing. Or eating. It’s just something that’s part of my day and necessary for normal functioning. For people who master the other spheres, you can see that they have this feeling about their own medium. I saw it on the faces of the performers last night. They live and breathe music. Their instruments are extensions of their identities that they have to exorcise. When I scroll through the Instagram profiles of visual artists, their dedication to the craft is demonstrated through the picture after picture after picture of their creations.

And, finally, I am now – perhaps like the musicians – confident enough to think that my work is good enough. I also think it’s now good enough for others. So yes, maybe I am more like the musicians than I think.

#personal #createninety #journal #feb2019 #february2019 #thoughts #contemplation #writer #author

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ftpbtw-gbf · 5 years

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Drawless gbf alt rules

(will edit and update this as necessary)

Obviously the primary condition is not to draw from the premium gacha.

Summary of other notes:

Rupie Draw

Main Account Assistance

Cygames Freebies

Event resources

Draw boxes

Rupie Draw

There is a secondary gacha pool called the ‘rupie draw’ that uses a much more abundant in-game resource to pull common weapons and summons, most of which are useless, but there is a small chance that the rupie draw can pull characters and summons even up to the ssr (highest) rarity, so I’ve been debating whether I should allow myself to pull on it. I’ve so far done a few daily free pulls from it out of habit, however have been waffling on whether to continue or not because of that small chance of gacha luck. Whether I open up the use of it or not may also depend on how far I intend to take the account, as the plus marks that come from the rupie draw (randomly) would be useful to help compensate for my char’s low stats.

verdict on rupie draw: disallowed for now

Main Account Assistance

I’ve also been vacillating a bit on what extent I should let myself use my high rank alts to help out. For my own sake, and because my average play time per day already probably skews from the norm, I’m now leaning towards letting my other accounts blast magna (omega in-game in the NA translation) raids which new players would normally have to pub(lish) to the community for help in clearing in the early stages anyway. The one point against this method is that by doing it myself, I give my drawless alt easier access to vice mvp chests that they are less likely to get in pubbed raids. That said though, I think I will allow myself to blow up my own raids, mostly because the time component that I might be saving myself compared to a true new player is already wildly varied and once again, handicapping myself further probably won’t serve as any better of an example for new players to follow. Me doing it for myself is just a simulation of the community blowing up the raid for someone else. The same ultimately applies to co-op, but co-op can be even harder to find a carry.

verdict on using main and/or alt to help with publicized content: allowed

If anyone who reads this happens to want similar help, I’m more than happy to punch stuff for you if I’m available.

Cygames Freebies

In the time since I started this account, cygames has generously handed out some additional freebies, namely - a tiamat omega (0*) summon along with a tia gauntlet and a tia bolt, and, more recently, a colossus omega (0*) summon and two colo canes, all at mlb sl10. When starting out, I’d considered not using these since they would not be available to newer players who start later on, however, I ultimately reversed my opinion on the basis that, like using my main accounts to help speed up farming, the goal of this account documentary is less about progression speed and more about progression steps. Since every player will experience their own drop luck, the speed at which they fill out their first base grids will vary whether they have access to these freebies or not and there’s no way to make my own drop luck usefully representative of any kind of expected average. Therefore, using these freebies is merely a fast forward simulation of grinding out omega raids for the respective drops.

Verdict on using Cygames’ spontaneous limited hand outs of omega summons and weapons: allowed

Event Resources

While the reward pool is fairly homogeneous from event to event, there are a few noteworthy differences:

Event Characters

Event Summons

Event Weapons

Event Characters: Some events offer an SR character in the element advantageous to the event enemies. These characters can vary widely in their usefulness but new players should take advantage of them as much as they can. In general, more characters = more options.

For the purposes of my account, I started during the event “Many Lives of Cats,” which turns out to be a bit of an enigma. Instead of having an SR character, this event granted an R character, but with a twist - Young Cat (whom I named “Sky” in this account), changes his element based on what element MC is. Purely by virtue of having a variable element, Young Cat was immensely useful to me and while I don’t think he enabled any strategies for me that an SSR of the same element couldn’t replicate in some capacity, I do admit I probably used him more in the first few days than I should have. Unfortunately, I can’t go back and correct that but moving forward I intend to continue using Young Cat for one key reason: R only quests. If I remove Young Cat, the only R character I would have left is Walder, who, while a decent R char, is static to earth element. When/if I get to the point where I need to challenge R only quests, I will attempt them with just walder, but if they prove difficult, I will not hesitate to slot in Young Cat. My reasoning in this is that for the purposes of these quests, virtually any R char would do, so Young Cat, regardless of kit, becomes a place holder for whatever R chars a reader following the guide may have in that element. Is Young Cat better than some of the gacha R chars? Yes. Will it make a difference in trying to follow my steps? Probably not.

With respect to other event characters however, since I cannot know when certain readers may have what event characters, I will refrain from using any event characters that do not come from side stories (since those are statically available to everyone).

Event Summons: While “Many Lives of Cats” had an Earth summon “Cat Parade,” this summon is largely underwhelming, even for a new player. It’s base elemental boost of 60 (70 mlb) is solid, the fact that it decays every turn down to 20(30mlb) makes it unreliable, especially early on when anything that can be killed quickly can be cleared regardless of your team’s power and everything else will take long enough that the summon aura will decay to uselessness (and often near the end when you really want to make that final push).

So this Cat Parade is not a useful event summon and is basically a non-factor for the purposes of this account. However, later this month Cygames will be rerunning “What Makes the Sky Blue II: Paradise Lost.” If Paradise Lost is not added to side stories shortly after its rerun (like WMTSB1, did), then I will not be using the SSR summon and SSR character that the event gives (despite them both being really good T-T). Will update this if there’s a new development.

Like with characters, since transient events may not be available to future players, I will refrain from using event summons that may similarly not be accessible to future players, though most event summons are pretty underwhelming to begin with, especially with side stories giving out mlb 50% elemental summons

Event Weapons: “Many Lives of Cats’s” event ssr weapon was an earth staff with an ex attack modifier. While there are a number of readily available ex weapons in side stories, there is not an earth one among them. The only non-event linked earth ex at the moment are the two rose queen weapons which require HL. So until that changes, I will refrain from using this event weapon.

Verdict:

Characters: Young Cat allowed, others disallowed.

Summons: disallowed (and not generally worth using anyway outside of a few exceptions

Weapons: disallowed (unless there’s a side story equivalent)

Draw boxes

There are other draw boxes other than the premium gacha, namely story event draw boxes and guild wars draw boxes. Since everything in both of these types of boxes are entirely ftp friendly, both boxes will be fair game to draw from. They both contain useful resources but mostly stuff that can ultimately be grinded for else where.

Verdict: allowed

#gbf #granblue #granblue fantasy #rules

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maximuswolf · 4 years

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Open Letter to Job Seekers looking to enter the cannabis industry via /r/CannabisExtracts

Open Letter to Job Seekers looking to enter the cannabis industry

Apologies in advance for the long post

I've seen and read many a post in this sub, and other related subs, with people looking for "industry jobs" and wondering how to get one. As I'm sitting on my computer, "weeding" (sorry, puns are the low hanging fruit of humor but I couldn't help myself) through literally hundreds of applications, I thought maybe I could shine some light on the process from the other side of the curtain. Maybe offer some helpful advice for hopeful applicants, and offer a glimpse of what it means to work in the industry. Note: Those of you with Doctorates in Organic Chemistry or a Masters Degree in Botany, this write up isn't for you. You can probably definitely score a job. Shoo! Go on, you heard me, scram! Now, for the rest of you lurkers and hopefuls, lets take a look:

What's a cannabis job really like?

Well here, your mileage may vary wildly depending on where you work. I don't have much retail experience but I've worked in cultivation, Manufacturing (as in infusion, filling, packaging) and extraction for over a decade now, from the Prop215/SB420 days, to now, in multiple states, so I'll speak to what I know.

First things first. It's a job. It's a job that involves working with cannabis, but it's a job. It's not going to be all bong-rips and rainbows. Personally I love the industry, it's challenging, always varied, and a passion of mine. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty cool the first time you see 1,000lbs of weed. Then after a while you look at it and go "oh shit my back already hurts from standing for the last 12 hours and I have to get it off this damn truck and do like 2hrs of paperwork". Some companies are awesome to work for, some are shitty, it's life. I've heard some horror stories about shops being set up to churn and burn, minimum pay for crazy output. Anyway, what do the jobs look like? note, this is more from the point of view of an entry level position, obviously a cultivation directors general duties are going to be somewhat different than that of a starting out employee

Cultivation: Here is one area that gets a lot of people applying with very unrealistic expectations. I mean, back in the day when you're burning a few with your buddies, who didn't dream of growing weed? It'll be sweet, smoking a blunt, snipping on the plants, bumping some sweet tunes... Dude, it's farming. Ever met a lazy farmer? Here's what a job as new cultivation tech looks like: Hauling bags of grow medium, Cleaning reservoirs, Cleaning floors, flood tables, etc... Lot of cleaning. You'll feel like a janitor. As you gain trust you will begin to be shown how to do things like mix nutrients, take clones, etc... When you work with plants, it's tying up branches and snipping dead leaves. Always looking for pests. Some facilities has everyone help w/ harvest, some places it's a dedicated crew. Trimming is an easy job to get because it has a high turnover. It's a very "keep up the pace or get out" kind of job. Some places pay by the lb, which means if you can keep up a high output you can make decent money, other places are hourly w/ bonus for exceeding goals. At my last facility I saw a lot of 21yo kids come and go because the job wasn't as "Chill" as they had hoped for it to be.

Manufacturing: Honestly this one can be rough unless you like that sort of thing. Sitting at a production line, putting variable labels on things, folding boxes, putting inserts into boxes, running a capping machine, swapping trays on a filling machine (and loading/unloading the trays), etc... it can be monotonous. But it can also be a great way to get your foot in the door as it's a less competitive labor pool than cultivation or budtending. A high output mfr facility looks great on your work history, and you can start picking up an understanding of Track and Trace, etc..

Extraction: Manufacturing but w/ hazards! A lot of the same packaging stuff, but also extraction. The work can be fairly physically demanding. You need to be good about record keeping. Be prepared for long hours, as processes don't always conform to the 8hr work day. Be ok w/ being given what seems like charlie work, especially when you're new, such as packing material socks or milling material. Some of the parts of the job can be rough, we do a lot of Fresh Frozen and so that means suiting up and packing/milling in the walk-in freezer at -20c, but on the bright side it smells fantastic in there! It's important to learn everything you can as fast as you can, and opportunities open up quickly.

What are my opportunities for promotion?

Depends on your company, but based off my experience, if you show up on-time, don't show up high/hungover, and work hard, you will stand out. The industry is hungry for hard-workers. Like, super hungry for competent people. If you put your time in, and build some networking, you will be able to find work, especially if you're able/willing to relocate to chase good opportunities.

How do I get a job in cannabis?

Well, how picky are you? Because assuming you live in a state in which it's legalized in some form, and you live near a population center in which cannabis operators, er, operate. You can probably find facilities that are hiring. As I said, many facilities churn and burn employees. It's a fact. But you want to persevere, awesome! Look on indeed or other job boards. Go to company websites and see if they have a 'hiring' or other employment application link. Then apply. It's really that simple! That said, every-time we put up a listing I get HUNDREDS of applications. So assuming you don't have "Manufacturing Supervisor for Kurvana" on your resume, you are going to need to learn how to stand out and you are going to need to maybe be willing to take a job you outside of your particular area of interest to get your 'foot in the door'. Maybe you really want to be a cannabis extractor, well that's a tough job to get sometimes. But if you put in 6 months working in packaging, now you've got some skills, some frame of reference about the industry, a brand name on your resume, hopefully a good referral, and possibly the chance to transfer to a department that you're passionate about.

Advice for getting hired

One sad truth of any industry, is the 'ol catch-22 of you need experience to get the job, but to get the job you need the experience. Just go and try getting hired as a bartender with zero-knowledge of tending bar. Unless you meet a very specific physical description chances are you're not going to get the job. Any industry is going to generally prioritize applicants with experience over those with none. That said, there are ways to level the playing field.

First, write a good resume. Make sure it's well laid out, spell check the damn thing. Have someone else spell check it. I know I'm not hiring for a position as an English teacher, but if your resume has "detale orrientede" under "skills" we've already gotten off on the wrong foot. Your resume is your chance to compress who you are and why I should hire you into a page or two. List your relevant experience if you have it. I can't tell you how often I have candidates apply through indeed and answer the question form asking 'how many years of industry experience do you have?' with something like "5" but then their resume lists a string of jobs none of which are in cannabis. I know, it was shades of grey for a while there, but consider making a separate cannabis industry resume if you don't want that stuff on your regular job resume.

I've been an amateur/black/grey market grower and/or extractor for 4 years is that relevant?

Sure, somewhat...depends a lot on how you did things and at what scale. Don't expect the Cultivation Director at a thousand light facility to be super impressed by the 2lbs you pulled per year out a tent, even if it was "super fire". Think about if you wanted to get a job at a regular farm, would the owner be impressed by the tomato plant you grew in a pot on your patio? Same w/ extraction. If you have legit non-regulated experience, that's fine, mention it. Make a production portfolio, and attach it. If you can grow some sweet diamonds, I'll definitely take that into account. However...

DON'T OVERSTATE YOUR EXPERIENCE. Honest to god, I get so many of these. "Master Extractor" "5 Years Experience BHO Extraction" Etc... Cool, but expect for me to ask some (imo) pretty basic questions up to some pretty advanced questions. If you apply to work at Stone Brewery claiming to be a master brewer, expect your interview to be very different than if you say you're a home brew enthusiast who is eager to learn. If you tell me on your resume that you are a "master hydrocarbon extractor" and you don't know what the term LEL is ...I'm going to probably think that you might have been a bit dishonest with me and you're going to have a bad time on your phone interview. So, be honest about your experience, but be realistic. I don't expect every applicant to have the ability to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment to learn with, and if you're straight w/ me that's fine. But claim to be a master and get interviewed with that expectation.

WRITE A COVER LETTER. Honestly. Do it. Do it for every company you apply to. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Who you are, why you want to work for our company, why you would be a great asset to the team. Make it specific to the company you're applying to, particularly if you're going through a job board type site like indeed. It shows the hiring manager that you took the extra two to three minutes to look us up, see what we're about, and personalized your application. it makes you a person not just another one of the hundreds of resumes we got. I get so few cover letters and I just don't understand why. It puts you at the top of the pile, it really does.

Want to know a true fact? I give 98% of the people who wrote a cover letter a call for a phone interview (the 2% who don't get calls are because their resume is trash or they are clearly a crazy person). So write one. It doesn't need to be the next great american novel, but spend a few minutes on it.

Now you have a solid resume, and know about the cover letters, it's time to bring out the big guns. This is my gift to you for reading this far:

Learn the rules and Regs for your state. Go online, find the relevant laws, rules, etc... Print them out, and read them. Take notes. Act like you are studying for the SAT. Put "Extremely Knowledgeable in CA or AZ or WA or wherever you live Regulations and Laws on your resume and in your cover letter. Expect to be asked a question or two. If asked how you know anything about it, and you answer "I wanted to get into the industry so I studied the laws in order to be a better asset to the company." you will get put on the top of the job applicant pile. Guaranteed.

You want to really "wow" the hiring manager? You want to knock their socks off? You want to get that job, experience in the industry be damned? Go and get yourself certified in METRC or BIOTRACK in addition to the regs. Honestly? If I had an applicant who had ZERO experience in the industry, was 21 years old and wrote in his cover letter that he was so devoted to the cannabis game that he went and got a METRC cert and learned the CA BCC/CDPH Rules and Regs...I'd hire him on the spot. I don't give a shit if his last job was retrieving shopping carts. That would tell me he was in it to win it and I'd keep an eye on him for advancement. Guaranteed.

What about Oaksterdam or THCUniversity or SmokeWeedErrDay Academy?

More sad truth time: I don't care about those. I don't know of anyone else in a hiring position in the industry that gives a 'degree' from one of those non-accredited online cannabis 'degree' mills any credence. Maybe I'm wrong, Chime in below if you are a hiring manager for whomever and you look at a 4 week online program from Oaksterdam and think "I should hire that guy". I mean, if you want to do it to learn something, cool, but I don't think I've ever seen it on someones resume and thought anything other than "huh, neat" and given it no additional weight past the rest of their resume. Honestly, I've had employees that have done courses through programs like that and they had some weird ideas about how things were done.

Exception: Professional Development Education or learning specific skills or processes. There are some cool courses you can take that will teach you basics, in a lab setting, on certain processes such as SPD, WFD, Isolation, etc...I always like seeing that and have done some myself.

I want a degree that will set me up for a future career in cannabis, what do you recommend?

Well, what do you want to do?

Extraction/Manufacturing: O-Chem is a one that a lot of shops like to see, but I like Chemical Engineers. I just hired a kid right out of school, and he's been fitting in great. Way I've always looked at it is "chemists figure out how to make a chemical process happen, and chemical engineers figure out how to make it happen at scale"

Cultivation: Should be abit of a no-brainer right? Something Plant or Agricultural science oriented.

Anything Else: Well, business degrees are always good for, well, business positions. It's an industry like any other, if you want to be the guy/girl telling the other guys/girls what to do a business degree isn't a bad idea, unless you want to specialize (advertising, Social Media Marketing, Software design, etc..)

Anyway, thank you for reading all of this, hope it is of some help to y'all.

Submitted August 31, 2020 at 04:17PM by blunt-e via reddit https://ift.tt/32XSzQD

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tainghekhongdaycomvn · 7 years

Text

The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist

Posted by zeehj

The SEO case for competitive analyses

“We need more links!” “I read that user experience (UX) matters more than everything else in SEO, so we should focus solely on UX split tests.” “We just need more keywords on these pages.”

If you dropped a quarter on the sidewalk, but had no light to look for it, would you walk to the next block with a street light to retrieve it? The obvious answer is no, yet many marketers get tunnel vision when it comes to where their efforts should be focused.

1942 June 3, Florence Morning News, Mutt and Jeff Comic Strip, Page 7, Florence, South Carolina. (NewspaperArchive)

Which is why I’m sharing a checklist with you today that will allow you to compare your website to your search competitors, and identify your site’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities based on ranking factors we know are important.

If you’re unconvinced that good SEO is really just digital marketing, I’ll let AJ Kohn persuade you otherwise. As any good SEO (or even keyword research newbie) knows, it’s crucial to understand the effort involved in ranking for a specific term before you begin optimizing for it.

It’s easy to get frustrated when stakeholders ask how to rank for a specific term, and solely focus on content to create, or on-page optimizations they can make. Why? Because we’ve known for a while that there are myriad factors that play into search engine rank. Depending on the competitive search landscape, there may not be any amount of “optimizing” that you can do in order to rank for a specific term.

The story that I’ve been able to tell my clients is one of hidden opportunity, but the only way to expose these undiscovered gems is to broaden your SEO perspective beyond search engine results page (SERP) position and best practices. And the place to begin is with a competitive analysis.

Competitive analyses help you evaluate your competition’s strategies to determine their strengths and weakness relative to your brand. When it comes to digital marketing and SEO, however, there are so many ranking factors and best practices to consider that can be hard to know where to begin. Which is why my colleague, Ben Estes, created a competitive analysis checklist (not dissimilar to his wildly popular technical audit checklist) that I’ve souped up for the Moz community.

This checklist is broken out into sections that reflect key elements from our Balanced Digital Scorecard. As previously mentioned, this checklist is to help you identify opportunities (and possibly areas not worth your time and budget). But this competitive analysis is not prescriptive in and of itself. It should be used as its name suggests: to analyze what your competition’s “edge” is.

Methodology

Choosing competitors

Before you begin, you’ll need to identify six brands to compare your website against. These should be your search competitors (who else is ranking for terms that you’re ranking for, or would like to rank for?) in addition to a business competitor (or two). Don’t know who your search competition is? You can use SEMRush and Searchmetrics to identify them, and if you want to be extra thorough you can use this Moz post as a guide.

Sample sets of pages

For each site, you’ll need to select five URLs to serve as your sample set. These are the pages you will review and evaluate against the competitive analysis items. When selecting a sample set, I always include:

The brand’s homepage,

Two “product” pages (or an equivalent),

One to two “browse” pages, and

A page that serves as a hub for news/informative content.

Make sure each site has equivalent pages to each other, for a fair comparison.

Scoring

The scoring options for each checklist item range from zero to four, and are determined relative to each competitor’s performance. This means that a score of two serves as the average performance in that category.

For example, if each sample set has one unique H1 tag per page, then each competitor would get a score of two for H1s appear technically optimized. However if a site breaks one (or more) of the below requirements, then it should receive a score of zero or one:

One or more pages within sample set contains more than one H1 tag on it, and/or

H1 tags are duplicated across a brand’s sample set of pages.

Checklist

Platform (technical optimization)

Title tags appear technically optimized. This measurement should be as quantitative as possible, and refer only to technical SEO rather than its written quality. Evaluate the sampled pages based on:

Only one title tag per page,

The title tag being correctly placed within the head tags of the page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the title (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

H1s appear technically optimized. Like with the title tags, this is another quantitative measure: make sure the H1 tags on your sample pages are sound by technical SEO standards (and not based on writing quality). You should look for:

Only one H1 tag per page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the tag (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

Internal linking allows indexation of content. Observe the internal outlinks on your sample pages, apart from the sites’ navigation and footer links. This line item serves to check that the domains are consolidating their crawl budgets by linking to discoverable, indexable content on their websites. Here is an easy-to-use Chrome plugin from fellow Distiller Dom Woodman to see whether the pages are indexable.

To get a score of “2” or more, your sample pages should link to pages that:

Produce 200 status codes (for all, or nearly all), and

Have no more than ~300 outlinks per page (including the navigation and footer links).

Schema markup present. This is an easy check. Using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, look to see whether these pages have any schema markup implemented, and if so, whether it is correct. In order to receive a score of “2” here, your sampled pages need:

To have schema markup present, and

Be error-free.

Quality of schema is definitely important, and can make the difference of a brand receiving a score of “3” or “4.” Elements to keep in mind are: Organization or Website markup on every sample page, customized markup like BlogPosting or Article on editorial content, and Product markup on product pages.

There is a “home” for newly published content. A hub for new content can be the site’s blog, or a news section. For instance, Distilled’s “home for newly published content” is the Resources section. While this line item may seem like a binary (score of “0” if you don’t have a dedicated section for new content, or score of “2” if you do), there are nuances that can bring each brand’s score up or down. For example:

Is the home for new content unclear, or difficult to find? Approach this exercise as though you are a new visitor to the site.

Does there appear to be more than one “home” of new content?

If there is a content hub, is it apparent that this is for newly published pieces?

We’re not obviously messing up technical SEO. This is partly comprised of each brand’s performance leading up to this line item (mainly Title tags appear technically optimized through Schema markup present).

It would be unreasonable to run a full technical audit of each competitor, but take into account your own site’s technical SEO performance if you know there are outstanding technical issues to be addressed. In addition to the previous checklist items, I also like to use these Chrome extensions from Ayima: Page Insights and Redirect Path. These can provide quick checks for common technical SEO errors.

Content

Title tags appear optimized (editorially). Here is where we can add more context to the overall quality of the sample pages’ titles. Even if they are technically optimized, the titles may not be optimized for distinctiveness or written quality. Note that we are not evaluating keyword targeting, but rather a holistic (and broad) evaluation of how each competitor’s site approaches SEO factors. You should evaluate each page’s titles based on the following:

The site’s (sampled) titles are not duplicative of one another,

Their titles are shorter than 80 characters,

They appear to accurately reflect the content presented on their pages, and

The page titles include the domain name in a consistent fashion.

H1s appear optimized (editorially). The same rules that apply to titles for editorial quality also apply to H1 tags. Review each sampled page’s H1 for:

A unique H1 tag per page (language in H1 tags does not repeat),

H1 tags that are discrete from their page’s title, and

H1s represent the content on the page.

Internal linking supports organic content. Here you must look for internal outlinks outside of each site’s header and footer links. This evaluation is not based on the number of unique internal links on each sampled page, but rather on the quality of the pages to which our brands are linking.

While “organic content” is a broad term (and invariably differs by business vertical), here are some guidelines:

Look for links to informative pages like tutorials, guides, research, or even think pieces.

The blog posts on Moz (including this very one) are good examples of organic content.

Internal links should naturally continue the user’s journey, so look for topical progression in each site’s internal links.

Links to service pages, products, RSVP, or email subscription forms are not examples of organic content.

Make sure the internal links vary. If sampled pages are repeatedly linking to the same resources, this will only benefit those few pages.

This doesn’t mean that you should penalize a brand for linking to the same resource two, three, or even four times over. Use your best judgment when observing the sampled pages’ linking strategies.

Appropriate informational content. You can use the found “organic content” from your sample sets (and the samples themselves) to review whether the site is producing appropriate informational content.

What does that mean, exactly?

The content produced obviously fits within the site’s business vertical, area of expertise, or cause.

Example: Moz’s SEO and Inbound Marketing Blog is an appropriate fit for an SEO company.

The content on the site isn’t overly self-promotional, resulting in an average user not trusting this domain to produce unbiased information.

Example: If Distilled produced a list of “Best Digital Marketing Agencies,” it’s highly unlikely that users would find it trustworthy given our inherent bias!

Quality of content. Highly subjective, yes, but remember: you’re comparing brands against each other. Here’s what you need to evaluate here:

Are “informative” pages discussing complex topics under 400 words?

Note: thin content isn’t always a bad thing. Keep page intent in mind as you evaluate.

Do you want to read the content?

Largely, do the pages seem well-written and full of valuable information?

Conversely, are the sites littered with “listicles,” or full of generic info you can find in millions of other places online?

Quality of images/video. Also highly subjective (but again, compare your site to your competitors, and be brutally honest). Judge each site’s media items based on:

Resolution (do the images or videos appear to be high quality? Grainy?),

Whether they are unique (do the images or videos appear to be from stock resources?),

Whether the photos or videos are repeated on multiple sample pages.

Audience (engagement and sharing of content)

Number of linking root domains. This factor is exclusively based on the total number of dofollow linking root domains (LRDs) to each domain (not total backlinks).

You can pull this number from Moz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE) or from Ahrefs. Since this measurement is only for the total number of LRDs to competitor, you don’t need to graph them. However, you will have an opportunity to display the sheer quantity of links by their domain authority in the next checklist item.

Quality of linking root domains. Here is where we get to the quality of each site’s LRDs. Using the same LRD data you exported from either Moz’s OSE or Ahrefs, you can bucket each brand’s LRDs by domain authority and count the total LRDs by DA. Log these into this third sheet, and you’ll have a graph that illustrates their overall LRD quality (and will help you grade each domain).

Other people talk about our content. I like to use BuzzSumo for this checklist item. BuzzSumo allows you to see what sites have written about a particular topic or company. You can even refine your search to include or exclude certain terms as necessary.

You’ll need to set a timeframe to collect this information. Set this to the past year to account for seasonality.

Actively promoting content. Using BuzzSumo again, you can alter your search to find how many of each domain’s URLs have been shared on social networks. While this isn’t an explicit ranking factor, strong social media marketing is correlated with good SEO. Keep the timeframe to one year, same as above.

Creating content explicitly for organic acquisition. This line item may seem similar to Appropriate informational content, but its purpose is to examine whether the competitors create pages to target keywords users are searching for.

Plug your the same URLs from your found “organic content” into SEMRush, and note whether they are ranking for non-branded keywords. You can grade the competitors on whether (and how many of) the sampled pages are ranking for any non-branded terms, and weight them based on their relative rank positions.

Conversion

You should treat this section as a UX exercise. Visit each competitor's sampled URLs as though they are your landing page from search. Is it clear what the calls to action are? What is the next logical step in your user journey? Does it feel like you’re getting the right information, in the right order as you click through?

Clear CTAs on site. Of your sample pages, examine what the calls to action (CTAs) are. This is largely UX-based, so use your best judgment when evaluating whether they seem easy to understand. For inspiration, take a look at these examples of CTAs.

Conversions appropriate to several funnel steps. This checklist item asks you to determine whether the funnel steps towards conversion feel like the correct “next step” from the user’s standpoint.

Even if you are not a UX specialist, you can assess each site as though you are a first time user. Document areas on the pages where you feel frustrated, confused, or not. User behavior is a ranking signal, so while this is a qualitative measurement, it can help you understand the UX for each site.

CTAs match user intent inferred from content. Here is where you’ll evaluate whether the CTAs match the user intent from the content as well as the CTA language. For instance, if a CTA prompts a user to click “for more information,” and takes them to a subscription page, the visitor will most likely be confused or irritated (and, in reality, will probably leave the site).

This analysis should help you holistically identify areas of opportunity available in your search landscape, without having to guess which “best practice” you should test next. Once you’ve started this competitive analysis, trends among the competition will emerge, and expose niches where your site can improve and potentially outpace your competition.

Kick off your own SEO competitive analysis and comment below on how it goes! If this process is your jam, or you’d like to argue with it, come see me speak about these competitive analyses and the campaigns they’ve inspired at SearchLove London. Bonus? If you use that link, you’ll get £50 off your tickets.

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

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lawrenceseitz22 · 7 years

Text

The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist

Posted by zeehj

The SEO case for competitive analyses

“We need more links!” “I read that user experience (UX) matters more than everything else in SEO, so we should focus solely on UX split tests.” “We just need more keywords on these pages.”

1942 June 3, Florence Morning News, Mutt and Jeff Comic Strip, Page 7, Florence, South Carolina. (NewspaperArchive)

Methodology

Choosing competitors

Sample sets of pages

The brand’s homepage,

Two “product” pages (or an equivalent),

One to two “browse” pages, and

A page that serves as a hub for news/informative content.

Make sure each site has equivalent pages to each other, for a fair comparison.

Scoring

One or more pages within sample set contains more than one H1 tag on it, and/or

H1 tags are duplicated across a brand’s sample set of pages.

Checklist

Platform (technical optimization)

Title tags appear technically optimized. This measurement should be as quantitative as possible, and refer only to technical SEO rather than its written quality. Evaluate the sampled pages based on:

Only one title tag per page,

The title tag being correctly placed within the head tags of the page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the title (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

Only one H1 tag per page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the tag (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

To get a score of “2” or more, your sample pages should link to pages that:

Produce 200 status codes (for all, or nearly all), and

Have no more than ~300 outlinks per page (including the navigation and footer links).

To have schema markup present, and

Be error-free.

Is the home for new content unclear, or difficult to find? Approach this exercise as though you are a new visitor to the site.

Does there appear to be more than one “home” of new content?

If there is a content hub, is it apparent that this is for newly published pieces?

Content

The site’s (sampled) titles are not duplicative of one another,

Their titles are shorter than 80 characters,

They appear to accurately reflect the content presented on their pages, and

The page titles include the domain name in a consistent fashion.

H1s appear optimized (editorially). The same rules that apply to titles for editorial quality also apply to H1 tags. Review each sampled page’s H1 for:

A unique H1 tag per page (language in H1 tags does not repeat),

H1 tags that are discrete from their page’s title, and

H1s represent the content on the page.

While “organic content” is a broad term (and invariably differs by business vertical), here are some guidelines:

Look for links to informative pages like tutorials, guides, research, or even think pieces.

The blog posts on Moz (including this very one) are good examples of organic content.

Internal links should naturally continue the user’s journey, so look for topical progression in each site’s internal links.

Links to service pages, products, RSVP, or email subscription forms are not examples of organic content.

Make sure the internal links vary. If sampled pages are repeatedly linking to the same resources, this will only benefit those few pages.

What does that mean, exactly?

The content produced obviously fits within the site’s business vertical, area of expertise, or cause.

Example: Moz’s SEO and Inbound Marketing Blog is an appropriate fit for an SEO company.

The content on the site isn’t overly self-promotional, resulting in an average user not trusting this domain to produce unbiased information.

Example: If Distilled produced a list of “Best Digital Marketing Agencies,” it’s highly unlikely that users would find it trustworthy given our inherent bias!

Quality of content. Highly subjective, yes, but remember: you’re comparing brands against each other. Here’s what you need to evaluate here:

Are “informative” pages discussing complex topics under 400 words?

Note: thin content isn’t always a bad thing. Keep page intent in mind as you evaluate.

Do you want to read the content?

Largely, do the pages seem well-written and full of valuable information?

Conversely, are the sites littered with “listicles,” or full of generic info you can find in millions of other places online?

Quality of images/video. Also highly subjective (but again, compare your site to your competitors, and be brutally honest). Judge each site’s media items based on:

Resolution (do the images or videos appear to be high quality? Grainy?),

Whether they are unique (do the images or videos appear to be from stock resources?),

Whether the photos or videos are repeated on multiple sample pages.

Audience (engagement and sharing of content)

Number of linking root domains. This factor is exclusively based on the total number of dofollow linking root domains (LRDs) to each domain (not total backlinks).

You’ll need to set a timeframe to collect this information. Set this to the past year to account for seasonality.

Conversion

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2xNjjFy via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

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swunlimitednj · 7 years

Text

The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist

Posted by zeehj

The SEO case for competitive analyses

“We need more links!” “I read that user experience (UX) matters more than everything else in SEO, so we should focus solely on UX split tests.” “We just need more keywords on these pages.”

1942 June 3, Florence Morning News, Mutt and Jeff Comic Strip, Page 7, Florence, South Carolina. (NewspaperArchive)

Methodology

Choosing competitors

Sample sets of pages

The brand’s homepage,

Two “product” pages (or an equivalent),

One to two “browse” pages, and

A page that serves as a hub for news/informative content.

Make sure each site has equivalent pages to each other, for a fair comparison.

Scoring

One or more pages within sample set contains more than one H1 tag on it, and/or

H1 tags are duplicated across a brand’s sample set of pages.

Checklist

Platform (technical optimization)

Title tags appear technically optimized. This measurement should be as quantitative as possible, and refer only to technical SEO rather than its written quality. Evaluate the sampled pages based on:

Only one title tag per page,

The title tag being correctly placed within the head tags of the page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the title (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

Only one H1 tag per page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the tag (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

To get a score of “2” or more, your sample pages should link to pages that:

Produce 200 status codes (for all, or nearly all), and

Have no more than ~300 outlinks per page (including the navigation and footer links).

To have schema markup present, and

Be error-free.

Is the home for new content unclear, or difficult to find? Approach this exercise as though you are a new visitor to the site.

Does there appear to be more than one “home” of new content?

If there is a content hub, is it apparent that this is for newly published pieces?

Content

The site’s (sampled) titles are not duplicative of one another,

Their titles are shorter than 80 characters,

They appear to accurately reflect the content presented on their pages, and

The page titles include the domain name in a consistent fashion.

H1s appear optimized (editorially). The same rules that apply to titles for editorial quality also apply to H1 tags. Review each sampled page’s H1 for:

A unique H1 tag per page (language in H1 tags does not repeat),

H1 tags that are discrete from their page’s title, and

H1s represent the content on the page.

While “organic content” is a broad term (and invariably differs by business vertical), here are some guidelines:

Look for links to informative pages like tutorials, guides, research, or even think pieces.

The blog posts on Moz (including this very one) are good examples of organic content.

Internal links should naturally continue the user’s journey, so look for topical progression in each site’s internal links.

Links to service pages, products, RSVP, or email subscription forms are not examples of organic content.

Make sure the internal links vary. If sampled pages are repeatedly linking to the same resources, this will only benefit those few pages.

What does that mean, exactly?

The content produced obviously fits within the site’s business vertical, area of expertise, or cause.

Example: Moz’s SEO and Inbound Marketing Blog is an appropriate fit for an SEO company.

The content on the site isn’t overly self-promotional, resulting in an average user not trusting this domain to produce unbiased information.

Example: If Distilled produced a list of “Best Digital Marketing Agencies,” it’s highly unlikely that users would find it trustworthy given our inherent bias!

Quality of content. Highly subjective, yes, but remember: you’re comparing brands against each other. Here’s what you need to evaluate here:

Are “informative” pages discussing complex topics under 400 words?

Note: thin content isn’t always a bad thing. Keep page intent in mind as you evaluate.

Do you want to read the content?

Largely, do the pages seem well-written and full of valuable information?

Conversely, are the sites littered with “listicles,” or full of generic info you can find in millions of other places online?

Quality of images/video. Also highly subjective (but again, compare your site to your competitors, and be brutally honest). Judge each site’s media items based on:

Resolution (do the images or videos appear to be high quality? Grainy?),

Whether they are unique (do the images or videos appear to be from stock resources?),

Whether the photos or videos are repeated on multiple sample pages.

Audience (engagement and sharing of content)

Number of linking root domains. This factor is exclusively based on the total number of dofollow linking root domains (LRDs) to each domain (not total backlinks).

You’ll need to set a timeframe to collect this information. Set this to the past year to account for seasonality.

Conversion

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2xNd98K via SW Unlimited

0 notes

ubizheroes · 7 years

Text

The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist

Posted by zeehj

The SEO case for competitive analyses

“We need more links!” “I read that user experience (UX) matters more than everything else in SEO, so we should focus solely on UX split tests.” “We just need more keywords on these pages.”

1942 June 3, Florence Morning News, Mutt and Jeff Comic Strip, Page 7, Florence, South Carolina. (NewspaperArchive)

Methodology

Choosing competitors

Sample sets of pages

The brand’s homepage,

Two “product” pages (or an equivalent),

One to two “browse” pages, and

A page that serves as a hub for news/informative content.

Make sure each site has equivalent pages to each other, for a fair comparison.

Scoring

One or more pages within sample set contains more than one H1 tag on it, and/or

H1 tags are duplicated across a brand’s sample set of pages.

Checklist

Platform (technical optimization)

Title tags appear technically optimized. This measurement should be as quantitative as possible, and refer only to technical SEO rather than its written quality. Evaluate the sampled pages based on:

Only one title tag per page,

The title tag being correctly placed within the head tags of the page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the title (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

Only one H1 tag per page, and

Few to no extraneous tags within the tag (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

To get a score of “2” or more, your sample pages should link to pages that:

Produce 200 status codes (for all, or nearly all), and

Have no more than ~300 outlinks per page (including the navigation and footer links).

To have schema markup present, and

Be error-free.

Is the home for new content unclear, or difficult to find? Approach this exercise as though you are a new visitor to the site.

Does there appear to be more than one “home” of new content?

If there is a content hub, is it apparent that this is for newly published pieces?

Content

The site’s (sampled) titles are not duplicative of one another,

Their titles are shorter than 80 characters,

They appear to accurately reflect the content presented on their pages, and

The page titles include the domain name in a consistent fashion.

H1s appear optimized (editorially). The same rules that apply to titles for editorial quality also apply to H1 tags. Review each sampled page’s H1 for:

A unique H1 tag per page (language in H1 tags does not repeat),

H1 tags that are discrete from their page’s title, and

H1s represent the content on the page.

While “organic content” is a broad term (and invariably differs by business vertical), here are some guidelines:

Look for links to informative pages like tutorials, guides, research, or even think pieces.

The blog posts on Moz (including this very one) are good examples of organic content.

Internal links should naturally continue the user’s journey, so look for topical progression in each site’s internal links.

Links to service pages, products, RSVP, or email subscription forms are not examples of organic content.

Make sure the internal links vary. If sampled pages are repeatedly linking to the same resources, this will only benefit those few pages.

What does that mean, exactly?

The content produced obviously fits within the site’s business vertical, area of expertise, or cause.

Example: Moz’s SEO and Inbound Marketing Blog is an appropriate fit for an SEO company.

The content on the site isn’t overly self-promotional, resulting in an average user not trusting this domain to produce unbiased information.

Example: If Distilled produced a list of “Best Digital Marketing Agencies,” it’s highly unlikely that users would find it trustworthy given our inherent bias!

Quality of content. Highly subjective, yes, but remember: you’re comparing brands against each other. Here’s what you need to evaluate here:

Are “informative” pages discussing complex topics under 400 words?

Note: thin content isn’t always a bad thing. Keep page intent in mind as you evaluate.

Do you want to read the content?

Largely, do the pages seem well-written and full of valuable information?

Conversely, are the sites littered with “listicles,” or full of generic info you can find in millions of other places online?

Quality of images/video. Also highly subjective (but again, compare your site to your competitors, and be brutally honest). Judge each site’s media items based on:

Resolution (do the images or videos appear to be high quality? Grainy?),

Whether they are unique (do the images or videos appear to be from stock resources?),

Whether the photos or videos are repeated on multiple sample pages.

Audience (engagement and sharing of content)

Number of linking root domains. This factor is exclusively based on the total number of dofollow linking root domains (LRDs) to each domain (not total backlinks).

You’ll need to set a timeframe to collect this information. Set this to the past year to account for seasonality.

Conversion

You should treat this section as a UX exercise. Visit each competitor’s sampled URLs as though they are your landing page from search. Is it clear what the calls to action are? What is the next logical step in your user journey? Does it feel like you’re getting the right information, in the right order as you click through?

from Moz Blog https://moz.com/blog/competitive-analysis via IFTTT

from Blogger http://imlocalseo.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-seo-competitive-analysis-checklist.html via IFTTT

from IM Local SEO https://imlocalseo.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/the-seo-competitive-analysis-checklist/ via IFTTT

from Gana Dinero Colaborando | Wecon Project https://weconprojectspain.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/the-seo-competitive-analysis-checklist/ via IFTTT

from WordPress https://mrliberta.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/the-seo-competitive-analysis-checklist/ via IFTTT

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