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notallthosewho-wanderarelost · 3 years

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Since it’s Tuesday and we get Loki 1x05 tomorrow and then I’m seeing Black Widow the day after, and I guess I’m doing these now, some thoughts on Loki 1x04.

Hopefully this will be a shorter post due to me not knowing wtf is going on. This show is so chaotic and it’s perfect but that makes trying to predict it impossible. How VERY LOKI OF IT.

NOPE, NOPE THIS IS NOT A SHORTER POST, I have no idea what is going on plot wise but this episode gave me a lot of character stuff to talk about apparently.

Alright, let me get the big one out of the way. I’ve already said this in various places, mostly tags, but if I’m gonna make this post it’s gotta be here. I’m uncomfortable with Loki/Sylvie being romantic. Would prefer for Marvel to stay away from selfcest. PLEASE. I’m kind of hoping and wondering if it’s a fakeout for a reveal that Loki has finally learned to love or at least accept himself through his care of and admiration for Sylvie, which would be VERY Agent of Asgard-esque and I can see it being very probable.

I think giving Loki a love interest of any kind was always going to be difficult to pull off, but especially Loki as he is at the point in time when the show finds him- fresh off his attempted takeover of Earth and probably still deeply reeling from the revelation of his adoption and also likely mentally affected by any torture and/or mental manipulation Thanos might have done on him. Loki’s self-loathing is probably still close to an all-time high here and he’s questioning who he even is. I’m not saying that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else- I don’t think that at all; in fact I think loving someone else would probably encourage someone to value themselves more- but Loki as he is here I think would need to work through some of his own issues before he could get involved with anyone else. I think that Loki would need to learn to love himself first, to accept that he’s worthy of love, before he could genuinely fall in love with anyone else. (Remember this, I’ll come back to it.)

I got major sibling vibes from Loki and Sylvie on Lamentis. Like I said last post, they felt like alternate universe twins to me. They’re the same person from different universe, but also very much not the same- I feel like twins is the closest description? I can admittedly be pretty awful at picking up romantic vibes when I’m not expecting them, but I did not get romance vibes at all.

I also feel kind of annoyed that we would never be having this conversation or having this as a canonical ship option if Sylvie hadn’t been female. Loki is now officially canonically bi, (which means Sylvie is too btw) but in comics Loki is both bi and also genderfluid. Lady Loki is just Loki when Loki is identifying as female. So having Loki fall in love with a female version of himself feels both unnecessarily heteronormative and kind of...awkward in terms of 616!Loki’s genderfluidity, to put it lightly. (Note: I am not genderfluid, this is just my opinion, please prioritize actual genderfluid people’s opinions on the subject over mine.)

That said, after I finished the episode I was genuinely confused if they were actually going there and had to go look up interviews to see what the Loki team was saying about it. I found this interview with head writer Michael Waldron, also featuring quotes from director Kate Herron and from Tom Hiddleston. Relevant quotes below:

“That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story,” head writer Michael Waldron explains to Marvel.com. “We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy? But in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story.”

Loki reassures her that while they might lose, they don’t die — they survive. He goes on to call Sylvie “amazing” for how she almost took down the TVA on her own, and it’s clear from the look on his face that even though they’ve only been together a short while, Loki’s already come to admire and respect her. As the moon literally crumbles around them, Sylvie places a hand on Loki’s arm, and that’s when it happens: A branch on the Sacred Timeline. These two Lokis are having a moment they were never supposed to have, which as Mobius puts it, is “pure chaos.”

“The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship,” continues Waldron. “Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA.”

...

“Who’s a better match for Loki than himself?” director Kate Herron chimes in. “The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey. He sees things in Sylvie that he is like, ‘Oh, I've been there. I know what you feel.’ But she's like, ‘Well, I don't feel that way.’ And I think that was the kind of fun thing about it. She is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences. So just from an identity perspective, it was interesting to dig into that.”

“When Loki meets Sylvie, he's inspired solely by curiosity,” reveals Hiddleston. “He wants to talk to her and understand her and try to discern what was similar about their experiences, and what was different. He keeps asking her questions because he wants to see if his experience was also her experience. I think he realizes, and she realizes, that while they're the same, they're not the same.”

Aside from the parts where Michael Waldron says “...have this guy fall in love with another version of himself...” and “the same person falling in with another version of one another,” everything they talk about in this article could be read as Loki and Sylvie caring for each other in a way that’s not necessarily romantic. Waldron even says that the series is specifically about self-love and forgiving yourself.

(Coming back to the thing from earlier about Loki needing to love himself now.) The way I’d read Loki and Sylvie’s relationship, especially from Loki’s side since we know more of his history, is that this is the first time that either of them actually cares about themselves. Because of their trust in and their love for each other, they’re each able to see themselves as a person worthy of love. I think that’s what the Nexus Event was. I think that’s why Loki and Sylvie’s moment of connection destabilized the timeline. Because Loki’s self-loathing is a deep root of his villainy, and the sacred timeline needs Loki to be a villain, two versions of Loki feeling self-worth, at the same time and place, created a HUGE nexus event. Loki even says it himself in the first episode: he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because (he feels) he has to, in a desperate play for control. He lashes out and hurts people because he thinks it’s the only way for him to have some control over things.

What Loki starts to speak to Sylvie at the end, he says, “This is new for me,” and references the nexus event on Lamentis. We never get to hear what it is that’s new for him. The episode sets it up to make us think that Loki’s about to tell Sylvie that he’s in love with her. But I think (or hope) that he was about to say something more along the lines of how the time he spent getting to know Sylvie on Lamentis helped him learn to care about himself and see his own self worth. That’s certainly a new feeling for him, since Loki seems to have always been an outsider and been looked down upon. And actually saying out loud that he’s starting to gain a sense of self worth would definitely be new for him. Loki knows that he and Sylvie will figure this out because he’s figured out the nexus event on Lamentis- that when they accept themselves and their own self worth, they can do pretty much anything.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that we never actually hear from Loki himself that he’s in love with Sylvie. We only hear it from Mobius, who’s feeling pretty betrayed by Loki and uses the entire concept to write Loki off as a huge narcissist. That way, he won’t feel as bad about Loki betraying him, or about sticking Loki in a time loop jail. Not that Loki would be the type to shout any romantic feelings to the world, especially in this situation, but the way he kept denying it didn’t seem like it was something he had to lie about.

This episode also called Loki a narcissist a lot; I assume to set up the “reveal” of his feelings for Sylvie and explain why he would fall in love with an alternate version of himself. But while Loki is many things and sure has a lot of issues, I do NOT think narcissism is one of them. When the time loops really start to get to him, he says to Sif: “I crave attention, because I’m a narcissist. And I suppose it’s because I’m scared of being alone.” But that second sentence completely contradicts the whole idea of narcissism! According to a quick google, the definition of “narcissist” is “a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.” But Loki is the exact opposite. He has such a low opinion of himself that he acts out to get attention, because he’s so used to being overshadowed, overlooked and alone that he’s afraid that if he doesn’t do things for attention then nobody will give him any. He can be arrogant, yes, but even a lot of that stems from well-earned confidence. Loki is very talented magically and is used to being the smartest person in the room. He knows what he’s good at. But he sure isn’t attention-seeking just for its own sake. Any narcissism he’s displayed, he’s done since becoming a “villain” in Thor, and it’s actually been a mask to cover up his massive inferiority complex.

I also think it’s definitely worth mentioning that when Loki calls himself a narcissist, he’s repeating what Mobius said to him earlier. Loki clearly does care about Mobius and his opinion of him and feels bad about how things have fallen out with him. He’s also been through the time loop dozens of times now, and there’s a reason the TVA picked that memory. Because what Sif says to Loki really reflects his deepest fear. He doesn’t want to be alone, but he has such little love for himself that he might very well think he deserves to be. Loki’s emotionally exhausted at that point and just wants things to stop.

Okay. I think that covered most of my character analysis of the episode. I have some theories about Sylvie and the Time Keepers/TVA, etc, but they won’t be anywhere near as long as THAT^ was.

To start at the beginning of the episode: Sylvie’s backstory is SO SAD. I want to hug her. She spent almost her entire life on the run, growing up and living in apocalypses so the TVA wouldn’t catch her again. She didn’t deserve any of that and I’m so upset on her behalf.

Especially because as I said in another post, I think that the reason Sylvie got taken by the TVA was because she was never going to be a villain. Sylvie was kind and wanted to be heroic in the clip we see of her as a child, and she knew she was adopted. She was never going to be the Loki the TVA needed her to be for the Sacred Timeline because nothing would have ever pushed her to do what our Loki did.

The scene with Sylvie and B-15 was so good. Sylvie was kind to B-15, because her natural instinct is to be kind, and I have so many feelings about that. I love Sylvie. And then B-15 coming to the rescue to uncollar Sylvie and Loki and give Sylvie her sword was EPIC. She’s so cool.

Small aside, I got emotional seeing Asgard again in Sylvie’s flashback. I miss Asgard. :(

Also, if a kid can escape the TVA just by biting the agent holding her, the TVA have really got to step up their game. That’s kind of pathetic. Good for Sylvie though, that was very clever of her. The most juvenile yet effective tactic.

The Time Keepers being fake robots was an excellent twist, and one that I kind of saw coming as soon as they didn’t show Ravonna’s conversation with them earlier in the episode. It immediately made me feel like there were no Time Keepers at all. (And I was wondering if the no-robots rule from episode 1 would be plot relevant! I wonder if it has anything to do with the Time Keepers actually being robots?) It was also really clear that Ravonna was lying about what happened to C-20. As of now I think that Ravonna might actually be the real power behind the TVA. Or possibly a designated lieutenant to the real power behind the TVA:

When I was looking up interviews about Loki/Sylvie in this episode, I stumbled across an article about Ravonna’s comic counterpart and started kicking myself so hard for not recognizing her. In comics, Ravonna Renslayer is Kang the Conqueror’s wife. (Now, in my defense, my previous exposure to Ravonna was in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, in which she spends most of her screentime in a coma.) For anyone who doesn’t know, Kang the Conqueror is a time traveling classic Avengers villain. His whole thing is that he time travels, and wants to take over all of time. So it’s possible that Ravonna runs the TVA to benefit Kang somehow (maybe because Kang needs a certain sequence of events to assure a future victory over the Avengers?) or even does it on his orders. Kang the Conqueror is also set to be in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania. (Aka Antman 3.)

(I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Kang the Conqueror also happens to be the reason the Young Avengers form. The very first member, Iron Lad aka Nate Richards, is a teenage Kang who meets his future self and decides he doesn’t want to be evil, so he travels back in time to get the help of Kang’s nemeses, the Avengers. However, he lands when the Avengers have disbanded and winds up putting together a team of Avengers-affiliated teenagers instead. The team gets bigger over time and a later version of it notably includes Kid Loki. I’m not going to go off on a Young Avengers tangent here but I LOVE the Young Avengers, please read Young Avengers volume 1 by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung and all of its associated tie-ins. It’s fantastic. Unfortunately Kid Loki is only in volume 2, which gets a very solid “no thank you” from me but ymmv. Imo if you want Loki, read Agent of Asgard instead; I keep bringing it up for a reason and that’s because it’s amazing. Kid Loki is also in Journey into Mystery prior to his appearance in Young Avengers, and I haven’t read that yet but it looks very good.)

I’m VERY curious as to what the deal is behind the TVA. This could go a lot of different ways but they all seem exciting.

This show is definitely gearing up for a finale in which the TVA no longer exists or at least no longer decides everyone’s fates, which is exactly what I predicted back in episode 1.

Final thoughts on the episode: I was just wondering after Mobius was pruned if maybe the pruning sticks are actually teleporters of some kind, instead of time tasers, and then we got THAT CREDITS SCENE. I am so confused but also VERY EXCITED. I almost screamed when I saw Kid Loki. MY CHILD. I just had this thought but oh, I would kill for a Thori reference. Best murder dog. Classic Loki’s costume looks so terrible, it’s absolutely on purpose, and I love it.

THIS SHOW HAD BETTER END WITH MOBIUS GETTING A JETSKI. AND BOTH SYLVIE AND LOKI HAPPY.

I’ve been wondering since the show was announced if this show would somehow end with a version of the comics Kid Loki + AoA Loki storyline, where this Loki gets reborn into the main MCU as Kid/Teen Loki so he can join the Young Avengers, and I still don’t know how I feel about that, but with how things are going I can still see it happening.

LET EVERYONE WE LOVE BE HAPPY AT THE END MARVEL.

#long post #loki spoilers #loki 1x04 #loki series #a rare text post appears #loki #sylvie #mobius #tva #ravonna renslayer #kang the conqueror #meta #my stuff

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bentdownspoon · 4 years

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Hi, How Are Ya? #1// Jeffree Star

I would like to remind everyone that I very rarely write for Nate, so unless you send me a plot I can’t resist the answer is gonna either be no or I’ll just write the request for Jeffree by himself.

Feel free to request for Jeffree!

################

You've just gotten home from an exhausting day at work. While you hold a regular job, you also do a small bit of modeling on the side. It was nothing serious for you, and you valued your position at your job more than anything else.

Putting your bag away, you allow your hair to fall free of its bun, making your way to your bedroom. Kicking off your shoes, you fall into the fluffy bedding and sigh. After a moment of relaxing, you reach into your back pocket and take out your phone. Scrolling through your Instagram feed, you remember the picture you'd taken the night before. You upload the selfie, editing it only a little out of sheer exhaustion.

Tossing your phone down, you get up to have a shower before you get too comfortable. When you finally return to your room, you can hear your phone going off at a constant rate. Raising an eyebrow, you pick it up and unlock it. Seeing Instagram notifications, you raise an eyebrow. You can't understand why you have a sudden flood of followers until you get to the last notification in your feed.

jeffreestar started following you

Raising an eyebrow at the random name, you click on the account. Your eyes widen when you realize how many followers he has...she has? You're a little thrown off by the pictures, but you couldn't help but think that whoever this Jeffree Star person was, he was hot. Hitting the follow button, you exit from his profile and go back to your feed. At least that explained the flood of followers. It wasn't the first time someone with a significant following followed you. Usually a ton of followers came your way afterwords. It wasn't really a big deal.

You were just about to close out the app, when you received a message.

jeffreestar: Oh my god, girl. Your Instagram is giving me so much life!

Y/N: Oh wow, thank you! Yours is amazing too

jeffreestar: So are you like, a model?

Y/N: I do a little modeling, but not full time. You're like one of those beauty gurus right?

jeffreestar: Something like that. I'm Jeffree by the way

Y/N: I'm Y/N. Nice to meet you!

Y/N: Hey I'm sorry to cut this short but I'm exhausted. I was just about to head to bed

jeffreestar: Oh no, I totally understand. Have a good night

Y/N: You too Jeffree. Talk to you later?

jeffreestar: Oh yeah totally goodnight Y/N

Y/N: Night Jeffree

You close Instagram and put your phone on its charger. Crawling into bed, you double check that you set your alarm and then finally managed to get some sleep.

##############

You didn't really hear much from Jeffree after that. He liked a few pictures, but other than that there wasn't much communication. You didn't dwell, but curiosity did prompt you to Google him. You'd come across some... interesting pictures and articles. You vaguely remember hearing about him and seeing him as a teen, but other than that, you didn't really know too much about him. You were never a fan of following public opinion, so you'd only read some of the articles. A lot of them painted Jeffree as an awful person, but he'd only been nice to you so time would tell.

Today you were doing a photoshoot for one of your friends. She was trying to launch a fashion line, and you'd agreed to take some shots with her newest collection. After over an hour of hair and makeup, you finally got to see the new line, and you absolutely fell in love with a red bomber jacket she'd set aside for the first outfit.

"Knock Knock," Kyla poked her head into your dressing room, "oh shit you look hot."

You turn to look at her, raising an eyebrow. You look at yourself in the mirror, seeing the baggy green joggers, the white crop top and the red bomber jacket. Your hair is up in a bun, and you're probably wearing more makeup than you've worn in a while.

"I really like this jacket," you tug at the sleeve, "I look cute."

Kyla laughs, nodding at you, "keep it. You do look cute."

"This is why we're friends," you wink at her, "you ready for me?"

"Yeah, Josh is just setting up the next shot," she nods, leading you to the shoot.

"Speaking of Josh," you smirk, "has he asked you out yet?"

"Oh my god, shut up Y/N," she gives you a look.

"I'm just asking, since he's been eye fucking you since I got here. He should at least buy you dinner first," you laugh at her expression.

"It's not like that," she insists.

"Whatever you say, babe," you wink at her, just as you make it to the set.

"Oh hey, I was just about to ask where you guys were," Josh looks up when he sees you, "everything all set?"

"Of course," you nod.

"Great," he nods, "ready whenever you are."

The day and the shoot go by in mostly a repetitive blur. You change outfits at least 10 times, but you manage to get some amazing shots. Kyla is there to keep your boredom to a minimum, and between laughing and the music, the day doesn't feel too long. Before you really know it, everyone is settled into a booth at a local restaurant not far from your apartment, ordering drinks and food.

"Oh my god, all the pictures turned out amazing," Kyla gushes, swiping through some of the pictures on her phone.

"Send me that one," you point to your favorite, "I want to post it on Instagram."

"Ok hold on," she taps on the share icon, while you glance down at the menu.

You're not sure what to order, so you're a little distracted when your phone goes off. You glance at the notification, seeing the message from Kayla. Unlocking your phone, you save it and immediately go to Instagram. You have to crop it a little to fit the upload requirements, but you do that easily. Tagging Kyla and her company, you leave your phone alone and tune back into the conversation going on around you.

"What do you think, Y/N? You coming with," Josh gains your attention.

You frown a little, smiling apologetically, "I literally have no idea what you said, sorry. Coming where?"

"To this bar downtown," he repeats himself, "I know the DJ who's working tonight so we can all get into VIP."

"Oh," you nod your understanding, "actually I gotta get home after this. I have work tomorrow."

"You're always working," Kyla gives you a brief glance, before turning back to her phone when it begins to chime continuously, "oh my god!"

"What," you raise an eyebrow at her shocked face.

"Um... Jeffree Star just followed me," she freaks out, "I don't even know why! You think he likes my line?"

You glance at her phone, and then back to your own. You smile a little, deciding to let her assume what she wanted to. Her clothes were really good, so she deserved to feel better about it.

"So you know who he is," you decide to ask her opinion, which you trusted more than the internet.

She looks at you like you're crazy, "did you never have a MySpace? He was probably the most popular person on there. He was the gay PewDiePie"

You laugh at the comparison, "PewDiePie? Really?"

"Yeah...if PewDiePie was really flamboyant and problematic," she shrugs with a smile, "I used to be obsessed with him as a teen. I went to Warped Tour every year of high school just to see him. He's had some controversy, but from what I heard he was a lot different."

"I've seen articles," you admit, "I wasn't really sure what to think. I don't really know who he is."

"That's crazy," Kyla shakes her head, "he was literally everywhere, but I guess you were just too much of a nerd."

"Well this nerd has a good job and I'm hot now so it doesn't matter," you wink at her.

#############

By the time you got home, you were only slightly buzzed and ready for bed. You'd lied about needing to go to work, you just didn't want to go out with Josh and his frat boy friends. As much as you liked him for your friend Kyla, when he drank he was just annoying to you. You'd rather be home, catching up on work or watching TV.

Your phone chimes, causing you to glance away from your TV, and pick it up. You smile a little, seeing a new message from Jeffree.

jeffreestar: Wow you're killing it in that outfit, girl

Y/N: Thanks! It's one of many from my friend's line coming out in a few weeks

jeffreestar: I saw. I followed her earlier. Her clothes look really good. Especially on you

Y/N: Yeah I was there. She freaked out. Apparently she was a big fan in high school

jeffreestar: And what about you? Were you a fan?

Y/N: Honestly I had no idea who you were until she told me. I wasn't really on social media, I'm still not besides Instagram.

jeffreestar: Oh ok. I mean I'm a little surprised, but it's no big deal. At least I know you're not a fan trying to steal a lock of my hair.

Y/N: Why steal it when I can just ask nicely 😉

jeffreestar: I'll give you whatever you want if you ask nice enough

Y/N: Oh my god 😂 I'm entirely too gay for this conversation

jeffreestar: So you're a lesbian?

Y/N: I wouldn't necessarily say that. I've dated guys too. I just like who I like, male or female as long as we click.

jeffreestar: yeah totally get that. So have you done any modeling for anything else besides clothes?

Y/N: Not really. I did an ad for a shoe brand in Europe in college, but nothing besides that. Why?

jeffreestar: I'm working on a project and I'm looking for a few models. Everything is really hush about it right now

Y/N: I see...well, I'm assuming it's nothing crazy so I'm sure I could get the time off if you needed me 😉

jeffreestar: You'd take off of work just to be in my shoot? That's insane!

Y/N: I pretty much make my own schedule for the most part unless I need to attend a conference or some kind of business trip. Luckily I trained my employees to be able to function without me for a few days when I need it

jeffreestar: Oh wow, that's impressive. So you're the top dog, huh?

Y/N: I'm always the top in anything I do 😏

jeffreestar: That's...wow. Ok, work. 😂

Y/N: I'm joking... mostly.

jeffreestar: No I'm all for it, girl. I'm actually on my way out the door, but I'll definitely be in contact.

Y/N: Have a good night, Jeff.

jeffreestar: You too!

###########

Weeks pass, with you speaking to Jeffree nearly every other day, if not every day. You'd grown to the point you would consider him a friend, even if you had never officially met him. He lived in Los Angeles, and while your job sometimes took you there, you hadn't had any trips recently. You knew, of course, that it was the time of year that you'd be sent off to inspect various wearhouses along both coasts.

Working in logistics had it's perks, which usually included travel and relatively flexible hours when you could work from home. You'd just come back from inspecting a chain in New York, which took way longer than you'd first assumed it would because the whole place was falling behind on orders. It ended in most of the management being fired, and lower level employees either being promoted or shuffled around from wearhouse to wearhouse.

The best part about being the boss of so many people was that you really didn't have a boss yourself. No one really could criticize your decisions, since your actual bosses trusted pretty much everything you do. It gets them the money you promise, so they don't really think about it, or care. But, the downside was that you often had to deal with people being extremely critical of you, especially if they got fired. It was the biggest downside.

As you checked your emails, you hear your phone go off. Glancing at it, you smile a little when you see a text from Jeffree. You were still surprised that he trusted you with his number, but he'd explained that he trusted you. You guys clicked, and it sometimes felt like you'd always known him.

Jeff The Beauty Killer 🔪👄

Hi gorgeous, how are ya?

Y/N

I'm fine Jeff 😂 how's your project going?

Jeff The Beauty Killer 🔪👄

It's actually going surprisingly well. That's so crazy you ask, because that's why I'm texting you

Y/N

Oh? What's up?

Jeff The Beauty Killer 🔪👄

I'm in a meeting, and I have to make final cuts for the models I'm using. I need to check if you're still interested and if you're free to come to LA next Thursday?

You raise an eyebrow, turning back to your computer to double check your emails to see if anything has changed about your schedule. You see an optional request from a regional manager on the west coast, asking you to come in and help evaluate some of her employees. It didn't come directly from your own boss, so you could easily turn it down, but a quick glance at the location had you smirking. LA. Perfect.

Y/N

As it happens, I'll be flying out to LA tomorrow morning as soon as I can get a flight. I can just request that week off starting Thursday. Does this mean you'll finally tell me what's been going on?

Jeff The Beauty Killer🔪👄

Oh my god, that's actually perfect! I'm so excited! Yes girl, I'll tell you everything as soon as I get done with all of this. I'll send you an email with the contract and the details about pay and everything else

Y/N

I'll be on the lookout for the email but you don't have to pay me, J. If I don't charge Kyla, why would I charge you?

Jeff The Beauty Killer 🔪👄

We'll argue about that later! Thank you so much I'm so excited about this whole project and honestly I can't wait to finally meet you in person!

Y/N

It's about time! And I'm excited for you I know how stressed you've been about... whatever is happening.

Jeff The Beauty Killer 🔪👄

Honestly it's been so annoying having to keep it a secret because I've come so close to just telling you so many times but I'm like calm down Jeffree, you can do this 😩

Jeff The Beauty Killer 🔪👄

But I really have to go, I'll call you later girl! We HAVE to talk ☕

Y/N

I'm off for the rest of the day, so I'll be waiting. 👀

You put your phone down, and go about both booking your flight, and responding to your emails. Once that was done, you busied yourself with looking over the employee records attached to the requested email. It would help to know a little more about the situation you were stepping into, so you could get the job done effectively.

As you settled in, you wondered briefly what it was you'd signed up for with Jeffree. Whatever it was, it sounded like a big deal given his apparent fame and popularity. You couldn't stop the anxious feeling that settled into your stomach, but also there was a part of you that was excited to finally meet him.

In such a short amount of time, Jeffree had become important enough to you that it was weird that you'd never met him in person. What if you absolutely hated him when you met him? If his vibe was weird, you'd be forced to distance yourself. That would suck because of how close you'd already gotten. It was the first time you actually truly considered someone online a genuine friend, so it was a little weird.

Brushing the troubling thoughts aside, you instead focused on the work in front of you. Whatever happens, happens. Stressing out will only cause problems, you'd learned that the hard way.

#jeffree star #jeffree star imagine #jeffree #celebrity imagines #lesbian imagines #female reader #shane dawson #imagines #imagine

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toshikosatos · 4 years

Text

where I’ve been

trigger warnings for mention of suicidal ideation, and very nonspecific mention of sexual intrusive thoughts. brief mention of fear of starting a fire and contamination fears. (there is also a link to an article which I provide warnings for later, but here’s an advance warning that the article at that link mentions pedophilia.)

alternative title: “OCD: It’s More Than Just Hand Washing! (And Yet I Am Also Singlehandedly Keeping the Body Shop in Business with My Frequent Purchases of Hand Cream in a Desperate Attempt to Undo that Self-Inflicted Damage, As Well.)”

2016 was when it really started to get bad.

there was no real, or at least good, reason for this. my friend had just flown across the Atlantic and moved in with me and my parents, and it was so nice living with a friend and having that constant companionship. I had just finished my first year back in school after deciding to go back and finish my degree following a four year gap, in which I’d bounced between part-time service industry jobs, unemployment, and periods of severe mental illness. it was hard, but I got through that first year. I was 25.

things that sucked, though: season 5 of Person of Interest was happening, and after a year of anticipation, I wound up really disappointed by it. I have a tendency to fixate really unhealthily on my current favourite media, pretty much invest my entire emotional wellbeing in it, and then get totally crushed when it winds up disappointing me in some way. I still feel this cycle happening and don’t quite know how to break out of it, but it was worse back then. and the fandom was also full of REALLY toxic drama at the time that I couldn’t see clearly enough to disengage myself from (although it did ultimately lead to me quitting Tumblr). it wound up really triggering what I now understand to be my OCD, but I didn’t get that back then.

but maybe I should have seen it. I remember weird little things that popped up when I was younger. I went through a time for a few days as a tween when I couldn’t stop flaring my nostrils, or focusing on my blinking, and getting increasingly stressed out by it. later in my teens, I got more anxious about checking all the lights in my house to make sure none of them were about to burst into flames before I went to bed. I also had a bedtime ritual where I’d look at the moon and wish for my loved ones’ wellbeing, and it got more and more ritualized, in this way where I couldn’t step away and go to bed until I felt I’d looked at the moon just Enough, or done certain physical gestures by the window enough times. then I did a school project on OCD at 17 and thought, oh, hey, a lot of this sounds familiar! it made me so aware of my compulsions, but I also started doing them more and getting more stressed out by them as a result, somehow. but a little while after finishing the project, things calmed down again.

these were the things I understood to be related to OCD. I didn’t know WHAT was happening to me when I couldn’t pull myself away from Twitter arguments at 25, couldn’t stop going over the same topics with friends and explaining how I felt and getting reassurance that my friends didn’t judge my opinions, or didn’t judge me for having had a different opinion in the past. I didn’t know why I was losing hours of my life to stress over The Discourse going on on my Twitter feed. I just thought, geez, my anxiety is a mess.

then I went back to school in the fall, and it got worse. one day I remembered something offensive I’d said to be ~edgy when I was 14. read: 11 years prior. I became overcome with anxiety for the next few days, convinced that if I ever told a friend about this, they’d disown me for being an awful person. finally, I told them, and they did not care one bit. they just started listing other 14 year olds they’d known who’d done the same kind of shit. I breathed a sigh of relief. for the time being.

then I wrote an essay that led me down a questionable Youtube rabbit hole. I wound up getting very triggered by a video I saw of something that probably should have been removed from Youtube, but I also convinced myself that I was a horrible person for having looked at it and not immediately looked away. I worried about this for about a month.

then in December 2016, it got much worse. I remembered something similarly inappropriate that I’d seen online when I was 15. again: 10 years earlier. I had looked the thing up out of morbid curiosity, thought it was inappropriate, and never looked at it again. now, 10 years later, I was suddenly overwhelmingly convinced that I was a HORRIBLE person for having looked at this, and that any of my friends would agree and would leave me forever if they knew. within a few days, it became so overwhelming I told a friend, and she did not care. I felt better, for a moment. but it came back. the fear always came back. reassurance from any one person was never enough. I always knew that some remaining friend WOULD hate me for one thing or another I’d done, and it WOULD be proof that I was a terrible person.

I didn’t see how it could get any worse until January 2017. somehow, it did. my thoughts were out of control. I triggered myself eight ways till Sunday, and that January and February was one of the hardest times of my entire life. I was never suicidal - I always knew I would never actually kill myself - but I imagined myself dead every single day, and thought about how much better off we’d all be if I’d never been born. (I remember feeling this way when I took the picture I included at the top of this post.) I felt like there was no point in me living anymore because I was such a horrible person, but that I HAD to keep living, so I was just stuck in a pointless existence, not allowed to feel fulfilled anymore. it was probably the lowest I’ve ever felt. it was the worst feeling. I was anxious and afraid, but that isolating fear made me deeply depressed, too.

but it was pretty early on in all this that I tried to google what I was feeling, and was led to this famous article by Rose Cartwright about pure O OCD. (MAJOR trigger warnings on that article: she talks in detail about sexual intrusive thoughts about pedophilia as well as sexual orientation). honestly, having a name for what I was going through didn’t make me feel much better, but at least I had some idea what was happening to me, now. and it was that knowledge that EVENTUALLY helped me to help myself. it gave me the language to use with the doctors I met, an understanding of how to explain what I was going through, which eventually helped me through evaluations and got me into an OCD treatment program in the fall of 2018. and it did show me that I wasn’t alone.

but there was a sense of, “how did I never realize what this was until now?” I’d referred to myself as having OCD tendencies for a long time. “OCD habits.” I didn’t think any of it was severe enough to actually call OCD. then I found out all the different ways OCD can manifest: intrusive thoughts about sexual topics, violence, morality. I’d had them all. even back in 2013, when I first started seeing a psychotherapist, I went through a phase where I couldn’t stop having a particular intrusive sexual thought that made me feel like a monster. I told my therapist about it, desperate. she reassured me that I wasn’t a freak, and I felt a whole lot better. but she never even used the term OCD. she just said it was strange that I was having these thoughts when I didn’t have a history of abuse. but that’s not strange: it’s just how OCD works sometimes. she didn’t Get It. (I have read that psychotherapists often don’t get it, because they’re quite focused on analyzing the reasons why you feel a certain way, and OCD sufferers already do that too much. we don’t need to analyze: we need to learn to live with our bad thoughts, and not act out compulsions in response to them.) so I went on not knowing until it got much, much worse. and that is why people really need to start building a better understanding of all the different things that OCD entails.

I have intrusive sexual thoughts. I worry CONSTANTLY about everything I’ve ever done wrong and that I’m a bad person, and every single day I fight the urge to seek reassurance from my friends that every single one of those things isn’t It, the thing that will finally make them realize that I’m a horrible person and leave me forever. I second guess every decision I make to the point that I wind up frozen by my own anxiety. I obsess over contamination and harm, too. I wash my hands too much because I’m afraid if I don’t, and then I touch something someone else will touch, I might contaminate them in some way, and that would make me a horrible person. it all comes down to “this will make me a horrible person.” all my other obsessions come back to morality, in the end. I had one doctor who evaluated me tell me I was wrong to connect my sexuality obsessions to my morality obsessions, but I think she was wrong. they are absolutely connected. it is ALL about this for me, in the end.

when I was cleaning my room last year, during my treatment, I got distracted by a notebook I wrote in when I was 12, and I found a page where I wrote, in 2003, “My obsessive compulsive habits are getting out of hand.” I didn’t even remember knowing the term when I was 12. I saw it that long ago, but it took me until I was 27 to get treated for it. there’s no such thing as too late, but when I read that, I wished I could have told my younger self to get help and why. I wished I could show my 17 year old self, or my 21 year old self, or my 25 year old self that page, and let her know, “this is what’s going on. this is what you need to tell a doctor you’re dealing with.” but maybe now I can help someone else figure that out, like Rose Cartwright has helped me with her OCD activism and writing.

my treatment ended a year ago, and I haven’t been using the tools they gave me very diligently since. I’ve been really struggling as a result, but executive dysfunction is a bitch. I hope I can start working on it again soon, because I already know what I need to do to feel better.

a book we used in therapy that I found incredibly helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Over-OCD-Second-Self-Help/dp/1462529704

Rose’s book: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0118ITJUY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

#comes back to tumblr to reblog gay terminator content and writes a personal essay about my mental illness instead #sure!#I don't know why I'm doing this exactly but here I am #if you don't want to click but are interested in resources that have helped me with my OCD feel free to message me #the workbook we used in therapy that helped me is called getting over ocd by jonathan s. abramowitz #gotta say it feels good that I've come so far that I can talk about it this openly now though #personal

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cloudsspoke · 6 years

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Reason why Shinhwa is Problematic group

So last nite when I scrolled over twitterland, i stumbled upon this tweet from one of shinchangs that I followed,

and curiosity kicked me in, and i searched to know what happen and found that this girl from that fandom questioning the legend status of shinhwa on her tweet, and not only that she also said shinhwa is problematic group, after she found the post from this tumblr page offensivekpop.tumblr.com that referred to shinhwa-suju’s indian dance during shinbang and fact that shinhwa used many n-word for their songs.

I am all okay if not everyone willing to acknowledge Shinhwa as LEGEND. The title will be forever as a subjective matter, its up to personal preference. Reason to call a group LEGEND will be different cuz we can see it from many point of view. Eventho generally speaking SHINHWA and other KPop 1st gen group deserves to get the LEGEND title, and no one should questioning why or throw the should they question.

But what makes me itchy is, to call Shinhwa as problematic group because of the weak reason stating the indian dances and n-word. Its all happened in the past duh. Why still digging it? If wanna accuse shinhwa, better to give more valid, strong, legitimate reasons. And for indian dance itself, did it sparked controversy too back then, 6years ago when JTBC aired that eps? I dont think so. Was there any articles like from soompi, koreaboo, allkpop, dispatch and other salty medias? I googling it and the only one who brought it and took it as offensive was this anonymous person who submitted to the offensivekpop itself (x) . And about the usage of N-word. Duh. I dont wanna start write abt this. Cuz isnt the main reason why I write this post.

So, left aside the girl from that fandom who called Shinhwa as Problematic group, for me myself, I can add more reason if I want to justify the girl’s statement...

SHINHWA is SURE A PROBLEMATIC GROUP.. They have this 20years together.. And from stories which came from their own mouth make me admit if shinhwa def have problem with their behaviour.. And why is that?

1. They rejected the idea of SM recycled the group if 2nd jib happened to be failure too, and agreed to end their idol career and cont pursued their education. How can a rookie group thinking like that? So problematic ever since day 1.

2. They never care to listen to what people said when they insisted that they are still 6 members, that Andy still be the part of Shinhwa when people were delighted to see Shinhwa as a perfect 5-members idolgroup.

3. Try watch their HEY COME ON messed up performance for KBS. What on earth ? Who the hell do they think they are?? If this wasnt an act that show how problematic they were, then for me its a valid proof of how snob they were. Sigh.

4. Again, they rejected the renewal contract from SM because they knew some members didnt get it, or they knew SM treated them unfairly. As problematic as it may sound, Shinhwa loves to put themself into a problematic situation because of their stubborness. How dare they were to be the 1st group who left big agency like SM? Did they know the risk and consequences??

5. And how about the fact that Shinhwa members peed behind the tree and waved their hands to greet fans who saw them did this? And how can they always bragged over their drunk stories? Bragged that they won the sexy dance competition? Seriously, Shinhwa? Are you immature or crazy or what ? Ah, no. Problematic. No wonder if other fandom sees you as a problematic group.

6. And dont let me start to talk about how heartless, how cold the way Dongwan treats sasaeng. Sprayed them with coldwater? Throwed them with stuffs? Scolded them for 2hours? Forced them to do physical workout like sit up, etc as a punishment for keep on coming to the dorm? Cmon, dude you are idol. Thats not how you treat fans!

7. Another reason to accuse Shinhwa as problematic group can be seen from the earlier days of how they did an interview. Its a total chaotic. Ruckus. Commotion between members here and there. Shouting for no reason. Nonstop bickering over silly stuffs even when they knew the camera recorded everything. None from members gave serious answer and showed their respect to the host/VJ/reporter. Shinhwa always play with themself, no matter they were, be it in stage, behind the stage, in the midst of interview, photoshoot, you named it.

8. Dont forget the fact that Shinhwa is the only group ever released seminude photobook. Like. WHAT THE HECK? No idols showed their butt to the fans so confident like Shinhwa. Such an exhibitionist. And they were also the one who started the beast-Idol trend. Showed off their abs during Only One. Ugh. Dongwan’s choco yummy abs. Ugh.

.........

Im sure other than 8 stuffs that I already wrote above, there are still many legitimate reason out there that we can use to accuse Shinhwa as problematic, one big crazy old-idol group. But call us blind, we still love them that much, in fact we love Shinhwa because of that reason. If other fandom failed to see the good in Shinhwa, unable to see how precious Shinhwa is, then let them have that salty oh-so-wrong opinion towards Shinhwa. We, Shinhwa Changjos, just stay together protecting uri oppadeul, just like what Dongwan said, that SHCJ is the Knight of SHINHWA. That we will do everything for the sake of SHINHWA. Cuz we know, world outside SHINHWA is a dangerous one. So we choose to stay inside Shinhwa.....

#personal rant #shinhwa

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keywestlou · 3 years

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DRIVE-INS RETURNING

Brief mention was made this morning of the one and only drive-in theater ever in the Key West area. It was on Stock Island and opened January 1, 1953. Now long closed.

Brought to mind my experience with drive-ins. They were a part of my life for a number of years.

I began going to drive-ins when I got my driver’s license. Seventeen years old. Oh, the joy it brought!

One went not for the movie. Rather to neck.

Then there came the time one was married and with children. Difficult for young parents to go out. So we took the children along. Yes, to the drive-in. They were dressed in their pajamas when we left the house.

Following some soda and pop corn, they were ready to sleep. Parents came prepared. Pillows and blankets on the back seat. We put the kids to bed.

Mom and dad did not neck. We could do that at home. It was good to get out, however. We cuddled.

Cars were made for necking and cuddling in those days. The front seat was wide. Today’s front seat counsel was not part of the front seat.

Drive-ins are returning. Suddenly appearing across the country. The result of the COVID pandemic. Safe and secure. One article claimed correctly that drive-ins were “a safe way to escape from the realities of coronavirus.”

A bit of Key West.

On this day in 1953, Key West began a program to inoculate younger than 15 with gamma globulin to protect them from paralytic cancer.

Parents did not complain. They were happy to see their children protected.

How times have changed!

On this day in 1950, Tennessee Williams bought a house at the corner of Duncan and Leon Streets. The price $13,000. Today, somewhere in the area of $1 million. Subsequent owners have kept the property pristine pure.

The time was 71 years ago. Duncan was the last street in Key West in that area. Sprawling salt ponds in front. Williams said he bought the house because he always wanted to walk out his front door and see water.

No water to see today. Key West expanded that area. Blocks of homes now to the front of the Williams’ home.

Lisa lives 1 1/2 blocks from the William’s home on Duncan. When Williams bought his home, Lisa’s was part of the salt ponds.

Williams’ Duncan Street home was his residence for 34 years.

William Hackley’s entry for this day in 1856 contained what has been an ongoing complaint of his. The “new” sewing machine he bought several months earlier.

A “lemon.” He continues to have problems with it.

A week ago, he reported it was working ok. Today, on the bum again. The wheel is not working properly. He suspects the cotton might be too rough.

The Dairy Queen is one of the most popular places in Key West. It is located on United just below White Street.

Built in 1951. Still going strong 70 years later.

I used to go frequently when Robert and Ally were small. Now I go alone stopping in on a hot day for a small soft chocolate cone. I have to eat swiftly. Even in the cool of the air conditioned car, the ice cream melts rapidly.

Kenny Chesney performed in Key West last night at the Key West Theater. His live show simultaneously ran on Sirius XMO.

Chesney bought a lovely huge home on Caroline Street about 10 years ago. Did not stay long. Sold it after a short period of time. He was upset someone was checking his mail to see who was writing him, etc. The information then spread throughout Key West.

Chesney was inflamed at what he properly considered an invasion of his privacy and put the house up for sale.

Southern Florida is where stone crabs propagate and live. Their only residence world wide.

I love stone crabs! Consider them the finest of meals. If I were to be executed tomorrow and had my wish for a last meal, it would be stone crabs.

There is an annual Blessing of the Stone Crab Fleet. It is a southwest Florida tradition.

Takes place in Everglades City at the Rod and Gun Club.

The blessing is a tradition that began centuries ago in Mediterranean fishing communities. The purpose of the blessing to ensure a safe and bountiful season.

A festive family party day. Floral petals are strewn on docks along side the boats, a coconut guava cake contest, a frog jumping contest, food and live music.

Strange things happen. One occurred today.

I read Google News religiously every morning. One of the news items this morning was Trump had sued Twitter in a Florida federal court to compel Twitter to restart his account. He claims Twitter was “coerced” by members of Congress.

The facts are Trump was removed from Twitter in January based on Twitter’s belief Trump was “a risk of incitement to violence.”

The lawsuit has been referred by one person as a drunk shouting “let me back in the bar.”

Google News relied on two non-USA news sources. The Jerusalem Post and WION. The Jerusalem Post name speaks for itself. WION is India’s global news network.

Something was not right. Why didn’t Google reference any American sites? Were there any?

I checked. The usual American sources were all over the internet with the news. Strange that Google for whatever reason relied on The Jerusalem Post and WION.

Nothing wrong with it. A change, however. My curiosity is piqued. Why?

Arkansas Senator Krysten Sinema not a popular lady today. Not even in her home state Arizona.

Some interesting media comments re how she is viewed at the moment.

“She is the biggest radical in Congress.” “Corrupt.” “Scoundrel.” An obstructionist “sacrificing…..the future itself.” “Snake in the grass.”

Sinema and Joe Manchin have been heaped upon jointly. Joyce Behar of ABC’s The View: “They will be the ruination of this nation. Those two.” They “must be brought to task.” Democracy “is really on life support right now because of these two people.”

There are many dictators or wanna be dictators in power today. One is Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. He announced his retirement from politics yesterday. The Philippine Constitution bars a second term.

He refuses to run as Vice President in effect as Putin did several years ago when he was confronted with a similar problem.

One thing he is correct about: “The overwhelming sentiment of the Filipinos is that I am not qualified.”

Speculation is his daughter will run for President.

Duterte is definitely unpopular. The primary reason his 5 year program of killing extra-judicially suspects in the “war on drugs.”

People like Trump and DeSantis should be proud. COVID deaths have topped 700,000.

Syracuse/Florida football this afternoon at 3:30. Can’t wait! Syracuse a 4.5 point underdog.

Enjoy your day!

DRIVE-INS RETURNING was originally published on Key West Lou

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flyingvgroupca · 4 years

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A $5,000 Link Building Strategy: How Real Estate Companies and Realtors Should Generate More Clients and Referrals

If you could invest $5,000 in backlinks to secure increased rankings for your real estate website, what would you do? Would you risk, buying as many links as possible from as many sources as you can find, in an attempt to quickly rank in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines? Or, would you rather, partner with a link building team, and work out a scalable strategy to attract trust-worthy, ‘white-hat’ links, reaping the benefits for months and years to come?

What is link building you may ask?

The story of link building traces back to Adam and Eve. There are some subtle connotations you ought to know about, which we’ll reveal in a minute. But first, let me tell you what link building is not. Link building is not a magic wand that instantly transforms you into a traffic-generating ninja. It is not the holy grail to mediocre content. It is not a push-button tool that sends hundreds of visitors to your website overnight. It is not a content marketing hack. It is not a cold email outreach template that you blast to 100’s of random leads, then sit back and wait for them to do business with you. It is not a quick SEO ranking formula. Just ask around. More often than not, you’ll hear that most real estate marketers and agencies erroneously believe these to be proven methods. Usually, they realize the contrary to be true, only after squandering $5,000. When it comes to link building for Google rankings, no budget in the world will solve your lack of organic traffic, clients, and referrals.

So what’s the alternative you ask?

You need an expert SEO team by your side, to help: Run a professional audit of your website, and then Create a custom link building strategy for your real estate website. The question is: will you be able to trust an SEO agency with your $5,000 budget? Should you pay a general SEO firm to handle your link building campaign, or should you employ a team who is highly specialized and experienced in real estate website ranking and link building? Unfortunately, Adam and Eve learned the hard way whom to TRUST. The ancient story of managing the Garden of Heaven, teaches us some vital modern SEO lessons that we can apply to our websites and businesses. This power couple lost everything they had, in a split second, such as: A one-on-one, direct relationship with the almighty God. And access to everything the Heavenly realm offered them, free of charge. The Bible reveals that our spiritual mother and father conducted what the SEO experts refer to as ‘black hat’ experiments. As you recall, the enemy, also known as Satan, used ‘link-bait’ to engage Eve in a high stakes conversation, which ultimately changed the direction of human destiny.

I’ll explain this statement in a second.

For now, understand this: For most website owners and marketing newbies, the first SEO encounter starts off with a bad experience. They get lured into believing the various ‘link building’ scams out there, and mistakenly place their trust in the empty lies promising ‘get fast rankings’ touted by the so-called ‘SEO experts’. Stop! You don’t have to tolerate their drivel anymore. Once you know the truth, the truth will set you free! What I mean is simple: test-drive the reputation of an expert, before paying for their service. Here’s what you need to do: Engage those SEO teams with an extensive proven track record in helping businesses like yours generate consistent traffic and rankings via ethical link building. Ask them to perform an SEO audit for your real estate website, and share the findings with you. If you like what you see, and your gut instinct tells you that this team is the perfect fit, then ask about pricing. Try to negotiate a smaller contract in the beginning. Maybe $1,000 or $1,500 would be enough to ensure you get a feel for their service, and see results before fully embracing their proposed strategy. I call this the ACM Method, also known as Authentic Conversational Marketing, a trust-building approach that does not pressure you into buying anything when you search for an SEO partner for your real estate business. Some important points to consider: Genuine link building starts with a ‘white-hat’ link building pro performing competitive SEO intelligence, and keyword research. Most teams are aware of this, but do not apply it correctly. Therefore, you should always double check their actual website rankings and client testimonials. Back in Heaven, everything was strategically mapped out in advance, and “link-bait” was fundamental. The fallen angel, Satan, didn’t approach our ancestors directly. He used a serpent as his furtive ally to execute his cunning plan. The goal was to captivate Eve’s attention, while she was away from Adam bewitching her and engaging her imagination (the right brain), inspiring her curiosity about the forbidden fruit. It all started with an ‘innocent’ question: ‘God said, you shall not eat from every tree of the garden?’ A strange, insidious counter idea was rapidly planted in her mind… with a single goal: To question God’s authority, and to ignore the only demand he made of man. ‘And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die.’ Eve’s faith in God was battled-tested, for the first time. At least, that’s what the narrative tells us. Eve’s guard is down when confronted with this surreptitious proposal, therefore, she is swiftly mired in the swamp of lies. ‘And the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die. For God knows that the day you eat, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Again, Satan starts to construct his arguments on the earlier, completely false premise. This reminds me of when these 'SEO experts' claim top rankings for lower than industry standard fees. Consequently, many succumb to the offer, since it seems like such an irresistible bargain. Today, Satan still claims that God is unfair, and wants to prevent humans from accessing “God-like” status and achievement. Some SEO ‘experts’ construct a similar lie when leading you to believe that you can get a certain amount of links in a specific amount of days for a minimal investment. Long story short, Eve got sidetracked, and was influenced to trust in the ‘father of all lies’ instead of the Creator himself. She was systematically indoctrinated… to look at the fruit in a “new,” distorted way, ultimately touching and consuming it. 'And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit, and did eat, and gave it to her husband with her; and he did eat.’ Both fell into the trap, designating the entire human race to either eternal life or eternal damnation. Oops.

How is this universal mega event applicable in today’s SEO and link building shaddy industry?

First, you have to understand this: SEO and link building is a skill that can be learned. Just like communication. Once you master it, you can mesmerize your audience and lure them to your real estate website, turning them into raving clients and referrals, just like Netflix is doing with their consumers. Your content has one goal: to produce loyal clients and referrals. Otherwise, your precious time, money and energy spent on content marketing are all in vain. I’d say link building it’s more of a soft skill than a hard skill since it requires more creativity and imagination than technical SEO know-how per se. In my experience, there are two types of real estate companies. One company, let’s call it A, creates its own exceptional content and then waits for links to come in. The second company, let’s call it B, publishes fabulous content, provided by or featuring third party sources, and is proactive in link building. Company A makes two major mistakes: #1 - Creating Its Own Content This method presents significant drawbacks. First, you have to invest a considerable amount of time on these 5 common, yet time-consuming, and energy-draining tasks: Research Writing Editing Rewriting Proofreading It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours to produce a single article or blog post, depending on the content length and research. Plus, let’s consider the time required for proper graphics creation and content uploading. This may take up to 60 minutes per post. You may need multiple posts per week to generate enough demand. It is imperative that this content is highly-engaging to transform prospects into clients, right? If you’ve systematized your business in such a way as to involve your team or allow VAs to handle content research, creation, and publishing, then it’s a significant improvement to your approach. You’re left with more time to handle other priorities and challenges within your company, while an SEO expert team takes care of ‘content marketing’ via the Authentic Conversational Marketing approach I have mentioned earlier. Still, other real estate companies take advantage of a different approach, which is more sustainable and profitable, and important for you to use in your business as well. #2 - Build it, and they’ll come Sitting back and waiting to receive back-links and brand mentions from industry leaders, as well as targeted bloggers and social media pros who have access to your desired audience, is not going to drive much traffic or attention to your real estate website and content. It is essential for you to be proactive and highly-strategic in your approach, or not much will happen. Company B does two things right: #1 - It publishes content created in-house, in combination with expert interviews, and crowdsourced articles (by non-competitive, third party, ‘authority’ sources) Example: 25 Real Estate Agents Share Their Best Tips & Advice For First-Time Home Buyers The result…? Here’s the number of shares and backlinks (captured via Ahrefs)

Here’s another one 44 Realtors Tips On Selling And Buying A Home At The Same Time

This strategy, if performed right, creates a ‘wildfire’ brand exposure effect for your content, substantially increasing the number of likes, shares, comments, and more importantly, back-links to this type of content. In time, this combined effort produces consistent organic visitors, and higher web page rankings.

Who said link building for free targeted traffic was a zero cost technique and a working scheme to produce fast results?

However, what I’ve shared above is only the tip of the iceberg. Let me explain what I mean. For example, you shouldn’t publish expert roundups just to get backlinks. Think beyond this selfish vision. You’re creating this popular form of content primarily with your audience in mind, and secondly, to help build trust with the experts, for future beneficial relationships, and mutual growth. You’ll be rewarded with rankings and visitors as an afterthought. Does this make sense? I’d say, publishing expert content gives you more time and freedom to focus on your business instead of spending countless frustrating hours trying to figure out how to make your content go ‘viral.’ #2 - It promotes the content on a vast scale Crowd sourced blog posts created by real estate bloggers and agencies make one major mistake. They think that once their expert roundup goes live, traffic will melt their website servers. In most cases, the majority of these link building campaigns fall short, and is prevented from taking off due to two main reasons: The initial intention of the website owner or SEO team was to get traffic, shares and links, instead of considering their audience and producing insightful content set to spread rapidly due to its fascinating nature. That’s why some deceitful experts are featured in ‘experts roundups.’ Their responses are mainly based on theory and guessing rather than on hands-on experience. This is also the reason why poorly conceived questions are asked ad nauseum. Finally, this is why these blog posts aren’t usually optimized for SEO and ranking purposes. There’s no active outreach involved once a post goes live. In this case, some outreach is done, but it is executed incorrectly. This means that the focus is on obtaining a share or backlink request, instead of providing value for the experts involved. One expert roundup created with 50 business coaches received a 35% backlink placement response, which is unheard of in the industry. They’ve managed to provide enough value during the entire process, so that a significant number of experts have linked to the final blog post from their websites.

Authentic Conversational Marketing Strategy, that is covered here, is something you may want to implement in your link building campaign. If you do it right, it works without fail! If you’re interested in finding out more about a custom SEO link building strategy for quality link building results, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with FlyingVGroup, and request a free website SEO audit. You may see surprising results within 12 months when your traffic and rankings are propelled through the roof! Thank you so much for reading A $5,000 Link Building Strategy: How Real Estate Companies and Realtors Should Generate More Clients and Referrals. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter to receive monthly emails on all of the latest trends and happenings in the digital marketing space. You will also receive our FREE E-Book with the Amazing Marketing Tools for Powerful Business Growth. Sign-up below! Also, if you received some value out of this article, please share with your friends or colleagues, or leave a comment/question below. We really appreciate you reading our blog and every share/comment means the world to us and allows us to continue producing valuable tools to help you grow your business! Share this PostAbout the Author

Robb Fahrion Facebook Twitter Google+Robb Fahrion is the Co-Founder and a Partner of Flying V Group. He is passionate about helping businesses grow using the power of the internet. Robb graduated from Chapman University in Orange, CA and currently resides in Costa Mesa, CA. Robb enjoys writing about digital marketing, helping his clients turn their dreams into reality, and is a HUGE Mike Trout fan. The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid AdsNovember 25, 2019What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or BlogNovember 19, 2019Real Estate SEO Tools Exposed: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs MozPro Review (2019)November 11, 2019

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tsukifairy · 5 years

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finalproblem · 7 years

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“Sixteen by six, brother.”

Carrying on with Eurus’ song...

As someone once said (very recently), for a twist to be effective you need to give the audience a fair chance to work it out.

Eurus’ song code was not, by that standard, a great twist.

Sure, we knew she sang a song that had something to do with the Redbeard incident. And we knew there were funny gravestones with wrong dates. But most of the information was withheld from the audience until it was splashed up on the screen for Sherlock’s big deduction sequence.

Which, okay, is not the worst cheat ever committed by a TV mystery writer.

It does feel like a pretty unnecessary one, though. Withholding most of the song as if anyone watching was going to assume there was a code, pause the episode, and take notes so they could crack it? And really, they could’ve easily slipped in one more creepy voice singing a single line--”Let Death make a room”--somewhere earlier in the episode and it would’ve been much less of a cheat simply by playing fair enough to let us know the word “room” was in the song.

But what if we try a thought experiment?

What if the writers didn’t care about playing fair with the whole gravestone code business because it wasn’t the real puzzle?

What if there’s a different puzzle?

Ready? Here comes the experiment:

For the duration of this post, let go of the idea that this song was something created by Sherlock’s sister to lead him anywhere.

Just let the song be the words on their own.

If you need a reason to talk yourself into even considering this possibility, remember that in The Lying Detective, Sherlock’s writers introduced a memory-inhibiting drug named TD 12. Then they made a point of having Culverton Smith explain that not only could the drug do what he was using it for and erase memories currently being recorded, but it could also corrupt past memories. And then we never got an example of old memories being corrupted. You don’t introduce an invented fact like that unless you’re planning to make use of it later.

So if you need a reason to shake the song free of the story we were told, assume it was a real thing Sherlock remembered, but his memory of the song’s actual context was completely corrupted.

(I’m not going to get into what Mycroft knew or where reality ends and memory begins or the larger backstory beyond the corrupted memory idea in this post or we’d never make it to the actual point. So try to just relax and enjoy this experiment for what it is on its own.)

Because we care about playing fair, we’ll start our experiment with the image at the top of this post. The very last image of The Final Problem--John and Sherlock running out of a post office.

“A post office?” you ask. Yes, a post office. Because they are Big Time Action Heroes. 😉

But seriously, that’s a post office, and here’s why.

It’s a big building named Rathbone Place. There’s still a street named Rathbone Place in London, but did the writers decide to have our heroes walk by a street sign in honor of Basil Rathbone? No. No, they did not. They made it a building and had the set decoration folks create two big plaques so we were all very clear what the name of the building was. And the only big building that’s been named “Rathbone Place” during Sherlock’s run was the Royal Mail’s Rathbone Place Western Delivery Office. (Note that the real Rathbone Place building looked different than that, but as it was torn down shortly after Series 3 aired, I don’t blame the Sherlock team at all if they made the decision to pick something that looked more like the other related post offices instead of trying to recreate a very specific post office almost no one would remember the look of.)

Is it completely obvious that the building is a post office from a glance if you’re not a super nerd? No, but Googling “Rathbone Place” takes you right to a Wikipedia article about the street that mentions the former mail depot. So it’s not too hard to get a foothold from there. A fair, if admittedly subtle, clue.

Knowing that’s a post office is the single most important hint for the thought experiment we’re about to try.

Meanwhile, if you do happen to be a super nerd you can dig a little deeper...

Rathbone Place was one of a small handful of postal depots that were part of the now-defunct Mail Rail network--a mini subway system used to transport mail under London.

Remember the clown robbers in The Sign of Three? I’ve argued that the only way for them to have expected to get 12 tons of gold out of the bank was if they were taking advantage of the abandoned Mail Rail trains. (Sally Donovan mentioned a “tunnel entrance” at the bank, and the whole thing becomes a parallel for canon story The Red-Headed League.)

I’ve also argued, for unrelated reasons, that the robbers were connected to Lord Moran. Remember how the tip that led to Lord Moran’s capture was about “an underground terrorist network active in London”? And then they caught one (1) guy. Do we really think Lord Moran was the entire “network”? Or does it make more sense that there are a bunch of baddies taking advantage of London’s various underground tunnel systems, and Sherlock just hasn’t figured it out yet?

Also for some wacky reason, the writers started throwing clowns and trains all over TFP. So, uh... Huh. That’s interesting.

And because it will matter later, you need to know I refer to the robbers as the Scowrers, like the baddies in The Valley of Fear. Here’s the reason if you want it.

Time for our favorite song again:

I that am lost, oh who will find me? Deep down below the old beech tree. Help succour me now the east winds blow. Sixteen by six, brother, and under we go!

Be not afraid to walk in the shade Save one, save all, come try! My steps - five by seven Life is closer to Heaven Look down, with dark gaze, from on high

Without your love, he’ll be gone before. Save pity for strangers, show love the door. My soul seek the shade of my willow’s bloom Inside, brother mine - Let Death make a room.

Before he was gone - right back over my hill. Who now will find him? Why, nobody will. Doom shall I bring to him, I that am queen. Lost forever, nine by nineteen.

Like we said last time, one of the interesting quirks of this thing is the number pairs: “sixteen by six,” “five by seven,” and “nine by nineteen.” They’re superficially similar to canon, but then actually different enough to make a person wonder what the writers were up to.

I’m sure many attempts will be made to bash through using those numbers as code or cypher key or mathematical curiosity. But we’re not going to go that way today.

Instead, we’re going to double back to canon.

Remember how I said the mysterious rhyming words in The Musgrave Ritual were like a verbal treasure map? The writers had Sherlock brush off that approach to interpreting the song (he dug as a child and found nothing). But what if that was a feint? We’re operating in an experimental reality where the song was never about finding Redbeard or Eurus’ room, so of course it was a feint.

We should reconsider the song’s lyrics as instructions or directions.

And honestly? Look at ‘em. The amount of overwriting that was put into the song considering most of it was never highlighted in the episode makes way more sense if these were actually proper Musgrave Ritual style directions the whole time. Plus there are tons of pieces that would work as abstract descriptions for locations or directional guidance just like in the original story. It’s dripping with them.

For example? “And under we go!” That right there would be a mighty fine line to include if you were writing instructions so all the other baddies in your underground terrorist network would know how to navigate the subterranean tunnels of London.

But hang on--if none of this was ever about a secret sister, why would the song keep using the word “brother”? Like I said above, I refer to the robbers as the Scowrers because I think they’re based on that group of baddies from The Valley of Fear. And what do Scowrers call each other?

“Then in the name of Lodge 341, Vermissa, I welcome you to its privileges and debates. You will put the liquor on the table, Brother Scanlan, and we will drink to our worthy brother.”

(This also raises the question of whether Jim had a stationmaster brother, or a stationmaster “brother.” But we’ll leave that one alone for now.)

We could be here all day just picking at parts of the song that might mean this or that. Let’s try to nail down something specific instead.

Using the framework that the song is actually a verbal map for the underground terrorist network to navigate the tunnels under London (some real and some fictional or exaggerated, as is the usual way with this show), let’s go back to the strange number pairs.

The Scowrers were using Mail Rail and John and Sherlock ran out of a post office as the final big hero shot of the series. Does the postal system give us some kind of clue about how to interpret the numbers?

Why, yes. Yes, it does.

I give you... the postcodes of London.

(bigger map here)

You can read all about the history of London postcodes online if you want, but the short version is:

first directional letters were assigned to districts

then numbered subdistricts were created

but the system used to assign numbers was quirky and geographically haphazard, resulting in what you see on the map above

So any numbered subdistrict isn’t necessarily going to be geographically close to the other subdistricts with sequential numbers. Instead, any number can randomly turn out to be by any other number.

Hmm... Numbers by numbers. Why does that sound familiar? 🤔

Yeah, let’s look at those number pairs from the song again.

We’ll start with the pair that got the most play in the episode: “sixteen by six.”

Help succour me now the east winds blow. Sixteen by six, brother, and under we go!

If we take the number pair line and its rhyming line from the song at the same time, we get a pretty good clue about where to look. The rhyming line gives us the direction of “east,” so if we head to the E postcode... Ta da! E16 is right next to E6. Sixteen by six.

Interesting point to note? There is a Mafeking Road in E16. When Sally Donovan was talking about everything they were doing to stop the clown robbers in The Sign of Three the other weird thing she mentioned besides the tunnel entrance was that the police had “armed response on Mafeking Road.” There was no obvious reason why Mafeking Road had anything to do with anything, and it was never explained or addressed. But if the part-real, part-fictional subterranean tunnels of Sherlock connected over to E16 via Mafeking Road... That would’ve given police a reason to be there.

Next number pair: “five by seven.”

My steps - five by seven Life is closer to Heaven

Pulling it with the rhyming line doesn’t help us quite as much this time. There’s no obvious compass direction. If we get a little flexible in the proper tradition of these being disguised directions, though, you could read “closer to Heaven” as “up.” That isn’t very helpful for finding postcodes in a 3D space, but on a typical map we can translate “up” into “north.”

And sure enough... The N5 postcode is next to the N7 postcode. Five by seven.

Interesting point to note? Pentonville Prison is in N7. That’s the same prison Jim broke into in Reichenbach. And it’s the prison that was the origin of a creepy flower arrangement sent when Sherlock was in the hospital in a deleted scene from His Last Vow (released later as a DVD extra):

Magnussen: And the black wreath? C Block, Pentonville. I’m not sure the intent was entirely kindly.

I previously put forward the case that Lord Moran could reasonably have been held in Pentonville while on trial. And honestly, he could still be there if the writers felt like keeping him there for story / Victoriana reasons. Or maybe the relevant point is that he’s not there anymore between having Pentonville staffed by people who were willing to help Jim with his Reichenbach stunt and possible secret tunnels linking up to the area...

And Pentonville was quite close to an old proposed Mail Rail expansion line...

Should we be worried about that Lord Moran lookalike who was getting on John’s bus in The Six Thatchers? And carrying a newspaper with a headline about being in two places at once?

BUT I DIGRESS. Let’s get back to numbers.

Our final number pair is the trickiest. As it should be in any good puzzle.

Doom shall I bring to him, I that am queen. Lost forever, nine by nineteen.

This time our rhyming line doesn’t have any obvious directional hint.

We could maybe break pattern and borrow the “right back” directional indicator from the beginning of the verse to suggest returning east where we started, but are E9 and E19 next to each other? No. In fact, there are no “9″ postcodes next to any “19″ postcodes anywhere in London.

So are we sunk? Doomed by the queen?

Maybe not.

Here’s a fun little quirk--there’s no E19 postcode. There’s an E20 postcode, but no E19. The E postcodes already went up to E18 when they decided to add one for the London Olympic Park, but instead of doing the obvious thing and continuing on to E19, they skipped straight over it to E20.

The E9 postcode may not be next to the nonexistent E19, but it does bump right up against E20.*

And the proper name for E20?

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

So read that one more time:

Doom shall I bring to him, I that am queen. Lost forever, nine by nineteen.

Interesting point to note? Even before the creation of E20, there had been multiple attempts to get another neighborhood’s postcode changed to E19. The requests were rejected. It would be so easy for the writers to concoct a government conspiracy reason for E19 not being allowed to exist and instead being the “lost” London postcode. Especially when you’re mixing this in with the secret subterranean tunnels of London, which already have tons of government and conspiracy baggage of their own.

I’ll pause here for now. I do have thoughts about what other parts of the song could mean within the “underground terrorist network” interpretation, but it’s harder to be precise with the bits that didn’t get convenient assigned numbers. So I’ll get to those in a separate post later.

In the meantime, as usual, I encourage you to post in Tumblr’s #the musgrave riddle tag if you want in on this funny little map game. (Don’t send stuff directly to me, because I’ll probably never be able to get back to you.) Once you start looking at the song this way, it’s really easy--and fun--to find more possible London location references in the lyrics. Get on Google Maps and knock yourselves out!

* E20 is so tiny that the E9 / E20 border may not show up clearly on most postcode maps, including the one I embedded earlier in this post. But if you look on Google Maps, you can see E9 is indeed physically adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

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alexanderhamllton · 7 years

Text

Something Here [Lin-Manuel Miranda x Reader]

Request: Hi! Could you please write a linxreader imagine? Reader is lin's girlfriend, but they haven't been together for that long and she is quite a bit younger than him. He takes her to the show one night and introduces her to the cast. The cast have there worries about her being younger and that she might only be with him for the fame. (They maybe confront him about this) In the end they see that she is not with him for fame or whatever, but really loves him. I would love it if you could write this.

Word count: 1,495

Warnings: age difference, light swearing, a little bit of angst but nothing big.

A/N: I changed the request a little (as always) but the main idea remains. I hope this is what you wanted, the idea came kinda easily to me this way, so maybe that’s why I went a bit off from the request, I hope you still like it tho! <3

askbox | masterlist

You knew. The moment his lips touched yours during rehearsal you knew, and it felt like the most cliche description ever to say that you got butterflies on stomach and a spark between you and Lin when you kissed, but that was exactly what happened.

Weeks progressed and you, the newest understudy for all three Schuyler sisters, were scared out of your goddamn mind. This was your broadway debut, and learning the four female roles on the biggest show on Broadway was no easy task on its own, being in love with the creator and main star of the show didn’t help either.

After almost two months of rehearsal, you were covering for Peggy/Maria for the first time, so you decided to get to the Richard Rodgers earlier than normal, which ended up making you and a few other cast members the only ones there.

“[Y/N], can I talk to you for a minute?” Lin’s voice was low and you didn’t feel his usual excitement, what made your anxiety run a thousand miles per hour, bringing back every moment you’ve spent together since you met him. Trying to keep your cool you just nodded, and he made his way to the dressing room you shared with some ensemble members that haven’t arrived yet. “Where do I even start, uh...”

“You’re making me nervous, Lin.”

“Sorry.” He said, sitting on the couch next to your vanity. Lin’s fingers went through his hair and you raised your eyebrows at him, making him giggle nervously. “Okay, I’ll go straight to the point: I think there’s something here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Between us. I don’t know if I’m going crazy but since the first time we kissed on rehearsal I can’t stop thinking about you, this is making me go out of my fucking mind.” Lin stood up and you watched his movements, unsure if you should say anything. His pace was steady as he walked back and forth on the small space from one side of the dressing room to the other. “I mean, should I have these feelings? Aren’t you a bit... Too young for me? You probably think I’m super creepy and this will make things awkward, I’m-”

“Lin.” Your voice immediately stopped his babbling, making him stop walking and look into your eyes. “I felt it too, but I figured it was all in my head, like you said I’m a younger than you and you’re, well, the star.”

“To me, you’re the star.” Lin offered his hand and pulled you from your chair the moment you took it. “Okay, maybe we have this age difference but you’re amazing, I couldn’t get my mind off you and... I want to be with you.”

You bit your lower lip trying to hide a smile, just sinking everything in. This is one of the moments you felt like taking a leap of faith, holding to your courage as tight as you can, so you did. When you held Lin’s face and kissed him, the world felt right, and as you both melted into the kiss, you figured there was no age difference, nothing or anybody that could take Lin from you now.

That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try.

Everything started a few weeks later, when people noticed you both leaving together after the shows: Holding hands, taking pictures with fans together, news started to pop on your twitter feed with tabloid headlines that went from “Sugar daddy? Lin-Manuel Miranda caught with younger actress from Hamilton” all the way to heavier headlines calling you a social climber and a gold digger. It came to a point where twitter was just not a fun experience anymore, but you never thought the headlines would get to the ears of people inside the theater.

Arriving with Lin on the theater that afternoon was a nightmare: major tabloids now had the spotlight on you and your boyfriend, considering he was always really private about his personal life and this was the first time there was something interesting for people to trash. There was almost ten paparazzis waiting for your arrival, and Lin had to call the theater security to take you guys from the taxi you took to the stage door, once you made to the dressing rooms, Lin allowed himself to show some frustration. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry.” The need to apologize was bigger than you. Lin talked over a million times about how nothing of this was your fault, but you couldn’t help it. Lin-Manuel Miranda has always been a pretty chill celebrity in the eyes of the media: never involved in scandals, always considered a role model. You were the cause of his first “problematic” headline, and knowing that crushed you.

“Hey, we are over this, okay?” His hands cupped your face as he touched your forehead with his. “I knew the risks and chose to take them, I need to know if you’re with me on this.”

As you nodded, his lips met yours in a sweet kiss.

“I need to run some things over with Tommy and Alex, will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.” You faked a smile as he ran down the stairs. When you found your way to the dressing room, Chris stopped you.

“Hey, [Y/N], do you have a minute?”

“Sure” You walked behind the man who gives life to George Washington every night all the way to his dressing room. “Is everything okay?”

“I believe you’ve seen the news lately?” You nodded. “You’re a cool girl, you really are, and I can see you’re making Lin-Man really happy, but as his best friend I need to know-”

“If the headlines are true.” You completed his sentence before he did. He did his characteristic head tilt, and you looked down for a few seconds before deciding what to say. “Look, I love Lin. I know it’s been only a few months but he changed my life in the best possible way. I know there’s no way for me to prove my intentions to you or to... Them. But you need to trust me, and if not me, Lin’s judgement about me.”

“[Y/N], you probably know this already but Lin is a romantic. He’s hooked, for real, so I’m choosing to trust your intentions. Please, don’t break his heart.”

“I’d never, Chris, I promise.” He nodded before turning to his vanity, and you made your way out of his dressing room.

You felt lucky you didn’t have play any roles on the show that evening, because your brain was just a mess: every single second you spent on our phone, something about you and Lin’s relationship popped up from a friend, twitter or Facebook. You tried your best to stay away from google, but curiosity took the best of you: As you started reading the tweets, posts and articles from different sources doubting your relationship with the Hamilton star, you couldn’t help but let the tears fall down your face. You head the storm of applause and quickly tried to pull yourself together before the cast got back from stage.

“[Y/N], you okay?” Jasmine’s voice caught you by surprise as you finished wiping your tears off with a cotton pad meant for removing makeup, she still was with her final costume. “Were you crying?”

“No, I was just...” As she came closer, her eyes went straight to your phone.

“Is that the tabloid bullshit about you and Lin?”

“Maybe.”

“C’mon [Y/N], you can’t let this get into your head.” She took the seat next to you and placed her hand your shoulder. “Don’t you think Ant and I don’t have problems with this?”

“Well, no, ou guys always look so happy.”

“We are, but it’s because we learned to ignore shit like that, it’s not healthy and will drive you nuts if you let them get into your head.”

“Thanks Jazzy, but it’s ready to say when you’re not a decade younger than Ant.” Her little smile showed a compassion you haven’t seen in a while. As a young artist you moved to New York once you got into college, and deal with your problems without help just became your normal state of mind, it was good to know it didn’t have to always be like that.

“You’re both grown-ups, and from what I’ve seen so far, you really like him. I mean, I’d have never kissed Lin that passionately as Maria in my life.” Her statement made you let out a little laugh, causing Jasmine to smile. “See? You’re already feeling better.”

“Thank you, Jas.”

“Thank you for what?” Lin’s voice made you both look at the door, and there he was already on his street clothes.

“Just a little girl talk. Will you be okay?” Jasmine stood up when you confirmed, stopping by Lin before leaving the dressing room. “We like her.”

“Good, so do I.” He answered before smiling at you. “I like her a lot.”

#lin manuel miranda #lin manuel miranda x reader #lin manuel x reader #lin manuel miranda imagine #hamilton imagine #hamilcast imagine #hamilton x reader #hamilcast x reader #my writing

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aurelliocheek · 4 years

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Women in Mobile: Bosses of the Industry – Bruna Amaya @ Hurb

This article is part of Liftoff’s Women in Mobile: Bosses of the Industry series, featuring in-depth interviews with inspiring women in the mobile industry.

Bruna is the Head of Marketing at Hotel Urbano (Hurb), the leading online travel agency (OTA) in Brazil, based in Rio de Janeiro. She’s had experience in many marketing channels, but found her passion for Mobile Marketing when leading the growth team that led Hurb’s app to becoming their most important channel.

Learn more from her Mobile Hero profile.

It was no easy feat for Bruna Amaya to go from intern to app marketer to Head of Marketing, all while at Hurb (formerly Hotel Urbano), an online platform that enables travelers to find and reserve accommodation and activities based in Brazil. She chalks a portion of her success up to being curious and humble to talk about topics she doesn’t necessarily know about. She’s never afraid to ask questions, no matter what her title is.

Tell us about your current role.

I’m the Head of Marketing at Hurb, a Brazilian online travel agency that markets the largest number of lodging options on the internet. While I used to focus on all major channels (Facebook and Google, meta-search, etc), my current single focus is our mobile app.

My team and I work everyday to build an excellent “app house”. What makes it excellent and unique are the people and our cross-functional nature. We work closely with product, IT, data science and performance media marketing.

My management style is hands-on. It’s a tough balance staying close to daily optimization and testing while empowering the team to grow with autonomy. The one thing that is constant is curiosity. In such a dynamic environment, knowledge can quickly become obsolete. I never stop studying and learning and expect the same from every team member. This is how we built the “app house” to be strong today and for the future.

What has been your career path?

My background is in Industrial Engineering. I never imagined I would land in Marketing. I joined Hurb.com in 2016 as an intern rotating across multiple marketing departments.

My entire career in digital marketing has been shaped here at Hurb. When I first joined, I didn’t even know what a CPC was and was lucky to find a team of amazing people and an incredible mentor – Hurb’s CEO, João.

After joining Hurb, my scope and responsibility took off really fast. It was only seven months after I joined the company that our CEO challenged me to take on managing our mobile app and soon after that other marketing channels as well like Google, Facebook, e-mail marketing and more. As Head of Marketing, we built the team from scratch which quickly grew from 15 to 60 people. For the first time we had a mobile app-focused strategy and no longer duplicated the website experience within the app. I caught myself leaning more and more towards the app space, which fascinated me.

Earlier in my career, I used to think that growing my scope of work was a signal of success. With time I realized that owning such a high potential channel takes time, effort and a different set of skills that weren’t necessarily transferable. It was at this time that I took a step back and developed a plan.

I remember the day I pitched the CEO on building an app-only marketing team, and focus 100% of my time on this. For the first time I narrowed my scope down, believing my contributions in this area would be much greater than managing marketing across multiple channels. At the time, our app accounted for a single-digit share of Hurb’s revenue. Within two years, our mobile app grew to account for one third of our revenue. Hard decisions I learned lead to growth, and throughout this time I’ve experienced tremendous personal and professional development, often painful at first, but extremely rewarding.

What is one thing you wish you knew at the start of your career?

That success is a collective accomplishment. I used to think that to prove myself I had to make everything happen on my own. I had all the energy and strong will, and also thought credit would be deserved if I did everything by myself. I took on many projects at a time, and looked less after others. It took time, experience and strain to realize that rallying a team together is more challenging than doing everything alone and definitely more gratifying.

There’s an article from Harvard Business Review that explains the difference between managers and great managers. When you are a manager you play checkers. Your entire team has the same movements—they have the same qualities.

Great managers, on the other hand, play chess. They identify the best qualities of each team member and get the best output from all of them collectively. Great managers know and value the unique abilities of their staff, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack.

By helping others succeed, I’ve come to learn that we all thrive. This lesson has made me a better leader.

As a professional woman, what does it take to succeed in today’s world?

Keep learning, remain curious, do what you love and be your best self everyday. This shouldn’t differ based on gender, however women do face challenges that are gender-related. In this short list, we see how women often have roadblocks asking questions or having their ideas valued in a room that is male dominant, which has a strong impact on keeping curiosity and being your best self.

My experience at Hurb, however, is very different. I’m fortunate that most leaders here are women and there’s a high level of gender bias awareness. I also have a great level of responsibility to remain an active role model, to continue nurturing this culture and pass it along, both internally and externally.

If you weren’t in the mobile industry, what would you be doing?

I would be doing logistics or something related to industrial engineering. I used to work in a company called Ball Corporation. They sell cans to Coca-Cola and other bottling companies. My job was to make the production lines work faster.

Can you share some self-care habits that help you be the best version of yourself?

I wish I could say I meditate, but I don’t! One of my 2020 resolutions is to take better care of myself, do things that I like and have more work-life balance. I exercise whenever possible and I read a lot. I enjoy studying leadership, reading about the mobile industry, learning and developing myself. It makes me really happy when I allocate time for these self-care habits.

One fun fact about yourself that few people know?

My age. I’m currently 24. It’s been a challenge because sometimes people don’t trust my skills or capabilities because I am young. I was 22 when I became Head of Marketing. When I speak publicly representing Hurb, I sense bias for “looking like an intern”. I don’t overthink it; I deliver my best work, results follow, and I earn people’s trust.

What is the number one resource you recommend to women?

First, I believe that women have the power of building community. Each of us should create and stay close to our networks. When I first took on the app responsibility at Hurb, the single person who was a mobile marketing expert left the company two months later. I had to get out there and learn from people—these connections helped me grow. Being curious also makes your participation in networks more relevant. I’d go to events, ask any company to pitch their product, and have my go-to people for different topics. And on the flip-side, I’m always open to chat with others who need help too.

Second, keep reading. From online content, to books and articles. Read about your core job, build your soft-skills, and increase awareness on gender bias. By reading and learning about these topics, I became more conscious of my own triggers and surroundings. It helped me navigate gender issues in my own career as well as with people around me.

Connect with Bruna on LinkedIn

The post Women in Mobile: Bosses of the Industry – Bruna Amaya @ Hurb appeared first on Liftoff.

Women in Mobile: Bosses of the Industry – Bruna Amaya @ Hurb published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

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anycontentposter · 4 years

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$200 vs $4,000 Camera: Is Your Phone Good Enough for Travel Photography?

Sensor image quality has advanced so much over the last few years that phone manufacturers are boasting photographs that rival those from larger mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Some, like the Xiaomi Mi CC9 at 108 megapixels, quadruple the resolution of my best camera.

The iPhone 11 Pro and Google Pixel 4 have incredible night mode capabilities using imaging algorithm and stabilization that’s comparable to the high ISO capabilities of my Sony Alpha. Most of them shoot 4K video at 60 FPS. Between using Filmic Pro for film and Snapseed for photos, I have more options than ever with what tools I choose to shoot with.

And that’s just it. Options.

As a photographer and filmmaker, I don’t feel anxious that phones are allowing more people to produce footage that is comparable to my bigger and more expensive set-ups. In fact, I feel better knowing that on days in which I don’t feel like lugging my gear around or even taking my camera out to capture some food photography, I have the option of producing something that is high quality and sometimes indistinguishable from the images coming out of my Sony a7 III.

Comparing iPhone 7 Vs Sony a7S II Images

And I want to prove that using two photographs I took using my Sony a7S II and iPhone 7 (both are 12-megapixel cameras, both a few years old) a couple of years back in the Lofoten Islands of Norway. At the time, I didn’t plan on doing a comparison — I just happened to take the image first on my phone before pulling out my camera to get the shot with a slower exposure.

While resorting through my images recently, I came across the two images side by side when I did a batch edit and noticed that they came out differently (JPEGs don’t respond to the same changes as RAW files). Out of curiosity, I spent about 5 minutes to see if I could make the images similar.

The results were interesting. In fact, they were getting so close than I spent another 5 minutes to spot edit a few things to see if I can make them indistinguishable.

Here are the two photos:

How long did it take you to figure out which was shot on the iPhone 7 and which was shot on the Sony a7S II? How did you figure it out and are you correct? I’ll reveal the answer a few paragraphs down.

Did I Edit The Images?

Quite a bit. The process of creating a photograph is different for everyone and has only ever been limited by the tools that we have access to, whether be it in a physical darkroom or today in Adobe’s Lightroom (and Photoshop). Personally, I do most of my image editing in Lightroom. It’s fast, allows me to do most of the manipulation I want, and I can batch edit a bunch of similar images.

For these two images, I played around quite a bit with the white balance temperature, colors, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, curves, clarity, texture, and dehaze. The Sony a7S II image was slightly wider at 24mm on a full-frame sensor, so I cropped it some to match the iPhone’s field of view and I cropped the iPhone into a 2×3 aspect ratio to match with the Sony image.

Below are the edited images next to their originals.

Comparison With The Original Images

In the Sony a7S II original, you can more details in the cloud and the overall colors, tone, and contrast of the image are different from the edited version. I shot this with the Sony 24-70 f/2.8 GM lens at .8 sec shutter speed, f/22, and ISO 100. The slightly slower shutter speed allows me to blur the movements of water just a bit. I was kicking myself for not bringing any graduated or ND filters to allow me to shoot even slower than this and to retain the details in the cloud.

In the iPhone 7 version, the first noticeable difference was the completely blown highlights in the cloud. The phone camera also exposed it a bit darker and warmer than a7S II. Other than that, the details are very similar and, in fact, the overall image is sharper than the Sony a7S II because there was some accidental motion micro-shake with the a7S II. The iPhone image was taken at 1/120 sec, f/1.8, and ISO 20.

For both, I added a gradient filter from the top down over the mountains to blow out all the clouds completely and went negative on the dehaze and clarity to add a soft glow to the top of the mountains. This effect ultimately hid the shortcomings of the iPhone sensor with not being able to capture the same dynamic range that a Sony RAW file can.

Below are two cropped views to give you a sense of detail.

iPhone 7 Sony a7S II

Like I mentioned earlier, shooting at .8 sec on a travel tripod standing on a windy bridge created some unwanted shake in the a7S II image. On the iPhone image, the detail is pretty sharp, and sometimes almost too sharp for me. To compensate for that, I dialed down the texture a bit to de-sharpen the image.

You can click here for the iPhone and here for the Sony to download higher resolution versions of the two images for pixel peeping if that’s your thing.

So did you guess correctly above? The a7S II was the first (top) one. Congratulations if you guessed it right. For me, it’s still hard when I look at them side by side, but the giveaway would have been the blurred movement in the water from the slower exposure.

Is Your Phone Good Enough For Travel Photography?

The short answer is yes. With careful composition and exposure, you can take spectacular photographs with your phone. With all the new phones sporting multiple cameras and crazy imaging algorithms to produce some high-quality images, you have a lot more features at your disposal with the device that you’ll always have on you.

With the iPhone 11 Pro, you can even get some beautiful portraits with some nice optically-produced bokeh at a tighter focal length. For landscapes, you can throw on a wide adapter and match the super-wide field of view of my widest camera lens. Even without it, you’re getting a pretty wide image.

With the Snapseed and Lightroom app on your mobile OS, you can edit images even quicker than on your laptop/desktop software. It’s crazy how fast I can create an image out of Snapseed and send/share it right away. I’m finding myself content with shooting on my iPhone a lot more than I was in the past. Even when I’m not, sometimes I’ll send the images from my camera to my phone and do an edit there for social media instead of waiting to load it onto my computer.

Ultimately, as far as photographs go, I believe the content of a good, compelling image will outweigh its technical specs, always. As a photographer and archivist, I want to have the best quality that I can get. When it comes to sharing, most content is consumed on mobile devices where you can hardly appreciate the qualities of a 50-megapixel camera. You probably can’t tell the difference between a 24- and 12-megapixel camera because of the relatively low image sizes that are uploaded and further compressed before viewing.

In other words, as long as an image looks good, most people won’t care about the megapixel count or even what camera it was taken with.

As far as video, which I will go into detail in a separate post, most cameras now shoot 4K 60 FPS, which will allow you to create some beautiful slow-motion footage. Using the Filmic Pro app, I have more control over my settings and have used footage shot from my phone mixed in with my a7S II footage.

The answer is basically yes, you can use your phone for travel photography.

Is The End Near For Professional Cameras?

Absolutely not. While I used this example to illustrate what you can do with a camera phone image (and not even the latest iPhone which is far better than the iPhone 7 camera), a lot of post-processing and artistic intent went into the final image. With the a7S II, I was able to shoot at a wider angle that I preferred (and even wider if I put on my 16-35mm lens). The built-in cameras are still limited in what focal lengths you can shoot with (although with all the triple and quad camera systems, that might change soon).

Mirrorless and DSLR cameras will, for the most part, still produce better images out of the camera than your phone, and allow you more flexibility with interchangeable lenses. For images with more shallow depth of field, the bokeh created digitally is currently not as good as the optical bokeh you get from different lenses. I will almost always shoot with my camera if I want to shoot portraits.

I also prefer the RAW images that come out of my cameras, which gives me more latitude to make fine adjustments. I’ve seen some amazing edits and composites from artists using JPEG images, so I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s just a little easier for me to have more data and detail to work with in my edit.

Ultimately, both my Sony (currently a7 III) camera and iPhone (currently XR) are tools, and I always process the images to create a final image that I envision and want to share. Learning your tools is the best way to get the most of your images and constantly relearning is the only way I’ve found to get better and not get stale.

These are all personal preferences, so how you look at it might be different, but it’s certainly interesting for me to see how far camera phone images have come since I first took a photo with my Sony Clie UX-50 PDA.

About the author: Kien Lam is an international photographer and filmmaker based in San Francisco. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. He runs whereandwander.com and believes in living for those moments that make the best stories, told or untold. He is working through his bucket list and wants to help others do the same. You can find more of his photos on Instagram. This article was also published here.

Read more about this at petapixel.com

https://coolarticlespinner.com/200-vs-4000-camera-is-your-phone-good-enough-for-travel-photography/

#equipment #iphone #iphone7 #iphonevs #phonevscamera #reviews #sony #sonya7sii #cameras

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years

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"Are You Right There Father Ted?" | Father Ted | Series 3 Episode 1 | Dead Parrot

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/are-you-right-there-father-ted-father-ted-series-3-episode-1-dead-parrot-9/

"Are You Right There Father Ted?" | Father Ted | Series 3 Episode 1 | Dead Parrot

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Miyagi now not ample day goes with the aid of after I do not take into account certainly one of his many words of knowledge kiddo we already spring from them the Maori sorry I do not know how to cuss in there and appear for our no Mary’s on calculator ring the message the first-rate of all of the chinese language men and women themselves seem at them there they usually create that bright a first-rate bunch of that so I feel it can be just all features of chinese culture thank you inquisitive about coming here well slide exhibit free drink very much appreciated thank you father certainly yes well I just wanted to clear matters off i am not a trend and the priest I will have to costume in black and go round telling men and women what to do whereas monks more drink at any place in the air would you adore a cup of tea oh no no thanks no i’ve a style of allergy to as you understand it’s very rare we’re beautiful critical if I drink tea there’s a 70% chance of loss of life you are making cope any approach that you could to change your intellect no thanks anyway to China hooray – cookie Islands hiya extra drink i’m sorry Tabasco how about every person comes back to my location for a drink wait I ought to go to the toilet first this joy we have yet do that stuff like sure and i mentioned so extremely good I’ve blown up in lower than an hour and there was this accretion yeah expensive father critic on the directions of a not too long ago deceased client father Seamus Fitzpatrick listed below are some gadgets which he precise you must have in the occasion of this death i will provide an explanation for the whole lot sincerely no I can’t hello sorry once more after which most importantly have you opened that reward but no looking forward to it although a year’s give of whiskey how very beneficiant sure the main issue there may be essentially you see there’s been a little bit of a metamorphosis of plan Oh you Oh you you

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airoasis · 5 years

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"Are You Right There Father Ted?" | Father Ted | Series 3 Episode 1 | Dead Parrot

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/are-you-right-there-father-ted-father-ted-series-3-episode-1-dead-parrot-9/

"Are You Right There Father Ted?" | Father Ted | Series 3 Episode 1 | Dead Parrot

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wineanddinosaur · 5 years

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More Headlines, Fewer Bottles: The Rise of Clickbait Scotch

On a Monday evening in late February 2019, a small group of New York-based writers went to Sotheby’s for a lavish dinner prepared by Chef Massimo Bottura, the famed maestro behind the world’s best restaurant, Osteria Francescana. This private event was ostensibly held to announce The Dalmore’s new, 49-year-old Scotch, L’Anima, which was packaged in a single bottle and would eventually fetch £108,000 at auction (approximately $139,500), to be donated to the chef’s non-profit organization, Food for Soul.

Really, though, if we’re being honest, this Scotch was created and that event held so the invited journalists would write about it — and dozens eventually did.

It seems like once a week some company releases a brand new, incredibly old, gorgeously packaged, hilariously rare, and extremely f*cking pricey whisky. How it tastes and whether someone actually buys and drinks the stuff is beside the point. Instead, brands are creating what essentially constitutes “clickbait Scotch” — products designed to generate headlines readers will click on, not actual spirits people will sip and savor.

“[It] helps break us out of the very focused whisky press, much more to lifestyle press, with a bit more of an interesting angle,” Claire Blackadder, The Dalmore’s global head of brand, says about these expensive releases. “We don’t want to just be a luxury whisky, we want to be a luxury brand, and act how other luxury brands act.”

So do quite a few other Scotch brands these days. In mid-April 2019, The Glenlivet released the third installment in its “Winchester Collection,” a 50-year-old single malt of which only 150 bottles were produced. They sold for $25,000 each.

To simply explain The Glenlivet Winchester Collection Vintage 1967’s packaging would be enough for you to write the entire lead to your article: The hand-blown, hand-engraved, and hand-painted glass bottles were designed in collaboration with award-winning British furniture designer Bethan Gray, who took her inspiration, according to the press release, “from the rolling hills that surround The Glenlivet distillery in Scotland.”

Do the buyers of these bottles actually drink them? Occasionally, I am told, but it hardly matters. Many speculate that these well-heeled buyers are more interested in converting liquid cash into literal liquid and, hey, if a brand gets a whole bunch of stories out of it, that’s great, too.

“The problem is: the people who will buy these are not buying whisky, they’re buying status,” Joshua Hatton, president and CEO of Single Cask Nation, posted to Facebook upon the release of The Macallan’s $53,000, 52 Year Old earlier this year.

The Macallan is today’s best-known producer of liquid-as-investment. The company was creating clickbait Scotch before there was an internet to click on. In 1986, and then 1993, it released two different 60-year-old bottlings that sold for around £15,000 each (about £26,400, or $34,200, by today’s standards).

The Macallan’s luxury releases didn’t really start gaining buzz until 2002, when it launched its Fine & Rare collection. By 2007 The Macallan 1926 was auctioned off for $54,000 — then the most expensive whisky ever sold and, thus, catnip for those writing headlines at all the blogs proliferating at the time. An arms race to be included in “Most Expensive Scotch” articles and listicles thus begun.

“I can actually look at this with some sort of perspective,” says Robin Robinson, author of the upcoming “The Complete Whiskey Course: A Comprehensive Tasting School in Ten Classes,” and not a fan of these luxury bottlings. “Say Macallan has some 50-year-old whisky. Prior to the current boom, they would just have taken that and blended it into a younger bottling, have it be part of their 18- or 25-Year-Old range, and that would be the end of it. No one was buying whisky back then anyway, so why would someone buy an old whisky? Now there’s a market.”

Over the last two decades, whisky got red hot. Companies were able to find customers for just about anything, no matter how absurdly it was priced.

Dalmore entered the fray in 2006 when it launched its own Rare & Prestige Range, which included a 40-year-old bottle marketed for £1,300. By 2010 the company was offering just three bottles of something called 64 Trinitas. The price? A whopping £100,000.

These Rare & Prestige releases were “not about breaking world records but about making the best whisky money can buy,” master distiller Richard Paterson claimed at the time. “Not every whisky distillery has these [old releases], and the ones that don’t have them get jealous and become bitchy at me,” he added.

Enough companies did have the stock for these old releases, however, and so the niche category continued to explode. Glenfiddich offered a 50 Year Old in 2013 for $26,000. The Glenlivet Winchester Series began in 2014 with a 1964 release for $25,000 (A headline: Glenlivet’s $25,000 Whisky That’s Actually a Bargain… Sort Of). Glenfarclas came out with the John Grant 60 Year Old in 2015 for $20,000. And Macallan continued to crank out flashy release after flashy releases, grabbing headlines a few times a year with yet another insane product.

That would seem to have culminated with last summer’s The Macallan 72 Years Old in Lalique, which cost $60,000 and was packaged “in a unique and bespoke crystal decanter and presentation case that are defined by the outstanding architectural complexity of our new brand home,” according to the press release (but, quite frankly, to me, looked impossible to pour).

“This is something they should be serving at Hudson Yards,” Robinson says, referring to Manhattan’s new, much-maligned, uber-luxury real estate development. “It’s just full of ridiculous glitz and more expensive than it really needs to be.”

The Macallan 72 Years Old in Lalique netted more than 10 pages of articles dedicated to it, according to a recent Google search.

Like Robinson, most whiskey drinkers I talk to seem to loathe these releases. Many think they are downright bad for an industry that has long struggled to shed it’s 1-percent-er label and attract more younger, middle-class drinkers.

“A 50-year old-whisky, I don’t care where it’s been, that’s not prime-condition whisky,” Robinson says. “So now marketing takes over. For these Lalique bottles, you’re paying as much for the bottle as the actual whisky inside it. Does it take a little bit of the heart and soul out of whisky? Yeah, it does.”

Alas, these luxury releases don’t show any sign of slowing down. Last year alone, Johnnie Walker released the John Walker Masters’ Edition for $25,000 a bottle, Highland Park offered a 50 Year Old for $15,000, and Balvenie released 12 total bottles of its 50 Year Old for $38,000 apiece.

Does it always have to be a cynical play, though?

Craigellachie seems to actually be using its latest clickbait release for a bit of good. Its 51 Year Old was not put in some crazy decanter, nor was it even offered for sale when it was released just this spring. Instead, the brand decided to give away complimentary drams of it at pop-up bars throughout the world, allowing many average folks to taste a luxury libation for the first time in their lives.

(Of course, that liquid largesse still netted plenty of headlines.)

If that’s what it takes to get a heritage spirit company some press these days, and if it will maybe teach beginners about the single malt category, I suppose that’s not the worst thing in the world. Maybe, in some convoluted way, these clickbait luxury offerings are actually how you do attract a more mainstream audience.

“I think there’s a lot of people that are still learning about malt whiskey and I think these luxury releases do help them navigate things a little more,” says Blackadder. She imagines such consumers might read a clickbait Scotch headline and think, ��‘Wow, they have these whiskies at amazing ages getting amazing press coverage. Maybe I should see if the rest of their range lives up to that.’”

The article More Headlines, Fewer Bottles: The Rise of Clickbait Scotch appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/single-malt-thirst-trap-is-a-curiosity-gap/

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kennethmontiveros · 5 years

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10 Creative Lead Gen Examples Sourced from Marketing Legends

Lead generation is the number one challenge for marketers today. And it’s only going to get harder now that most Google search results pages have become saturated with promotional lead magnets masquerading as “great” content.

There are millions of free resources out there already competing for attention. And customers are quickly catching on to the fact that most of these “Ultimate Guides to Dog Grooming” aren’t really worth giving up their personal information for.

Jessica Meher, VP of Marketing at Notarize, put it really well on Twitter:

So many #SaaS companies today produce the same content mktg formulas as they did 10 years ago.

E.g. ebooks on "the complete guide to X" or blog posts on "5 reasons why." etc.

This shit works, until it doesn't. Now's a good time to invent the new ebook. Get creative.

— Jessica Meher (@jessicameher) February 6, 2018

To stand out, you need more than quality content. You need to think outside the box. Try something a little bit different. Maybe even a little bit experimental.

For inspiration, we talked to some of the most legendary marketers working today and asked them to share their most creative lead gen examples. And believe me—some of these folks needed QUITE a bit of convincing to spill their most useful and interesting ideas.

But we got ‘em here for you: 10 unique examples lifted straight from the private swipe files and secret marketing playbooks of the pros. Use these ideas as inspiration for your next lead gen campaign. Or, just keep them handy for the next time you want to try something more interesting than creating another ebook or webinar.

Ready? Let’s get cooking.

Jump to a Creative Lead Gen Example

Create an Interactive Tool

Embed Your Lead Gen Forms in Videos

Interview a Third-Party Expert

Send Attention-Grabbing Direct Mail

Share a Customer Experience to Spark Brand Searches

Connect via Communities

Promote a Personalized Template

Look for Unique Cross-Promotion Opportunities

Start an Interesting Side Project

Publish a Surprising Quiz

If you’re creating a lead gen campaign, make sure you check out our professional landing page and popup templates. You’ll be able to optimize your page design to earn more conversions and qualified leads.

1. Create an Interactive Tool

There’s a good reason why so many brands—including HubSpot, Moz, and, yes, even Unbounce—have invested time and effort to create free tools. Tool-based marketing is popular because even simple interactive ideas can generate boatloads of qualified leads.

For example, Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey, says they developed a Free Keyword Tool for the Wordstream website. Marketers could use it to research and prioritize new keywords in just a few minutes.

And while developing an interactive tool might seem like a lot more work (you might need someone who knows how to code), Larry says they were able to generate a huge number of leads as a result.

Here’s how the tool works: you start out by entering a keyword or website URL that you’re interested in analyzing. To hone the results, you can also choose the industry and country you want to focus on.

What makes this tool particularly clever is the way it displays the results. Hit the “Search” button, and you’ll instantly be able to see some of the related keywords. But all the other information? It’s hidden, blurred out, or obscured in some way.

This smartly creates a curiosity gap for visitors, who feel like they’ve already started the process of doing research on their keyword. All they need to do is take one teeny-tiny extra step to get their results.

That final step? You gotta give up your email address.

Boom, lead generated.

This simple tool took just 3 months to build, yet has generated over a million email signups.

PRO TIP: Even a simple tool can be expensive to create. When considering your tool-based marketing idea, speak with a sample of your target audience first to see if they’d be interested.

2. Embed Your Lead Gen Forms in Videos

I believe it was old Billy Shakespeare who once wrote: “To gate or not to gate? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous website traffic, or ask for an email address against a sea of troubles…”

At some point, every marketer faces this dilemma. You have an amazing piece of content—now are you going to give it away for free as a way to attract organic traffic? Or do you gate the content and use it as a lead gen magnet?

Cara Hogan, Content Strategist for Zaius, considered these options and asked—why not both?

For their Marketing Unboxed series, Cara says they took a hybrid approach to gating each video. Rather than lock up their content entirely behind a lead gen form, they actually embedded forms into each video so they showed up as you watch.

We created the Marketing Unboxed video series as a top-of-funnel piece of content designed to engage our target audience of B2C and commerce marketers. By including a lead gen form within the video itself, we encourage people to subscribe, but we don’t require it.

The forms draw just the right amount of your attention, without being too distracting. It slides off the video if you move your mouse off the screen, but then pops back on whenever you come back. All in all, a very classy approach that Cara says has driven some serious results.

We’ve generated hundreds of net new leads from this video series so far. We’ve only published 10 total episodes, and older episodes continue to earn subscribers over time. Some of these subscribers have since been nurtured to become new Zaius customers.

3. Interview a Third-Party Expert

For many brands, consistent blogging is one of their main sources of lead generation. Every time you put out an article, it’s an opportunity for someone new to visit your site, discover your brand, and opt in for more communications.

And there’s nothing wrong with looking outside of your own organization and team for content, either. Stepping outside of your comfort zone and providing a fresh perspective can actually be a fantastic way to bring in new audiences.

Take, for example, this lead gen example brought to us by Aaron Orendorff, Content Strategist for iconiContent. To help Shopify Plus rank for some valuable keywords, such as “ecommerce replatforming,” Aaron interviewed a high-profile expert in the industry.

Aaron says it’s the quality of the interview that makes this lead gen example work.

Rather than a heavy-handed sales pitch, the piece is an interview with Paul Rogers—one of the brightest and most respected leaders in ecommerce … That objectivity—and framing the article as an honest conversation about a ‘dirty word’—is highlighted throughout.

But wait, how do you actually generate leads with an interview or blog post? Well, Aaron explained that they peppered the article with three separate lead gen CTAs (including an Unbounce popup) to present visitors with downloadable content upgrades, related to the topic of the interview.

Popups and sticky bars can turn any high-traffic page into a lead generator. Find out how you can use these targeted offers to drive more conversions.

4. Send Attention-Grabbing Direct Mail

Direct mail might seem like an old school marketing tactic, but that’s exactly what makes it so darned interesting for lead generation. Why not focus your efforts on a smaller customer segment, and put together packages that really get them to sit up and take notice?

Take, for example, these direct mailers that Hero Conf sent out to promote their PPC marketing conference. The event organizers took a pretty interesting approach to get the attention of marketers like Casie Gillette, Senior Director of Digital Marketing at KoMarketing:

Oh man. @heroconf this is one of the coolest pieces of direct mail I've ever received! Who knew video could be so amazing in such a small package? pic.twitter.com/aQnlV2y71G

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) January 31, 2019

Each piece of mail embedded a small video screen to show clips of the presenters who would be speaking at Hero Conf. And while these must have cost a fair bit more than a typical event brochure, Casie says the unique packaging really helped to win her over.

What got me was if you played the video to the end, they had a free ticket offer—you just had to respond to the email they had sent earlier … By placing the offer at the end, only those who watched the video all the way through would learn about the offer. A really cool way to grab attention.

5. Share a Customer Experience to Spark Brand Searches

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and keynote speaker, recently pointed out that most video testimonials are pretty dry. They’re usually just a lot of talking heads, with nervous customers babbling on about all the reasons why they like some marketing brand.

But there’s also a different type of video testimonial—one that actually tells the complete customer story. And although these can be harder to produce, they can also serve up a different type of indirect lead generation for your business.

As an example, Andrew suggests watching this video on YouTube that recently went viral: Vance’s Incredible 365-day Transformation. The video currently has over 31 million views and 50,000 comments on YouTube.

Unlike other video testimonials, this customer story is shot in real time. It’s compelling, it’s emotional—and it doesn’t have a single call to action.

Instead, Vance mentions throughout the video the diet and exercise program he is using to lose weight. The references start out subtle, but eventually become a main focus of the video. Andrew calls this an “implied CTA” that generates leads by inspiring viewers to take the next step.

A great testimonial video needs no call to action. It actually should create a moment that inspires people to do the next search … It doesn’t need a button, it just invites people who are so inspired to actually check out the next step of the product.

If you want to try this for yourself, all you need to do is start thinking about how you can frame your customer stories more like, well, stories. Connect with viewers on a personal or emotional level, and tease out the results so they get curious to learn more.

6. Connect via Communities

For freelancers, consultants, and smaller marketing agencies, you might have to take a slightly different approach to lead generation. While you can still build lists using your website and landing pages, a lot of your success will also come from word of mouth and social interactions.

For example, Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré, B2B SaaS Consultant, says their go-to lead generation strategy has been to build sincere connections with other people, in both online and offline marketing communities.

Being an active member of my favorite communities has lead to me receive leads from other members, because I’m demonstrating expertise in that domain.

Nichole says that being an active community member on websites like Growth Hackers has often lead to them becoming a part of the team, responsible for either community management or growth.

As you build relationships and demonstrate expertise, people will naturally start to think of you or your company for future opportunities. The key is to be genuinely helpful and selfless in your interactions, and to try to build actual friendships with other members of the community.

The thing is, ‘getting leads’ was never my end goal for any of these communities. I was just actively building relationships by bringing value to others.

7. Promote a Personalized Template

The right template on the right page can be a powerful tool for generating leads. That’s because visitors are willing to give up their personal information in exchange for something practical they can actually use.

But while traditional templates are usually just generic PDF downloads, Ross Simmonds, digital marketing strategist, says you can get better results by making a downloadable template that’s more personalized and interactive.

Almost every audience loves a template. If you can think about a simple template that arms your audience with the steps they need to take to solve a problem – it can be a great win. Even better; make it an interactive template that gives the user the ability to download it at the end.

As an example, Ross points towards this Free Privacy Policy Generator created by Shopify.

Privacy policies are one of those things that ecommerce business owners know they need, but probably don’t have time to create. And while Shopify could have given their visitors a sample policy or instructions on how to create their own, instead they decided to go above and beyond by building a personalized template generator.

The form you fill out to generate your privacy policy serves two purposes. Not only does it help personalize the template with your company info, but it also lets Shopify follow up meaningfully with every lead that uses the tool. How cool is that?

The template approach is interesting because there’s a true value exchange. If you’re offering a template that is closely aligned with your product or service it can be both a rewarding user experience and a rewarding lead generation tactic.

8. Look for Unique Cross-Promotion Opportunities

Cross-promotion isn’t a new idea, but it’s not something too many marketers think about strategically when it comes to lead generation.

The hard part, of course, is finding the right brand to partner with. If the other company is too similar, then your audiences might already be overlapped. If the other company isn’t similar enough, then you run the risk of promoting to people who just don’t care about your brand or products.

This is where a bit of outside-the-box thinking can come in handy. Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist at Moz, points to this particularly clever example of cross-promotion between Hydrate IV Bar and Live Love Lash:

Rather than partner with another health or fitness company for their cross-promotion, the marketers at Hydrate IV Bar decided to try a different strategy. They thought about different places where their target customers might be available to try an IV bar, and struck up a smart partnership based on that:

The Hydrate IV Bar team was brilliant in thinking outside the box for local lead gen! In what instances are people in a position of stillness/rest where they could also benefit from IV therapy? Lash extensions! This cross-marketing has done very well for both businesses and feels like an efficient use of time for their customers.

And the thing is, there are all sorts of unique cross-promotion opportunities available that marketers might miss. Let’s say you’re a running shoe company, for example. The obvious cross-promotion opportunity would be a sports store, right? But you could also partner with a gym or training facility, and target athletes in the places where they spend the most time.

9. Create an Interesting Side Project

Sometimes, the best leads can come from the projects that have very little to do with your actual business. If you dig into related topics, you can discover whole segments of customers who otherwise might not have been exposed to your brand or marketing.

And when it comes to side projects, Ryan Robinson is a self-described aficionado. Once, he launched a public challenge on his blog to validate a random business idea in under 30 days with only $500.

The project took up a lot of Ryan’s time for that month, even though it was something he was doing on the side. He figured it would just be an interesting way to educate readers on how to validate their business ideas, and perhaps bring in some new audiences to his blog. But he was surprised by the number of leads he was able to generate as a result.

I saw a sizable surge in traffic during my first week of the challenge. Throughout the course of the full month as I updated the challenge post, I picked up almost 3,000 new subscribers on my blog.

To take advantage of all these new leads, Ryan even built a new course based around his learning.

A couple months after the challenge wrapped up, I launched a course about validating ideas to that new audience … This new group of subscribers that tuned in and kept a close eye on my challenge were very qualified leads, and that course ended up generating over $15,000 in revenue during just the first week of open enrollment.

10. Publish a Surprising Quiz

Online quizzes have been around for years, but many marketers still haven’t discovered their potential for lead generation. They’re powerful because they’re so compelling—visitors actually have fun filling them out, and then get super curious about the results. (“Why yes, I do want to know which piece of IKEA furniture best represents my personality.”)

To find a creative quiz example, we went to the quizmaster herself, Chanti Zak. Chanti is a quiz funnel strategist and copywriter who specializes in creating quizzes for lead gen, and really brings a special flair to the quiz creation process.

As an example, she shared this saucy quiz she created to target entrepreneurs for Jenna Kutcher’s website.

The key to a great quiz? You’ve got to surprise and delight visitors with every click, so they stay engaged throughout the process. Throw them a couple curveballs along the way, and then hit ‘em with results that speak to their unique situation.

The results go deep into what uniquely positions you to create a successful business. The custom results meet people where they’re at and are intentionally designed to empower them to take action.

To attract the most leads, you’ll want to create a quiz that speaks directly to your brand and target market. For this example, Chanti created playful questions and answers that really get in the headspace of a budding entrepreneur.

And the strategy seems to have worked too, with this quiz alone generating over 100,000 leads.

When this interactive and personalized approach is the first impression someone has of your brand, your chances of converting them from onlooker to customer are exponentially higher than with a generic lead magnet.

Are You Ready to Take the Lead?

Of course, we’re only scratching the surface with these 10 ideas. There are all sorts of different ways to generate leads, including more tried and true methods. You could always host a webinar, offer a free ebook download, run a contest, or buy ads on social media.

Whatever you try, the most important thing to remember is that in order to generate qualified leads, you need to offer up quality content. Give those top-of-funnel leads something that’ll educate, entertain, inform, or inspire and soon you’ll be overwhelmed with too many leads. (#firstworldmarketingproblems)

Share in the comments below if you have another method of lead gen that works well for your business, or if you think there’s something we missed. The more ideas we can round up, the better!

10 Creative Lead Gen Examples Sourced from Marketing Legends published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

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