#look at you making me talk about my feelings on my silly media analysis blog

[yvtro]

op I am going fucking feral over "he can take on a tragedy, what about a tuesday?" thank you that is now being added to my charlie day conspiracy board meme jason todd edition

speaking as someone who is 19 and has been (figuratively in my case) dead inside for the past like five years I think jase should get to relearn how to be alive because I am doing that right now and shit slaps this fucker deserves to be happy! goddamn!

also in related news something I read once (in an analysis of superhero media in general lol): "it's about being /part/ of the world that you keep saving" and I thought you would find that interesting wrt jay meta

i've been thinking about this ask since yesterday. it's such an open-hearted message, so i will reply in kind, and tell you that the reason for which civilian jay and the general trope of him relearning how to live is very dear to me for basically the same one as yours.

interrupting my regular jayposting to go on a personal tangent (or a literature survey. or both.) but, around a year ago i came across this review of solnit's "orwell's roses," which contained this fragment (apologies if you have already seen it and to everyone else who did; i quote it all the time):

It strikes me, in this context, that one measure of maturity might be attaining an awareness that there can be no genuine devotion to fighting the forces that unworld the world without genuine devotion to the littlest manifestations of beauty that make this planet a world and this existence a life.

i'm not a part of any bigger effort to change the world, but then also didion's speech comes to mind:

I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.

and then i also got to rereading some authors i used to be obsessed in high school with (lots of existentialist; a very typical adolescent phase i believe, so revisiting it felt a bit regressive), and i got into a space of mind very similar to what you describe. i think you really need to learn how to appreciate small things, or just even see small things, else there's nothing you can do.

and i like to project this quest onto jay, because it fits. it's about being /part/ of the world that you keep saving. you are so right. i'm just telling you to live in it.

thank you so much for sharing <3 i wish i had such a mature outlook on it when i was 19, you're also beating jay to the ground with it. i apparently needed years reading and rereading the same books to learn it. nevertheless, let's do our best.

#look at you making me talk about my feelings on my silly media analysis blog #*starts talking about my emotional state with 2 degrees of abstraction instead of 7* #but i'm very happy that what i say resonates with people sometimes #also i have a whole tag ab this on my main (@jutrzenko btw) called living for beginners.. #answered

[sixamese-simblr]

Reviewing the Black Friday musical by Starkid because I feel like it

I know that the shared audience for this and my blog is probably close to zero but I feel like sharing my thoughts. I've been binging Team Starkid musicals the past few weeks, and because Black Friday is both clearly higher budget and simultaneously not as strong as the preceding ones, Firebringer and The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, I feel like I need to get my thoughts out.

Spoilers will be unmarked.

Black Friday is a musical about an eldritch entity called Wiggly trying to get a foothold in our realm, and doing so in the most American way possible: selling merch of itself.

So far, love the premise. There are two main issues I have with the show: while the show is correct in its message, it spends too much time with characters spelling the message out to the audience, and the tone is too bleak to really work.

My first gripe is arguably the smaller one. The musical's central conceit is that all the adult characters have "holes", emptiness in their lives they seek to fill with products. Among the media I've seen dealing with consumerism it is the most spot-on with its analysis. Most anti-consumerist media says "products don't make you truly happy" but doesn't stop to ask why people turn to products. Black Friday acknowledges that they do so because products are the only thing that's reliable in American society with so much economic insecurity, no social safety net and a political system that cannot be counted on to change anything. While the analysis is spot-on, the musical has not one but two characters (Uncle Wiley and Lex) talk basically at the audience for several minutes to explain this, and once more in song form (Made in America). It just feels preachy and takes away from the interpretation of the musical as a text by providing the author's intended reading. It also takes away from Wiggly as an eldritch entity - it makes Wiggly just a little too concrete to work.

My bigger gripe is the tone of the musical - it's a really bleak and serious tone. While I respect the turn into a more serious path, it's just not done particularly well, because the chosen tone conflicts with the medium. One of the major conceits of musical theater is that when the emotions get strong, they get expressed through song. The main protagonists, however, only feel gloom: they are a teenage toy store employee who wants to get away from her deadbeat mom, a dad who lost his wife last year and a nurse who killed her abusive husband. However, gloom is not a particularly great emotion to sing about. This makes most of the songs not really stick. The main standout song for me is the opening jingle which instead expresses a manufactured corporate cheeriness - a great choice! Corporate positivity is already an inherently inhuman emotion and is a great fit for an eldritch entity! The entire musical starts with the characters having deep life problems and ends with the implication that they die in a nuclear blast. The emotional ups and downs are not pronounced enough. I wish they kept up the faux cheeriness more to contrast with the dreariness of the characters. I feel it could be done to really unsettling effect, although that could rended the musical a little too similar to The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals. Then again, it fits with the inherently silly premise of an evil plushie. One song that I feel particularly drops the ball is Wiggle, the villain song near the end by the members of the Wiggly cult that has formed in the mall. It's the climax of the musical, and it just doesn't capture the religious extacy that it attempts to get to.

To round off with my positive remarks on the musical: Linda, Wiggly's prophetess and cult leader, is an absolute delight. We support women's wrongs in this house.

It also has one of the coolest on-stage practical effects I've ever seen. Throughout the musical, we get a sense of what Wiggly look like through his depiction as the dolls:

However, halfway through the second act we finally meet Wiggly in person, using two lights for eyes and the Christmas decorations that have been there the whole time for tentacles to genuinely great effect:

It gives such a great sense of an otherworldly creature lurking in the shadows, not quite clear enough to make out, but through the magic of pareidolia and the fact that we've seen the stuffed Wigglies and know what he's supposed to look like he's clearly visible. It's such a great way to evoke the presence of a larger-than-life eldritch monster live on stage.

#ramblings #nonsims #black friday #hatchetverse #review

[dangerous-advantage]

(yagi-no-eda here~)

Totally would circle back /pos. I’m also pretty new to the fandom!

My wife has liked Usagi Yojimbo and associated stuff for years but it’s only this summer that my brain has allowed me to really get into it, and make it past the first 2-3 comics. Not for lack of trying - it was just never the right time in an ADHD way*. Something always would distract me. I’ve inhaled all the comics I can in just the last couple of months and yeah, Stan came at me with a steel chair too. I did not expect …this whole situation. I’ve been a fandom lurker since 1999 and yet suddenly I have blog I use near daily, a sketchbook, and bunch of fic WIPS...

Mainly because I am Unwell over UY.

I have accepted my fate. This is always going to be a Thing now.

Though I did admittedly also inhale TMNT 2003 and Rise.

Travels with Jotaro is one of my favourite volumes, but I’m also weirdly into Bridge of Death rn and just….in general having a moment over Usagi’s time with Mifune. To the point I’m doodling intros for a fake show called The Mifune Years. He had this whole expected future and friends - denied.

* to be fair this is also the summer I found out its def ADHD driving this media analysis machine I call a brain

Hope this was an okay way to get back to you! /lil anxious

Feel free to network (or share thoughts) in my tags anytime, I love hearing what other people think. Also happy to chat anytime. Or feel free to tell me to back off and that's chill too :)

(been waiting to answer this for when i had more time but gave in; should be working on my fic(s) but you know how it is lmao. stay tuned for a very long post, because i love talking about things with people, especially things i like haha

very cool to see another person very passionate about this series! i grew up on 2003 (and the 90's movies-- my parents had the third one on cassette and i remember i wore that fucker out lmao) but it was always more of a "scattered interest" rather than something i was fully pulled into

i started getting into rise (read: The Algorithm came for me) probably mid-July of last year, but didn't fully fall into it until after the movie came out. it renewed my interest in tmnt overall, and i've been here ever since!

i did attempt to watch the usagi chronicles a couple of times, and i remember thinking they were fun but not really my thing. (i definitely want to revisit it, even though i know it won't hold a candle to usagi yojimbo. it does look fun in a silly way, which i can get behind.)

i knew vaguely about how big usagi yojimbo was, and that it was a commitment, but i'm surprised how quickly it sucked me in. i've never been super interested in stuff within the genre, but damn if it doesn't satisfy the autism. entire chapters devoted to infodumping about the edo period of japan? sign me the fuck up!

i especially did not expect how much it would make me feel. like. wow. ouch. usagi is just Some Guy but he is also so well characterized and you really feel for his internal conflict, 10/10.

i've been looking for series with older protagonists, especially those more focused on the familial/platonic aspect rather than romantic (i am just an nd queer on the interweb, can you blame me for yearning for found family?), but hadn't found any i really liked other than the tarot sequence by kd edwards (very good read, would highly recommend.)

also not to be a nerd but ohhhh my god i am so obsessed with the plot with mifune.

like i know the series takes place after that, and after the fallout of that, but just. wow. imagine devoting your entire being to another, to the point where you would readily die for them and their word, and then they die. they die, and you did everything you could to honor them in that death, but they're still gone.

like... that emptiness stays with you. you don't just get over that. maybe it's the "being raised in a cult" but wow, do i empathize with that.

idk if we explore more about the fallout/exact history with mifune/immediately following mifune's death but there is so much writing potential there. if i was not embroiled within turtle hell and 50,000 words deep in a multi-chapter fic already, i would absolutely write something for it.

like. this is adjacent to your interest in the topic, but can you just imagine (/rhetorical /general you.) as far as we know, he spent five days on the battlefield before he made it out to the tangled skein.

(which is one of my favorite additions like good god holy shit. that is so cool and angsty. your lord, days after dying, appears as a fucking ghost and saves you. like, if i were to be silly and funky, i would absolutely headcanon that as the reason that he was able to stand up and continue on. because i mean... what else? what else could motivate you to stand up once more after something like that?)

(well. honor. but mifune is the physical manifestation of honor in the narrative, so same difference? it's like both thematically significant and emotionally significant and-- ok im shutting up now. but i could talk for days, istg.)

but like. how do you reconstruct yourself from that? we see him holding tight to this sense of honor, even after his lord is gone, sent reeling (adrift in the waves) with only his soul and moral compass to hold to.

which makes it hurt so much more when we see these ideals of honor-- this ghost of a man, of a life, still haunting him years after the event-- still woven through the narrative, made to specifically conflict his deepest wants.

i joke about it a lot on my fic discord (i have a whole channel called 'father-material' devoted to just pictures of him hanging out with/taking care of kids), but something that seems very important to him is wanting to be a father figure, and wanting these connections to family and friends.

but that is contrasted against these ideas of honor, the very thing he built and rebuilt his foundation off of after it was torn away from him. and it's just so incredibly painful but also it makes sense, because he can't just give up the side of himself that is a samurai. too much of his person, his characterization, is built off of this.

to see it constantly clash with this want to settle down and finally rest, devote himself to his relationships/family rather than the code of bushido-- the very essence of honor itself-- ourgh ourgh ourgh its so good

(put aside the fact that he once said he could never serve another lord, and we know from the story that the idea of a "lord" can be more than just a person... he never stopped serving mifune, not truly. he still upholds the ideas of honor that mifune stood for/represented. as if his lord never truly left him.)

...i was going to say more, but then i realized this turned into a whole-ass mini-analysis, so i'm forcing myself to stfu. but basically: i have feelings about this series, man (/gender neutral).

anyway. if you ever do put something together, i would love to read/follow it! if i ever wrote something, it would probably be exploring the direct fallout of losing mifune, so hey, different niches but similar (:

also: never be anxious about talking to me ever in any way possible. i will probably be even more annoying than you in tags/asks/everything under the sun, and i do genuinely love talking to people who share my interests (typically about those interests.) i like to pretend i am an internet Cool Guy, however, it is a flimsy veneer to hide all the cringefail swaglessness and unending mental illness about my blorbos

(...i am so tempted to just invite you to my og turtle discord server so i can annoy you about usagi on the regular. also about what my reimagining of yuichi would be, because i have so, so many ideas.

i will refrain, but if you would be interested, it has been kinda dead as of late, so it would be nice to enrich the ecosystem a little by slowly collecting other usagi-interested individuals and slowly taking it over, one by one (/j /lh).)

anyway, same thing goes for me with my posts/asks/reblogs/messages/whatever. i am so very earnest, so if that puts you off, that's very chill and fine. however, as long as you're down to vibe, i am similarly down to vibe >:D

i once more apologize for this monstrosity of a reply. i would say it won't happen again, but my reading comprehension apparently does not extend to the "all things in moderation" maxim. instead i choose maximalism (to the max)

(sorry for that joke. yeah that will also happen again. sorry. /lh /pos)

#confessionals #i love my moots #many-wings #@many-wings #usagi yojimbo #uy #miyamoto usagi #long post #tw long post #thank you for the ask!! #i could talk about this stuff forever haha #also congrats on the realization/diagnosis!! #(: #i hope this was all coherent #(i am a bit mentally unwell about this series if you somehow couldn't tell /lh) #you do not know how much i have wanted to scream about this to someone. you *do not know.* /pos #i love all my moots but they are not aware of how much space uy takes up in my brain constantly all the time #usagi yojimbo analysis #miyamoto usagi analysis #(feel like i should tag it as that haha) #i know i know i know i should be working on 'it was futile' but this has inspired me to do that quick uy analysis post i was thinking about #so look out for that (usagi be upon ye) #oh hey that's a good uy tag. mine now #usagi be upon ye #also you reminded me i wanted to make an uy sideblog. i never make side blogs but very few of my moots are into uy as well #so i might as well contain it elsewhere /lh #the name i wanted is gone but it's fine i can work with it

[neurotic--erotic]

rambling about stuff and things (hi again)

hi, it's neo!!! long time no see, i missed it here :D this is gonna be a long text post and i'm just going to be talking a lot and reflecting on this whole blog. it's just a lot of personal feelings and life and other boring stuff. not sure if it's going to reach anyone and it probably won't be interesting, i've just been feeling very sentimental recently and wanted to talk about shit.

i know i've kind of just abandoned this blog and im really sorry. everything on this blog is representative of a period of my life that i look back on with nothing but fondness and joy, and im genuinely kind of sad it has passed.

i think when i started this blog i must have been 15 or 16, im 18 now and im in college :D i haven't updated here since my junior year i believe, but i have logged in occasionally since then, whenever i remember to, and it really warms my heart to see people continuing to find my stuff buried in the recesses of 2021-22 - if a little guilty as well for not being around as much but really i'm just very grateful. i've always been really socially inhibited and afraid to insert myself into online circles. this silly little blog was honestly a step forward for me because i always keep my hyperfixations to myself for the most part. i never really engaged with this community on a deep level besides putting my silly posts out into the ether, but it was still a very new thing for me to make myself seen, especially to share things that i made, and it meant so much to me to receive such positive feedback on it once i did.

sometimes i really hate my hyperfixation style. i fall so hard in love with something, i center my whole life around it, it basically becomes a part of my identity, but all of a sudden it no longer brings me that same rapturous joy. it gets kind of awkward when i've centered my entire blog around one thing, i've made myself known for being solely dedicated to that thing, and i just don't know what to do once i lose interest. it's hard for me to fake that passion, but i have no idea how to shift gears at that point, so i just kind of disappear. i more recently made a new blog and this same pattern kinda happened again with a more recent media hyperfixation. i don't know what it is about that piece of media, because a few months ago i was completely enraptured in it but at this point it feels so strangely far away that the thought of it almost repulses me somehow? i can't figure out why i fell so hard out of love with it, but i guess that's not the point. i was just thinking about that because it's so different from my experience with this blog.

i still love will wood, probably always will, i still consider ww/wwatt to be my favorite artist of all time if not just really high up there. i don't believe any other singular artist has had so much of an impact on me, and i'm so grateful for everything. that's another reason why it's kinda sad that i don't have the same amount of hyperfixation energy about ww; back then i fully understood how masterful and special this music is and the amount of passion i had for it, to fully immersing myself and to understanding everything about it that i loved so much, reflected the level of awe and excitement i thought it deserved. part of me thinks the right way to experience and appreciate music should be just like that, at least for me, and i wish i had that much passion about things more often. this might just be my special interest bias but i think music-related hyperfixation is so amazing, because so much goes into music as an art form that deserves to be appreciated to the fullest extent. my expressions of love most often tended to center around lyrics and lyrical analysis, as i think you can see on this blog, but i was also passionate about things like the musical composition, instrumentation, and behind the scenes stuff, just absolutely everything that went into it. i've always loved music, but this hyperfixation really taught me to like, LOVE music for the first time. i really look at music in a whole different way because of ww. i have so much appreciation for musical artists and the art of creating music.

of course, a part of it was the parasociality as well, i've always thought it was important to be honest with myself about that aspect of musical hyperfixation and to be careful to handle it appropriately and respectfully. i relate it to musical hyperfixation in specific because for me a considerable amount of hyperfixating on music extends past the music itself and ends up including the artist. ww's music was utterly fascinating and i became fascinated by the mind and talent that created it. that's another way it's changed the way i look at music; artists are so often just as interesting as their art, often because of the way their ideas, values, experiences, and character translate into artistic expressions that seem so much grander in scale than just one person. i wanted to better understand the music because a big part of why it appealed to me was that i felt that it understood me. i think it's that i felt such a personal connection to the ideas being expressed and the way they were expressed, i wanted to be able to express myself similarly but i couldn't, so i settled for gathering an encyclopedic wealth of knowledge about every aspect that shaped the music into the form it was presented to me, and that included understanding the artist. i developed this fascination with the way that any piece of art that anyone creates is inherently affected by the person that makes it, the time and place they make it, the mindset of the person and the experiences that shaped their mindset. even unconsciously or abstractly, when we make art we answer to an internal need to say something or give something form. i have a very analytical brain and i feel i often need to fit things together like puzzle pieces so that they make logical sense in my brain, but that logical approach was a way i used to bring myself closer to the music.

i really did (obviously still do) have so much respect for will wood, i regarded him as extremely talented in so many ways that i wished i could be, and i felt deeply thankful that he exists and that he put his art into the world. (all of these r still true of course.) every time i made something to post on here or infodumped about his music or something, i was expressing my gratitude towards him but directed it elsewhere. i think i was interested and fascinated by him as a person but above all else i was grateful. and it was weird to feel that amount of gratefulness towards a human being that i had never met and did not know i exist. i mean i'd had short-term parasocial fixations on people before, including specific musical artists, but probably the reason my ww fixation lasted so long and had such an impact on me was because of the amount of connection i felt to the music, like it 'saved me' in a way (cliche i know), and like it was destiny that i found it.

i guess i'll talk about that too. i think i must have discovered will wood and the tapeworms in 2019 (i remember it was my freshman year of high school), when spotify randomly showed me self-ish as a recommended album. i'd never heard of it in my life. i listened to it for the album art alone, and whenever i tell this story i need to stress how rare that is for me to do. i've never been the type to jump into an album i've never heard anything about or to be instantly fascinated by an artist. again, if i had a stronger belief in the concept of destiny, i'd point to this instance, but although i say so in a generally playful way, i really can't express how happy i am that this happened. i became obsessed with the album. i found it during a transitionary period of my life that was chaotic and often very stressful, and i fell back very heavily on all sorts of music, among which i came to consider self-ish part of this heavy rotation.

from there i eventually listened to everything is a lot, probably around 2020, and the normal album later that year. i really cant remember precisely when it transformed from a favorite artist to an all-consuming hyperfixation, but it was definitely within The Timeframe. you know the one the 2020 one. i got more and more into analyzing his songs and concurrently started watching interviews and stuff and becoming fixated on his public persona as well. there was a good period of time i would talk about it nonstop, and i started this blog in the middle of that, which is definitely very evident. late 2020 through 2022 were the golden years so to speak, but especially 2021.

i shared his music with my dad. we bonded over it a lot. it was really meaningful to me because i don't typically share my interests with him, and there have been occasions where he has been unreceptive or critical of them, but often we connect over music. i was so happy that he understood how fascinating i considered it and engaged with me in conversation about it. i have such fond memories relating to this, especially when we were on car rides together and we'd end up blasting the song with five names on full volume (ow, but fun lol).

in november 2021 my dad and i got to see ww in concert. he was offering like a vip front row q&a thing for that concert and my dad got those for us, i still cant believe that it makes me so happy thinking about it. took some really awkward pictures standing like 2 feet away from will and looking like i was about to explode, got a cd signed, cried during most of the performance, ended up getting a migraine from the spotlights and having to go outside for some of it, and it was the best fucking night of my life. i'll never forget how kind he was as well, because i was so nervous and awkward and lowkey panicking the whole time, i hope it didn't make him uncomfortable but he was so respectful and sweet and it meant so much to me. it was such a great experience. will is such a great person and i love my dad so much.

i guess after in case i make it i ended up moving on to other things, but in all honesty by that point i had lost a little bit of the passion already. i was still hyperfixated but at certain points i felt like i was faking it a little just because i didn't want to lose the happiness it'd given me for years at that point. again that's kind of just the cyclical nature of my fixated interests, at a certain point the adrenaline hit sadly starts to wear off. but i think because of this waning hyperfixation i experienced the album slightly differently than the previous few. for starters, i cried a lot. i think i wasn't so hyperfocused on analyzing the lyrics and dissecting every element, which was also largely because of how intimately emotional that album is, and instead i experienced it in a very sentimental and emotional way for the most part. i've been revisiting it a lot lately, it really has a special place in my heart. maybe it's the transition i've made as i've entered college that drew me back to the bittersweetness of ww's indefinite signing off in the form of solo music; in opposition to the chaos and passion that led me to this point, i've found myself in a place where it's often lonesome, reflective, and internal. i sometimes feel like i don't have as much time to be swept up in the world outside of myself, because i've just been trying to find my own place in the world. i think a lot about the future and what kind of person i am going to become. at times i feel like i've been distracted from the value of the things around me and out of touch with myself. i don't know. it's something of a comfort album, but it puts me in a very sensitive mood.

anyway, yeah. all this to say that i'm not hyperfixated on will wood anymore but he, his music, and all the memories i have attached to them will always have a very special place in my heart. i know i was never a big part of this fan community but i really can't express how much fun i had being here. again, i don't know who will see this and i'm sorry i stopped checking in, but i'm just so happy i existed in this space for a little while.

actually, i found a little something in my drafts that i never ended up publishing so.. maybe.. maybe content? :] maybe? just a little thing because like making graphics and posting song lyrics was so much fun and i just don't have the motivation to anymore and i miss doing it </3

i feel like i've said this a million times but thank you. like if ur seeing this ur so cool, even if you didn't read any of this and just scrolled to the bottom i'm so happy you're here. i guess we'll see what the future holds for this blog, which is to say i have no idea if i'll ever get around to posting anything and if i do i'm not really sure what it would be. besides the one draft that i want to see if i can finish up for funsies so i hope i can post that at least!!!

alright i can't believe i sat down for like 4 hrs and banged this whole thing out i'm in such a silly goofy mood rn. thank you for the last time. love you

#not content #neo fucking rambling/infodumping for 5 hours check

[rockore]

Welcome, welcome!

Hello! Looks like we got ourselves a visitor!

Welcome to the blog ever (a.k.a, my blog) right here!! I'm going to be the host for this entire blog. What's my name? Oh silly me, I forgot to introduce myself!!

About the admin

The name's Rocko!! You can also call me Cinn, Core, Mac or whatever comes up with your jumbling brain!!!

Do note that I go by he/they (and neos, feel free to ask!)

I am a huge 90s-2000s cartoons enthusiast so I'd be glad to talk Abt em!! I'm mainly interested in 90s-2000s nick/cn cartoons

What is this blog about?

Well, I'm glad you ask!! This is a blog where I mainly reblog stuff, (mainly Abt cartoons. If not, then either art I rlly love or really important stuff).

Other then that, I also post art of my very own and maybe rambles sometimes! I also love making analysis on medias I find interesting. I'm also a sucker for 2000s media aswell, they interest me a lot.

DNI:

Basic DNI crit, l0lic0ns/sh0tas, /p3d0s/z00s, nsfw accs, pr0sh1tters, worshipped x worshipper shippers (this one's on VERY thin ice) s3lfc3st shippers, or if you're very problematic in general.

BYF: (READ IT VERY THOROUGHLY)

I am a minor and please take not of that!! No weird shit is tolerated here.

I uhm. Cuss so if you're uncomfortable w that, I suggest you leave.

I have social anxiety, so although dms are open I might respond late

Multifandom, so if you're following for one thing maybe prepare yourselves for other stuff aswell.

USE TONETAGS WHEN INTERACTING W ME!!!! I tend to find it hard understanding certain sentences if it isn't too specific. Using tonetags will help a lot!

I often mistype and spam letters/talk in caps. Welp, if you cant handle these im sorry lol

Well just don't be weird alrighy

Andd that's the end!!

For more info (such as my other interests and such) feel free to refer here

#pinned post #yah looking for moots basically #sigh idk if ishould tag #cn #2000s cartoon network #2000s nickelodeon #ok ehm #yeah i love camp lazlo a lot if you coukd tell

[swordsovereign]

𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐅𝐎𝐍 of 𝘎𝘙𝘈𝘕𝘉𝘓𝘜𝘌 𝘍𝘈𝘕𝘛𝘈𝘚𝘠 by percival (he/him, 30+)

⎛ journal entry ₁ bonds ₂ possibilities ₃ meta analysis ₄ ⎠

𝚊 𝚜𝚝𝚞𝚍𝚢 𝚒𝚗 [ . . . ] the hero's journey. the value of life. finding another way. facing your demons. carrying the burden of the skies. a power the corrupts and cures. it's lonely at the top. gazing at the stars.

⎛ affiliated with [ . . . ] tba. ⎠

𝐨𝐧𝐞. #SWORDSOVEREIGN is an independent, private, highly selective and mutuals exclusive writing blog for seofon of granblue fantasy.

i am 30+ and for my comfort, this blog is 18+. please do not follow me if you are under 18!

on this note, this blog will feature dark and triggering themes. seofon acts silly but he also has a lot of things going on and none of them are that happy. i will make sure to tag these things with the format of #trigger so that they can be filtered out!

𝐭𝐰𝐨. shipping is not the priority here- but seofon isn't against romance at all! he just has a habit of opening his mouth and inserting his foot.

if shipping happens, it will require a LOT of plotting and will not be with any mun or muse under the age of 21.

i am very open to other sorts of bonds, though! because it isn't just romance when people talk about ships!

i should also note that i will accept mains and exclusives!

𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞. i am known for writing metas across the blogs i have. in the wise words of a friend:

with this in mind, the metas i write are portrayal specific to this blog, so please give them a read! i know i can be rather wordy- anyone who has followed me elsewhere may know this, but for my first time followers, worldbuilding is one of my favorite things to do. i am particularly fond of analysis of character psychology.

𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞. to the point above, i do have other blogs. i am in and out of other fandoms, but i am trying to focus on a smaller group of things for my own sanity.

and by this, i mean i work 32-40 hours as a registered nurse in an inpatient psychiatric unit. i am busy, i am tired, and i can't keep letting my focus go all over the place. inevitably, it still may do that because i have a tendency to be scattered, so if i don't get to something immediately, it isn't you, it's me!

also related to that, i do love communication! i struggle with reading the room (it's the Autism tm) and so if something's up or if you're bothered, please be direct with me! i will not take offense, i quite appreciate feedback so that i can be better as a person! in return, i will communicate back! i am learning to curate my space (after 10+ years of being on tumblr).

𝐬𝐢𝐱. there are people i won't interact with due to various reasons. i won't interact with genderbent versions of characters, people who are Real Life Individuals (not counting fictional depictions like in the typemoon franchise or whatnot because those really have nothing to do with the actual individual they're supposedly based on?).

please stay far away from me if you fall under the following categories (i'm censoring things because god knows tumblr just picks shit up idk): proshipping, writing inc*st, p*dophilia, r*pe/n*ncon, are transphobic/homophobic- the usual gross behavior! use your moral compass!

on top of that, i am a firm believer that we learn from the media around us. full censorship is just as dangerous as the aforementioned things- the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows! please refer to this post which essentially summarizes the gist of what i'm trying to explain.

𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧. anyway, hello, i'm percival / percy, i am 30+ and use he/him pronouns exclusively! i am a hobby artist (it's my side-gig from nursing) and sometimes i post my art, tagged #whats my art tag considering i constantly forget my art tag if it's fancy. please do not repost my art without my permission.

mutuals, feel free to ask me for my discord, since i am much easier to reach there!

i look forward to writing with you!

[hopelesslyinlovegirl]

Being pursued feels unnatural

It´s a new day. And, now, a new subplot of my life opens as i try to cope with the complexity of being an adult, once again.

I´ve started talking with a man. Romantically. Once again.

It´s 12 am. I have an economics exam tomorrow. I didn´t have dinner.

But i feel that i cannot continue with life if I don´t express myself in some way. I think I might die.

Unlike my other talking stages that i´ve been on, this one feels surprisingly natural. He replied one of my tweets, dmed me and like that we´ve been going on with our small talk. Just getting to know eachother questions.

I cannot provide a full on analysis unlike my other works displayed on my blog due to the recentness of the events that i´m expressing. If, by any circumstance, you are a follower, and that was your favorite part of my texts, I deeply apologize. This writer is, by all means, consumed by university and the pressure of an upper education and she merely writes as a hobby when she feels like it.

Back on track on what I was saying, I must say that there is a question that remains and disrupts my studying. How long will this last? How long until he gets tired and decides to ghost me? Will this be good or will this be bad?

When I got to know he is a fan of my football club´s classic rival, I jokingly told him that i don´t mess with fans of my classic rival. He, then, declared that I would have to shut it, because he would make me fall in love with him.

Although I highly doubt it due to my past experiences of love (that, if you´ve been following the plot of my life long enough in this blog, you will get it) I still reflect on that single message.

A man out there stated that they would make me fall in love with him. That, in more archaic words that i love, he would like to court me.

In all seriousness, I find it somewhat silly. Not because courting is silly by itself, but because my brain cannot compehend that someone may want to court ME. Me, of all the people.

I am not the type that gets approched. I am not the type that gets male attention, nor do I even try to get it because of the absolute loss of time it signifies for me. No one will try to text me the next morning. What´s the point of it?

And now, the only way my brain copes with all of this information, is by assuming that eventually he will stop, and won´t be interested in pursuing me. I can fanthom many reasons why. And one of them is: I am not pretty enough.

This also aligns with my recent body dysmorfia that has surprisingly consummed me. I never cared a lot about how I look like but, now I do. Thoughts like "I am not pretty. Look to all of those pretty girls there in social media. I am not like them" overwhelms me when I try to post a picture. Try, because in the end i do not do it. People will make fun of me.In all seriousness that problem deserves it´s own text, that I will get to you... soon.

But for now, I will leave you with my most recent thought.

What ifs always kill me. In all ways, at all times. But there is one what if that keeps me going all around, giggling, kicking the air, mantaining the little life that still resides in my body.

"What if this works out?"

[hxdrostorm]

@shuuhuu​ has sent: Send  🐶 for a role play related pet peeve. Send 🔍 for something you look for on other’s blogs Send 😊 for likable quality for a role play mun to have

munday no-no and yes-yes list [Accepting]

🐶 for a role play related pet peeve.

// In my old fandom, I used to assosciate myself with someone who thought a little too highly of themselves over the type of their threads, “deep analysis” of the canon and “critical consumption” of the source material. It took me awhile to realise just how plain silly and stupid, they were being. “I’m not like other fans, because I don’t enjoy the popular ships/plots/etc.” this could sum them up 90% of them and their blog’s content.

I don’t think I have to explain why or even how, stupid this mentality is in any fandom, right? The problem isn’t with analysing a source material, in search of some possible different interpretation or something like that. The problem lies when the person starts getting an inflated ego, because of their “essays” and they think, they can look down upon everyone else who isn’t immediately on board with them. And unfortunately, I’ve often stumbled upon this sort of behavior, in every RPC I’ve been in.

Ever since I became aware of this, I’ve been trying to avoid people who act like that. Because honestly? They are just Karens, who want to get their asses patted for their “deep & profound content”, while shitting on anyone else who happens to disagree or don’t find any entertainment out of their things. Those are the same people who try to push the idea that, there’s a “right” way to consume a media. When...That’s not really a thing? It is this kind of mentality, that creates a super toxic and restrictive community. There’s no right or wrong way to enjoy a media, but there’s a very negative way to engage with a community. And the moment you start rattling out other people, go out of your way to shame people for what they enjoy (make them feel lesser of a fan), that’s when I lose respect for someone.

Send 🔍 for something you look for on other’s blogs

// This is specifically for Star wars blogs. As someone who enjoys cloneshipping content, I try my best to search for people who either don’t mind it or share my interest in it. Unfortunately, I’ve had a few very bad run-ins with people who attacked me, when they learned I enjoyed that sort of shipping (one time was because of it. Another one, was because someone INFERRED I was talking about it in a HC post... When I really wasn’t.).

I get not liking cloneshipping, I understand it and will obviously respect someone’s wishes, of not wanting to engage with it (or even assosciate themselves with someone who likes it). HOWEVER, people lose their right to complain, when they attack or vague about someone over it.

Send 😊 for likable quality for a role play mun to have

// Patience! I’m very thankful and happy that so far, my RPing partners have been super understanding of me needing to space out the time between replies. I get being excited and hyped for an interaction or thread, BUT considering the length of the replies I tend to pump out can be quite long... I really need to take my time with those, otherwise I’ll end up overwhelmed and it will affect my writing’s quality.

This is why I queue up the majority of my replies, and the majority of the ones I get to “faster” are on Discord (simply because there’s no such thing as queueing up a message there).

#ooc / #shuuhuu #thank you for the ask!

[murdereraisuha]

I wrote this for myself to try and organize my current theories on TWST, but I might as well keep this blog going even though I’m out of ideas for card maker memes.

This is basically a rant that starts out with theorizing about RSA, the Cater=Cinderella theory, and Split Card, but then spirals into a Cater character analysis.

For anyone who doesn’t know the Cinderella theory, it’s basically just Cater might have something to do with Cinderella because he has two bossy sisters, and during the ghost marriage there was this whole thing where Riddle needs to rescue Cater before midnight because of some Queen of Hearts rule. 

Spoilers for Cater’s personal stories (including his halloween outfit story) and chat, and chapter 4 of the main story. Okay now let’s get into it. Over 1,800 words geez what am I doing with my life

   Aight so Ace and Deuce don't have their unique magics yet and there is obviously Something going on with Cater so it really makes me think that we're gonna return to Heartslabyul somewhere down the line. We know there's gotta be more stuff with RSA, so that might tie into the Cater = Cinderella theory. Maybe we have a chapter focusing on RSA and Cater will be the main focus or ally for that. IDK man, I'm still kind of eh on the Cinderella theory cause it makes a lot of sense but we already have Mozus being the evil stepmother. Him and Cater are from the same hometown (?) but my concern is that if Cater is a main focus and he gets connected to Mozus then Mozus would also be in the spotlight which would be odd given how nothing seems to suggest that the teachers (except Crowley) getting bigger roles in the story. However, it could always be a situation like with Farena where Mozus is there and some sort of connection is briefly discussed but he isn't important and maybe someone else takes the role of evil stepmother in the story.

   Ok idk so we're gonna go back to Cater. If the Cinderella theory is true, we gotta consider how exactly Cater represents Cinderella. Does he represent Cinderella in the way that he's twisted from her (ex. Azul & Ursula) or that he just takes the role of Cinderella for a chapter (ex. Azul & The Genie)? The fact that he uses dark magic points to it being the latter, that he really is twisted from a card soldier. However, we gotta consider 1. the nature of his unique magic 2. the plot of Cinderella. Though we know he has the ability to clone himself, we don't know how exactly this works. Are the clones identical, or do/can they have differences? In episode 1-15, the Cater clones all have slightly different responses ("はーい" "まかせて！" "おっけー♪") to getting ready to paint the roses. Given how clones don't exist in real life, it's impossible to tell whether this variation indicates actual differences in personality, is just due to the clones' slightly different experiences (like a sort of butterfly effect), or if it's just a decision by the writer so they aren't repetitive. Another thing to note is that in that same episode Cater claims that cloning himself is tiring. If this is the only source for this information, there's the possibility that it just was a lie to let him manipulate the 1st years into helping him paint. Finally, Cater's ability makes me think of Twice from BNHA. Can only the original Cater create clones? Or is he like Twice in that his clones can also make clones, therefore making it impossible for anyone, including himself, to tell who is the original?

  What I'm getting at here is the possibility of Cater having clones that 1. stick around permanently and 2. are significantly different than him. This would create the possibility of him being twisted from both the card soldiers and Cinderella, but he is able to use his clone ability to split up those aspects of himself. One Cater is the card soldier one normally walking around NRC and who has dark magic, but then there's another Cinderella Cater who has light magic. Assuming this is what is going on, it would kind of connect to his two-sided personality, where he presents his bubbly, social-media addict personality to the world but has another, depressed, more private personality underneath. 

  Now, getting into what I mentioned before about the plot of Cinderella, Cinderella normally looks like a humble servant. However, with the aid of the fairy godmother, she completely transforms herself into a breathtaking princess so she can go to the ball. However, once the clock strikes midnight, she transforms back. Basically, Cinderella has the ability of transformation, to have two completely different versions of herself. One version is her true, plain self, while the other is a flashy deception. This information strengthens what I just said about Cater's personality and clone ability.

  Actually, just going into Cater's personality for a bit (yeah, “a bit” lol)... He has a big focus on always being presentable. In his lab coat, he seems pretty desperate to hide all evidence of his true self, claiming that he just failed at putting his magic in the depressed mandrake and then hiding all his other mandrakes aside from the fun ones. This desperation is similar to Cinderella's, with how she flees the ball in a hurry once it reaches midnight so no one will see how she truly looks once the spell breaks. Now, why do Cater and Cinderella behave the way they do? I don't remember Cinderella's exact motivations for attending the ball, but wikipedia says that she had to flee the ball because if the spell broke there she could get caught by her stepmother & stepsisters. What is Cater's "ball"? Well, because of his strong social media presence, his "ball" is basically everywhere, all the time. If something happens on social media that exposes his true self, breaking his "spell", not only can other students see it, but his sisters can also see it.

  Cater hates sucking up to his older sisters, which implies that he has had to suck up to his older sisters and put up his happy front around them too. Just like how Cinderella can't afford to let her stepsisters realize her true identity at the ball, Cater can't afford to let his sisters realize his true self. It's honestly kind of sad; unlike Cinderella, whose stepsisters only showed up later in her life, Cater's older sisters have been around him and making him miserable for all of his life.

  Kinda unrelated, but looking though Cater's chats, in the one he has with Trey they talk about the Queen of Hearts and her love for sweets, Cater remarks that he wants to have tea with her too, leading Trey to say that Cater would be unable to befriend her since they're in different social classes. Isn't this basically a genderbent version of Cinderella, just a commoner, wanting to go to the ball where the Prince is? 

  Now going back to Cater's personality. Even if he does fear his sisters, that doesn't seem to fully explain his 24/7 pep and focus on being magicammable. Now, what if we say that happiness=nobility. In Cinderella, she dresses up like nobility so she can remain in the ball where the actually rich people are. What if Cater is acting happy so he can fit in with the people around him, who are naturally happy enough that they don't need to fake it? Is this a fake it until you make it situation? At the end of his ceremony robes story, after he says he's tired and doesn't care about the ceremony, he says he's just kidding and goes back to talking about the selfies he took that day. Even though he's alone and wouldn't really get hurt for dropping his performance. It gives the vibe to me that his situation is not like Jamil's, where he's fully aware he's unhappy, deliberately acts otherwise in front of others, and tries to eliminate the cause of his unhappiness. Instead, Cater is trying to eliminate his unhappiness itself. He grasps onto magicam because if he fills up his account with pictures of a happy life, it's like he's actually living a happy life.

  This idea I have of Cater trying to fit in also goes along with his focus on the current trends, like in one of his gym uniform voice lines where he panics at the idea of not knowing about a new popular game. Rather than making his own aesthetics or trends, he goes along with the crowd. Sweets and desserts are trendy? Then he'll take tons of pictures of them and say they're super delicious even if he actually hates sweet food. He disregards or evades his own preferences to create the appearance that he's just like everyone else, and he puts effort into staying up to date so he can maintain that appearance.

  Moving on, I reread his halloween outfit personal story. Something that stuck out was the end, when Cater thinks that Lilia wouldn't understand what he's going through. Specifically, Lilia wouldn't understand his 下らなくてどーしよーもない feelings. According to jisho, 下らない can mean trivial/not worth bothering with/worthless, and it can also mean stupid/absurd/silly. Then, どーしよーもない (どうしようもない)  means something that can't be helped, that has no way out of it. Doesn't this seem kind of odd? That he claims his feelings are just trivial then but also he can't help having them? Is this a contradiction? Or is it something like he believes that most people wouldn't have these silly feelings but he specifically is too weak to push past them?

  For self-esteem though, he seems to at least be trying to boost it. Like in his gym uniform story, when he decides to just clone himself and have each one run 1 lap instead of him running 5 by himself, his clones all praise him for the idea. However, this could be a fake it until you make it thing again. The praise does seem a bit heavy-handed. 

  There's also the whole thing in the 2nd part of the story where he talks about all the shallow friendships he has made. He notes that he'd rather have a casual time with people rather than get attached. That plus his family situation... means he's really never had anyone to trust. Anyway, he then goes on to talk about how magicame is amazing for helping him maintain all these casual friendships. So there we have another reason for his social media addiction: not only does it let him create a picture of happiness, he can get tons of feedback affirming his happiness and serving as proof of happiness. How can he possibly be lonely if he has so many friends?

  Both in his ceremony robes and halloween outfit stories have a moment where Cater is tired and admits he's tired but then downplays it. Yeah, the ceremony was tiring, but he got tons of great pictures out of it! Yeah, dealing with guests was rough, but at the same time all the halloween stuff was exciting! This sort of thing is a pretty common strategy for increasing the persuasiveness of an argument. By first agreeing (yes, he's tired) with the opposing view (he is not happy), he can then push his own view (he is happy) and point at his earlier concession as proof that he has looked at both sides of the issue instead of only looking for evidence of his own belief. 

 So basically what I'm getting here is that Cater Is Not Okay. Prevented from building close bonds with friends or family, he's reinforcing his isolation himself through his fervent efforts to never let anyone close and never let his mask drop. He's gone so far as to try and convince himself that he's happier than he actually is through self-deception and social media.

  Alright that’s all I got for now see ya

#twst analysis #twisted wonderland #cater diamond #twst

[triviareads]

everyone is looking for different experiences out of fandom. some people only want to consume and create content and others want to have discussions, whether it be criticism or praise or anything else. the whole point of a fandom community is that it *is* that deep if you want it to be. And no one gets to dictate your fandom experience or should comment on it unless it is causing a lot of problems for other people.

I don't agree with everything on your blog, (looking at that one anon who tried to psychoanalyze everyone in their relationships with female characters. notes of truth but oof the generalizations) but it would be super weird if I did! Recent anon and some other people in this fandom don't get that differing opinions is what makes a community. (multi-)shipping, character interpretation, and analysis are the fabric of fandom. Extrapolation is in the fabric of fandom.

hell, you're doing analysis of the media of your fandom for whether you realize it or not, and some people's opinion are just more critical than others, so it is a tad hypocritical to say *just calm down* because why don't you too?

I think people get defensive when criticisms take on the fandom at large. saying THE WHOLE or MOST of the fandom is this way or taking a moral stance about something that is actually gray or something ythat some people dont give much thought to(esp bc based on who you follow and how you interact, everyones fandom looks different!) might prickle people a bit.

And in the case of female characterization which seems like a big part of our fandom because we are (from what Ive found) mostly women, we must remember that the internalized misogyny is real. Because we as women expect more of each other than we do of men sometimes its just as easy to fall into the trap of writing a fic with simpering debutantes as it is to act superior to real people you've never met before for projecting "pick me" feelings (this isnt to @ you but some of your anons)

Long story short the thoughts and feelings of real life people are more important than our fave fictional characters and I know im definitely preaching to the choir here and you shouldnt respond if you dont want to, but I just wanted to uh, commiserate? show support for healthy criticism? have a nice monologue about the makeup of online community? etc?

Anyway, feel free to disagree anything I said in this manifesto, it's the whole point :)

This was a lovely read- I'll reply to what I can, since I do, by and large, agree with everything you've said.

Since there's always room for improvement for all of us, I will definitely try to be more mindful of my generalizations of the fandom- saying "some" instead of "the whole" or "most"- when I'm talking about Bridgerton.

You are absolutely right in that internalized misogyny is real, both in stories as well as in real life, and that is why I've made a concerted effort in all my fics to avoid writing "pick me" girls and the rest of the female characters as "simpering debutantes". The women in my stories are aware, on some level (that level varying based on the time period and their circumstance), of why women are behaving the way they are. I have written two different takes set in the regency era on women schooling men on why they have no right to bitch about "vapid social climbers" or "simpering, grasping, silly debutantes" (which can be found here and here).

And this carries over into real life- how some women choose to interact with a fandom (including the fantasy aspect of women seeing themselves in certain heroines) should not judged by others, at least, as long as there is nothing too problematic about it (see: the fetishization of Regé-Jean Page, general racism I've seen in some parts of the fandom, homophobia, etc.).

#bridgerton #bridgerton fandom #ask

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Let’s talk about The Twist of Good Omens (Pt. 1 of 2).

This is HALF a meta / scene analysis and praise for the actors, and HALF an Ineffable headcanon following the meta, so I hope you’ll bare with me as my brain spews out this shit that’s been going through it all week. It’s gotten really long, so I’m going to split up the meta / analysis and the headcanon into two separate posts because as I was writing this, it was getting long, and I know some people are here for either/or.

Spoilers follow, obviously.

A little known fact about me (or perhaps well known if you’ve been here for a long time) is that I LOVE the body swap / face swap trope. OBSESSED ABOUT IT. Loved it since I was a kid. I think it’s more the psychology of it that interests me (like I also consider “plopping a brain into a robot” part of this trope too, and the ensuing crisis intrigues me... a lot of my old Sonic fanfiction dealt with this type of thing). That and my innate desire to not be me, but I digress. One of my favourite movies ever is Face/Off... not a fantastic movie by any means, but damn if I didn’t obsess about it because of the psychology of it all. I LOVE watching actors pretend they’re the other actor playing their role. It’s amazing to me.

And AS someone who has consumed this trope like life since as long as I’ve consumed media, it probably took me less than a couple minutes to spot the twist ending in Good Omens. I immediately sensed something was off, mainly in their discussion in the park and  the mannerisms of the characters when they went to their respective places. 

When Aziraphale hesitated on saying “ineffable”  before death showed up, THEN Crowley’s hesitation on what Death’s appearance was, and THEN the “tickety-boo” from Crowley, is when something was niggling at me upon first watch of the scene. I wasn’t REALLY certain about my suspicions until C!Aziraphale and Gabriel were talking in the scene immediately following. Azzie was VERY subdued in Heaven, more like he was just trying to buy time or he was bored, when in the past he would... well, essentially not shut up and try to make small talk when he was confronted by the Gabriel or the other Angels. 

Instead he looked like a man who was lowkey annoyed and bored of being there, like he’s seen it all before. He didn’t question the demon bringing up the Hellfire. Just placid indifference.

It threw me for a loop, and that’s when I said, “Oh, they switched bodies, didn’t they??”. And it’s upon rewatches that I really REALLY became obsessed with this entire ending scene, because that’s when everything sort of falls into place, and you begin to see the minutiae of Sheen’s and Tennant’s acting in these scenes, and ALL the previous mannerisms from their characters are absorbed into each other’s portrayal of, well, each other. Essentially: “David, play this scene the way Michael would play this scene as if he were pretending to be you shamming the demons.” It’s amazing.

Here’s where I need to fucking praise Sheen and Tennant on their acting, because GODDAMN did they ever get each other’s mannerisms down pat, because upon subsequent rewatches, this is where I’m seeing all the clues about the twist ending that are GLARING, and I AM LIVING FOR IT.

So let’s jump back to the beginning of the scene, where they each return to their respective favourite material things: Upon returning, each character, if they were themselves, would have been OVERJOYED by their material items being back in tact. Azzie loves his books, and Crowley LOVES his car. Instead we just see... indifferent satisfaction that everything was restored? It was odd, but not alarming. You could stock it up to them being tired from the events of the day. It was still red flag one, for me.

Now, I’m not going to point this one out as “red flag two” because I can’t recall at all a time BEFORE this scene if this next thing ever happened, and perhaps someone can let me know if they recall before I get a chance to do my fourth run-through of the series: The flavours of ice cream they each end up eating; it would be a tell if they’re each eating what the other normally does. It would be a neat little clue that they each don’t realize they’re really doing that’s out of character. So... red flag 1.5 I will say until confirmation. 

The “tickety boo”, I’m going to label as a Red Flag 2: rewatching the series, we see Azzie uses the phrase when shit’s going tits up. Crowley mocked him for it, but never ever said it other than that one time. On first watch, you just write it off as Crowley picking up Azzie’s phrases, since Crowley says a lot of silly phrases, but upon second watch, you’re like, OH SHIT, wow, it’s totally Azzie, should have seen that.

Then there’s each of them in Heaven and Hell. I already talked about my tip-offs for Azzie, so let’s talk Crowley. A!Crowley was stammering on his speech, in that way that Azzie does when he’s nervous and unsure of himself and he’s trying to formulate his thoughts and understand what is happening. He was SURPRISED about Michael working with the demons, because – even though he saw Beelzebub and Gabriel interact, he had no idea how twisted in their own schemes both sides were. This is uncharacteristic behaviour for Crowley, I think anyway, because he would know that some of the Angels get away with all kinds of shit and STILL never Fall. Azzie... ahh, I love him, but I don’t think he would.

And A!Crowley STOOD like Azzie would... Crowley has this... way he sort of stands still (ie. trying to be cool but he’s really not). He wasn’t doing that at all in this scene. And the fact he was concerned about his clothes getting ruined? Yeah, when has that ever stopped Crowley? It was sort of a sweet thing that  this Lovely here pointed out and I only remembered about it when I read this post. Azzie didn’t want Crowley’s brand new coat to get ruined, aww. 

Jumping back to C!Aziraphale, still super quiet and indifferent and almost ANNOYED at the proceedings, and not once does he stammer at all. Azzie always stammers (a little more than his usual speech patterns, anyway) when facing the Angels, especially Gabriel, but this is legit the first time he doesn’t. Just smart-arse remarks and a “devil may care” (hur dur) attitude about the proceedings. 

I think I was 90% sure about my theory about the twist when the the bathtub scene that follows appears, because it didn’t really make sense to me in my head that the Holy Water WASN’T doing anything. The demons later surmise it’s because they’ve “gone native”, but are they really sure? Hmm. Anyway, this whole scene is HILARIOUS to me upon rewatch, because it’s now Azzie CERTAIN that he can’t be harmed here from the punishment even if he’s wearing Crowley’s face, and he FINALLY lets himself BE his own person. Funny how him seeing through a demon’s eyes is WHY he finally lets go (which, you know, is kind of what happened with Crowley 6000 years before... realized the world wasn’t fair and it wasn’t going to treat him with kindness). He finally understands Crowley, I think, in a way, because of this incident. 

Azzie is FINALLY certain and unafraid of being himself. He no longer stammers, and literally strikes fear into the demons in the dorkiest of ways and THEN secures Crowley’s future of being left alone. That tiny little thing there is really sweet and so Azzie. 

As for C!Aziraphale, he’s a dramatic bitch in the Hellfire to scare away the Angels. And though it’s not seen, I’m certain Crowley would have guaranteed Azzie’s safety in the same way that Azzie did his... I’m just assuming since it’s alluded to in their final park-bench conversation.

And – segue! – as we switch back to the park bench scene, I think this was when I was, on my first watch, all “yep, they switched”. Look at even just the camera pan-in: they’re sitting on the wrong sides (Crowley has ALWAYS sat to Azzie’s left-hand side), and Azzie is slouching. Azzie NEVER slouches, just as Crowley is never straight-backed and proper when he sits. I absolutely adore Tennant playing a reassuring-Azzie so beautifully, and then the uptick in the intonation of “Anyone looking?” is SO Aziraphale, that if you hadn’t picked up the clues by now, that should have set you off, as well as... why would Aziraphale know if “anyone is looking”? Crowley has ALWAYS been the one who’s able to sense other beings around, and I feel like it’s BECAUSE of his status as a demon that he can do this (as a former angel, it might be a “skill” he retained when he fell, and then gained the skill to sense other demons, so then he would be able to tell if either-or are around, whereas Azzie would only be able to sense love, happiness, and other angels, is my theory).

AHHH And then. AND THEN, Sheen’s impersonation of Tennant’s speech patterns when he says “Right. Swap back then?” and then with the face he makes. It’s ALL Crowley right there. GAWD, perfection.

I love their little interaction after the switch... Azzie is just SO DAMNED PROUD OF HIMSELF, WHAT A PRECIOUS CINNAMON ROLL. And Crowley is enamoured by it all. He VISIBLY sees the change in Azzie, what seeing the world through Crowley’s eyes has done to him. So much so he chances to ask Azzie out, and he FINALLY accepts, no hesitation.

AH. That’s a WHOLE other meta in-of itself.

Next, Part 2, is my head canon for the lead up to this scene. It’s more of a musing than anything else, spawned by a thought I had about why are they able to switch so easily... and how did they know that they could? It won’t be nearly as long as this so I should have it up in a few days when I have a free moment :)

Anyway, I’d love for y’all to add your own thoughts or expand upon mine here if you’ve anything to say!

Cheers everyone, and welcome new people to my blog that my other GO meta may have enticed you to here <3 We’ll see how many meta this show squeezes out of my brain, probably not nearly as much as Johnlock does, but there we are, LOL <3

#good omens #go meta #go final twist #spoilers #go character analysis #go scene analysis #my meta #my thoughts

[analysis-by-vaylon]

Animation reviews, criteria for analysis, and the scope of this blog.

Hello, there. I’ve recently been browsing Netflix for animated features and series to watch, and I thought I would share some brief thoughts about these with you; however, it’s not my intention to turn this blog into a review blog -- I’d rather stick to lengthy analysis. I’m simply using these reviews as a starting point to discuss some things that have been on my mind lately.

I want to accomplish multiple things with this post: I’ll talk about some of the animation I’ve seen recently, discuss why I’m not going to post longer analyses for these, and then go into some detail about what sort of things you can (and can’t) expect me to talk about when I discuss animation.

Reviews for Recently-Watched Animation

Only one of these is recent; I basically just browse Netflix, look for something with an interesting premise, and watch it. It’s not a very complex process.

April and the Extraordinary World. 2015. Origin: France. I found its premise silly. The dialogue is uninspired at best and its characters unsympathetic. Many critics praised its animation, but because I don’t like steampunk, I found the scenery and designs to be dull. Not recommended.

The Little Prince. 2015. Origin: France. I’ve never read the book, but I sense that this film does it justice, as it effortlessly weaves imaginative fantasy-adventure together with a story about the pressures of adulthood. There’s a great deal of mystery and symbolism in it that was, for me, a breath of fresh air. Recommended.

My Life as a Zucchini. 2016. Origin: France. This is a stop-motion animation whose characters have a wonderful amount of life and vibrancy in their designs and dialogue. Despite being on the shorter side (at a mere 65 minutes!), this film still manages to pack a whole lot into its charmingly-told love story. Recommended.

A.I.C.O. -Incarnation-. 2018. Origin: Japan. 12 episodes. I wanted to like this -- I really did -- but despite its intriguing premise and the promise of pure science fiction themes, I ultimately found this anime to be lackluster in its storytelling, concepts, and designs. It seems to focus more on action than on execution. The dialogue is especially bad -- rife with what I call “anime-isms”. Not recommended.

In This Corner of the World. 2016. Origin: Japan. This film takes us back to World War II-era Japan with faithfully-reconstructed depictions of both Hiroshima and Kure. The scenery is gorgeous, and the characters’ victories and struggles are as palpable as the looming horror which ultimately waits for Hiroshima. Despite the cheerful face the characters bravely put on, the film reminds us that no one escapes unscathed from war. Recommended.

Remember: just because I enjoy something and you don’t -- or vice-versa -- does not mean that one of us is wrong and one of us is right. There is such a thing as personal taste; April and the Extraordinary World, for instance, was widely acclaimed by critics, but I personally dislike it.

Criteria for Analysis

When it comes to writing analysis, I am mostly interested in longer works that have complex overarching themes, intriguing concepts, or an engaging use of language. I don’t intend to write about anything that I wouldn’t recommend to others for their own enjoyment. Films are nice -- and some of them do indeed offer enough complexity to warrant bringing them under the critical eye -- but I have found that the series format is most suited for allotting time for the development of themes, symbols, and so on. I believe in the power of structured meaning; by this, I don’t mean that the work needs to follows a formulaic structure, but rather the work creates, through association and recurrence, an idiomatic framework of meaning.

An example of what I mean can be found in The Lord of the Rings in the symbolism of the One Ring. Historically, in fiction and everyday metaphor, rings were used as symbols of love, commitment, power, wealth, and greed. In The Lord of the Rings, however, the One Ring -- though it certainly carries this ancient symbolism with it -- takes on additional symbolism through its association with actions or feelings: compulsion, for instance, in being compelled to wear and desire it; hardship, in that the Ring is a heavy psychological burden for all who bear it; treachery, in that the Ring seeks to return to its true master and always threatens to escape or betray those who wear it; and malice, in that the Ring represents Sauron’s power-hungry desire for dominion over all beings and for the ability to cruelly inflict suffering upon them. It’s thanks to the widespread appreciation of The Lord of the Rings that these meanings have entered into the wider consciousness of symbolism associated with rings -- though, of course, love and commitment remain today the central ones.

Obviously, the longer a series is, the more it can add to its personal grammar of meaning: take, for instance, Star vs. the Forces of Evil and the Blood Moon, a recurring symbol -- throughout all three seasons -- of love and destiny. Each additional appearance of the symbol offers a chance to further enrich its meaning.

By borrowing cultural symbols and constructing personal ones, writers can elevate their work, tapping into powerful ideas much greater than themselves; presenting those ideas in an intelligible way can hopefully lead the reader to some sort of epiphany or greater awareness. This is as true of animation as it is of literary fiction, which brings me to my next point.

The Scope of This Blog

I started this blog in order to bring the same critical approaches used for writing about literature to animation. You won’t hear me often discussing frame rate, color grading, or other technical elements of visual design -- despite animation being primarily a visual medium. To people who work in the animation industry, that may seem odd, but I’m simply not trained in film, animation, or art theory, and anything that I know about those subjects (which is not much) is from reading about them in my own personal time. I just don’t consider myself qualified to comment on the finer technical points of visual media.

My academic training is in English literature and critical theory, and I’m more interested in ideas and their conveyance than in visual impact, as you may have gathered from the previous sections. Elaborate animation can be impressive, yes, but my personal opinion is that visual achievement is a hollow victory if it lacks complex meaningfulness. The example that always comes to mind for me is the Nichijou anime: yes, some of the animation in the series is, without a doubt, exemplary in terms of technical effort and stylistic experimentation, but without any intellectual complexity to support the series, it simply feels pointless -- even downright mean-spirited. Perhaps an animator would find the series interesting, but it’s not what I’m looking for.

Part of that, too, is due to my own limitations. I am visually impaired, so I tend to de-emphasize visuals and give primacy to written and spoken language. I simply can’t see well enough to make critical judgments on the visual aspects of animation. Hence, you will often hear me speak instead of narrative, dialogue, characterization, and so on -- elements of literary fiction as applied to animated storytelling.

I’ve often thought about whether or not I should even be running a blog like this; it is entirely possible I don’t belong in discussions about animation. I think animators who believe in the supremacy of board-driven animation (like John Kricfalusi, for instance) would agree with that: animation, they might say, is the realm of artists and not writers -- and especially not writers who have no background in art whatsoever. They would have a point. Animation is, as I said earlier, primarily a visual medium, whether that involves ink, paint, clay, cardboard cutouts, or computer-generated drawings. What right do I have to intrude into the world of color and movement? And my answer is none. I have no right. I am a trespasser.

And I am comfortable being one. I expect no one to listen to me; I would still be saying the things I have said even if no one were. Perhaps it is foolish to think so, but I believe that animation can have the same things in it that literature does: that it can be both intellectually complex and fun, that it say something about the human condition, that it can challenge its audience. I don’t want people to lose sight of what is important about storytelling -- no matter what format it comes in.

#analysis #critical theory #animation

[hanzi83]

Harassment Back On

It is about that time again where I am supposed to retract what my irrational venting the past week and then make the same excuse about my mental illness. I would hope people can see those patterns already and I have been transparent enough with people and being genuine about what I have been thinking and feeling. I immediately regret what I write, especially in a manic state, but it is necessary to be out there, even though it will all come back to haunt me in the end. It will probably get to me when the time comes, but I don’t have desire to be around, and it is my true feelings, and I would sacrifice myself and express my irrational anger to display what other people go through with mental illness, who have to just say they have it and they are dealing with it but will never show you the true ugliness about this mental disease.

In a rational mind I would not wish this on my worst enemy and certainly not anyone who has ever been a friend, but then my illness kicks in and I wonder if the mentally ill feelings are the real emotions I feel because people have put me in a game and a reality show like I am in the Truman show and ask myself if I am justified in the way I feel or am I being incredibly silly. This constant cognitive dissonance that goes through my mind is really fucked up. I know when I get like this, I normally try to stay to myself and express it without anyone’s help because I feel like there are 2 kind of mentally ill people, those that have their episodes and are trying to figure out the science of why this keeps happening and why are patterns being repeated, and then there are those who are mentally ill and feel normal about it because the people they hang out with are encouraging this behavior.

I worry for some people. I had to keep my distance from a show that is similar to Stern’s show but a lot more diet coke version of it and because I had fun in the beginning but then I realized he was trying to cause drama and at all costs deflect from his actual real story of his life and started drama with everyone on his show. It is like he took Stern’s entire career and used all the antics, tropes, and jokes and compressed it within a year because he obviously studied Stern and for some reason when I was not sure if I wanted to return and test it out by seeing how much he would be nice after the fact that he vowed to want me to kill myself and even got his producer friend to accuse me of sexual harassment because I was not buying into her games, and how she wants to manipulate Whack Packers, and she is aligned with a very elitist type of lawyer who I presume might be protecting her from getting any dirty laundry out there. Then after cooling down I have went back on here and there just to get it out of the way because he will seem peaceful and persistent but because he expected me to come on more often, he has used his own people that work for free, to stir up drama and so it won’t seem like he is doing it.

I have gone over this for a while but now that I am not going back, he dropped his nice guy act and tries to constantly bring my name up, while pretending he doesn’t care. I don’t know if he is being this obvious about going from one extreme to another, but his intent is for me to call in and say something so he can cause more drama. And this is all after he cuts down his streaming days and presumes that he is going away for a bit, and I have been there. I say I will quit social media and within a half hour I am back on because I am addicted, but what is scary about this guy and his crew is that he has been so desperate for attention he has turned on anyone that contributed to get a reaction and when he gets called out he kind of backs out. He doesn’t even show up on camera because I assume he is indulging in something that makes his mood extremely intense and always confrontational. I am just alleging because I don’t know for sure, but since him and his crew can keep perpetuating online rumors about me and say I am a terrorist, and then I presume that woman producer of the show is feeding the manipulated puppets on the show lines about knowing I am making a bomb,

I know this is stupid to say because most people know I am not violent, but I don’t know how to make a bomb nor would I make one. I can barely remember the people in my life’s name and barely manage my time, but this fat disgusting shit head has time to make a fucking bomb? Are you kidding? Maybe it is supposed to be absurd but when it comes to these people who have connections, I would not fucking put it passed them to do something since they give out people’s information, at least eludes to it but then doesn’t fully admit it.

The reason I am writing this blog though because as much as I thought he has stooped to fuck with me and others, now he is using mentally disabled people to send messages to me to get something started. I have expressed concern with Wendy the Slow Adult being used, and while they have helped her out and raised money for her, they seem to get their use out of her and now show more attitudes toward her, after she plugged them on the Stern Show. He will play dumb about why others are treating her like shit, and since these people act at the host’s behest, I can assume he allows it to go on. This is what he wanted when he wanted Whack Packers on, but after seeing the harassment she gets on her Face Book chats, I wonder if that is all him or his people doing it to make themselves feel better from their shitty existence. So Wendy messages me, and sometimes I wonder if it is her that has the account and it isn’t people from the show, and she tells me that the host wants me to go fuck myself and not to talk to me, and I replied “Well that’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me, then you don’t have to” and she says she wanted to and didn’t know what his problem was, and I said ‘I don’t know what it is either, that is why I am staying away from him” I didn’t want to treat her like she couldn’t understand but I wasn’t going to put my problems on someone who is mentally disabled to pass my digital notes and start some gossip. Low and behold she goes on his show and her appearances are always planted. I feel like they tell her to say certain things, like by the way, someone informed me, because I am not in their discord application, that she posted a picture with her tits out and wrote “Happy now?” like she had been told but she claims she was just drunk, and I am sure the perverts there have screen grabbed it and will fuck with her in the future. She comes on the show recently and she says she told me what he told her to say and then she made up my response. I knew right then someone was helping her, and it was used to prompt this guy to try and call me and fuck with me more.

What he will do in his next stream is try to read this and when he realizes that my analysis is better than whatever he can spew because he either copies Stern or copies me when it comes to insults and the cadence in which he talks, he will just get upset. The more I write the more visibly he gets upset because he is expecting his tactics to try to make me kill myself. He has admitted this, and he could have been joking but since I suspected him for a while to be the troll when we were even getting a long, and then the more alt right the crew, he assembled, seem to be the further I wanted from it and the venom in which he speaks my name shows me he needed me for something and he constantly tries to play back past contributors of his show to fuck with them and get a rise out of them. It is scary because even though he suffers from depression he has surrounded himself with alcohol and people who are encouraging it. If you go to their streams you will notice the overly transparent of people trying to be the voice of reason, but it is all an act.

These people can get away with it because they are Trump supporters so they have option of doing shady things and not even be looked into for what they are doing. It is truly scary and more people have left it because he is trying to destroy people’s friendship and relationships. As a avid Stern fan in the past, I can see the techniques, and even the acknowledging of it he seems to think that if we mention it we will stop because he just nods to it while seemingly looking like he is embarrassed in a way so I keep bringing it up. He has already fucked with other web cam chicks, and used the rants I had against the producer of the show and because this other chick had the same name, they tried to fool her into thinking I was ranting about her. It is disturbed that he will go to such lengths because he is looking for fights.

I can’t wait until he gets back on air and proclaims that he is not getting the messages of him somehow curing people’s depression, and then whatever technique I use to express myself he does it because he can’t create anything on his own, he has to copy something and someone at all times. It is disturbing. The last 3 broadcasts he has said he regrets what he did but then he continues to allegedly drink and then goes off on everyone like he is looking for some way to muster some interest because he is afraid of actually being genuine and real. He puts on this show and pretends like he has remorse for what he says and does. He doesn’t have a soul in my opinion

He will keep trying to trigger me and try to get me to go back on and then says “if you’re a man you will call in” and it is more like “I want you to call in because I have planned ways to talk over you and still get some content out of it because I will do anything to get more views” I guess pretending more people are tuning in while buying your numbers is not good enough is it? I keep telling these people to leave me alone, but they will keep bringing me up and finding creative ways to do so and still manage to make them look like they are totally the victims in all this. That is fucked up.

I will probably have to delete Wendy off my Face Book list because I know they will use her to send me more messages, and then if I do that they will pretend to be offended for her and say her feelings are hurt but they didn’t like that I was invited on her Face Book live, which got several thousand views and it probably hurt his ego more people want to see her than they want to see him. Just go back to doing your NBA content and just leave me alone. Stop trying to get a reaction out of me. You are a dangerous person, not because of you personally but because you are aligned with people who are giving you permission to do this. It feels like you are the end of your rope and that is why you have such hatred for me because I didn’t want to return back to the show and I didn’t want to see there all hours in the night while mediocre personalities are taking 9i0 minutes to tell one fucking story.

Stop using Wendy. I hope someone finally exposes you for the evil you are. You could get better and do some good with your mental health, but you choose to keep it negative and keep it going because people in your chat are feeding your ego. It is truly disgusting. I hope people in the media are watching because you are probably one of the shadiest group of people I have ever come across.

#Hanzi Howard Stern 2018 Show Wendy The Slow Adult Youtube Broadcast Harrassment targeted shit head diet coke Sternshow mental illness #sociopath triggering exploit money jealousy bitterness blame

[reputationiseverything]

How I Beat Google’s Core Update by Changing the Game

email marketing for small business

Google released a major update. They typically don’t announce their updates, but you know when they do, it is going to be big.

And that’s what happened with the most recent update that they announced.

A lot of people saw their traffic drop. And of course, at the same time, people saw their traffic increase because when one site goes down in rankings another site moves up to take its spot.

Can you guess what happened to my traffic?

Well, based on the title of the post you are probably going to guess that it went up.

Now, let’s see what happened to my search traffic.

My overall traffic has already dipped by roughly 6%. When you look at my organic traffic, you can see that it has dropped by 13.39%.

I know what you are thinking… how did you beat Google’s core update when your traffic went down?

What if I told you that I saw this coming and I came up with a solution and contingency strategy in case my organic search traffic would ever drop?

But before I go into that, let me first break down how it all started and then I will get into how I beat Google’s core update.

A new trend

I’ve been doing SEO for a long time… roughly 18 years now.

When I first started, Google algorithm updates still sucked but they were much more simple. For example, you could get hit hard if you built spammy links or if your content was super thin and provided no value.

Over the years, their algorithm has gotten much more complex. Nowadays, it isn’t about if you are breaking the rules or not. Today, it is about optimizing for user experience and doing what’s best for your visitors.

But that in and of itself is never very clear. How do you know that what you are doing is better for a visitor than your competition?

Honestly, you can never be 100% sure. The only one who actually knows is Google. And it is based on whoever it is they decide to work on coding or adjusting their algorithm.

Years ago, I started to notice a new trend with my search traffic.

Look at the graph above, do you see the trend?

And no, my traffic doesn’t just climb up and to the right. There are a lot of dips in there. But, of course, my rankings eventually started to continually climb because I figured out how to adapt to algorithm updates.

On a side note, if you aren’t sure how to adapt to the latest algorithm update, read this. It will teach you how to recover your traffic… assuming you saw a dip. Or if you need extra help, check out my ad agency.

In many cases after an algorithm update, Google continues to fine-tune and tweak the algorithm. And if you saw a dip when you shouldn’t have, you’ll eventually start recovering.

But even then, there was one big issue. Compared to all of the previous years, I started to feel like I didn’t have control as an SEO anymore back in 2017. I could no longer guarantee my success, even if I did everything correctly.

Now, I am not trying to blame Google… they didn’t do anything wrong. Overall, their algorithm is great and relevant. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be using them.

And just like you and me, Google isn’t perfect. They continually adjust and aim to improve. That’s why they do over 3,200 algorithm updates in a year.

But still, even though I love Google, I didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. Because I knew if my traffic took a drastic dip, I would lose a ton of money.

I need that traffic, not only to drive new revenue but, more importantly, to pay my team members. The concept of not being able to pay my team on any given month is scary, especially when your business is bootstrapped.

So what did I do?

I took matters into my own hands

Although I love SEO, and I think I’m pretty decent at it based on my traffic and my track record, I knew I had to come up with another solution that could provide me with sustainable traffic that could still generate leads for my business.

In addition to that, I wanted to find something that wasn’t “paid,” as I was bootstrapping. Just like how SEO was starting to have more ups and downs compared to what I’ve seen in my 18-year career, I knew the cost at paid ads would continually rise.

Just look at Google’s ad revenue. They have some ups and downs every quarter but the overall trend is up and to the right.

In other words, advertising will continually get more expensive over time.

And it’s not just Google either. Facebook Ads keep getting more expensive as well.

I didn’t want to rely on a channel that would cost me more next year and the year after because it could get so expensive that I may not be able to profitably leverage it in the future.

So, what did I do?

I went on a hunt to figure out a way to get direct, referral, and organic traffic that didn’t rely on any algorithm updates. (I will explain what I mean by organic traffic in a bit.)

I went on my mission

With the help of my buddy, Andrew Dumont, I went searching for websites that continually received good traffic even after algorithm updates.

Here were the criteria that we were looking for:

Sites that weren’t reliant on Google traffic

Sites that didn’t need to continually produce more content to get more traffic

Sites that weren’t popular due to social media traffic (we both saw social traffic dying)

Sites that didn’t leverage paid ads in the past or present

Sites that didn’t leverage marketing

In essence, we were looking for sites that were popular because people naturally liked them. Our intentions at first weren’t to necessarily buy any of these sites. Instead, we were trying to figure out how to naturally become popular so we could replicate it.

Do you know what we figured out?

I’ll give you a hint.

Think of it this way: Google doesn’t get the majority of their traffic from SEO. And Facebook doesn’t get their traffic because they rank everywhere on Google or that people share Facebook.com on the social web.

Do you know how they are naturally popular?

It comes down to building a good product.

That was my aha! moment. Why continually crank out thousands of pieces of content, which isn’t scalable and is a pain as you eventually have to update your old content, when I could just build a product?

That’s when Andrew and I stumbled upon Ubersuggest.

Now the Ubersuggest you see today isn’t what it looked like in February 2017 when I bought it.

It used to be a simple tool that just showed you Google Suggest results based on any query.

Before I took it over, it was generating 117,425 unique visitors per month and had 38,700 backlinks from 8,490 referring domains.

All of this was natural. The original founder didn’t do any marketing. He just built a product and it naturally spread.

The tool did, however, have roughly 43% of its traffic coming from organic search. Now, can you guess what keyword it was?

The term was “Ubersuggest”.

In other words, its organic traffic mainly came from its own brand, which isn’t really reliant on SEO or affected by Google algorithm updates. That’s also what I meant when I talked about organic traffic that wasn’t reliant on Google.

Now since then I’ve gone a bit crazy with Ubersuggest and released loads of new features… from daily rank tracking to a domain analysis and site audit report to a content ideas report and backlinks report.

In other words, I’ve been making it a robust SEO tool that has everything you need and is easy to use.

It’s been so effective that the traffic on Ubersuggest went from 117,425 unique visitors to a whopping 651,436 unique visitors that generates 2,357,927 visits and 13,582,999 pageviews per month.

Best of all, the users are sticky, meaning the average Ubersuggest user spends over 26 minutes on the application each month. This means that they are engaged and will likely to convert into customers.

As I get more aggressive with my Ubersuggest funnel and start collecting leads from it, I expect to receive many more emails like that.

And over the years, I expect the traffic to continually grow.

Best of all, do you know what happens to the traffic on Ubersuggest when my site gets hit by a Google algorithm update or when my content stops going viral on Facebook?

It continually goes up and to the right.

Now, unless you dump a ton of money and time into replicating what I am doing with Ubersuggest, but for your industry, you won’t generate the results I am generating.

As my mom says, I’m kind of crazy…

But that doesn’t mean you can’t do well on a budget.

Back in 2013, I did a test where I released a tool on my old blog Quick Sprout. It was an SEO tool that wasn’t too great and honestly, I probably spent too much money on it.

Here were the stats for the first 4 days of releasing the tool:

Day #1: 8,462 people ran 10,766 URLs

Day #2: 5,685 people ran 7,241 URLs

Day #3: 1,758 people ran 2,264 URLs

Day #4: 1,842 people ran 2,291 URLs

Even after the launch traffic died down, still 1,000+ people per day used the tool. And, over time, it actually went up to over 2,000.

It was at that point in my career, I realized that people love tools.

I know what you are thinking though… how do you do this on a budget, right?

How to build tools without hiring developers or spending lots of money

What’s silly is, and I wish I knew this before I built my first tool on Quick Sprout back in the day, there are tools that already exist for every industry.

You don’t have to create something new or hire some expensive developers. You can just use an existing tool on the market.

And if you want to go crazy like me, you can start adding multiple tools to your site… just like how I have an A/B testing calculator.

So how do you add tools without breaking the bank?

You buy them from sites like Code Canyon. From $2 to $50, you can find tools on just about anything. For example, if I wanted an SEO tool, Code Canyon has a ton to choose from. Just look at this one.

Not a bad looking tool that you can have on your website for just $40. You don’t have to pay monthly fees and you don’t need a developer… it’s easy to install and it doesn’t cost much in the grand scheme of things.

And here is the crazy thing: The $40 SEO tool has more features than the Quick Sprout one I built, has a better overall design, and it is .1% the cost.

Only if I knew that before I built it years ago. :/

Look, there are tools out there for every industry. From mortgage calculators to calorie counters to a parking spot finder and even video games that you can add to your site and make your own.

In other words, you don’t have to build something from scratch. There are tools for every industry that already exists and you can buy them for pennies on the dollar.

Conclusion

I love SEO and always will. Heck, even though many SEOs hate how Google does algorithm updates, that doesn’t bother me either… I love Google and they have built a great product.

But if you want to continually do well, you can’t rely on one marketing channel. You need to take an omnichannel approach and leverage as many as possible.

That way, when one goes down, you are still generating traffic.

Now if you want to do really well, think about most of the large companies out there. You don’t build a billion-dollar business from SEO, paid ads, or any other form of marketing. You first need to build an amazing product or service.

So, consider adding tools to your site, the data shows it is more effective than content marketing and it is more scalable.

Sure you probably won’t achieve the results I achieved with Ubersuggest, but you can achieve the results I had with Quick Sprout. And you can achieve better results than what you are currently getting from content marketing.

What do you think? Are you going to add tools to your site?

PS: If you aren’t sure what type of tool you should add to your site, leave a comment and I will see if I can give you any ideas. 🙂

Google

[reviewandbonuss]

How I Beat Google’s Core Update by Changing the Game

Google released a major update. They typically don’t announce their updates, but you know when they do, it is going to be big.

And that’s what happened with the most recent update that they announced.

A lot of people saw their traffic drop. And of course, at the same time, people saw their traffic increase because when one site goes down in rankings another site moves up to take its spot.

Can you guess what happened to my traffic?

Well, based on the title of the post you are probably going to guess that it went up.

Now, let’s see what happened to my search traffic.

My overall traffic has already dipped by roughly 6%. When you look at my organic traffic, you can see that it has dropped by 13.39%.

I know what you are thinking… how did you beat Google’s core update when your traffic went down?

What if I told you that I saw this coming and I came up with a solution and contingency strategy in case my organic search traffic would ever drop?

But before I go into that, let me first break down how it all started and then I will get into how I beat Google’s core update.

A new trend

I’ve been doing SEO for a long time… roughly 18 years now.

When I first started, Google algorithm updates still sucked but they were much more simple. For example, you could get hit hard if you built spammy links or if your content was super thin and provided no value.

Over the years, their algorithm has gotten much more complex. Nowadays, it isn’t about if you are breaking the rules or not. Today, it is about optimizing for user experience and doing what’s best for your visitors.

But that in and of itself is never very clear. How do you know that what you are doing is better for a visitor than your competition?

Honestly, you can never be 100% sure. The only one who actually knows is Google. And it is based on whoever it is they decide to work on coding or adjusting their algorithm.

Years ago, I started to notice a new trend with my search traffic.

Look at the graph above, do you see the trend?

And no, my traffic doesn’t just climb up and to the right. There are a lot of dips in there. But, of course, my rankings eventually started to continually climb because I figured out how to adapt to algorithm updates.

On a side note, if you aren’t sure how to adapt to the latest algorithm update, read this. It will teach you how to recover your traffic… assuming you saw a dip. Or if you need extra help, check out my ad agency.

In many cases after an algorithm update, Google continues to fine-tune and tweak the algorithm. And if you saw a dip when you shouldn’t have, you’ll eventually start recovering.

But even then, there was one big issue. Compared to all of the previous years, I started to feel like I didn’t have control as an SEO anymore back in 2017. I could no longer guarantee my success, even if I did everything correctly.

Now, I am not trying to blame Google… they didn’t do anything wrong. Overall, their algorithm is great and relevant. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be using them.

And just like you and me, Google isn’t perfect. They continually adjust and aim to improve. That’s why they do over 3,200 algorithm updates in a year.

But still, even though I love Google, I didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. Because I knew if my traffic took a drastic dip, I would lose a ton of money.

I need that traffic, not only to drive new revenue but, more importantly, to pay my team members. The concept of not being able to pay my team on any given month is scary, especially when your business is bootstrapped.

So what did I do?

I took matters into my own hands

Although I love SEO, and I think I’m pretty decent at it based on my traffic and my track record, I knew I had to come up with another solution that could provide me with sustainable traffic that could still generate leads for my business.

In addition to that, I wanted to find something that wasn’t “paid,” as I was bootstrapping. Just like how SEO was starting to have more ups and downs compared to what I’ve seen in my 18-year career, I knew the cost at paid ads would continually rise.

Just look at Google’s ad revenue. They have some ups and downs every quarter but the overall trend is up and to the right.

In other words, advertising will continually get more expensive over time.

And it’s not just Google either. Facebook Ads keep getting more expensive as well.

I didn’t want to rely on a channel that would cost me more next year and the year after because it could get so expensive that I may not be able to profitably leverage it in the future.

So, what did I do?

I went on a hunt to figure out a way to get direct, referral, and organic traffic that didn’t rely on any algorithm updates. (I will explain what I mean by organic traffic in a bit.)

I went on my mission

With the help of my buddy, Andrew Dumont, I went searching for websites that continually received good traffic even after algorithm updates.

Here were the criteria that we were looking for:

Sites that weren’t reliant on Google traffic

Sites that didn’t need to continually produce more content to get more traffic

Sites that weren’t popular due to social media traffic (we both saw social traffic dying)

Sites that didn’t leverage paid ads in the past or present

Sites that didn’t leverage marketing

In essence, we were looking for sites that were popular because people naturally liked them. Our intentions at first weren’t to necessarily buy any of these sites. Instead, we were trying to figure out how to naturally become popular so we could replicate it.

Do you know what we figured out?

I’ll give you a hint.

Think of it this way: Google doesn’t get the majority of their traffic from SEO. And Facebook doesn’t get their traffic because they rank everywhere on Google or that people share Facebook.com on the social web.

Do you know how they are naturally popular?

It comes down to building a good product.

That was my aha! moment. Why continually crank out thousands of pieces of content, which isn’t scalable and is a pain as you eventually have to update your old content, when I could just build a product?

That’s when Andrew and I stumbled upon Ubersuggest.

Now the Ubersuggest you see today isn’t what it looked like in February 2017 when I bought it.

It used to be a simple tool that just showed you Google Suggest results based on any query.

Before I took it over, it was generating 117,425 unique visitors per month and had 38,700 backlinks from 8,490 referring domains.

All of this was natural. The original founder didn’t do any marketing. He just built a product and it naturally spread.

The tool did, however, have roughly 43% of its traffic coming from organic search. Now, can you guess what keyword it was?

The term was “Ubersuggest”.

In other words, its organic traffic mainly came from its own brand, which isn’t really reliant on SEO or affected by Google algorithm updates. That’s also what I meant when I talked about organic traffic that wasn’t reliant on Google.

Now since then I’ve gone a bit crazy with Ubersuggest and released loads of new features… from daily rank tracking to a domain analysis and site audit report to a content ideas report and backlinks report.

In other words, I’ve been making it a robust SEO tool that has everything you need and is easy to use.

It’s been so effective that the traffic on Ubersuggest went from 117,425 unique visitors to a whopping 651,436 unique visitors that generates 2,357,927 visits and 13,582,999 pageviews per month.

Best of all, the users are sticky, meaning the average Ubersuggest user spends over 26 minutes on the application each month. This means that they are engaged and will likely to convert into customers.

As I get more aggressive with my Ubersuggest funnel and start collecting leads from it, I expect to receive many more emails like that.

And over the years, I expect the traffic to continually grow.

Best of all, do you know what happens to the traffic on Ubersuggest when my site gets hit by a Google algorithm update or when my content stops going viral on Facebook?

It continually goes up and to the right.

Now, unless you dump a ton of money and time into replicating what I am doing with Ubersuggest, but for your industry, you won’t generate the results I am generating.

As my mom says, I’m kind of crazy…

But that doesn’t mean you can’t do well on a budget.

Back in 2013, I did a test where I released a tool on my old blog Quick Sprout. It was an SEO tool that wasn’t too great and honestly, I probably spent too much money on it.

Here were the stats for the first 4 days of releasing the tool:

Day #1: 8,462 people ran 10,766 URLs

Day #2: 5,685 people ran 7,241 URLs

Day #3: 1,758 people ran 2,264 URLs

Day #4: 1,842 people ran 2,291 URLs

Even after the launch traffic died down, still 1,000+ people per day used the tool. And, over time, it actually went up to over 2,000.

It was at that point in my career, I realized that people love tools.

I know what you are thinking though… how do you do this on a budget, right?

How to build tools without hiring developers or spending lots of money

What’s silly is, and I wish I knew this before I built my first tool on Quick Sprout back in the day, there are tools that already exist for every industry.

You don’t have to create something new or hire some expensive developers. You can just use an existing tool on the market.

And if you want to go crazy like me, you can start adding multiple tools to your site… just like how I have an A/B testing calculator.

So how do you add tools without breaking the bank?

You buy them from sites like Code Canyon. From $2 to $50, you can find tools on just about anything. For example, if I wanted an SEO tool, Code Canyon has a ton to choose from. Just look at this one.

Not a bad looking tool that you can have on your website for just $40. You don’t have to pay monthly fees and you don’t need a developer… it’s easy to install and it doesn’t cost much in the grand scheme of things.

And here is the crazy thing: The $40 SEO tool has more features than the Quick Sprout one I built, has a better overall design, and it is .1% the cost.

Only if I knew that before I built it years ago. :/

Look, there are tools out there for every industry. From mortgage calculators to calorie counters to a parking spot finder and even video games that you can add to your site and make your own.

In other words, you don’t have to build something from scratch. There are tools for every industry that already exists and you can buy them for pennies on the dollar.

Conclusion

I love SEO and always will. Heck, even though many SEOs hate how Google does algorithm updates, that doesn’t bother me either… I love Google and they have built a great product.

But if you want to continually do well, you can’t rely on one marketing channel. You need to take an omnichannel approach and leverage as many as possible.

That way, when one goes down, you are still generating traffic.

Now if you want to do really well, think about most of the large companies out there. You don’t build a billion-dollar business from SEO, paid ads, or any other form of marketing. You first need to build an amazing product or service.

So, consider adding tools to your site, the data shows it is more effective than content marketing and it is more scalable.

Sure you probably won’t achieve the results I achieved with Ubersuggest, but you can achieve the results I had with Quick Sprout. And you can achieve better results than what you are currently getting from content marketing.

What do you think? Are you going to add tools to your site?

The post How I Beat Google’s Core Update by Changing the Game appeared first on Neil Patel.

[batbigfoxstudentthings-blog]

Friendship readings

For my blog project, I am following WWE female wrestlers also known as total divas. I decided to follow them because I feel that there is something to learn about celebrity culture. Throughout my blog project, I will demonstrate how social media has allowed celebrities to represent their brand in a discrete way, while at the same time convincing fans they are special.

This week I took a look at readings from Chris Boor and Danah Boyd. Both their readings had a main theme in common, which was friendship. What came to my mind when I thought about friendship was how the WWE total divas stars make their fans and followers feel like they are friends. Now I understand that I cannot pick up the phone and call any of them, however, I feel that they make fans believe that they are more than just strangers. Fans are supporters, believers, and friends they care about. The authors I have introduced will help me display what type of relationship is present in this situation.

In Danah Boyd’s article “Friendship,” she brings up the point of liking the people we surround ourselves with. There are times we surround ourselves with people we may not like or simply tolerate for our friends or for professional reasons. These are people you can be around, however you would not necessarily call them your friends. Friends are people who you care about and enjoy being with. Boyd would say the friendships you have would be based on the concept of “homophily.” She describes homophily as, “the likelihood that people connect to others who share their interests and identity” (Boyd, p. 7). What this means is that we surround ourselves with people that we share similar interest and values with. If you think about it, the reason you like your friends is that of the qualities you like about them. Those qualities are similar to yours because your friends display yourself. You are able to see this play out with the total divas.

The reason why I like the divas is not because I like to watch wrestling. I like them because of the similar interest we have. They are all strong women that can wrestle. I consider myself a strong individual who is not afraid to wrestle. The divas have families who they love hanging out with and doing silly things with. I come from a big family and they all mean the world to me, so I can appreciate the quality family time spent. These women all work hard to be in top shape which is something I am working on at the moment. There are many more reasons why I can relate to these women, nevertheless, it is all because they in a way displays qualities I like or wish to have. With that said, I will now explain what kind of relationship has taken place.

Chris Bloor in his article, “What are friends for?” talks about how there are two types of relationships. The first one being instrumental which subsequently consists of using a friend as a tool in order to get something out of it. This is the type of relationships celebrities have with their fans. Celebrities have thousands and sometimes even millions of followers on their social media sites. There is no way they know all their fans individually. Fans are essentially used as a tool for fame. The second relationship Bloor mentions are social relations, which includes personal friends you have gotten to know based on experiences. These would be the people you hung out with or talked on the phone with. Bloor makes an interesting point about being worried that society today is looking for relationships for instrumental reasons. Even though we are not celebrities, we also practice instrumental relations much like WWE stars. We can have so many people on our social media sites we do not know or that we may follow for specific interests. 

In the final analysis, I could say Bloor has a point in worrying about society today looking for instrumental relations only. WWE starts along with other celebrities we might like, may create a real feeling of connection with us, even though there is a more hidden meaning behind it.