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eddiediaaz · 10 months

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Hey!! I just wanted to say that your recent speak now gif set is sooo stunning. I was wondering how you managed to create that cassette tape effect if it isn’t any trouble? It’s really so pretty.

Have a great day! ✨

ahhh thank you so so much! first of all, i cannot take any credit for this effect, as it was greatly inspired by this amazing yellowjacket gifset by @thewintersoldier!!

but here's how i recreated the effect, from a cassette png (found on pngwing here), to this animated cassette effect (as seen in my speak now set):

psst: i usually always create in photoshop cs5, but for this effect you need a recent version of photoshop because it's using transform keyframes (i think cs5 doesn't let you do that, or i just don't know how to lol). i used cc 2019 for this.

sorry if this is lengthy or has too much or too little details haha, but i hope it's comprehensible! english is not my first language so i also apologize in advance for any mistakes!

I. PREPARING THE CASSETTE

so, starting with the png here:

i removing everything i didn't want on the cassette png with the brush tool by just drawing the right color over the unwanted text. for the color, i then went to image > adjustments > hue/saturation and in the red tab, i played with the hue slider to get that purple color. finally, i added some text to my liking, and this is what i ended up with:

(not necessary but: i also selected the white lines on each side with the magic wand tool because i wanted these lines to be transparent. once your selection is done, go right click > layer via cut. it will create a new layer of the cutout you just made. you just need to disable or delete the layer to make the selection (lines) transparent.)

at this point you want to have only 2 layers: the revamped cassette and the text layer. you can remove the text layer actually, and just add the title back at the end, as it is not necessary for this effect. i just like to have the visual.

if you have multiple layers, you need to select all of them (except the song title layer), right click on the png layer and click on merge layers. this will create one layer with all the editing you made on the cassette. if you think you will need to edit this later though, i would save the file as a psd before merging the layers.

II. THE EFFECT

okay, so now that you have your cassette, make sure your video timeline is activated, not frame animation, and you are ready to go.

first, you want to create a perfect circle shape around one of the reel with the elliptical marquee tool (hold shift while dragging the circle). make sure it covers the entire area that will later be rotated. make sure this circle is perfectly centered around the reel or otherwise the animation will be a bit lopsided.

then right click on this selection and go "layer via copy". this will create a layer of only that circle selection. important step: right click on that new layer and go "convert to smart object". the layer should look like that, i've renamed mine:

now if you go to your timeline and open that new smart object layer, you will see that you have 3 keyframe options. we only need the transform one.

go to the start of the timeline and activate the transform animation by clicking on the stopwatch button. a keyframe will be created automatically.

to create the actual animation, move the position of the cursor on the timeline further, i put mine at the 01:00f mark so it's easier to create the right timing.

then what you want to do is select the reel smart object layer and hit ctrl + T. a box will appear and this is how you will make the reel rotate.

to rotate the reel shape, move your cursor near the blue box on your canvas and drag it until you have rotated the shape halfway through and hit enter. another keyframe will be created and if you play your animation, the reel should rotate on itself for half a turn

move your position on the timeline to 02:00f and do the same thing: select the left reel smart object, hit ctrl + T, rotate for another half turn, and hit enter. this third keyframe should be the last one needed for the animation and you should have a full animated rotation of the reel.

play your animation, and adjust the speed to your liking by dragging the keyframes on the timeline (but make sure they stay within the same distance from each other). the closer the keyframes are, the faster the animation are, and the further they are, the slower it'll be.

then you can just trim the smart object to your animation's length, and duplicate (right click the smart object > duplicate layer) this layer the amount of times needed (i find this less finicky than duplicating keyframes), and placing them one after the other. three full turns should be enough. this is what my timeline looks like right now:

and my animation for the left side looks like this:

as you can see, we can see the little "dents" peeking through behind the animation. we don't want that! to remove it, select the revamped cassette layer (that should be under the reel smart object), and create another perfect circle around it with the marquee tool. this time make sure it's smaller than the previous one, it just needs to cover these dents.

then right click on this selection on your canvas and go "layer via cut". this will create a new layer with that selection, and all you need to do is to disable it. this is removing the information in that circle.

once you are happy and the animation works, you can just delete that cut layer. now the animation is done and looks like this:

III. SECOND ANIMATION

one you have done it on the left side, you just gotta do the same thing on the right side. you can also try duplicating it, but i found it finicky for some reason (or maybe i'm just not used to the controls of this 2019 photoshop version?).

this is what i have once i've done the same thing on the right reel:

once i am happy with the speed and everything, i want to have only one layer so it's easier to use on gifs. first, i will save this animation as a psd file, in case i want to reuse it. then i am removing the song title layer and will be flattening everything and creating frames from this animation. to do so i am using the "save" action from here.

i'm not sure why it does that, but it's creating a couple of frames where the reels are a bit offset from their position everytime there's a full circle done, so i just delete these 5-6 frames. you can also change the speed here, but by default it should be 0.05.

once you are happy with it, just turn these frames into a smart object with the video timeline again (convert frame animation to video timeline and select all the frame layers > right click > convert to smart object)

now you have a smart object that is ready to be used anywhere!

IV. FINAL TOUCHES

for my particular speak now gifset, i have multiple layers of the animated cassette on each gif:

1, bottom one - cassette layer set to the blending mode "hard light" and set to opacity 86%:

2, middle - this same cassette layer set to hard light, but with the opacity at 100%, AND with a layer mask so it's only applied to the animated reels (i wanted them to show up more):

3, top one - and finally a third layer with another layer mask because i wanted the white label and speak now area to be less see through. it's set to the normal blending mode and the opacity is at 75%

and then i just added the song title on top at 100% opacity and normal blending mode, and added some drop shadows, and tada!

there we have it, i hope this was helpful <3

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anghraine · 6 months

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Dealing with images on Dreamwidth

Okay, one more Dreamwidth post!

DW is geared around text posts and currently handles images rather awkwardly. But it does actually have image hosting capabilities, though the space isn't unlimited (I've never come near to maxing it out). I was thinking about that and figured I could make a post over here about how I back up images to Dreamwidth, and then post them using the Rich Text Editor.

I tried to explain what I do as clearly as I could, but the detail might make it sound more complex and difficult than it really is. I'm sorry if so! But here goes:

Step 1: Go to the main page at www.dreamwidth.org. It should look something like this:

Step 2: Click the red button in the upper-right to log in. Once you do, the main page should look something like this:

Step 3: If you look below the Dreamwidth logo, you'll see five categories of things you can do. You want the first category, "Create." Click on it and select "Upload Images" from the drop-down list. I've put a blue circle around it in the picture below:

Step 4: Upload your picture!

The picture above is the standard "Upload Images" screen. From here, you can click the link to "View all your images" to see everything you've uploaded, and I think "manage your images" lets you adjust titles and descriptions of the images and such. But what you want is the "Browse" button. It'll take you to your computer files and you can upload the picture or pictures you want.

Let's suppose I want to upload two pictures from Baldur's Gate 3:

and

Okay. So after I click "Browse", find the right folder on my computer, and use CTRL+click to select both of these pictures (you can also upload pictures one-by-one if you wish), the space below the "Browse" button will show the pictures you've uploaded. It should look something like this:

There they are! You can give the pictures names in the "Title" boxes, but if you want the file names saved, make sure you click the "Save descriptions" button below the pictures (circled in blue below):

At this point (much faster than it sounds like), you've uploaded the pictures to your account where you can look at every picture or file you've ever uploaded to Dreamwidth. That's cool, but they're not actually in a post yet.

Step 5: Make a new post.

In a new tab, open Dreamwidth (www.dreamwidth.org) again. It's important that this is in a different tab and you don't navigate away from the one your pictures are showing on.

You should see the "Post" button in the upper right of the main page, below your username. I've circled it in blue here:

Click on "Post."

That'll take you to the Create Post page where you actually put things on your blog.

I'm currently trying out the beta version of this page that's going to get applied pretty soon, so the style looks a little different here than in standard Dreamwidth. I figured I'd use the beta version because a) it's what people will see in the future, and b) we're going to use the old Rich Text Editor that is the same in both styles.

The Rich Text Editor has a blue rectangle around it and a blue arrow pointing at it in the picture above.

Let's narrow in on the Rich Text Editor. Like in any post, you can just start typing into the Rich Text Editor, if you want words at all. So here I typed a little explanation for the BG3 pictures and put the cursor where I want the pictures to show up.

You can see that there's a bar of options above what I've typed, with buttons that let you bold, italicize, underline, etc. We want a button further on—the square button with a yellow background that looks like a tiny landscape of mountains and sunshine. I've put a blue circle around it on the screenshot below:

Step 6: Add your pictures!

Clicking on the little landscape button will open a box where you can paste the URL of any image you want to put in your Dreamwidth post. The image doesn't have to be hosted on Dreamwidth—you could paste a link to a picture on Tumblr or whatever—but it'll be more stable if it is, so that's what we're doing.

It looks like this:

Since we already uploaded our pictures to Dreamwidth in the earlier steps, we just need the URLs for the pictures. There's a pretty easy way to see what it is.

Step 7: Copy-paste the URL.

Click back to the tab with your newly uploaded pictures. There will be a code at the bottom of each one. In our case, it looks like this:

It might look a bit intimidating if you're not used to code, but you can ignore the most of it. You just want that little part that begins with https and ends with .jpg.

Copy the URL (I've put a blue box around it above) and click back to the Create Post tab. The "Image Properties" box from Step 6 should still be up.

Paste the URL into the top box that says "URL." I've surrounded the correct box with a red rectangle in this picture:

Hit the "OK" button at the bottom and:

You'll see tiny boxes around the frame. Those will go away if you click anywhere other than the picture; they're for adjusting the size.

Step 8: Adjust the picture if you want

You know how Tumblr automatically stretches/shrinks pictures to make them fit? Dreamwidth just leaves them the way they are, so if your original picture is very big, it will look very big, and if it's small, it will look small. But you can adjust the picture yourself.

Maybe my picture of Shadowheart seems really big compared to the text and I want it smaller. I'll click on the tiny box in the upper-left corner of the picture (that one simply because it's the most convenient) and drag it inwards until the picture is the size I want.

And there she is!

BTW: No matter what size you make a picture look in your post, once it is posted, you can always right-click with your mouse and say "open image in new tab" to see it in its real size.

Here's a real post I made with a picture of Shadowheart I'd slightly shrunk in the Dreamwidth editor:

But if I right-click on the image and tell it to open in another tab, you can see that the saved picture is actually full-size:

So feel free to adjust your picture in the post however you want; it won't change the version you originally uploaded to Dreamwidth.

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but that's how I get images uploaded to Dreamwidth and then embedded in Dreamwidth posts!

#there's been talk of a proper image upload function within Create Post but they've had more urgent updates so ... maybe #for now this works though #anghraine babbles #dreamwidth #long post #anghraine's pics

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20dollarlolita · 8 months

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A little guide on how to use Lolibrary to research for handmade lolita fashion:

We've talked about EGL coord mood boards, where you collect a bunch of images that you think will help you communicate your ideas and surround you with inspiration. When you're asking for help with lolita ideas, presenting a mood board immediately lets everyone know a lot about what you're trying to make and the route you're trying to take to get there.

I also use the technique for researching as well, but you have to approach the process of what exactly you put on the board slightly differently.

For example, today I wanted to make a skirt for a friend. I know that this friend wears a lot of sweet lolita, and a lot of Angelic Pretty. I also knew what fabric I had. So, off we go to Lolibrary. If you're new and you've never been there, it's your new favorite website. It documents lolita fashion history and it's such a powerful resource that I don't think any other fashion out there has.

Lolibrary has a very elaborate search system. When I'm looking for advice on how to construct something, I like to put in search parameters so that I have a like 15-30 pages to look through. You want it specific enough that you're looking for the thing you're looking for, but not so specific that there's only four results.

In this case, I knew I wanted something inspired by Angelic Pretty, and I knew it was going to be a skirt. So, that's our search terms, and we get about 30 pages of results. If you don't have 15+ pages of results, you're probably going to want to widen your search a little. You can specify multiple categories like "Skirt, JSK, OP, or Salopette" which will find you results that are any of the four in there. You can search Angelic Pretty but also Baby the Stars Shine Bright and MAM. You are researching, so you need to have enough results to research.

Right now, we're differing from a mood board in that we are not collecting things that we want. We are looking at what exists.

So here I have a whole page of skirts. We now need to narrow it down into skirts that sort of look like skirts made with the fabric like the fabric we have. Wow, that's a sentence.

So now, in a background tab, I open every single result that looks like it was made with fabric with a similar fabric to mine. In my case, it was all-over prints of a certain size. And I just keep going. I'm not even looking at the skirts yet. I'm just opening tabs.

Once I have like 60+ tabs open and Firefox is questioning its life, I start copying the main picture off each listing and slapping them all onto a board. I like to make a big canvas (like 1500x1500) in GIMP and then just dropping the pictures on there. The whole idea here is just to be able to see all the results at once. However, I usually will sort of start lining them up a little bit.

For example, on this one, I started sort of putting more complex designs in the top right, and simpler designs in the bottom left. If I saw that something was constructed very similarly to how another skirt was constructed, I would sort of try to put them next to each other. However, I really don't get too caught up in the "it has to be right" process here. The entire purpose of this is so that I can then close those 75+ firefox tabs and save my browser.

And now that everything is on one page, we can start looking for patterns. What things do I see a lot on this page? I see a lot of 3-flounce skirts. I see a lot of skirts with a lot of tiers and lace and detailing. And I see a lot of skirts with a ruffle on the bottom and a little bow on the waistband. From this, I can look at how much fabric I have, how long I have to make this, and how much work I want to put into this garment today.

And now that I have these skirts, most of which have similar construction in some aspect (don't look at the very top or very bottom ones. They don't know what they're doing here), I have multiple options to look at for the fine details of what proportions I should be looking for in both "how wide should this ruffle be" and "how big should this waist bow be". Prior to this search, yeah, I know a lot about how a lolita skirt could be constructed, but this taught me a lot of nuance of how Angelic Pretty constructs their skirts that have a relatively large all-over print.

Someone told me that my print I had felt very Emily Temple Cute, and while I love that brand a lot, it's not my friend's style. So making sure I was referencing Angelic Pretty skirts and not Emily Temple Cute skirts can help me confirm that I'm making something my friend will wear more than something I would wear.

So anyway, there you go. The secret is all in finding that initial search, specific enough that you don't have 100 pages to go through, but open enough that you do have like 15-30 pages to go through.

#tag later #queue

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godbirdart · 1 year

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first off, i just want to say that i love your art, you are a huge inspiration to me and i love how expressive your characters are! would you have any tips for someone trying to grow a following from their art? specifically within the furry community ideally. im just not sure where to start

i hope youre having a great day!

thank you so much!!

okay i gotta preface this with: i have been doing commissions for over a decade. everything i say here i've been doing since roughly 2014, but my career as an artist didn't really Take Off and become reliable until 2019. success isn't immediate. some artists will grow faster or slower than others, not every tactic is going to apply / work for every artist; and that's okay. just keep pushing yourself and adapting and figuring out what works for You!

i’m putting this under a readmore as it got a bit long. every time someone asks me for advice on professional Anything i always write up a five page essay despite trying to bulletpoint it oof

post on multiple platforms and keep them all updated. i’m putting this one in bold because it is possibly the Most Important thing. we’re all watching twitter sinking over there, and many of my mutuals there were floundering because they hadn’t established themselves on any other social media site. i strongly recommend three or four socials minimum. my main four sites are tumblr, deviantart, twitter and toyhouse. furaffinity is also good. inkblot and artfol are new and i use them frequently as well. if you don’t like posting manually to every site each and every time you post art, Postybirb exists and is what i use to crosspost all my art to most of my socials at once.

avoid venting a lot on main. we all have frustrating days where our art isn’t getting the recognition we hoped, or we’re feeling petty about a controversial topic or the latest drama. it happens! it’s okay! however, many people just don’t like seeing dozens of negative posts on their feed. most people will sympathize, but if your negative vents are constantly clogging their dashboard they’re not gonna stick around.

shamelessly self promote yourself. reblog your own art. retweet it again. repost it. mention your other socials. we live in a world of timezones! when you post art, only a fraction of your audience is going to see it. i recommend reblogging / retweeting one to four individual pieces periodically over the course of a day and change it up each day. you can also repost your own work into photosets and title it “recent commissions” or the something like that.

don’t hide your linktrees and carrds. seriously! the amount of times on twitter i went to try and follow someone on another platform only to find they had no carrd or linktree link,, it is infuriating. put your socials link in your bio or pinned or SOMEWHERE readily at the top of your profile that’s easy to spot.

if you’re offering commissions, make a telegram channel or discord server for your announcements / openings.

post regularly. this one is a lot harder for artists that don’t make a lot of content, but posting even a status update once or twice a day can go a long way - especially if you’re on twitter with that platform’s hideous algorithm. alternatively as i said earlier, just retweet/reblog your work a few times a day and you should be good.

art trends are cool and fun and an easy way to get your work seen by others. see a “draw your sona in this outfit” meme? go, have fun with it. this one’s a bit tricky as timing is everything when it comes to ~trending~ content, so try and draw quick. that said, it’s never outdated to drawover reaction memes with your fursona.

try not to clog your socials with memes and shitposty images. this one is directed at twitter specifically. with twitter moments now gone, your media tab is the last way for people to hope to find your work organically on your profile without having to use the twitter search. they can’t get invested in your work if they can’t find it!

it’s okay to change course if you’re not vibing with where you’re headed. if you want to move onto a new aesthetic - that’s fine! you may lose some followers if they don’t click with your new vibe, but you’ll inevitably gain some new ones.

avoid frequent name changes. so many of the artists i follow have changed their brands / urls over the years that i don’t recognize them anymore.

tag your work properly. on tumblr, the first five tags on the original post are the tags your work will pop up in in the search feature. make those first five tags the Most important ones; example: #furry, #anthro, #art #fursona etc. twitter’s algo seems flip-flop if it likes tags or hates them. if you see a tag trending, repost your art in a photoset with the hashtag in the post [example: if #pokemon is trending, repost some of your pokemon fanart with the hashtag in the post body]. if the tag isn’t trending,,, i’ll be honest it’s a gamble if twitter likes your post or not at that point. i have no advice for that hell algorithm.

hosting raffles or doing a mini art request event [example: “leave a ref and i might draw your oc”] is good for traction while simultaneously giving back to the community + your audience a little!

try and reply to / like comments on your work. it’s not required per se, but it’s good to express gratitude.

engage with other members of the community. comment on other peoples work. like it. retweet it. follow other people. obviously don’t be disingenuous about it, but this is what the professionals call ~networking~

don’t compare yourself to others. this one is one you have got to keep in mind constantly. you’re going to find 17 year olds with huge followings and 30 year olds that are doing professional industry work whose level feels alien and almost out of reach. if you’re not doing as well, don’t let yourself get discouraged. we all gotta start somewhere!

related to the above point: be nice to your followers. venting on main about not having the same audience volume as others can come off as a huge middle finger to the audience you already have.

gaining a following takes time. unless you get a really lucky break, it’s going to take a lot of work and self promotion to build up your brand.

slap your name on everything. i mean it. any art you do - sign it. watermark it. people can and will share art in telegram channels and discord servers, and if the art interests someone they can easily source it back to you if your name is on it.

you can buy adspace. if you’re catering to a furry audience specifically, you can buy adspace on furaffinity pretty easily. inkblot i believe also offers adspace for artists though i haven’t looked too deep into it. this is really a “if you’re okay burning money” situation, as the huge chunkk of internet users have adblockers now and it’s a gamble if people will see or even click on your ad.

just have fun and do your own thing. you can hop on trends and draw art that caters to your audience’s tastes, but don’t forget to draw what YOU want and what YOU’RE about. Draw what makes YOU happy.

hope these help!! ;w;

#long post

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gaygryffindorgal · 4 months

Text

A Christmas Prince; The Royal Wedding

Chapter 5: The Breaking Point

Summary: Dawn investigates the situation in Alderly, leading to unexpected consequences.

Words: 5k

Characters:

Dawn Harvelle and Evander Alderly by @potionboy3

Quincey and Olympia Alderly, Tess Brandon

Rocky Weasley by @magicallymalted

Pandora Lovelace by @gcldensnitch

Also featuring:

Evan Harvelle by @potionboy3

Beginning| Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Want to read the first fic in the series, A Christmas Prince? Click here!

Chapter 5: The Breaking Point

Dawn was on a video call with Rocky and Pandora, while Rosa and The Queen argued about flower arrangements.

“We're on our way to the airport,” Pandora was saying. “See you in just a few hours!”

“It’s arse o’clock in the morning, try and get some sleep on the plane, okay?”

“I'm on vacation,” announced Rocky. “I'll sleep after New Year's.”

“You’re insane.”

“Your blog is what’s insane,” Pandora said. “It got like a billion hits in under ten hours but why did you take down all the photos?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everything you put up is like, gone,” Pandora explained. Dawn minimized the call window and pulled out his blog.

“Vanished about an hour ago,” said Rocky.

“I didn't take it down,” Dawn said, confused.

“Someone did,” Rocky observed.

“I bet I know who…”

Pince’s new office was on the same floor as Dawn’s wedding hell, so it didn’t take long for him to storm there. The culprit in question was talking one of the palace aides, a man by the name of Mr. Gorski.

“May I suggest a little damage control?” said Pince.

“I shall have a word with my friends in the press,” said Gorski.

“Much appreciated.”

The aide left and gave Dawn a funny look at the door.

Dawn stepped inside. “Did you censor my blog?”

“With all due respect, I thought we had talked about this, and agreed that…”

“I never agreed to my work being censored!”

Pince sighed and turned her computer screen to face Dawn, with all the pictures he had taken on full display. Another tab was open on the background, something about a company called Meadowlark but Dawn didn’t get a good look, before Pince maximized one of the pictures. The one showing Olympia and Gaia goofing off.

“Do you really think that this is the sort of image the royal family should portray?”

“I saw that it's trending!” Dawn argued. “It had tons of positive comments.”

“It's also a breach of protocol.”

“I seriously doubt,” said Dawn and took a deep breath. “…that traditional protocols were set up for viral social media.”

“Times change, protocol does not.”

“Well, in this case–,” Dawn started but Pince simply said: “Your photographs belong to us now. It's just the way that it is.”

Dawn couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Maybe he should have cleared a permission to post the images. He’d have to have a word with Quincey about this.

“Now, shall we turn our attention to the royal portrait?” asked Pince. “It is to be rendered at 4:30 promptly.”

“I can tell something's bothering you,” Quincey whispered. They were posed for the royal portrait, which Dawn had to admit, was not the best position to have a conversation in.

“Can we talk about it?” Quincey asked.

“I don't know, can we?” he hissed back. “It seems like we need a royal decree to go to the loo.”

“Who's ruffled your feathers now?”

“I had a rather unpleasant conversation with Miss Pince today,” Dawn explained. “I don't appreciate being controlled.”

“It's a balancing act,” said Quincey. “At the end of a day, they work for us, but we need to play by the rules.”

“She deleted posts from my blog, without informing me.”

“Please, be quiet Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness,” said Rosa.

“Once we get through the wedding and you're officially Prince Consort, we'll be at a better place to pick our battles,” Quincey added quickly.

“’Once we get through it.’ Sounds like you're talking about a medical procedure…”

“Let's just go with the flow. Keep calm and carry on, for now. Okay?”

The photographer cleared his throat, and both Dawn and Quincey assumed their poses.

“Chin up, King Quentin, give me some regality.”

Flash.

“Watch the smiling. This image must exude solemnity and control.”

Flash.

They were ordered to turn this way and that, change hand positions, change sides, and Dawn was getting annoyed. He knew this to be a part of life as a member of the royal family but Pince censoring his blog had already burned away much of his already short fuse.

“How much longer will this take?” he asked after twenty minutes.

“The sooner we get it right, the sooner we can go,” said the photographer.

“It’s the necklace,” said Miss Pince. “Who approved this? You, Miss Yaxley?”

Dawn realized they were talking about Tess’s necklace, and he grabbed it protectively.

“I…” Rosa started. “I thought it had been agreed upon.”

“I chose it,” said Dawn.

“Well, it's absolutely wrong! Take it off.”

“I want to wear it.”

“It's inappropriate,” said Pince and snapped her fingers for Rosa to take the necklace. Rosa walked over to Dawn apologetically.

“I really want to keep this,” said Dawn.

“This isn’t about you,” said Pince. “It’s about the royal portrait.”

“Quincey?” Dawn attempted, turning to his husband-to-be.

“Miss Pince, is there really no way he could…”

“This is the official portrait, Your Majesty, I’m afraid I must insist on the removal of the necklace.”

“I don’t see–,”

Pince stepped closer. “You two don’t want to insult the crown now, when we’ve come so far. It’s crucial we do everything by the books.”

Quincey sighed and Dawn could see the fight draining out of him. “Alright.”

“What?” Dawn asked.

“It’s just a necklace, Dawn.”

Dawn felt like he’d been dumped into cold water. Silently he took the necklace off but instead of giving it to Rosa’s expectant hand, he carefully put it in his pocket. Then he got back into his pose, and it certainly wasn’t hard not to smile anymore.

The atmosphere was not quite merry, when the family gathered together in front of a fireplace to read Christmas cards sent by the Alderlian people.

“It makes us proud to have you as our royal family. May you be blessed with the happiest of Christmases. Love, the Potters,” Queen Isabella read from her big, throne-like armchair. “All the cards from well-wishers have to be my favourite part of the season.”

“I love hanging Christmas cards from my partners and customers on my office wall back home,” said Tess.

“Would you like some coffee with that whiskey, Evander?” asked Quincey when Evander sat next to him on the couch. Evander made a face at him. Dawn could suddenly see them as kids, bickering over toys or the front seat of a car.

“Dear Royals, while I'm sure you're having a dandy Christmas at the palace, the real working people of Alderly are suffering…” the queen stopped short and cleared her throat. “This one isn't very festive.”

“Keep reading, mother,” said Quincey.

Isabella hesitated, but went on: “I've lost my job, as the business I owned and worked at my whole life, but which was put out of business by your New Alderly disaster. Thanks for nothing but a big lump of coal in my stocking this year.”

Isabella lowered the card and looked distraught. “We are doing everything we can, aren't we? That man has no idea how hard we're working for the long-term well-being of the kingdom.”

Evan nodded encouragingly. “Some people just like to complain. It's like I always say: can't let the naysayers bring you down. Right, peanut?”

“Dad…” muttered Dawn.

“All hail, Prince Peanut!” said Evander, raising his glass.

“All hail, the village idiot,” said Olympia.

“Mr. Harvelle has a valid point,” said the queen. “Mustn't let a malcontent disrupt the season.”

“Read another one, mother,” said Quincey.

“Dearest royal family, sending you warmest wishes this holiday... and hoping for the best. Merry Christmas…”

Olympia came with Dawn to wait for the arrival of Rocky and Pandora. Quincey had sent a car to fetch them from the airport. They were coming together, since Jimmy couldn’t get away until the wedding due to his father’s magazine going out of business. Nymeria was also working until Christmas Eve, so Maxim had postponed his arrival, too.

“I think there’s more to these New Alderly problems than meets the eye, but I've been too caught up thinking about the wedding protocols,” Dawn told the princess.

“What do you mean more?” Olympia inquired.

“Call it journalistic instinct.”

Just then the car pulled up and Dawn’s friends filed out.

“Dawn!” said Pandora excitably and came to give him a hug. Rocky followed suit.

“Hi guys,” said Dawn. He was very happy to see the two of them, especially after the insane stuff that had been going on in Alderly.

“You must be Princess Olympia,” said Pandora and curtsied. Dawn felt proud.

Rocky bowed and said: “It's an honour to be a guest of the realm.”

“Uh, excuse Rocky, this is his first royal wedding.”

Olympia laughed. “The realm welcomes you both. Abide, and you will avoid the dungeon.”

Pandora and Rocky exchanged glances.

Dawn showed his friends around. Their reactions were pretty much in line with Dawn’s own.

“Oh, my gosh, can you believe this place?” said Pandora. “It's amazing.”

“You think if we just moved in, they'd even notice?” Rocky asked.

“Let's give it a try.”

“Where are the knights in shining armour?” Rocky continued. “When's jousting? I want to joust.”

“I want wenches serving mead,” Pandora announced.

“There are no wenches in my kingdom,” said Quincey, who had appeared at the end of the hall. He walked up to them, smiling. He’d spent more time with all of Dawn’s friends throughout their engagement and they got along nicely. Dawn was willing to wager that Pandora and Rocky had more goodwill for the king than he did, at the minute.

“Quincey,” said Dawn. He was still pissed off about the necklace, but he didn’t want to start an argument when his friends had just arrived.

“My King!” said Rocky.

“Good to see you both again,” said Quincey.

“Good to see you, too,” said Pandora. “You have a beautiful country.”

“So many dignitaries about, too,” said Rocky. “I never get to meet dignitaries at the Noodle Chalet.”

“I wish I could come have some fun with you three today, but sadly, my day is far from over. mother has the new accounts for us.”

Of course she did.

“Well, I’d love to stay and help but…” Dawn started.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t postpone our celebrations?” asked Pandora, looking between Dawn and Quincey. Dawn, however, had other plans in store.

“It’s quite alright, you should show your friends the sights of Alderly. But think of me when you're having fun.” His tone was a little off, so maybe he wasn’t completely unaware of Dawn’s hurt feelings.

“You heard the King, it's party time,” said Pandora.

“It's your bachelor night!” said Rocky. “We're gonna get it going!”

Quincey rolled his eyes at them in amusement and left. Dawn turned to his friends, half a plan formed in his mind.

“Actually, there's something I was hoping you two could help me with.”

“What kind of something?” asked Rocky.

“A lead I want to follow up on.”

“A lead?”

“More of a hunch. Potentially a source.”

“Wait,” said Pandora “A lead for what? A scoop?”

“Discrepancies in the kingdom's finances,” Dawn explained.

“That sounds way more fun than a bachelor party,” said Rocky, sarcastically.

“Should've seen this coming. It's just days to your wedding, your best friends just flew in to celebrate, and you want to work?” asked Pandora.

“Yes. There's something going on in Alderly that doesn't make sense.”

“What does Quincey say?” asked Rocky.

Dawn scoffed, annoyed at the mere thought. “He's too busy going with the flow. Please, I need your help. There's someone we need to find tonight.”

Dawn’s plan involved finding the Christmas card sent by the displeased subject. It was from a man by the name of Aberforth Dumbledore. Tess agreed to help, too so they had four people combing through the cards instead of three.

“Let us search the realm for one Mr. Dumbledore,” announced Pandora.

“We should at least bring our sunglasses,” Tess said as a clear dig at Dawn for his disguise at the airport. “Having the Prince-Consort-to-be spotted roaming the city without any security might be a bit risky.”

“I’m security,” said Pandora but Tess was not convinced so they all dressed up as incognito as possible. Dawn put on a hat for good measure. He was aware of the risky nature of his plan, but he had started to seriously doubt the court’s ability to handle this situation.

The four of them went to the most popular pub in town to start with. The Three Broomsticks it was called, and they had it on good authority that it might be a place to find this Mr. Dumbledore.

“If this Aberforth guy isn't here,” said Pandora. “Can we please do something fun?

“Yes, something that resembles a bachelor party,” agreed Rocky.

“I spoke to Mr. Flitwick, and he said that Mr. Dumbledore’s been here almost every day since he lost his job.”

“Notice how he didn't answer my question,” grumbled Pandora to Rocky.

“Well, at least it's a bar…”

The bartender was an older lady with magnificent, light brown curls. Her name was Rosmerta and Tess went to ask her about their mystery man so as to protect Dawn’s identity. While he waited, a man walked up to him, clearly well into god knew how many pints.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses inside?” he demanded. “It’s dark as a dungeon in here.”

Dawn, not wanting to cause any kind of a scene but being well aware of how drunk people were capable of causing a fight from nothing, just said: “I have a light sensitivity disorder.”

The man did a double take and squinted his eyes at Dawn. “Do I know your voice from somewhere?”

“I gotta go, sorry,” said Dawn and joined Tess at the bar. He very much did not want to be discovered here.

Rosmerta pointed them to one of the corner tables, where an elderly chap was sitting, nursing a pint of ale.

Dawn approached, his companions behind him.

“Aberforth Dumbledore?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Aberforth did not seem particularly forthcoming when he asked: “What kind of questions?”

“About your work situation.”

“You some kind of reporter?”

“Well, sort of,” said Dawn and removed his sunglasses.

“Merlin’s beard,” said Aberforth, obviously recognizing Dawn. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“I want to help,” Dawn said. “The situation is getting out of hand, and I think I might be able to do something about it. Not that King Quentin isn’t trying his best, he’s barely slept since I got here.”

“And I'm supposed to feel sorry for him?” asked Aberforth. “How much sleep you think I've been getting?”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Dumbledore, that's not what I meant,” said Dawn, backpedalling. “It's just that they... that we are all trying to find the best solution.”

Aberforth scoffed. “But you're one of them. Why should I trust you?”

To be fair, Dawn probably hadn’t thought this thing through. He wasn’t used to not being the underdog himself so having it thrown to his face made him hesitate. Still, he pressed on: “Why else would I be here? I want to understand what's going on, too.”

Aberforth sighed and motioned for them all to sit down. Maybe because he actually believed Dawn or maybe because he figured if he cooperated, they’d all leave him alone sooner.

“This whole New Alderly initiative, it's a fraud. It was supposed to be a way to get the country to invest more money back into itself. That be the case, the money should actually stay in Alderly.”

Dawn took out a tiny notebook and a pen. He wasn’t going to fumble what might very well be his last chance of doing some actual investigative journalism.

“I owned a pub called Hog’s Head Inn for 45 years before we were shut down.”

“If local businesses like yours aren't getting a piece of the pie, then who is?” asked Dawn.

“Well, a new company, Meadowlark. They bought out many local businesses and there simply weren’t enough customers to stay afloat. They could afford lower prices.”

Meadowlark grabbed Dawn’s attention. It was the name he’d seen on Pince’s computer this very morning. This, however, was the first time he was hearing anything about a big corporation buying out local businesses.

“An Alderlian company?”

“Well, on paper, maybe. But them and another couple of companies formed at the start of the initiative. All a bit fishy, if you ask me.”

Dawn wrote down everything he thought relevant as fast as he could. Aberforth eyed him and then asked: “What are you planning on doing anyway?”

“Getting to the bottom of this.” Dawn said determinedly. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Dumbledore. It's a good start.”

Aberforth nodded. “I never did like being called Mr. Dumbledore. Aberforth will do if you happen on these parts again, Your Highness.”

“Alright, Aberforth–,” Dawn started, when suddenly someone yelled across the room: “There he is! With the hat!”

“I think we got trouble,” said Rocky, standing up quickly.

“Dawn! Dawn Harvelle!”

“For cock’s sake,” Dawn swore and slipped his notebook back into his pocket.

The four of them retreated to the very back of the pub but paparazzies had already been alerted to their presence. Suddenly someone grabbed Dawn by the arm, and he jumped.

“Follow me,” said Evander of all people. “I know a way out.”

“What the hell?” asked Dawn.

“Or you can stay here and be picked clean by the vultures,” Evander said urgently.

“What… You tipped these people off, didn't you?”

“If I tipped them off,” Evander demanded. “Why would I be trying to help you escape? Let's go.”

“I don’t see any other way out of here,” said Tess.

“Fine,” Dawn relented, and they all followed Evander out from a side exit.

Once outside and away from the earshot of any paparazzi, Dawn asked: “Did you follow us here?”

“We're fighting on the same side here,” said Evander.

“I don't know what angle you're playing, but I know you're playing one.”

“This is my car, come on,” he said, ignoring Dawn’s comment. It was tiny and old, and Dawn couldn’t place its model. All he could do was ask: “What happened to the Lamborghini?”

“It was a Ferrari and I told you I had to sell it,” Evander said. “Now get in unless you want those people to catch up with us.”

They filed in, Dawn stubbornly in the back while Tess took the front seat. He didn’t appreciate having to be rescued by Evander.

“Thank you,” said Tess.

“Why on Earth did you think it was a good idea to go snooping to town?” Evander asked and he was clearly talking to Tess, made more evident when he added: “Dawn’s the most famous person in the country right now.”

“In my defence,” said Rocky from the right side of Dawn. “I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“We wanted to help,” said Tess. “And I think we might have found something worthwhile.”

“Not much on Meadowlark Enterprises…” Dawn said later back at the palace. He’d pulled out his laptop and was trying to find out any information he could about the mysterious company. “Just a public web site with no physical address. It's like someone's scrubbed the records. There's no footprint.”

“Is that the best you can do?” asked Evander.

“Remind me again why you're here?”

“I rescued your asses from the paparazzi,” said Evander. “And I know more about the economic situation than you.”

“Really?” asked Dawn. “Here I thought you were just a waste of space.”

“You have such a way with words,” said Evander.

“Well, I am a writer.”

Rocky drew Dawn’s attention back to the computer screen.

“Hey, check that out,” he said. “Looks like Meadowlark is getting the lion's share of the contracts with these two other firms: Geller Inc., and Houghton Alexis.”

“Those must be the others that Aberforth was talking about,” Dawn mused, examining the screen.

“Do you know anything about those companies?” Tess asked Evander who looked slightly surprised at being asked a direct question.

“No, but I do know that any company involved in public works projects has to register their financial information with the Hall of Records database.”

“How do we get in there?” asked Dawn.

“You're the one with the King for a fiancé,” said Evander.

“I don't want to ask Quincey about this. Not unless I really have to.”

“Why not?” asked Evander, smugly. “Do I detect trouble in paradise?”

“Wipe that stupid look off your face,” said Dawn.

“Guys,” said Pandora. “Can we stay on subject.”

“Right,” continued Evander. “We could break into the Hall of Records. Or kidnap the records keeper, toss him in a dungeon, and hope he gives up the passcode.”

This solicited a few chuckles from everyone around the table but Dawn.

“Or we could hack it,” said someone by the door. Olympia walked in; arms crossed.

“How long have you been out there?” asked Dawn.

“Long enough to get the gist,” Olympia replied. “Chances are Alderly's public firewalls aren't exactly state of the art.”

“Are you saying you could do it?” asked Dawn.

“No, she’s not,” said Evander, looking at Olympia in equal parts surprise and suspicion. “Remember how I said I went to Oxford for Economics?”

“Vaguely.”

“I minored in computer science.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” asked Dawn.

“No, he isn’t,” said Olympia. She didn’t seem at all happy about having spoken this idea out loud but if there was a chance they could get to the bottom of things this way then Dawn had to admit that it wasn’t entirely bad.

“If I can create a network interface that catches the traffic to the legitimate server, I can backdoor the access.”

Everyone looked at Evander like he’d just spoken a completely different language.

“An interfacing server-traffic-catcher,” he said. “Never heard of it?”

“Of course,” said Dawn, sarcastically. “So obvious.”

“Do you think you can crack this?” Tess asked Evander.

“Yes, but it's going take some time,” he said as Dawn handed his laptop to him. “Perhaps all night.”

“No problem,” said Pandora and then turned to Rocky. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“Bachelor party?” asked Rocky.

“No,” said Dawn.

“I would appreciate it if you let me work in peace so by all means, go have your little party,” said Evander.

“I do not feel comfortable leaving him alone with this,” said Dawn. “He has my computer, after all.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Tess. Dawn squinted his eyes at her. He wasn’t sure why Tess was suddenly so nice about Evander.

“Alright, fine, but no partying” he said. At least he knew he could trust Tess.

Olympia led Dawn, Rocky, and Pandora upstairs.

“Alright,” said Olympia. “The coast is clear. Now.”

“Where exactly are we going?” asked Dawn.

The princess reached a door and tried the handle. It was locked, so she produced a key from her cardigan pocket. “Since we’re not throwing a party, we might as well do something fun.”

Olympia let them in. It was a standard palace bedroom and Dawn couldn’t immediately tell to whom it belonged.

“Olympia, whose room is this?” he asked and then noticed a framed photograph of Evander on one of the nightstands. Had they entered the lair of some secret Evander fan-club or did this man seriously have his own picture on his nightstand?

“Evie’s, of course,” said Olympia as innocently as she could muster.

Dawn walked over to the bed and picked up the picture frame. “I would’ve guessed his mother.”

Olympia chuckled and began to search around the room for something.

“What are we looking for?” asked Pandora.

“I happen to know that Evander has a collection of quality sheet masks somewhere in here,” Olympia explained, opening drawers and cabinets. “We’re going to… borrow a few.”

“Sheet masks?” asked Rocky, as if he hadn’t heard Olympia correctly.

“Yes!” the princess said. “It’ll be fun, trust me!”

Dawn got to looking and soon enough discovered a stash in one of the drawers of Evander’s closet. “Oh, wow, these are like… posh posh.”

“I know right,” said Olympia. “Everyone, take your pick.”

Pandora and Olympia chose masks for themselves, but Dawn was still stuck on the price tag.

“He had to sell his car but he’s still sticking to these…”

“Priorities,” muttered Pandora and examined her mask’s package.

“He does have a very soft-looking skin,” said Rocky, grabbing one for himself.

“That’s so true,” Pandora said.

“Is there anything else we could nick?” asked Dawn. He was definitely interested in mildly inconveniencing Evander in any way he could.

“I mean,” started Pandora. She looked around the room. “He’s basically poor, now, right?”

“He’s still a count,” said Olympia. “He might be exaggerating his struggles a little.”

“His car did truly suck, though.”

Rocky cleared his throat. “He is currently trying to help the country… Maybe. Just a friendly reminder.”

“Let’s just grab the masks and go,” suggested Pandora.

Olympia looked at Dawn. “Hmm, what do you think? Has Evie deserved our mercy?”

“Well, with a quick glance we didn’t find anything particularly evil…” Dawn said.

“Yeah, alright,” said Olympia. “Masks it is.”

“Actually,” said Dawn, still holding Evander’s picture. “I’m taking this. It’s a good Christmas present for Quincey.”

Olympia laughed. “I’m sure he’ll love it.”

“I’ll place it in our bedroom… His bedroom…? Do we have to sleep in separate bedrooms?”

“Not once you’re married,” said Olympia. “Propriety rules, and all.”

“In The Crown they have separate rooms,” said Rocky.

“They used to have those here too,” said Olympia. “And I’m sure you could get one if you wanted to.”

“Do you think he wants that…?” asked Dawn, carefully.

Olympia looked at him quizzically. “Quincey? I very much doubt it.”

Dawn shrugged. Quincey was always so busy that Dawn thought he might’ve even wanted some privacy.

“Let’s go, then,” said Olympia. They all filed out of the room, stolen masks in hand. Dawn felt a bit good about it, even though he was well aware of the good works Evander was currently performing.

They went to Dawn’s bridal suite and put the masks on. Olympia also insisted upon mani-pedis, so that’s what they did. She had some glühwein brought up and they passed a pleasant evening. Rocky was very much looking forward to waking up with the world’s softest skin the next morning and Dawn didn’t think about his wedding drama all that much. But this, much like a lot of things in Alderly, wasn’t the night Dawn would have planned for himself, and if it had been Jimmy, Maxim, Rocky, and him, the night would have gone very differently. Probably something along the lines of beer-pong. However, all things considered; it was still pretty fun.

Dawn was woken up way too early by someone calling his name.

“Mr. Harvelle. Mr. Harvelle!”

“Rosa, go away…”

“I am not Rosa,” said the distinct voice of Miss Pince. “Now, get up, get dressed, and follow me to my office.”

Dawn sat up. Pince’s face did not promise good news. She left the room so Dawn could get dressed in peace but was waiting right outside the door. When they arrived at the office, Quincey was already there, looking slightly dishevelled. Pince had probably woken him up, too.

“Quince?”

“Dawn, what are you doing here?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Dawn “You don't know?”

“Not a clue. Miss Pince asked me here…”

“Your Majesty, thank you for coming,” said Pince and took a seat.

“What can we do for you?” Quincey asked. Dawn was starting to feel like his actions from last night were going to come back to bite him in the arse.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said Pince and opened her computer so Quincey and Dawn could see the article displayed on it. “But we have been hit by a rather severe public relations snafu. This is exactly what we don't want.”

It was a front-page article proclaiming: The Prince Consort goes barhopping! Complete with several pictures taken at The Three Broomsticks.

“That's Dawn's bachelor party,” said Quincey but then he stopped and looked at the pictures more closely. “Is that Evander?” His tone was more that of surprise than disapproval though. Still, Pince didn’t look happy.

Dawn cleared his throat, he had better tell the truth than let Quiney think Dawn had invited Evander to his party. “It wasn't a party, we were investigating.”

“Investigating?” asked Quincey.

“Investigating what?” Miss Pince echoed the king.

“The discrepancies in the royal finances.”

“Excuse me?” asked Pince.

“What?” said Quincey.

Pince took a deep breath and said, more to Quincey than to Dawn: “I'm afraid that Mr. Harvelle does not understand his role within the royal family.”

Dawn, pissed off that he was spoken of as if he was a child or not in the room, said: “Oh, no, I get it. I'm supposed to smile, and nod, and do as I'm told. I understand, I just... I don't agree.”

“Well, I suggest that you cease from any further investigation and any activity pertaining to your blog immediately.”

“No way,” said Dawn.

“Your Majesty?” Pince implored.

“I…” Quincey started. “Look, Dawn, I think Miss Pince might be right about this. The approval ratings for the royal family are in the gutter and I–,”

“Really, Quincey?”

He couldn’t even say that he was surprised by Quincey not taking his side and that was probably the most disappointing thing about the entire situation.

“Just for a while.”

Dawn got up from his seat. He’d had enough of this entire bloody farce. He was beginning to think that maybe he wasn’t really cut out for this role and that maybe he had fucked up when he agreed to it in the first place. He stormed out of the room and could hear Quincey calling after him and Pince saying: “Sir! Give him some space. Let him calm down. And meanwhile, The Queen Mother has sent some notes for tonight's speech…”

tag list: @lifeofkaze, @gcldensnitch, @endlessly-cursed, @cursed-herbalist, @magicallymalted

(ask if you want to be included or removed)

#not a single thought has occured in my brain throughout writing this entire thing i promise u that #fic: the royal wedding #a christmas prince au #dawn harvelle #dawncey #the plot thickens #quincey has been kind of girlfailing in this one #but we'll get a chapter from his pov so maybe he can justify his actions himself (or not we'll see)#*my writing #quincey alderly

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dykesbat · 14 days

Note

hi. writing here because of your privacy settings, sorry.

from what i’ve seen you’re doing supporting for fundraisers, and i wanted to ask for your help.

i’ve had a person submit an ask to me saying they’re from gaza and need donations. i’ve never had experience with anything like this, but i’m trying to ask questions. they don’t share much info about themselves. their link leads to a something something linktree where you can donate with paypal. they sent me a photo per request, upon looking it up in google it leads to a gofundme https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-aqlain-family-evacuate-gaza?modal=donations&tab=all

can’t open it because of the country i live in, but the date is set to 16 feb. the name there doesn’t match name in their link, or the name they’ve sent me per my request.

:•( i’m getting a fishy vibe, but i’m worried it could be a person new to tumblr or eng speaking social media in general.

hi! sorry for responding so late. you did everything correctly and those are all definitely signs of it being a scam. i just talked w a friend about this (ill copy and paste my tips below).

i completely understand the worry. many of these red flags aren't outright indicators that every single blog that fits them is a scam, but the combination of things is what really makes the case. it's unfortunate but, a big red flag generally is if a new blog sends you an ask about donations. it's a common scam tactic from before this nakba. the scammers are just exploiting palestinians' genocide instead of the other issues they typically exploit.

obviously not all of these tips are absolute indicators of a scam and some are already things youve considered! but my general tips:

1. is the blog just new? if the icon is of a real person, is it their image? (you can reverse google image search! w mobile you'll have to save the image first and find a site for it. i typically use labnol but i can help you find alternatives if youd like!) are the posts they're reblogging related to the things that you post? (consider: how did they find you) are the posts they're reblogging coming from an actual dashboard rather than the recommendation page? (indicates that they're reblogging popular posts without any rhyme or reason to look like a real blog) is their first post a donation post and was it just made? (dates the blog. you can look in their archives to see the date of their earliest post)

2. where are they linking to? im not sure if your device has an option to preview a link url before sending you to the page but if it does, i would use that here just to be safe. do the names of the accounts match? (note that in this case, of course, many fundraisers are being raised by people outside of palestine. but if the blog claims to be the account owner, do their names seem to match? if theres a description, do the names match the ones the blog gives?) does it lead to a paypal instead of a gofundme? heavily stressing that this obv doesnt mean every request from someone using paypal is a scam, esp w the way gfm has been screwing over some palestinians, BUT paypal is often what scammers would use. gofundme is generally reliable and every fundraiser is donation protected, meaning its possible to get a refund from gofundme in the rare case that the fundraiser is a scam.

3. verifying gfm's can be a lot harder bc my go to options aren't always available. generally what i do is to look at through the organizer's updates, the fundraiser's description <- which obv you should always do anyways, and the fundraisers photos to see if theres anymore information about social media accounts related to the fundraiser. sometimes people will link twitter profiles, sometimes people will link instagram profiles. its just the same process of scrolling back as far as you can and seeing if you can identify the same face(s) from before more people started exploiting these traumas to scam others, seeing when the profile was made, checking if the images are truly from the profile's owners and not stolen, etc.

the biggest indicators imo are the stolen photos since the originals almost always link back to a name that doesn't match the blog.

#asks #hope you're having a lovely day please lmk if theres any other way i can help!

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lightandfellowship · 1 year

Text

Examining Vor's motivations

(Major KHDR spoilers)

So if you’ve experienced KHDR's story, then you’re probably aware of how...confusing and seemingly contradictory Vor’s motivations are, at least on an initial viewing. Because of this lack of clarity surrounding her circumstances and inner thoughts, it can be a little difficult to get a solid grasp on her character. However, I think her motivations, feelings, and choices start to make a lot more sense once you analyze her cutscenes closely. The key to understanding her, I think, is realizing how human her emotions are. And human emotions are oftentimes a complex web of contradictory ideas that can't always be easily defined, explained, or reconciled.

In light of this, I decided to engage in some character analysis where I examine her story more in-depth, going over some scenes from the game and trying to break down her motivations into something a bit more easily understood. (Also be forewarned that this post is fairly long and image heavy, so you might want to open it in a new tab or something.)

So, Episodes 1-2 aren’t very useful for analyzing Vor’s character, one because not much happens in those episodes, and two because those episodes utilize the “pick your party member” system where the characters are sometimes interchangable without many significant alterations of dialog (sometimes no alterations at all.) Technically Episode 3 uses the same system, but at least here the dialog changes are substantial enough to make a bit of a difference. So let’s just start with the end of Episode 2 and go from there.

(FYI, I wanted to use even more images in this post, but I was running into some issues, so I decided to reduce the number of them. I apologize if the lack of an image in certain places creates any confusion.)

Episode 2/3

The end of Episode 2 has Vor noticing that Xehanort and Eraqus are scheming a plan together, and she's suspicious/curious enough to (rather forcefully) insert herself into the group so that she can get all the juicy details. That is if you choose to take her with you as your third party member, which...why wouldn’t you? It’s clearly what the story wants you to do.

But just for the sake of thoroughness, know that if you don't pick her, she'll dramatically pout with a "Aww..." and look really sad while everyone else smiles. It's played for laughs but she honestly looks pretty upset about it.

Anyway, when you give in to her request, she’s very pleased. She jumps up and down excitedly and says that Xehanort and Eraqus won’t regret bringing her along (even though Eraqus looks pretty unhappy about it). Even as early as this moment you can see that Vor likes being included in things and getting the opportunity to prove her usefulness/worth to her friends. As the episode goes on it becomes even more clear:

She gets upset when Eraqus still refuses to let her in on the plan despite allowing her to tag along, throwing a tantrum and smacking him repeatedly.

"Don't look so surprised. You made it pretty obvious." She reveals that she's way more observant than they give her credit for, correctly guessing that their plan involves the Queen of Hearts and her darkness.

"...so you were going to leave me to do your own research!"

She gets upset again when she finally learns the details of their plan and questions why they were leaving her out of it/refusing to let her help them.

And finally when Xehanort and Eraqus explain that they didn’t want to involve anyone else for fear of their classmates getting hurt, Vor ignores their concerns and confidently declares that they should go visit the queen together. Xehanort and Eraqus are, in a way, trying to exclude her from their plans with the excuse that she might come to harm, but she won't let them leave her behind.

Again, just to reiterate: it’s clear that she loves her friends a lot, wants to be included in everything they do, wants to feel like a useful, strong, reliable member of the team, and something that will be stated more directly later: she wants to feel like she belongs somewhere.

Episode 4

Where all the important stuff actually happens, but mostly at the end.

But some details of minor relevance before we get to that: Vor is the first one to rush off to help the seven dwarves when Xehanort, Eraqus, and Vor overhear that a cave-in happened in a mine. Makes sense; she’s naturally curious and likes to be helpful.

After they help the dwarves reunite, Vor makes a comment about how the seven dwarves remind her of her and her six classmates. Her friends and her place among them is fresh on her mind, for reasons that aren't known to the player yet but get revealed soon afterwards.

She also looks pretty pleased with herself to have a solution to Xehanort and Eraqus’ problem, when they say that tracking down Darkness isn't going to be easy. Vor corrects them, and reveals that she discovered an all-knowing Mirror that could potentially solve all of their problems. Again, this ties in to her desire to be a helpful member of the team.

But anyway, on to the actual meat of this whole thing.

Xehanort, Eraqus, and Vor go to speak to the Magic Mirror. The Queen interrupts their discussion, throws a potion at the mirror, and the group fights it. After it's defeated Vidar shows up, and compels Vor to reveal A Secret.

Here we learn through a flashback that when Vor first discovered the mirror, she discretely asked it a question of her own without telling her friends that she did this. She asked it if she would ever become a Keyblade Master.

A single sentence question, but it implies a lot about Vor. The fact that she’s asking this at all means that she isn’t confident in her abilities or her future. Even the use of the word "ever" suggests a level of desperation to her query.

So here's the thing: when Eraqus approaches the mirror, his first instinct is to ask a silly question like “How can I beat Xehanort at chess?”, and Xehanort makes no attempt to ask the mirror a personal question at all (though knowing him he would probably ask about his dream friends like MX does later in life). I imagine even if Hermod, Urd, and Bragi had the opportunity to ask the mirror a question, it wouldn’t be about the possibility of them failing to become a Keyblade Master, it would be about something else that bothers them. So I think this anxiety about failure might be unique to Vor specifically.

But what makes her think that she might not become a Keyblade Master? Some possibilities: maybe she feels like she’s falling behind on her studies compared to her friends. Maybe she feels like she’s become complacent in her comfort. Or maybe she feels like people underestimate her abilities because of her appearance and stature (Xehanort and Eraqus were shocked at her picking up that boulder, after all.) Vor is very observant and has a good intuition (even her name comes from a Norse goddess with this exact reputation) so if people were looking down on her, I think she would notice quickly. And this might be why she’s so eager/persistent to be included in activities and allowed to be useful. She feels like she has to prove herself constantly in order to be on the same level as her friends.

Anyway. The mirror gives its answer but it wasn’t the reassurance she was hoping for. “With friends thy heart doth lie, content and free of woe / In comfort stagnant calm, forward thou fail to go.” Let’s break this down line by line before we get into her reaction.

“With friends thy heart doth lie”. She spends a lot of time with her friends, yes, but also the focus of her heart, the focus of her affections, is directed at her friends (wouldn’t surprise me if they’re the most important people in the world to her).

“Content and free of woe”. She has a pretty good life with her friends, for the most part. “Content” doesn’t necessarily equate to an overabundance of happiness though, the connotation of it is like...satisfactory enough. Right? “I’m content with something” vs. “I’m overjoyed with something”. Things could...probably be better? Maybe underneath the surface Vor can tell that something is wrong, but since things are Good Enough, she doesn’t try to think about it too hard, y’know? Don’t fix what isn’t broken. This Is Fine. If I try to improve things I might accidentally make things worse instead.

“In comfort stagnant calm”. Comfort. Something that eases the pain. Friends who make you forget about the pain. Stagnant. Unchanging, unmoving, lifeless or unable to support life effectively (like stagnant water), unable to progress or develop or improve. Your friends are moving forward and bursting with potential and you are not. Calm. Stillness. Peace. But it’s unexciting, unrewarding, you’re not being challenged by anything or anyone and it isn’t conducive to improvement or learning.

“Forward thou fail to go.” Pretty open-ended wording, but since Vor was specifically asking about becoming a Keyblade Master, that must be the subject matter the mirror was answering about. For whatever reason being with her friends is going to prevent her from becoming a master. I kinda have a theory that the mirror was basically saying (in his usual cryptic unhelpful way) “if you stay with your friends you won’t become a Keyblade Master because you will DIE” but who knows.

Vor takes this. Not well. In fact, she’s very angry. She runs up to the mirror, gets right up in its face and yells at it, and then raises both of her arms up into the air like she wants to break it. We've seen this before where she’ll smack Eraqus over and over again (despite her official bio saying she shies away from battle, she’s surprisingly prone to some mild violence) but it almost seems like she’s ready to kill this thing, lmao.

She does say something interesting though. First she yells “That’s not true!” and then clarifies “I want to become a Keyblade Master as much as everyone else!”

Is that true? Is she just as motivated as everyone else? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll get to that.

But the Mirror’s matter-of-fact statement about being literally incapable of lying makes her calm down real quick with a quiet "Oh."

We flashfoward back to the present. Vor explains her feelings in more detail.

She says that recently, she started to realize how she really feels. I think the moment she’s referring to is actually shown in the game: it’s the flashback that plays at the end of this scene where the lower classmen discuss their reasons for wanting to become Keyblade Masters. So let’s go out of order a little bit and talk about that.

Vor asks all her friends why they want to become Keyblade Masters. It’s hard to say exactly why she brings this up, whether she had a specific reason or if it was just idle chatter. Everyone gives their reasons and at the end Eraqus returns the question to Vor. Why do you want to become a Keyblade Master, Vor? And wow Vor practically goes through the five stages of grief within the span of five seconds when asked this.

First she’s a little taken aback, like she didn’t have an answer prepared (because she didn’t). Then she looks confused, like she’s NEVER BEFORE asked herself this question and is suddenly realizing that her brain can’t find motivation dot exe. Then she looks HORRIFIED, the true implications of what this means dawning on her. And then realizing that she needs to put back on her cheerful mask before her friends start to suspect something, she pulls herself together enough to come up with an excuse for why she can’t answer. She makes a joke about how wishes won’t come true if you say them out loud so HAH I tricked all of you! Now NONE of you will become Keyblade Masters!

So. Okay. That was a lot of emotions she just went through in a short period of time. But what does it all mean? I think it means that she never once stopped to consider why she wanted to become a Keyblade Master, because she was just following in her friends’ footsteps. She wants to go wherever her friends go, that’s all. Like a baby duck following a bunch of other baby ducks. Oh, all of my friends are joining the Keyblade wielder program? That’s gonna take up a lot of their time and I won’t get to spend as much time with them as a result...wait, what if I join too? Then I get to hang out with them during school and outside of school, and we get to go to class together and do activites together and go to lunch together and I get to belong somewhere and and and! Oh, why would I want to become a Keyblade Master? Shhhh don’t ask me that la la la la I can’t hear you!!!

What’s interesting though is that despite seemingly coming to realize that she might not actually have her own personal motivations for becoming a Keyblade Master, she still asks the mirror if she'll ever become one as if she still wants to. Maybe it’s not a matter of needing to find a different path in life, maybe she just needs to find a better reason for wanting to become a Keyblade Master? Or maybe she just wants to prove herself capable and strong enough to accomplish this feat? Or maybe she was in denial? I guess denial would make the most sense actually since she reacted pretty strongly to the mirror's implication that she wasn’t as motivated as her friends, even though she’s probably already realized this about herself at this point.

Her lack of a definite reason isn’t the only thing she realizes, though. She also realizes that even if she finds her true motivation, even if she successfully becomes a Keyblade Master, one of her other desires will inevitably escape from her grasp: her desire to be with her friends. Because for whatever reason, the path of the Keyblade Master requires them to go on their own separate paths. And even in the scenario where Vor fails to become a Master, she has no reason to believe that her friends will fail alongside her, meaning that they would all eventually leave her to go do their own thing anyway.

So, you can see where all the contradictory feelings start to converge. She wants to become a Keyblade Master. She doesn’t want to become a Keyblade Master. Actually, maybe she does want to become a Keyblade Master? But in the very least she wants to do it for a better reason than “because her friends are doing it”. But wait, if she and her friends become Keyblade Masters, then they’ll go their separate ways and they won’t be together anymore. Vor doesn’t think she can handle that. But what could she possibly do to prevent that? She can’t ask her friends to give up on their dreams just to make her happy. So is separation inevitable, then? In that case, how can she reduce the pain of that separation? The longer she stays with her friends, the more she’ll grow to love them, and the harder the separation will be. But what if she left now? Wouldn’t that be easier in the long run? Plus, the mirror said that staying with her friends will prevent her from growing, so isn't leaving undeniably a good thing?

And so she leaves.

It seems that Vor’s departure from the group kills two birds with one stone: leaving her comfortable bubble allows her to escape the stagnation that’s been plaguing her development, and it also allows her to preemptively nip in the bud the pain that’s only going to grow more and more unbearable over time. She’s essentially ripping the bandaid off in one fell swoop rather than peeling it back slowly and painfully.

As for Vidar...at least initially, Vor’s decison to help him probably had nothing to do with wanting to help him and everything to do with just needing a good excuse to finally bite the bullet. He gave her an out and she took it. After all, Vidar gave her NO EXPLANATION whatsoever on what his plans were. How could she possibly judge whether or not he was worth helping with zero information to go off of? However, once she finds out that Vidar is trying to do something “noble” and “good” (defeat darkness) I imagine it wasn’t too hard to get her on board. Though I’d be curious to know what she thought about the whole “purging the world” thing. Unless he just kept that part under wraps and was vague about what “defeating darkness” actually entailed.

The next time we see Vor after her departure is in the lamp room in Agrabah. She doesn’t say much in this scene other than reiterating that she wants to help Vidar. However, there are two moments during this scene where I think we can get a glimpse at what she's really thinking. The first:

Here we see Hermod angrily denouncing Vidar's plan, saying that what they're doing is wrong. And Vor looks pretty startled and upset about that. She's probably not too comfortable knowing that her friends don't approve of what she's doing.

Second, is when Vidar says this:

And now look at how her expression changes with each line of dialog.

She starts off sad/worried, then becomes a little more despondent, and then gets really upset (eyes shut tight).

Vidar talks about losing sight of what's truly important, and when Xehanort asks what that important thing is, Vidar basically says "my friends, and us fighting by each other's side."

Interesting thing to say in front of someone who you helped convince to leave her friends, and therefore is no longer fighting by their side...

You could argue that Vor is only making these faces because she's sad/upset about what happened to the upperclassmen, but it's so much more interesting to me to think that in this moment, she's starting to seriously doubt her decision to leave.

One other thing. At the end of this scene when she’s about to leave, there’s a pretty sad moment between her and Eraqus. Vor looks at Eraqus, who is GLARING DAGGERS at her. She's upset about it for a split second before her expression becomes determined instead (sucking it up, trying to harden her resolve). She walks through the portal and leaves, and Eraqus, perhaps realizing that his anger isn’t actually making him feel any better, drops his glare and goes back to being sad instead. But here's the thing: she never sees him drop his anger. She leaves thinking that Eraqus hates her right now. Why is that important? Because it’s the last interaction they have before they meet up again during Vor’s death scene. Oh. Great. :’)

Speaking of her death scene. Yeah that’s the next time we see her. Or, we see her talking to Baldr a couple of times before this, but her death scene is the next relevant topic.

Vor apologies, saying she messed up big time. Eraqus incorrectly assumes she's talking about...her death? Not being able to stop Baldr? Something like that. But she clarifies she's not talking about now, she's talking about her decision to leave her friends behind. Leaving them was a mistake. A mistake that, in her eyes, was her fault. Since she's dying she doesn't really delve into why it was a mistake or how she came to that realization. Instead she simply states "This is where I belong."

Whatever happened on her journey with Vidar, she must have concluded that leaving her friends early on in order to minimize her pain later wasn't the right call. Why? Because her true place of belonging was with them, regardless of the inevitable pain that may result from that.

Perhaps she thinks that leaving them was a moment of weakness, that she should have been stronger, strong enough to endure the pain. Perhaps she thinks that her friends deserved better, didn't deserve to be "selfishly" abandoned by her. Perhaps she realized that Vidar's plan was wrong and she shouldn't have left her friends to join him. Or perhaps she simply realized that being separated from them actually caused her more pain in the long run, which would kinda defeat the point of her decision to leave them in the first place. Either way, she ultimately changes her mind about leaving her friends, seemingly re-finding her purpose in a life she already had before but now has tragically lost.

Without further information about Vor's journey, it's hard to say if she ever got closure to...anything. Does she still want to be a Keyblade Master, or no? Is she still afraid of change/not changing? What does her decision to return to her friends mean for her character? Because like, it's entirely possible that her choice to return was a form of character regression, where she realized that she couldn't handle being disconnected from comfort and familiarity. Or maybe it wasn't! Maybe she realized that she could fight against her stagnation and her tendency to follow others without having to abandon everyone in her life to accomplish that, and we just don't get to see that because she died prematurely. With so little information to go off of, I think it ultimately comes down to personal interpretation. What flavor of tragedy do you want her death to be? What kind of resolution do you want for her character arc (positive or negative)? Is the tragedy of her death that she crawled back to her bubble and remained stagnant? Or is it that she died right as she achieved enlightenment about her true desires and her place in the world, meaning she didn't get to reap the benefits of her character development?

Anyway, that's about everything I have to say about Vor for now. If you have any thoughts or feedback, feel free to send them my way in the form of tags, reblogs, replies, or asks. I'd be curious to hear other people's interpretations of Vor's character and story. Especially if I missed any important details that you think are essential to understanding her.

Thanks for reading!

#khdr #kingdom hearts dark road #kingdom hearts #kh dark road #kh vor #vor kh #rambling about kh #rambling about dim path #ch tag: vo #ch tag: era #ch tag: vid #ch tag: xeh #khdr spoilers #long post

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softpine · 1 year

Photo

aw thank you!! i just gave them one outfit with cc, since it’s the outfit they wear the most often and i don’t want to overload my gameplay save with cc. i have a whole separate mods folder and everything to keep myself in check lol

whenever i get the chance to retcon things and call this time period the 2000s, i take the opportunity 😌 even if it’s just gameplay

we have the same eye color for sure and i can see the nose too! i wish i had his teeth tho 😭 the only picture i have of myself from this angle is when i was drunk off my ass FJSJDKSJ enjoy this cursed image

@maturation hmmm not really :( i wrote some tips here for making teenagers look like teenagers, but it’s even harder to make them look like preteens 😭 i think the only time i pulled it off was with casper, and that was really just because he has a baby face without trying. i didn’t even try with asa because he’s so big, i just did a time skip to avoid the whole thing. i’m sorry i can’t help more!! it’s such a huge limitation of the sims :/

hey! i thought i had removed everything by pandasama, but there was actually a file called “animation_injector_changingtable” in my mods folder that was causing problems. delete it, then delete localthumbcache, then reload the game to see if it worked :) otherwise my other problem was an outdated TOOL mod, i thought i updated it but i actually downloaded an old version! (btw, pandasama’s other stuff works fine now, i put it all back after i finished testing. just make sure to update the childbirth mod if you have that)

@moresimming omg thank you so much 🥺 not to sound morbid, but making people cry because of my story is the biggest compliment fjksjds media that makes me cry is genuinely my favorite thing, so hearing that i can do the same thing for someone else is awesome. i’m so happy you’re enjoying it!! thank you ;-; 💖💖

yes it’s a main blog!! i would 1000000% recommend creating a new account for your simblr! it’s huuuge for visibility. it would be really hard for people to follow you back if your main blog is the one whose url is showing up; most people won’t go to the effort of clicking on your blog to find out if you have a simblr somewhere else. i created a separate email so that i could keep my personal blog as my main blog, but still have a new account for simblr :) also if you use firefox (which everyone should tbh), you can use the containers extension so that you don’t have to log in and out of your accounts all the time, you can just open them in two tabs!

↓ GHOST STUFF BELOW, trigger warnings apply ↓

right??? that’s the first question i wanted to ask, but honestly i don’t know if i want the answer fjksjds i’ll just choose to believe that ghosts know the concept of privacy 😌

okay it's kinda funny you said this because... well i don't want to give too much detail but i used to live between a historic cemetery, an honest to god abandoned psychiatric facility, and a building that's known to be one of the most haunted places in the state. but i still never felt or saw ANY ghosts. that's why i didn't believe for so long, because how can i be in the freaking bermuda triangle of ghost activity and never see one?? i'm still mad about it lmao, whether i believe in them or not, i've always wanted to see a ghost so bad. especially if they're just lonely! come to me and we can chill lol

oh wow yeah it’s always freaky when people who don’t seem like the type to believe in this kind of stuff tell you stories like this; it adds a new layer of credibility if you can eliminate all other options. like when people are grieving their loved ones, it’s normal to see/hear/smell them everywhere, and when you’re living in that fog of grief, you can mistake a lot of things for ghost activity that are actually just a result of you looking for patterns to make sense of it all. and i still think this is the case most of the time. i remember when my grandma died, my mom was understandably a complete mess, and she was always misplacing things in that time. but to this day, she still claims it was my grandma who was moving her water bottle, turning the stove on, etc. i’m still (and always will be) a very science minded person, so i’m always going to look at the other explanations first. sorry that was a tangent lmao but my point is, it’s always weird when someone down to earth says stuff like this. that would be so sad, but at least he was able to comfort them a little bit :( what an awful way to go :(

#asks #anonymous #nonsims #brandi answers #maturation #moresimming

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dearclem · 1 year

Text

𝑵𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻𝑹𝑬𝑺𝑻 𝑻𝑨𝑺𝑲 𝑶𝑵𝑬

— a look at clem's mobile device & social media ( ft. kage, montez, candy, aranya, finley, dae-eun ).

THE BASICS:

brand of phone:

apple iphone 14 pro max 1TB²

color:

deep purple.

case:

phone case: plain, matte black. popsocket: a ghostface call me, visual here

locked or unlocked:

locked with both a passcode and face ID. face ID is the preferred method, of course, but her passcode is her mother's birthday in the order of DDMMYR ( so it's 230373 ).

wallpaper:

THIS piece of artwork that she finds very cute ( pastel panting of ghosts sitting on a grassy hill with a crescent moon, clouds, and rainbow in the sky ).

lockscreen:

THIS photo of dao, her cat ( siamese kitten sleeping on its back in her lap with view of adorable toe beans ).

USAGE:

time spent on device:

it depends. on the days of her uploads, she's probably on it more than usual because of engagement. otherwise, she's only on it whenever she's reaching out to someone, when she's playing her games before trying to sleep, or she's looking up something and doesn't have her ipad or computer handy.

five most used apps:

spotify. kindle. webtoon. classic words. animal restaurant.

web tabs:

none are open. whenever she's done using one, she closes it.

last thing googled:

probably when she was looking for a new story, so something like japanese urban legends.

last text message received:

an update regarding a delivery of something she ordered for monty's upcoming birthday.

last voicemail:

probably a spam call and no, her voicemail is never full. she always cleans them out after listening to them, only saving the ones that are really special.

last thing on camera reel & what image was last saved:

last picture taken: THIS selfie. last image saved: THIS photo that she emailed to herself, which was taken for a previous concept to post on her company's instagram for httpfear. ( tw: fake blood ).

extra tidbits:

this is mainly just a section i wanted to add because these were things that came to me as i was doing this, but there was no real place to put them, so you're getting them here. as is true for her regular life, she keeps her phone very tidy and there is a place & reason for everything: all of her apps are organised in folders---e.g., daily, socials, entertainment, games, shopping, etc.---and she only has four folders on each page so the majority of her background is visible; like with her voicemails, she doesn't keep texts directly on her phone unless they're special and she cleans her call history regularly; if you're in her phone, trust she has you saved under a nickname, even if she doesn't ever address you using said nickname; she always closes both web tabs and apps on her phone the second she's finished using them; she is constantly sanatising it; physically CANNOT STAND having the red notification bubbles on anything and when some apps glitch and those things don't always go away immediately when they should is when you get to see angy clem; and she uses one of those privacy screen protectors so you have to be sitting at the right angle to see what she's doing.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

handles:

personal handles: dearclem. handles where she posts all podcast related things: BLKBoxStudios

instagram, latest post:

snapchat, latest sent:

using the mini tripod she has when going on adventures, she took this photo and sent it to monty, rubbing it in that she has goodies and he doesn't 😌

dating apps:

doesn't partake in the thing, no. has no desire and people can be creepy.

spotify:

top three songs of '22: fall in lust ╱ EDEN, jiselle {xx}

❝ we should ride this wave, until the sun comes up baby kiss me harder, make me feel the rush i don't wanna be alone tonight, so why don't we just fall in lust.. ❞

boomerang ╱ the summer set {xx}

❝ let's pop champagne, fake like we're billionaires just you and me, ain't much but we don't care you look so good, i love when people stare you on my arm, tryna keep you there.. ❞

call me back ╱ chase atlantic {xx}

❝ if you get a minute, call me back i'm so lonely and you're the only one that knows me and if you're busy, then i understand it it's bad timing, and i'm probably gonna end up crying.. ❞

last listened to: killer on the drive home ╱ kaiyko {xx}

❝ stop your crying it's not the end of the world but no one listens to a quiet little girl i wanna talk about it, don't wanna shout about it left me alone made me the killer on the drive home.. ❞

tiktok:

she has the app downloaded, but that's only because she gets sent tiktoks and it's just easier to have it downloaded than not. it's never something she finds herself scrolling on.

facebook:

this is another social media app that she wants no part of. she's never had one, nor will she ever because she has no family to keep in contact with and all her friends are nearby.

others:

has youtube, pinterest, reddit, & tumblr.

youtube is where she posts the videos she creates of her two podcasts.

ADVICE PODCAST. HORROR PODCAST. ( tw: horror images, fake blood, creepy eye drawing?, knife ).

pinterest is mostly a private thing ( as in most of her boards are hidden ) because she pins things for aesthetic purposes regarding different ideas she has and may wish to explore in the future. the only boards that are public are her own personal board ( about herself and things she likes ) and a board she's created for the book series she's already published and within that board, each book has it's own section with things like how she pictures the main characters, their connection, the aesthetic of the location & mystery, etc. reddit is something she uses as a way of connecting with some of her listeners and giving them a place to post their own stories and things they may want her to read/cover because whereas she gets some of her inspiration from r/nosleep sometimes, she also likes involving her listeners and that's a wee bit easier to manage in comparison to emails, especially considering she does everything all on her own save for someone she has help her with the editing of her youtube vids. tumblr is where she posts writings, something like a diary of sorts ( think like inkskinned & sue zhao ), though it's completely anonymous and she'd likely throw herself into the void if anyone found out it was her.

#nightrest:task001 #꒰ 🎙️ ꒱ tasks ╱ 𝒄𝒍𝒆𝒎 𝒅𝒖𝒑𝒐𝒏𝒕 ◞#also lets pretend that gif for the yt vid isn't from a movie thx :)#it was the tamest one i could find that wasn't too triggering :////

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handinlovablehand · 2 years

Note

do you have any advice for how you made the tallahassee microsite/reconstructed it? i’ve been interested in doing the same for we shall all be healed

hello! i've been having The Days of All Time, so sorry for the wait 😅 i talk about how i did it here on my site, but the broad strokes are:

go to page on the wayback machine

download every image i can by right-clicking

right click the page itself -> view source -> copy and paste the html into my code editor

i should clarify: this is the insane person way to do it! do not do this! there are tools that allow you to mass-download pages off of the internet archive, which would've saved me a lot of time and effort.

i would also view source to get the images that showed when you weren't hovering your mouse over it. i'd find it in the source code and open the image's link in a new tab, which would let me download it. this same trick goes for missing images, too - sometimes it'd bring me to a different date where the file was actually backed up.

for reconstructing pictures, i could only really work with the hover images/vice versa. taking a brief look at WSABH, it looks like you shouldn't have too too much difficulty with that.

this is REALLY important if there are any .swf files!!! just because they don't show up on the page doesn't mean they aren't there! check the source code! if they're on the archive, you can open them in the video editor of your choice, export them as a .mp4, and re-embed them. (they can be very finnicky, though. it took some tweaking to get the bedroom gif to work properly, and now how much would you pay is corrupted and i can't fix it.) just know that if you choose to host on neocities, you can't host an .mp4 on there without a subscription - embedding it as a youtube video is fine, as long as you keep a copy somewhere else. i previously used google drive but it's stopped playing nice with embeds, at least on safari.

if everything above has failed, check annotated tmg's transcript and youtube for videos.

i have a hunch that WSABH's site was made with the same software as tallahassee's, so if it was, just know that there are a couple of weird quirks. if you have prior experience with web design, it'll probably make ur eye start twitching lol. 4ad's css page is linked to the file but i don't think it's actually necessary for the page to work - most of the styling for elements is done in-line.

that's about all i can think of... good luck!!! if you ever need more help, please do reach out again, and i'd love to see this when it's done.

#asks #anon #not art #tallahasseeposting

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ffxiv-resources · 2 years

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Glams and Dyes

If you love Cute Clothes as much as me, these are very much for you. But if you don't really care what your character wears (or the color it is), these are completely optional.

Unlocking

You may as well do them both at once as they unlock at the same time and are both given by the same person and neither takes you out of Vesper Bay

[Image ID: screencap of Swyrgeim in Vesper Bay, to the left of her is a selection box that lists the options of two quests; Color Your World and If I Had a Glamour, Small Talk, or Nothing /end ID]

These unlock in Vesper Bay out in Western Thanalan aaallllll the way to the west, past Horizon but before the sharp turn north. you'll be out here a lot for MSQ later so remember it's location. If you get here at or around level 15 she should be the only quest marker, if I recall correctly.

[Image ID: two more screenshots of Swyrgiem, these two with quest synopses next to her. On the left is Color Your World; "Swyrgiem wants to show you a whole new world of colors." and on the right is If I Only Had a Glamour; "Swyrgiem wishes to impart to you her knowledge of glamours." /end ID]

Like the queen she is she sends you to get her drinks. If I Only Had A Glamour marks on the map who to talk to, but for Color your world you need to go to the Merchant & Mender that you can see in my caps just above the quests and the orange juice will be under Purchase Items. don't worry! it's only 7 gil.

[the rest under cut because this is Long]

Use

my first note is that many dyes can be bought in the markets of every city. Some can be bought in the cash shop, some can only be crafted, and some are beast tribe locked (and some are locked in other ways). However, all dye can be found on the market board, just be willing to pay a small fortune for some colors if gotten that way. I would always either check the market or look the color up on gamerescape to see how to obtain it before going to the market board.

In the inn room look for these mfers:

[Image ID: The Glamour Dresser and Armoire in the Limsa Lominsa inn. /end ID]

Anything that can go in the armoire, I'd put in there because if you get really into glams the dresser can uuhh fill up quick, and you can access the armoire while making glams without any extra hassle. Plus in order to put things in the dresser you need glam prisms whereas you don't for the armoire. Prisms can be bought on the market board, from your Grand Company upon reaching Sergeant Third Class, or crafted. The unlock quest, should have given you 12 and that's plenty enough at this low a level.

At this point, unless veteran friends have given you clothes or gil and/or you've spent money in the cash shop, you shouldn't really have any of the gear meant for glam, except the little hat the quest gave you. You can put armor and starter clothes in but I would hold off on either (unless you really wanna glam to starter gear) because you might need them if you pick up an off class and it's a hassle to pick up a class and then remember you have to yank gear out of the glam dresser or buy a new set.

But, let's say you had gear and everything you wanna put in your dresser is there and you're ready to make your first glam.

[Image ID: The ffxiv glamour interface showing Aki, a Xalea girl, in her starter outfit and the dresser open to her shoes. /end ID]

The 20 tabs you see above the character display are the 20 glamour plates you get. You can have 20 unique and custom outfits pre-designed and waiting in here. Much like when equipping armor, as you select the spot for a piece of gear on the left the right will open to all the gear you have stored for that place. Select feet you get shoes, head you get hats, etc. **Note: wrists/gloves/shirt sleeves can and will cover bracelets. Accessories are the lowest level; any cloth that covers the same spot will be on top.**

but say maybe for parts of your glam you want something from the armoire. Then hit that long horizontal button under the display of gear in your dresser that says Open Armoire. You don't need to save the glam before hand or anything, it only refreshes that side of things.

If you do seasonal events you'll slowly start collecting up things to fill your armoire with (they do not always give gear but when they do it goes in the armoire.) Otherwise, it's a good place to dump artifact armor (from reaching level caps) if you don't want to get rid of it or want to use it for a glam.

Now! you've selected your outfit. Looks kinda cute, but the colors don't match your character? Well, that's what the dyes are for! Right click/press square on whichever piece of gear you wanna start with and you'll get this

[Image ID: the ffxiv dye selector. In the character box Aki stands wearing the gear she is outside of the dresser with the Ishgardian thighboots selected to dye. /end ID]

This is, as you can see, pretty cut and dry. It's separated by colors so if you click the red circle you see all the red dyes, blue you see the blues, etc. The notes I will give you are that 1) there are pinks under both red and purple, 2) Terebinth turns something back into it's default color, and 3) you can select colors you don't have at this step but you cannot save the plate with dyes you do not have on it.

What I generally do is go through and pick all the colors I want and then pick secondary colors in case the first is too expensive/not for sale/I'm to lazy to make/get, I note how many of which colors I need and then I remove all the dye and save the plate. Then I exit the dresser and go get what dyes I don't already have before returning. this way I'm not guessing that colors will look good together and potentially wasting gil. I also buy dyes in small bulks when I can afford it so I have some for next glam.

However you personally do it, once you apply your dyes and save the plate (again) you're done! All you need to do is hit Apply.

[Image ID: same as the first only now Aki is wearing a peach flower corsage, the hempen camise, summer sunset wrist torque, faire kohakama, and Ishgardian thighboots all dyed either regal or gloom purple. /end ID]

Congratulations! You have now made your first glam plate!

[Image ID: Aki, now out of the dresser, wearing her new glam and cheering. The camera is angled to fit her whole glam but also get a close up of her face. /end ID]

Note: you can apply/change what you're wearing in any sanctuary (denoted by a little crescent moon by the exp bar) but you can only change the plates themselves in the glam dresser in inn rooms. you can also mix and match so if one glam is missing pants and you want pants from another, apply the pants one first, and then the one you want the rest of, and the pantlessness won't overwrite while everything else will.

Also: because of that last point, if there is something that you want to never show up with this glam, you want to get the Emperor's New [gear type] for it and you only need one ring for both slots. (I have bought a second unnecessarily so many times.) I generally get all of the accessories on most of my alts because I just don't really like how most in game jewelry looks. There are plenty of people who use this to run around shirtless. Get creative. They're craftable and available on the market board. sometimes they're relatively cheap, sometimes they're not.

#ffxiv new players #ffxiv beginners #ffxiv resources #ffxiv new player guide #ffxiv help #ffxiv #ffxiv tutorial #level 15 #Out Of [Nation]#Glamours #Dyes #image described

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bfxenon · 10 months

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How to Create Kick-Ass Local Landing Pages Whiteboard Friday

Learn all about how to create kick-ass local landing pages in this Whiteboard Friday with Amanda Jordan. Discover the most popular features and get to know the dos and don'ts when creating local landing pages.

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Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Amanda Jordan at RicketyRoo, and today I'm going to be talking about how to create kickass local landing pages. I talked about this topic at MozCon in 2022. I did some research on the top 50 pages in the U.S. and home services businesses that ranked on the first page, and then I reviewed those pages and analyzed the features that they were using on those pages to determine what makes a winning location landing page.

Most popular features of local landing pages

So the most popular features are listed here. Sixty-one percent of the home services businesses that ranked on the first page had reviews on their location landing pages. I think that's pretty much a given now, even though only 61%, there is 39% who were not doing it. But that's pretty much a given in my opinion that you should have reviews on that page, if for any other sake other than being able to use the structured data for it, for the conversion rate optimization, just providing users with a reason to trust you and believe that you're good at your job.

So like just for any other reasons, that would be the basic reasons why you want to do that. Thirty-two percent had a unique value proposition, so something to set them apart from their competitors. I think that's actually very low, and that should be something that really all businesses should be striving for is setting themselves apart. You don't want to just be another site that's saying, "Hey, you can give me money for my services."

You would want them to know why they want to choose you, and that is something that you do in your unique value proposition. Only a quarter of them included any type of sale or a coupon, which is a huge missed opportunity. So if you're seeing that your competitors aren't offering a coupon or sale, that's an opportunity for you to snag business from them. If they're shopping around and going to multiple websites, if you're the only one that is offering a coupon, they don't know that you might be, I don't know, 10% more expensive from your competitor until they call and get a quote.

So if you're offering 15% off, you may actually snag a customer and only have to give them 5% off because they don't know what your prices are compared to your competitor. So that is a good way to get more clients in and get more conversions. Then only 18% had awards or recognitions mentioned on the page. I think that's a missed opportunity as well because those are trust signals. Those show people that they can trust your business, that you're recognized in your industry, that you do good work.

So these are the features that I found on those businesses in the top 50 most populated cities in the United States. Where they ranked on the first page, these are the features they were using the most. There were some standouts where they had almost everything you could think of as far as features, and then there were others where they were getting lucky, like low competition. Their business has been around for a really long time, so they didn't have to put in that much effort to rank well because everyone knew them and they're almost like a fixture in their community.

So if you look for plumbing in that city, that's just what's going to show up.

Answer these questions when thinking about your pages

So really, when you're thinking about your location pages, you should be trying to answer these questions. I put them here because I think like a detective a lot of times when I review sites, and I like "True Crime" a lot, so I think about it as kind of putting together what am I looking for, almost like Clue.

You want to know what's going on. Who did what, where, when, why, how? So when you look at your competitors, answer these questions, and when you're thinking about your own location landing pages, answer these questions too. Who are you trying to reach out to? Who are you? What's your business? What are you trying to offer them?

What are their concerns? Why should they choose you over competitors? When are you the best choice for them? Where can they contact you, and how can they contact you? All of these questions should be answered on every location landing page. If you're not answering all these questions, then people are going to have to search around on your website to find those answers, or they're just going to leave and go to a competitor who can more easily answer those questions.

If you think about it, this is a lot of what Google tries to answer in your Google Business profile as well. So you should be matching up not necessarily word for word what's on it, but think about the features that Google is trying to show in their own tool and make sure that those features also exist on your location landing page.

To answer those questions, look at the data

So you want to answer these questions, and how you want to answer them, you want to use these types of data.

You want to use first-party data. So you know your customers. You've worked with them. You likely have a CRM that you use. You want to use that CRM to accumulate valuable data and use it on your pages. If you know that at certain times of the year certain issues exist for a certain amount of houses and you're in home services, say the summer months, you already know in the summer months AC units are going to need maintenance and repair.

Put the percentage of homes that you serve with those issues during those months on that page in that area. That's automatically adding unique content that no one else has and that Google is going to see too as unique content, that's data-driven content, that's interesting content. So not only is it something that is unique to your page and not more generic than content that people are used to seeing, but it's also something that may be interesting enough that people will share with others, that may be used for other reasons as a source for other things as well.

Third-party data. So you want to use statistics, FAQs, things that you can find around the internet that you know is true, that is relevant to your business and is relevant to that specific location so that you can be as unique as possible within your content without being duplicative at all. Then user- generated content.

Your users should be leaving you reviews. If they're not leaving you reviews, you should be asking them to leave reviews. So that's one of the things that you can do. Comment sections on websites. There are lots of clients that I've had, especially in e-commerce, where they have e-commerce and local together, where they have a comment section where people can talk about their experiences, not like in a review place, would ask questions, give feedback on some things, things like that, communicate with each other, almost like a forum sometimes too.

That's a ton of user-generated content that's right there that you didn't have to write, that's about your products and services in your business. It will show up in Google as well. So it's more usable content that you could have someone else produce for you.

Dos and don’ts of creating local landing pages

Here are my do's and don'ts of creating a location landing page. I'm going to start with the don'ts because I see these issues frequently.

Even when businesses have the best intention, when they've hired an SEO, when they've hired a marketing director, I see that they run into these issues a lot, and they're hard to overcome. Not to belittle, they are difficult. Duplicate content is a huge issue for location landing pages. Thin and generic content are huge issues. But if you look at your data sources that you could actually pull from easily with scalability, so you don't have to worry about someone having to go through and write about unclogging a toilet 200 different ways.

You can pull your data about how many house calls you've gotten about unclogging toilets seasonally, by area, by ZIP code. Use that data on that page instead. That's so much more interesting than saying like, "Hey, if you have a clogged toilet, come call us." Everyone knows that you want them to do that. You can make that page more interesting.

You could have reviews about people who called you for specific types of issues on that page as well to facilitate that uniqueness and personalization for the user. So really the duplicate content and the thin and generic content issues are solved if you use first-party, third-party, and user-generated content. They will solve those issues for you, and it doesn't have to be something extremely labor intensive.

A lot of this data can be pulled from Google Sheets into your website. Don't treat it like a blog. That is another issue I see very commonly is that a business will say, "We need a ton of content to get people to come to our location landing page. We want this page to rank really well." But they forget that it's also about bringing someone in and making them want to make a decision to work with you on that one page.

It's the landing page, so they shouldn't have to go anywhere else to determine if they want to work with you or not. By answering these questions, you give them all the information they need to decide that they want to work with you, and you want to do it in a way that's engaging and interesting. So you don't want to have a huge block of text with nothing breaking it up. You want to include any sales or coupons, awards, reviews, and unique value propositions throughout that content to break it up and give them multiple opportunities to decide that they've read enough, they've heard enough, and they're ready to work with you.

So these are my steps and recommendations for creating a kickass local landing page. If you want to discuss more, you can find me on Twitter @amandatjordan.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

We hope you’re as excited as we are for August 7th and 8th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!

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hydrus · 11 months

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Version 529

youtube

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

NOTICE! For everyone but macOS, Version 527 had special update instructions. If you are updating from 526 or earlier, please consult the post here: https://github.com/hydrusnetwork/hydrus/releases/tag/v527

I had a good week. There's a new quick lookup system that lets you search for a file's source without importing it.

full changelog

sauce

Every now and then, I am looking at a file outside of hydrus and I can't remember who the artist/character is, or I want to know if I have the artist subbed. When it isn't something the common online source platforms support, I usually download the file, import it to my client, and then do a 'open->similar looking files' on it to see everything I have that looks like it to get more info. I'm basically doing SauceNAO but on my own client. I wanted a way to do this faster.

So, this week, check out the renamed 'system:similar files' predicate on a fresh search page. It now has two tabs. The latter is the normal 'system:similar to' that takes file hashes, if you need to do some manual lookup between imported files, but the first panel is now essentially a paste button. If you copy image data or a file path to your clipboard and paste it there, it'll calculate the similar files info and embed it into the search predicate, letting you search for anything that looks similar to what you have in your clipboard. Give it a go!

I also added a search cache to the main 'similar files' search system. Repeat searches should be massively faster, and searches you re-run with increased distance, like 0 to 4 to 8, and the background similar files search should also accelerate naturally as the cache populates. My 10k file test client's similar files search sped up about 3-4x! I'm not sure what a million+ file client will do, but let me know what you see.

other (advanced) highlights

The v527 update went ok, no massive problems, but I wish I had done a bit more testing. Some Win 10 users are getting a two-second delay on opening any page due it seems to a Qt bug that got fixed in the next update, and putting these new libraries in front of more eyes would have caught this. Therefore, I have made a 'future' beta build that is the same code as the normal release, but it uses the newer library versions I am planning to next update to, for instance Python 3.10 instead of 3.9 and Qt 6.5.0 rather than 6.4.1. I am not sure how often I will put these future previews out--maybe once a month, maybe every week--but for now, if you had any weird issues with the recent update like the two-second bug, please check out the 'future' version of last week's 528 here: https://github.com/hydrusnetwork/hydrus/releases/tag/v528-future-1 . I'd also like to hear from anyone who has an older or unusual system and just wants to try it out. I particularly want to hear about problems--if you need to perform a clean install to update, if you have an older OS and it straight up won't boot, just any feedback on what is good and bad, and I can tweak it before I roll the updates into the master branch.

Thanks to a user, the HTML parsing formula now lets you search the previous or next siblings of a tag (instead of just descendants or ancestors). If you know you need the 2nd 'p' tag after the 'div' you have, it should be pretty easy now!

next week

I'll keep at small jobs and cleanup. I realised just now that my new similar files paste button should probably take direct file URLs too, so I'll give that a go. It'd be nice to hammer out some more Client API stuff too, and I really need to catch up on github issues, but we'll see. I am not firing on all cylinders right now, so I am keeping it simple.

#release

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lakelandseo · 1 year

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The Authoritative Content Funnel — Whiteboard Friday

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, digital marketing expert Amanda Milligan walks you through the three parts that make up a content funnel for building authority, as well as the types of content that fit into each one.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. My name is Amanda Milligan. I am the Head of Marketing at Stacker Studio, and I am here to talk about something that I made up that I hope is very useful to you all. It is the authoritative content funnel.

So the reason that I put this together is because of conversations I was having with folks about I'm always talking about authoritative content and I realized that there was a mismatch of what other people thought I was talking about and what I was talking about. What I realized is that there are so many different types and we need to be thinking about them in a certain context, and I thought the easiest thing to start this brainstorm was to think about it overlaid the typical content funnel that we're all used to. So what I'm going to do today is walk through those different categories, explain how I think about it, and then I would love to hear your feedback after watching this if there's something that I missed or anything else that we should explore.

Decision

So let's start down here at the bottom with our favorite, the decision stage. I have written here, "Illustrate that your brand is the best solution." So in terms of building authority at the decision stage of the funnel, you're trying to reinforce that the person who's on your website or really anywhere is making the right decision. They're almost there, right? Like they have pretty much decided they want to go with you. Don't give them a reason to doubt themselves or to back out.

Demos

The way you see a lot of people do this, demos are good example of this. Even demos could almost be a little bit higher in the funnel. But it's a way of reassuring people, okay, this tool does what I thought it did. I'm getting the validation that everything that I need it to do is there. I'm seeing it for myself. I don't have to just base it off what they're telling me. I get to see it firsthand. That's helping to build authority.

Testimonials

Testimonials, especially in the B2B world, you'll see oftentimes a contact form will have testimonials listed next to them, and that's a way of saying, "You're right. You do want to fill out this contact form or this lead form. Look at these authoritative brands who have trusted us in the past." So they're leveraging the authority of their previous or current clients to show that they work with great businesses like yours and to validate that you're making the right decision.

Reviews

Same thing with reviews. Whether it's your product reviews or it's just the star ratings, the average star ratings on a third-party platform, you'll see that come up a lot, third-party validation, and you'll also hear this referenced as like authority signals. It could be client logos or places you've been published, all that sort of thing. All of these are lingering around conversion pages because they're trying to validate to you, "Yes, work with us. It's a good decision."

So that is the decision part of the funnel.

Consideration

Consideration gets a little more nebulous. So you're trying to show that you understand the nuance of your audience's problems and that you could be a good solution for them. It doesn't always have to include your product or service, but it can. However, what it does need to do is reflect that you have a very good understanding of your buyer personas and your potential customers.

Case studies

So a lot of the examples are case studies. That's a little more branded, but you're showing I know what your problem is and I can show you how we did this, again, for other companies similar to yours and how we were successful.

How-tos and guides

But then you also have more higher in the funnel examples of how-tos or guides. So if you know, if you've done your keyword research or your question research and you understand what your target audience or even a little bit more of a general audience is looking for in your space and you're able to create content that answers those questions, people are going to start to trust you because you're helping them.

Again, we're talking about not just content. If we zoomed out, there are other goals for content. We're already talking about some of them — conversion. But if we're talking about just authority, the way that you're building authority is by showing you know the answers to their questions, period. So the thought process here is: What are the best questions for us to answer no matter where they fall as long as we're showing that we care about them and we're the best people to answer their questions?

Awareness

Then we have awareness. This is what my career has primarily been based on, so I'm a little biased toward awareness because I think it's the biggest area of opportunity for marketers. It makes sense to focus here, especially in the beginning. You know that you need to convert. When you get the traffic, you know you want to convert those people. Completely understand. But I think the biggest area of opportunity and where a lot of people can start surpassing their competitors is up here, building awareness and authoritative awareness in particular.

The way to do that is to create content that is not specifically about what you're trying to sell but about bigger topics in your industry and doing it in a particular way.

So that's the other thing. Whether you have somebody in-house who is already an expert, definitely you can leverage that, but a lot of us don't have that. A lot of us are at companies where there's already somebody who's kind of famous in the field and everybody already inherently trusts. So you need to try to think about how you can create content that's going to build authority at the top of the funnel.

Newsworthy content

At Stacker, we're a newswire that creates stories usually based on data. We create newsworthy content on behalf of our brand partners. So we operate in the top of the funnel. Newsworthy content is essentially anything that a news site would deem worthy of picking up. So that's kind of a whole other strategy and a whole other Whiteboard Friday.

But any kind of original data applies as well. A lot of companies will run surveys or they'll use internal data and share that, and that's really interesting to audiences. Again, you could do some digital PR and get that picked up. Or also really common are annual reports, and that often does take internal data and supplies information and trends to a broader industry for their benefit.

But the difference here is you're trying to show readers that you're willing to invest time and money into creating content that's not just about selling for you. It's about helping the broader audience. But it's also about showing Google this. The way that that happens is when you're creating newsworthy content or any kind of like digital PR type content and earning great news mentions and links, that signals to Google that you're an authority too, and that's why there's a lot of missed opportunity if you don't do this part of the funnel.

So that's how I think about it. I would love to hear how you think about it. If this is a topic that's interesting to you, I run a newsletter where I talk about stuff like this all the time. It's called "Newsworthy," and you can go to this URL here and subscribe and say hi. If you reply to it, it's my email, so please feel free. But also, as you can see, I talk nonstop and I can talk about marketing forever, so please feel free to tweet me. I love to meet new people and to talk all things content, authority, newsworthiness, all that good stuff.

So in the meantime, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it, and I hope to talk to you soon.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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