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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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maverick-werewolf · 4 years

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Wulfgard: The Hunt Never Ends Preview - Story 6, “Troubled Waters”

Interior illustration from The Hunt Never Ends story, “Troubled Waters”

We’re almost there - the book releases one week from today!

I am a very special kind of stressed, lemme tell you.

This preview is of the final story in the story collection and my personal favorite: “Troubled Waters.” If you didn’t know, this is a preview for my upcoming story collection, Wulfgard: The Hunt Never Ends. It’s a book, but it’s something in-between a novel and a short story collection.

Each story in the book is individual and stands on its own, but they also go in order and build upon each other. So I’m not sure if one should really call it a novel, but it’s also different than just unrelated short stories. It bridges the gap between the two mediums.

Anyway, here’s another preview - enjoy!

For more info on the book itself, you can also check out this post. Also be sure to check out the Hunt Never Ends tag for a whole lot more book previews!

And remember - Wulfgard: The Hunt Never Ends is available for preorder (digital only; physical available on release date) on Amazon.com!

Pre-Order Link

Please note that, while the ebook is now available for preorder, Wulfgard: The Hunt Never Ends will also be available in paperback on October 30 from the same Amazon listing! Paperbacks cannot be preordered using Amazon’s system, however.

Be sure to check back October 30 for the physical (paperback) edition!

If you’re interested in purchasing the book digitally, you can now pre-order it right here and have it immediately on October 30!

(Paperback edition will be available on Amazon on October 30)

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There were a lot of things Caiden knew how to do. Clean a sword. Maintain a bow or a crossbow, even customize the latter almost beyond recognition. Make his own arrows or bolts. Investigate a crime scene. Bandage a wound, make a tourniquet, brew a potion, hunt, forage, track, forge his own tools or weapons, carve wood, build houses or fortifications, command an army, cook meals…

But one thing he didn’t know how to do was read. And it pissed him off.

The beds in Castle Greywatch weren’t much. Some straw, changed daily, for a mattress, and some sackcloth to cover it. Any Venatori better off liked to buy their own beds, but Caiden wasn’t exactly drowning in coin. Following the dullahan encounter on Samhain, Kiya had given him a feather pillow as thanks – he didn’t want to think it had belonged to Relgar, but it probably had – and that was the nicest part of his sleeping arrangement in the castle.

He shifted his back against that pillow, currently squashed between him and the shoddy headboard and struggling to retain any fluffiness as a result. He tried to focus. Focus, he tended to be good at, but staring at the book in his hand almost made him wonder. It was a much smaller bestiary than the one Gwen had been given by Illikon, with a likewise smaller amount of illustrations.

If he had any sense, he would have just asked Gwen for help with reading. But his dignity – or maybe his stubbornness, or both – had long since thrown that idea out. He had all day to struggle with this, unless something came up. So, he reached to the nightstand beside him for the bottle of whiskey there. If there was something Castle Greywatch did have, it was decent booze.

Not that it seemed to be helping right now. It made things a little fuzzier, maybe. Slightly dulled that deep, gnawing, empty pain inside him, but not enough.

After they left Illikon, that feeling had grown louder, rowdier – tried to make itself more known. Whatever it was found claws to dig into his spine, using them to reach his skull. There, it chewed into him, left seeds of growing frustration – restless anger he couldn’t seem to muzzle. Any unwanted feelings of loneliness, of being lost, only got worse. A pulling, a need, telling him to do something.

After a few nights spent at Greywatch, it had grown to take a shape he almost recognized: hunger. Impossibly deep hunger that absolutely nothing satisfied.

That was why he couldn’t think. Not the drink. Not the page in front of him, covered in small symbols supposedly forming words, all of which made no sense. It was the smoldering flame in him turning into an empty inferno, and he had no idea how to put it out – or how to give it more fuel to burn.

Caiden’s eyes lost focus on the bestiary, staring at something inside rather than out. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand, his grip on the book loosening, letting it droop.

Some tentative excitement came creeping up the stairs just outside the room. Caiden snapped the book shut and shoved it under his pillow, folding his arms and feeling an awful lot like a five-year-old trying to hide something embarrassing.

Except the bottle of whiskey. Couldn’t really hide that. Not like it mattered, anyway; she already knew it.

Gwen rounded the corner, peering into the room past the partially ajar door. She gave a few tentative knocks, eyes on him.

Caiden grunted. Yeah. Come in. You already have.

When she stepped into the room, Caiden instantly noted she was fully suited up, wearing her leather jerkin, belt of potions, weapons… Which for her, unlike him, was unusual to see when they were around the castle. Something was up.

Gwen paused, looked at him, followed his gaze to the far wall obviously in search of something interesting there, then at him again.

He met her stare evenly. “What?”

She shot the whiskey bottle a glance. “It’s a little early to be drinking, isn’t it?”

Caiden shrugged. Did that actually matter right now?

“Sure… Okay.” Cool worry filled the room, emanating from her, lapping jittery and mildly annoying waves against him. Gwen fumbled with a letter she’d been holding halfway behind her back. “Well, everyone in the great hall was talking missions, and a new one just came in. I snatched it up – thought it might be interesting. It’s not really like anything we’ve done before…”

An unnatural urge to snap at her, tell her to get on with it, rose in his throat and forced him to swallow it. Barely. It settled in his stomach, uncomfortable and heavy, and he tried to tell himself not to be a half-drunk asshole.

“What is it?” he prompted, voice coming out too flat as he struggled to find his usual patience.

That made Gwen screw up her brow at him more than a little, but she said, “There’s a village in the mountains not far from here – secluded little place called Norhaven. It doesn’t seem very noteworthy, except it has its own freshwater spring coming out of a mountain. But now a monster’s attacking them over the water, or that’s what they’re claiming. They say it’s been burning people, of all things, and it only attacks in the dark.”

For half a second, Caiden’s mind stuttered and ground to a halt. The first time he met something that only attacked in the dark, it had been his first monster hunt. It wasn’t something he liked recalling.

But he nodded.

“They… want us there as soon as possible,” Gwen added, almost tentatively. No, not almost. Definitely. Her nerves were frayed. She was worried about something, and it only seemed to get worse the longer she looked at him.

Caiden didn’t much like people worrying about him. He never had.

So he huffed, trying to figure out how to give what she might consider a ‘normal’ response. He stood and popped his neck in a short shock of painful relief. Even if it didn’t help the pinching headache he’d gotten from being bent over a book and trying to read for so long, it felt slightly better.

“Maybe we should wait until tomorrow morning,” said Gwen, still eying him like he was sick.

He eyed her right back. “I’m fine.”

“Caiden, you’ve drunk way more than usual lately – and that’s already saying something – and way earlier in the day. You know how terrible that is for you, right? And besides that, you’re talking even less.”

Gwen frowned. Some kind of hurt came off her then, enough to make his insides almost start to shrivel.

“You can trust me,” she said at length. “If something’s wrong, talk to me about it. Wouldn’t you be the first one to tell me that you need to know if I have something going on, so it doesn’t jeopardize our mission?”

Caiden’s jaw tightened, hard, before he gave it permission. You know she’s right. Yeah, she was right, and he couldn’t tell her. Every word, every phrase that came to mind sounded dismissive. Uncaring, or at least untrusting.

But Gwen gave up fairly quickly, still wearing a frown. She nodded and said, “Okay. Want to leave in an hour or two? It isn’t far to ride. We’ll get there before sundown and we can find a place to sleep.”

Caiden nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll meet you by the stables.”

With that, Gwen turned and left – though not without throwing a quick, and decidedly worried, look back at him over her shoulder.

(More preview under the cut!)

------------

“These attacks,” said Gwen, “do they usually happen around the spring, under the trees?”

Asger nodded. “Mostly.”

“And has anyone been in that cave since it started?”

“Where the source is? Gods, no. Gotta have a deathwish to walk into the dark after this thing.”

“Yeah,” Caiden said, already walking around the trees and toward the cave. Behind him, Asger sputtered, while Gwen’s quiet footfalls and building, anxious excitement followed in his wake.

“Go on back to town and get some rest, Asger,” Gwen called back to him.

Caiden stopped before the mouth of the cave and squinted into it, reaching for a potion on his belt: one to enhance his senses. Beside him now, Gwen shifted, tension radiating from her like constant lightning.

“If you drink that and that thing burns you, it’ll really hurt,” she said. “I heard some Venatori pass out from pain if something catches them with one of those.”

Caiden huffed. “I didn’t last time. I won’t this time either.”

Just as he drained the potion bottle, Asger’s panting caught up with them again as he stopped by their side, drawing his bodkin dagger and holding it up in a shaking hand. Gwen blinked at him, and Caiden furrowed his brow.

Asger’s face slowly drained of color as he stared at Caiden’s eyes – a side-effect of the potion was his eyes glowing. Not much, just softly, but it tended to scare the hell out of the average person.

“You probably shouldn’t come with us,” Gwen offered slowly, like she was trying to calm Asger down from some fit of panic. “Especially since… your weapon there looks like something my partner might pick his teeth with.”

“This’s a finely-made dagger, I’ll have you know,” Asger blurted. “And I’m the watchman here, this is part of my job. Let’s go on then—”

He stepped forward, but Caiden snapped one hand out and got a firm grip on Asger’s arm, stopping him in his tracks.

“I’m on point,” he said. “You shouldn’t come, but if you’re following us, then stay behind me. Gwen…”

“On it. I’ll cover your rear— I mean, the rear.” A blush quickly rose in her cheeks. “Tom ruined me,” Caiden faintly heard her mutter under her breath.

Caiden grunted. Then he turned and led the way.

Didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust, then to adapt, thanks to that potion. Faint moonlight spilling in let him see limestone walls slick with condensation and a violently gushing spring, churning the water on the far end of the cavern at the base of the wall. Spitting it out straight into the reservoir, the flow of it turning gentle by the time it left the cave.

Heavy mist hung in the air here, maybe kicked up by the water. But something didn’t seem right.

Then he realized why.

Fear washed down upon them like frigid rain – so much fear that, for half a second, it froze every muscle in Caiden’s body. His nerves pulled taut, ready to break and snap down on him like a whip, hard enough to leave a few more scars on his back. Hand shooting to his sword hilt in a white-knuckle grip, he drew in a sharp breath and fought the chill that ran fast up his spine and forced him to be afraid.

This wasn’t natural. Gwen, from the way she was suddenly fumbling with her gear, seemed to know it.

Asger, on the other hand, didn’t. He bellowed out a hoarse shout, nearly fell spinning around to face the exit, and ran for the cave mouth.

All around them, a shrill voice echoed, “Leave this place!”

It spoke the words very clearly – not the gibberish he’d been told about.

Everything happened at once. A rush of air ripped by him, trailing cold in its wake, like off the surface of the spring itself. Asger screamed, his heavy boots scuffing the stone as something made him stumble and fall. Caiden charged forward at a surging shadow, blade ready to swing.

And an arrow lodged itself in his upper arm with a hard lance of pain and a meaty thunk.

Caiden coughed out a grunt and staggered from the impact, the arrow locking up his sword arm and stopping him mid-strike. Whatever had come past him and attacked Asger seemed already gone, moving faster than he could even understand.

Gwen appeared beside him in an instant, hand on his uninjured left arm and sputtering apologies. “Caiden!? I – gods— I shouldn’t have tried to shoot it, it moved so fast—”

The cave around him was far from silent. Asger swore as he scrambled to his feet, Gwen kept on apologizing as she tried in vain to tug Caiden out of the cave until he, halfway in a stupor, finally staggered along after her.

Boots against stone. Grass under their feet, bright moonlight overhead. Plenty of pain in his right arm that twitched useless and limp at his side.

These sensations stayed, but something was missing.

He’d heard once that silence was golden. He had never understood what ‘silence’ entirely meant. This was the closest he’d ever come.

The whispers had stopped – the fleeting memories. All of it. The fear from the monster was gone – his, Asger’s, Gwen’s – he felt no terror from anyone, though they still looked afraid. Sounded afraid. Moved like it. But he couldn’t sense it. It didn’t invade his mind, twist into him, and try to make itself at home.

And he suddenly felt blind. Deaf. Neither of those things, yet both at once – because it was gone. A sense he had known for his entire life, something that was always there. Gone, no trace left. He felt dumb.

Caiden blinked. Furrowed his brow. His shoulders tensed, pulled against the arrow still biting deep into his arm, and made him wince.

What the hell was going on?

In the corner of his vision, he saw Gwen fumble for something in a pouch on her belt, only to draw out the shattered neck of a bottle. She swore and threw it aside, turning her attention to him instead as he stared straight ahead at nothing in particular.

“Caiden – Caiden, hey, look at me!” Gwen grabbed the harness around his shoulders and tugged on it hard enough for his eyes to snap to her and stare. Her face was pale. “That arrow was poisoned. Okay? You’re probably woozy right now; it’s very fast-acting…”

“Gwen—”

She sucked in a hard breath and blurted, “Caiden if you say ‘I’m fine’ I swear to Athena I will punch you in the stomach.”

He paused and cocked his head at her, his mouth ever so slightly ajar.

“Listen,” she said, voice quivering and straining to sound strong, “the bottle for the antidote I had on me broke – I have more of it, but it’s in my saddlebag. We have to get you to the inn so we can get that arrow out and I can give you the antidote. Okay?”

“Just pull it out,” Caiden mumbled, his words coming out slurred.

“I’m not doing that, you don’t just suddenly pull an arrow out – there are procedures for this!”

One sharp tug on his uninjured arm later, and he was following her back down the mountain path, both of them led by a stumbling Asger. The watchman looked at a deep welt on his forearm, his flesh twisted and reddened – what was left of it. Most of it had burned off entirely. Asger swore more colorfully than the average sailor, wearing a deep grimace.

He separated from them with a few hurried words to Gwen – words Caiden should’ve heeded, but paid no attention to – and disappeared into a nearby home. Gwen kept leading the way, up the stairs and into the inn, still tugging on Caiden’s uninjured arm.

“By Jove!” the innkeeper shouted, starting up in an instant from where he’d been sitting in his quiet tavern.

He quickly started throwing questions, which Gwen just as quickly deflected. She mostly did that by dumping a handful of coins on the counter and asking for two rooms. All the while, Caiden leaned his uninjured arm on the nearest table and pulled in one deep breath after another.

Pain quickly found its way across his body, tightening every muscle and settling heavily in his chest, like having molten lead poured into his lungs. It didn’t leave him any room to breathe, and that didn’t leave him much room to think.

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modestlyabsurd · 5 years

Text

Pinky Promise (Loki x Reader)

"Oh come on. You could at least try to seem happy."

You struggled - so hard - not to bite off every nail on your hands. You'd been letting them grow. Letting go of an old habit. It was in these exact types of moments that the habit developed from, however.

He sighs, then murmurs, "Would you say something?"

You could break your own jaw with the pressure of your clenched teeth.

"My patience is wearing thin."

"Fuck your patience."

"At last! She speaks."

Nothing in this filthy excuse for a suite can seem to hold your gaze, but you're sure as hell not looking at him.

"Come on. I know you have more."

His mocking tone.

"What are you trying to get out of me? What is it? Tell me, for God's sake, so I can say it and you'll leave me alone!"

"I want nothing more than your cooperation."

You laugh, but it comes out as a spiteful scoff. "You are the last person I want to cooperate with. For anything."

"Why not?"

"Are you fucking serious?"

"I mean, perhaps not a full one-hundred percent, but for the most part, yes."

You stand up and begin walking, wanting simply to be away from him, away from this circumstance, away from everything. Just away.

A cold, large hand takes hold of your wrist.

"Ow! Don't you fucking touch me! Let go!" He won't. His fingers are stronger than your pull. "Let me go, you dickhead!"

This is more difficult than he expected. You're a bit stronger than he expected as well; the punches to his sternum are definitely leaving behind angry red marks.

Panic begins to set in simultaneously as hopelessness sets in. They are one. You can't escape his grip, and you can't escape this fucking planet. A burning growl ripples through your throat.

"If you don't let me go - "

"Only if you'll not walk away."

"I don't want to be here!"

"Why are you so angry?"

"I don't want to be here! That's just it! I do not want to be here!"

"What else?"

"What do you mean 'what else'? Everything else! I'm - I'm scared, I'm alone, I'm fucking clueless. I've had a torture device implanted inside me without my consent! I mean, you said yourself how small us humans' minds are. Well imagine how I feel right now! I'm imprisoned on another planet! That's a lot for a tiny, meager brain to take!"

"I said that? When did I say that?"

"During your attempt to rule my planet. That among other things."

A wave of something washes over Loki. Sadness, or hurt, confusion. Something.

"I wanna go home."

By now the last traces of anger have morphed into despair. The childish words you've chosen are all you feel. You look down at your feet, the floor a dingy slab of polished rock. Tears are just behind your eyes, but they don't fall. They're stuck, giving you no emotional vent.

"Where did they place it?"

"Place what?" you hiss.

"The obedience disk."

So the torture implant has a name?

Resentfully, you reply, "In the middle of my back." Your voice shakes. "It still hurts like hell."

Loki safely assumes that the pain of the wound is partially to blame for your demeanor towards him. He thinks this to take his mind off the fact that his actions in the past are more responsible for it.

"May I see it?" he asks gently.

You look at him without an ounce of trust. He notes it. But you also seem to soften ever so slightly. Maybe his request isn't laced with ulterior motive or out of malice or mockery. His eyes look different than they did on the TV screen all those years ago.

Taking a deep breath and holding it, you lift your shirt up from the waist all the way up, giving him view of your back.

A grimace escapes his mouth before he has time to stop it.

With deft fingers he takes the edges of your shirt, relieving the awkward position you were in. A raised circular wound, reddened, with dark tendrils reaching out from it beneath the surface of the skin, of which he realized were your veins. Inflamed by the unwelcome outside source of electricity.

Feather lightly, and completely by accident he grazed the branches of veins with a cool fingertip - you wince upon contact.

"I - sorry. I was just ... I may be able to relieve some of the pain."

"No! Don't - just, please don't touch it."

"I'm not the most trustworthy of beings, but I'm asking you to trust me. You won't last like this for long."

"No, it - it hurts really bad and - " you go to put your shirt down and move away, but Loki places a hand on your shoulder. It wasn't until then that either of you noticed the magnitude of your tension; your shoulder was scrunched up to your ear.

"Please, I - " no, he won't beg you of anything. "Just, just this once. Then you can never trust me again." Bargaining was much better.

This time he doesn't wait for your consent before going to work; covering the disk and surrounding skin with his open hand, he sends a surge of healing energy throughout the wound. To you, the sensation was highly unwelcome. But just beneath the surface, the harshness began melting into cool numbness, like aloe to a sunburn. Menthol to a sting.

Your entire body relaxed. Even your vocal chords as a quiet, involuntary moan escaped them. You'd been confined within your own body for hours.

"Oh my gosh, thank you so much," you sigh, a bit out of breath from the sudden overwhelming change of feeling.

"It's not permanent, unfortunately. The relief should last about a day or so. When the pain returns, I will renew the spell."

"Are there any, uh, side effects? From the magic or whatever?" You look over your shoulder and barely catch a glimpse of his arm raised to your exposed skin; he hadn't yet took his hand away.

Jolted from the eye contact, he finally lets your shirt fall to cover your back. The cooling sensation lingered beautifully.

"No. There should be no other effects besides the cold. It is only a mild healing spell that my mother taught me," Why did I just say that? he scolds himself mentally.

"Your mother taught you magic?" you ask, a newfound wonder swirling in your eyes.

Loki had not meant to divulge something so intimate, much less to a mortal. It just ... flowed out. Without inhibition. He needs to stop this now.

"Yes, however that is none of your business. You'll learn everything you need to know about me soon enough. For now, if you wish to return to Midgard, you must do as I say and follow my lead at all times. Fortunately for you, I know what I'm doing. Unfortunately for me, you do not. At any rate, if you choose to cooperate, I will see to it that you arrive home safely. You have my word."

Frankly, you didn't think his word was worth two cents.

But what choice do you have? Loki is literally your only hope. In retrospect, he did take away the physical pain that crippled you at no benefit for himself. He does seem solemn.

One has to be sure, though.

"Do you pinky promise?"

You hold up your right pinky before you. Loki's brow furrows, and his head shakes in disbelief.

"What difference will that make?"

"If you break a pinky promise, you burn in hell."

He scoffs at how beneath him this is. He'd just assured you that you'd be going home. Why wasn't that enough?

Oh, he remembers. It's not often right in front of his face looking him in the eye - the results of his actions, that is.

With a dramatic eye roll, he mirrors your hand gesture, sticking his pinky finger straight up. "I promise."

"No! That's not how it works, stupid!" You grip his hand with your left one and bring your pinkies together, linking them. You stare into his eyes completely serious. "What do you promise?"

"I promise to see to it that you return home to Midgard, alive, and in one piece."

You've either just made the best decision of your life, or the biggest mistake of your life.

a lil drabble from my drafts to remind me of the good times on Sakaar :)))

tag list: @arttasticgreatnessoftheawesome77 @afinedilemma @fire-in-her-veinz @paradisaicsam @drakesfiance

#loki x reader #loki imagine #loki odinson #loki laufeyson #loki drabbles #loki fluff #loki angst #loki #tom hiddleston #thor #thor odinson #thor ragnarok #the avengers #avengers x reader #avengers imagine #marvel imagine #marvel #mcu #modestlyabsurd

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innuendostudios · 5 years

Text

Research Masterpost

Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such.

Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, doc by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert*** The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton Neoliberalism and the Far Right, by Neil Davidson and Richard Saull Trolls Just Want to Have Fun, by Erin E. Buckels, et al The Entrepreneurial State, by Mariana Mazzucato

Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Al-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle.

The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube.

(caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments)

Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video.

(caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence)

How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets.

Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandier A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality.

On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.”

The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus.

Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win.

(caveats: myriad. for one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. he also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.)

Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.)

A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening.

(caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)

Terror, Love and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein A look at totalitarian governments and cults through the lens of attachment theory. While not explicitly about the Far Right, it’s interesting to see the overlap between this and Healing from Hate. Stein stresses that the control dynamics she discusses are not exclusive to cults, and are, in fact, the same ones as in abusive relationships; cults are just the most extreme version. So you can see many similar dynamics in Far Right organizations, like the Aryan Nations or the Proud Boys. It’s made me curious how many of these dynamics are in play in the distributed, less controlled environment of online extremism, and makes me want to look further into the subject before drawing conclusions.

(caveats: book is, as with How Propaganda Works, sometimes a slog and rather repetitive. I clocked a 4-page stretch in chapter 8 where Stein did not say a single thing that hadn’t been said multiple times in previous chapters. also, when talking about people coerced into highly-controlled lifestyles, she offhandedly includes “prostitutes” among them? it’s that liberal conflation of sex work and trafficking which is really not cool. this isn’t a major point, just something to notice while you read it.)

Alt-America, by David Neiwert (livetweets) A look at the actual formation of the Alt-Right, and the history that led up to it: the Militia and Patriot movements of the 90′s, the Tea Party, the rise of Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, and so on. Having been steeped in the rhetoric and tactics of the Far Right for so long, someone doing the work of sitting down and putting it all in chronological order is immensely helpful. Generally clear and well-written, too, and would be an easy read if not for how goddamn depressing the content is. Has an unfortunate final 7 pages, where Neiwert starts recommending actual policy. Falls into the usual “have empathetic conversations with genuine conservatives to turn them against the fascist wing taking over their party,” not recognizing the ways in which conservatism is continuous with fascism, nor the ways that trying to appeal to moderate conservatives alienates the people whose rights they deny. Means an extremely valuable book leaves a bad taste in the final stretch, but everything up to then is aces.

#the alt-right playbook #alt-right

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scribblescrabblebabble · 5 years

Text

RoyEd Week 2k19 Day 6!

Title: Seven(?) Days

Rating: T+

Relationships: Roy Mustang/ Edward Elric; Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes

Chapter: Day 6- Wait for me

Cross- Posted on AO3 and Fanfic.net links- AO3 fanfic.net

Best quality reading will be through the links, not on Tumblr itself because I’m too lazy to do italics and shit right now. For @royedweek2019 ‘s RoyEd Week!

This is a prompt from day 5, but lets ignore that hehehe.... Hughes lives! AU

--------------------------------------

A long time ago, Trisha Elric had told her sons that, “Good will come to those who wait,”. It was a common phrase, and she had meant this to mean more on the lines of “wait your turn” and “don’t skip in line” and that sort of thing.

Ed mused on his mother’s advice. He noted wryly that waiting hadn’t done her much good at all- it probably did her a whole world of bad, in fact. He never understood why she waited so dutifully. Never, that is, until now. As he looked upon his garden that Friday evening, the alchemist realized that he, unexpectedly, took after his mother in this way.

----~----

Ed awoke on Saturday two hours after he fell asleep; his alarm for 6:00 had yet to ring. Even in his sleep Ed had been restless, as the blankets were twisted at the bottom of the bed, and his pillow lay a few feet from his dresser across the room. In an attempt to calm his nerves, Ed took a long shower and, unable to find a second towel, called Winry with his hair dripping all over the office rug.

As he waited for his sister-in-law to answer, Ed looked out upon the back yard in the office window, dewy and colorful in the early spring sunrise. Maybe he’d pick a few of the flowers to spruce up the house a little bit- was that too cheesy?

Winry’s tired voice greeted him at last, “Hello?”

“Heya Win.” Ed replied, followed by what he guessed to be a sigh.

“Edward, the sun is barely up! What could you possibly need from me? If it’s an emergency I’m sure there are people who live closer to you to call.”

He chuckled a little guiltily, “Sorry Win, ‘M just trying to kill some time until 10:00. I’m too jittery to get anything productive done.”

Winry gasped, “Oh, is today the day?”

Ed nodded, knowing she couldn’t see, “It’s the day.”

--~--

The past two years had been a long string of going to work at the lab or in the office with Team Mustang, reading the paper, and anxiously awaiting the rare phone call from Al or Roy. To both of their credit, they called whenever possible, but Al was very busy with his teaching job and helping Winry with their young daughter, and Roy…

Roy was never around phones much, Ed guessed.

The blonde currently slouched in his office chair, doodling on a spare sheet of paper in lieu of alphabetizing the sources for his latest compilation of research. Riza looked at him reproachfully from her own desk across the room until he sighed and got back to work, balling up the spare paper and throwing it into the bin. Even then, it took him a minute to focus enough to actually comprehend the words he was trying to sort.

‘Abrams, Addison, Anderson, Amaryllis… wait no, m before n… shit this is dull, I need to get out of here.’ He pushed himself up and muttered about an early lunch break before he strode out of the large room. He looked disdainfully at the coffee machine, before deciding a quick stop by a café would do him better than the bitter crap in the office.

He hadn’t been sleeping well, even worse than he usually tended to, and it was only partially because of the workload regarding his research.

Outside, the air smelt of rain, and Ed regretted not taking an umbrella or something with him when he left (Riza would give him an earful if he came back dripping all over the freshly polished floors). The old coffee shop stood in a quaint corner, rather out of place in the midst of military office buildings, yet wholly welcomed by the lot. Ed knew the barista, Louise, well, and when he walked in she smiled, “Morning, Major! Usual?”

“Please.” Ed sighed, giving her a wad of cash, insisting she keep the change because he was too lazy to try and count it out, and sitting at a small two-person table towards the back of the building. He hadn’t brought any work with him, so while he waited, the alchemist kind of dazed out, just letting the ambiance of the little shop clam his nerves a bit.

A familiar female voice interrupted his tranquil state, “Edward?” He looked up in surprise, coming face-to-face with Rose’s friendly smile. He moved to stand and greet the young woman, but she motioned for him to remain seated, and took the chair across from him.

“Rose, what brings you to Central?” Ed asked curiously.

“Winry asked me to come drop off some parts with clients she has over here. And to check up on you, of course.” The Leorian responded, “Speaking of which, Edward, you look absolutely tragic!”

Ed was about to retort, but Louise came to the table with his usual coffee and sandwich. He thanked her, and took a large bite of his food before continuing where he was interrupted, “I do not look tragic, Rose, you’re being dramatic.”

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Uhh…”

Ed knew Rose wasn’t nagging just to be annoying, as the evident worry in her eyes was practically palpable. He only assumed everyone else back in Resembool would have the same expression if they saw him like this. This thought sent an arrow of guilt into his stomach, but he suppressed it quickly, changing the topic of their conversation, “Well, they say the war’s dying down a bit in the east. Some Ishvallan insurgent groups and all of the Southeastern front are still neck-in-neck, but that’s a good sign, right?”

Rose gave him a very unimpressed look, knowing full well what he was doing. She took to bait, however, to appease him, “Yeah, I heard the Fürher’s been trying to start peace negotiations, futile as it may seem. Have they begun sending soldiers home yet?”

Ed nodded with a small frown, “Hawkeye said they’re releasing some who have families and stuff to tend to at home: pregnant wives, senile grandparents, and the like. Just means the non-priority soldiers’ll have to stay out longer.”

Rose frowned as well, “Not necessarily. If there’s less conflict, then they don’t need as much workforce out there, you know?”

“I guess.” He sighed.

Rose rolled her eyes, “I know what this is about, Edward. He’ll be back soon.”

“What, did he tell you? ‘Cuz the certainly didn’t tell me.”

Rose looked cross, “He’s fighting! Not getting any response is better than a letter saying he’s dead! Do you really think digging a pity hole is going to help the situation?”

Ed looked at her angrily, then his expression dropped as he saw then emotion on her own face. He remembered the Rose of eight years previous, broken in the midst of a war, yet not fallen prey to self-pity. Sure, she had been manipulated by Dante, but everything she did was for a good greater than herself. Settling in Resembool, even, was for her son to be happy, and she took her present with such grace it was ridiculous.

Ed looked to his plate and quietly admitted, “It’s just… stressful, not knowing. God, I wish I knew how he’s doing, Rose.”

She smiled, “I know, it’s the worst. But you know what?”

“What?” Ed asked around another bite of this lunch.

“When you do find out, it’ll be worth the wait.” She stood up, “I’ve got to deliver these parts, but I’ll swing by your place tonight. We can make some dinner or something, okay?”

Ed smiled at her, “That sounds great. I’ll see ya then.”

“See ya!” She turned out the door. Ed sat at the table, alone again. Now, however, the thought of returning to his list of names wasn’t so daunting, especially with the promise of Rose’s divine cooking in his future. He took his time finishing the sandwich, and took his to-go cup of coffee back to the office with him.

Riza was the first to acknowledge Ed as he walked in, placing his cup on his desk and making as if to sit down. She held a little orange envelope out to Ed from her desk, and Ed quickly took the telegram. Seeign Riza’s small smile, he had an inkling who it could be from.

“Excuse me.” He muttered, taking the envelope into the long-closed room to his right, Roy’s private office. He pushed down the sadness at the empty desk and lack of paper heaps set out to be avoided, sitting hard on one of the large office chairs, hands shaking a bit as he opened up the folded paper. A smaller slip of paper came out, and Ed read the words greedily.

‘Coming home Oct 16, 10:00. Central West Station.

I have a surprise. Love you more than I can say.

-Roy’

--~--

After Winry hung up, stating that Trisha had awoken and needed ‘Mama time’, Ed was at a loss for what to do. He trudged back to the bedroom and changed into his day clothes (no point in pretending he may go back to nap). He threw his old clothes into the laundry basket and decided, on a whim, to change out the bedsheets and throw the old ones in with his dirty clothes. That started, Ed began obsessively cleaning the house- once the laundry was piled up, a table looked dusty, then the oven needed a wipe down, and he had to cook his own breakfast so there would be dishes, and so on, until before he knew it, the clock struck 7:00 and the phone rang.

Ed threw down the dish rag, seemingly broken from his mindless work trance, and retreated back to the office to answer it. This time, Gracia’s voice greeted him.

“Edward? How’re you doing?”

Ed sighed, but it came out as more of an exasperated laugh, “Just barely keeping it together, I guess! Trying to find something to do until I can go down to the station.”

Gracia laughed as well, sounding just as tired as he felt, “I understand the feeling. Elicia and I’ve been up for hours!”

“Have you talked to Maes?” He hoped he didn’t sound too desperate, but that hope was fairly fleeting.

“Not for about two weeks, but I haven’t heard from anyone else about him so that’s a plus, yeah?”

Ed didn’t want to tell Gracia that to him it absolutely wasn’t a plus, so he just hummed in agreement, “Roy hasn’t called or anything since the telegram. I guess we’ll see what that means today.”

“have you thought about what that surprise could be?”

“Yeah, probably too much.” Ed laughed a bit, “It’s making me even more anxious, somehow.”

Gracia laughed lightly, “Hey, so I called to ask if you wanted me to bring some lunch to the station for you. I’m already bringing some for Elicia so it’s not a big deal.”

“No thanks, I can’t eat right now.” Ed politely refused. Gracia seemed to understand, for she didn’t push the matter.

They talked lightly until Gracia hung up (something about an oven or something like that). The blonde stood in the study, anxious and with nothing to do for the next three hours.

--~--

Ed watched the tracks obsessively. He knew he’d definitely know when the train came to view, but he’d grown so anxious and excited he couldn’t do much more than sit and stare. Gracia sat beside him, reading the paper with Elicia working through a novel beside her. She seemed very composed and must make Ed look like an absolute wreck in comparison. Her day dress looked very clean and neat, whereas Ed had barely the patience to bother fully buttoning his own shirt.

Elicia noticed the train first, dropping her book and standing quickly, “Mom, Ed, I heard a whistle!” The eleven-year-old bounced excitedly as the train slowly screeched into the station. Ed felt his nerves burn deep in his abdomen, and he almost felt sick as he stood with the woman and girl, watching the train cars take far too long to slow down. Inside the train, every window was filled with blue-capped soldiers, their faces practically pressed to the glass, much like small children, in search of their loved ones. Several groups in front of Ed jumped and waved, their husbands or wives or whatever identified out of the many faces in the vehicle.

Finally, the train stopped, and the soldiers were let off one-by-one, each saluting their superiors at the doors before they were set free to find their families. Ed anxiously stood about the growing crowd of soldiers.

Hughes was the first out of the two, happily saluting his superior and running straight to Gracia, having seen her already from inside the train. HE managed to lift and spin both Gracia and Elicia at one time, an all-around bubble of joy. Seeing Ed, he shot the blonde a broad, knowing smile. After three more men, Ed finally, finally, spotted Roy. He boarded off the train, saluted, and scanned the crowd hopefully.

His eyes found Ed the moment the blonde’s feet began to move and was thusly prepared for Ed’s weight as he ran full-force into Roy’s arms. They didn’t talk for a short time, too busy trying to get each other as close as possible, as if to make up for the lost time. Then, Ed leaned back to look over the other, checking for injury.

Roy laughed, and it sounded pretty close to perfect, “I’m not hurt, Ed.”

Ed laughed too, finding his emotions burst out with his smile, “I had to make sure, you haven’t really contacted me aside from a single telegram in-“

He fell quiet, as suddenly Roy’s mouth was in the way and he was too busy kissing him back to continue his protest. “I’m sorry,” he murmured as they parted.

Ed sighed for dramatic effect, “I think I can excuse it this one time. Besides, I believe there was a surprise I was promised?”

Roy’s smile brightened, if that was possible, and he quickly looked to the superior officer at the door and back to Ed, “Of course! They should be off of the train soon; had to have a double check.”

“They?” Ed repeated, confused. Roy just smiled and took Ed’s hand, leading them to the door of the train. Looking back, Ed could spot Maes with a devilishly gleeful look, Elicia jumping around excitedly, and Gracia looking at he and Roy with a hand over her mouth. “Roy, what’s going on?” Ed asked.

They reached the doors as the superior officer helped out the last of the ensemble, two very shaken looking Ishvallan children, a boy and a girl. If Ed had to chance a guess, he’d peg them at around two or three years old. They looked around, helplessly confused, and Ed realized with a sinking feeling in his gut that their parents weren’t with them. They didn’t have anyone to meet at this station. Except…

They noticed Roy, and walked quickly in a beeline to him. As they reached the couple, the children seemed to realize that Roy had a companion and slowed shyly. The older man chuckled and squatted down to be eye-level with the two, “Molly, Gregory, this is Ed. He’s my husband.” He looked up at Ed, motioning for Ed to join him on the ground. He did, and the children seemed to look at him curiously. Roy continued, “Ed, this is Molly, and this is Gregory. Their parents asked me to… to take good care of them.” The blonde’s heart stung at the visible pain in Roy’s eye from a memory he was sure to learn of later.

He also saw a bit of uncertainty in his husband’s face. He realized that he’s been awfully non-responsive to the two so far, and Roy was essentially bringing kids into the complicated equation of their relationship. Smiling, Ed squeezed Roy’s hand affirmatively.

“Molly and Greg? Well, this is a surprise!” Roy’s grin lost it’s callous edge, seeing Ed’s positivity, and he pulled the both of them up to their original standing position.

Ed turned to the little kids, “We’ll make sure to take great care of you. I’m not very good at doing things halfway.”

Molly nodded and replied, “kay,”.

“You alk-mee too?” Gregory asked, hiding a bit behind his sister.

“A-alchemy? Yeah, I’m an alchemist.”

Roy muttered, “Greg’s blown away by alchemy. Thinks it’s the coolest thing he’s ever seen.”

Ed grinned broadly, “Well, that’s good! Cuz you’re gonna be around a lot of alchemy, right?”

The little boy’s eye sparkled, “Ya!”

Roy proffered the hand not already taken by Ed, which Molly took gladly. Greg was hand-in-hand with Molly as Roy led the little pack towards the Hughes’s, Gracia looking like she might cry, and Elicia already running to give her Uncle Roy a big welcome hug.

Ed looked back at the two kids- technically his two kids. ‘Oh, fuck I’ve got kids!’ he thought, finding himself increasingly excited about the prospect. Plus, if these kids already thought alchemy was awesome, what could possibly go wrong?

#royed #safe RoyEd #RoyEdweek2019 #royedweek #wartime romance AU #kid fic

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hillbillyoracle · 5 years

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Pre-Goal/Anti-Goal Planning

So in preparation for the New Year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make next year go a little better than last. After a lot of journaling and note taking I eventually came up with 3 rules, 3 roles, and 3 values that I want to run any goals or projects through before taking them on. I realized this year that I set a lot of goals that didn’t really get me closer to anything meaningful. It just sounded nice to have done them. And I think that can work in a lot of cases, but I needed something more.

Alexandria asked me to write about how I came up with them so she could try. So I asked if I could make it a shareable post and here we are.

I hope this makes sense to other people. Right now it just seems like some vague thing in my head that might only resonate with me but I want to put it out in case it helps someone else. Just know it’s a little convoluted and more of an exercise in showing my work than a complete system.

I made a worksheet if you want to follow along because of course I did.

Here are my notes (sorry for potato quality):

What are you searching for?

I started with this question and sat with it for a while. I felt like I’d been spinning my wheels this year and not getting very far and it wasn’t for lack of vision. I realized a big part of why I felt so stuck is because I was using other people’s measuring sticks and I had no clue what one tailored to me would even look like.

So I wrote down what I was looking for – “How to accomplish more and be successful by my own standards?”

What are you looking for?

I like the solution focused question that gets used a lot for this – if you woke up tomorrow and the main thing you’re struggling with was fixed, how would you know? What would be different about your life?

For me, I realized I would feel less anxious about my self-worth, have work that I both enjoy doing and feels meaningful, and know how to do it.

What are my standards?

This made me realize I had no internal sense of what my standards of meaningfulness were despite clearly feeling like something wasn’t going as I wanted. So I took time to jot down notes from the sources of self-reflection and self-knowledge I’ve been working with lately – the Enneagram, Sidereal Astrology, and Meyers-Briggs.

I was specifically looking for similarities but also differences – conflicting desires are a bitch to resolve.

Other sources might be tarot readings, other forms of divination, notes from therapy, asking your friends what they think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are, etc. Whatever data you’ve got here, throw it in the pile.

I want to have a life that is…

Here I just jotted down what I felt like I was most craving in my life at the moment. I wrote down “interesting, spiritual, rich/full, and growing”

This was interesting for me because I realized I keep setting goals that don’t bring me closer to those things. I keep setting goals to like run a half marathon or going hiking more or finish my degree and get a real job but none of those things actually gives me what I’m craving.

The gap between my cravings and my goals was very eye opening here.

Values and Roles

This is the section where I really wanted to dig in and make it more actionable. I started by listing my greatest values and what I want to embody – courageous, creative, curious, and caring.

I then translated those into archetypal roles – what role do I fill when I embody this value fully?

And then I answered the question - what does a person in this role do?

So it became:

Courageous – The Challenger – to unblock

Creative – The Dreamer – to elevate

Curious – The Analyst – to discover

Caring – The Teacher – to share

I later shrunk this down to three roles and values because I felt like there was a lot of overlap between creative and curious for me personally. I also think my courage comes from caring deeply. The way I think of the roles is that they are my higher self in a language I can better understand. I have this internal sense of that higher self, but I need to have a language for it if I’m going to apply it more practically. I’ve often thought of my higher self as a warrior engineer or a warrior healer. Parsing it out like this is more helpful for some reason though.

Mission

This helped me come up with a short mission statement – they’re cheesy I know – to succinctly describe all the thinking I’d been doing so I could come back to it later.

“My mission is to discover new methods and ideas, unblock barriers to access, and to elevate the everyday.”

I also wrote down ideas for what I would do if I were trying to fulfill each part of it:

Discover – read widely, learn, experiment

Unblock – teach for free

Elevate – create what I want to see in the world

Rules

I don’t really have good notes on how I came up with the rules. For me they seemed like a natural extension. I wanted some sort of contract with myself that would bring me closer to what I’m craving in my life but leave room open to interpretation.

What I came up with were

1) Don’t be boring

2) Write the book you want to read

3) Live in the yellow

All of these are pretty personal and are tied to memories with strong emotions that I think will help me implement them.

For this section I would just say, what are three ways you don’t want to let yourself down?

Be realistic and don’t let your inner critic in on the conversation here if you can help it.

Okay but why do all this? Why not goals?

I wanted to know why I was setting goals before I went to set goals. I’ve been relying too heavily on other people’s ideas of success and because of my disability and just where I am in life I realized that I need to majorly confront those ideas before setting the same dusty old able-bodied neurotypical goals.

But I also wanted something where if I didn’t check anything off my goal list - I’d still feel good about this year, in case it gets really intense like 2018 did. In that way, it’s kind of anti-goals. The goals are really just here to inspire me this way.

Every goal that even makes it on my list will get filtered through the values, roles, and rules – in that order. They will need to align with my values, fulfill the functions of my roles, and abide by my rules.

Every goal I set this year will get filed into a system based on priority. It’s inspired partially by Caitlin Scott’s ideas about picking 5 things that if you got them done you’d look back on and go hey that was a good year. It’s also inspired by something amending-death introduced me to – Esme Wang’s productivity journaling with limitations, her 1-3-6 list in particular – which they describe as follows:

So while I still need to work my way through the author’s writings on this system, I want to sort my goals into a similar system. I will have my one goal that I will put most of my energy into and the rest will follow. Where I put them will depend on how well they line up with what would make me look back on this year and go “that was a good year”.

Here are some I’ve brainstormed in the last few days and the finished Values/Roles/Rules reference.

Conclusion

I hope this was at least interesting to folks.

Let me know if any parts of this were particularly helpful and if you know of anyone’s work that’s similar to this please connect me. I would love to read more in this vein that isn’t steeped in capitalist productivity cult bullshit.

Here’s the worksheet link again.

As always, take what is useful and leave the rest!

All the best!

#tarot #witchblr #planning #new year #goals #anti goals #pre goals #i have no idea what to tag this hot mess #free worksheet #i guess

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cornelisdemooij · 5 years

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Innuendo Studios Research Masterpost - With More Links

This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries. Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such. Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, documentary by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein <- (currently reading) Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Motion of Light in Water, by Samuel R. Delany Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Alt-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle. The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube. (caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments) Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video. (caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence) How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets. Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality. On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.” The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus. Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win. (caveats: myriad. For one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. He also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. Finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.) Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.) A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening. (caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)

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whenisitnottimeforbed · 6 years

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Unscheduled Change in Procedure

So I wrote this for @koreanrage but I didn’t know it wasn’t going to show up for anyone else, and I know it’s not what I usually write(I’ve only done Sleepy Hollow fics up to this point) but I’m a bit dry as far as that well is concerned and among other things, this incited my inner writer so, I present to you something I’ve been working on. Or at least a peace of it. A Clintasha domfic

"What? Why are you making that face?" Clint snorted a bit, yanking a shaft from a body. While the head of this, an incendiary bolt, was used up on the half charred remains of a 6'10" monster of a man, the reinforced, double folded titanium shaft was still quite usable. Rubbing the edge of it, where a bit of cooked flesh had seared to the alloy, he reached over his shoulder to load it into his mechanized quiver, watching his partner as she rolled her eyes at him.

"I thought we agreed no more ending the exchanges with explosives?" She lifted a dead man with her foot, rolling him to his side. Beneath him was her knife, damaged and seared from the blast and thereby rendered useless. Letting the corpse fall back over, Natasha dipped down to scoop up some concrete rubble and walked downhill on the precariously leaning floor to a wall with so big a piece removed a bus might be able to drive through unhindered. Were they not on the twelfth story. She turned and rested her elbows back on part of the hole that reached up to her waist watching the Hawk pick through the wreckage they had wrought together for his recyclables.

"I counted 15 knives and 45 bullets loosed." He smiled, pointing another scavenged shaft at her teasingly, "you were out of ammo."

"12, 13, 9, 2-" Natasha nodded at the varying array of guns littering the floor under, beside, in the hands of, or strewn around the dozens of neutralized enemies, announcing the remaining magazines. “And you don’t ‘loose’ a bullet or a knife.” Clint knew there was no need to check for error.

"So, you were going to be able to grab those from where? What was the plan to get out of that pit- rocket up onto the ceiling?" He tipped his head toward a collapsed piece of floor where the blackened floor indicated the arrowhead had detonated near.

"You don't think I could have taken those eight guys? Really?"

"I think you were being a body-hog; when we're not with the team, I'm not a- we don't have to be 'heroes', just agents. Besides, I'm not allowed to use my toys just because you don't want to get new knives?" Clint had to cut her off, walking over to her and resting on his own elbows, looking out passed their concrete barrier over the dilapidated and abandoned looking buildings that extended for blocks and blocks in this direction.

"New knives are always better. What I don't enjoy is this red mist that hangs around. I'm just- ugh- coating my lungs and my suit- not to mention my hair." She smiled, scoffing, turning her head out into cold air and watching her exhales condense.

"Ha. How can you tell?"

"You can't smell it? Come on, Beethoven." She smiled, turning back to face him, where even with her unheightened sense of smell, she was more than close enough to whiff the scent of his physical exertion, the oil that lubricated his bow and bowstring, and every so often when the small breeze allowed it, his breath. He seemed to watch her for a moment before he tipped on one elbow leaning toward her, resting his nose in her lightly frazzled curls and inhaling, his eyes closing.

"Cherry-" he quietly announced, beyond ruby locks and into her ear, "Almond. Gunpowder. Iron..."

"-Blood." She corrected him, standing back up and pulling her head away from his, slowing as she took more steps away. It was a small feat mentally forcing her hand to keep from straying to her ear where, somehow, his breath still tickled her, "And viscera. If you have to use it, use it when we're in the open, or when you're solo."

"Hey, I'm down one sense, I'm not a dog- but, I did get you a window." He chuckled rubbing the edge of the blasted wall-hole as though it were a fine piece of craftsmanship.

"Don't expect me to praise that," Nat gave him an eyebrow and a smile as she moved backwards, "Not after what you did to the stairs, Handyman." Taking a small hop, she leapt from the precipice that was the threshold to this room where steps would have been, and fell about a story down. Where there had once been glass that she might have landed on, there was now an opening and she straighted herself through the whole, to descend half a floor more to the leaning building that this one was now tipped against. The black leather clad woman crouched on impact and slid down the roof of this structure as it was forced at an even less stable angle, getting further and further away. Clint was right behind her, though instead of allowing the slide, he pushed off to drop through a hole not very far away in this roof. He fell inside, and watched her form drop outside a most still transparent pane of glass. It was officially a race.

Jumping off some of the crumbled roof rubble, Hawkeye used some of the exposed fire sprinkler piping and swung himself up over a partially blocked doorway, letting himself slide to the end of the tiled hall where there was a staircase with a few sets missing. He jumped with loud clangs from handrail to handrail down the hole at the center of the spiral. In response, he heard some glass break about a floor lower than him. Chancing it, he leapt from where he was to the floor and ducked out of a opening created by the tipped building's bricks no longer being able to line up in proper stacks. There she was waiting for him,

"Taking your sweet time?" she turned, walking toward the sounds of populace a few alleys down.

"Thought I'd enjoy the scenic route- why, you got somewhere to be?" He followed her.

"You know me- just that wonderful 'home sweet home'."

"Yes, and so big what with only the bed, fridge, chair, and closet taking up space."

"Minimalism."

"Right, yeah, of course, sure."

"Just open the jet."

They'd made quick and purposeful work of getting outside the small, mostly abandoned city, out where the forest began, which is where they'd parked the secretive Quinjet. Clint obliged, clicking the remote control that opened the hold so she could walk in. As she went, she clicked the appropriate switches to get the vehicle ready to be started up.

Once seated in their chairs, both began to click about, hitting buttons, raising bars, turning dials, and checking readouts silently in the specified order. With the turbines starting up, they'd have been up in the air in no time at all, were it wasn't for the sound of voices. Clint, of course, only noticed after he saw Natalie freeze, clearly concentrating on her auditory sense before leaning forward to peer back through the side of her window. He stood too when he heard the distinctive pop of a gun.

"What are they doing here?" Nat sat back down quickly, trying to finish up her half of the launch sequence, "How'd find us out?"

"Better question is why would they be chasing us? Didn't we just get rid of the biggest source of trouble they had? Can't we just be the heroes for once?" Behind them were not the uniforms, body armor, or automatic firearms of a rouge rebel crime faction, but plain clothes and improvised weapons of average citizens and townspeople.

"Wait, look-" she stopped him, and both of them noticed that there were two forms clearly ahead of the mob, one with short white hair, and the other with longer red. Small forms. Visually assessable at eight and five years of age probably, leading the flood of angry faces. Clint looked while both he and Natasha momentarily froze, at the larger form- the boy with the white hair, and two big, adrenaline fueled eyes looked back at him. He stared into them and he saw a look he had encountered before, but had felt unsettled by until he saw a child so young giving it to him. He could traits as if they were listed in writing on his head- anger, desperation. The terror of facing death.

"Let's go." Natasha brought him from his trance and he looked away for only a moment to help her try to get going, but glanced back for the boy and saw nothing. Instead, now he too could hear what she had listened to earlier.

"--Witch!"

"--Demons!"

"--Kill the mutants!"

"--They're a curse!"

"Wait! Wait!"

Both of them snapped around toward the voice at the Cargo hold- the boy had crawled up onto it, pushing the girl he was clinging to further in.

"Nuh-uh-" Natasha got up quickly to relieve them of their stowaways, the turbines raising in volume and speed. The boy could read her face and posture.

"T-Take my sister, please- just her! Up in the air with you! I'll catch up and take her back!" He pushed the little girl further in, a voice accented in the Russian of the land but with an otherwise spotless record in terms of grammar and vernacular. The female child sat stiff, nearly fetal, eyes so paniced and afraid they might have belonged to a rabbit in its final hour, the chase lost. She pinched her small fingers into her brother's jacket sleeve, her knuckles and nails still somehow paler than the rest of her.

"No-" Nat answered him curtly as she moved back to shoo them off and around the side while Clint began the takeoff sequence allowing for a slight foot-high hover, turning the hold door another direction. Once the kids were off, some time could be bought if they faced the crowd.

The young boy turned from this rock to look back to the hard place and caught sight of a barrel point toward him and his sister. In a flash that was quicker than Nat expected, as fast as the sound of the shot, he seemed to teleport to the girl, pushing her back further inside the jet. Natalie's eyes shot up to the aimed weapon immediately, but her peripheral vision and linked reflexes forced her to reach out and catch the red headed girl by the shirt before the girl fell back on her head. She wasn't quite quick enough to catch the brother before the bullet passed through his leg and lodged in the floor near the cockpit.

"Nat!" Clint shouted back. She'd pulled out a gun from the handy wall compartment, walked passed the groaning boy who cringed as she passed, and to the edge of the cargo door where she slammed her fist on the button to close it. Through the squishing window, she began opening fire on the crowd, turning them away while Clint tipped the jet up and away from the mob, forcing all passengers inside to stumble or slide toward the cockpit, and quickly took off. There was the distinct sound of bullets being blocked by the jet's fuselage for a few seconds before the maximum range of hand weapons was exceeded.

Moaning and whining, hissing through his teeth and trying hard not to cry outright, the boy's tears began pooling on the floor under his cheek or on the collar of his stained and well used baby blue, velvet jacket he was wrapped in. He clutched his thigh where it trickled blood steadily onto his jeans, and the girl at his side got to her knees, pulling her thin, once-white dress under her and tried to hold his head, stroking his hair with shaking hands covered almost completely by stretched, burgundy cardigan sleeves. She jolted though, when the short haired woman headed toward her and cowered behind the injured boy, holding his jacket over her face. For his part, the young boy quickly tried to sit himself up, extending an arm behind him flinching visibly with the effort and pain. Natasha stared at them in the white noise of the air rushing past the vehicle for a moment and the hum of the turbines and their engines, eyeing the quivering girl and the angry, tearstreaked boy, and strode away from them.

"Wait-" the boy called, surprised, "Will you take us, too?"

"No." Natasha answered him.

"But-"

"No-"

"Then-then, just my sister- she's only five-"

"No." She'd gone over to her captain's chair and returned with a small box. When she came down to her knee in front of the children, the girl who had peeked in the very slightest of fashions clung once again to her brother, burying her face in his back, and the boy pushed at her, trying to back up in a panic. He'd forgotten that he was using his leg for that, though, and wheezed through his teeth when the muscles returned with screams of pain. A hand shooting out immediately, Natasha snatched his calf and pulled it to try and look. He fought her.

"Stop! Let me go! Aurgh-!" She said nothing, but she was much stronger than him. He groaned, trying to pull his leg away and from behind him, the girl tried to reach forward and pull at him too.

"Don't- No!" he protested, clearly in pain, but steeped in anger, and she slapped away his hands. He tried to push or peel her fingers off, and she shoved him away again. It seemed in fact, that he was more upset than in pain now, but once she popped open the box, a clear death grip on his young calf, and pulled out a bottle, a tube and a roll, he stopped. He could see what the things were, and yet, after a moment he continued the struggle. She grabbed and ripped the leg of the pants, rolling the pieces back, poured the bottle onto some cloth and then pressed it to the sides of the wound. He jolted as though it hurt, and she gave him a look. He quickly tried once more to pull away,

"Leggo! What are you doing? Is it poison?! Are you trying to kill me too?!"

"I don't want you bleeding all over the hold. Be still." She ordered, snatching his leg close again.

"No! Get away from me! What are you doing?"

"You wanna get an infection, kid?" Clint called from the pilot's chair.

"She's pinching me! With her claws!"

"Claws?" He was laughing, but the boy had little time to notice, as the woman had leaned forward and grabbed his shirt, pulling him in,

"You're gonna be still, or I'm going to drop you from 32,000 feet, and superspeed isn't going to save you from a fall. Do you understand?" He could muster no response save for biting his lip in fury and growling back at her. She took that as submission, threw his shirt back at him, and began swabbing the area with the tube and another part of the fabric. Finally she began wrapping him up. Now that he was silenced, he took the opportunity to display some passive protest. She'd lean his leg up to get around it and he'd let it fall to a side. She'd pull it near and flatter and he'd pick it up toward him. Natasha glowered at the boy and he glared back as if to say threatening looks meant nothing to him. They clearly terrified the pair of eyes behind him, though. Natasha quickly finished and let the boy snatch his leg away while she stood and went to the front to click on a com.

"Sit down-" She ordered behind her while she picked up the walkie phone.

"We are sitting-" the boy retorted snidely.

"In a chair," Clint cut in, "Put some seatbelts on." They looked up toward him, but the girl began to move, crouching to help her brother. A bout of turbulence shook the cabin, forcing her to stumble, and quickly both of them began to move. Both Natasha and Clint could hear clicking from behind them where he situated his sister before hopping into one of the row of chairs lining the side of the hold.

"Q1 contacting Base. Come in base."

"Base here. What is it?"

"We're coming in with a load."

"A load? This wasn't a recovery mission."

"Stowaways."

"You can't drop them?"

"No, unfortunately, I don't think we can. We're bringing them in."

"Agent Romanov-"

"They're mutants, Hill."

There was a pause, shorter than anyone actually realized before,

"Understood." and both ends hung up. Everyone remained silent. No one seemed especially keen on said silence. Well, almost no one.

"So, what are your names?" Clint broke it for the rest of the group.

"You don't need to know that."

"Well, what are we supposed to call you then?"

"What do you care, why do you need to call us at all?"

"What, you wanna ride in silence- we've got a while till we get there, kid?"

"Better than talking to some dirty agent murderers and kidnapping monsters-"

"Look-"

"Now, I get that you're in a bad mood-" Clint turned in his own chair to face the children, his face beyond serious, cutting off Natasha and looking back into the boys eyes, "but it's no trouble at all to turn around and drop you back off where you came from if you want to be disrespectful. This isn't a kidnapping mind you- and it doesn't have to be a rescue." The boy stared back into his eyes defiantly for as long as he dared, but turned his head away, admitting defeat. His sister's small hand reached far from the very rigid seats to grab his and Clint turned back around.

"My name is Pietro. My sister's name is Wanda."

From next to a soft harumph, he responded with, "We're Clint and Natasha."

In no time at all really, but much longer than anyone in this particular group would have chosen to spend together, the party arrived at their destination. The children were forced to follow without explanation as Natasha and Clint unbuckled themselves and turned the jet off, heading out through the hold. Pietro groaned, putting weight on his leg, so Wanda tried to take on some of his weight, barely managing to keep up with the adults. Around them was a bare hanger, dark except for bright spotlights produced by high powered bulbs. There was little time to look around though as Natasha and Clint seemed to be cutting them no slack.

Outside the circular islands of light, in darkness black as a suit, who knew what might pop out and attack them? Though he was the one being helped, Pietro led his sister forward, keeping his eye on the adults. They headed down the gangway- the only plank of stability over a vacuumous abyss, trying to both fit on the thread of walkway that seemed to get thinner and thinner, and even though a guardrail was fastened to each side, the gaps between the two bars and each of the thin columns was far too big, and just invited children to slip through them like water helplessly flushed down a drain. Having successfully stepped down from this they passed hydraulic doors, the mouth of a sideways, silver monster, with jaws that opened so wide that it must be a trap, and doors that shut so fast you could probably be chopped in half. Into a hallway next with pipes slithering around the walls so tightly together they looked like a swarm, burying someone as small as they were, hissing with menace, gurgling hungry threats and sometimes shuddering as though readying for the strike. Finally they ascended a few tricky stairs, hurrying to avoid being left behind but dreading whatever it was they were growing near to, not unlike the trip to the stage for a hanging. Then it was to a big double doorway, and through another one of the same kind, this time opened with a passcode and a card. Ones just like in a prison. Inside was a much brighter room made seemingly purely of pale, creamy concrete with boxes stacked all around and some big cars parked in docks. Pietro could smell the scent of the outside through all the motor oil and stuffy recycled air somewhere nearby and Wanda began looking around, trying to see if she could find the bright, warm light of day.

"Where are we going?" Pietro finally asked.

"Check in." Clint didn't turn around.

"Check in what?"

"Unexpected cargo." Natasha answered.

"Where are we going?" The boy demanded now. Glancing back, Natasha could tell he was forming an even more uncomfortable take on the facility.

"Somewhere safe." her voice was more tired than reassuring. There was a quickened, stumbling, patter of feet before the children pushed past her and Clint and then stopped before them. The face Pietro wore clearly displayed his willingness to fight. His nostrils flared as he panted through his small nose and his eyes shifted between the woman's and the man's. Beneath his arm, Wanda's tiny nostrils pulsed too, but her eyes was quite plainly afraid.

"We won't." Pietro asserted, "We'll leave, we'll leave like you wanted. We don’t need your help. Show us how to get out of here, and we'll go-"

"That won't be necessary," Startled into jumping, the children nearly fell spinning around and looking up into the clean cut face and pressed suit of the Agent Coulson. He came to a curt stop hardly a foot behind them, perfect posture and hands clasped behind his back, a bit of a smile on his otherwise strategically common face. The way they acted, one might have assumed the boogeyman had suddenly materialized at their flank when the two children reeled, stumbling in reverse into Clint and Natasha and hugging the black clad "murdering kidnappers" close with their backs. Pietro pulled Wanda's head close to him to keep her from seeing.

Both Natasha and Clint watched the moment's long events transpire before exchanging cautionary looks until Coulson required their attention again,

"Mm, smaller than anticipated." he commented casually.

"Don't let the appearances fool you, they don't think they're small." Natasha nodded back.

"W-we won't go with the evil agents-" Pietro managed to voice, and Wanda even shook her head from where it was tucked. The look he was giving must have been amusing because the agent in question chuckled quietly.

"You're using 'Evil' as relative term." He briefly rebutted before he raised his head, "Where'd you find them?"

"They found us." Natasha nodded.

"What's the situation?"

"Isolated, possibly volatile-"

"Possibly?" Natasha made something of a gesture, questioning Clint's assessment.

"My personal opinion?" he continued, and Coulson gave a nod, "Threatened and on the brink."

"And you believe protection is required?"

"Yes." Both Clint and Natasha answered.

"Agency protection?"

"Yes." There was a pause, heavy among everyone who knew what was transpiring as well those who didn't, but Coulson took a breath and seemed no more phased than if an ant or a spider had crossed his path.

"Good. Fury agrees with you. We'll take them on."

"Great." Clint nodded.

"As Assets."

"Alright." Natasha agreed.

"They'll receive training, protection and surveillance around the clock, and be placed in a discreet location with their handlers."

"Sounds like a good plan to me? Nat?" Clint spoke more to instill confidence in the children looking up at him now that they were being included in the conversation, than to his partner.

"Couldn't be any better." She didn't seem to care as much, agreeing, but making no moves to be a comfort.

"Spectacular. Your things are already en route. There will be more specific instructions on arrival."

"Wait, what?"

"Huh?"

"Think of it like a vacation." Coulson turned, heading away, "Where you're working."

Some vacation. Putting aside that it was, in fact, a work detail, when they were told they were headed to Vegas, at least there had been a glimmer of hope. Well, Vegas indeed is where they landed- in a small airport hangar for personal crafts- and loaded into a minivan cab that smelled like cabbage mostly with hints of other things- frying oil, burnt rubber, maybe feet- and overlaid with incense that was clearly meant to counteract the first volley of scents but only managed to mix with it into some sickening new olfactory safari. And then they arrived.

Standing in the Nevada sun, the children stood while their cargo was unloaded listening to a soundtrack of dog barks, muffled, blasted music from somewhere far off, tires screeching off maybe a block away. Here, there were the smells of cannabis drifting in and out over the hot breeze where the smoke of a small fire hitched a ride, and as the taxi abandoned them, all four members of the "Shields" family stared at their new neighborhood and new home.

***End of Part I***

#clintasha #fanfiction #Domcom #more to come #part one of ?#4k words #I am not a professional writer #keep that in mind #just thought I should put this out before #infinity war #avengers #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #domestic fanfiction

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daynamartinez22 · 3 years

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Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 319

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 391 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

What’s up everybody and welcome to the pre Christmas edition of Hump Day Hangouts. It’s Marco from Semantic Mastery. And my partners wishing you the best of what the season has have has to offer. And even if you don’t celebrate it, we still want you to have a fantastic fucking time regardless, man.

And so, with that, I am going to call on you as I see you. Oh, there we are. There’s a there’s an issue of he’s usually driving this wreck. I’m just going to continue man. We’re glad to have you here. We’re glad you’re you’re supporting Semantic Mastery. We’re glad you’ve been supporting us all this time. I see lots of you who have been with us seems like forever since we began. I am going to call on you from right to left on my screen. And so that means that you’re up, Adam. What’s up man? Married pre Christmas. Hey, likewise glad to see everyone Marco I’m glad you’ve got some holiday cheer I’m not sure what’s wrong with Chris you’re not and Bradley. No, nothing you guys Oh, there we go. Chris it’s a Christmas tradition man.

Yeah, that are here down but I was I was working in like cutting it close. And I didn’t have time to run downstairs and get my hat until I saw Marcos and I was like, oh man, so my bad. Well, that’s alright, we’re here for Hump Day Hangout. Yeah, things are going good here. I had blue skies and made it out for running the hills this morning and back for Hump Day Hangouts and then going to be doing have a couple day drinks. Running the hills. I guess.

This time it actually was but maybe I should have done the other thing now. I’m pretty similar. So anyways, I can’t complain, man. I’m happy to be here. Yeah, that’s it, man.

Thanks, Adam. Then I next saw Hernan coming on. What’s up man catches up. Yeah, good. Good. Everything is good, man. Everything’s good. Happy to be here. As usual. Happy to you know, spend some time with the family. Usually, we do the 24 nine and then the 25th. And we keep on eating up until I don’t know up until the seventh of January.

It’s good, man. Everything’s good. I’m happy to be here.

Cool. Brandon, what’s up, man? So man, happy to be here got a shit ton of work going on man. It’s uh, it’s crazy. But I can’t even slow down for the holidays much. I am taking some time off between or next week for the New Year’s holiday though. But I’m looking forward to Christmas. My I had a bunch of family in town that just actually left this morning to you know, they spent four or five days here in town, which was really cool. Got all my daughter and all her cousins together and it was a lot of fun. And

I’m looking forward for 20 2021 though. Hopefully it will be better than 2020

Unknown Speaker 2:52 s to be right. Na Chris What’s up man? Yeah, then good here. Forgot my head. But like, at least a font something to keep disappeared up. Out. Other than that, yeah, things are good. Unfortunately. No snow It seems this year here in where I’m living.

The rest is like tons of snow. But yeah, it is what it is. And yeah, looking forward to like the holidays.

I actually will take some time off. Starting tomorrow for

I don’t know pretty much the weekend, four days to get a bit of a time out and relax and come back to work. So yeah, fantastic, man. That’s for me. What can I say?

I kid don’t hate me. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game? Because is the game that allows me to do the do I do? Anyway, glad to have you. We are running an MGYB special for those of you don’t know. Adam, please drop the drop the page on this Hannah is giving people an early Christmas present. Everything Everything. I believe everything is got a coupon on it. So Merry fucking Christmas.

With that, unless anybody has other amounts. Oh, yeah, charity webinars, I’m sorry, the charity webinars. We are going to be starting them in about two weeks. They’re a little bit delayed because I’m trying to get all of the people together. Dixon Jones of inlinks has decided to come in and donate his time, which is fantastic because he’s going to be talking about content and entities. He’s the guy he started out as the marketing, I believe, manager or whatever he was at majestic. When it was really cool. Then he left and now he has inlinks which is which is a fabulous tool that we’re using every day for our content. And the only way that you get access to him is through our webinars where you can come and ask him anything you want. Listen to his presentation on on entity

He knocked me for a loop when I talked to him. And so that is what he is with Jordan basis training around what are one of the tools. And so he’s going to be there, I got my mike piers, coming on Jordan Fowler is going to talk about branding, branding and entities and how to guide the bat through all that. So we have some fantastic things we’re putting together. But it’s taking time because it’s so good, so many people, so many things that we’re giving away. And all it takes is a donation, and I’m gonna say it again, your heart will tell you whether you donate and your wallet will dictate how much so if only four you can give my kids is five bucks, what you would have spent on that cup of coffee, that’s fine. And if it’s 500 bucks, then that’s fine. I mean, they both will get you into the webinar. And in fact, the more you donate, the more the closer that you get to spending an hour with me on whatever you want, ask Marco anything, we can go over any of your project, we can go over anything, it’s up to you. And so that’s what we’re having. That’s what we’re doing, I will announce it more formally. And if you guys want to donate, just send, and I’ll put that the email in the chat, the email that you send proof of donation to so that you can get notified for when the webinars start. So you will be placed on the mailing list. When you donate, send the proof that you’ve donated.

And then you will be pulled on our email list. And we will contact you with the email dates how to how to register how to sign up how to get access, you’re going to get access to the replays, you’re going to get everything. And with that.

Let’s do this.

Any other announcements?

Be good?

Work? Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. All right. Very good. Grab the screen.

Okay, y'all see my screen? Correct? Yeah, yep. There we got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On Social Signals And How It Supports The SEO Of The Money Site?

Alright, so it looks like the first question comes from Timmy. What’s your thoughts on social signals? Obviously ones from real accounts are topically relevant to support SEO to the money site? If so, you know, any good vendors? I mean, yes, social signals are, you know, I assume they’re good. If they’re from relevant audiences, real people that are engaging with the content, then I think those are are great for SEO. It’s the spam signals that we think are worthless. And it’s been a long time since I’ve done any testing. But I can’t imagine that.

Three or four years ago, when I did a lot of testing on social signals, just spam social signals that you would purchase from, you know, Fiverr, or any number of providers. And they really didn’t move the needle at all for SEO. And again, that was shit. That had to be four years ago now. And I can’t imagine that all of a sudden social signals, like spammy signals would be weighted any heavier than they were four years ago. So I can’t imagine that they actually do anything. But real relevant signals from, you know, active users, you got to think about what’s happening when somebody is engaging in a content liking, like, chances are they have a history of being interested in that content, or even even if it’s not a long term history in recent history. And that that’s those are good signals. because trust me, Google knows, has a profile of that. That person, right, like in other words, it has an idea of that user that Google user, web user, whatever you want to call them, that shows their recent search history, that type of you know, what their affinities are, which means like, what their long term likes are, what they’ve recently been engaging with, and all that kind of stuff. So if they were if somebody in that, you know, real user that has a real profile, real history, and they engage with your content, that’s that’s a really good signal, because it’s highly weighted. Remember, Google has access to the same kind of data now that Facebook does, like behavioral interest, and all that kind of stuff. So when a user engages on content, if Google can kind of wait, that engagement signal, I don’t, I don’t have any, like hard data to show that. But from the type of, you know, traffic that I’ve been purchasing from Google audiences and such, it just, it’s just logical that that would be waited. I don’t know Marco, what do you think?

Activity relevance, trust and authority, right, Google. Now that’s the social. John Mueller said that Google doesn’t pay attention to social signals. Man, that’s partial. No act. Yeah. Bullshit, but partially correct. There’s no such thing as a social signal. You don’t stand there with a beacon right with a flashlight with a with that gun.

That Fragen signaling na, look what I’m doing.

The signal that you’re sending is through those pixels is it’s through those links. It’s through the people coming through your analytics and search console, right? Because you see the activity there, whether they’re relevant and whether they’re coming from trusted, authoritative sources. Google is tracking everything. If you’re setting goals in your analytics, then Google is further tracking. Because now you can guide Google or what it is that you’re expecting your visitors to do on your website, a lot of things that you can now set up so that you send additional signals to Google. So Google is tracking wherever that person is coming from. And we’ll just use Facebook as an example. You’re running Facebook ads, and maybe the conversion is on your website. Or maybe it’s not on the ad, or maybe you just want to pixel that person, maybe you’re forming on some type of audience, a fifth of the affinity audiences, also audiences also in YouTube, all of the different things that you can do, where the relevance is, as Bradley said, The People’s History, what are their interests, because this, if you’re buying signals, these people are going to be going all over the place, they’re going to be going. It’s not a real history, like a real user, where you know, you have an affinity, when you’re online, whether you’re a Facebook person, and Instagram person, majority person, whatever you are, you have an affinity, whether it’s gaming, whether it’s educational, whether you consume, right, consume information, whatever it is. And so when that person comes through that link, believe me when I tell you that Google’s going to know anything and everything there is to know about that person, unless you just don’t go online.

Unless you don’t have everything set up the way that we tell you to. So how do you get those those people pay for them, pay Google, don’t go paying a vendor for that, pay Facebook, pay Google, through YouTube, pay Twitter, pay Instagram, pay Pinterest, because what you’re going to do is, especially now through AI, is you’re going to be able to fine tune your audience to that particular interest to that relevance. So that the further you go in, the likelier is that that this person is going to convert. Because now what you’re doing is you’re finding that person with that problem with that pain. And you’re you become a problem solver, you’re solving the problem that that person came online for, and maybe they didn’t even know that they had a pain or problem to solve. But you did such a good job of putting yourself in front of them that that they decided, Okay, I’m going to go purchase it because it’s something that I need that I realized, that I need. And that signal. I don’t care how many you get from from any vendor, that signal that you’re paying for that and it’s pennies on the dollar, so 100 bucks a month, and, and and and it’s gold that’s worth more than anything you can get. And let me finish. Why? Because that vendor those people that that vendor sends sense to you, they’re not going to convert, the value is only going to be temporary. And maybe they’ll pick up enough where they’ll send enough signals that Google sends you real people. But why not start with real people in the first place?

Yeah, and let me unpause the screen for a minute because I pulled up. Okay. So while Marco was talking, this is what this is just to demonstrate what I was talking about guys, this is Google Analytics. This is for semantic mastery. And if you go into audience now you have to have the Advanced Data Collection, whatever enabled on your analytics account, and switching over to ga for now Google Analytics for like, all of that is like it’s so much more data that you get with the Google Analytics for as opposed to Universal Analytics. But anyway, what I’m trying to get at was what we were just talking about guys, and this is proof of it here. So this is a month of traffic or the traffic that has come to Semantic mastery.com our website in the last month if you go into audience and you look at interests, you can see these are the affinity audiences right affinity means long term like an interest, a long term interest, they have an affinity for right and so these are the affinity audiences that have visited our site in the last month. And then these are the in market segments and market segments means within the last 30 days, they have been searching for content and engaging with consuming doing searches around keywords that are all relevant to or that means they’re likely in the market for whatever a product or service and you can see business owners services, advertising and marketing services is our top in market audience makes sense. There are some subsets of that are subcategories. SEO and SEM services, business services, business technology, web services, web design and development, it makes sense that our top three in market audiences or visitors were in these are top our top the most of our visitors Excuse me, I’m trying to explain this the most of our visitors that have come the top three in market audiences that they’re in, in our business services, right or subset, subcategories of business in market audience Business Services, right. And that makes a lot of sense because of what you know what our contents about. And then there’s other categories as well. But this just goes to show you that it’s very, you know, Google gives has a hell of a lot more data than what they used to have from its from visitors. And you can see that in analytics, you can start to optimize your content for that, or this can even give you some ideas as to which type of audiences to target if you’re purchasing traffic directly from Google for YouTube display, whatever. Somebody want to comment on that.

Okay, I thought I heard somebody. And also, the other thing is. Here’s an example I just showed this a couple days ago, have some traffic just from YouTube. And this what you know, Marco was saying, if you can buy really inexpensive, I know we were talking about social signals originally, but talking about generating traffic signals, remember activity, relevance, trust, and authority. And these are in market. Well, these different various audience types here. But these are YouTube ads that I’m running. And you can see that I just selected an IM stands for in market audience, Home and Garden home garden services for a landscaping and Tree Service Company. And I’m running YouTube ads for them. And you can see that my cost per click, this isn’t per view, the average cost per view is nine cents. I used to talk about using YouTube for for more for branding, for gaining views, but I’m getting a hell of a lot better at actually driving traffic to local clients now using YouTube ads and look at the clicks one point or dollar 66 per click average cost per click from it from a very relevant audience, right and market Home and Garden Home and Garden services. So those 83 clicks are highly weighted clicks, because they’re coming from audiences that are Google has determined are in market for Home and Garden services. So hopefully that makes sense. You know, I don’t care about Facebook likes, shares, tweets, and all that kind of stuff. If it’s just spam, if it’s from irrelevant, in fact, it’s nice to get them from irrelevant social signals from a relevant audience. So somebody that is really, truly engaging with the content, that’s great. But that’s harder to that’s harder to spam or to spoof. It’s almost, you know, it’s very difficult to, but you can purchase relevant traffic signals directly from Google or Facebook, or, you know, many of these different social platforms that also offer advertising services. Right. And so the point is, if you’re buying relevant traffic signals, right from from, from, or engagement, traffic and engagement signals from a relevant audience, it’s likely that they may end up liking tweeting, sharing, whatever anyway, because they were a relevant audience to begin with. So my point like what Marco was saying, I totally agree with it’s better to just go with this type of traffic, and you’re likely getting natural, organic social signals from that. Okay.

It’s a great question, though.

Do I know of any good vendors? Not really, I think SEO Butler has some, at least they used to be called SEO Butler. I’m not sure if they still are. But I know that they had some tiered social signals that apparently or from what I understand were worked pretty good. But I don’t know that those are still relevant, because again, I haven’t done any significant testing on just social signals in several years.

Great question though. All right.

How Do You Get A Strong SEO Effect For A One Page Website That Don’t Have Silos?

Next question is from rocket blaster. He says, I watched one of your videos on silos and it seems like that can really help you to rank with all the pages and links etc. But you said you only use GMB free sites now. That’s a one page website. Now I might have in that one particular video, there was a period of time where I was just building GMB assets without self hosted WordPress or self hosted sites as part of the projects and and for so for a period of months. That’s all I was doing and I was just using the GMB websites. We’re not I’m not doing near as many GM B’s now, because it’s much more difficult to get them number one, number two, they’re they’re much more much easier to get suspended now also. So I am working with workout self hosted sites now again.

So I just want to clarify that I am using self hosted sites as the primary website for each project that I’m working on now even if it has a GMB, the primary website is that self hosted site. But you don’t have I mean, again, you can use a self hosted site, you can use a Google site. So sites.google.com or the actual GMB website even though it’s one page, you still can silo those can’t talk about how to do that here because we cover that in local GMB Pro or in the mastermind or in our iOS Academy. Pretty much any one of our paid groups, but you can silo a GMB website. Yeah.

You can silo anything. Yeah. Right. Sure. So and as far as that, like, we have two case studies going.

One is HVAC. And another one.

Well, I’m not gonna say what it is free. But it they’re both being shared in the heavy hitter club, every hitter club. And so if you want more guidance on this on how it’s done on how to set up the GMB on how to silo, the GMB and how everything now works together. Regardless, I’ve always said that local is relative. And so I’m taking that and applying it now to a national build where there is a GMB but the GMB of course, is a service area and the service area is the US. And we’re using that I’m losing the hell out of getting fantastic results. Again, well, Monday, we’ll have a heavy hitter club webinar, where I’m going to be covering that Rob is going to be covering the HVAC the case study, and we’re going to be showing that and you can totally take that one page site and silo it because of the way the Google the way that Google saves the posts.

Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, you know, we talked about like siloing press releases as well. And you can go watch the free webinar on our YouTube channel where we talk about press release SEO, or press PR silo stacking. It’s the same webinar, but we talked about that. So you can silo press releases, right, you can silo a GMB website, you can silo, a regular website, you can silo a G site. So it’s all about, you know, theme mirroring, and that’s what we talked about. And so you can still do it with the GMB website. So because what do you do you put all of your information on that one page, there’s a limit to how much content you can put onto a GMB website.

Because I on a recent project, I actually reached that limit. And it’s kind of weird because you can you can add, like it doesn’t tell you you can’t add more. Like it doesn’t say you’ve added too much content if you paste a bunch of text onto the GMB website, but when you publish it, it will. Whatever that limit is it will just cut it off at the bottom the text at the bottom. And we’ll just put a little like greater than sign at the bottom. It’s weird. But anyways, uh, yeah, I mean I what I typically do is it depends on how many pages like if there’s multiple silos on the on the money site, for example. Or, if you were just going to use a GMB website, instead of a money site, I try to list you know, a couple of paragraphs about the main products or services that the business offers. Right, so I would put section headers even though you can’t edit the SEO elements of the page on a GMB website, you can still bold things and you can, you know, add spacing and line breaks and things like that so that it’s easier for the reader but it also is more logical and the content structure itself. So but you can also do outbound linking from the GMB website. So, you know, you can think about using strategic anchor text links within the GMB website to some of the other assets and your tier one, you know, entity assets essentially, so you can link out to those two. So there’s a lot of stuff that you can do with GMB websites. You don’t have to have a self hosted site or but the other thing I would always recommend is, even if you’re just planning on using GMB stuff, you’re still going to want it I mean, you absolutely should still get a Google site and an so as part of the SEO shield. So why not make the Google Site your primary money site for the asset if you don’t want to use self hosted sites fine. Use a Google site. I still think that’s better than just using the GMB website. Although you can get significant results with just the GMB website. We’ve proven that

Is There Any Content That We Can Automate To Keep The Gsite Fresh?

so also some good questions Pavlo. He says is there any content we can automate for the G site to keep it fresh? Marco, I know he says for you, but I want to give a couple suggestions first, and then you can take that one as well. Um, so Pablo, yeah, you can put think about iframe in a blogroll page in to a G site. Right. Or you can get more specific and you can, you know, and theming and I can’t get too much into this, but you can get more specific and you could use your website.

I’m just assuming you’re using WordPress, but let’s just make that assumption. But remember with WordPress if you know if you use tags properly, you’ve also got tag pages. So you can insert, you could iframe tag pages into the G site. Same thing goes for categories, right category pages, which are like blogroll pages for specific categories. The same thing with tag pages, right? It’s for any, it’ll list all of the posts that or pages if you add tags to pages that share that tag. So think about using iframes to automate, you know, from a dynamic content source, like a WordPress site to auto update g sites. There’s an again, that’s all iframe stuff. Also RSS feeds. Remember, you can embed an RSS feed using the feed burner buzz boost embed code. So you create the buzz boost embed code using Feedburner. And then you can use your blog RSS feed or your tag pages. Remember, each tag has its own RSS feed, each category has its own RSS feed. So you can burn different feeds and then use the buzz boost embed code to also automate, you know dynamic content onto a G site. Marketing once I take that one, yeah, people forget. And I don’t know if he’s in our academy reloaded, but the entire foundation behind RYS and RYS Academy reloaded this iframe, and the way that iframes work, and with that, that’s enough to go and do whatever it is that you need to do, because we’ve ranked and outranked people with their own content using the iframe method, so the G site will outrank, we’ve our right brands, as a matter of fact, using their iframe. So people forget the original training. The foundational principles are iframes. Why do you think our dry stacks and G sites look the way they do?

That’s right. All right. So the next question was,

Is It Okay To Create Separate Gsites/Stacks Focused Around Specific Keyword Groups Like EMD As Part Of The Larger Drive Stack?

is it a good idea to create separate g sites or stacks focused around specific keyword groups, like an EMD as part of a larger drive stack? Yes, I mean, that’s that’s exactly what we teach. You create the the branded Gsite and drive stack. That’s, that’s part of your SEO shield. Anyway, once that’s created, as Google starts giving you your keyword targets, we call those extensions we sell you go to MGYB.co and order an extension for whatever it is that you’re doing that one is going to be, it can be location and keyword focus, or just keyword focus. So if you have multiple locations, you would want to relate the keywords to those multiple locations. And if not, then you would want to just isolate that keyword in that stack treating it like a silo. So we go back to siloing. And how important siloing is, people have said that and I can’t believe either saying that siloing doesn’t matter, anyone that they calling it something else. And you’re not understanding the basic foundations of what a what a bot does, when it comes on to a page and when it follows the links that lead from that page to another page, especially when the content is relevant. And siloing is working just as well, today, as when, I don’t know if Bruce clay is the one who coined the phrase siloing or whoever it was, whoever was that came up with that it’s still as relevant, maybe more relevant today, because of the way that AI is focusing on entities and relevance. Yep. I agree. semantic relevance.

So just to clarify, though, it’s not about creating separate g sites, or stacks, right? Or it’s about expanding a stack. Does that make sense in siloing, or theme mirroring within your stack and your G site. That’s, that’s, that’s the preferred method, because remember, you powering up that g site and that entity that brand.

And so instead of having separate entities, which is kind of like what you would do if you had separate g sites and separate stacks, if they’re related or relevant, there’s some sort of connection between topics or services or whatever, then it’s better to have it all underneath one brand. Because then, you know, as you continue to power up that entity, every time you add another expansion, so like another another silo, essentially, it’s going to instantly benefit from the authority that’s already accrued to the main entity. Does that make sense? So it’s way better off. Otherwise, you’re starting over from square one with each new stack or each new g site. So you’re better off, taking advantage of the authority that you’re building to your primary brand. That’s what that’s why we teach it that way.

Could You Elaborate Golden Frame?

Jay says in one of your videos, I heard Marco mentioned something called the Golden frame. Can you elaborate a bit more about this? Yeah, it’s just your money site, your, whatever your primary asset is for the brand or for the entity, your golden frame, your Epicenter, right? ground zero, so to speak. And typically, that is a self hosted site. But it doesn’t have to be it’s whatever your primary digital asset is, for your brand or your entity. Marco, you want to comment on that?

He was asking about what the golden frame is. Yeah, I know. But I can’t, I’m trying to remember where and in which video, I mentioned that, because when we talk Golden framus, it’s simply the money site, whatever that may be, right, whether using a G site, a GMB up or whatever, WordPress, it can be HTML, it can be whatever, and then everything that surrounds that, that is part of that entity and that brand, but directly related, so your Facebook, your Twitter, all of your branded profiles, then become part of that golden frame. That’s what we call the bowl of rice, the golden frame, because that’s where you’re going to be making money. Especially when you start writing ads and Facebook, and as I said, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, anywhere else, anywhere, where your audience resides, and where you can target them to sell to them. You shouldn’t get a profile just just for the sake of branding. Your profile should be created with the idea that it’s going to make you money somehow it’s going to help you make money otherwise, then it’s just a link. Right, it’s just part of a PBN about a public blog network, that you’re claiming for Google. And that really isn’t doing any? Well, it’s reinforcing your entity, it’s validating the entity. It’s solidifying the entity, but it should be making your money. And you should always focus on how you branded and how you create all of these entity relationships. So that it actually amplifies and and if someone clicks out at tier two, right, let’s say something is thinking from tier two to your tier one branded, it actually brings that tier two link, a step closer, so I call it a de facto, tier one or tier one B, if you want to look at it, because of the way that Google applies the distance grant or how many hops, you are away from trusted and authoritative sources.

Is There A Way To Backup RYS Stacks In Case Google Shuts The Account Down?

So the next question was also as you guys use RYS stacks for lots of stuff, is there a way to backup all of this in case Google shuts the account down? Um, that’s a great question. Maybe Marco has an answer. The only way I know how to do that would be to download everything.

Which you could I guess, download it regularly. That way in case the account gets shut down, you can still upload them to a new Google account. But you’d have to convert files because I don’t think you can download like a Google Sheet, for example, or a Google Doc as it is, I think you’d have to download it as like a Word file, or something or an Excel file or CSV file or something like that. So that it would be available to upload to a Drive account if if it were to get the original where to get terminated. Marco, is there anything that we do for backups, I think we shared a script where you can clone your drive stack, and even clone it. But but we also become, I don’t know how much I can give away here because that we’re going into into regular shit Academy secrets.

We gave you a script, we showed you how to we showed you how to clone it, we showed you what to do with the folder so that you don’t lose it, right? If you ordered dry sex and G sites for a month, you get instructions on what to do with that drive stack a G site so you never again have to go into it and and lose access to it.

So you don’t ever get tagged for whatever, maybe the IP or whatever. But you can still go in there as a manager, but never again as as the owner. I mean, you leave that alone if you need access. at some future point. It’s done through the manager, not necessarily the owner. We tell you exactly what we what to do. When you order that from us and it’s information that is also an always Academy reloaded. The scripts are in RYS Academy Reloaded, that that’s how you would do it. That’s how you would back it up.

Very good.

Do You Have Any Good Examples Of Curated Content For SEO or Digital Service Agency Website?

Okay, so the next one is from Marty he says, Hey, SM This one’s for Bradley going to follow your advice and get a VA to curate content from my lead gen properties. Would you have any good examples of curated content for as an SEO or digital service agency website as this type of content allows you for lead gen or can agency sites use it to know? Okay, so listen, the best thing to do Marty would be to just go get content kingpin. I don’t know if we have any 12 Days of Christmas specials going on for that or not. But a content kingpin is the exact process that I use and have been since 2012. So we’re going on what, nine years now that I’ve been using that exact same content strategy. I’ve trained all my bloggers to do that.

And it doesn’t matter what industry it’s for. Well, let me let me rephrase that. I don’t know that I would do it for the legal or the medical industries, because there’s so many regulations and such. But for, you know, for a digital marketing agency, like for content for your own agency, absolutely. And I use it for all of my my clients, too. We do curated content for all of my clients. I don’t have any examples to show you specifically for curating content for agency type of content, but the format, the process is all the same. Right? It’s all the same. There’s nothing different about it. So I would highly recommend that you go get content kingpin, because that is exactly the process that we’ve used for years now to generate content.

Last thing is I brought this up. I think I left this. I think I deleted the website, though.

Yeah. And it’s not actually been suspended. I just deleted that subdomain. I could probably recover it. I was going to show you some examples here of See, look, a lot of these pages are still indexed. It’s interesting.

Yeah, I could restore that side. I probably should because this was always used as a years ago, when during the mass Semantic Mastery masterclass, which was a kind of mid level coaching group that we had, I did this Gainesville home pros local SEO project, and we use, you know, my prime, my primary blogger, Esther, she still works for me today, this was back in like shit five or six years ago that I built this damn site, I’ll have to restore it. So that it can be used as an example. But there was curated content on that you could even probably go to the Wayback Machine and take a look at it. I’m sure you could, you could go to the Wayback Machine to archive.org and go look up that URL, Gainesville, VA dot local home pros dotnet. And you can see curated content on that page. But again, if you pick up local kingpin, you’re going to have all of the training for exactly how we set up curated content machine and VA manage all of that. For me, it’s a fantastic product, it’s still the same exact process that I use today. I just put a VA she started a couple of months ago.

I wanted her to not only to curate but to work with Jordan, the way the Jordan talk content at POFU Live right. But the very first thing that I had her do was go through content kingpin. The very first thing I mean, yeah, without question, go and learn how to curate content and then we’ll go and because that’s so that’s the foundation now she can produce content whenever I need. Right curated content real quick and under and under an hour. She has just a fantastic piece of content. If I need a more content then she just goes in and curate some more but that’s the foundation man I keep telling people whatever it is that we share with you. We use it on our own stuff on our own clients or whatever it is that we’re setting up we use it

Yeah, yeah. And I was just trying to see if I could find I should just restore the site for what was in my hostess cleaning stuff up and I accidentally deleted that site so anyways, I was trying to pull it up just to give you an example Okay, here you go. So yeah, again, Gainesville VA dot local home pros dotnet and you can go through here and I believe you can click through to the pages and then you should go to the blog and then you should be able to take a look at I guess some of the images don’t carry over an archive maybe they don’t cache those but yeah, they do sure you sure they do. So there you go. That’s curated content right there guys and is this exact same process that I talked about and by the way this because there’s the let’s just take a look real quick home remodeling Gainesville VA I haven’t touched this project in six years still number two in maps the site has been dead Marco for God knows at least a year you saw god.org and look at it it’s still number two in maps

That’s insane. So anyways, yeah, go use that as kind of an example if you want to try to reverse engineer but to be honest with you just go pick up content kingpin. It’ll be worth your money, I promise.

Moving on.

Do You Have A Company Or System You Can Recommend To Make A Real Estate Brokerage Site Look Good?

Okay, I’m going to build out a real estate brokerage site using SEO bootcamp theme because it is ideal for on page SEO. You’re right about that. Do you have a company or system you can recommend to make the website look good? You mean like a design company a shit. Adam, do you have any ideas of like, I know because you deal with funnel builders and stuff all the time. Do you have any recommendations for a design company for? What I mean? I have a recommendation, but it depends on on your budget. Yeah, go for it. Marco I got some ideas, but no particular recommendations. Okay.

I mean it. Again, it’s not cheap, but look up moon and our marketing moon and our mo n a n d. o wl contact them and ask for a quote best in the business? Definitely. Yeah. And if I would just say if they’re looking for more of a, you know, get something quick, if you know enough that you can kind of manage someone that, you know, you can find people who do this, just make sure you know, you do your background research and look at some stuff they’ve built, you know, have them show you a few things. And I mean, you there’s a ton of people out there who can put together really good WordPress sites. So, yeah, yeah, and there’s a lot of companies out there now that will do that, you know, like, on a monthly retainer, and they’ll build sites for you, and all kinds of stuff, like design stuff, like, it’s crazy. So you can kind of look up for some of those, too.

So, uh, okay, yeah, cuz typically, if I have, like more than I just build normal, like WordPress sites that were theme based sites. And if I need anything beyond my crude design skills, then I just hired somebody from Upwork or something to do what I need. So

anyway, alright, so next is I’m working with a company, which is plugins, for ID x and home valuations, I just need to make the homepage look good.

Okay, yeah. And again, maybe maybe you just wouldn’t hit another option would be to get, there’s a lot of like, funnel builders and funnel designers out there that can create like a homepage, like a one page, like long type home page type thing that you could use as the home page. And then you could have the rest of the site, you know, on a traditional traditional WordPress, you know, framework that is a lot easier to manage, because it just be a particular theme or whatever. But if you’re looking for custom design for just the homepage, a lot of times you could do that with a funnel builder, or hire somebody as a funnel designer that will do a one page, like homepage version of a funnel that will work really, really well. And those are new, you can get for pretty enik fairly inexpensive. In fact, you could even go to like, Click Funnels marketplace, for example. And there’s other marketplaces out there that for group funnels, and you know, all those different kinds of funnel, I mean, there’s a funnel builders are a dime a dozen now, but many of them now have marketplaces, where you can go look at pre built designs that you can purchase. Or you can even contact the designers that are selling pre built funnels in the marketplace and ask them to build you a custom funnel or landing page or whatever. Okay?

Also, look, remember, that’s just a landing page, if you just need the front page done, it’s just a landing page. And then you can go to Upwork and find landing page builders, like I mean, from all over the world that and they show portfolio of their their work and all that kind of stuff. And that’s what I do I just go to Upwork and hire landing page voters when I need something specific done. I mean, that’s that’s what I was gonna say if it’s on a budget, go to a park. Yeah.

How Do You Get The Best SEO Results For Press Releases?

Next question, I already have subscribed it to a service for press releases, I have to unfold untold, those press releases before I guess, unload, I have to unload those press releases before I can switch over to press advantage. How do I get the best SEO SEO results? Maybe backlinking? With my current? Or how to utilize? Okay, I see what he’s saying.

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know, because it depends on i don’t i don’t know what service you’re using. And I know, it just it depends there. You know, I’ve had problems with some of the press release distribution services in the past where they inflate their distribution numbers by using a bunch of really shitty sites that end up looking toxic or becoming toxic. And you know, they’re they’re so they’re they’re not, it depends on what it is. I don’t know which network you’re using or distribution service you’re using.

I would recommend that you don’t use press releases to link directly to your money site. If you’re not sure of the sites in the distribution network. Like if you just don’t know how clean they are or spammy they may be, you’re better off linking to tier one entity assets from within press releases as opposed directly to your money site. So what I mean by that is your SEO showed assets, syndication, network properties, GMB properties, that kind of stuff. You use those as your target URLs within the press release, or press releases instead of linking directly to your money site and then yeah, you can just hammer the shit out of those press releases with backlinks

And that’s a great way to do it. It’s better to select try to select press releases that have, do follow links. But you know, that’s not necessary that you don’t have to do that. But if you can identify which press releases don’t purge, like in other words, they’re not deleted after 90 days or whatever. But also contained to follow links. If you can do that, then those would be the ones that you would use as target URLs for a link building campaign. Any comments on that?

Yeah, well, we love press advantage. We love Jeremy. There’s a reason why his press releases worked. So well. I mean, we talked to him constantly. And he’s constantly making improvements. And he’s constantly giving us virtually everything that we asked for to get the best SEO value out of the press releases. But it’s not only that, I mean, he has a good press release network. It’s not really just garbage sites, like a lot of press release companies have. So without knowing who it is that you’re using another one, I know, because I’m not going to put anybody down. I don’t want anybody getting getting trashed on here. Without knowing who your press release service is and what they’re doing. Like, I can’t tell you what effect link building is going to have on that. I can’t tell you whether you should get in bed, I can’t really say because I don’t know how much power you’re pushing. I know the power that you can get from press advantage. And I and then dedhia knows exactly what to do. When we turn over that that the press release report. Because this is a this is like my like my Mo, right? When I get a precedent, I get the PDF, I give it to Daddy, I say hit it. And he knows what to do. He will do the same thing for you guys. Yep.

All right, we got to be in here somewhere.

There it is, right there. Alright, so this was the other thing is just go to YouTube and search, press release SEO, you’ll find our video about I don’t know halfway down the page or whatever, or you or you can just go to our channel. So semantic mastery calm or youtube.com/semantic mastery and then just click right here, which is the channel search feature, and type in press release, SEO. And you’ll see that it pops right up. It’s the first video, I would watch that. It talks about how we use silos are how we silo press releases, and then stack them that it’s it and it follows our theme mirroring methodology. So it works really, really well. And I would recommend that that’s how you you start siloing your press releases together to I don’t care what your what distribution company you’re using, even if they’re spammy. If you’re using if you’re linking to tier one entity assets as your target URL from your press release silo, as opposed to your money site, then you can still power that up by doing silo press release silos. And that’s a great way to do it, even if they’re spammy. If you’re never linking directly from the press release to your money site. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Okay.

What Course Do You Recommend That Aims To Monetize A YouTube Channel Through Adsense And Affiliate Links?

All right, moving on. Uh, next one. I am in a full time job. And I don’t want to deal with clients. As of now I want to create a YouTube channel that I want to monetize with AdSense primarily and affiliate links. Which course would you recommend? I don’t know about AdSense stuff. But I know for YouTube and affiliate stuff, my go to source for training, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years is Justin sarti.

He is it’s all that pretty much all he teaches is YouTube ads for affiliate marketers, right. So he talks about creating YouTube channel and then he talks about using ads to to for for affiliate offers. But he in some and in his training. He also talks about how to and Justin sardi.com right there. He’s, I’m sure you can find his training in here and you could or you could reach out to him or whatever. He’s got a free webinar. He’s got great stuff, Justin’s hands down the best that I know of, for YouTube ads stuff, especially for affiliate marketers. I learned I got I learned about YouTube ads and started using YouTube ads because of Justin, although he doesn’t teach anything about local he has in the past a little bit. But that’s not his. That’s not his his thing, right? His thing is affiliate marketing, using YouTube ads as the primary driver of traffic. And so and again, he’s got some really, really good training on that I’ve sent started finding others that teach about local lead gen using or lead generation for using YouTube ads. But this is really really good for affiliate stuff. And by the way, he also is the CO developer of tube sift, which is a fantastic tool for YouTube ads for for targeting, for finding placements, doing keyword research, all kinds of stuff. And that’s he’s the CO developer with Ted Chen, who created power suggest pro

So it’s a great tool, I highly recommend that and in fact, if you purchase some of his training depending on what level you buy from Justin sardi, a lot of times he’ll throw in, you know, tube sift for a year or for three months or whatever, depending on what you know what training program you buy. So I would highly recommend that you check out Justin sorry.

Anybody else have any recommendations for that?

No, sir. Okay.

Are The Links In The PRs Point To The IFTTT Ring Profile Pages Or Is It Syndicated Posts Within A Silo?

Okay, BB is up. And this is the real BB not to too many questions BB.

says, Hey, guys, number one about Marcus PR stack system is the links in the prs point to the IFTTT ring profiles pages, or is it just the syndicated posts within the silo? It depends on what you’re trying to do, baby. Yeah, but hang on, hang on a second, he keeps asking it and trying to get more information and more clarification on something that’s actually paid training, people have paid a lot for local PR Pro. And if we keep giving information for free, it’s a disservice to the people who have paid for the course, I think we’ve mentioned that enough, I am not going to get into how I do my PR stacking I set it up, you link them one to the other. That’s one thing the other one goes, wherever you need it to go. You need to have the data for where it is that you’re going to need it to go. And I’m not gonna say anything else about it. I’m not gonna clarify, I’m not gonna add anything to it. If you want the how, then that’s in the pay train. Yeah, join heavy hitter club. Maybe? That’s that’s way less expensive than Semantic Mastery, the mastermind I mean, or paying, you know, or, but I would, I would, I would recommend joining the heavy hitter club because those are the where you get all these types of questions. And like, you’ll see real live examples or draw diagrams, like all that kind of stuff. That’s what the that’s what that’s for. But yeah, I mean, and again, maybe it depends on what you’re trying to power up. So you have to know where you’re trying to push power. And that’s where you select where you talk, what your target URLs are going to be. Okay. Please give your thoughts on this saying SEO generally is for everything, and paid ads for high ticket items and branding only I call bullshit on that. I mean, you know, I generate leads using paid ads a lot.

I don’t know that, you know, technically, those are high ticket items, right? So if I’m generating like, let’s say I sell Tree Service leads at $40 apiece, right? Well, I can generate Tree Service leads using Google ads, right. And so that’s not a hot $40 lead is not high ticket for me, it might be for the Tree Service contractor that buys the lead from me for 40 bucks might be a high ticket lead that he buys. But 40 bucks is kind of a low purchase price, in my opinion. And I use ads, I use SEO for that and for and ads. So I don’t know who said that statement or where you read that statement. But you know, if you know how to use ads correctly, it’s not. It’s not it’s not just about for branding and high ticket items, you can do all kinds of stuff. Again, I just talked about Justin sardi with affiliate marketing. And it’s crazy. But in his Facebook, I’m in several of his Facebook groups. And he teaches I mean, you know, there’s all the time people in there posting screenshots from their ads account showing, you know, conversions, cost per conversions on sales of affiliate products, you know, for like, sometimes under a few bucks, you know, and they’re selling these affiliate products. So that’s cost per acquisition or cost per conversion. And so again, it’s those aren’t high ticket items, but yet they’re able to do it, you know, all repeatedly, reliably and repeatedly using YouTube as a traffic source, which is paid ads. So again, I don’t know where you saw that. I totally disagree with that statement. Anybody else?

No, I totally agree with you, man. You can use you can use ads to complement your SEO, they’re not mutually exclusive. At all. Google wants you to think that they are and that you don’t get an SEO benefit from ads. That’s bullshit to me. Okay. So it might not be a cause and effect relationship between ads and rankings.

It could be some other kind of relationship. When you start seeing it over and over and over and over again, then.

Yeah, yeah. It’s there. It’s there. Yeah.

Do You Still Own And Maintain IFTTT Networks?

So social bugs me that’s Wayne Wayne says Bradley. Going back through syndication. training. So Syndication Academy, you mentioned you had over 300 sites in your property. You said you were having issues with Google killing your sites in the network. Curious, do you still have any networks and he’s still putting them into Okay, so you must be talking about now as many years ago, when I I was doing a lot of video SEO for a local video production company.

I would wholesale video seo services to the local product video production company and they would sell it retail to their video customers. So in other words, you know, before I came along, they were just selling one off videos, maybe occasionally they get a repeat buyer, but they didn’t have recurring revenue. And I pitched this company on selling them wholesale SEO Services, that they could then retail to their, you know, markup and retail to their, their video customers. And that would create recurring revenue and, and I don’t do that anymore. And the only reason I don’t do that anymore, I mean, I still, I still do video services for that same client, but I’m using Google Ads now for YouTube, Google ads for video to achieve the results that I used to achieve through video SEO, because it’s a hell of a lot easier. And I don’t have to worry about maintaining hundreds and hundreds of syndication sites like I did in the past. I don’t have to worry about any of that crap at all. I just set up paid ads and from relevant audiences from relevant geographic, you know area, and I’m able to achieve better results better reporting everything using Google ads for video. So at the time that I was doing all that video SEO stuff, I would, you know, I had in particular one, I had multiple video syndication networks, but you know, and I would say like great big, massive networks, but the biggest one that I had, God, I think at one point I had over 30 IFTTT rings which would end up being something like over 600 properties, web to Dotto properties, and then there was even when we started with SERPs when we formed SERP space, many years ago, we started developing a video distribution for the What did we call that video powerhouse? I think is what we called it at the time, but it was a monster man. Yeah, it was a video embed network video and or maps embed network, but at the time, I think it was strictly for videos. And we built out a whole bunch of like pbn sites, so self hosted domains, and each one of them got a syndication network around it, and when then we would embed the video to the self hosted site or the network of sites. And each one of the sites would then syndicate through IFTTT or the syndication network, to all of the web tos and that was massive. Um, but yeah, I mean, again, that’s stuff i don’t i don’t deal with anymore, because I just use YouTube ads for all that now, and it’s a hell of a lot easier and a lot easier to maintain. So hopefully, that makes sense.

Do You Still Build Networks Around Your Syndication Sites?

Okay, so the next question was, and I’ll come back to wills. He says number two, do you still bet build networks around your syndication sites? Well, I mean, no, not really. Because again, I would mainly build these multi tiered networks for you for video syndication, not for content syndication, like blog syndication. Because I’ve talked about this many, many times, it’s covered in the IFTTT training or the syndication Academy training. But when you have multiple tiered networks for con blog syndication, that creates footprint issues, there are ways to minimize the footprint but you can never eliminate it entirely. And that’s by using you know, adding applets with related or relevant RSS feed triggers from other sources. That kind of helps to bit you know, mix your content in with other relevant related content from other sources. But again, that becomes a bitch to maintain as well especially the more the more tiers you add, the more of a pain in the asset becomes to maintain. So again, I really don’t do that anymore. That was only for videos syndication networks that I would do that not for for blog syndication and so for blog syndication now I pretty much stick with just tier one branded networks and and just power those up significantly.

Good question, though. Well says Merry Christmas, guys. I hope you are all doing well. Thank you for all that you do for this community. You’re welcome. Well, thank you for showing up link for the charity webinars. I believe that was posted already. Thank you. Wayne says we got to wrap it up in a couple minutes. Wayne says don’t believe in matters so much based on the list. But why aren’t things including any sem or semantic mastery? Oh, geez. And the most influential SEOs of 2020 from the page optimizer Pro. Yeah, I saw that article. Actually. That’s okay. My feelings aren’t hurt. Thanks. Thanks, Wayne. Yeah, I didn’t know what went up. I’m not an influential SEO I’m just a guy who ranks shit way and I don’t I don’t live off people’s praise. It doesn’t do anything for for what I do.

Let them let them have their moment in the sun man is okay. Yeah. Yeah, I’m not looking for recognition on that front either I don’t care. I mean, it’s cool because I actually looked at that. And that’s that that article and that’s, um, that’s good for all of those guys. Congratulations to all those that are on that list. Fantastic. They’re probably really good at what they do. Uh, Wayne says Personally, I think you guys are in a different league together. Well, thanks, Wayne. Appreciate that.

Will You Make A Course For Making Money Through Paid Ads With Minimal Budget?

BB says will you make a course SM style for making money through paid ads, Google search, display native Facebook, Instagram, mobile ads, etc. The best methods with minimal budget and also scaling. I’m I’m actually working on a big project now for Semantic Mastery for the mastermind, which is going very extensively into Google ads for for display network YouTube, and call ads. Not so much search ads well, call ads are search ads, but they’re slightly slightly different. And also, soon, I’m going to also be working on what’s called discovery ads, but those are all in the Google Ads network. I don’t do any advertising outside of Google ads. Every time I’ve attempted to try to do Facebook ads, I failed miserably at them. And to be honest with you, I have no desire to do that. Hernan teaches Facebook ads as far as all the other ad platforms now? Absolutely not at least that’s not anywhere near in the near future. Because I all I use is Google ads. And again, that training I am doing specifically for local lead gen. And that’s going to be something that we’re going to be releasing sometime next year, probably middle of 2021 because I’m working on a very, very big project right now. For some for me, but we’ll also be coming training program for the mastermind. So

okay, we got to wrap it up guys. Sorry, we didn’t get to everybody. It was close. But we damn near got them all. But it’s five o'clock. We got to go. Post your question again for next week. first conference get guys donate to Marcos charity, if you can. And Marco I already forgot if you mentioned it, but what date will the webinars be starting? So like once we have it, we haven’t set the date set that that’s why just send proof of donation. And we’ll take care of you my VA will make sure that you get the link to sign up for the for the notifications and for everything that’s coming. Cool. And where should they send the proof of notification to? Oh, sure I didn’t I’ll write the email. All right, cool. Well, it’ll be on the page and if you’re watching, you can come back and head over or just go to semantic mastery comm HD questions and get it there.

And I feel like a dick for missing my Christmas hat. You should.

Hey, guys, bye everyone. Christmas, everybody. Later

Source: Semantic Mastery Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 319 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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localwebmgmt · 3 years

Text

Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 319

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 391 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

This time it actually was but maybe I should have done the other thing now. I’m pretty similar. So anyways, I can’t complain, man. I’m happy to be here. Yeah, that’s it, man.

It’s good, man. Everything’s good. I’m happy to be here.

I’m looking forward for 20 2021 though. Hopefully it will be better than 2020

The rest is like tons of snow. But yeah, it is what it is. And yeah, looking forward to like the holidays.

I actually will take some time off. Starting tomorrow for

I don’t know pretty much the weekend, four days to get a bit of a time out and relax and come back to work. So yeah, fantastic, man. That’s for me. What can I say?

Let’s do this.

Any other announcements?

Be good?

Work? Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. All right. Very good. Grab the screen.

Okay, y'all see my screen? Correct? Yeah, yep. There we got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On Social Signals And How It Supports The SEO Of The Money Site?

That Fragen signaling na, look what I’m doing.

It’s a great question, though.

Great question though. All right.

How Do You Get A Strong SEO Effect For A One Page Website That Don’t Have Silos?

You can silo anything. Yeah. Right. Sure. So and as far as that, like, we have two case studies going.

One is HVAC. And another one.

Is There Any Content That We Can Automate To Keep The Gsite Fresh?

That’s right. All right. So the next question was,

Is It Okay To Create Separate Gsites/Stacks Focused Around Specific Keyword Groups Like EMD As Part Of The Larger Drive Stack?

Could You Elaborate Golden Frame?

Is There A Way To Backup RYS Stacks In Case Google Shuts The Account Down?

Very good.

Do You Have Any Good Examples Of Curated Content For SEO or Digital Service Agency Website?

Last thing is I brought this up. I think I left this. I think I deleted the website, though.

Moving on.

Do You Have A Company Or System You Can Recommend To Make A Real Estate Brokerage Site Look Good?

anyway, alright, so next is I’m working with a company, which is plugins, for ID x and home valuations, I just need to make the homepage look good.

How Do You Get The Best SEO Results For Press Releases?

All right, we got to be in here somewhere.

What Course Do You Recommend That Aims To Monetize A YouTube Channel Through Adsense And Affiliate Links?

Anybody else have any recommendations for that?

No, sir. Okay.

Are The Links In The PRs Point To The IFTTT Ring Profile Pages Or Is It Syndicated Posts Within A Silo?

Okay, BB is up. And this is the real BB not to too many questions BB.

It could be some other kind of relationship. When you start seeing it over and over and over and over again, then.

Yeah, yeah. It’s there. It’s there. Yeah.

Do You Still Own And Maintain IFTTT Networks?

Do You Still Build Networks Around Your Syndication Sites?

Will You Make A Course For Making Money Through Paid Ads With Minimal Budget?

And I feel like a dick for missing my Christmas hat. You should.

Hey, guys, bye everyone. Christmas, everybody. Later

Source: Semantic Mastery Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 319 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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