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chainofclovers · 3 years

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Ted Lasso 2x9 thoughts

It’s no secret that I absolutely adore Coach Beard; he’s one of my favorite characters on the show, and he’s so well-written and well-acted that somehow I tend to be both perfectly satisfied with the details we see and truly curious to understand more about the way he thinks, what’s really happening re: his professional and personal devotion to Ted, where he comes from and where he’s going. I don’t need to know his name beyond the name he wants to be called, but I want to know why we don’t have any other names for him. And I don’t need him to be a bigger focal point of every episode, but I very much needed this episode’s world-exploding reminder that every single character on this show has a rich inner life, full of joys and troubles.

“Beard After Hours” is like a movie, but one that scatters its climaxes and puts off its resolutions...because it’s not a movie. It’s episode nine of a twelve-episode season of TV. When the episode ended, I felt this almost frantic “But he needed to break up with Jane for good before the end of the episode!” feeling. I was so pulled in by the idea of being able to tell an entire story in one night, of going on an odyssey alongside a complicated hero, that watching Beard and Jane find each other in that club felt as intense as the fact that we don’t know if Ted responded to Rebecca’s voicemail and we don’t know what’s going to happen with Rebecca and Sam and we don’t know who isn’t getting married and who is having a funeral in 2x10 (I mean, I have my strong suspicions, but still!) and we don’t know if Richmond will be promoted back to the Premier League. And on and on. I didn’t mind feeling desperate for the story to resolve even though I understood after thinking about it for ten seconds that of course it couldn’t resolve yet. Or ever. Or yet.

I’m a big fan of the TL episode recaps/reviews Linda Holmes writes for NPR, and I have to quote something from this week’s directly because it so perfectly explains my feelings:

The power of the scene where Beard dances in the club isn't that it's a beautiful romantic climax. It's that it's an explanation of why he cannot seem to extricate himself from this bad relationship. What makes the worst relationships so dangerous is that they have elements that feel good that are very hard to get elsewhere. Beard knows that; he tells it to God. What's concerning isn't that Jane makes the world seem more interesting; what's concerning is she's the only thing that does. That doesn't take away from the joy of the dancing; it just tells you that even happiness is complicated.

I love Holmes’ perspective here so much, because it articulates something I was struggling to figure out: how it can feel so legitimate, like such a (temporary but nonetheless powerful) relief, for Beard to find Jane in that club and to have this moment of euphoria as his night nears an end. How it is possible to experience that relief on behalf of a character while fervently wishing it could end differently, because it’s so clear from the abusive text messages and the toxic calls and the manipulative interactions that Jane is terrible to him and they’re terrible for each other. But Beard knows this. He knows it when he hugs Higgins in the parking lot after Higgins is honest with him in a way Ted and Rebecca and Keeley have not learned how to be, and he knows it when part of his prayer includes the clear articulation that Jane isn’t the cure for what “ails me.” He’s inching closer to greater self-knowledge just as Ted is.

And the two big resolutions that really, really needed to happen did. I didn’t know I needed Paul, Baz, and Jeremy to get to wrap up their own night out on the pitch at Nelson Road, but I did. It brought actual tears to my eyes. And the other resolution was Beard showing up with the other coaches’ coffees for their meeting to watch the game film. As interesting as it would have been to see what Ted would have done if Beard hadn’t shown up, I’m so, so glad that he did. He’s got a messed-up face and some truly epic pants on, but otherwise this is just Beard showing up for work, showing up for his friends. It was incredible to realize that Beard and Ted haven’t been exaggerating when they’ve referred to his sex-and-drug proclivities in the past. The night documented in 2x9 might have been particularly scary and violent and euphoric and awful and meaningful, but this type of all-night adventure isn’t a foreign concept for this guy. In all the other episodes of this show, when we see Beard we’re seeing someone who might have been out all night, who might have spent the hours the sun was down desperately pushing himself closer to whatever edges he could find.

I don’t really want to touch upon all the allusions in this episode. They are abundant, they are well-documented, and also I haven’t even seen the movie After Hours. I enjoyed this episode for its allusive qualities and I enjoyed this episode for what it was and I feel like I have to be at peace with the fact that I’m never going to pick up on every single reference on this show and that is okay.

So, yeah, if this entry on my tumblr dot com blog seems remarkably devoid of references and allusions, it’s not because I’m not into it but because I find it too overwhelming to actually write about.

Very into the Misplaced and Discovered box at the Crown and Anchor. (That’s what Mae wrote on the Lost and Found box at the pub, right? Whatever it is, it’s so funny.)

Beard hallucinating Thierry Henry and Gary Lineker was truly upsetting and a great indicator not only of how broken things are between the Richmond coaching staff right now but also how deep Beard’s self-loathing might go. If you’d asked me before Thursday if I thought Beard loathed himself, I would say no. That deepening of knowledge alone makes 2x9 worth it.

James Tartt and his friends in the alley. Such a nightmare. I go back and forth on how much of the night was real, and part of me has decided all of it is, short of the images of Henry and Lineker. (And even that is real to the extent that it was a way of articulating what was in Beard’s head.) But watching Beard in physical danger brought on by the same abuser who had him so upset in the first place. It was a lot.

I’m so excited that Paul and Jeremy and Baz got some spotlight this episode. It was so wonderful to see them out of the pub. I love that they ended up telling the Oxford snots who they really were. They got to see Beard going to bat for them and smoothing over the situation socially, and that actually made it more possible for them to end up being truthful about themselves. Because they have nothing to be ashamed of, and they deserved the magic of that night. (And for it to end on Nelson Road. Every feeling. Oof.)

I feel like I barely have anything to say about the trouser-mending lady or the many places Beard goes or his key-dropping or the nightmarish feeling of wanting to be home and being unable to be home. It all happened and we all watched it and again, it was a lot. But I do feel incredibly moved and fascinated by the fact that Beard very obviously still hasn’t been home when he brings in the coffee. He’s had to sleep at the club for Jane- and key-related reasons in the past, and this time it’s not that he’s slept there but it still feels like a kind of homecoming he was robbed of for the entire night. Ted and Roy and Nate are there. He’s gotten their coffee orders correct. Ted is growing and evolving (he wants to learn from what’s happened, he’s insisting upon it even when the others resist) but he’s done a really perfect (almost romantic in its loveliness) thing by presumably spending his evening following a breakdown of his own speeding up the game film to 10x speed and adding Benny Hill. Ted is not OK and Beard is not OK and Nate is not OK and Roy is pretty OK but could very easily be not OK because he’s just joined a coaching staff with a whole lot of not OK. But they all showed up.

I am very into the realism of the lights being off in the club other than the coaches’ office (@talldecafcappuccino pointed this out!), and the way we’re seeing their desks from a different angle because this episode is unfocused on Ted. It really added to the mindset of being hungover and exhausted and unable to go home or even to know exactly what home should be; even this warm, familiar place feels off even as it’s a relief to be back there.

I am excited to return to our regularly scheduled programming with the full cast of characters, but I really adored this episode for what it taught us about Beard and what it illuminated about the humor, pain, and complexity of each person who inhabits this universe. Beard may not be loud about his long-standing beliefs or about the things he’s learned, but there’s a lot happening in there and I appreciated getting to spend 43 minutes with him and (in the case of the ticket he scrawls on a piece of paper so the pub guys can get into Nelson Road) the moments he sets in motion.

#ted lasso #ted lasso s2 spoilers #ted lasso 2x9 #meta by me #a lesbian watches ted lasso #coach beard

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florbelles · 3 years

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all of G & Y for the queen of new vegas, baby 😈🔥

thank you legend!!

— G. GORGEOUS.

i. what is their most attractive external feature?

it’s not something joss has given a lot of thought; she always understood that she was considered beautiful, and that usually meant she was bait for unsuspecting travelers who would stay at her father’s shack of an inn. the appeal is all in the facial composition, though — she didn’t have clean hair or skin or pre-war clothes, then.

ii. what is the most attractive part of their personality?

she learned early on how to manipulate people by saying the right thing, asking the right questions. dispensing the appropriate amount of approval at the opportune moment, withholding it just long enough to make it feel earned. to someone intimately familiar with how she operates, it’s not necessarily a charming attribute, but it’s what gets her what she needs and what draws people in to begin with

she’s also funny as hell, if your tastes run to the morbid or at the expense of others.

iii. what benefits come with being their friend?

she will not put out a hit on you!

full benefits of all her connections. an act if you want it. resources if you need them. the run of the strip and goodwill in freeside. exemption from getting kicked out of the tops if you’re winning too much ( swank hates this one ).

iv. what parts of them do they like and dislike?

well, she thinks she’s hilarious, thanks. she likes that she’s ruthless and cutthroat; it doesn’t really occur to her that she shouldn’t have to be, she just appreciates that it serves her, that it’s how she survived this long. she likes the way she looks; she’s not vain, but she likes the advantage it gives her. she’s proud of the fact that almost everything she knows is self-taught.

she dislikes that she’s so embittered, that she can’t let anything go. she didn’t really think about it when it was driving her — she’s going to get away from her father, she’s going to find her sisters, she’s going to ( from her perspective ) free new vegas — but when she’s left as a rebel without a cause she just has to sit with it, and she hates that. not enough to talk about it or do anything with it, even with her closest confidants she’ll never feel free to show what she perceives as weakness or vulnerability that way, but still. she wishes it were different, sometimes ( which, perhaps ironically, leaves her even more embittered and usually drives her out of vegas to go wander the wastes before she misdirects it more than she already has; she already slaughtered the strip once, she can’t do it again, it didn’t rid her of her anger last time ).

v. what parts of others do they envy?

relatedly, she envies anyone who is ( comparatively ) without baggage, insofar as that exists in the wastes, less in the sense of what’s happened to them but how they’ve coped with it and processed it. people who can be satisfied with what they have, who don’t have an anger or restlessness that consumes them. she thinks sometimes she would have been happier roaming the wastes all her life, and she envies those who do, to an extent, but that’s a thought she has the luxury to have when she actually has security & companionship for the first time in her life ( which she does not, in fact, walk away from despite technically having the option, so the insincerity of that envy is apparent even to her, if she’s being honest with herself ). is the appeal of the idea partly that benny absolutely abhors it to the point of bumping off others for harboring these potentially dangerous sentiments? yes. almost entirely.

— Y. YOU.

i. how old were you when you created them?

twenty-one. she was older than i was at the time. i now understand she is a fetus.

ii. what inspired you to create them?

unlike some of my other characters, joss was originally purely the result of in-game choices and mechanics. i just wanted a real bitch of a courier, not initially from the perspective of a fleshed out character but in the sense that she would take every chaotic asshole option available. lose to ringo at caravan? shoot him. end up shooting the whole entire bar and being the butcher of goodsprings. get villified by the ncr before even reaching primm. boone won’t speak to her because of this. break into his hotel room. shoot him. kill jeannie anyway because she found the receipts. shoot that guy who won the legion lottery because she thinks it’s an actual lottery and he’s gonna have cash. nope. just open fire on vulpes & company.

i started to develop a loose moral code for her by the time i reached freeside and adjusted my gameplay accordingly, but that is, in fact, her tragic origin story.

iii. were they different when they were first created?

honestly, given the above writeup, not as much as you’d think. obviously she’s different in the sense that character/developmental/background reasons now exist for her behaviors and choices, and a few things have been tweaked accordingly, but those were more additions than revisions to the extremely vague concept that already existed. she’s the same old very evil karma bitch she ever was.

iv. do you enjoy writing them more than other characters?

i don’t know if i would say more, but she’s one of my favorites ( there are obviously other characters i write more frequently now, especially in terms of what actually gets posted to tumblr dot com, but i originally wrote for her a good deal ). in terms of gameplay and early-stage development, yes, by an absolute landslide. her first playthrough is probably to this day the most fun i’ve had in my first runthrough of a game.

v. what’s your favorite thing about them?

exactly her aforementioned origins, actually! she’s a loose canon in every sense, just a real liability, but she is, horrifyingly, running this shit now. she also lets me play with a lot of my favorite tropes ( the femme fatale, the dark messiah, god save us from the queen ).

#going to try to get at least one of these done a day rip #answered #roberthouses #oc: jocelyn peralta #asks: joss

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starfleetdoesntfirefirst · 4 years

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Popping back into disco fandom after a busy week and decided to give my incomprehensible meta from earlier this week a reblog; however, discovered that this webbed site hid it and realized that, despite my scrupulously including no links, it very likely was hidden because of my tongue-in-cheek use of a certain phrase, so decided to just repost instead sans webbed site phrase. Anyway,

Thinking about the degree to which Cpt. Georgiou’s story is about kindness and integrity, and the degree to which that means that (long before the events of later in the season make this incredibly explicit) it is therefore about the enemy within.

Like any self-respecting Star Trek captain fangirl, I have firm opinions on Georgiou’s Coolest Moments, Most Underrated Qualities, etc. The moment that beats out of a hell of a lot of Cool Underrated Moments/Qualities to reach second-place, extremely-close-to-first place for me is the moment when she tells Burnham that retreat is not an option not only because they’re in Federation space but also because they are the only line of defense for the space station and the Andorian colony behind them.

It’s not really a quotable-quote, but to me, it’s one of her most awesome moments, because it’s what makes much of the rest of the pilot episodes an awesome story about a captain and her crew looking out for innocent people, rather than about a captain risking and ultimately losing her ship and multiple members of her crew for the sake of space!diplomatic posturing.

But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

Georgiou looks out for the people on the base behind her, and she looks out for people in the starship confronting hers, which is only the inverse of looking out for innocent people if you’re willing to stake their lives on the assumption that they are not innocent.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right–fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

What the advice columnist said was, of course, in many contexts, correct. We tell our children that fresh food is always cheap and easy to prepare and will save them, </food/diet talk> and that kindness feels good and pleasant and makes their lives better, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s brutal and painful and entirely capable of making things worse. I think one reason I find Georgiou’s Trek Captain StoryTM comforting is because of the way her story as a whole makes me feel less alone in not necessarily associating acting with kindness with feelings of softness or pleasure or fulfillment.

Acting with kindness is so often swallowing a grenade; wrapping your arms around it. Matter can’t be created or destroyed and even in the movies whose directors haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode about how jumping on a grenade probably wouldn’t work anyway, you can’t put the pin back into it. The pain has to go somewhere.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain–even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It’s hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

Despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued–and less visibly disabled–person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

Near the end of Discovery Season 1, I remember reading a review that encapsulated Mirror Georgiou as being mirror-universe-evil but also a better strategist than Prime Georgiou, because she was quicker on the uptake than Prime Georgiou had been when Burnham spoke with each of them, respectively, about the current relevant threats. But deciding who is better at threat assessment necessitates defining what is a threat.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery–Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

But as we circle back around to the same viewpoint again, the images shift. Instead of the Klingon fleet in front of Georgiou and the Shenzhou, we see the innocent people living their lives on Qo’noS; behind her, we see Mirror Georgiou bombing the rebel base; Mirror Georgiou preparing to execute Burnham; Cornwell and Sarek working with Mirror Georgiou to destroy Qo’noS; Qo’noS exploding into fiery nothingness. Is Prime Georgiou defending what is behind her from what is in front of her, or holding back what is behind her to protect the rest of the universe?

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

Would Captain Georgiou have been able to effect more net positive good in the universe if she’d been just a bit more ruthless, a bit less Captain Kirk and a bit more Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse, and had elbowed her way up in the ranks to become an admiral by the time of the war? Maybe! To quote another advice column: “Should” Éowyn have stayed behind in Edoras to be Queen? Probably.

(Because that one’s a complimentary quote and Tumblr will hide the post if I link: “Commander Logic tells you how to get unstuck,” captain awkward dot com, which I do not endorse entirely as an advice site but which definitely has its moments.)

But then, of course, there’s no woman-Hobbit tag team to kill the Witch-King of Angmar (who is most definitely not Innocent People), and then maybe Admiral Georgiou helps create a better Federation that flawlessly averts the war in the first place and buys all of its citizens a new puppy, or maybe a Georgiou who would make the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top is, in fact, the Georgiou we meet at the end of Season 1 who made the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top and now stands there, using a mirrored Starfleet to control a mirrored universe.

Here is the story we got instead: Georgiou was a captain and not an admiral, and she didn’t avert a war, and she lectured Burnham like a child and was space-racist about Saru and didn’t even always wrap her own indiscriminate cruelty and pain and desire safely in her arms.

(And yes, I’ll always be disappointed that we didn’t get seven seasons of Captain Georgiou, or one season of Captain Georgiou and six season of Captain Burnham and background Admiral Georgiou, or… Prime Georgiou isn’t just comforting and hopeful and inspiring; she has flaws and impulsiveness and ruthlessness herself. What would it be like to see the story where she grows?)

But she did not start shooting on a hunch, and she did not take innocent lives. She put her own ruthlessness into the service of holding back what was behind her as much as facing down what was in front of her. She changed the people who she served with and captained, like every other cliched metaphor of ripples in a pond, and when Starfleet became the enemy within, and partnered with her own mirrored enemy within to try to kill millions of innocent adults and babies and children, it was the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s first officer who was the first to stand and say No, and the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s pilot who was the second.

I enjoyed seeing Mirror Georgiou stab Mirror Lorca as much as I enjoyed seeing Éowyn stab the Witch-King of Angmar. I don’t have a problem with the power part of power fantasy. But sometimes the Underrated Moment looks uncool. Sometimes the only way to act with integrity is to give something up rather than to Stand Up For Yourself The Way You Deserve, and the only way to look out for someone else hurts you in a way that is painful and awful and unfair. Even the most satisfying power fantasy is still a fantasy.

I would have preferred to see Lorca live and stand trial for crimes against humanity not for his sake but because a Terran Empire that condoned death as a consequence for failure is only a mirror to a Federation that condoned life in prison as a consequence for mutiny.

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?

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redevenir · 4 years

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Hi! @lxveille I wanted to send it to you via message but it is way too long, and since we don’t each other I thought it might be weird?

I’m not sure how to put it, but I’ve been reading your blog quite a lot for the past few months, and, well, while I was on my phone and couldn’t log in, I still left a few feedback here and there, but apparently they never reached you because I can’t find them on your blog, which sucks because everyone likes them and I feel like you should definitely know that here I am, appreciating your efforts past and present, and I figured, rather than sending you tiny messages, I’ll give you a very general review of the pieces I’ve read – it will be short, but please, do not hesitate if you want me to explain something, I know you’re not in my head and I might get confusing, I don’t know!! (Also, if you’ve spent a lot of time on a piece, it’s only natural to want to know more precisely what one liked in it, so feel free, I have zero thing to do and quarantine for another 3 weeks at least – probably until september so, cheers to that) And you can see I still have a lot to read !!! I’m saving them up !! It’s so hard!! Hopefully this isn’t overwhelming, since I had the time I thought «just do it» and well here we are. Have a nice day and take care of yourself!

(also sorry for the numerous typos you’ll find in this – or, to be precise, the missing words. This is my cross to bear I guess)

Seungcheol

if a tree fell in the woods, like i fell for you: *see beat [it] or [around the bush]

Joshua

as in ‘crush’ → ‘crush’ follow-up : the realness of the struggle is real, oh dear. Not only is IPA hard to grasp but I had a very shitty teacher and, well!! I’m amazed. Also love the awkwardness in this, sometimes I had to stop because of second hand embarrassment – by the way, this is something I often feel in the way you write Joshua, there’s something slightly awkward but not unpleasant, if you know what I mean? Awkward in a good way?

100 ways N°68 : I loved it!! bartender but make it space-y! Like in the Seungkwan space au, I really appreciate the grounding aspect that comes with a «normal» job set in an exotic(??) au. Your world-building (and I mean it everytime) is spot on!

revel : Well, you just Maupassant-ed all over the place, that’s it, I’m in high school again wondering what the fuck really happened.

alibi : why is the mc so rude to him??? Be tolerant !!!

drunk : see!! the awkwardness!! It’s here again, in a gentle, caring way but!!

paradigm shift : What happened to them? Where are they now? Are they ok? Did they ever meet the radio people? Part of me wants to know, part of me wants to keep it unsure so I can imagine what happened after. Also love a little heat in those panicky times.

Spill : I know the feeling. I know.

Hoshi

when the music’s right : honestly, still not sure about it, but I’m glad it exists in its own weird way.

trust fall → acquiescence → sanctuary → insolation : I saw your answer to an anon saying the last part had «kinda flopped» so let me tell you: it was a nice end for an amazing au, it had everything and I for one cherish it for

100 ways N° 7 + 38 → apricot → of fawn and fences : the world building!! I want to take classes and learn this world’s History! I love that Soonyoung is portrayed as learning about his civilization, I think it draws a nice parallel between him and us readers, as we are both discovering/ surprised as much as he is, whereas mc seems more educated – in their own way.

100 ways N° 40 : you said it yourself « sweetheart soonyoung » well yes this is what I’m here for (among other things)

100 ways N° 42 + 50 : Every time I read one of your university au I love it. Every single time. The balance between the softness of your characters and the hardships of uni (to put it in a gentle way) makes them raw yet comforting.

beat [it] or [around the bush] : since january I’ve read this thrice, it’s never far in my head. I don’t really know how to express it but really thank you for writing it. In a way, I feel like you morning afters speak to me on a very deep level, I can connect with every single one of those I’ve read, and they all moved me like a groundswell (you can say that in french, hopefully it makes sense in english too) In conclusion they felt very personal and maybe I’m taking this too much at heart but I’m genuinely grateful you wrote them.

Wonwoo

implications : shed a few tears, loved it, loved it, loved it, in a 1984 kind of way – if you’ve seen the movie, this is the aesthetic I pictured. Really witty take on soulmates au. Super moving.

Woozi

crepuscule : love it love it love it. Don’t know what to say, I just enjoy every single word of it. It’s a treat, a candy.

happenstance : this is one of my favorite trope (is it even one though?) slice of life/shy shy shyness/university au but in the end it’s not left unsaid so it’s super satisfying. Also a treat.

100 ways N° 12 : soft boyish bub.

100 ways N° 8 : my heart, just take it.

Sequestered : cried real tears, thank god I was alone the day I finished it.

caveat → impulse : I felt wrong to feel it was very wrong omg. Left it feeling living with a zombie might be manageable after all – who knew!

in a moment → now you, too : !!! yes!!! I !!! have no words!! that’s it!! that’s the dream!!!

charmed, unsure : heavy vibes of Only lovers left alive, which I love

asking daisies and the art of faking : *see beat [it] or [around the bush]

Mingyu

caught : as I’ve said before : What happened to them? Where is mc now? Are they ok? Also I remember whispering « noo » at the very end. The timing is very efficient, and all the details you’ve put here and there only left me wanting more: what happened before? What happens after?

Seungkwan

100 ways N° 38 : for the love of god just fall in love already

100 ways N° 57 : yes ! YES ! Space kid Seungkwan for the win !!

100 ways N° 83 : « Except there absolutely is a reason, if only either one of you would work of the nerve to name it. » That’s my jam, that’s it. I’m a bit tired now so I know I could do these fœtus reviews way better! But it doesn’t mean I love them any less !!

Vernon

easy as… (pt.1) : I.. just, petition for making this into a tv show ? Please ? It is enthralling.

Dino

100 ways N° 37 : cute, Chan is cute. This is cute!

100 ways N° 14 : slice of life but make it apocalyptic. I’ve rand out of things to say but this? I’ve mentioned before there are some of your pieces I consider the reading equivalent of sweets. This is one of them. 15/10 would personally love a long Dino-centered apocalypse au. (among many other things but who knows! Maybe I’ll be the one to write it) (also consider: space Dino) (space college boy dino)(i’ll shut it now)

lee chan would like to buy a vowel : I remember sending you a message expressing my love for this one, but, since it never reached you !! a master piece!!! the way you write dino is so relatable?? *see also beat [it] or [around the bush]

That’s it for me.

Love.

PS : it doesn't have to remain on tumblr dot com, ask and I'll delete it right away !

#fic recs #svt fic recs

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starberry-cupcake · 6 years

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Extensive Les Mis fanon character interpretation Discourse under the cut, read at your own risk

I’ve been thinking about this for an embarrassingly long while and I know I’m not the best person to discuss this, because talking about Les Mis is like opening this huge box of things which you need to be a scholar to be prepared to back up fully. That’s why this is under ‘read more’, because I am aware and accept my own ignorance and limitations BUT I also think this is an interesting topic, so here we go.

One thing that has been increasingly bothering me in what we can call “the current fanon interpretation” of Les Mis, namely the fanon interpretation that arose/became popular post 2012 movie and through tumblr/ao3, is this idea that Enjolras is a toxic person and he tramples selfishly over people’s feelings.

This is something that escalates sometimes a lot, even to a point in which I had to one time witness someone on tumblr dot com saying that Montparnasse was a better person and preferable ship partner than Enjolras which made me just stop and stare at the screen for a long moment trying to comprehend where this was coming from.

There was an escalating fandom acceptance of Enjolras being incredibly selfish towards people in the benefit of “his cause”, which makes him a sort of childish persona who is unable to take care of himself and who doesn’t understand people’s feelings in the slightest.

This is 99.999999% of the time paired with Grantaire’s interpretation, which I think is a key to understanding why this happened in the first place and why it evolved into turning Enjolras into an unfeeling person who understands nothing of human emotions.

And I think it’s a fascinating thing to think about and deconstruct, even if I’m not fond of the interpretation.

I think that Grantaire is, to the current Les Mis fandom (more so than ever before, but I’ll talk about that in a bit), what Éponine was to the musical fandom (and creators) in the 80s/90s.

A big problem I have with Éponine’s interpretation in the musical (and again, I’m in no way the most qualified person to talk about this and my word should be taken with a bucket of salt) is that she was taken as the victim in a made up “love triangle” that never was. The musical uses Éponine as a tragic figure whose love for Marius is depicted as wholesome and romanticized, whereas Cosette is reduced to a Cinderella story and a very shallow characterization once she becomes an adult (let’s remember her storyline is reduced to being an object to Fantine’s hope, Valejan’s salvation and Marius’s survival without much of an own agency since her entire plot and growth and storyline are cut after she’s rescued by Valjean). So the musical puts the two against each other as the two “options” Marius has, but doesn’t focus on Marius and Cosette’s relationship aside from a couple songs and moments, instead gives Éponine a solo on how much she’s unrequited and a death scene where the entire plot point of her wanting Marius to go to the barricade is erased.

Éponine’s character complexity is reduced to the character people is meant to feel for and women are meant to root for because she is “the underdog”. And, most often that not, that’s what love triangles do, the underdog is the one people root for because they’re meant to identify with their unfair situation and their tough luck.

This is a disservice to Éponine and to Cosette, who are much more complex than this and it’s something most people tend to let pass because the musical didn’t have as much time to expand, but it isn’t a matter of amount of content depicted but on which perspective to focus and what lens to see the story through.

Ask anyone who was a fan of the musical in the 80s and who hasn��t read the book or seen any other adaptation who they prefer between Éponine and Cosette, if you don’t believe me. I mean, On My Own was adopted as the “anthem of the female friendzone” as cringe-y as hell as that sounds.

Anyway, what does that have to do with Grantaire, you ask me? Well, first of, it’s very easy to see how modern fandom tends to interpret Grantaire and Éponine as friends, really really close to one another. This is a very common occurrence that results from the comparison of their situations and strengthens my point, but it’s not where I’m going with exactly.

What I think that has happened with Grantaire, and here is the anthropological/sociological hypothesis nobody asked for, is that he became the embraced character for the current tumblr/ao3 fandom as Éponine was for that 80s/90s musical fandom, due to the interpretation he is given, to satisfy certain fandom needs that are current. Which isn’t wrong in itself, it’s what happens with archetypes all the time (and a subject of study for me, which is why this interests me specifically, I’m currently writing two projects that involve literary archetypes, but I digress).

Grantaire’s drunkenness and confrontational nature were turned into coping mechanisms for a battle with severe depression, in most cases, or other underlying mental illnesses. Which isn’t that much of a long shot in itself, all things considered, it has a canon basis to stand on, but creates a complex case when it comes to the consequences of the things he does.

Fanon transformed Grantaire’s confrontational nature into a constant cry for help, one which Enjolras most often, if not almost always, ignores. Sometimes out of being oblivious, sometimes out of selfishness, sometimes out of derision and contempt. Sometimes all of them at once.

And one consequence of this was that it started becoming more and more often for Grantaire’s actions to be fully embraced by fandom because he was starting to be conceived as a vessel for a lot of self-reflection. It isn’t completely random that Grantaire’s characterization became more inclined towards the narrative of mental illness and conflicting coping mechanisms, because they are all subjects we talk about more openly now than ever before, especially in the platforms where this interpretation is more often seen, namely tumblr and ao3. Not that they didn’t exist before, but that they’re discussed more freely now, especially through the idea of safe zones that social media and the internet in general allow.

What Éponine’s character was for the female fandom of the 80s looking for an underdog to root for, in a market filled with products about the female underdog who was unrequited and deserved to be loved, Grantaire somewhat became to a fandom needing to express this idea of existential emptiness and overall doubt about not only one’s state of mind but also where one is going with their life when others seem so certain about it.

And talking about being certain about a life goal, what’s going in with Enjolras, meanwhile? I believe that, much like Grantaire’s fandom characterization having somewhere canon to stand on, Enjolras’s severity has some places where it came from which we can all clearly see. I am a little bit tired of how many times people use the “capable of being terrible” phrase at this point, and then there was the whole thing with Saint Just which I’m not getting into because this is already too long.

But, much like characters written to be two sides of the same coin, Enjolras and Grantaire tend to be connected to each other’s characterization. They were like that in canon, they were written to be a pair which influenced, directly or indirectly, the other, so it isn’t strange to see that in fanon interpretations, the two also go hand in hand. Pun very much intended.

The issue I have with Grantaire’s interpretation isn’t that his perspective is more directly viewed, or that fandom goes more in-depth with his underlying issues, but the fact that sometimes identification turns into idealization. It happens very frequently in writing (and not only in fic) that authors who see themselves reflected in a character tend to try to erase any blame from them in a way to channel a sense of embrace for their own actions, and that can be counterproductive to the character’s complexity.

Because it isn’t really the problems and hardship what make a character relatable, it is their growth which comes from learning, which, in turn, comes from making mistakes.

When Grantaire’s mistakes are characterized as reactions to things that are outside his capability to control, when they are seen as mechanisms of what anyone would do if they were in his place, Enjolras’s reactions to them turn not severe but unfair.

Suddenly, all of Grantaire’s mistakes, jokes, derision and his unfavorable actions are seen as a product of an inescapable situation, out of his control, which, in turn makes Enjolras’s anger unjust and an over-reaction. Which, paired with the fact that Enjolras’s “cause” varies from interpretation to interpretation (especially in modern contexts, which are the most popular among this generation of fandom, where the “cause” has to be determined from social and political contexts that tend to be very vague out of the global state of the world and the intersectionality of issues, which overlay in every one of them), makes him unfairly distant and overall incapable of feeling empathy.

Something that can be seen very clearly in the way in which, when it’s written as a ship, Enjolras often has to “choose” between Grantaire and “his cause”, whatever that is in each specific narrative.

More so than making Enjolras too severe, my problem is with his desensitization. I feel that making Grantaire a constant victim (out of fandom willingness to grab onto him as a vessel of current issues of the generation he represents due to his canon-ish age) makes Enjolras desensitized to human emotion, especially because, most often than not, it is only him who is represented as oblivious or uncaring, while the rest of the group understands and sometimes even defends Grantaire, in stances even turning their backs on Enjolras for that reason, which always baffles me, truly.

Enjolras is a very complex character and his actions are matter of many essays and interpretations, but one thing I don’t think he can be seen as is uncaring. Even less so uncaring towards human emotion. His constant inner turmoil during the barricade is something to behold and I always turn to his decision to execute Le Cabuc/Claquesous as one of my favorite parts in the entire thing, and the fact that he grieves his decision in the way he does is a proof of his emotional complexity and empathy.

I don’t have a problem with Enjolras’s severity or Grantaire’s motives, I have a problem with the simplification of their narratives into a judge and a victim, which I think is what leads to these conversations of toxicity among them, opening another bag of complications.

But even if it’s something that bothers me, it also fascinates me to see how these interpretations shift so much and how they change according to the audience that embraces the text at a certain point in time. How we charge it with additional symbolic value as we go, transforming it a bit with each read.

I want to clarify, very strongly and vehemently, that these ramblings are IN NO WAY meant as derision of fandom interpretation or anyone’s particular writing. I too have written Les Mis fics and have fallen into interpretative conundrums that now, with experience, I judge unfitting to my current views, some which I have deleted, others which are still around. So this is in no way a call out of any form, not at all.

It is also not to criticize Grantaire’s interpretation, as someone who suffers from mental illness myself, I find it not only positive but necessary the inclusion of these topics in writing, whether it is in fic form or in any other type.

I find this a fascinating topic because, like Tournier said: “In some masterpieces - and that is why they are first among universal literature - there is an incentive to create, an infection of the creative verb, a way to put in motion the creative process of readers. I confess that, for me, that is the peak of art”. That is the magic of works like Les Mis, that we can use them to see ourselves, no matter how much time has passed, and if these characters still help to see ourselves and our reality in a way in which we can observe it better, I think Hugo would be glad.

#les miserables #luly rambles #i was gonna be brief about this and I ended writing an essay whoops #i know i'm not the best person to talk about this but I have thoughts to share i guess idk #les mis #essay posts

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philipreview-blog · 5 years

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How To Construct an Empire With Blogs

Here is what I hear a lot of; how Do I Blog? When you first start out developing a blog, it's tough to envision what it can end up being an Empire. Most of us have these dreams of running an Empire blog, but with numerous such obstacles to go through, over and under and around.

Running a blog can be a satisfying experience, mainly if it's a blog that teaches. Before we can go about the mentor, we require to figure out only how to construct it and what platform was going to be on. Let's take a look at a few things that we need to go over to make our Empire blog.

Domain Registration

The majority of people would like to have a blog that has a dot com name rather than the name of the real company, i.e., WordPress, Blog, etc. For those that don't know what (DNS) is; Domain Call System is the method of the dispersed calling system for computer systems and services.

Website Hosting

You can run a blog from a complimentary service and never have to worry about hosting your blog. I would advise getting a hosting company to host your blog, one that is friendly for your blogging platform.

Free Platforms Like WordPress

Again I can see you asking; how do I blog? Well, there are a few open blogging platforms on the Web like blog writer, Tumblr, blog, Jux, WordPress, Posterous Spaces, and Weebly. Some are better than others, and to choose one is typically a matter of your individual preference. Nevertheless, I have utilized a couple of them and would most certainly recommend WordPress because of its versatility and functionality. There are a few websites that are offering video tutorials that inform you whatever you require to understand about WordPress from establishing styles, plug-ins, affiliate marketing, and much, so I would not worry too much about understanding what to do here.

Use Headlines Efficiently

Picture writing the best article you ever wrote in your life, to have no one read it. Many of us never honestly believe that the title is necessary. We typically relate the title to something that involves the short article, and without a doubt, that is the way to go. However, you need to make it engaging enough for your reader so that they will click it to engage in your post. Before you create your heading, do a keyword search to discover out the number of contending sites are targeting those keywords; you can use an expression like "How Do I Blog?" Try to try to find fewer places that targeted your phrase. If you have 900 million websites targeting a particular keyword or expression, it is painful, if not painful, being brand-new at blogging that you're going to move up to the top of any search engine.

Have an Excellent Blog Style

When you first create your website, try to make an enticing site because you want individuals not just to read your content but indulge in the look of your website. I have actually been to some locations that look horrible, and it does not take me long to move on to another site.

Leverage Social Media

When you start targeting Facebook and other social network media such as Pin, Tweeter, LinkedIn, and others. Remember, many of these people are your buddies and family, and they going to neglect your post. A post here and there of interest will get them moving along the method, and it will also get them to like your website and start promoting it on their wall.

Recognize Your Niche

If you pick a subject that you do not take pleasure in, you're not going to compose exceptionally much, and as a matter of reality, you're going to fizzle out in about three months. A blog is nothing more than a journal and needs constant updates. Well, your blog is nothing more than merely that.

Keyword Research

Now that you discovered your passion, it's time for you to do some Keyword Research. There's no point in composing without targeting keywords that individuals are not browsing on. Use an online search engine like Google and target a specific word. Google has a keyword tool that you can utilize to target specific words or expressions. These will inform you just the number of individuals are browsing for those keywords. From there, you need to determine the number of websites has those keywords. It's not hard to do from this point; all you need to do is put your keyword or phrase in quotes, and that will inform you just the number of sites that have those keywords. Discover keywords that balance around 50,000 searches each month, which is a little over 1600 searches a day on that specific keyword. If you get 10% traffic to your site, that's 166 potential customers daily; that's a terrific start.

Link Building

No links, no exposure. It's great to write excellent material and desire that everyone will find it. However, the fact is, you must have authority websites connect to your website for your reading to see you. The way to go about doing this is to discover some beneficial article directories and start composing to become an expert in your niche. You can likewise use other blog websites that do not limit the links and link back to your site or short article. To find yourself high ranking post websites, key in Google "high ranking post directories," and it ought to return with a list of the top 50 short article directory sites. This will offer you an excellent starter as you sort your order by page ranking so that you understand which ones rank at the top. Choose yourself a unique starting point like, let's state, five rankings. Any person under 5, you will disregard and utilize any authority site that has a ranking of five or above.

Blog Comment

This might not look like a big deal, but blog remarks go a lengthy method to connect back to your site. You're in business if you align yourself with an outstanding high ranking blog that allows you to enter your signature as a blog link back to your website. As you become more of an expert on that blog, individuals will start to follow those links right back to your site. Not just that, however, the search engines will likewise support those links, and you will get a higher ranking on the online search engine. Every chance you get to attempt to increase your blog remarks.

List Building

A Weber appears to be the big honcho an email reacting to services. I think they cost around $19 a month or something along those lines. An email list is incredibly vital to your blog. There's nothing much better than having an email list of customers that have an interest in precisely what you need to offer. Your subscribers are interested in what you have to say and the offers you make to them when you become an authority in your area. Now, don't put continuously out something that costs them cash. You have to provide exceptional, free things too. The issue here is establishing an autoresponder that has substance. Once again, you can't merely spew total scrap; you usually need to provide something of value, like let's say a free e-book or some academic info that pertains to your blog.

Ping

Pinging Servers promote your blog; they develop a list of a range of blog sites that have brand-new material. Blog online search engines can supply brand-new outcomes quickly by polling just the newly-updated blogs. WordPress features a ping service as a default. Nevertheless, there are tons more that you can fill to your WordPress blog and have it ping whenever your blog has been updated.

Social Bookmark Links

Social bookmarks are excellent services that offer bookmark sharing. The function merely saves the bookmark and share that as a resource. Some services permit dealing with markers, and this helps to get the word out.

AdSense and ClickBank Advertisements

When you initially begin your blog, it's typically not a great concept to plaster a load of ads all around it. You might want to at least look into Google AdSense as a way of getting paid for enabling ads on your site when your traffic starts to grow to perhaps 5000 users a day. You may want to select a specific electronic and then link to your affiliate link, which goes to ClickBank so that when your reader clicks on that to get more details, and they acquire an item, you received some commission.

Learn About Marketing

Anybody can set up a blog, but not everyone knows how to market it. This is essential, and this is the reality; you require to find out how to sell your blog. There are a lot of things to find out and a lot of expressions you hear on the Web about SEO, keyword marketing, short article marketing, list building, and much more. All of these terms concern the growth of your blog, and you need to know something about them. Granted, a great deal of these things can be exceptionally overwhelming, but you must have a reasonably good grasp on each of them. If you're going to be running the blog by yourself, particularly.

Fix Broken Pages

Go through every one of your pages to examine for broken links. Broken links can send an incorrect signal to the search engines, and that would be disastrous. These reports have pages that people have visited, search engine keywords used, linked pages, and also your error reporting; broken links.

Spam

Don't ignore securing your blog. We 'd love to believe that everybody on the Internet is about business and discovering great material and enjoying your site. Regrettably, that's not the case, and there are some extreme head cases out there. When we usually create our blog, we focus so much on the look of it and its content along with the marketing, which we sometimes forget that spammers are out there aiming to publish ugly links. Make sure you have a trustworthy spam filter that will catch the majority of the reply Posts that are unsuitable for your blog.

In my first week that my blog was up and running, someone currently tried to spam my website with a link that went to an unsuitable site. The remark was something like; this is a helpful site with a link to this inappropriate website. The most excellent method to defeat this is not to allow replies to be immediately published so that you can inspect out the post for suitability before authorizing it.

Blacklist

Thus another area we need to perk up on and find out all about the word you do not desire on your blog. You can get them from locations like Google and Facebook, along with numerous other big organizations that deal with this type of thing frequently.

#blog #blogger

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beingmad2017-blog · 7 years

Text

With Blog WordPress Website How To Build an Empire

New Post has been published on https://beingmad.org/with-blog-wordpress-website-how-to-build-an-empire/

With Blog WordPress Website How To Build an Empire

This is what I hear a lot of; how Do I Blog? When you first start out creating a blog, it’s hard to imagine that it can become an Empire. Most of us have these dreams of running an Empire blog, but with so many obstacles to go through, over and under and around. One would believe that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Dreams keep us alive and keep us going and striving for what we want. A strong desire to achieve and a hatred for failure keeps us piercing forward to grab trophy reward.

Running a blog can be a satisfying experience especially if it’s a blog that teaches. But before we can go about teaching we need to figure out just how to build it and what platform were going to be on. Let’s look at a few things that we need to discuss in order to build our Empire blog.

Domain Registration Most people would like to have a blog that has a dot com name rather than the name of the actual provider i.e., WordPress, Blog, etc. This is where domain name registration comes in at, you simply register a domain for about $12 bucks a year and reroute (DNS) that domain name to your hosting company. For those that don’t know what (DNS) is; Domain Name System is the way the distributed naming system for computers and services. It translates IP Addresses with domain names.

Website Hosting You can actually run a blog from an entirely free service and never have to worry about hosting your blog. However, it’s a sense of professionalism and trust in blogs that are hosted with their own dot com name and running from an independently hosted servicer. I would recommend getting a hosting company to host your blog, one that is friendly for your blogging platform. If this is not your area of expertise, there are video tutorials that will help you through the process step-by-step.

Free Platforms Like WordPress Again I can see you asking; how do I blog? Well, there are a few free blogging platforms on the Internet like blogger, Tumblr, blog, Jux, WordPress, Posterous Spaces and Weebly. Some are better than others and to pick one is usually a matter of your personal preference. However, I’ve used a couple of them and would most definitely recommend WordPress because of its versatility and functionality. There are a few sites that are offering video tutorials that tells you everything you need to know about WordPress from set up, themes, plug-ins, affiliate marketing and much, so I wouldn’t worry to much about knowing what to do here.

Use Headlines Effectively Imagine writing the best article you ever wrote in your life, only to have absolutely no one read it. Most of us never really think that the title is that important. We usually relate the title to something that has to do with the article and by far, that is the way to go. However, you need to make it compelling enough for your reader so that they will actually click on it to engage in your article. Before you formulate your headline, do a keyword search to find out how many competing websites are targeting those keywords; you can use phrase like “How Do I Blog?” Try to look for fewer websites that are actually targeted your phrase. If you have 900 million websites targeting a particular keyword or phrase, it’s extremely hard if not impossible, being new at blogging that you’re actually going to move up to the top of any search engine.

Have a Great Blog Design When you first design your website, try to make an appealing website because you want people to not only read your content but indulge in the appearance of your website as well. I’ve been to some websites that look horrible and it doesn’t take me long to move on to another website. Most websites that are disgusting in appearance only holes a person’s interest for three seconds or so. Not a lot of time to read any content so you get the drift at this point don’t you?

Leverage Social Media Social media is a very big deal these days, just look at the young kids walking around with their cell phones crossing the street looking down and never look up. Most of them are texting or chatting on Facebook or some other social network media. When you start targeting Facebook and other social network media such as Pin, Tweeter, LinkedIn and others. Try not to just overwhelm them with all sorts of marketing. Remember, most of these people are your friends and family and they going to simply ignore your post. A post here and there of interest will get them moving along the way, and it will also get them to like your website and start promoting it on their wall.

Identify Your Niche Discover what your interest are and what you would enjoy writing about. This is nothing worse than having to write about something you can’t stand. If you choose a topic that you don’t enjoy, you’re not going to write very much, and as a matter of fact, you’re going to fizzle out in about three months. A blog is nothing more than a diary and needs continuous updates. For some of us, we were little kids and we had a little diary that every day we would write something in it. Well, your blog is nothing more than just that. Except for, you can choose to write things in it every day or every week but whatever schedule you put yourself on, make sure it’s consistent.

Keyword Research Now that you found your passion it’s time for you to do some Keyword Research. There’s really no point in writing without targeting keywords that people are not searching on. Use a search engine like Google and target a particular word. Google has a keyword tool that you can use to target particular words or phrases. These will tell you just how many people are searching on those keywords. From there, you need to determine how many websites actually have those keywords. It’s not very hard to do from this point all you need to do is put your keyword or phrase in quotes and that will tell you just how many websites actually have those keywords. Find keywords that average around 50,000 searches per month which is a little over 1600 searches a day on that particular keyword. If you only get 10% traffic to your website, that’s 166 potential customers per day; that’s a great start.

Link Building No links, no visibility. It’s great to write good content and wish that everyone will just find it. But the truth is, you must have authority websites link to your site in order for your reading to find you. The way to go about doing this is to find yourself some good article directories and start writing to become an expert in your niche. You can also use other blog sites that do not restrict the links and link back to your own website or article. To find yourself high ranking article websites just type in Google “high ranking article directories” and it should come back with a list of the top 50 article directories. This will give you a good starter as you sort your order by page ranking so that you know which ones rank at the top. Pick yourself a good starting point like let’s say, five ranking. Anybody under five you will just ignore and use any authority website that has a ranking of five or above.

Blog Comment This may not seem like a big deal but blog comments go a long way to link back to your website. If you align yourself with a good high ranking blog that permits you to enter your signature as a blog link back to your site, then you’re in business. As you become more of an expert on that blog, people will start to follow those links right back to your site. Not only that, the search engines will also follow those links and you will get a higher ranking on the search engines. So every chance you get try to increase your blog comments.

List Building A Weber seems to be the big honcho an email responding services. I believe they cost around $19 a month or something along those lines. However, an email list is extremely crucial to your blog. There’s nothing better than having an email list of subscribers that are interested in exactly what you have to offer. Once you become an authority in your area, your subscribers are interested in what you have to say and the offers you make to them. Now, don’t always put out something that cost them money you have to give them good free stuff as well. The problem here is setting up an auto responder that has substance. Again, you can’t just spew all out junk, you generally have to offer something of value, like let’s say a free e-book or some educational information that has to do with your blog.

Ping Pinging Servers actually promote your blog; they create list of a variety of blogs that have new material. Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly-updated blogs. WordPress actually comes with a ping service as a default. However, there are tons more that you can actually load to your WordPress blog and have it ping every time your blog has been updated.

Social Bookmark Links Social bookmarks are great services that offer bookmark sharing. The service is merely save the bookmark and share that as a resource. There are some services that allow for treating of bookmarks and this helps to get the word out.

AdSense and ClickBank Ads Although when you first start your blog it’s usually not a good idea to plaster a ton of advertisements all around it. Most readers get sick and tired of a tone of advertisements anyway. However, you may want to at least look into Google AdSense as a way of getting paid for allowing advertisements on your website when your traffic starts to grow to maybe 5000 users a day. Now, click bank is something that you could use in your current articles. So when you first start up and write an article about something; let’s say, electronics. You may want to pick a particular electronic and then link to your affiliate link which goes to ClickBank so that when your reader clicks on that to get more information and they purchase a product you received some type of commission.

Learn About Marketing Anyone can put up a blog, but not everyone knows how to market it. This is key and this is the truth, you need to learn how to market your blog. There are a lot of things to learn and a lot of phrases you hear on the Internet about search engine optimization, keyword marketing, article marketing, lead generation and much more. All of these terms are pertinent to the growth of your blog and you need to know something about them. Granted, a lot of these things can be extremely overwhelming but you should have a fairly decent grasp on each of them. Especially if you’re going to be running the blog by yourself.

Fix Broken Pages Go through each and every one of your pages to check for broken links. Broken links can definitely send a bad signal to the search engines and that would be catastrophic. What you can do is look at your web hosting reports. These reports have pages that people have visited, search engine keywords used, linked pages and also your error reporting; broken links. This would be a great place to start because sometimes, you can miss links easily. If you find that there is a page or something that is not working correctly you can always put in a refresh page to send them to a root directory or somewhere else that’s not broken.

Spam Don’t forget about protecting your blog. Although we’d love to think that everybody on the Internet is about business and finding good content and enjoying your website. Unfortunately, that’s not the case and there are some serious head cases out there. When we generally create our blog we concentrate so much on the look of it and its content along with the marketing, which we sometimes forget that spammers are out there looking to post hideous links. Make sure you have a reputable spam filter that will catch most of the reply Post that are inappropriate for your blog.

In my first week that my blog was up and running, someone already tried to spam my website with a link that went to an inappropriate site. The comment was something like, this is a very nice website with a link to their inappropriate site. The best way to defeat this is to not permit replies to be automatically posted so that you can check out the post for appropriateness before approving.

Blacklist Blacklist are another useful tool to help control bad words in your replies. This is another area we need to perk up on and learn all about the word you do not want on your blog. There are several services that already use an array of blacklist terms and variations of foul words. You can get them from places like Google and Facebook along with a number of other large organizations that deal with this type of stuff on a regular basis. It would be a good idea to learn from their experience.

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giveuselife-blog · 7 years

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How To Build an Empire With Blog WordPress Website

New Post has been published on https://giveuselife.org/how-to-build-an-empire-with-blog/

How To Build an Empire With Blog WordPress Website

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netmaddy-blog · 7 years

Text

How To Build an Empire With Blogs

New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/how-to-build-an-empire-with-blogs/

How To Build an Empire With Blogs

Free Platforms Like WordPress Again I can see you asking; how do I blog? Well, there are a few free blogging platforms on the Internet like blogger, Tumblr, blog, Jux, WordPress, Posterous Spaces, and Weebly. Some are better than others and to pick one is usually a matter of your personal preference. However, I’ve used a couple of them and would most definitely recommend WordPress because of its versatility and functionality. There are a few sites that are offering video tutorials that tells you everything you need to know about WordPress from setting up, themes, plug-ins, affiliate marketing and much, so I wouldn’t worry too much about knowing what to do here.

Use Headlines Effectively Imagine writing the best article you ever wrote in your life, only to have absolutely no one read it. Most of us never really think that the title is that important. We usually relate the title to something that has to do with the article and by far, that is the way to go. However, you need to make it compelling enough for your reader so that they will actually click on it to engage in your article. Before you formulate your headline, do a keyword search to find out how many competing websites are targeting those keywords; you can use the phrase like “How Do I Blog?” Try to look for fewer websites that are actually targeted your phrase. If you have 900 million websites targeting a particular keyword or phrase, it’s extremely hard if not impossible, being new at blogging that you’re actually going to move up to the top of any search engine.

Have a Great Blog Design When you first design your website, try to make an appealing website because you want people to not only read your content but indulge in the appearance of your website as well. I’ve been to some websites that look horrible and it doesn’t take me long to move on to another website. Most websites that are disgusting in appearance only holds a person’s interest for three seconds or so. Not a lot of time to read any content so you get the drift at this point don’t you?

Leverage Social Media Social media is a very big deal these days, just look at the young kids walking around with their cell phones crossing the street looking down and never look up. Most of them are texting or chatting on Facebook or some other social network media. When you start targeting Facebook and other social network media such as Pin, Tweeter, LinkedIn, and others. Try not to just overwhelm them with all sorts of marketing. Remember, most of these people are your friends and family and they going to simply ignore your post. A post here and there of interest will get them moving along the way, and it will also get them to like your website and start promoting it on their wall.

Keyword Research Now that you found your passion it’s time for you to do some Keyword Research. There’s really no point in writing without targeting keywords that people are not searching on. Use a search engine like Google and target a particular word. Google has a keyword tool that you can use to target particular words or phrases. These will tell you just how many people are searching for those keywords. From there, you need to determine how many websites actually have those keywords. It’s not very hard to do from this point all you need to do is put your keyword or phrase in quotes and that will tell you just how many websites actually have those keywords. Find keywords that average around 50,000 searches per month which are a little over 1600 searches a day on that particular keyword. If you only get 10% traffic to your website, that’s 166 potential customers per day; that’s a great start.

List Building A Weber seems to be the big honcho an email responding services. I believe they cost around $19 a month or something along those lines. However, an email list is extremely crucial to your blog. There’s nothing better than having an email list of subscribers that are interested in exactly what you have to offer. Once you become an authority in your area, your subscribers are interested in what you have to say and the offers you make to them. Now, don’t always put out something that cost them money you have to give them good free stuff as well. The problem here is setting up an autoresponder that has substance. Again, you can’t just spew all out junk, you generally have to offer something of value, like let’s say a free e-book or some educational information that has to do with your blog.

Ping Singing Servers actually promote your blog; they create the list of a variety of blogs that have new material. Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by pulling only the newly-updated blogs. WordPress actually comes with a ping service as a default. However, there are tons more that you can actually load to your WordPress blog and have it ping every time your blog has been updated.

Social Bookmark Links Social bookmarks are great services that offer bookmark sharing. The service merely saves the bookmark and share that as a resource. There are some services that allow for treating of bookmarks and this helps to get the word out.

AdSense and ClickBank Ads Although when you first start your blog it’s usually not a good idea to plaster a ton of advertisements all around it. Most readers get sick and tired of a tonne of advertisements anyway. However, you may want to at least look into Google AdSense as a way of getting paid for allowing advertisements on your website when your traffic starts to grow to maybe 5000 users a day. Now, click bank is something that you could use in your current articles. So when you first start up and write an article about something; let’s say, electronics. You may want to pick a particular electronic and then link to your affiliate link which goes to ClickBank so that when your reader clicks on that to get more information and they purchase a product you received some type of commission.

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starfleetdoesntfirefirst · 4 years

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But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right--fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain--even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It's hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

The real Not Safe For Tumblr: despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued--and less visibly disabled--person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery--Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?

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