#we need to do a six seasons and a movie campaign like the community fans did

[raedasideblog]

i would kill a man if it meant i got a few episodes of owl house that go into the backstory of whatever odalia, alador, and darius had going on at hexside

#i also need a hooty backstory #and several more young raeda eps #and about 20 more fun filler fluff episodes in general #we need to do a six seasons and a movie campaign like the community fans did

[pcssessicn]

☆ . · . miguel bernardeau, twenty-one, male, he / him . · . ☆ fitzwilliam 'fitz' phénix-alvarez lives in that huge mansion over there! no, not that one. look for white stucco walls & terracotta shingles and that’ll be it. the nhl defenseman has offered occasional glimpses of soft yellow walls and an impressive collection of plants in the background of social media posts, but all of that is nothing compared to seeing the opulence in person. they’ve remained protective as ever since moving to tercet court two months ago, but it seems like they might’ve gotten a little more mistrustful too. maybe that’s why they’re rumored to have such a distant relationship with everyone else who lives on this street. ☆ . · . ooc info: ollie, they / them, 21, est . · . ☆ career claim: cale ma/kar.

BASICS

Full name: Fitzwilliam Phénix-Alvarez Nickname: Fitz Birth date: September 29th Languages: English, Spanish, Quebecois Francois Hometown: 

PHYSICAL

Age: 21 Weight: 196 lbs Height: 6′2″ Body build: athletic, lean Eye color: grey-blue Faceclaim: Miguel Bernardeau Glasses or contacts: neither 

Tattoos: a raven in flight over his left shoulder blade, monochromatic vines winding up his left bicep

Scars: most predominantly a thin scar near the base of his neck where a skate slashed him when he was fourteen ; several other smaller scars of less note, especially on his hands --- much less noticeable

PERSONALITY

Good personality traits: observant, calculating, protective Bad personality traits: mistrustful, dishonest, aggressive 

Fitz comes across as very confident and in control, and at ease in his skin. The truth couldn’t be farther from it. He works hard to put forward the easy front he does --- and some days he can’t tell which one is more real. He has a dishonest smile that masquerades as honest, and a tendency to manipulate those around him when necessary to shed suspicion off himself. He can be almost charming at times, at least extremely amiable. Despite all this, Fitz is not rash or impulsive -- in fact everything he does is carefully calculated, though he goes to great lengths so it does not come across as so. The one place he feels truly effortless is on the ice.

He finds it hard to truly allow people close to him and to really see beyond the most superficial layers of himself. Furthermore, there is a deep-seated fear of not being enough and being forgotten ; he finds it easier to not let anyone close so there’s less chance of this happening.

THE STORY ( i rly was gunna try to write this nice and eloquently but... u get this instead 😔 )

— fitz was born to up and coming spanish actress reyna alvarez in chicago. the result of a messy one-night stand, but reyna ultimately decided to keep the baby. he is indeed named after fitzwilliam darcy from pride and prejudice bc his mother’s first breakout role was in a film adaptation of the book and she loved the book after reading it. how unfortunate for him.

— his birth father was never in the picture, but the man he would come to know as his father came into the picture a year or so after his birth. already one of the top architects in north america, paul robert phenix was in chicago for a conference and he and reyna fell in love. fitz has been told it’s was all very romantic. so then the happy family moved to pittsburgh where his father’s architecture firm was based.

— despite growing up with two parents who raked in a fair amount of cash, they made sure nothing was just given to fitz. they’d both had their humble beginnings and big believers in tough love, they made sure not to spoil their son. they did however make sure he was sheltered from the media when it poked around and the two things they did pay for without question were his education and sports.

— he started playing hockey when he was six after seeing a pens game on tv while they were out at dinner and knowing he just had to do it --- and never stopped. he got recruited to the us national team development program when he was sixteen and spent his last two years of high school in michigan living with a billet family most do who are with the program, which gave him a huge sense of “normalcy.” but really he was far from normal, his development taking great steps over those two years leading up to his draft year.

— queue the cale ma/kar career claim lads aka all the hockey development & logistics u can probably skip if u don’t care laksdjf: 

 one year before graduation and a draft, he vocally committed to playing at university of massachusetts - amherst. he went fourth overall to the la kings in the 2017 draft ( yeah technically irl that pick belonged to the avs but sh ), and proceeded to remain loyal to his commitment and play two years at umass despite his new top five prospect status. he was put into a first pair role from the start of his freshman year ( 2017-18 ), was a huge part in bringing the umass team up from the bottom of the standings. he plays for team usa in world juniors 2017 and 2018.

his sophomore year ( 2018-19 ), they make it all the way to the frozen four. fitz gets announced as the hobey baker winner and the day after they get knocked out of the tournament. not long after that he signs his entry contract with the kings and finishes out the season with them. he scores his first nhl goal on his first shot in game 3 of the first round of playoffs irl the kings don’t make playoffs but again shh. they get knocked out in the first round and fitz goes home and trains harder than ever.

he come back to kings training camp the next season ( 2019-20 ) more determined than ever to make the team. he does so out of camp and has an incredible rookie campaign. he gets injured in december and misses a few games but is back mid-january. fitz is given the calder ( award that goes to the best rookie in the nhl ) at the end of the season. technically cale hasn’t won this yet but we all know he will.

— la is a bustling city and fitz is a fan of one night stands : he just doesn’t feel like he has time for a relationship and hookups scratch that itch. he’s not an asshole about it, really. there is typically that understanding that this is a one time, no strings attached thing. but this one girl he sleeps with in march obviously does not get this memo and continues to not get the memo. she starts seriously stalking him in the following months and eventually he gets a restraining order against her ( use ur imagination kids ). he’s not really comfortable staying in his own apartment downtown for the time being though after he still sees her around. he stays with a teammate until the season ends, which then brings us to his connection to tercet court.

— paul robert phenix, now world reknowned architect, had a hand in designing several of the homes on tercet court, including one in the style of old money spanish mediterrianian villas that he designed with his wife in mind to be their new home. fitz’s mother had loved the house and moved in for a few years after the court opened but with her taking fewer roles up in the movie industry and getting exceedingly more lonely, she decided to embrace the more nomadic livestyle of her husband and moved out about a year and a half ago. since then the home stood vacant ( though certainly still cared for by several paid landscapers and maids ) until fitz’s dilemma arose a few months ago.

— a few phone calls and a begrudging agreement to pay the extremely steep taxes on the place for the year ( again, tough love and fitz may be a pro-athlete but he’s still making less than a million a year with his entry level contract ), and fitz moved in about two months ago ( say mid-may ).

MISC

— tri-lingual. father is french-canadian and his mother is spanish. needless to say he grew up a little confused. that worked itself out soon enough though. uses he uses quebois french in-season kind of frequently to talk to a couple teammates. really only uses his spanish to talk to his mother and family.

— since moving in fitz has filled the mansion with plants. he absolutely does not seem like a plant guy but he is... absolutely loves it. his major at umass was kinesology bc he thought it would be the most helpful and knew he wasn’t going to graduate but he snuck in some out-of-major classes on horticulture. truly just likes plants a lot. they don’t judge him.

— probably set up his own puck shooting pad in the backyard. why not there’s enough space. he had to retrieve a couple pucks from the bottom of the pool though which has been good incentive to not miss the net lmao. he also has revamped one of the rooms in the house to have synthetic ice.

— runs in the morning before it gets hot. skates a few days of the week in the afternoon. home gym in the house is definitely a perk but he prefers to work out with others because it feels more productive.

— probably drives like. a range rover.

— offensive defenseman. likes to jump up in the rush and is good at break out passes as well as zone entry. earned his place quarterbacking the first powerplay towards the end of the season. he can be quite physical when he needs to be though and don’t ever go after his goalie. ( his nhl.com player page )

— he’s not a recluse by any means, but he has no desire to built connections in tercet court so probably hasn’t actively reached out. they’re likely to have met outside of the small community or if your character forcibly came and introduced themselves. or if they knew each other already mayhaps??

— oh and he’s bi. like really really bi. obv not advertised given his career path but he’s not having some crisis over it either. it just is. probably has a stack of nda’s next to the condoms ready to go at anytime alsdkfj.

OOC

hey lads. i’m ollie !! for those around for round 1.0 of this rp i played alya ( the sports photog ). i am back and this time going back to what i do best : playing hockey boys 😔😔😔.

#linksintro #( this is.............. #not my best work lads ) #( but alas )

[squidlauncher64-blog]

Star Wars: The great divide between fans and Disney

Since Disney purchased Star Wars in 2012, Star Wars movies and video games have not been meeting fan expectations. The displeasure of fans, particularly since Episode VIII, has been fueling a divide between the fans and Disney, a divide that has been getting worse because of misunderstandings of what fans want, and Disney releasing products that are falling well short of fan expectations. Disney has had problems with miscommunication, misleading information, and an overall misunderstanding of what fans want.

In what follows, I’m going to argue that, despite what the fans say, this is not all Disney’s fault (just like it wasn’t all Lucas’s fault when it was all Lucas’s fault) even though the majority of the blame lies with Disney. I’ll argue that the fans’ finicky nature makes them hard to please, and that, if we’re ever to love Star Wars again, the fans need to be realistic in their expectations and be patient with Disney. We need to give them multiple chances to get it right. And we need to trust that they can. But ultimately it is Disney’s job to solve this problem.

Star Wars Fans:

To fully understand this divide, we must understand the fanbase. The fans are very passionate; some fans even name their kids after heroes from this universe. They search for books, movies, and fan films to further explore the Star Wars Universe. The Fans bring Star Wars to life. They kept the franchise alive during the decade long hiatuses between trilogies. This intense passion makes high expectations for new film and video game releases. The fans believe that their concerns are not being heard and their expectations are not being met. On the contrary, Disney feels like meeting all of the fans expectations is unrealistic. But the responsibility to fix this problem lies mostly with Disney because they, as a company, are supposed to please customers. Disney will need to be creative in their storytelling but keep in the back of their minds what the fans really want, and if they don’t know, they need to do the research to find out what the fans want. Most of Disney’s Star Wars film and video game sales are sold to Star Wars fans and by listening to the fans, Disney will be more profitable and will repair this relationship. It is Disney’s job to earn the fan’s trust back.

Star Wars Movies:

Disney has felt the wrath of Star Wars fans, particularly with Star Wars episode VIII The Last Jedi (warning spoilers below, skip to the end of the paragraph if you do not want spoilers for episode VIII). Fans were excited with the announcement of a new Star Wars Trilogy starting in 2015. But Disney had the difficult task of meeting up to 30 years of fan expectations and theories of what happened to Luke, Leia, and Han. Luke was a broken, defeated man in episode VIII and fans were expecting him to be more invested in the galaxy and more powerful. They felt that Luke did not behave like he would have after episode VI. In episode VII, Snoke emerged as a mysterious villain without any backstory. The creators killed Snoke in episode VIII without offering any information about who he is. The fans felt let down that this mystery wasn’t solved and isn’t likely to be solved. The biggest mystery from episode VII was Rey’s parentage. Fans spent time pouring over footage trying to determine who her parents are. There were theories about her being a granddaughter of Obi-Wan, Palpatine being her father, Luke being her father, and there was even a theory about Rey being a reincarnation of Anakin. Episode VIII revealed that her parents were nobodies. The fans felt like her parents were going to be anyone from the list of fan theories and they were disappointed that her parents were not. Some fans were so angry that they started a petition to remake episode VIII. Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, said this about listening to the fans:

I feel like every Star Wars thing that ever gets made has a loud response, because Star Wars fans are passionate, and that’s awesome, I don’t think it’s possible if you're really telling a story you care about, it’s just not possible to be intellectually processing… what everyone else wants. Nor would it be a good thing, a healthy thing. I don’t think that’s a good way to tell a story.

Rian Johnson was basically saying that it is not a good idea to listen to the fans. The fans had so much lingering unhappiness from episode VIII that they started a movement to boycott Solo, the Star Wars movie that came out after episode VIII. Realistically the directors of Star Wars will not please everyone, but they should keep in mind what the fans want when creating Star Wars stories.

Star Wars Video Games:

While Disney works on the movie aspect of Star Wars, Electronic Arts works on the video game aspect. In 2017, Electronic Arts (otherwise known as EA) released a trailer for Star Wars Battlefront 2. The trailer showed new characters and different eras of Star Wars. This game seemed to be an improvement from the original Battlefront game EA released in 2015. Shortly before the release of the game, fans found out that main heroes such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader were locked in the game and the time it would take to accumulate the in game currency to unlock one hero would be around forty hours . Fans and gamers expect when you buy a sixty dollar game that they would have access to all iconic characters. Electronic Arts countered with a statement on Reddit: “saying that the high unlock requirements were meant to give players a sense of accomplishment,” this comment became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. EA then lowered the cost of heroes by 75 percent.

Not only did they lock heroes behind walls of time, they also had loot boxes,  (loot boxes is a reward system where you can spend real currency or fake in-game earned currency to get random rewards) which have a “chance” of unlocking these heroes. To make it worse, the progression system, where you can level up certain abilities for gameplay was based on the loot box system. This was frustrating for fans because they could not choose certain abilities which they preferred to be upgraded because it was randomized. EA is promoting a pay to win system where the more currency you spend the more likely you are to win in a shameless cash grab. The fans wanted a progression system where they can choose which abilities to upgrade. EA has since replaced the progression system about six months after the game came out.

Recently Electronic Arts announced that they would be releasing new Clone Wars content for Star Wars Battlefront 2, much to the fans delight. EA then posted gameplay pictures and the fans scrounged the pictures looking for clues. The fans found what looks to be a droideka. A droideka is a droid from the prequels, that folds into a ball to move around then opens up to walk and fight. Droidekas are formidable enough to even stop Jedi. The fans were ecstatic. 

Pcgamesn reported EA’s response:

Electronic Arts denied that it was a Droideka at all, suggesting that it was merely environmental clutter. Eventually in a post on reddit the developer admits that they loaded up the scene and discovered that it was indeed a Droideka – although it was an unused static asset that somehow made its way into the backdrop. It has zero integration into the game, with no active plans to put Droidekas into Battlefront 2.

The fans felt deceived, and to make matters worse the droideka was a character the fans had been wanting and asking for, for some time. EA needs to communicate better with the fans.

Battlefront 2 isn’t the only Star Wars game created by EA that has been met with controversy. Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefront 2’s predecessor, according to most fans’ opinions, is not a complete game. Star Wars Battlefront was considered incomplete because there wasn’t a lot of content upon release. When the game was released there was only four different locations, six heroes, and nine multiplayer game modes. There wasn’t a single player campaign or much offline single player content. EA then announced that they would be coming out with a season pass (a season pass is where a company comes out with a bundle of new content, usually separated into three or four releases at a few different times for a price). The season pass included eight new heroes, four different locations, along with four new game modes. The season pass fractured the gamers into 2 groups: people who have the season pass and those who do not. The people who have the season pass would play on the new maps and the people without wouldn’t have access to the new content. The separation of gamers would lead to longer wait times for matches and it would make the matches less full. Gamers and fans were disappointed because they felt that in order to get a full game you would have to pay 110 dollars. Fans would have wanted a complete game upon release, with more single player modes, and a fanbase that was not fractured into two groups.     

Since Star Wars was bought by Disney six years ago, there has only been two video games released and both have been controversial. Before this change in ownership, Star Wars video games came out almost every year. Not all video games released before the sale of Star Wars were received well, but the creators took risks in gameplay and storytelling. They looked to explore the Star Wars Universe. Fans want games that explore different parts of this Universe. They want games that have compelling heroes, interesting storylines and gameplay that allows fans to live out their fantasies. But fans have received games that aren’t creative and they miss the frequency of Star Wars video game releases. Disney and EA’s repeated failure to meet expectations has been increasing this divide.  

Star Wars fan’s passion have also increased the divide:

Some critics are stating that the fanbase is to blame for the divide between fans and Disney. They would say that Star Wars fans are toxic. They would point out the death threats sent by fans to Rian Johnson and Ahmed Best (Jar Jar Binks). They’d show the many careers Star Wars has destroyed such as Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker in episodes II-III) and Jake Lloyd (Anakin Skywalker in episode I). They’d display the harassment of people who are associated with Star Wars such as Daisy Ridley (Rey) and Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), both of whom decided to leave social media because of fans bashing them and their characters. George Lucas, the father of Star Wars eventually decided to leave the franchise by selling it to Disney. George did this because he felt that the world was against him, particularly after the backlash of the prequels. Let me be clear, it is never permissible to bully someone and that respect of opinions, respect of persons should be our priority. It is okay to dislike a character or an actor’s performance, but we should not attack the actor/actress. The critic’s argument appears to be incorrect because the people that are doing the bullying are the minority of Star Wars fans. Critics might also be ask, do the fans truly know what they want? Star Wars episode VII was criticized by fans for being too similar to episode IV and relying too heavily on nostalgia. Disney responded by making episode VIII radically different, and the fans replied saying that it was too different. Two explanations can be stated for this. First the fans might not know what they want but they need to figure that out, or fans might not be united enough for their desires to be heard, or maybe both.

Star Wars is big because of its fanbase. Not many franchises could survive three movies that terribly underperformed. But Star Wars fans need to be patient and realistic in their desires. We need to become more united so that Disney can easily hear us. Fans would like movies about Knights of the Old Republic with the Sith Triumverate, Darth Vader hunting jedi’s before episode IV, Kylo Ren’s backstory with Luke and the fall of the Jedi and subsequent turn of Kylo Ren. This is not supposed to be a bash on Disney and EA, if it wasn’t for you the fans wouldn’t be getting new movies, video games, or stories. But listen to fans and take into account their feedback and opinions. It is not realistic for Disney to appease all of the fans, and that is understandable. Listening is enough and would help Disney make more money and by doing this; Disney would close the divide.

#Star Wars #star wars fans

[jfls]

He has six European and two World crowns to his credit, along with an array of medals from the most elite competitions on the planet. But there is one piece of hardware missing from the collection Javier Fernández has amassed in a decade on the senior circuit. His goal is to close out his final campaign in 2018 by adding a piece of Olympic hardware to his collection.

Every accomplishment has marked not only a personal victory for Javier Fernández, but also a first in Spanish skating history.

Capturing a sixth consecutive European title last week in Moscow elevated him into an elite league. Only two men have ever achieved that feat: Karl Schäfer — who claimed eight (1929-1936) — and Fernández.

And as he moves toward his biggest goal this season — a podium finish at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games — he is very aware that the significance of achieving it would resonate far beyond his own personal medal collection.

Though Spain has been sending athletes to the Winter Olympics since 1936, only two have ever come home with a medal — both in the alpine skiing discipline of slalom, and both from the same household. Francisco Fernández Ochoa became a national hero when he won gold in 1972 in Sapporo, Japan. Twenty years later, his younger sister Bianca skied to bronze in Albertville, France.

A quarter century later, Spain awaits its next medal winner — and Fernández wants to be the one to end that lengthy drought in PyeongChang, South Korea, in February. “It’s been a really long time since we got a Winter Olympic medal in any sport, so the goal for me will be to make a little bit more history in figure skating and in my country,” said Fernández who made his Olympic debut in 2010 — the first Spanish figure skater to compete at a Winter Games in more than 50 years. “It would be super special because we have never had an Olympic medal in figure skating. I know how hard the competition is going to be but I’m going to fight. I’m training to be the Olympic champion but my goal is just to be on the podium. I’m pretty calm and relaxed with my goals.”

It almost happened in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, where, after proudly carrying the Spanish flag into Fischt Stadium in the opening ceremony, he finished fourth in the men’s event — just 1.18 points shy of the podium. Fernández said that result fuelled everything that has followed the last three seasons, most notably his back-to-back World titles in 2015 and 2016.

“It was a good Olympics. I competed really well. I just made a few stupid mistakes in the free program and I missed a medal. But it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good competition or that I feel bad about it. Not winning a medal gave me more energy and strength to get back into training, which was a good thing.”

BREATHING SPACE

Fernández offered a similar perspective when asked about the 2017 World Championships in Helsinki, where his two-year winning streak came to an end. Though he posted a personal best score of 109.05 and won the short program by nearly five points, he placed sixth in the free skate and tumbled to fourth place overall — the first time since 2012 he did not take home a medal from Worlds. “The season was tough for me, right from the beginning. I was training so hard but I couldn’t get everything 100 percent secure,” Fernández explained. “I was fighting all the time in competitions — some of them were great, but some were not the best. It was nothing more than that.

“At Worlds, I had an amazing short program and I was confident in myself going into the free. But, while I was waiting to skate, I heard the scores for Yuzu (Hanyu, who won the event with a 321.59 total). I kind of got scared because I was not 100 percent secure, and I began to think negatively.”

But not winning the World title also removed a large target from his back, and Fernández believes that was something positive to consider this season. It is a point that was also reinforced during a post-Worlds discussion with his coaching team, headed up by Brian Orser and Tracy Wilson. “We approached this season with a different perspective. The attention was not going to be fully on me going into a competition, with everyone looking at me because I was last year’s World champion and expecting me to win every single event,” he said. “That was going to help me with the competitions and the pressure this season. I knew it would be a really tough year but when you have a little less pressure on you, it is really a positive.”

Fernández turned to an old friend to help him in his Olympic medal quest. He revived his Charlie Chaplin character for the short program, (crafted by David Wilson who also did the free), but promised fans they would see a new interpretation of the iconic silent film star. “This year, it’s a different kind of Charlie Chaplin. The program and the emotions are completely different,” Fernández explained. “It was a good idea to bring a little Charlie Chaplin back, to show people that even with the same music, you can do different things. Charlie is his own character — he thinks he’s normal, but he is not normal. Everything he does is so funny. He was an amazing character and I can play along with his music and his movies because he does so many things.”

The music for the free program from “Man of La Mancha,” figured to strike a chord with his homeland fans. “It’s a really famous Spanish character that a lot of people know,” said Fernández. “It kind of shows a little bit of all my favorite styles in one program … it’s a program that changes a little bit every minute. We found it very interesting.”

While some of his biggest rivals continue to add more quads to their programs, Fernández stuck with what works for him — two in the short, three in the long. “I had already decided myself that I would not do an extra quad in the free program,” he said.

Instead, he has counted on the complete package and the guidance he receives from Orser, who has provided direction since they teamed up in 2011. “I would say Brian is similar to me in the way he thinks, and that’s why we connected really well. We really understand each other,” Fernández said when asked why Orser has been the right coaching match for him.

OLYMPIC FINALE

Fernández knows the end of the journey he and Orser have been on together is now just weeks away. The Olympics in PyeongChang will be his last. Whether he continues to compete beyond this season … that is yet to be decided. “I can say this will be my last Olympic cycle, that is for sure. I’ve been doing senior competitions since 2007 … I’ve been in skating for like forever,” the Madrid native reflected. “I’m one of the oldest skaters now in men’s skating, with Patrick (Chan) and a few others. I’ve been to 10 senior Worlds and 12 Europeans … not too many people can say that.

“This could be my last year, or maybe not. Maybe I will do another competition or another year. That’s something I have to decide — if I’m really ready to do it or not. There is no point to train and compete if you don’t want to do it. Sometimes that is what skaters need — the adrenalin, and to be at a competition with all their friends, but I don’t know if I’m going to do any more competitions ever.”

With that thought in mind, Fernández has approached this season as if it might indeed be his last, and savored every step of the experience. “I’ll just give it my all because this might be my last one. That will give me a little extra energy,” he said. “So, this season is going to be more like, ‘Enjoy the last season — and then decide what is going to happen.’”

In the first half of the season, his “all” was enough to win Autumn Classic in September, the Japan Open two weeks later, and Internationaux de France in November.

NEXT CHAPTER

Fernández plans to become a coach at some point once his competitive days are done. He currently spends a week each summer teaching aspiring young skaters in Madrid, but when asked if retirement from competition would mean a return to his homeland, he hedged on the answer.

“That is a good question. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” said Fernández, who is committed to growing the sport in his homeland. “Of course, I have a lot of things to do in Spain and a lot of things I want to work on to keep building the sport. We have a show in Spain that we did this past December, and we want to continue doing that. I still want to do some shows and I want to try coaching. I also have Brian saying, ‘you should stay in Toronto and help me teach here.’ So, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Fernández acknowledged that being a pioneer in Spanish skating has been both a burden and a blessing, but one he has willingly taken on because it is so important to him. “It’s not an easy job. You need to develop a name in figure skating, so that everyone will recognize you and know that you’re going to compete in a particular competition,” he said. “There is also the aspect of trying to develop your country’s reputation and then introduce it to the skating world. It is a good thing that Spanish people now recognize that we are competing at Europeans, Worlds and Olympics.

“A skater that was born in one country and competes for another country that has more of a skating background probably does not think about this. But it’s kind of more beautiful, building and bringing up your sport in your own country, even if it is also a harder job.”

Fernández speaks with pride about Barcelona hosting the Grand Prix Final two years in a row and the impact it had on how Spaniards now view his sport. “It was a big achievement for Spain. It was great because the Spanish skating community didn’t have any competition experience and they did such an amazing job. It was also amazing for building figure skating in the country — to show everybody what a big competition is like, and how exciting it is for the audience,” he said. “People realized how amazing the sport of figure skating is. Having it twice in a row helped skating in Spain so much.”

His nation’s highest officials have also taken note of his achievements. Fernández was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Spain in April 2016. Earlier this year, he received the Gold Medal of the City of Madrid, and the Medal of the Community of Madrid. Those honors “felt like an Olympic or a World medal,” Fernández said.

“When your own country is proud of what you are doing — that is an amazing feeling.”

#javier fernandez #season: 2017 2018 #interview #link

[teachanarchy]

On May 13, at about 4 pm, Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, a mountainous Samoan from Vancouver, Wash., decked another man in downtown Portland's Chapman Square.

Occasional acts of violence are a fact of life in any city. But this punch was different. The assault, captured on video, embodied the intensity of the political hostility boiling over on Portland's streets.

Those streets are becoming a battleground—not just between protesters and cops, but also between right and left.

In the four months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the metro area has witnessed at least six rallies or marches where some segment of the extreme right and militant leftists have confronted each other in public spaces.

The showdowns are but a small segment of the political unrest in this city. Since Trump's election, Portland has been the site of at least 30 marches and rallies. Those events have been largely peaceful. They have also featured high-profile clashes between riot police and anarchists, resulting in at least 160 arrests and an estimated $1 million in property damage.

But it's the encounters between competing political ideologies that display a new kind of fury.

On one side is an ad-hoc crowd of militant leftists—including anarchists, socialists and communists—who cast themselves as an anti-fascist front, or "antifa." They often dress in black clothing and ski masks, an unofficial uniform borrowed from an anarchist subculture often loosely described as the "black bloc."

On the other side is antifa's political opposite: a coalition of white supremacists, anti-government militia groups and online agitators known as the "alt-right."

Their next skirmish could unfold in the middle of the Rose Festival.

On June 4, Kyle Chapman plans to lead a rally across from Portland City Hall. Chapman is an online celebrity from California who has attracted a wide following for battling left-wing protesters, wearing a gas mask and armed with a large stick.

Chapman is coming to Portland at the behest of Joey Gibson, a Vancouver video blogger. Attendees of his Portland-area events this spring have included anti-gay street preachers, crews of bikers, and several people claiming affiliation with Confederate and neo-Nazi groups.

Chapman and Gibson have both gained a degree of prominence in the alt-right, a nationalist movement designed to provoke and taunt liberal "snowflakes" they see as undermining America.

On the street, the conflict between right and left can look absurd—like deleted scenes from the Mad Max movies.

Yet in the wake of Trump's election, brawls between dozens of adherents of alt-right and antifa movements have become regular events in cities from Boston to Berkeley, Calif.

"It's never been as vocal as it has been in recent months," says Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson. "While they're not street gangs, the threat of violence is there. They're challenging each other—calling each other out."

Alt-right-led events with the title "March 4 Trump" began occurring around Portland two months ago, starting in Lake Oswego and Vancouver.

Last month, the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade was canceled after an anonymous email threatened a mass assault of alleged white supremacists who were rumored to be planning to march.

Since that uproar, alt-right groups have twice come to Portland for tense standoffs with local leftists.

Longtime observers of extremism hear echoes of old Portland violence.

"This is a manifestation of a long-simmering battle between the extreme right and the extreme left in this town," says Randy Blazak, chairman of the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crime. "It led Portland to be dubbed 'Skinhead City' in the 1990s. Thanks to the sea change of the 2016 election season, it's back in full force."

The workings of alt-right groups are mysterious—often by design.

Many members use their real names, but refuse to give straight answers on anything else.

One of the most visible alt-right leaders in the Pacific Northwest is Joey Gibson, 33, who lives in Vancouver. He casts himself as a champion of free speech. His public pronouncements and YouTube videos seek to get right-wing allies riled up to "trigger some snowflakes"—meaning, taunt and provoke liberal and leftist college students.

Gibson tells WW he is "promoting freedom, through the power of prayer," he says. "It's kind of a spiritual movement."

In April, Gibson traveled to Berkeley, where he posed for videos with Kyle Chapman, a 41-year-old commercial diver and YouTube personality.

Chapman's fans call him "Based Stickman," which means a badass guy with a stick. Chapman was filmed at the Berkeley "March 4 Trump," breaking a signpost over the head of a left-wing protester. He was arrested on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon, among other charges. An online campaign raised $50,000 for his bail and legal defense.

Chapman did not respond to WW's requests for comment. In a March 31 profile in The New Republic, he said he was a conservative Republican and uncomfortable with some of his extreme admirers. But he pledged to keep going into new cities to confront leftists.

Alexander Reid Ross, a Portland State University geography instructor who recently published a book on fascist and antifa struggles, Against the Fascist Creep, says alt-right agitators see Berkeley, Seattle and Portland as targets.

"They think by making incursions into 'enemy' territory and demoralizing them—by beating them up or mocking them relentlessly—they'll be able to throw off the assumptions that underlie society," Ross says. "They see it as a civil war."

The alt-right is shady about its affiliations and intentions.

Their anti-fascist opponents are clearer about their goals, but resolutely anonymous.

The roots of antifa—the local wing is called Rose City Antifa—lie in left-wing brawlers who organized in Cold War Germany, as well as in the underground punk-rock scene of Portland in the 1980s and '90s.

In 1988, in an event that seared this city's residents, Ethiopian student Mulugeta Seraw was beaten to death by white-supremacist skinheads. That event helped give rise to a group of "anti-racist" skinheads, the forebears of today's antifa.

"In one sense, this is nothing new," says Blazak. "These guys have been going at it for years. They put on new haircuts, and they do battle in the streets of Portland."

Rose City Antifa declined repeated requests for comment.

But WW's reporting—conversations with people at events, as well as interviews with longtime observers of the movement—indicates that affiliates include middle-aged, gainfully employed veterans of the anti-racist skinhead scene, as well as college student activists and kids as young as 14. It's difficult to say how many people are involved in antifa movements in Portland, but crowd estimates at marches suggest it's as many as 200 people.

Ross says Portland's antifa groups play a key role in discouraging the rise of racist violence and intimidation. "It has become shorthand for people who want to go out and fight Nazis," he says. "The alt-right has to be understood as a fascist movement."

In their black bloc-style outfits, which they have worn four times in the past four months, it is difficult to distinguish these anti-fascist groups from more familiar anarchist protesters—or from thrill-seeking teenagers who see an opportunity to throw Pepsi cans at cops or smash store windows.

Marco Mejía, an organizer with Portland Immigrants Rights Coalition and the emcee of this year's May Day rally, says he has mixed feelings about antifa actions.

"I don't condemn people who feel like they need to protect themselves and the community," he says. Still, "there should be better communication."

On May 13, a day of thunderstorms and hailstones, Gibson and his antifa foils faced off in Portland's Chapman Square, located at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Main Street.

The event kicked off a block south with an anti-police brutality protest called by a Facebook group named Oregon Students Empowered. About two dozen left-wing protesters showed up, most wearing masks and black clothing.

Gibson, the pro-Trump organizer from Vancouver, also arrived with his crew, also numbering about two dozen. Within 15 minutes, the sides squared off.

Portland police officers observed silently, but then left. After about an hour of shouting, the left-wing group crossed the street. One of them set fire to a U.S. flag. (Others quietly objected.) Gibson's crew took the flames as their cue to begin the confrontation anew.

People from each side began screaming insults at each other as a circle of observers live-streamed the confrontations. Within minutes, Gibson's friend, Tiny Toese, the 20-year-old American Samoan, flattened an antifa protester half his size with a punch to the face, while the kid had his arms crossed defensively.

Portland police soon returned. Sgt. Jeffrey Niiya calmly questioned representatives from both groups. Niiya appeared familiar with individuals on both sides. "It's my job," he explained.

Gibson, who stresses how much his group supports law enforcement, appealed for sympathy, but Niiya was skeptical. "Some of the people on your side are inflaming the other side on social media," Niiya told Gibson.

"The problem is, we have outsiders," Gibson said. "I'm here to be respectful and to talk to them."

Niiya told antifa protesters that for police to make an arrest, the victim would need to provide his name. After some chatter in the group, the word came back via the human megaphone: "No victim!" The police decamped a second time from the park.

Later that afternoon, Toese returned home and recorded a video for his Facebook page calling the day a success.

"We don't come there to fight. Our goal is to educate," Toese said. "I know it turned a little bit ugly. I had to do what you guys saw me do. But please, everybody, that is not who I am. Don't take me as a violent person. I am just a big, happy Samoan. A brown brother for Donald Trump and a brown brother for America."

Toese also expressed eagerness for the next big brawl—evidently the June 4 rally starring Kyle Chapman.

"We got another event that's coming up," he went on. "You guys will see us there. That event is on my birthday. So I guess I'm going to be celebrating my birthday kicking some antifa ass."

June 4 falls in the second week of the Rose Festival, Portland's biggest annual family event.

The home page of the Rose Festival website currently reads: "Business as Usual."

"Recent events in Portland have led to rumors that the Rose Festival is considering canceling its popular parades due to safety concerns," the site says. "This is not true."

Mayor Ted Wheeler's office says he has instructed police to keep calm—and try to pacify the adversarial groups.

"Police try to work with organizers and try to head off any conflict before it happens," says Wheeler spokesman Michael Cox. "I know they're doing that work now with regard to June 4. Of course, their success depends in large part on the organizers' cooperation and communication before an event. Sometimes they get it. Sometimes they don't."

Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo sent to Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden on March 24 shows the federal government is keeping close watch on Portland—at least on one side of the political spectrum.

The memo, obtained last month by WW, confirms earlier reports that the feds are classifying property damage by left-wing protesters as "domestic terrorism."

"Rioting by violent anarchist extremists at events [last November] met the criteria" for terrorism, Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Patricia F.S. Cogswell wrote to Wyden. "DHS has a duty to report and analyze such acts of ideologically motivated violence."

Wyden says Homeland Security's distinction between property damage and political protest is somewhat reassuring.

"DHS said the right things here," Wyden tells WW, "but I'm going to be watching closely to make sure this administration doesn't blur the line between watching out for real domestic threats and targeting peaceful protesters who are exercising their constitutional rights."

Wheeler dismisses the concept of Portland protesters as terrorists.

"The mayor does not view protesters as domestic terrorists," says Cox. "As with so many things with the federal government today, Portland is going to continue with our strategy: honoring First Amendment rights while not tolerating acts of violence, vandalism or blocking transit."

By contrast, Homeland Security hasn't made any public statement about alt-right groups, even after well-documented violence in Berkeley. A unit involved in countering right-wing extremism has been disbanded.

Even so, police spokesman Simpson pledges his agency won't play favorites.

"We aren't there to protect one group and arrest another," he says. "We're out there to keep these two groups away from each other. We'd like to see cooler heads prevail, and for people to realize there is no changing each other's mind out in the streets."

Mike Bivins contributed reporting to this story.

#alt-right #antifa #black bloc #joey gibson #kyle chapman #race #racism #white supremacy

[talabib]

What You Need For People To Read What You Write.

Have you ever dreamed of being a prized novelist, famed screenplay writer or a slick Mad Men-esque copywriter? You’re not alone. Even so, chances are no one wants to read what you write – that is, unless you are ready to take some tough but tried and tested advice to heart. If so, you’re in luck.

This post looks at several different writing genres and different strategies for each of them, as well as useful techniques that work across almost all types of writing. So, get ready to learn the stuff you need for people to read what you write.

Nobody wants to read what you write, unless it’s exceptionally good.

If you’ve just put the finishing touches on your novel or screenplay, after months or even years of hard work, you might be at the stage where you’re nervous and excited about how readers are going to react.

Well, here’s your first piece of advice: don’t get too excited, because odds are nobody wants to read your writing.

We grow up thinking there is an audience for our work, since teachers and other students read our writing in school – but that’s only because they’re either being paid or forced to read it.

The reality is, people have other things to do. Most parents are less than eager to read their kid’s newest blog post or Harry Potter fan fiction.

A big reason for this is that most writing just isn’t very good. So, if you’re a young author looking for your big break, this doesn’t mean that all is lost – it just means that your writing needs to be exceptionally good.

Now, you may think that “good” writing means clever phrasing or high-minded literature, but that’s not the case. The good writing that will give you the best chance of capturing and holding people’s attention will be clear and easy to understand.

You don’t want to bore people, so make sure your work is either suspenseful and scary, beautiful and tragic or just plain fun; in other words, don’t spend a hundred pages describing the existential crisis a character experiences over his breakfast. You want to create writing that people won’t be able to put down.

What most people find difficult is learning to write for someone other than themselves. So, instead of focusing on what you find fascinating, spend time thinking about the interests of your potential readers.

While you might find the migration patterns of turtle doves fascinating, if you want to develop a readership, you need to find a way of injecting romance, adventure or tragedy into that subject.

It’s hard to find success in the writing business, but an apprenticeship can teach you lessons and build contacts.

You’re probably wondering: if nobody has the time to read, how is my writing going to become the next best seller or blockbuster? Well, nobody said it would be easy, did they?

Making a living through writing is tough, and it can take a lot of hard work before you start making a name for yourself.

For example, Bill landed in Hollywood in the 1980s with big dreams of becoming a successful screenwriter. Over the next five years, he worked on nine different scripts, each one taking him around six months to complete. Yet each and every one of those scripts was rejected by producers; clearly, something needed to change.

One of the best ways of getting your foot in the door of the writing business is an apprenticeship. After five stagnant years, Bill’s agent recommended that he partner up with Stanley, an established screenwriter with two successful movies under his belt.

It wasn’t a dream gig by any means. Stanley was always late showing up to their writing sessions – and not just five or even 30 minutes late, but three to five hours late. Before long, Bill was beginning to understand how this arrangement was supposed to work; he would do all the hard work so that Stanley could swoop in, make a few brilliant changes and call it his own.

While this might seem unfair, Stanley did know how to make a successful script, and he had plenty of Hollywood contacts that could make life a lot easier for Bill.

It’s just a fact of the business that a writer might have to slave away as an apprentice before they learn the tricks of the trade. While Stanley got all the credit for the scripts they worked on, Bill learned the valuable lessons of what makes a successful script and how to sell one.

Whether you’re working in advertising or writing literature, you have to have a concept.

You don’t have to watch a whole lot of TV before you see a bad commercial that makes you think, “no one’s gonna buy that.” When this is the case, it’s usually a result of the commercial having bad writing and a lousy slogan.

Successful advertising has a great concept – an idea that turns a dull product into something special.The secret to coming up with a perfect concept is to think about what the audience would find surprising, intriguing or otherwise exciting.

Let’s look at Avis Rent-a-Car, which has always struggled in the shadow of Hertz, the world’s number-one car-rental service.

With this competition in mind, Avis came up with a great concept for an ad campaign that turned being second banana into an advantage. Avis told people that being in second place meant they had to work twice as hard to make sure each customer gets the best possible service. So, when you pick Avis, you’re sure to have a better experience than Hertz, a company that’s just resting on its laurels.

But it’s not just advertising; literature and good storytelling also need to have a strong concept. Even Homer’s Iliad, one of the world’s oldest stories, has a great concept.

The Iliad is about the Trojan War, which lasted ten years. If Homer had tried to tell the full story of the war, it would have been exhausting and probably rather dull. So Homer found a strong concept by focusing on just a few days of the war and the thrilling story of Achilles and his anger.

Achilles is one of the great heroes in Greek mythology, a fearsome fighter who was once insulted by Agamemnon, the King of the Greeks. Angered by the king’s words, Achilles withdrew from the war and, as a result, the tide began to turn against the Greeks. But then, in the nick of time, Achilles charged back into battle and saved the day.

As you can see, even something as expansive as Greek history can be made into a tight and compelling narrative with the help of a good concept.

In advertising as in fiction, defining the problem or the theme is the first step toward creating a story.

If you’re the “tortured artist” type, then you might feel like you have no shortage of problems. But when it comes to writing, problems are a good thing to have, since they lead to both conflict and resolution – which is what a good story is all about.

In advertising, figuring out the problem is a big part of the process. Every writer trying to come up with a good advertising concept asks the question, “Why is this product not selling?” Maybe a product is simply bad, like a bathroom mat that turns red when it gets wet. In these cases, the best ad campaign in the world won’t help matters. But for many other products, once you identify the problem, it can lead you toward the solution.

Let’s look at classic brands like 7UP and Burger King, both of which are constantly battling against more successful competitors like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

In 1967, the marketing wizards behind 7UP came up with the “Uncola” slogan, which was a perfect way to set it apart from Coca-Cola. This way, it wasn’t presented as the inferior beverage, but was something else altogether. Like its ad campaign’s catchphrase said, “There’s no cola like the uncola.” Soon thereafter, sales went through the roof.

When writing fiction, once you find the problem, the next step to crafting your story is finding the theme. The theme is what allows you to cut right to the core of what your story is about; is it a tale of greed, revenge, envy or perhaps survival?

In the popular TV series Breaking Bad, it was all about transformation. In the very first episode, we’re introduced to our protagonist Walter White, and find out he’s a chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer. In order to make enough money for his family to live comfortably after he’s gone, White begins an unlikely transformation into a methamphetamine cook.

There are a lot of great stories over the five seasons of Breaking Bad, and coming up with good stories is always a challenge. But whenever the show’s screenwriters were stuck, they could always come back to the underlying theme, transformation, and get back on track.

Reading and writing are important to finding your voice, but great writing comes with maturity.

There’s a good chance you’re reading this post because you have stories you want to tell but don’t feel you’re talented enough. But here’s the good news: writing is like any other skill, so the more you keep at it, the better you’ll get. And one of the best ways to improve your authorial voice is to read.

Spend some time getting to know your local libraries and read the classics that represent the kind of story you want to write.

If you feel like your writing is coming off as phony, strengthen your authentic voice by writing more letters to your friends.

When we communicate to people we’re familiar with, we lay off the fancy language and stylistic flourishes that can make us sound inauthentic. You might even have some friends who say they love the prose in your letters but dread having to read the next draft of your novel. Instead of struggling with that phony voice, focus on the authentic voice that appears in your letters.

It’s also important to be patient, and remember that real wisdom and authenticity come with age. For years, Ben felt frustrated that all his writing felt fake and contrived. But as he started to mature, his writing got better.

At the beginning, Ben’s writing was like a selfie – a disposable plea for attention that was all about him and his life. But since he hadn’t done much living, there wasn’t much substance.

Young authors often fall into this trap. Eventually, though, they begin to experience more of life and all the hardships, broken hearts and suffering that it entails. This is where real writing can begin and when writers will have genuine wisdom to offer their readers.

Most stories follow a three-act structure, unless you’re aiming for an epic narrative.  

If you’ve seen enough movies, you’ve probably noticed that most of them follow a very similar story structure. And there’s a good reason for this, since a good structure can ensure that a movie delivers a satisfying story.

For most movies, this is the three-act structure, which condenses and breaks a story down into three segments that all help to make sure audiences are kept in rapt attention.

The first act is all about hooking the audience and getting them interested, the second act is about creating tension and conflict and the third act is about resolution, which often comes in the form of a showdown.

Just about any traditional story can fit into this structure, whether it’s a joke being told by a stand-up comedian, or a narrative that’s used to market a product. And this isn’t some cheap gimmick – it’s a tried and true recipe that even Shakespeare adhered to.

Romeo and Juliet, for instance, although it technically has five acts, can be divided into three distinct parts; the first part introduces the characters and setting, and leads up to the first encounter of the titular duo; the second part piles on the conflicts and problems stemming from their rival families; and the third builds toward the tragic death of our star-crossed lovers.

Now, as with most rules, there are exceptions, especially when it comes to long, epic stories. Lawrence of Arabia is a famous movie for many reasons, including its epic length of nearly four hours. The movie’s director, David Lean, specialized in epic films and believed these stories were best structured using eight to 12 segments.

In a structure like this, each segment can be treated like it’s own self-contained movie. But, since they are all still part of a linear narrative, each one should prepare the audience for what’s coming next. This way, it all adds up to a grand and epic tale. If you’re working on a four-hour movie or a 400-page book, you might try to keep this in mind.

The first act hooks the audience, the second act highlights the villain and the third act delivers the climax.

One of the reasons Star Wars was and continues to be so popular is that it drew audiences into a whole other world, making them leave the theater with a feeling of wonder and amazement.

If you want to carry your audience off to another world, you first need to hook them – and this is what the first act of your story should do.

Now, at the same time you’re hooking your audience, you also need to kick off the plot of your story. Let’s see how David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook managed to do this.

The first act introduces us to our hero, Pat Solitano, as we learn about his psychiatric issues and obsession with getting back together with his ex-wife. Pat is then invited to a dinner party where he meets Tiffany, a charming but equally unstable woman.

The first time Pat and Tiffany meet is the precise moment when the plot truly begins, and it’s also when the audience gets hooked. We know that these two are going to fall in love, but we don’t know how Pat is going to overcome his obsession with his first wife.

Moving on to the second act, this is a good time to focus on the villain or antagonist. You introduced the hero in the first act, so now you can create a clear conflict by introducing the details of the villain and let them get the upper hand, if only for a moment. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, after re-establishing Batman, it’s the Joker who takes center stage in the second act. In other stories, the villain might be some other inner or outside force, like an approaching hurricane, an economic crisis or even some internal demons within the hero.

By the end of the second act, the stage should be set for the third act and story’s final showdown. In Bridget Jones’s Diary, this came with the revealing of important information: Bridget Jones, the protagonist, finds out that her love interest, Mark Darcy, isn’t actually in love with another woman, only for Darcy to then find harsh words about him in Jones’s diary – can love triumph above all?

Great actors are attracted to complex characters and important themes.

If you want to write a movie that will be brought to life with the help of megawatt star power like George Clooney and Jennifer Lawrence, then it makes sense to write something that will appeal to these actors, right?

To pull this off, you need to win them over by creating truly memorable characters. Let’s say you want Tom Hanks to be the male hero in your film. Remember that this was the man who played the lead role in Forrest Gump, Sully and Philadelphia, all of which are movies that feature a unique character with depth and nuance, thus allowing him to give a memorable performance.

Or think of the characters that legendary actors Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson played in Something’s Gotta Give, characters that were layered, well rounded and worthy of their talents. If you don’t create something brilliant, you shouldn’t expect a brilliant actor to waste their time with it. If it doesn’t live up to these high standards, you know you still have work to do.

One of the secrets to writing a great character is finding a meaningful theme that supports a memorable, larger-than-life performance.

A lot of popular movies are filled with car chases and sex scenes, but if you want something award-winning and memorable, you’ll need to go deep.

Out of Africa won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and the character of Baroness Karen von Blixen was played by the award-winning actress Meryl Streep. She was drawn to the role because the movie touches on complex themes about how everything in life is fleeting, including our relationships and our dreams of creating something meaningful.

In this movie, Streep plays a character who is passionate but unwilling to commit to a relationship, and though she wants to build a great school in Africa, her dreams fall apart. With these rich themes and possibilities for nuance, it was the perfect role for a great actor.

Nonfiction follows the same basic rules as fiction, and both rely on a strong theme.

You might think that your book on the migratory patterns of the turtle dove doesn’t need to be as thrilling as the latest Game of Thrones novel, but there’s really no reason to think that way. Nonfiction can be every bit as exciting as fiction, and the same rules apply to both genres.

When the Steven was working on his nonfiction books, he was dealing with subjects that didn’t necessarily lend themselves to thrilling stories of heroes and villains. One of those books is The War of Art, which is about the process of creative writing. Nevertheless, he treated it the same way he would if it were filled with devilish villains and car chases.

So, if you’re looking at your thesis on nineteenth-century opera and thinking there’s no way it can be interesting, here are some helpful tips.

Just like fiction and a good screenplay, nonfiction needs to be focused on a central theme in order to be engaging and coherent.

Let’s say you’re writing a biography on your great-great-grandmother Rosie. She was an early American settler who crossed the country in a covered wagon while she was pregnant, faced the threat of potentially violent native Americans, and had eleven children and three husbands before she passed away.

This is a potentially thrilling story, but if you just go from one event to the next, it runs the risk of being stale and predictable. Instead, you need to find a theme and focus on it.

In this case, you could focus on the American dream and the quest for a better life in the face of hardship. Now, whether it’s being stranded in a broken-down wagon or facing the loss of a child or husband, every event in her story would have this theme running through it, tying them all together.

So, now there’s no excuse for turning in a dull manuscript, screenplay or ad campaign. Now that you know what to look for go, it’s time to get to work crafting a great story.

A good story doesn’t require clever wordplay and flowery prose. Instead, it’s about creating a powerful, well-structured story that has a meaningful theme and characters with depth and nuance that reflect that theme. Whether it’s exciting, dramatic or romantic, by working hard and being well read, you can reflect on your own experiences in life and use structured narratives to create something people will love to read.

#What You Need For People To Read What You Write.

[gaiabros]

Short on time? Head on over to our ELECTROWEEN Mixes page where we have created an archive for all of our ELECTROWEEN productions. There you will find our latest 2019 mixes to stream and download. If you like what we’ve been creating, please subscribe to GAIA BROS to receive news and announcements about forthcoming projects and articles.

You read that right, ladies and gents. 2019 marks the decisive end to a decade of Halloween-inspired, pop culture infused music productions, which have been in production since the series’ humble beginnings back in Fall 2009. Right off the bat, you may have a question or two popping up. Why is ELECTROWEEN ending on its decade milestone 2019 mix? Will there be more EDM mixes coming in the future?

Grab a beer and find a cozy seat, then come back and join us for the details. Story time, kids!

Setting The Stage: First Mention of the Series’ End

Before jumping into ELECTROWEEN 2019 details, I need to spend a little time establishing some relevant details from a year ago.

Last Fall, shortly after we had released ELECTROWEEN 2018, I flew down to San Diego to visit Matt and his girlfriend Jessica for the weekend of Halloween. We saw the Halloween movie reboot, carved up some pumpkins, dropped by Tatsu Ramen in L.A. for some delicious bowls of noodles, and drove up to Universal Studios Hollywood for their Halloween Horror Nights (in particular, to check out the Stranger Things attraction). We had a wonderful time together.

Pumpkin carvings by Scott, Matt and Jessica

It was during this visit when I announced to Matt that 2019 would mark the final year for the ELECTROWEEN series, ending a solid run of releases spanning our 20s to our early 30s. It has become a cherished tradition… something we’ve always looked forward to with the start of each new calendar year. ELECTROWEEN is Halloween for us, and a token of our years of friendship and love for the arts, electronic dance music, cult video games and films. In short, it is the summation of everything we love, and have come to love. This was bittersweet to talk about, but in the end it’s for the right reasons.

The rationale behind this decision is, for the most part, straight-forward. Since jump starting my DJ hobby back in 2006, I have released over 30 studio production mixes, manned two radio shows ([OuteR HeaveN] and PLURALITY at WSNC Radio), and performed countless live DJ sets at house parties, bars and private events.

In many ways, I’ve exhausted myself from the art form and feel a burning need to start creating my own music, rather than curating the works of others as I’ve done for the majority of my adult years. But also, life has happened, too.

Other Happenings That Have Influenced This Decision

During the same weekend I visited Matt last October, I simultaneously released my second album, Gravitational Waves, for my chillsynth project Gravity Mission. The album took three years to envision, create and release (collaborating remotely for the entire process) after a six year dry spell from our initial 2012 debut Before The Spoken Word. I came to realize the creative process was deeply rewarding and allowed me to evolve artistically in ways I had not previously imagined. In a real sense, it showed me that the barriers to creating music only exist in my head, and that changing course at any time is entirely possible.

Gravity Mission’s Gravitational Waves album (released October 26, 2018)

Lastly, life changes have been a considerable factor, often left out of the picture here on GAIA BROS. Having moved eight times since the release of my initial 2009 mix, I’ve been feeling the need to get more serious about putting down roots, connecting to a single place and getting acquainted with my local community. After my wife and I bought our first home in 2017, I started switching gears and pursuing other interests, including gardening, foraging, craft beer, table top gaming, GM’ing and traveling. It’s been a wonderful past few years, but a lot to handle. Thus I’ve had to make some tough decisions and learn to be more realistic with my time commitments.

“Tell Us About ELECTROWEEN 2019 Already, Please!”

Whew! Thanks for hanging in here for the entire reason why you’re reading this post! Let’s jump right into ELECTROWEEN 2019 — its inception, influences and more.

As the crown jewel in this decade long saga, ELECTROWEEN 2019 needed to be fantastically epic in a way that other mixes couldn’t be. It needed flair, funk and spirit on all levels. But most importantly, it absolutely HAD to be a fun reminder of why we started doing this whole thing in the first place. Returning full circle to our beginnings was key.

Where it all began: ELECTROWEEN 2009 (released October 16, 2009)

I began by looking back on our early mixes and questioning why we fell in love with the concept of merging EDM tracks and jack-o’-lantern heads together. We were creating something different, something bold — a novel form of expression that did not yet exist in the world. Several tracks started to stand out, and they were always the ones that jacked our bodies in ways unlike anything else. That’s when the realization struck: our final mixes for the ELECTROWEEN series needed to be celebratory and sentimental, using tracks with massive swing and vibe that pulse with uplifting energy and emotion.

This led to months of heavy Spotify rotations and research, ultimately pointing to the spiritual successor of the 70s: Nu Disco! A long time fan of Daft Punk, their French house discography was a great starting place for finding similar artists and classics. What originally felt like a monumental undertaking quickly became a super synthesized formula for hot disco beats and flashing synths, and the energy continued to pick up from there!

September Reunion in Portland, Oregon

A few weeks back, Matt flew up to Portland to celebrate the end of the ELECTROWEEN series. We GAIA BROS reunited over glorious moments of food, drink and beats at home, while foraging in the woods for Chanterelles, and driving out to the coast. Matt and I carved up our pumpkin helmets for the last time and fully embraced the defining characteristic of our early mixes.

For the first time in seven years, we embarked on a photoshoot with gold and silver capes in search of Portland’s most aesthetically gratifying street art. Some gloomy weather rolled in, but we ended up working with the rainfall to leverage its luminous quality for the end product. Below is a gallery of the final images processed from the shoot, which we have included within the download files for the 2019 mixes. Continue on after the gallery for liner notes and the final cover art designs created especially for the occasion!

VII’s Decade Celebration Mix Liner Notes

From Scott: My tenth and final mix for the ELECTROWEEN series touches on the things most sentimental to me. It is everything I have to give, and everything I could ever say, in a timeframe just short of an hour and a half. This is the longest production I’ve created to date, and looking back on it, I never wanted a single moment of it to end. The mix embodies the essence of the long and wholesome nights spent with close friends and loved ones… those irreplaceable times that will forever shine in our minds and hearts.

My 2019 mix is divided up into three seamlessly transitioning acts: a soaring and lofty Halloween introduction at-length (VG OST and Synthwave), an all night long celebration (Nu Disco), and finally a sincere and heartfelt closure, painting a pensive mood with vulnerable feelings of love, melancholy and, ultimately, acceptance.

Samples from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night are most prevalently stitched in between tracks. I completely fell in love with this game upon its release this past summer. Matt and I have patiently waited four years for this game, as we were original backers from the April 2015 Kickstarter campaign. It’s clear that Koji Igarashi and Michiru Yamane have put their souls into this beautiful masterwork. I also drew samples from other favorites including Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Game of Thrones, and 300, which all have their own places within the narrative of this work.

Having ventured into the darkness (perhaps a little too long) in years past, I’ve found my way back to the grooves that bring the “feel good” vibes in spades. I should note here that initially I had started working on this mix back in March 2019 in order to get a head start on the final mix concept. With that said, I am extremely satisfied with the end product. The coin design illustration I created for the cover art came together effortlessly based on the passion encompassing this special time. The whole process has been cathartic on a deep level. I’m grateful for these ten years of ELECTROWEEN and will always take them with me into whatever comes next. Special thanks goes to Matt for believing in this project and being a great collaborator, my wife Lindsey for her support and encouragement, and David for listening and being a loyal fan all these years.

Loveless’ Decade Celebration Mix Liner Notes

From Matt: OHHHHH MAN! Has it been a decade already? Where did all the time fly? I was just a wee lad yesterday bumping to Scott’s mixes and now I’m a seasoned vet of the Halloween variety. Tonight I am going to see Lana Del Rey with my girlfriend which will be a great cap on the end of ELECTROWEEN. Lana’s moody and melodic music is of a bygone era. She really evokes the spirit of ELECTROWEEN (side note: thank you to Jessica, my aforementioned girlfriend, for introducing Lana to me). This year I open with an instrumental and a remix of her first big hit, Video Games. A song that reminds me of a few weekends ago when I visited Scott.

We went mushroom foraging and shot the ELECTROWEEN liner photos. We haven’t shot photos like that since 2012 and it was amazing. The rain followed us every spot we went that day, brightening up all the colors. It was a tough shoot, but well worth the results.

We also went to a retro video game bar in Portland. There, we found the Sega Genesis version of TMNT: Hyperstone Heist. I haven’t played that game since I was in grade school and it was an incredible moment to share with Scott. The song “Video Games” evokes a simpler time with a tinge of melancholy. I think I’ll always pair this experience and that song together.

ELECTROWEEN is coming to an end. As I type that, my heart hurts. When Scott and I spoke about it earlier this year, it bothered me. I wasn’t upset with the decision, but ELECTROWEEN has become an integral part of who I am. However, it is important to move on and hone our passions. You cannot be married to every creative thing you do, and ELECTROWEEN has come to a fitting end. I think Scott and I will take everything we learned over the years and make something truly magical and different in 2020.

As for my mix, this year it was more personal. I skipped many of the video game pleasantries that have made up ELECTROWEEN’s previous iterations. I tried to throw in all styles of music we’ve used in the past 10 years and kept the overall mix more funky and positive. Halloween is for mischief after all!

In 2019 Loveless (my DJ persona) is locked away in a mental institution and the key is thrown away. This, of course, is the end of ELECTROWEEN and Loveless’ fate is uncertain, but you always gotta leave the end open for a sequel. Thank you to everyone who has listened to these mixes over the years. It has been a labor of love that I wouldn’t have traded for anything else. From now until the end of time the crisp Autumn air will always feel like ELECTROWEEN to me.

Thanks For Listening and Being A Part of ELECTROWEEN!

We sincerely hope that you enjoy the ELECTROWEEN 2019 mixes while testing out some of your best moves this Halloween season. Whether this is the first mix you’ve listened to of ours or your tenth, we want to thank you for being a part of our community and keeping the spirit of Halloween alive. ELECTROWEEN has been one of the most meaningful projects of our entire lives, and it will always be here, preserved in time. The mixes will continue to be available on GAIA BROS well into the future; feel free to dive back in any time.

The era of ELECTROWEEN officially ends here, and a new one begins. What is to come, no one can know for sure…

—

I’d like to close this significant chapter of our lives with a special quote:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

Peace, Love, Unity and Respect — forever and always. ❤

VII (Scott Werley) and Loveless (Matt Konop)

The End of an Era: Celebrating 10 Years of ELECTROWEEN Mixes #electroween #halloween #mixes Short on time? Head on over to our ELECTROWEEN Mixes page where we have created an archive for all of our ELECTROWEEN productions.

#2019 #Celebration #ELECTROWEEN #Gaming #Halloween #Mixes #Nu Disco #Synthwave #VG OST

[margaretbeagle]

Can you make a great six-second ad? Here’s what we learned from the best

When marketers wish for more time and resources, they often wish to spend it on video marketing.

Well, what if you only needed six seconds of video to make your impression?

The current run of 6-second ads on platforms like YouTube and Twitter has opened up new options for marketers who are looking to get their message heard via video without going overboard on video resources.

We’ve taken YouTube’s best practices and looked at the list of the best six-second ads to find all the secret ingredients behind short and snappy video marketing. We think these tips will help you craft the perfect YouTube bumper ad, Twitter video, Instagram story — you name it — and will make video marketing a cinch for you and your brand.

The benefits of being on YouTube

YouTube is a bit of a different animal when it comes to social media marketing, particularly because it has such a heavy emphasis on, well, video content. On Twitter, you can type out a message and hit send. On Instagram, you can upload a pretty photo or a meme.

On YouTube, you have to create a whole video!

We’ve written lots before about how to create awesome videos, whether you’re a newbie or on a budget .. or a seasoned pro. As with most marketing activities, it’s not as difficult as it might look at first. The hardest part is getting going.

Still, it can feel like a big hill to climb. 

So why bother climbing?

Well there are a couple strong points in your favor for putting in the work and making things happen on Youtube.

First, YouTube is gigantic.

Chances are that if you’re targeting consumers, then consumers will have some sort of connection with YouTube.

Take these stats for instance: 

YouTube has over 1.9 billion monthly active users.

In the U.S. over 90% of 18-44-year-olds watch videos on YouTube.

Not to mention that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and the second most popular website behind Google.

Now, we’re not necessarily talking about becoming a YouTube influencer or growing your channel to millions of subscribers and views. That would be great, of course. But it’s not needed in order to get value from YouTube. 

Spending some of your ads budget on YouTube ads can help you reach a targeted audience through a medium that is engaging and very strong on the storytelling side. 

Which brings us to the second reason why it might make sense to invest some in YouTube advertising … 

One of YouTube’s best formats is six-second video ads.

You don’t have to make a mini movie or spend a lot of time and resources to build something long and lasting. You simply have to fill six seconds of time with a catchy, on-brand message. 

Seem doable? 

A lot of brands think so, which is why the ads format on YouTube has proliferated. There are a lot of options now — and if you spend much time on YouTube, you’ve probably seen a lot of variety in the ads also. It’s becoming a hot space. 

We’ll cover some of the basics of this ad format and then spend the majority of the episode diving into what makes a great YouTube ad by studying some of the best ones out there. 

Your YouTube ad options for videos

YouTube offers three types of video ads

Skippable video ads that viewers can skip after five seconds. These ads come before, during, or after the main video.

Non-skippable video ads must be watched before your video can be viewed. These are a maximum of 15-20 seconds long

Non-skippable video ads that can be up to 6 seconds.

Specifically for this blog post, we’re going to focus on the six-second ads. These appear in the pre-roll — the ad that shows right before your video starts. 

Because of this, you pay for bumper ads by impressions. They are charged by CPM – cost per thousand impressions, meaning that you pay for a bumper ad for every 1,000 impressions of your video. 

YouTube ads typically have an average cost-per-view of $0.10 – $0.30. And according to an AdStage report, in 2018 the average CPM on YouTube was $9.68. Additionally, the average cost per click was $3.21 and the average click-through rate (CTR) on YouTube was 0.33%.

How does this compare to other social networks?

It’s on the higher end because of the high engagement on YouTube’s video ads. Facebook is near $9.00 CPM, but Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn benchmarks are closer to $6.00. 

Best examples of six-second ads on YouTube

YouTube recently announced its list of the top six-second ads from the past year. The list included:

Subaru

Frito-Lay

Doritos

Oreo

Eggo

Almond Joy

and many more

Personally, I love what Geico dos with six-second ads: they’re often quite brilliant and funny and play with the form really well. 

What do all these videos have in common? There are a few elements that we noticed, plus YouTube has shared some of the qualities that it believes are key to a successful ad and video on its network. 

How to make a successful YouTube ad

1. Put your brand front-and-center

There are a couple reasons for this. Featuring your brand early on will help orient the viewer and increase engagement with your ad. Also, the first few seconds of the video are crucial, whether you’re making a longform video or a six-second ad. 

YouTube recommends starting with a powerful brand moment rather than a slow build. And of course, when making a six-second ad, you don’t really have time for a slow build!

You can do this in a lot of different ways. If you have a product, you can feature it in the first frames, as Doritos does in its six-second ads. Other brands start with a shot of their logo or a logo overlay onto the video. 

2. Use catchy music and sounds. 

95% of video watched on YouTube are played with the sound on, so music and voice are an essential component to your ad’s success. This is a bit different from other social platforms where sound is often turned off and captions are necessary. You don’t need any captions here. 

If your ad doesn’t necessarily have a strong audio component, another way to capture attention is from quick editing. This is obviously used quite well in the six-second ad formats. 

By putting multiple shots into the first few seconds, you can capture attention quite well. 

Looking at some of the top 6-second ads on YouTube, for example, Doritos put five shots into its six seconds, and Dove had seven shots — more than one shot per second. 

3. Think mobile-first when building your ad.

The majority of YouTube watching happens on mobile devices, so you’ll want to consider this experience when you’re coming up with your ad idea and your production. For instance, consider how people are using their phones — people may be watching on battery saving mode which means darker screens and less visibility, so bright colors and big text will make the biggest impact in your ad. 

Ok, let’s take a quick music break and then come back with some final advice on making the most of your YouTube ads.

Strategy: What are six-second ads good for? 

It’s not a lot of time to drive an action from your viewer, which might be why a lot of brands use the short videos for increasing brand awareness.  Of course, this comes with challenges of its own. How do you even measure brand awareness?

YouTube has thought of this. They offer a brand lift survey that you can run to measure the direct impact that your ad is having on the perception of your brand and the behaviors that you’re influencing. The survey measures a number of different factors: 

increases in brand awareness

ad recall

consideration

favorability

purchase intent

brand interest

They even let you optimize your campaigns while they’re happening, based on the results from this brand lift survey.

Of course, if a Youtube brand lift study is outside of your budget, there are other ways to measure its impact, too. You can look at foundational metrics like view rate and click-through rate to determine which of your ads are working well. 

Now there has been talk about the super-short ad format being too short to effectively communicate a message. There may be some truth to that, but at the same time, there is science and research behind just how quickly we’re able to process ads. 

In a recent study, brain researchers found that mobile ads can trigger an emotional response in less than half a second. The brain only needs 400 milliseconds to see and react emotionally to mobile ads. YouTube in particular has a couple things in its favor: video ads were twice as likely to stimulate an emotional response than static images, and mobile ads are a full one to two seconds faster to get a response than desktop ads.

Strategy: Cross-channel marketing

We’re big fans of repurposing content here at Buffer. We love taking a blog post and turning it into a SlideShare, a podcast episode, an infographic, and more. So we think it’s great to be able to do the same with ads.

Fortunately, there’s not much that needs changed with six-second videos because so many other places support this short format. 

I’m sure you’ve started to see this format on places like Hulu and other streaming services. On the social media side, Twitter has recently rolled out 6-second ads as a new ad type. Early tests with some brands on Twitter have shown up to a 22% increase in view rate.

What’s really interesting, as we mentioned earlier, not everyone browses Twitter with the sound on. So if you’re planning on using your short YouTube video ads on other social networks, it might be useful to really lean into the strong visual branding side of things.

In fact, a study by EyeSee showed that short-form videos with the sound-off that included clear branding, delivered a significantly better ad recall and message association compared to typical TV-style ads. 

Alright, one final strategic point we wanted to share is more like a quick time saver. When it comes to making short, six-second YouTube ads, you may not even need to start from scratch. 

Tip: You can repurpose existing ads and have YouTube cut them down to six seconds for you. 

That’s right, This year, YouTube began testing a tool called Bumper Machine that optimizes video ads for mobile audiences. The tool uses machine learning to pick out key moments from longer ads and convert them into the six-second bumper ads that we’ve been talking about this episode. 

Some of the elements that the machine learning algorithms are looking for are: 

human characters

motion

the sharpness of the video’s focus 

the quality of the framing

So if you’re looking to create a short ad to try out on YouTube, you may be able to test quite easily by repurposing a well-performing ad to work in the six-second format.

We’ve had a lot of fun researching short ads for this episode. If you have any personal favorites, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to send us a link on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, and use hashtag #bufferpodcast so that we can spot it!

Can you make a great six-second ad? Here’s what we learned from the best published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

[mariemary1]

Can you make a great six-second ad? Here’s what we learned from the best

When marketers wish for more time and resources, they often wish to spend it on video marketing.

Well, what if you only needed six seconds of video to make your impression?

The current run of 6-second ads on platforms like YouTube and Twitter has opened up new options for marketers who are looking to get their message heard via video without going overboard on video resources.

We’ve taken YouTube’s best practices and looked at the list of the best six-second ads to find all the secret ingredients behind short and snappy video marketing. We think these tips will help you craft the perfect YouTube bumper ad, Twitter video, Instagram story — you name it — and will make video marketing a cinch for you and your brand.

The benefits of being on YouTube

YouTube is a bit of a different animal when it comes to social media marketing, particularly because it has such a heavy emphasis on, well, video content. On Twitter, you can type out a message and hit send. On Instagram, you can upload a pretty photo or a meme.

On YouTube, you have to create a whole video!

We’ve written lots before about how to create awesome videos, whether you’re a newbie or on a budget .. or a seasoned pro. As with most marketing activities, it’s not as difficult as it might look at first. The hardest part is getting going.

Still, it can feel like a big hill to climb. 

So why bother climbing?

Well there are a couple strong points in your favor for putting in the work and making things happen on Youtube.

First, YouTube is gigantic.

Chances are that if you’re targeting consumers, then consumers will have some sort of connection with YouTube.

Take these stats for instance: 

YouTube has over 1.9 billion monthly active users.

In the U.S. over 90% of 18-44-year-olds watch videos on YouTube.

Not to mention that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and the second most popular website behind Google.

Now, we’re not necessarily talking about becoming a YouTube influencer or growing your channel to millions of subscribers and views. That would be great, of course. But it’s not needed in order to get value from YouTube. 

Spending some of your ads budget on YouTube ads can help you reach a targeted audience through a medium that is engaging and very strong on the storytelling side. 

Which brings us to the second reason why it might make sense to invest some in YouTube advertising … 

One of YouTube’s best formats is six-second video ads.

You don’t have to make a mini movie or spend a lot of time and resources to build something long and lasting. You simply have to fill six seconds of time with a catchy, on-brand message. 

Seem doable? 

A lot of brands think so, which is why the ads format on YouTube has proliferated. There are a lot of options now — and if you spend much time on YouTube, you’ve probably seen a lot of variety in the ads also. It’s becoming a hot space. 

We’ll cover some of the basics of this ad format and then spend the majority of the episode diving into what makes a great YouTube ad by studying some of the best ones out there. 

Your YouTube ad options for videos

YouTube offers three types of video ads

Skippable video ads that viewers can skip after five seconds. These ads come before, during, or after the main video.

Non-skippable video ads must be watched before your video can be viewed. These are a maximum of 15-20 seconds long

Non-skippable video ads that can be up to 6 seconds.

Specifically for this blog post, we’re going to focus on the six-second ads. These appear in the pre-roll — the ad that shows right before your video starts. 

Because of this, you pay for bumper ads by impressions. They are charged by CPM – cost per thousand impressions, meaning that you pay for a bumper ad for every 1,000 impressions of your video. 

YouTube ads typically have an average cost-per-view of $0.10 – $0.30. And according to an AdStage report, in 2018 the average CPM on YouTube was $9.68. Additionally, the average cost per click was $3.21 and the average click-through rate (CTR) on YouTube was 0.33%.

How does this compare to other social networks?

It’s on the higher end because of the high engagement on YouTube’s video ads. Facebook is near $9.00 CPM, but Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn benchmarks are closer to $6.00. 

Best examples of six-second ads on YouTube

YouTube recently announced its list of the top six-second ads from the past year. The list included:

Subaru

Frito-Lay

Doritos

Oreo

Eggo

Almond Joy

and many more

Personally, I love what Geico dos with six-second ads: they’re often quite brilliant and funny and play with the form really well. 

What do all these videos have in common? There are a few elements that we noticed, plus YouTube has shared some of the qualities that it believes are key to a successful ad and video on its network. 

How to make a successful YouTube ad

1. Put your brand front-and-center

There are a couple reasons for this. Featuring your brand early on will help orient the viewer and increase engagement with your ad. Also, the first few seconds of the video are crucial, whether you’re making a longform video or a six-second ad. 

YouTube recommends starting with a powerful brand moment rather than a slow build. And of course, when making a six-second ad, you don’t really have time for a slow build!

You can do this in a lot of different ways. If you have a product, you can feature it in the first frames, as Doritos does in its six-second ads. Other brands start with a shot of their logo or a logo overlay onto the video. 

2. Use catchy music and sounds. 

95% of video watched on YouTube are played with the sound on, so music and voice are an essential component to your ad’s success. This is a bit different from other social platforms where sound is often turned off and captions are necessary. You don’t need any captions here. 

If your ad doesn’t necessarily have a strong audio component, another way to capture attention is from quick editing. This is obviously used quite well in the six-second ad formats. 

By putting multiple shots into the first few seconds, you can capture attention quite well. 

Looking at some of the top 6-second ads on YouTube, for example, Doritos put five shots into its six seconds, and Dove had seven shots — more than one shot per second. 

3. Think mobile-first when building your ad.

The majority of YouTube watching happens on mobile devices, so you’ll want to consider this experience when you’re coming up with your ad idea and your production. For instance, consider how people are using their phones — people may be watching on battery saving mode which means darker screens and less visibility, so bright colors and big text will make the biggest impact in your ad. 

Ok, let’s take a quick music break and then come back with some final advice on making the most of your YouTube ads.

Strategy: What are six-second ads good for? 

It’s not a lot of time to drive an action from your viewer, which might be why a lot of brands use the short videos for increasing brand awareness.  Of course, this comes with challenges of its own. How do you even measure brand awareness?

YouTube has thought of this. They offer a brand lift survey that you can run to measure the direct impact that your ad is having on the perception of your brand and the behaviors that you’re influencing. The survey measures a number of different factors: 

increases in brand awareness

ad recall

consideration

favorability

purchase intent

brand interest

They even let you optimize your campaigns while they’re happening, based on the results from this brand lift survey.

Of course, if a Youtube brand lift study is outside of your budget, there are other ways to measure its impact, too. You can look at foundational metrics like view rate and click-through rate to determine which of your ads are working well. 

Now there has been talk about the super-short ad format being too short to effectively communicate a message. There may be some truth to that, but at the same time, there is science and research behind just how quickly we’re able to process ads. 

In a recent study, brain researchers found that mobile ads can trigger an emotional response in less than half a second. The brain only needs 400 milliseconds to see and react emotionally to mobile ads. YouTube in particular has a couple things in its favor: video ads were twice as likely to stimulate an emotional response than static images, and mobile ads are a full one to two seconds faster to get a response than desktop ads.

Strategy: Cross-channel marketing

We’re big fans of repurposing content here at Buffer. We love taking a blog post and turning it into a SlideShare, a podcast episode, an infographic, and more. So we think it’s great to be able to do the same with ads.

Fortunately, there’s not much that needs changed with six-second videos because so many other places support this short format. 

I’m sure you’ve started to see this format on places like Hulu and other streaming services. On the social media side, Twitter has recently rolled out 6-second ads as a new ad type. Early tests with some brands on Twitter have shown up to a 22% increase in view rate.

What’s really interesting, as we mentioned earlier, not everyone browses Twitter with the sound on. So if you’re planning on using your short YouTube video ads on other social networks, it might be useful to really lean into the strong visual branding side of things.

In fact, a study by EyeSee showed that short-form videos with the sound-off that included clear branding, delivered a significantly better ad recall and message association compared to typical TV-style ads. 

Alright, one final strategic point we wanted to share is more like a quick time saver. When it comes to making short, six-second YouTube ads, you may not even need to start from scratch. 

Tip: You can repurpose existing ads and have YouTube cut them down to six seconds for you. 

That’s right, This year, YouTube began testing a tool called Bumper Machine that optimizes video ads for mobile audiences. The tool uses machine learning to pick out key moments from longer ads and convert them into the six-second bumper ads that we’ve been talking about this episode. 

Some of the elements that the machine learning algorithms are looking for are: 

human characters

motion

the sharpness of the video’s focus 

the quality of the framing

So if you’re looking to create a short ad to try out on YouTube, you may be able to test quite easily by repurposing a well-performing ad to work in the six-second format.

We’ve had a lot of fun researching short ads for this episode. If you have any personal favorites, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to send us a link on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, and use hashtag #bufferpodcast so that we can spot it!

Thank Can you make a great six-second ad? Here’s what we learned from the best for first publishing this post.

[ultralifehackerguru-blog]

New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/16-seriously-fascinating-facts-might-not-know-donald-glover-aka-childish-gambino/

16 Seriously Fascinating Facts You Might Not Know About Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino

It’s not easy to describe Donald Glover.

He’s barely over 30, but he’s already been an award-winning actor, director, musician, and writer.

Without a doubt, he’s one of the most creative, unique, and interesting people in Hollywood, but how much do you actually know about the guy?

From his first job to his upcoming project, here’s everything you need to know…

1. At 23, he was hired by Tina Fey to be a writer on the NBC comedy 30 Rock.

Oh, and he was still living in a New York University dorm and working as a resident adviser while writing for 30 Rock. 

My Subscription Addiction

2. Apparently, it was always pretty obvious that he was born to be a comedy writer.

He was actually voted “Most Likely To Write For The Simpsons“ in high school.

Coincidentally, the script he wrote that got him hired on 30 Rock was a script for The Simpsons.

Flickr | NASA HQ PHOTO

3. His sketch group from New York University was really popular online.

It was called Derrick Comedy, and it racked up millions of views online.

SNL’s Bobby Moynihan and the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s Ellie Kemper were both featured in episodes.

Giphy

4. His big break was his role on Community.

Glover played Troy Barnes, a former high school quarterback who ended up in community college after injuring himself during a “keg flip.”

He left the show during its fifth season to pursue other creative projects.

Pinterest | Squidoo

5. His stage name, Childish Gambino, originated from a Wu-Tang Clan name generator.

Which is wild, when you think about it!

I mean, he’s been nominated for six Grammys and recently won his first while using that name.

Giphy

6. He has disowned his first mixtape, The Younger I Get.

He recorded the elusive mixtape in 2002 while he was at university, but he has since disowned it for being too raw and called it “decrepit Drake.”

Somehow, it has never appeared online.

Reddit | Curry10

7. Glover released a 75-page script online to go along with the release of his 2013 album Because The Internet.

The script also featured characters played by Rick Ross and Chance the Rapper.

Giphy

8. In 2017, he became the first black director to win an Emmy for comedy directing for Atlanta.

He also won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance in the series.

Instagram | @lenawaithe

9. He’s been cast as the adult version of Simba in the upcoming remake of The Lion King.

And we couldn’t be more excited.

He recently performed with the actor who will play the younger version of Simba at the Grammys, and we all got goosebumps for days.

Giphy

10. He’s joining the Star Wars universe.

In another case of absolutely perfect casting, Glover will play the young version of Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Han Solo movie.

So basically, he is starring in all of our new favorite movies.

Twitter | @RealRonHoward

11. He’s expecting his second child with his partner.

Glover is very private about his personal life, so we don’t know a ton about it.

However, at the Emmys, he announced that his partner is pregnant with their second child!

Tumblr | imogenpoots-rph

12. His appearance in Spider-Man: Homecoming was definitely not a coincidence.

It was a reference to the fact that fans of Glover campaigned to have him play our favorite web-slinger back in 2010.

He eventually voiced the character in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series.

Heroic Hollywood

13. He auditioned to play Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live.

Unfortunately, he ended up losing out on the role to Fred Armisen.

Armisen went on to play Obama on SNL from 2008 until 2012.

Giphy

14. He helped his friend Chance the Rapper come up with sketches for his SNL appearance.

Chance’s turn hosting SNL this year was one of the funniest episodes of the season, but we aren’t surprised that Glover had a hand in it.

Uproxx

15. He was one of Time‘s “100 Most Influential People” in 2017.

“He embodies his generation’s belief that people can be whatever they want and change what it is they want, at any time,” wrote Tina Fey about Glover in the issue.

Instagram | @rizahmed

16. And finally, he’s not related to Danny Glover.

So we can finally put those rumors to rest.

Do you like Donald Glover better as an actor, writer, or musician? COMMENT and let us know, and TAG someone who loves his work!

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(C)

#Lifestyle #Movie

[jameyoverton-blog]

Twitter Views This As Churn

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[junker-town]

The day Chris Long gave a season of NFL checks to charity

The Eagles defensive end’s career is football, but he won't let it be his legacy.

Chris Long looks up from his phone in time to see the stoplight change from yellow to red. He slams on the brakes of his Toyota FJ Cruiser and apologizes; he’s trying to follow his GPS while looking for an Instagram video he filmed with a drone at his farm in Virginia. It’s a bird’s eye view of him and a few childhood friends blowing up a Darth Vader doll stuffed with colored powder and Tannerite, an explosive target used in rifle practice.

Long, a defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles, is driving to the Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School in North Philly to speak to high schoolers. Earlier this morning, he announced that he and his wife Megan are donating his last 10 game checks to three different organizations devoted to educational equality in the three cities in which he’s played football. He’s calling his new initiative “Pledge 10 for Tomorrow,” encouraging fans to give what they can, and he’ll donate an extra $50,000 to the city with the most donations.

“Ah, here it is!” he says, finding the video. “I know Tannerite isn’t good, but how cool does this look?”

He hands me his phone. It looks very cool, mesmerizing even. Long has set the video to a song by My Morning Jacket, and the soaring chords match the brilliant bursts of teals, greens, and pinks that billow out against a white blanket of snow.

“One of my buddies from high school who I do this stuff with just had a kid,” Long says, taking his phone back. “I hope it doesn’t mean he’ll stop doing dumb shit like this with me.”

I remind Long, who is 32, that he has a kid, and that having children hasn’t stopped him, nor generations of men before him, from doing dumb shit.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, and smiles.

Long starts telling me about the other dumb shit he does. He regularly runs out of gas. He's had the car we’re in for two years and hasn't registered it. He lost his birth certificate a while ago. He was so obsessed with the movie Drive that he bought himself a ‘96 Chevy Impala, then totaled it listening to the soundtrack a day later. (He owned a replica of the scorpion jacket Gosling wore, too, but gave it to Goodwill after the crash because “the dream had died.”) Last year, he listed his former Patriots teammate Danny Amendola’s number on a fake Craigslist ad for a Suzuki Spider, then watched a bewildered Amendola field calls from people looking to buy his nonexistent motorcycle. He and William Hayes, who’s on the Dolphins now but played with Long on the Rams, once filled a teammates’ car with packing peanuts and crickets. The crickets died and it smelled terrible.

“I am incapable of not being a regular fucking moron,” Long says, laughing.

He misses the turn for the high school. He whips the car around, finds the entrance, parks, and walks by a few vans belonging to local news crews and NFL Films. The league is filming the event for some series about Players Doing Good Stuff.

This fall is the first time Long has so overtly publicized his charitable work. He founded WaterBoys in 2014 after he climbed Kilimanjaro with his then-teammate James Hall. So far the organization has funded 26 wells — 22 of which have been built in East Africa — that serve 7,000 people each. With former NFL player and Green Beret Nate Boyer, Long also leads trips of veterans up Kilimanjaro. He then founded the Chris Long Foundation in 2015.

Following the Unite the Right rally in his hometown of Charlottesville, Va., he was moved to put his arm around his teammate Malcolm Jenkins when Jenkins raised his fist during the national anthem before a preseason game. Long has continued to do so through the season, and yesterday, he and Jenkins were two of 12 players at the NFL owners fall meetings to discuss the protests. In a week, they will spend their day off after the Eagles’ Monday Night Football game against Washington at the Pennsylvania State Capitol advocating for criminal justice reform.

After his symbolic gesture, Long felt he had to publicly do something concrete. In September, he gave his first six checks to fund two scholarships at St. Anne’s-Belfield, the private high school he went to in Charlottesville (even though he and Megan had quietly funded two already, and those kids are about to head off to college). But he wanted do something “more macro,” so now he’s giving away his last 10 checks, too, forgoing an entire season’s salary. He also created the matching campaign on social media because he thinks a lot of people truly do want to help, they just don't know how. Give them a link and a pre-vetted charity, turn it into a competition, and boom: you’re raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. (As of publication, Long has raised over $205,000.)

Inside the high school, Sylvia Watts McKinney, the director of Summer Search, one of the programs Long is supporting, introduces him to the group of kids he’ll be speaking to. She reads a passage from Ralph Ellison’s essay What These Children Are Like.

“If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then I will not only drop my defenses and my hostility, but I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.”

“A little bit about me,” Long says, after he thanks McKinney and takes the mic. “I’m a football player. I spent eight years in St. Louis, and we never won more than seven games in a season, which is really bad, for anyone who follows football. It was a rough time.”

He’s not using any notes, and sounds far more natural than he did recording a Pledge 10 PSA from a teleprompter this morning at the Eagles facility. The students, very few of whom are white, seem skeptical at first, but they warm up as Long tells them how the Rams never made the playoffs, how he was injured in 2014, how he was released in 2015, how he went to New England and won a Super Bowl. He thinks he can do that here with the Eagles. A few kids whoop.

Long, back row, with students from North Philly’s Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School.

“For me as a student growing up,” Long says, switching gears, “I had everything I could ask for. Every resource was at my disposal. I went to a private school, I had tutoring, all those mentoring opportunities I needed, but I still struggled in school. I wasn’t a great student, but I also think I took it for granted. And that is something I really regret.”

Long did, and does, have everything. He’s the son of Diane and Howie Long. Howie was a famous NFL player, actor, and is now an analyst. Football is the reason Long — and his brother Kyle, who plays for the Bears, and Howie Jr., who works in player personnel for the Raiders — grew up rich and is the thing that has made him richer. It’s afforded him over 311,000 Twitter followers, given him a platform. Which, right now, he’s using to tell kids that they should value people the way people value retweets or likes on Instagram. This makes them laugh.

Then he lets it rip.

“Life is short,” he says. “Live it with joy. I really think that the biggest thing I could leave you with today is to take pleasure in the work that you do, whether in classroom or community, and enjoy it. Be that contagious light that spreads energy to other people. Great people make other people feel they can be great, too. We talk about this in the locker room as football players and leaders, how you want everyone around you to feel like they can be great for having played with you, sat in a classroom with you, been a friend of yours. Through your loyalty, your excitement, and for who you are. Be contagious in your energy.”

It’s Wednesday around noon, five hours before the event at the high school, and Long is walking into the Whole Foods next to the apartment he and Megan are renting in Philly. It’s 75 degrees out, but he’s decided it’s fall, so he’s wearing socks with Birkenstocks, thick sweatpants, a long sleeve wool shirt, and a Carhart vest.

“I call his style, ‘rich hobo,’” Green Bay Packers tight end Martellus Bennett will tell me on the phone a few days later. He played with Long in New England and the two became very close. Bennett describes their connection as “cerebral.”

“He’d walk into the locker room and I’d be like, ‘Nice jacket, but those sweats are trash, and those Birks gotta go,’” Bennett says. “But he has to wear socks because his toes are gross. I love his style, he always makes me feel okay to dress the way I dress. We both just didn’t care. He’s like a rich bum. Just look at him.”

The rich bum is currently looking at a wall of healthy-looking drinks. He picks up a Maple Water and puts it in his basket. I ask what Maple Water is. He’s not totally sure, but it’s probably just water with maple in it, and he says it’s good. I ask if he worries about getting recognized when he goes out in public.

“Nah,” he says. “I haven’t been in Philly long enough. And the great thing about being a football player is you don’t get a ton of facetime. You always have a helmet on.”

Long also grew up around fame. It’s not something new he’s had to adjust to.

“It’s too hot for the hot bar,” he says, waving his hand in the direction of the steam trays of chicken and tofu.

He then proceeds to wander up and down each aisle. I lose him at one point, which is hard to do, because he’s 6’3” and weighs 276 pounds. His arms are the size of a normal human’s neck. He has wide eyes, a square jaw, and broad, decisive shoulders. He could pass for a Viking, if Vikings had tattoos that said VIRGINIA; he has a full sleeve on one arm and a half on the other that will soon become full. Tattoos, he says, are addicting.

“He shows us as black players in the NFL that he gets it. He’s not turning a blind eye.” — Martellus Bennett

Long scoops some peanuts and raisins out of a bulk bin. If he occasionally acts like a teenager, he consistently eats like one (or at least a somewhat health conscious one). Over the next three hours, I’ll watch him eat a bowl of cereal, a protein bar, a piece of Ezekiel bread with peanut butter, a chicken breast, an entire bag of trail mix, a grapefruit, more trail mix, all of these peanuts and raisins, and another protein bar.

“He’s a total meat,” Diane will say about her son when I call her tomorrow. Long credits his parents — who’ve been involved with the Boys and Girls Club of Charlottesville for a long time — for teaching him and his brothers the importance of giving back.

“Did he clean his truck when you were there?” Diane asks.

I tell her I don’t know if he cleaned it, but that it was very neat.

“I'll tell you what,” she says. “That’s probably the one inauthentic thing you saw about him. Because usually, when you get in that truck, there’s piles of clothing and paperwork. He looks like he lives out of his car. He probably cleaned it for you.”

About an hour after the Whole Foods excursion, Long is sitting in a plush room off of the lobby of his apartment. He just called in to Ryan Russillo’s radio show, and we can’t go back upstairs because Megan doesn’t want us to wake their 18-month-old son, Waylon. We have to get out of this room, though, because the sun is beating directly in and Long is sweating through his wool shirt.

“You wanna play pool?” Long asks.

I say sure, so we head to the lobby, where there’s a pool table that no one ever uses. We’re playing best of five. Long breaks, then sinks the eight ball a few turns later. I win. I somehow manage to win the next game, too, on my own merit, which shocks both of us.

Suddenly, he realizes there's a chance he could actually lose this thing. His eyes narrow and he starts enforcing obscure rules. He wants to raise the stakes, so we bet that I have to publicize who loses in this article.

Long was the No. 2 draft pick out of UVA and a fierce competitor during his six “miserable” seasons with the Rams. He was, at one point, one of the best defensive ends in the league, but the team consistently sucked, and he suffered back-to-back, season-ending injuries in 2014 and 2015. When then-Rams coach Jeff Fisher released him, Long reached out to Bill Belichick and the Patriots. New England wasn’t the perfect schematic fit for Long in terms of defense, but he just wanted to win, so Belichick said he’d find something for him to do.

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Chris Long won a Super Bowl during his one season with the New England Patriots.

Last season wasn’t ideal from an individual standpoint — he was only on the field for 65 percent of the snaps — but it culminated in a remarkable Super Bowl win. And it gave him some of his closest friends; he still talks often to Bennett, Devin McCourty, Julian Edelman, and Rob Ninkovich often. That team had something special.

Still, he can’t get rid of the devil on his shoulder whispering that he wasted his prime with St. Louis, a team that was once a single fake punt away from going 0-16. He decided not to resign with the Pats because, while a championship was nice, he’s still acutely aware that he won as a role player. He loved team success, but his individual ambition was still unfulfilled.

“My career’s been all over the map, and I think players struggle with what’s their legacy,” Long says. “I haven’t been a superstar, but you can still think about your average-ass legacy. What’s kept me in the game is trying to leave on my terms. This has probably happened to so many players, and I probably won’t be able to accomplish it. But I want to leave playing at a high level. And using the game. I don’t want to let the game use me.”

Long felt that the Eagle’s defense was a better fit for him, and his intuition that they’d exceed expectations has turned out to be correct. With only one loss, Philadelphia has the best record in the league as of Week 7. And while he isn’t on the field more than he was in New England — he’s playing just 45% of snaps this year — he has two sacks so far and seems happy with his role. He also knows that as an active player, he has a bigger platform to raise money and speak out than he would if he retired.

Long sinks a shot, rubs his arm. He’s still sore from the Thursday game against the Panthers, which was almost a week ago. When he was recovering from surgery in 2014, he’d sit on the sidelines and watch huge guys crash into each other, thinking, I do this? He hasn’t been diagnosed with any concussions, but he worries about how CTE manifests itself. He also knows it’s too late to reverse any damage.

“And what’s me taking a knee in response to Trump? That’s not what this is about. He can’t make me kneel or stand.” — Chris Long

“Something I worry about more than that is the void that football will leave when I’m done playing,” he says. “You’ve been doing something your whole life, and then it’s over. You’re approaching your middle age. My friends back home have settled in. When I stop playing, I’m going to be the one who’s like, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

Long wins the fourth game to tie us up, 2-2. He keeps getting interrupted by the phone calls, FaceTimes, and texts from other players (including one from Edelman that just says “so tight”) as Pledge 10 gains traction.

“I think he’s one of the most genuine guys you could be around, especially off the field,” Hayes tells me. “Ninety percent of the guys you play football with, you don’t talk to after that. Chris and I haven’t played together the last couple years, but we’ve never left each other. He was my partner in crime when it came to pranks, and we both love competition. I tried to push him every day, and he did the same for me. He’s more of a brother than even a friend.”

Long breaks to start the fifth game, then goes on a roll, putting away most of his stripes for an early lead. He eyes up the cue ball, aiming for the striped No. 10, but he judges the angle wrong and sinks the eight ball again. I win.

We go back up to Long’s apartment after playing pool. Waylon has woken up, and is very busy putting wooden pieces of mail into his wooden toy mailbox. He’s a spunky kid with a mullet, which Long thinks is hilarious (he called him a young Mike Gundy on Instagram, in reference to the mulleted head coach of Oklahoma State). Megan gives Long a hard time for losing to me while she gets ready to take Waylon to the park.

Nicole Woodie, who used to run community outreach for the Rams until Long hired her to run his foundation, showed up at the apartment a few minutes ago. She sits on the couch replying to emails. Media requests have been pouring in since Pledge 10 went live.

“Someone from The Ellen Show just emailed me,” Long says, sprawled out on the coach and overflowing onto the ottoman. “They want me to come on. I’m gonna tell them no.”

“Chris, are you crazy?!” Woodie says. “You can’t turn down Ellen! Think of the moms!”

“Hmm,” Long says. “I don’t know. Would we reach people we wouldn’t reach through the sports media stuff we’re already doing?”

“Yes!” Woodie practically cries. “It's a totally different demographic! And Ellen usually does something like gives a big check. Come on, you have to do this.”

Long reluctantly agrees.

“His thing is that he’s not trying to bring attention to himself,” Bennett tells me. “He's trying to bring attention to the cause. That's noble, because a lot of people try to make it about themselves. He's trying to spread a message. He’s like, ‘Nah, I’m a part of this fight, but these [black players] are the generals. He wants to put the generals out there, guys who are more adept to talking publicly about it instead of himself."

I’ve watched Long try to do this all day. The Eagles’ PR guy asked Long this morning if he’d do SportsCenter before the upcoming Monday Night Football game against Washington.

“Nope. Put Malcolm on,” Long told him. “Put Malc up there. He’s doing great stuff in Philly.”

On Monday night, SportsCenter will run a short segment on Long anyway. But they will have to use old footage, random photos they dug up, and quotes from one of Long’s statements.

“How do you support guys like Malcolm without hijacking the situation?” Long wonders. “And then how do you interject your opinion without making it seem like you know these issues better than the people dealing with them? That’s a thin line you gotta walk.”

Bennett thinks Long is managing to walk it.

"You go through the league,” Bennett says, “and not many white players are actually saying things like Chris does. When he does, it goes bigger than just a black player saying it. He shows us as black players in the NFL that he gets it. He’s not turning a blind eye. When white players stay quiet, I’m like, I know you see the struggle, I know you see what’s going on. You play with me. We're examples of how people can get along and come from different backgrounds to work toward the same common goal. But when I speak on things that matter like this, and you turn your head, it’s like you think you can wash it away.

“Chris has always been real about it,” Bennett continues. “We'll have a conversation if he doesn’t understand something. That’s a powerful thing. And now he’s donating all of his salary to equality education? It's just like, what?!?"

Hayes appreciates Long’s involvement, too.

“When he put his hand on Malcolm’s shoulder, it showed a lot,” he says. “That one little thing he did. He knew that it could possibly cause a rift or cause a lot of conversation, but Chris, he knows what’s right, and what feels right. And he’s gotta stand up for it.”

Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

Eagles defensive end Chris Long embraces teammate Malcolm Jenkins on October 8, 2017, during the National Anthem.

Long hates that Trump has made the method of protest the point of contention. He thinks the national anthem is the most effective way players can draw attention to social injustice in their communities, but he’s never felt comfortable taking a knee because of the work he’s done with veterans. After Trump said that team owners should fire any player who kneels, a lot of people tweeted at Long telling him it was now his duty to do so.

“A lot of people use the knee as though it were some barometer for how much you care about these issues,” Long says. “I could take a knee and not do a thing off the field — and I’m not alluding to anybody doing this, I’m just saying — and it would be worthless. And what’s me taking a knee in response to Trump? That’s not what this is about. He can’t make me kneel or stand.”

Long picks up Waylon and gives him a raspberry on his stomach, then goes to find a shirt that doesn’t have a picture of the band The Highwaymen on it. He comes back out wearing a corduroy button-down that Megan bought him yesterday. He almost walks out the door with the tag still on.

On Wednesday night, after his speech, Long spends time with the Summer Search kids in the cafeteria. He takes pictures, posts a video to his Instagram story, and then does the requisite press conference before thanking McKinney, the director of the program. On the drive home, he talks about how jazzed he is that he got to meet some kids his donations will benefit.

“Before somebody’s president, or a hero in society, or somebody who invents something, they were sitting in a classroom,” he says. “You have no fucking clue who that person’s gonna be, who sets that whole thing in motion that alters the path of a city. Programs like this tell kids, ‘You matter. You fuckin’ matter, man.’”

I ask Long if he liked high school, and instead of answering, he asks me if I liked high school. He keeps flipping the script like this — who would I profile if I could pick five people to write about? What’s been my biggest mistake in an article? What’s been my most disastrous tweet? (All of them, I tell him.) He might be testing the waters; he’s mentioned that he might want to have a podcast, or try writing, once he retires.

He’d be good at getting people to talk; I’m five minutes into a story about the time I almost got suspended before I remember he's supposed to be telling me things like this. I ask him the question again.

No, he says after a beat, he didn’t especially like high school. He thinks he squandered it. He loves his friends from Charlottesville, but he wonders what his life would’ve been like if he hadn't gone to college in the same town he grew up in. He’s grateful for football, but wonders what it would’ve been like to find a passion off the field, something that didn't require Toradol shots to the ankle. That wouldn’t be over before he’s 35. That he’d be sure could fill the void. He never graduated from UVA and still wants to get his degree. He wishes he could've lived two different lives at once.

“I don’t know if you were like this,” he says quietly, staring ahead. “But when I turned 18, I got so sad. I was like, man, I just want it all to slow down. I kept thinking how I’d be 30 soon, how we're running out of time. I’m always thinking 12 years ahead.”

Long is motivated by an adolescent invincibility and stubbornness, but guided by an old soul’s understanding that life is short. He’s at once the teenager still doing “dumb shit,” and a grown man looking 12, 20, 50 years into the future.

It’s this duality that allows him to believe two things can be true at once. He's convinced he can still have his best season yet, but knows time is working against him. He knows about the risks of CTE and the fragility of bones and tendons, but puts his brain and joints on the line each week. He’s squirmy in the spotlight, but knows he needs it to make the biggest difference he can.

“You’re looking to catch him in the lie. And you won’t. It’s just like, why bother?” — Scott Van Pelt

The path of least resistance for Long would’ve been to retire after winning a Super Bowl and shut the hell up. Instead, he signed with a new team and dove into the thorniest political issues facing the league. And now he's doing it for free, at potentially huge physical cost.

“Charity is one of the coolest parts of being a football player,” Long had said on night before the launch of Pledge 10. “I’m really not bullshitting you, I really do care about what we do. I would totally resent the idea that I just do this shit for no reason.”

He sounded desperate to make me believe him; I could almost see his brain spinning. I asked him if he’s ever anxious.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am. And I’m trying to control the narrative in a positive way. I want to make sure I’m not misunderstood. I hate being misunderstood.”

Long has this recurring dream where he’s going to jail for life. Because no matter how hard he tries, the narrative is out of his control. Thanks to social media, he hears people who accuse him of having a white savior complex, or of being an entitled millionaire trying to stay relevant. He can see when people call him a libtard, a snowflake, unpatriotic, tell him to stick to sports. It drives him nuts when people insult his intelligence, and it’s the reason he fires back — the way he did when people criticized him for not going to the White House after the Super Bowl. Or the way he will in a few days when a conservative columnist (whose recent columns include “Hollywood has too little masculinity, not too much”) for the Bucks County Courier Times writes that Long “is a good example of the odious trend of virtue signaling.”

There will always be naysayers, so what can he do? Find a place — both on and off the field — where he can be useful, try his hardest to do what he believes is the right thing, and hope to cement a legacy he’s proud of.

“You can’t believe this guy is as good as he is,” ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt says. He’s admires Long and gave $10,000 to Pledge 10. “You’re looking for reasons for him not to be great, or good, or with his heart in the right place. You’re looking to catch him in the lie. And you won’t. It’s just like, why bother? Why not just accept that this is someone whose heart really is where it appears to be, and just be happy that exists? As opposed to trying to figure out how, or being an accountant for ways he could better. What a waste of time.”

Long’s mother says something similar.

“It almost sounds like a Disney movie,” Diane tells me. “It’s like he’s a weird, dark Disney movie. Dark because the subjects are more serious, but really, he’s just a good soul trying to do good.”

Having successfully navigated back from the high school, Long pulls up to the parking garage of his building and turns his car off in the middle of the road. I’m confused at first, but then realize the fob that opens the gate is attached to his keys. Which means he has to take them out of the ignition. He does, then waves them in front of the security pad to open the door.

“Chris,” I say, “There’s gotta be an easier way to do this.”

“Yeah,” he says grinning. “I know.”

Then he puts the key in the ignition, turns the car back on, and floors it up the ramp.