#and it's usually to things the audience has figured out the general gist of within two seconds of seeing it. it's very awkward

[juney-blues]

amazing digital circus would be so alright if it was good

[paragonrobits]

a few days ago i got to thinking about a RPG i was interested in, around early 2010s at the earliest (and around that time I think was the tail end of the days when me, my mom and my little brother lived out of a car, so my memory of specific dates is extremely fuzzy), called Big Eyes Small Mouth. It was a fairly lightweight system designed around emulating the feel of different anime series, with a multiverse setting built to accomodate it, fantasy settings along with cyberpunk or futuristic, all with the intent of making it as flexible as possible to incorporate whatever was included, both in the sense of flexible character concepts (so you could play as pretty much whatever you wanted, as well as broad archetypes of various anime series) and the actual concepts of the setting itself from psychic mech pilots to monster trainers (albeit less tongue-in-cheek than other character ideas, since that one was often worded in significantly meaner spirited terms) were all presented as openly as possible

for various reasons I don't think that game system is actually quite as useful for the reason I usually look at RPGs, which is to create characters within the mechanics of that system. It was built with a tri-stat system which my characters generally tend to not work too well with, given their general power levels. however, the IDEAS inspired by the setting are what's on my mind. Among other things, there's a concept where people are born as 'keys', or with an inherent power to open rifts between different worlds. In-series, its assumed that most of them tend to be ordinary students (leaning towards the anime inspiration, though amusingly enough I think this predates the majority of most isekai series, which might use this as a starting point).

So I kept thinking; what if I used this as a baseline for character concepts, one way or another? And the idea currently percolating for me is a group of people who are, for one reason or another, somewhat vulnerable and wind up with this portal-type power (or that one of them has portal portals at least, perhaps a mix of the game Portal and the X-Man Blink) and pop into the greater multiverse, winding up protected by a group of my main OCs, whom i've taken to referring to as the OC Squad (though in my ideas, I've considered the idea of calling them something like the Iconoclasts, shortened to Icons as they wind up gathering followers).

The basic gist there is of using this group of weaker characters as an audience surrogate, using them to introduce the more wacky or far-out elements of my setting that they otherwise wouldn't know, with their relationship with the OC Squad evolving. (Into WHAT, I'm not sure!) But the question is what exactly IS this group of characters? I was thinking of making them something relatively low-scale, with the specific idea being 'the cast of a coffee shop AU abruptly wind up dropped into a post-apocalyptic science fantasy setting and have to deal with the sudden danger'.

But this has its complications. A setting similar to real world earth doesn't make sense for my setting, while something similar enough to modern earth has its own issues, and would require figuring out at least one world among many that maps to the real world Earth and a suitable society. It IS possible, though i figure very rare, for one world to have survived the cataclysms particular to the setting and retain a technology level similar to the modern world.

It would be way more likely, I think, for them to functionally come from a cyberspace world existing as data, running a simulation of such a world or the life stories of people who were there and died a long time ago; in other words, they realize they're the end game of SOMA, or its the same issue facing Tidus from final fantasy X. This way has two built in plot hooks; the first would be them coming to terms that there's no going home and that home never technically existed; alternatively, their entire life is an illusion, with their dramas and loves and fears all being them playing out the stories of people who died a long time ago, and now they can choose not to be, but must deal with the existential horror that implies. Are THEY real? What DEFINES real?

And that leads into the other question; what are they, in the sense of species (however that applies here, as the possibility of taking on new bodies is fairly reasonable in my setting)? They MIGHT be human, but its also just as reasonable for them to be anthro-style beastfolk, super sleek sci-fi robots, or something else entirely. I might consider working out a basic five to fulfill a group dynamic with the twist being that they quickly take on dramatically different characteristics in short order (for example the emotional heart of the team winds up becoming the leader of the friend group as the original leader reacts badly to circumstances and winds up becoming the hot headed brute force problem solver instead).

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - “Rapunzel Knows Best!” ( A first half of S3 Recap)

So I decided to place the recap after Be Very Afraid for several reasons. For starters it’s where the season three hiatus took place. It’s also framed like a cliffhanger episode the same as The Great Tree and Queen for a Day; so while Cassandra’s Revenge is technically the midseason finale, Be Very Afraid functionally servers this narrative purpose better. Finally I want to keep the Cassandra heavy stuff contained in it’s own recap later same as I did for Varian’s arc in season one. 

Also keep in mind, everything I discussed in previous recaps still apply here. Nothings changed and you could argue that the issues I bring up now could have also apply to past seasons; they just happen to be at their worst here. 

Here are the past recaps 

To Filler or Not to Filler

Hey, What Ever Happened to That Varitas, Guy?

What Is the Point?

‘Whatta Twist’

And here are the episodes that’s covered in this recap

Rapunzel’s Return Part 1

Rapunzel’s Return Part 2

Return of the King 

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

The Lost Treasure of Herz Der Sonne

No Time Like the Past

Beginnings 

The King and Queen of Hearts

Day of the Animals 

Be Very Afraid 

Poorly Defined Conflicts 

I’m not just talking about Cassandra’s lack of goals here either, though that is a part of it. I mean in several episodes the central conflict isn’t laid out clearly enough before being resolved.  We flip from one set up to the next without ever resolving the first; like in Rapunzel’s Return when Cass and Varian fight for screen time or whenever Rapunzel is suppose to learn one lesson only for someone else to learn a completely different lesson in every other episode. And to this day I don’t know what Rapunzel and Feldspar’s subplot in Lost Treasure was suppose to be about. 

There’s also of course the ill-defined overall conflict; which at this point has become convoluted and nonsensical to the extreme, and will only grow more aggravatingly stupid as the season progresses. The main villains lack clear goals, their motivations don’t align with previously stated facts, and the actual interesting conflict involving the threat of the rocks and their destruction of people’s lives and homes is just shoved under the rug and forgotten about.  

There is no story without conflict. Having the conflict be all over the place is not only confusing but makes it harder for the audience to invest in what’s going on. 

Failed Narrative Promises 

Tying in with the above statement regarding conflicts, we have failed narrative promises. Rapunzel is repeatedly told to that she needs to learn something in several episodes only for her not to learn it at all. She either learns some unrelated ‘lesson’ that wasn’t established, (like in Rapunzel’s Return with her pervious goal about ‘opening up to others’ being switched out for a generic ‘responsibility’ lesson that at the last minute, where she doesn’t even do anything responsible,) or she winds up ‘teaching’ the opposite lesson to a different character thereby rewarding her for her bad behavior.   

And that’s just within the induvial episodes themselves; there’s also broken narrative promises through out the overall story arc; like...

no justice/redemption for Lady Caine, 

no acknowledgment that the Saporians are the victims of colonization

no conclusion regarding Corona’s murky past

no satisfying ending to Varian’s plot that sees everyone in involve grow

a poor copout of an explanation for Cassandra’s face/heel turn

The Dark Prince reveal going nowhere 

The Brotherhood being put on a bus 

King Frederic, or any royal, not being held accountable for their past actions 

Lance’s new found responsibilities just being thrown away for the tenth time 

The Disciples plot being being dropped 

next to nothing in season two winds up being relevant 

And Rapunzel, the protagonist of a coming of age story, fails to learn anything at all 

I could probably go on but you get the gist. Tangled is incredibly frustrating show to watch because doesn’t deliver what it promises. You’re not being clever by ‘subverting audiences expectations’ unless you can justify your narrative decisions with previous set up. Tangled is too lazy to build proper set ups so it’s ‘twists’ leave you wanting to punch things rather then impressing you. 

Character Assassinations 

Every single character in Tangled the Series gets thrown under a bus, driven off a cliff, and then allowed to drown in the ocean of their completely unaware self-congratulatory smugness.  

Rapunzel is turned into a bully

Cassandra is given the idiot ball to hold permanently 

The King and Queen are lobotomized

Quinin gets replaced by a robot  

The rest of the Brotherhood are pale shadows of what they could have been 

Edmund is transformed from tragic complex figure into a dumb jerkoff who abuses his kid for a laugh 

Zhan Tiri, once an ancient demon warlock, is reduced to a floating impotent ghost girl 

The Saporians become poor hipster parodies

Cap is put on a bus

Any villain who isn’t Cass is gets ignored

Lance is infantilized to the point of absurdity

Eugene becomes a doormat 

and poor Varian is forced to become a complacent victim to his abusers as oppose to being allowed to keeping his dignity 

I think the only person who escapes this mass murder of characterization is freaking Calliope, and she’s hasn’t even appeared yet! (Well okay her and Trevor, maybe) 

This all ties back into the poorly defined conflict and failed narrative promises. Rather than let the characters drive the story, they’ve become puppets to the plot, and plot is really stupid and forced, and circles back in on itself and is full of contradictions. 

Manipulating the Audience’s Empathy to Do the Work for the Writers  

The reason why the creators believe they can get away with such poor characterization and lazy writing is because they expect the audience to do all the heavy lifting for them.  

Cass isn’t given an on screen reason for what she does because they’re hoping her fans will just automatically excuse her because they like her/relate to her and not, you know, get mad at the writers for dumbing her down. And after all who doesn’t love the creator’s pet? Meanies! That’s who! 

No one calls out Rapunzel’s bullshit on screen, because if everyone likes her, then you, viewing audience, should too. Because if you have any sort of independent critical thinking abilities and a sense of right and wrong then clearly you’re ‘just a hater’. 

Everyone should just shut up and be satisfied that Varian is even on screen now and be grateful for the scraps that they get cause he’s not the real point of the show and according to Chris ‘Varian fans aren’t real fans’. Even though they make up most of his viewing audience. 

I could go on, but it’s just variations of the above. The writing in this series is very fond of gaslighting the audience and trying to trick them into justifying the absolute worst behaviors while desperately hoping they doesn’t noticed the continued downgrading and dismissal of characters they do like or once liked.  

And the sad thing is, it’s worked. There are people to this day that still try to justify this show’s shitty morals and bend over backwards to excuse the likes of Rapunzel, Frederic, Cassandra, and Edmund.  Worst, there are loud sections of the fandom, (usually on twitter) who think bullying is okay and follow in Chris and his characters footsteps. Most of them young impressionable girls who are now ripe for TREFS to indoctrinate because they use the same bullying tactics and excuses for authoritarianism. 

Media does effect reality, but not in the way purists and antis would have you believe. No one is going to become a violent manic from playing a video game nor a sex offender because they read a smut fic. But they very much will conform to toxic beliefs if it’s repeated enough at them by authorities they ‘trust’; like say the world wide leading company known for family entertainment and children’s media, and the ‘friends’ they find within the fandom for said company... 

I’m not saying you can’t enjoy Tangled the series or that you’re some how wrong for liking it’s characters, nor do you have to engage with every or any criticism thrown it’s way. But yes you need to think about the media you consume on some level and valid criticism is very much important to the fandom experience for precisely the above reasons. 

Conclusion    

This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg of what’s wrong with this show, but it is most of its biggest problems laid bare. Anything that haven’t covered here or in the past recaps will be explored in the final recap. Cause this is it folks; the last leg of the journey for this retrospective. When come back, hopefully next week, we’ll tackle Pascal’s Dragon.  

[codynaomiswireart]

Ur writing is so good!! Any tips you could give me for my story with Varian??

Awww, thank you so much @rainsplash69!!!  :D

Hmm…as for Varian story writing tips, here are a few things that I try to keep in mind when writing a story around him:

- The Draw of the Character - When it comes to writing about Varian (or most any character in fan fiction for that matter) it’s good to keep in mind what draws people to that character in the first place, and then figure out how you can employ those traits into your own story. For Varian, a lot of fans seem to be drawn to him because of his compelling story arc, his cute character design, his quirky nerd traits, that odd space he inhabits between being an adorkable and well-meaning friend to the main cast in the beginning of the series and then to…well, a murderous and broken antagonist in the latter part of season 01, etc. Take the traits that really make Varian an interesting/endearing/compelling/appealing character to the audience, and use them to the best of your ability in writing about him.

- Setting His Mood - In the canon series, Varian’s an extremely emotive character, which comes through in his facial expressions, his body language, his actions, and his speech. While some characters tend to express their emotions dominantly through one or a couple of these traits, Varian tends to express his feelings through all of them in some form.  So when I attempt to describe how he’s thinking and feeling about something, I try to include a little bit of each of these things in how I do it. For example, if Varian’s feeling uneasy about something, I’ll write about how his facial expression shows suspicion, perhaps his posture is also rather defensive, maybe he’s hugging Ruddiger close in order to feel more secure, and his tone of voice and words come out a bit faltering if he’s unsure of himself. It helps to paint a more vivid picture of Varian visually and audibly (in a sense) for the audience, and makes whatever scenario he’s painted in feel more real and believable for his character. It’s also good to strike a balance between “showing” and “telling” what a character is thinking and feeling, as you don’t want to bog an audience down with details (which would be an excess of “showing”), while also not being so short or vague on details that the audience is left dissatisfied in how the picture was painted for them (which would be only “telling” an audience how things are). There’s definitely a time and place for both. The trick is just finding out how to employ them in a balanced way.

- Speech Patterns and Vocabulary - Once Varian’s mood has been established, then I try to supplement that with his dialogue. I’m not always successful at this, but when writing dialogue for Varian, I try to think of what I’ve already heard from him in the series, and apply his speech patterns and vocabulary to the gist of what I want him to be saying or talking about. For example, in the show, Varian tends to stutter a bit when he talks, so I’ll often have him stuttering in the dialogue I write for him. Usually this stuttering becomes more pronounced when he’s excited or nervous about something - as if his brain is running a bit faster than his mouth (and given how brainy of a person he is, this is very likely for him I think). Varian will also sometimes throw in some big, science-y words here and there, while also having a lot of the teenage sass mixed in there as well, which is fun to combine!

- Accounting for History and Realistic Reactions - Another thing that I’m not always successful at but try to keep in mind when I write a Varian fic (unless it’s for an AU very independent of canon series material) is Varian’s history, and how he would realistically react to whatever scenario I put him in when writing a fic. For example, in “Gauze in the Wound”, I try to keep reminding myself of all that happened to Varian in season 01, how it all affected him in the canon series, how far realistically things would’ve progressed for him with Xavier’s aid, and then trying to realistically explore how it would continue to influence him in the story as events occur. Having (fairly) realistic reactions to things is also always a good bonus in fan fic writing, as it’s really what makes a character believable - and often relatable - to the audience. If I wrote GitW in such a way where Varian is almost immediately healed and ready to move on from everything after only meeting once with Xavier, then that wouldn’t be very realistic at all (and would also make for a very short and boring story). While I am not always successful at it, I do try hard to think about what possible realistic reactions Varian would have towards whatever’s going on around him in a given scenario, and use the tips above to work that into the fabric of the story.

- Being Mindful and Self-Aware - Tying in a bit to the above tip, I also feel that personal intentions are very important when writing fan fiction. I mean, for sure, not every single piece of fan fiction written has to be über deep, dark, and/or meaningful (some can just be fun, theoretical, and/or silly!), and not everything that authors of fan fiction write about necessarily reflects their own personal values. But I do try to keep a kind of mindfulness about it whenever I do it, even for the little one-shots. For example, I try to remember that given the target audiences of the canon material, it’s pretty likely that I could have a very young demographic coming upon the material, so I try to make it appropriate for a general audience when it comes to character interactions, depictions of violence or blood, language used, explorations of life and death themes, etc. I also do want the things I write to be meaningful and edifying for my audience(s), even if it’s only in a small way, and I try to do this by taking the above tip in mind (the one about characters having realistic reactions to things), drawing upon inspiration from other works (both from other fan fics and also original works out there in the world), and in being mindful and prayerful in how I write (as I also do find it to be a kind of spiritual activity for me a lot of the time, even if not overtly stated within the material itself). It can also become an exercise in analyzing my own heart, as trying to write realistically makes me consider how I myself may theoretically respond to certain things, and how that reaction may be similar or different to how Varian (or other characters) would respond. Hopefully, in this exercise, I can glean out a story that resonates with my heart, and hopefully with the hearts of others as well!

Hope this is helpful!  :D

[anywhereconsulting]

eBook - Look For The Few And Talk To The Many

With this ebook, we aimed to provide you a focused summary of the most valuable, replicable marketing tactic that can help you increase your sales rapidly. 

After reading this ebook

You will be able to find the best offer which answers your customers' most crucial problem.

You will deliver more value to your customers so that they want to buy more from you.

You will have the ability to tap into a market that is untouched by your competitors.

You can craft an offer that converts most of your prospects into customers as it is non-refusable.

You will be familiar with the mindset on how to build a business with an exponential growth potential.

Why you should read this book

We can give you three simple reasons for it:

You want to attract more and better customers to your business while spending the same amount of resources on marketing and sales. This book contains proven strategies to achieve this goal.

You have current issues with your marketing. Can't find the right audiences; your messages are not converting; your online presence could have better figures. This book details some tactical advice that can positively improve your non-vanity hardcore marketing metrics.

You are struggling to convert leads into closed deals and afraid to leave money on the table with each sales pitch. We give you solid tips on how you can double your sales within weeks after implementing these tactics.

If you use our proven strategies detailed in this book, you will get results. You can set your business into a solid growth pattern, dominate your market, and beat your competition without effort.

How do we know? Because we helped to build up businesses from zero to $1M annual recurring revenue within months - only by using and implementing these tactics into their marketing strategy. And the best part? These tactics can help most businesses in all industries - they are industry-, platform-, and niche-agnostic.

We use these strategies to get our clients, and we help our clients implement these on their end. We wanted to summarize these up into a short 15-pages format - it is indeed the essential information you need to double your sales now.

How to get the ebook

You have 2-options to get the ebook. You can get the PDF version by clicking the GET THE EBOOK button below, or you can read the copy down under in an edited format. The content is not gated; you are free to read or grab it with you as you like. When you share it with others, please mention us as a source.

LOOK FOR THE FEW AND TALK TO THE MANY

The 5 essential proven strategies to double your sales now

What's in it for you?

The first question should come to your mind - why should you care to read this short book. We can give you three simple reasons for it:

You want to attract more and better customers to your business while spending the same amount of resources on marketing and sales. This book contains proven strategies to achieve this goal.

You have current issues with your marketing. Can't find the right audiences; your messages are not converting; your online presence could have better figures. This book details some tactical advice that can positively improve your non-vanity hardcore marketing metrics.

You are struggling to convert leads into closed deals and afraid to leave money on the table with each sales pitch. We give you solid tips on how you can double your sales within weeks after implementing these tactics.

If you use our proven strategies detailed in this book, you will get guaranteed results. You can set your business into a solid growth pattern, dominate your market, and beat your competition without effort. 

How do we know? Because we helped to build up businesses from zero to $1M annual recurring revenue within months - only by using and implementing these tactics into their marketing strategy. And the best part? These tactics can help most businesses in all industries - they are industry-, platform- and niche-agnostic. 

In this book, you will learn:

How to find your customers' pain points - and use them to provide solutions that your prospects need

How to focus on an untapped market that is mostly ignored by your competitors

How to craft robust solutions that are solving your customers' problems, immediately

The concept of value-based marketing and what is really behind it that makes it so powerful

A simple method that single-handedly can double your sales within weeks

We use these strategies to get our clients, and we help our clients implement these on their end. We wanted to summarize these up into a short format - it is indeed the essential information you need to double your sales now.

We don't waste time - you shouldn't either. Let's jump forward to the first tactic.   

Learn about your customers' pain

It might sound a bit too dark but hear us out. You probably heard about the thing about painkillers vs. vitamins. Painkillers are easy to sell because people need them right now to solve an immediate problem. Vitamins are harder to sell because they don't fulfill an immediate need. Everyone knows that certain apps can help you have a more balanced diet, but when you are on the road and hungry, Google Maps enables you to find the closest grocery store. 

Your goal is to become an essential solution for your customers to solve their immediate needs now. After all, no one will buy you anything if you offer something that your customers might need or will need. You have to provide something that is needed right now. 

If you want to jumpstart your sales, you need to create offers that solve immediate problems. To do that, you need to learn the pain of your customers. What is their most pressing issue that you can solve? What is the single most crucial pain-point that keeps them away from achieving their goals? Once you know the problem - you can offer the solution.

How to learn about their pain? Well, you need to do some research. There are three main areas where you should start.

Start with the most important and widely-used platform, Google. Everyone is typing their questions into Google in desperation to find a solution to their problem. Check keywords around your existing product or even within your industry - what is the most searched phrase. Check related Google searches, which gives you the exact questions your prospects are searching for answers. A simple Google search can provide you excellent top-of-the-head value around the most excruciating pain points your customers have. You can top Google searches up with tools like the Google Keyword Planner or Answer The Public - the latter is one of the most powerful marketing research tools.

Funny how the internet hasn't changed in the last twenty years. After the casual search options, the second area where you need to look at are the forums. Online forums are places where people ask questions, socialize, talk, and exchange ideas. They are not forums per se, but platforms like Facebook Groups, Quora, Reddit, or any industry-related groups are the best options to get the gist of your customers' problems. Find the most active forums, groups, or threads - they usually have enough insights for you.

The last area where you need to look is the world of public reviews. It depends on your business, but platforms like Amazon, Yelp, even Facebook or Google My Business are an excellent way to gather relevant insights. Good, 5-star reviews are OK but focus on the bad reviews. People provide points that are missing from a product or a service - if you can create solutions that solve these missing points, you are in for business. Focus on your competitors first, then broaden your search within your industry. 

We always recommend gathering the information into a spreadsheet for later use. It is essential to check the pain points but equally crucial to follow how your customers explain their pain. What words are they using? How they phrase their problem? That information can help you craft better ads, better headlines, better offers that address your customers' pain points with their own words. To your customers, you will become a mindreader with this tactic.

But pain is not enough - that addresses only those who are ready to buy now. What about those who haven't faced a problem yet? Learn how to focus on the broader audience from the following tactical advice. Read on!

Look for the few but talk to the many

Essentially, you can increase your sales with two tactics. You either increase your conversion rate on your current flow of leads, or you can increase the number of leads you get to get an overall impact on the figures. We believe that you need to combine the two efforts into one with one tactic: focus on the few who are ready to buy from you now but always talk to those who are not there yet. 

Generally, your audience has five segments. There are those, the majority of your potential clients, who are not problem aware - they don't know that the issue you are solving exists yet. Others are aware of the problem, but they don't know how to solve it. Some see the solution and actively looking for those who can provide the solution for their pain. And others are aware that you exist and you offer the solution. A few of them are ready to buy from you. Most sales teams focus only on these few - they are easier to convert as they are aware of the problem, know you have the solution, and have a genuine interest in buying. 

With the first tactic in this book, you can create a solution that solves their immediate problem. With different tactics detailed here, you can increase your sales team's conversion - but that works only for the few who are ready to buy. It would be best if you also increased the incoming flux of prospects, so you have a funnel set to provide enough leads for your sales team. Ultimately, you have to increase your traffic, generate more buzz around you, make people aware that you exist - you have to talk to the many. 

What is the best way to achieve that? A simple combination of content and targeted ads. While ads can deliver a high impact on a short timeframe, content is more longtail. You need some content to supply ammunition for the ads, but the most effective long-term strategy is to become a thought leader in your industry. You have to become the authority who has the solution to your customers' problems. You have to be everywhere, highlighting that the problem they might not know yet, exists. You have to promote the ideal solution everywhere, furthermore, stress that you offer that solution. The tools you need to use are different for every business - it can range from guest posting on blogs, answering forum questions, being very active on social media, providing free webinars and other content, etc. However, the ultimate goal is the same: put yourself at every stage of your customers' research. Your sales team can convert more easily as your ready-to-buy leads will want to buy from the best in the industry. Those looking for a solution will find you quickly, and with an efficient marketing funnel machine, you can move them quickly to the stage where they are ready to buy. You can get on the radar for those who are not aware of the solution or even the problem. Your active ad campaigns should reflect your approach - the more platforms you use to drive traffic, the segmented your visitors will be. It is worth balancing your marketing budget between multiple ad platforms, even if your resources are limited.

Speak to the many, broaden your audience. With this tactic, you can increase your conversion rate and the number of your leads. But to maximize the impact, you need to provide value. Read on to learn about the next strategic approach - value-based marketing and what is really behind that.

Value is free; help isn't

In recent years, the concept of value-based marketing became a practice only within young entrepreneurs - but the rest of the industry forgot about it. Why? Because of two things - first, customers attended too many 'free webinars' and other bullshit solutions masked as sales calls. Everyone became more paranoid and cynical. Second, giving value is hard - you have to understand your customers' problem, create a solution to solve it and provide value around it. Most businesses fail even with the first step. To understand value-based marketing, you must understand the principle behind it: you provide value for your customers without asking anything from them in return. You can't pull them into a webinar on whatever topic, which is essentially a sales call. You 'just' provide a webinar with an insane amount of value in it; that's it. 

We don't waste time with story-mode, but there's a great story that helps everyone understand how value-based marketing works. Bruce Henderson founded Boston Consulting Group in 1963 - at a time when other companies like McKinsey dominated management consulting. Despite the fierce competition, he managed to grow the company so big that it is now part of the Big Three, the world's three biggest consulting companies. How he did it? With a simple marketing technique: value-based marketing. He published his ideas in short stories called Perspectives and sent it to potential clients. He provided value for free and showed a genuine understanding of his clients' problems, and with his insights, he actively helped them succeed. Within years, the company grew above the sky because of value-based marketing that served BCG an influx of leads. 

Today, it might not be the best option to write short stories and mail them to senior executives. But though formats change, tactics stay the same. Content that adds value still acts as a powerful magnet for leads. Frankly, you are reading a piece like that now. 

Value is useful. Value is entertaining. People are more likely to buy if they are learning something useful in a simple, digestible format. The most useful tactical advice we can give you when it comes to value is a simple one. Provide value all the time. Don't waste anyone's time - value should present itself even with a simple headline. 

Lastly, the value should be actionable for both sides. Your customer should find it useful for consideration, even for implementation. But it should be actionable for your business as well. The value should drive your customer further into their buying cycle. Make sure you include a call to action at each lead magnet content piece you create. Call to action shouldn't be a sales offer - just a drive for further action. 

After all, though value can be free, your help is not. In the next chapter, you will learn how to craft an offer that ridiculously increases your rate of closed deals. 

The secret to a zero $ marketing machine 

If you spent any cash on marketing so far, you would probably be familiar with cost per lead and cost per click terms. There is a quantifiable figure on how much you need to spend to get a client. How much does it cost to drive a prospect through your funnel and turn them into a client? We bet you would be thrilled to know that this figure can be zero $ - or even better, you can make a small ROI on every dollar you spend on marketing without considering your usual sales figures.

At this point in the book, you know and applied the tactics detailed. In that case, you are probably familiar with your customers' pain points, you crafted solutions for these problems, and you invested in value-added marketing to appeal to the broader public. Now you need to prepare a sales offer that turns leads into clients. Most businesses go with one or maybe a few high ticket offers. But most people are not ready to buy a high ticket offer from you right now. But that doesn't mean that they are not prepared to buy. If you ignore these people, you will leave a great deal of money on the table. 

Enter downselling. You have to create an offer that is low priced but still high value. This offer will convert most of the leads in your pipeline on day one, increase your customer base, and pretty much pay out their acquisition cost, making your whole marketing budget liquid. And the best part? Micro-offers like this can instant-qualify leads into sales-ready customers. Anyone who bought something from you is a potential customer who will buy something else. 

I'm sure you are familiar with IKEA, the furniture store. Did you know that putting an affordably-priced restaurant plus a food court in their stores was and still is part of their marketing strategy? IKEA was one of the many furniture companies selling affordable furniture via its warehouse-style stores. Serving food was one of the prime distinction from their competitors. It reinforced their family-brand, plus it is easier to sell furniture to someone who's not hungry. Today, more than 1/4 of their visitors come only because of the food, which accounts for 5% of their revenue. Buying a couch is above $1000 - getting a meal for the family is below $100. It is the power of downselling.

Our practical tips on creating your low-priced downselling offer: 

Even if it is low-priced, it has to have tremendous value. Remember, it might be cheap to eat at IKEA, but it is healthy and tasty and distinctive. Where else could you get Swedish meatballs with gravy? Your downselling offer shouldn't be a low-priced, low-value version of your full-priced offer.

Connected to the point above, never highlight the bargain value of your offer. Your offer's weight should be much higher than the price - it is the only way to generate buy-in from your customers.

Learn as much as you can about your customer through this downselling offer. Those who bought-in on the proposal are all potential buyers for further, higher-priced offers. The more you know about them, the more comfortable you can sell the high-ticked offers.

Now that you know all our secret tips - except for the last one. Our final tactical advice is the simplest one. It is all about getting ready to leap forward. Keep reading.

Finding the right ones

No marketing or sales strategy should help you if you are not ready to implement the changes. Getting prepared is all about asking the right questions to yourself. 

Do you have the right people to achieve your goals? We strongly believe that hiring is the most critical part of a business - if you hire the best people, you can conquer the world. But if you employ mediocre ones, no matter your idea or your tactic, you will have a hard time succeeding. We also strongly believe that not everything is up for outsourcing to marketing agencies or freelancers. Critical parts of your marketing activities should stay in-house: content production to preserve your tone of voice, overarching marketing strategy to fulfill your business goals, functional sales teams to proper representation, etc. When it comes to outsourcing, you need someone who understands your business, provide fantastic value to your team, and won't settle for good-enough quality. 

Do you have the right tools to meet your targets? Using the right tools and tactics to build a rigid marketing & sales funnel is crucial. The two most important factors you should look for are these:

Automate as much as you can in your funnels. It costs you a great deal of time to build something up, but it pays out in the longterm. But make sure that there is a human operating the machine, and there is a human when your prospect needs it.

A tool can only do so much as your strategy allows it. First, you need to see the marketing opportunities, create a plan, and then create tactics to achieve your goals. Only after these steps you can consider the right tools to help you propel forward.

Do you have the right mindset? Your mindset should be clear - returns can't come when there is no investment. Patience is a virtue; though you can achieve great results within a limited timeframe, the real value is on the longtail. Your marketing and sales efforts should consider time and resources - always. We helped one of our clients build up a stable empire with $1M annual revenue via value-based marketing. But it took almost a year to achieve that - and took even more to solidify the position. Sadly, pink unicorns are as real as 'get rich quick' schemes.

If you made sure that you have the right people with the right tools and the right mindset - we should talk. We wholeheartedly hope you got some cookie out from this jar and learned something new. We offer a free consultation for 'ready' - we provide these calls with the same value-based mindset. We review your business, marketing & sales activities; we provide a blueprint on what you need to do to jumpstart your growth, plus a roadmap that details each step along the journey - all of these are fully tailored to your business, to your problems.

If you are ready, schedule your call with us. We are looking forward to speaking with you. 

My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. We solve problems for growing businesses with specialized marketing solutions. To read our case studies & learn more about our work, click here. Connect with me on LinkedIn or book an appointment here.

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[madehq]

Repackaging for Uncertainty

It’s not news that the global covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted cultural institutions around the world. Here in New York, what was initially announced as a 1-month closure for Broadway was recently extended to the end of 2020, forcing theaters to go dark for at least 9 months. For single ticket purchases, sales can be painfully pushed back, shows rescheduled, credits offered, and emails blasted. But at this point, organizations are now looking at a 20/21 season that has been reduced by 50-70%. So while they ponder what a physically and financially safe reopening looks like, they’re also having to turn their attentions to another key portion of their audience: subscribers.

Every company will tell you they want to cultivate a relationship with their customers. From a brand perspective, you always want to have a key base of loyal consumers, and financially these are the patrons that will consistently return to make purchases. Arts and cultural institutions use annual packages to leverage their reliable volume and quality of programming, allowing them to build relationships with their patrons which span over decades, and sometimes generations. Rather than buying several tickets to individual shows, a package is a bundle deal. The benefits vary from org to org, early access to show dates, choice of seats, and discounted prices on the shows being some of the most common, but one thing is constant: in order to reap any of these benefits, patrons commit to multiple shows over the course of the year. As a relationship tool, packages are very effective. Theatre Communications Group (TCG) in New York City produces an annual fiscal analysis for national trends in the non-profit theater sector by gathering data from all across the country. In 2018 they gathered data from 177 theaters, and found that, on average, subscribers renewed 74% of the time.

This is about more than brand loyalty though: these packages represent a source of consistent income for theaters. Beyond the face value of individual tickets purchased by subscribers, which according to TCG’s research tally up to an average of $835k a year (with the highest earning tier of theaters surveyed pulling in an average of 2.5 million dollars), subscribers are much more likely to convert their attendance into other kinds of support for the organization. These patons can be marketed to with low risk (of annoyance) and high reward (in literal dollars). Thus, the value of subscriber relationships goes well beyond their sheer presence in the venue, making them one of the most consistently considered portions of the audience. At a time when uncertainty is the name of the game, a set of dependable patrons might seem like the perfect audience slice to reach out to right now.

However, since the rewards for packages typically revolve around early access, and require a multi-show commitment, subscription purchases and renewals usually receive a big push very early in the season sales cycle, putting them in a particularly vulnerable position at the start of the covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the extension of venue closures have not only shifted back sales dates, but also the seasons themselves leaving patrons with fewer shows to choose from, and fewer to commit to. This is forcing everyone to figure out how to salvage the potential income while still providing a valuable, and fair, experience to patrons. Thus far, we’re seeing three different answers to this question emerge.

Like-for-like

One straightforward approach is to roll with the punches and create mixed packages between this season (Season A), and next season (Season B). This works particularly well for orgs with consistent types of content every year. For example if an organization has a package of 5 Jazz concerts in Season A, but 3 of them are cancelled due to the pandemic, you just take 3 shows from Season B to replace them. Behind the scenes, this strategy does require a lot of hands-on adjustments if shows continue to be cancelled, but with the benefit of preserving the structure of the original package. Patrons also have a transparent view into how the value of their package is being preserved, however they are still tied to a specific show date with no knowledge of what the situation will be at that point.

Voucher Exchange

Another solution which has started to arise is the idea of a voucher system. Rather than trying to reschedule after a show in a package is cancelled, patrons are given vouchers which can be redeemed for a ticket to a future performance. For organizations, this option puts a lot of the workload at the front end, as it requires detailed business consideration: do vouchers expire? If so, how far in the future? Do the vouchers have a dollar value, or can they be exchanged 1:1 for a production? What happens if prices change between now and reopening, or if a user wants a ticket of a different value? (You get the gist). All that being said, once those business rules are set, it has the potential to put the other choices in the hands of the patron. Consequently, for patrons this option takes off some of the pressure: they don’t need to commit to another uncertain date in the future, instead they can be assured they are receiving the value of their package at a time that they feel comfortable.

Pay It Forward

A third option is to push the guesswork entirely to the future and allow users to purchase a set bundle of shows as normal, but with no mention of dates or seats. Instead of setting a calendar for the year, patrons are committing to content: 5 shows, rather than 5 dates. Some organizations have had this in place for early renewals for years, and find it to be an easy way to service patrons who are loyal to the organization through thick and thin. Ultimately though, this allows both parties to make more informed decisions about their theatergoing habits closer to the show itself, rather than 3 months ahead of an unknown future. That being said, this solution requires a lot of upfront discussions within the organization, and to the patron, about what might happen if patrons cannot attend the dates they are assigned either due to conflicts or continued safety concerns.

Anyone who’s remotely involved in the arts & culture sector will not be surprised that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Some organizations will enjoy the straight-forwardness of mixing packages, others will want to allow for uncertainty and opt for the voucher system or the pay-it-forward option, still others will come up with an infinite number of alternate approaches to this issue. And of course, these solutions are all dependent on an optimistic future which is still a huge question mark: some areas are opening up, others are extending their closures, previously bankable organizations are filing for bankruptcy, and for every positive trend in cases there’s a spike somewhere else. In the game of whack-a-mole that is covid-19, the path towards reopening, and specifically a positive subscriber experience, is a tightrope: business rules will need to be clearly defined, messaging carefully considered, and customer service well briefed on the new practices. No matter what solution organizations opt for, it will need to be tailor fitted so that the patron relationships which will keep theater alive beyond this pandemic can be cultivated. Otherwise they run the risk of patrons feeling milked for money, and lemming marched into the theater.

[irinapaleolog]

How the Devil Became a Dreamboat: Exploring the Byronic Hero with Kylo Ren

As it turns out, the popular problematic favorite and the OG problematic favorite are basically the same person.

Welcome to Elements of Story, a biweekly column about narrative tropes, what they mean, and why they just won’t go away.

For the inaugural installment of Elements of Story, and just in time for Valentine’s day, I’m going to dissect an archetype that has been causing a stir and setting hearts aflutter for centuries: the Byronic hero. 

Definitions of the Byronic hero vary by source, but the basic gist is that he’s an arrogant yet emotionally sensitive rebel who rages against societal norms, is usually haunted by a dark and mysterious past, and has been a staple of romantic storylines for hundreds of years. You could literally write a book about the history of the Byronic Hero—indeed, multiple people already have—so for the sake of concision and also my continued sanity, we’re going to investigate the Byronic hero through the specific example of one of his most recent appearances: Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). 

Ever since The Force Awakens first premiered, Darth Vader’s grandson and #1 fan has been a point of contention within the Star Wars fandom, particularly with regards to his dynamic with protagonist Rey (Daisy Ridley). While things have calmed down somewhat following the underwhelming finale that was The Rise of Skywalker, if you want to start a fight online about a galaxy far, far away, mention “Reylo” and see what happens. 

One of the most genuinely befuddling things about the discourse surrounding Reylo is the frequently held opinion that its allure is anyway inexplicable or unforeseeable. Similarly, the common, lazy narrative that its popularity can be explained away as Adam Driver’s thirst-club projecting their desire onto the Star Wars universe reeks of ignorance. Whether borne of conscious intent or sheer coincidence, Kylo Ren is a villain who also fits a centuries-old romantic archetype like a glove in ways that are hinted towards in The Force Awakens and laid increasingly bare in each subsequent installment. That some viewers picked up on the Byronic subtext early while others did not simply speaks to the variance in media consumption habits and tastes between audience members. If you’re familiar with an archetype, you’re going to spot its likeness, and view said likeness through the lens of the implications baked in with that lineage. If you’re not, you won’t. 

So, who is this Byronic Hero guy, anyway? Well, the tl;dr version is that he’s basically Satan and his origins predate Lord Byron by at least a few hundred years. 

In truth, the Byronic Hero is so old that tracing his origins gets quite speculative. There’s not a singular definitive answer so much as a collection of theories. To give a relatively cohesive explanation of who this guy is and how he got here without writing a novel, I’m going to things down into two key questions: 

What makes the Byronic hero satanic?

How did Satan become romanticized? 

To address the first question, let’s start by talking about the Devil. I’m not going to say that John Milton was the first storyteller to make Satan cool, but he sure did make such a characterization mainstream with Paradise Lost. The most beautiful of God’s angels, Lucifer chafes at God’s omnipotence, convinces a number of his brethren to join him in a rebellion that ultimately fails, is banished to Hell and eternally damned, but stubbornly stands by his choices because, “better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” Milton’s Satan was, to use modern parlance, a beautiful trash fire—a handsome, passionate dreamer whose quick-tempered fervor proves self-destructive in spite of his considerable intellect.  He is, in other words, smart enough to know that his hubris will be his downfall, but too in thrall to his passions for that knowledge to save himself from such a fate. He is a tragic hero as defined by Aristotle, an inherently sympathetic figure not as much in spite of his flaws as because of them. 

not as much in spite of his flaws as because of them. 

Let’s stop for a second so I can convince you Kylo Ren fits this pattern, in case you aren’t convinced already. With his journey from Ben “too much Vader in him” Solo to Kylo Ren, his rejection of his heritage and violent rebellion against Luke Skywalker, he follows the same basic trajectory of Milton’s Lucifer. And as far as personality is concerned, Ben didn’t gel well with the “there is no passion” Jedi code, and unlike Anakin Skywalker, it didn’t even take the development of a particular relationship for things to reach a breaking point. 

Now, as far as how Satan became a romantic figure, we need to make a stopover with the Romantics because the journey from Romantic to romantic is really just semantics. Romanticism was a prominent intellectual and artistic movement in Western culture that took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries and encompassed everything from literature and painting to architecture and music. It emphasized emotion, spontaneity, irrationality, and the individual with a particular focus on subjectivity, and is generally regarded as a reactionary movement—a rebuttal against the rationalism that defined the Enlightenment.

Romantics loved Milton’s Satan. “My favorite hero, Milton’s Satan,” Robert Burns gushed, lauding Satan’s “intrepid, unyielding independence,” “desperate daring,” and “noble defiance of hardship.” That Byron, one of his contemporaries, would channel his admiration for the same figure into a series of mercurial protagonists that would codify an archetype is hardly surprising. While crediting Byron with inventing the Byronic hero is a significant stretch considering the archetype is really just Satan rebranded, there is one key component of this character that Byron did add to the equation, and that is a particular kind of longing that a number of commentators have likened to homesickness. “Love is homesickness,” Sigmund Freud wrote in his seminal essay on the Uncanny. In terms of understanding the human mind, Freud is one small step above total quack, but as far as narrative theory is concerned he made some compelling arguments, this being one of them. As Deborah Lutz says in her essay “Love as Homesickness: Longing for a Transcendental Home in Byron and the Dangerous Lover Narrative,” “the Byronic hero often[…] is a criminal, an outlaw who is not only self-exiled, but actively, hatefully, works against society as a murderous pirate,” yet also often feels, “pains of remorse, not only for his crime but also for his self-inflicted homelessness.” Kylo Ren, with his laments of “I’m being torn apart,” and “let the past die, kill it if you have to” rhetoric interspersed with explosive bouts of self-loathing, could not be more emblematic of this facet of the Byronic hero if he tried. 

All of this helps explain what makes this archetype emotionally engaging, but not how “self-hating emotional clusterfuck” became sexy. In order to get to the bottom of that, we actually need to go back quite a bit. In Western culture, sexuality, death, and evil have been birds of a feather since the nascence of Christianity, which took vague correlations between these concepts already present in several Greek mythological figures and ran with them. While the Devil is often depicted as a hideous beast, the concept that he might also take the form of a man—specifically, an attractive one—dates back centuries (Lucifer was the prettiest, remember), and is apparent in a number of surviving records of witch trial confessions detailing demonic encounters. But taking on a handsome face is not the only attribute frequently bestowed upon Satan and his kin. As Toni Reed writes in her book Demon Lovers and their Victims in British Fiction, “identifying Satan and other demons with sexuality, especially with huge phalluses, may well trace back to Greek mythology.”

That’s right. Satan has serious BDE. Do with that information what you will.

It’s worth noting that the Byronic hero is ultimately a beloved romantic fantasy not because it represents something many people want in real life, but precisely the opposite, much like0 how enjoying seeing the lions at the zoo doesn’t mean you want one in your house. He’s a darkly tempting, narratively intriguing prospect that is enjoyable to experience vicariously through fiction, a Pandora’s box that can be opened and then closed again without repercussion. Times and tastes change and the Byronic hero evolves to suit them—devil, tempestuous gentleman, wannabe Sith—but his defining characteristics and their guilty pleasure appeal are eternal.

[danithebookaholic-blog]

A Book You Picked Solely Because of the Cover

The Fallen: The Fallen and Leviathan

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

This week’s suggestion on the Pinterest Reading Challenge is to pick a book solely based on its cover. So, I looked through my collection of books that I’ve gathered up through the years and thought to myself, “Hum… what looks good?”

With this week’s suggestion, I didn’t have the full pleasure of “judging a book based on its cover”—because I am trying to go through the hundreds of books that I already have—I’ve read all the synopses on their covers before. But I did make myself pick through a selection of books based on a few guidelines: the book couldn’t be a movie or TV show, it couldn’t be a classic that everyone knows the gist of the story line, and it couldn’t be one that I’ve been itching to get my hands on. I made myself look through the ones that I haven’t looked at for a while, the ones that were bought on a whim, written by someone I’ve never heard of before, or given to me from someone who reads genres that I’m not that into. This week I was going to make sure it was something different for me… Or so I thought.

Looking solely at the covers of the books I had collected—a couple fantasy, several YA and children’s chapter books (I don’t know why I gravitate to these so much!), a mystery, and a memoir—I kept coming back to the same one over and over. A black and white photograph of a lone figure with the title written in red. The lighting in the photograph had the lone figure highlighted in all the right places—the contours of his face and muscular arm—this alone will have you thinking to yourself that this must be some kind of romance novel, a spinoff of a harlequin perhaps and this will catch the females of the audience and make them want to pick it up. But romance novels are not my thing, so that is not what caught my attention. It was the dark angelic wing protruding from his back, and with a title of The Fallen, I couldn’t help myself but to pick it.

Some History:

The Fallen: The Fallen and Leviathan is a Young Adult read. It was originally published in 2003 and reprinted in 2010 with the new above picture on the cover. It is book one of five in The Fallen series, and it turns out it was also made into an ABC Family movie, Fallen, in 2006. (Oops! So much for those guidelines I made for myself!)

The Synopsis:

***SPOILER ALERT***

I wrote this review a little different than usual. I’m not sure why, other than this is how it came out, and I apologize that it 1) reads a bit like a school book report, and 2) does give away some of the ending.

 Aaron Corbet is a child of the foster care system and has finally found a foster family who he regards as his mom, dad and his brother, Stevie. On his eighteenth birthday he can suddenly understand and speak languages of all kinds even though he’s had no education in them. On top of that, he comes across a “homeless” man who begins following Aaron, telling him about his troubled past and the future that is to come: Aaron is Nephilim—the son of a mortal and an angel—and he has been chosen to redeem the Fallen.

The angel Verchiel is the master of the Powers and a Messenger of God. His duty is to cleanse the earth of the filth that the Fallen have produced upon the earth: Nephilim. Using his human hounds and divine senses he tracks down Nephilim and purges them from the earth. The Nephilim he’s currently hunting is Aaron Corbet.

With the help of Zeke, the Grigori, Camael of the Fallen, and his best friend Gabriel, Aaron transforms into the Nephilim he is, and not a minute too late: Verchiel has finally found him and is ready to purge his filth from the earth. A battle ensues and Aaron turns out to be more powerful than Verchiel originally thought. Aaron injures Verchiel, who flees, taking Stevie with him. Now Aaron must not only fulfil the prophecy, but find his brother before Verchiel turns him into one of his human hounds.

Aaron and his posse begin a road trip in search of Stevie, with a powerful pull toward Blythe, Maine. Along the way they encounter a group of Orishas, another product the Fallen have created. However, the Orishas are ruled by Verchiel, who has bestowed the mission of killing Aaron upon them, but they don’t succeed. Only one Orishas remains, and before fleeing it gets a small revenge and bites Gabriel.

Arriving in Blythe, they find Gabriel a doctor to treat the infected Orishas bite, but the townsfolk here are a little strange: they look suspicious of everyone and act as if they’re being controlled. That is everyone but Dr. Katie McGovern, who later tells Aaron that she, too, is an outsider, new to town. She came to town because her ex-boyfriend, Dr. Kevin Wessell, had e-mailed her with a strange request that she visit, but when she got to town he was missing and hadn’t been in to see his patients for days.

Katie enlists the help of Aaron around the office until Kevin hopefully returns, but after finding several strangely mutated animals in Kevin’s freezer, she begins to think that Kevin may have dug up some dirt on the town that someone didn’t want him finding out.  Katie and Aaron agree that they need to find out what’s going on around the town and try to find Kevin, but the mission is doomed from the beginning when Katie turns up missing herself. Aaron begins the mission alone, only to find himself in the lair of Leviathan, “that spark of uncertainty in the Creator’s thoughts as He forged the world—that brief moment of chaos—before Genesis.”

Leviathan, a great sea monster, entraps its victims by making their mind’s eye see whatever paradise it wishes to see, then swallows them whole and lives off the life force stored inside them. Aaron finds that both Camael and Gabriel are in Leviathan’s stomachs, and knows that in order to save them he must overcome his fear of letting the Nephilim power within him out and do the one thing the Archangel Gabriel could not: destroy Leviathan.

Aaron defeats Leviathan and frees all those within Leviathan’s stomachs including his friends and the Archangel Gabriel. Aaron then fulfills the prophecy and forgives the Fallen who are found within Leviathan’s many stomachs and sends them to their Heavenly home. But before The Archangel Gabriel ascends he gives Aaron another hint about the prophecy he is fulfilling and a wink of information about who his real father is.

The Fallen concludes with the townspeople of Blythe, Maine being released from their captor’s control, Katie and Kevin reunited, and Aaron with a lot of questions: Who is his real father? What does his father have to do with the prophecy? And where is Stevie?

The Review:

The Pros:

Of course, I liked The Fallen, it’s right up my alley (so much for breaking out of my habits and trying something new!) First, it’s a YA read, so you know I’m hooked there.

Second, it’s a present-day mythology just like the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan or The Mortal Instruments and Shadowhunter series by Cassandra Clare, both of which I’m a big fan of. To take a myth—and I use this word to group together the whole, so please you Christians out there don’t hate on me for using this word, I’m a Christian, too! —but to take a myth such as angels or Greek gods and to create a new story for them is awesome! You’re taking those classics that a lot of people don’t read any more because they find them boring or too difficult to understand and are making them readily available to today’s societies so that Genesis, Matthew, Luke, Homer and Sophocles are getting a new—and usually younger—generation to ignite and share their stories again.

Third, something that I found that set The Fallen apart from most YA books was the language. I, myself, don’t have the best vocabulary by any means (I should have listened to my mother and studied for those vocabulary tests!), but I have grown my knowledge and understanding over the years, and this book still had me looking up words in the dictionary (or rather dictionary.com, yay technology!) I like that about a book! I like that while I’m reading for pleasure I’m still learning things. I don’t think that everything should be dumbed down so everyone in the general population can understand it. I think you should always be learning something and improving on yourself, and if that means you must get a dictionary out to understand what’s happening in the storyline then that’s great! You learned something in the process; you made yourself better and had a better experience because of it!

The Cons:

Aaron Corbet is a little fake. He’s too good and not moody enough to be a teenage boy and a child of the foster system who has just found out that he’s this mythological creature. In the beginning, you’re told that he has a troubled past, that he was moved from foster home to foster home, but the person sitting in front of you is polite, never causes a stir, and when he does have an emotional outbreak of some kind its abbreviated and almost void of emotion. Almost like his outburst were an afterthought, like Thomas Sniegoski’s editor said, “Hey, don’t you think he would be a little upset that this is happening?” The lack of emotion he shows when someone he loves is hurt or killed is the biggest one for me. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t get angry and yell, he just tells himself that he can’t believe that they are hurt or dead. I understand shellshock, but I think this is a bit more than just that. Aaron is not fleshed out enough to be a real person, but then again, I guess he really isn’t, after all he is Nephilim.

My other qualm with The Fallen is defeat is too easy. With each battle scene—if you can really call them that—the fight was ended really before it began. These are some big monsters he’s going up against, and yet I saw how the end of each battle was going to play out from the moment they started. There was no adrenaline rush of “is he going to make it?” in any of the battle scenes. From the beginning, you knew he was going to be just fine and good would prevail over evil once again.

The Wrap-Up:

Overall, I enjoyed The Fallen. I thought it was a great storyline with a good mystery: I want to know who Aaron’s father is myself! Who is this—as Camael puts it— “angel of formidable power to have sired one like [Aaron]?" ? And does he ever find Stevie? All the questions Aaron has at the end of the book are questions I have too, which is a sign of a good story. The author has you hooked to make you want to pick up that next book. Which I plan on doing just that!

 From one wine-loving bookaholic to another, I hope I’ve helped you find your next fix. —Dani

 Love this book? Check out The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare or one of her many other Shadowhunter series.

Pair it with: Lost Angel’s 2016 Mischief—Fruit-forward and jammy, with hints of cocoa.

Not all good wines are expensive, and this one is just that: good, easy on the wallet and fits with the trouble that Aaron gets himself into.

Start a conversation: What book have you chosen based solely on its cover and why? Was it worth the gamble?

Have a book you’d like to suggest or one you’d like me to review? Please feel free to leave your comments down below.

[williamschulteaieseciitkgp]

Buy Your Blog The Eye It Needs Now

Helpful Advice On The Way To Blog Smarter

Blogging can seem like a type of technology that may be elusive towards the ordinary entrepreneur, but that may be not even close to reality. Online blogs are merely a type of communication between a website owner along with the visitors who decide to go through the URL. Make it worth their time by creating informative and entertaining blog posts. Read on to discover how.

If you are beginning to blog, it is vital that you never stop trying. You are not likely to get a lot of readers your first day, and in many cases the first week, and that is certainly okay. Just keep writing what you are actually excited about, along with the readers will come to you.

Headlines are what prospective customers have a tendency to read first. They behave like bait. If your bait is nice, they will “bite” in the article too. However, should your headline is dull, repetitive, commonplace, predictable, or just not intriguing at all, readers may choose to skip blogging the complete thing.

Set goals for the blog. Having set goals you want to achieve will go along way towards upping your productivity. Select how many posts you need to make inside a given week. Figure out what your focus is going to be and what keywords you might be targeting. Finding the time to determine your goals, helps keep you on focus and writing a blog productively.

Your blog should stand out from the masses of other blogs. Being unique and offering an unusual flavor in your content will entice readers. You’ll obtain the same result by getting information which is tough to locate. Try to post about unusual pastimes or knowledge. Provide specifics of how widgets are made. In this way, you give readers reasons to read your site if they need certain information.

Design your website to maintain not simply the reader’s interest but also your interest. When you grow tired of what you are actually writing about, you won’t be more likely to keep blog posting. Even though you do, the caliber of your writing will be affected. internet marketing review Readers can tell that the writing has lost some of its punch.

Structure your site content and so the reader can easily scan them to catch the gist. Individuals who read blogs are, usually, an impatient bunch. They flip backwards and forwards between pages practically on the speed of light. If you wish to obtain your message across, let them have an issue that will catch their attention with only a fast scan.

While you are seeking to select a topic which will be the foundation of the blog, you should ensure that you are searching for your topic. You can’t expect to have a blog whose topic doesn’t appeal to your interest in anyway. Choosing a topic which you love improves the chance that you’ll stick to continually updating your blog site, that can generate new readers.

A good way to engage your website readers would be to add a poll for your blog. This feature is often seen on most blog posting platforms and lets you require input from your readers. You could potentially ask what they really want to view much more of or a smaller amount of and utilize the poll leads to fine-tune your blog. So, add a poll and get to know your audience better.

Attempt to utilize synonyms for your keywords. This will likely be sure that your site will not come off as a piece of spam. Varying your word option is also the best way to draw your varied audience. It is an easy step that can produce a realm of difference for your personal blog.

Blogging

Post content that might be relevant to readers. Rather than writing a blog regarding your everyday routine, offer guidelines for your readers to look as well as your life such as recipes or travel tips. Readers will love to use these guidelines in their own homes and lives instead of merely reading concerning your life.

When writing your blog, make sure which you create your Feed as obvious as is possible. It is possible to not expect other readers to find it if it blends in with all the current text within your blog. That is why you ought to input it inside a prominent position on your blog, and check out to apply the orange RSS icon if at all possible.

Try breaking your site content into manageable pieces. It is a super easy, but unfortunately ignored having a blog tactic. Tend not to write like you try to operate a marathon. Break up your posts in smaller pieces.This will help to improve your SEO, and it may help create a clearer writing approach. This can actually enable you to think better.

Take time to apply the strategy learned in the following paragraphs to the own blogging efforts. You may soon be reaping the advantages of increased sales and much more satisfied customers, who feel a personal connection to you and your company. Start writing your blog today with renewed confidence as well as a fresh approach.

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