#CM Episode Hit re-watch

[whimsyswastry]

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<3 <3 Thank you  @greypetrel​ for the tag. Sorry it’s taken me a bit...that ADHD urge to rearrange in the middle of the night on a work day hit on earlier this week and my loft has been a disaster area since.

I think I filled out something similar not too long ago, but as I’m pretty sure most of my answers have changed since then, I shall fill it out again. Plus, I love being tagged :D

Share your wallpaper: I’m rocking the Dragon Age love. A beautiful and complicated piece you can find here, by @lethendralis-paints

Last song you listened to: Feeling nostalgic for being 18 so I’m listening to Here (In Your Arms) by Hellogoodbye

Currently reading: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo for the second time. The entrire grishaverse gripped me in a way I hadn’t felt since H*P* when I was like 9 years old. Plus, who doesn’t love Wesper?

Last movie: Quasi on Hulu by the people who made Super Troopers. Surprisingly funny, but definitely one of those dumb improv movies you need to be in the mood for.

Last show: lol also Supernatural. I missed Cas, so I’m re-watching some of my favorite episodes while I design a digital planner.

Craving: Sleep. I gave in to my recent craving of homemade brownies and now just need to sugar crash.

What are you wearing right now: A loose 2-piece pj set, blank spaghetti straps and black shorts.

How tall are you: I converted my height from imperial and apparently I am also around 166 cm.

Piercings: Two in each ears that usually has tiny hoops in it. I also had a triple forward helix which was SO AWESOME, but itched like mad so I took them out and let it close.

Tattoos: One on each wrist and a handful of others that I plan on getting if I ever commit the time and money.

Glasses? Contacts? Glasses. I used to wear contacts on special occasions, but I’ve embraced the glasses 24/7 lifestyle.

Last drink: Water

Last thing you ate: The aforementioned brownies

Favorite color: It changes pretty regularly. As far as clothing goes, I really like dark reddish purple, that orange-y yellow, olive green, and eggplant. Any jewel tone really. But I’m also a fan of those sickly sweet pastels when I’m doodling.

Current obsession: I’m between obsessions honestly. I guess the closest thing would be the digital planner I’m designing. Can’t wait until the DA or ME bug bites me again, though. Particularly because I’m *so* close to having completed my second draft of Operation Leviathan, but my brain just won’t do the thing.

Any pets: One adorable, stubborn, sassy basset mix.

Favorite fictional character: Only one? Umm....Castiel comes to mind immediately. But he’s just the current one, not my all time favorite…all-time favorite is probably…. Kaidan Alenko.

Tagging || I tagged a bunch of people last time and am feeling shy...so please consider yourself tagged and don’t forget to tag me if you do it! <3

[gothprentiss]

hi sona! i'm sending this as an ask so you can ignore it as long as you want. i have been noodling on this and wonder if you have thoughts too: emily and strauss. in "book of the dead" you wrote that convo between derek and emily about strauss' drinking and derek's issues with hotch when they were stuck in traffic with that very funny christmas truck. in hit/run we see erin strauss thank derek for calling her out on her drinking. do you think strauss ever tried to make amends to emily? i like to think so, and i like to think about how poorly that conversation might have gone, given what strauss did to emily and perhaps colored by emily's experiences with matthew. i went back and looked at some of strauss's episodes, and it appears that any lingering animosity between them was gone by season 7, i guess put to rest(?) by emily's death. so maybe an amends conversation wouldn't have gone as poorly as it would have in say season 5. follow up, do you think CME section chief emily ever thinks about strauss? because i sure found strauss haunting me as i watched.

first off: thank you so much for sending this as an ask because i did have to watch a couple of cm eps about it! and many other things in the interim. so my initial instinct re amends— in the style of strauss reaching out to derek— was not really, kind of, maybe and i don’t think that’s changed, but i do have a lot to say now. unfortunately. nb and disclaimer i didn’t watch back every strauss ep so whatever’s dumb here is 50/50 just me being dumb / i don’t remember what happened. tldr i don’t think strauss would have seen herself as having anything to apologize for or remedy without prompting from prentiss, and i don’t see prentiss in a position to do that without either a) strauss surviving until the later seasons or b) reimagining how much was going on behind the scenes of prentiss exit s7.

so first (yuck fic talk sorry) — i’d meant to write something longer about strauss in “book of the dead”. when derek’s trying to decide how far he thinks hotch was willing to see strauss fall, i’d been meaning to write prentiss more overtly wondering how far she’d have been willing to see it go, examining the conditions of her own resentment and compassion, etc. something more about reid, too, whose struggles with addiction i think would have weighed on her mind more in that context, and more, too, after matthew’s death. [more on this below. if i remember.] i’d thought about whether she’d then tell him about strauss’ role in hiring her; it strikes me as the primal scene for emily leaving, even though it’s never brought up in that context, because it’s unimaginable to me that a profound sense of you weren’t supposed to be here hasn’t dogged her ever since. a lot of the s6-7 prentiss arc works because she is fundamentally a different kind of person than the rest of the team, and she’s aware of that. the conditions of her hire, i imagine, might be part of how she names that difference for herself. at the same time, though, i can see her really wanting to say something about it— wanting it as a clean breaking point, easier than everything in the wake of the doyle case— and deciding not to, knowing she’d regret it and hate what she’d expose herself to by opening that door. so i just left it. point here isn’t just something i didn’t bother to write, it’s that i really do think of early season strauss as pretty critical to prentiss as a character, even if that’s kind of reading against the grain of the show. the show, after all, thinks of prentiss as having earned her place on the team through the events of 3x02, which i assume is why we don’t really see her processing this moment. 

as for making amends. i say not really because i think not overtly— in part because i do not think strauss would consider her actions worth amending. i think strauss would largely see herself as having operated in good faith albeit without the right big-picture mentality, but also as having handed prentiss a really good job which she wouldn’t have gotten anyway. her whole speech to prentiss is basically like, i am your benefactor who got you what you wanted, i see this unit as a huge problem, i want you to help me fix it. sneaky, cloak and dagger shit, sure, but a kind of office politicking i don’t know that strauss would have totally reneged on by later seasons, and likely not something she’d see as anything other than typical quid-pro-quo. it leads to some initial awkwardness and a sense of a lingering liability (prentiss could make things more difficult between hotch and strauss, which could presumably go up the chain of command and get strauss in trouble?), but i don’t know if this would have translated to guilt for strauss. (i was sort of wavering on how much i’m overreading this, because i know i read against the show’s grain a lot.) 

one way strauss was thinking of her relationship with prentiss was as one of potential protégée: she was, after all, pretty honest about her intentions, and pretty clear that, while she was holding the job as a cudgel over prentiss’ head, she effectively expected prentiss to work for her. you’d choose this person carefully; i don’t think strauss saw herself delivering the kind of verdict on prentiss’ merit and place on the team that i think prentiss received. i do kind of wonder if she saw a younger agent who had a bit of a reputation for ambition and hotheadedness and saw someone she could shape— probably a career she could build too (lots of upward job mobility if hotch goes, after all). i think ‘saw her younger self’ would be pushing it too far, but i think there are some parallels between the recklessness and ambition that strauss throws at prentiss and the recklessness and ambition we see from strauss in her villain arc. in some ways, i can see strauss thinking of prentiss as an unfortunate lost cause, impressed and exasperated in equal measure by her display of hard-headed devotion to the bau. 

what i can see, though, is strauss catching animus off prentiss and either going after her about it or really examining the situation. i haven’t rewatched every strauss episode, so i don’t remember how much the strauss redemption arc they go for coincides with the period of time in which that would be possible or reasonable— after all, i imagine strauss knew very well how unpopular she was among the bau team. i don’t think something like the extremely bad vibes she caught off prentiss in 5x09 would have done it, precisely because it arises from that more generalized hostility— and, as i said above, i think strauss probably had an impression of prentiss as, by nature, obstinately loyal to the team and hostile to her authority in the wake of 3x02. 

so that’s what i think about strauss’ character. i did really like her as a villain, and in general i love a careerist woman character who is just so driven by her own ambition that she doesn’t really know how to do anything other than aim upwards. my fondness for that kind of character does shape the above thoughts, too, since i see her as a kind of character who is pretty limited in her capacity for guilt, or her capacity to act on guilt. shame, sure, and i think that underlies her conversation with derek. like, bottom line TLDR etc— i think strauss would have regrets about prentiss but would put the onus on prentiss falling in line with the unruly BAU and its practices. there’s an element of the moral (administratively so) crusader to strauss in her anti-hotch agenda, one which i think would largely lead to her seeing prentiss as a bit of a letdown whose resentments were immature and poorly conceived.

i also said not really— i do think if we imagine more going on behind the scenes of prentiss’ departure, there’s space for there to have been some kind of confrontation during s7, as you say. like blah blah the show’s short memory and inconsistent commitment to totally smoothing out issues jars oddly with the way that we see prentiss often really holding onto resentments (e.g. 4x17). i think in some ways, the only person prentiss would have brought up the ‘i wasn’t supposed to be assigned to this unit’ thing to would have been strauss, because she’d see it as established knowledge between them— it wouldn’t require the same measure of vulnerability or confession. (or, like, impossibly, when prentiss becomes unit chief. if she hadn’t died and had remained in the fbi after the uhhh… replicator? storyline, then 100 percent i can see prentiss bringing it up in later seasons.)

as for prentiss— like i said, i think she would have a MASSIVE chip in her shoulder about all this. but one thing i find interesting is whether or not that would translate to hating strauss. i declined to say that strauss would see prentiss as a younger version of herself, but i do think one thought that was VERY loud in prentiss’ head as she stared up into the far distance at the end of season 2 was the realization that not letting her mother get her a job didn’t disentangle her from getting politicked upwards. this is because of my family, even. here, more overthinking: i think the extent to which strauss is not just one person who fucked with her but also emblematic of everything she didn’t want for herself is less than the extent to which that is true of her mother, and in a way that i think she would have sat down and reckoned with. it’s not a resentment and anger she can necessarily get rid of (cf. 5x09), but it’s not one she can meaningfully act on. 

in the same way that i think prentiss is a letdown for strauss, strauss strikes me as a letdown for prentiss. i was thinking about how in limelight prentiss jumps to agent morris’ defense in this moment of the show doing lil babby feminist politics— if she were a man you’d say she had balls, or something like that. there’s the obvious angle of responding to what she sees as chauvinism from her peers, but i think it also bespeaks a level of admiration for ambitious women. you know, growing up around ambassador prentiss, i’m sure she had her fair share of women in power that she admired even as she came to resent the kind of power-politicking that came with said positions. the show leans into a particular kind of incompetence (i.e., bad in the field) for strauss as it progresses— i kind of imagine prentiss watching, cataloguing, and feeling more angry and let down the more she saw. i guess (circling back to yuck fic talk) that’s another reason i wanted to write prentiss thinking about strauss— i see her as unable to figure out how she feels about the possibility of the woman’s professional downfall. i think she might think, at some point, there’s no use really holding a grudge (which she nevertheless holds) after strauss no longer is a threat to the team— like i think she is aware that her life’s path has been eased (/her agency over her life has been limited) in equally significant ways which were simply not made so apparent to her, and the grudge against strauss is really just a grudge against the condition of her existence. i think of when she tells reid, worried about failing to live up to his potential, that she thought she’d be a bored socialite at this point: i got the sense that prentiss thinks, despite it all, that this is probably one of the better ways her life could have gone. 

blah blah my sense of how prentiss works and ticks is very much hinged on me being like She’s Just Like Clarice Starling and the self-examining steely* control that starling has is very much central to how i think prentiss thinks as well. (*steely isn’t impermeable. but i think prentiss has learned to compartmentalize well partially by just having to when she was growing up and developing individuality which was antagonistic to her environment, and partially by sheer force of will. i feel like i am always beating this drum in fic lol.) so other TLDR bottom line— i don’t think she would have let herself bring it up except under extreme duress.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT THE LAST PART. yeah for sure i think she thinks about her. i do kind of imagine her desire to not be like her mother has a far more complex echo in strauss, who is presumably the imprint for prentiss’ sense of what misuse of power looks like in behavioral science. i assume she thought a great deal about strauss, who thought what she was doing was right, and that the agents caught up in her desire to roust hotch should either bend or break. i’m cutting this off here. this is long. i just think the show should actually try to write prentiss as good at her job so i can more fully commit to like, oh yeah i also think that the way she wasn’t (imo) ever fully able to respect or not respect strauss really dogs her and her capacity to evaluate her actions as leader. 

[katierosefun]

Once again, thanks for a detailed reply! I agree re emotional complexity of good betrayal stories, even though irl I know I wouldn't want to go back as I wouldn't have any love left for someone who betrayed me. (And, to return to HdL, I'd send CM to Hell w/o a second thought. I guess I'd make a very poor writer - but a vicious vengeful ghost lol) (Sorry, needed to get this out of my system bc I HATE CM so much it makes me incoherent. How people can ship him and MW is beyond my comprehension)

PS: And here's another random thought: it occurred to me that there's something knight-like in Chan-seong's devotion to Man-wol... and then this made me think about La Belle Dame sans Merci (I know this association is a bit far-fetched, but I can't get it out of my head now) (Ok, I'll stop spamming you now; have a nice day!) (2/2)

well, anon, i think there's a lovely place for vicious vengeful ghosts. (and to be honest, i am in partial agreement with you--i never really did sympathize at all with chung myung, just because like . . . ? i dunno, maybe it's just that his life never seemed too hard, and i didn't think the stakes were necessarily high enough for him to do all that he did :/ like, the hell dude. you didn't have to do all that, did you? like, what was the reason?

and also, like . . . maybe chung myung seems especially small in my opinion because of how sharp the contrast between himself and chan seong is. (in that chan seong's insanely selfless. he trusts man wol completely, and he's also willing to risk everything for her! even earlier in the show, he admits to that other hotel manager about how he does have feelings for man wol, but he won't act on them . . . and also, maybe chan seong and man wol's relationship hits a very personal chord with me because something about chan seong telling man wol to trust him and something about man wol being still somewhat stuck in the hurt that was inflicted on her years ago and something about learning how to love while also learning how to let go and learning how to wait are all so . . . GOD!! ! ! ! i didn't expect to get invested in their relationship, but upon the second watch, i realize that i really did love them a lot more than i thought--and i think part of that is just like. hotel del luna is one of those shows where i don't think people will really understand the appeal of it unless they're at a different point in their life, and each episode in the show sort of reflects so many different people's stages of life, so i think that's the beauty of the show. something about that other hotel manager, you know, the one directly before chan seong--saying something about how you meet all kinds of people and it makes life so much more interesting.)

oh, and as for the poem: i've never read la belle dame sans merci until this morning, and i agree. the image of sitting on a hillside and dreaming, the pale knights having maybe something to do with the ghosts, and then waking up and finding oneself alone . . . there's something bittersweet in the poem because it speaks of love for a woman found in a meadow (man wol in the garden!) with long hair and wild eyes (MAN WOL), but that emptiness that comes with waking up and looking around and just waiting (and this is why i sojourn here, / alone and palely loitering) :(((((((

[arjsstuff]

Memories with Pkyek

My introduction to Pyaar Ki Ye Ek Kahani or PKYEK as we all called it started with the amazing introduction promos I watched several times on star one. I remember watching one of the trailers of PKYEK on star one when I was in 5th grade which is almost 11 years back. I was casually switching channels and I saw this ad, mysterious, the tone of the ad was pretty dark, a curly haired girl and a blue eyed guy and he saves her from getting hit by a car. It was strangely so beautiful and the words “math aao mere kareeb, aag hu main jal jaogi” was clearly stuck in my head and this was a promo a week before the serial released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM1Cq62uJcY

I think the serial was scheduled to air from 18th October 2010 which was 2 days before my birthday and although I decided I have to watch this I could not watch it for some reason and I forgot about this serial. One day in class my bench mate and then close friend started talking to me about this serial and I immediately told her how much I loved the promo and she asked me to watch the episodes at 8:30 and if I missed it she also told me the re-broadcast timings which was sometime in the evening. I was like yeah sure since she strongly recommended it to me I would definitely watch it. So I was almost 7-8 episodes late and the first episode I watched was Abhay-Piya's first dance and the first scene I watched was Haseena telling Abhay to control himself on their party night near a small bridge kind of place and then the dance followed. 

OMG I must tell how it was one of the best dances I had ever seen on TV serial, it was so magical, especially the way they both were so lost in each other’s eyes and he ensured her torn dress wasn’t visible to anyone and also they danced on to kuch khaas hai song which was such a great song and it ended with the signature Mahiyaa tune. It instantly got me hooked to and I watched it religiously every day. My mom did not want me to watch teen romance Hindi TV serial so I literally had to change channels to Hungama every time she came to the hall XD. Since PKYEK was such a phenomena at school I made so many friends and the best part about pkyek is wherever I went after school for example junior college, Uni, my cousins friends etc all became my friends because of how we all watched pkyek LOL. 

Anyway so I got my really studious friend Z into watching it and she was this person who never watched TV but once she say Abhay she was hopelessly in love with that guy. I cringe when I think we all went through this in 5th grade, I mean how were we all swooning over him like proper teenagers. Anyway one day she went to the library and found his picture on some magazine and she told me and I literally ran to the library to get a hold of it but there were so many people already holding it and finally I got a glimpse of Abhay Raichand’s photo and a short interview by Vivian D'sena. I think she started getting so addicted to pkyek that her mom did not like it and she sometimes called me n my landline to talk about it lol. One day there was this class in school where we weren’t supposed to talk so her and I wrote whatever we had to talk on my notebook along with my friend D and the full chat was about Z, D and me swooning over Abhay, while letting A have Abhay and us mostly us teasing her with him. The chats were extremely funny so I tore them from my book and gave it to my senior in my school bus to read it, and when her stop came, before she got down she handed over the papers to me. I think my bad luck was super great that day and my bus teacher, who was this very this strict language teacher who 7-8th grade students caught her passing the papers onto me and asked me to hand it over to her. I immediately put them into my bag and tried tearing them into pieces while she kept screaming to hand it over to her. In the end I had to hand over one part of the chat which was quite dangerous considering we were only 5th graders going crazy about an actor and talking like late teens but I managed to save the dangerous part in my bag. This ***** ma’am read it and literally told me that she would hand it over to my school’s head teacher and she did that the very next day. Why can’t teachers get a life? 

Anyway the next day I came to class and told everyone about this and my extra sweet friends told me not to worry about it. In between an afternoon class, the peon came and called Z first, we thought maybe she got called for some extra circular activity, but when the peon came again and called me I knew I was dead. I went into the head teacher's room and she had almost got screwed and I was next in line and I somehow told even D was a part of this convo and even she got called. The other girls in my class were actually worried cuz they knew what was happening. And later head teacher screwed all of us and I guess Z cried on her way to class and then the head teacher let me and D go to class but we were so shameless, after getting a earful we could not stop laughing and literally lmaoed in the corridor before entering the class. This whole thing kind of strained my friendship with Z, and we weren’t the best of friends anymore but D and I still stuck close.

My school had this weird system where there was a girls and boys corridor and the girl’s corridor was pretty cool since it was on the left side and was closer to the trees while the right corridor used by guys was where the teachers entered the class from. So in these corridors we always role played and for some reason I was always Abhay even though I wanted to be Piya (I’m guessing it was because Of my short hair and being an serious faced person generally) and a lot of my friends were Piya and this friend of mine who was crazy about guys was called tracker and my friend D was Misha and we used to randomly dance to songs and recall the dialogues from the previous episodes, do the remoe juliet skit from pkyek and all sorts of things.

The background music on Pkyek is seriously so legendary and is among one of my favourite bgm tracks for a hindi serial. I would personally rate it number one and it had been my ringtone for 3 years. I tried looking for the Mahiyaa singer and the official song but I could not find it anywhere and mostly found only the recorded copies played in the serial. In my school bus I had seniors who I was very very close to because of pkyek and we always sung the background music, it’s so funny how we knew all the background music from pkyek by heart and remembered it perfectly and were in sync. I started singing this usually in my class as well and my friends hummed along.

Times of India and this other newspaper which I can’t recall had this section where TV channel broadcast programs were listed every day and this tiny picture from random TV shows was displayed on top of it. Whenever there was a pkyek picture all our friends used to literally fight over a picture that was probably 1*1 cms, very very tiny and even the quality wasn’t great but if you opened my pencil pouch on any random day you would find at least 10-15 of them LOL (I’ve lost all of them now).

found this from https://thereandtheir.wordpress.com/tag/indian-tv-serial/ the tv listing was similar but it was a bit different

I already mentioned how strict my mom was back then so I had to watch the re broadcast since I couldn’t watch the episodes fully at 8:30 PM. I had to wake up around midnight or early morning to watch it. I remember my parent’s thinking I sleep walked because my parents found me in hall instead of my room on odd mornings. It was quite the life with the box TV since I had to sit so close to it and the volume had to be on 1 or 2 since I could not wakeup people at home while watching it. One of the benefits of waking up early to watch this was also that I could see the newest promos on TV and I was always the first one in class to tell what the new promos were about. I remember telling my friends some of the coolest Pkyek promos like the vampire reveal one which in my opinion is still the best promo for a Hindi TV serial (I think Parvati introduction promo for Mahadev on Lifeok is a close second) and the promo where Abhay bites her and many more. I remember revealing this to my friends and my friends rushing home and switching on star one and waiting for the promos to appear and calling me to tell how amazing those promo were.

I remember how this one time I went to my senior A's house and we created fake Ouija board to call spirits. So we called her dead grandmother's spirit and she asked if the creepy guy in her class who was obsessed with her would stop annoying her and I immediately remembered the pkyek scene where Panchi asks maithli on the Ouija board if Danish would ever get punished. I don't know who's idea it was to play with it but it certainly had to do something with pkyek.

Those were really the fun times of my life. Pkyek is and will always be the most memorable serial for me. It’s not like we can expect great cg and VFX for a vampire serial and it in no way could be another vampire dairy or twilight (not to forget EK produced it) but the story and the writing was really amazing. I was a huge sucker for Abhay-Piyas chemistry and the supporting cast were literally the best!

[guylty]

Today’s post comes as a mixed bag of inconsequentialities, both RA-related and OT, just because I have – oh wonder – a renewed urge to write a blog post. It proves a point I made in an earlier post that I am more likely to blog when I need some hobby writing in order to balance out work writing. I have just spent a few hours (!) dealing with the CMS of my new copy writing client, hence I am keen on writing for fun now. Let’s start off with a bit of Armitage.

Spooks 7

Over on Twitter we have been doing a Spooks 7 re-watch over the last few weeks. On Saturday we finished episode 4 with a handful of us live-tweeting while we watched the show simultaneously. It has been a while since I watched Spooks, and it is actually quite fun to revisit Lucas North after a long time. There is, obviously, the fact that RA looks so skinny and young in the role – which is no wonder, as we all know that he starved himself to look like a very gaunt ex-prisoner at the start of the season. Also, the show was made 12 to 13 years ago *omg* – time has passed since then although RA could very easily still play an MI5 agent. In fact, he’d make a very convincing “Sir” Lucas as the head of the counter-terrorism department. Yeah, yeah, I know, that option was taken away from us when they killed off the character – literally and figuratively – in season 9. But just sayin’. In any case, I was watching from my box set of season 7, and it just occurred to me that Lucas is actually front and centre (figuratively speaking) on the cover. At least in terms of size, he is the biggest head 🤭 on the cover. And he gets quite a smoulder on for Disc 4 (see above) 😁. BTW – isn’t that the worst tagline you have ever seen on a spy thriller??? “MI5 not 9 to 5” – jeepers, I suppose that is meant to be funny, but boy does it feel like a flat pun 😂…

Among other things that we delved into with the meagre 140 characters at our disposal, was Lucas ex-wife Elizabeta. It has always struck me as somewhat strange how she was written. So, she is his ex-wife. Lucas is quite clearly still in love with her when he finally returns after 8 years in prison. She, however, having been told he was dead, has divorced (?) and moved on. Fair enough. However, given that she divorced him not knowing why he had actually vanished, it feels a bit strange to me that she has so little feeling for him. Ok, she seems to have a new relationship (and a child), and it would be extremely confusing to find oneself faced with the beloved husband that had been declared dead. Nevertheless I found her a bit too cold. (Or am I in APM-by-proxy?)

Anyway, it was a fun hour spent together on Twitter. Don’t expect any in-depth discussions about characters or scenes, it’s mainly pithy remarks. But if you want to join in, I am sure our organiser mujertropical would be happy to have you. We’re on again next Saturday at 8pm BST.

Couple of OT Updates

No word from the recruiter re. my job application/interviews last week. It’s Tuesday now; the interview was on Thursday. Ok, I get the message 😁. I guess the job is not on. And tbh with you, I am relieved. Don’t get me wrong, it was great to get some validation through this expedited application process. But I wasn’t altogether sure whether I wanted to work full-time for the small amount of money they were offering… This way I won’t have to engage in unpleasant salary negotiations…

For those of you curious about my latest upcycling project: The tray table has been transformed and is now in situ.

Tray table as picked up at the dump

After cleaning and repainting

The final object, distressed, decoupaged and now in situ on the landing:

A Score

I can’t tell you exactly what made me look into online auctions last week, but somehow I looked at an Irish auction site and I spotted a small porcelain figurine whose style looked familiar to me.

I am neither a collector of porcelain, nor do I actually find these particular figurines particularly cute, but I immediately recognised them as “Hummel figurines”. They are quite well-known in Germany and have been collectibles for the past 70 years. The older they are, the more valuable. They are not my cup of tea at all, but my mum has a couple of those figurines and apparently really loves them, so I placed a bid on the auction, hoping that no one in Ireland is aware of what these figurines can be worth. Bingo. I won the figurine for 25 Euro – my maximum bid because the auction did not provide any details about the age of the figurine. Today I picked it up, and it turns out to be from the 1950s (judging by the trademark underneath), which makes it a bit more valuable than my bidding price. I saw the number 150 pop up a few times… Suffice to say I am chuffed. My mum’s birthday present is sorted ✔️

Revisiting the past

I can’t even tell you why and how, but somehow I came across a really old article about RA this week. Many of you have read it before, so it is not new at all. But I thought it was fun to revisit it and have a look at what RA was on a about *ten years ago*. This is an interview with The Mirror on the release of Strike Back.

I didn’t pick this out for the purpose of snide comments or in order to negate what has recently become more obvious, but I thought his answers to the more personal questions here were interesting, as the interview shows RA at 39 – and here we are, RA now (almost) 49. Newspaper articles (especially from tabloid sources) always have to be taken with a grain of salt, but I’d say that RA has come a long way since then. Apart from his private life, I am also struck by his honesty re. the fears that keep him up all night. Does he still believe that? (With some major hits and starring roles under his belt, one would hope not.) In any case, fun to re-read.

  A Bit A’ This ‘N’ That Today's post comes as a mixed bag of inconsequentialities, both RA-related and OT, just because I have - oh wonder - a renewed urge to write a blog post.

[justice4jemily]

Team Jemily, DOWN WITH JEID

So, I took one for the team and watched the most recent three episodes of Criminal Minds on fast-forward, to attempt to find some Jemily moments/avoid Jeid bullshit.  And I’m sorry to say, it was a vast wasteland.  The first episode opened with some sort of party that the whole team was at, and Emily and JJ seemed to be alone on the back deck, talking... so I re-wound and hit “play”... but it was quick and casual and nothing particularly interesting, and the convo soon ended so Emily could make a phone call.  And that seemed to be the ONLY one-on-one interaction the two had in the three episodes.  There was a scene in which JJ returned to work after a stay in the hospital, and everyone lined up to hug her... except Emily didn’t??  Emily went all concerned-boss-mode on her, reminding her not to work too hard, and JJ was assuring, “Emily, I’m fine,” or whatever.  I dunno, I could be an optimist and take the lack of a hug to mean that JJ had already been with/hugged Emily BEFORE that moment at work, whereas everyone else was just seeing JJ for the first time since her hospital discharge... I saw a LOT of Reid’s face on screen; boring.  And I noticed at least two instances of Emily DIRECTING JJ and Reid to team up on cases.  Shooting yourself in the foot, Em. Very disappointing.  F you, CM powers-that-be.

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY MAKES CURTIS BYTE THE DUST

S1;E6 ~ November 1, 1986

[Photos © Getty Images]

Directed by Marc Daniels ~ Written by Bob Fisher and Arthur Marx

Synopsis

Lucy's attempt to computerize M&B Hardware results in a a shop full of lawnmowers and with Curtis listed in the obituary column.

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Barker), Gale Gordon (Curtis McGibbon), Ann Dusenberry (Margo Barker McGibbon),  Larry Anderson (Ted McGibbon), Jenny Lewis (Becky McGibbon), Philip Amelio (Kevin McGibbon), Donovan Scott (Leonard Stoner)

[For biographies of the Regular Cast, see “One Good Grandparent Deserves Another” (S1;E1)]

Guest Cast

Dave Madden (Stanley Bigelow) is probably best remembered for playing Reuben Kincaid, the manager of “The Partridge Family” (1970-74). He was a regular performer on “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,” which (for some seasons) was programmed opposite “Here's Lucy.”  Madden died in 2014 at age 82.  

Stanley is a sales representative selling lawnmowers. His last name is only listed in the final credits but is not spoken aloud in the episodes.

Billy Van Zandt (Delivery Guy) is an actor and writer of more than 25 plays with Jane Millmore.  A native of Red Bank, New Jersey, he is married to Adrienne Barbeau. In 1990, Van Zandt won an Emmy Award for “I Love Lucy: The First Show,” which introduced the long-lost pilot to TV viewers.

This was the eighth episode filmed, but it was aired sixth. “Life With Lucy” loses its time slot with an 8 share, the lowest to date and the second lowest of all those aired.  

When Lucy activates the leaf blower and scatters seed packets all over the Hardware Store, Curtis says “We were hit by Hurricane Lucy.” In 1957's “Building a Bar-B-Q” (ILL S6;E24), Ricky says that he thinks the re-built monstrosity of a brick barbecue was caused by Hurricane Lucy.  

Curtis: “You know me, always keeping up with the times.” Lucy: “Yeah, he's almost up to 1956.”

In 1956, Gale Gordon had finished playing Osgood Conklin on “Our Miss Brooks” and started a playing Harvey Box in “The Brothers” (aka “The Box Brothers”), a Desilu series that lasted just one season on CBS. Lucille Ball began 1956 with “I Love Lucy” touring Europe and ended it with the Ricardos and Mertzes visiting Cuba.  

Bigelow (Stanley’s credited surname) was the name of a Department Store in Jamestown, New York, Lucille Ball's hometown that it is said rejected a teenage Ball when she applied for a job in their ribbon department! One of Lucille Ball's distant relatives was also named Bigelow. In the 1950s Lucy and Desi promoted Bigelow carpeting. She used the name Bigelow on both “I Love Lucy” and “The Lucy Show” (above).

Stanley: [To Curtis] “We've been through a lot together.  From the pot-bellied stove to the microwave.  Then back to the pot belly.” [Pats Curtis's belly]

When Curtis compares the extinction of wild animals to the human race being replaced by computers, Lucy says he's been watching too much “Wild Kingdom.” “Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom” was an educational series about the lives of wild animals that aired on NBC from 1963 to 1988. Until 1984 it was hosted by zoologist Marlin Perkins.

Lucy: “Change is hard on everybody.”

In the episode, Lucy attaches file cards to the computer using magnets, which wipes out the inventory data. In reality, refrigerator magnets placed on the computer would not be strong enough to have caused any harm.

Curtis: [To Leonard, furious] “You gave our trash to the trash man?!?”

Using the computer, Lucy orders a lawnmower. She accidentally presses the ‘1′ key three times and orders 111 lawnmowers for a cost of $4,192.67!  This means the push lawnmowers were wholesale priced at $37.77.  Adjusting for inflation, that would be nearly $90 today.

Curtis: [To Lucy] “I'm dead!” Lucy: “You're not dead, you're just not a lot of fun.”

To straighten out Curtis's obituary, Lucy calls her friend at the newspaper, Carol. The name may be an homage to any or all of Lucille Ball's friends Carol Burnett, Carole Lombard, or Carole Cook.  The unseen Carol tells Lucy she learned of Curtis's passing from the bank. Lucy used the computer to stop the check to Chadwick Mowers with the phrase “CM decreased” but types “CM deceased.” The bank interprets CM as Curtis McGibbon. [Only on television, folks!]

Lucy returns the computer, but buys a Robot named Rupert! In 1928, British schoolboys built a robot named Rupert which contained mechanical representations of human organs!  

Curtis: [To Lucy] “Listen to me!” Lucy: “I don't have to, you're dead!”

On “The Lucy Show,” Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) installed a computer at the bank in “Lucy, the Superwoman” (TLS S4;E26)…

and again in “Lucy and Bob Crane” (TLS S4;E22).  Both aired in 1966!

On a 1972 “Here's Lucy” Harry Carter (Gale Gordon) installed a giant computer named EXMO III in the office as “Lucy's Replacement” (HL S4;E19).

Prior to that Lucy Carter tried her hand at computer dating in 1968′s “Lucy the Matchmaker” (HL S1;E12). The comic payoff of most episodes featuring computers was having them short-circuit and run amok!  

Lucy Carmichael encountered robots played by mime Larry Dean in “Lucy and the Ceramic Cat” (TLS S3;E16)...

and again in “Lucy and the Robot” (TLS S4;E23).

This Day in Lucy History ~ November 1st

"Mr. and Mrs. TV Show" (ILL S4;E5) – *November 1, 1954

* This episode's original broadcast was pre-empted. It eventually aired Monday, April 11, 1955.

“Lucy Helps Danny Thomas” (TLS S4;E7) – November 1, 1965

"Lucy and Her All-Nun Band" (HL S4;E8) – November 1, 1971

[cortexifansquint]

criminal minds for the fandom ask!

Thanks!

Top 5 favourite characters: Emily, JJ, Morgan, Garcia, RossiOther characters you like: Luke, Kate, Tara, BlakeLeast favourite characters: Hotch I guess? Like, zero dislike, but I’m more indifferent to him than other characters. Otps: Derek x Emily, JJ x EmilyNotps: don’t really haveFavourite friendships: Morgan/Prentiss/Reid, Favourite family: JJ & kiddos are adorableFavourite episodes: Hit/Run, Minimal Loss, Children of the Dark, Valhalla/Lauren, 100, L.D.S.K, Revelations, Penelope, In Name and Blood, Derek, Compulsion, 200, Demons, The Fisher King, Profiler Profiled, 52 Pickup, Demonology, The Company, Omnivore, The Black QueenFavourite season/book/movie: 3, 2, 8Favourite quotes: “Best musical moment: “As it Seems” during JJ’s wedding reception, “Sympathy for the Devil” & “The Funeral” in the beginning and end of “Revelations”, Garcia coming in as The Black Queen with “Bootylicious” playing, “My Side of the Story” from demonologyMoment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: When it really disappointed you: the fire, hire, then fire and re-hire debacle of S6/7. Introducing Maeve just to have her killed. Saddest moment: Hayley’s death, dozens of victim’s family scenesMost well done character death: Gideon, just because of the pettiness. They killed him off 8 seasons after his departure and had JJ & Garcia eating his mint ice cream like inches from where his body was found lmaoFavourite guest star: Michelle Trachtenberg was cool. Favourite cast member: AJ probably, I’ve been a fan the longest (and most of her filmography is atually watchable lol)Character you wish was still alive: Maeve

One thing you hope really happens: idek anymore at this point I’m mainly watching for the characters/actors

Most shocking twist: drawing a blankWhen did you start watching/reading?: Mid-S3Best animal/creature: Sergio! Favourite location: The bullpen and Garcia’s office have all the best momentsTrope you wish they would stop using: killing off male characters’ wives/girlfriends for man pain arcsOne thing this show/book/film does better than others: yikes lol, well I guess all the deep friendships and not turning any of them into romances. Also the way they handled Morgan’s character. He has all the makings of what would normally be a f*ckboy, but he isn’t. How the male characters aren’t weird about hugging and being affectionate with each other.  Funniest moments: Brad the “real fbi agent” will always be iconic. “Talk dirty to me”. Couple you would like to see: Demily or Jemily, but alas no inter-team relationships and one half of each of these ships are married with children so…Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: oh gosh, this cast is already a revolving door and musical chairs! Favourite outfit: Favourite item: Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: Just the DVD’s + the second paley panel What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: I have little in common with every character so I have no idea! Probably hang out in Garcia’s office.  Most boring plotline: The Replicator arc was pretty anticlimacticMost laughably bad moment: The unsub that flew away in a tornado with the body in No Place Like HomeBest flashback/flashfoward if any: All the scenes with Morgan and his father. Goth!Garcia meeting Hotch and Morgan for the first time. All the Lauren Reynolds stuff. The Jemily flashback on the jet in 200. Most layered character: Morgan and Prentiss I think. Most one dimensional character: I think they’re all pretty layer-y idkScariest moment: CM is more disturbing than scaryGrossest moment: That unsub that was feeding people parts of a decomposing headBest looking male: Derek and LukeBest looking female: JJWho you’re crushing on (if any): Favourite cast moment: Wheels up video, Paley panels, MGG Unauthorized Documentaries, gag reels, AJ Kirsten and Paget doing that lady killers or something photoshoot a while backFavourite transportation: The JetMost beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you:  I notice stuff but it doesn’t necessarily bother me since it’s a case of the week thing. 200 was ?? but hey it’s JJJ centric + Jemily-ness. Best promo: The one with all their faces in the dark talking about serial killers At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: Late S3  

[todaybharatnews]

via Today Bharat nbsp; If yoursquo;ve been following Telugu cinema for a while, yoursquo;ve already been introduced to the rise and fall of NTRrsquo;s political career ndash; no, not the Young Tiger NTR ndash; through numerous films, books, and articles. And if yoursquo;ve grown up on a steady diet of the same, then yoursquo;re also acutely aware of the ever-changing political weather in the two Telugu states in the south. Why then would you need an entirely new series to describe how idealistic and autocratic he was? Zee5rsquo;s Chadarangam is a hapless exercise that tries to deify an actor-turned-politician. Didnrsquo;t the creator-and-director Raj Anantha get the memo that Krishrsquo;s two-part biopic arrived and disappeared like flashes last year? While Deva Katta painted his story of Prassthanam on the canvas of the back-stabbing nature of politicians, Sekhar Kammula made Leader to show that there can be Chief Ministers to whom you can look up. Later, Koratala Siva fine-tuned his game via Bharat Ane Nenu, in which the CM of undivided Andhra Pradesh (played by Mahesh Babu) weeds out the evils from the society. Irsquo;m not going to rush into the individual merits of these films for this piece. Irsquo;m bringing these up only to remind you of how writers of Telugu films havenrsquo;t shied away from telling the tales of different kinds of politicians. Chadarangam precisely wants to occupy this space, but the alternative history that the show tries to create and the black-and-white characters it presents don't work. For one, Superstar Gangadhar (Srikanth), whorsquo;s modeled on NTR, wants the country to get rid of INP (fictionalized version of INC ndash; Indian National Congress), as he says that theyrsquo;re looting India since Independence. You must remember that INP, here, is a party that has been ruling the nation without a strong opposing force for 70 straight years. The similarities donrsquo;t just end there. When NTR was the CM of AP in the '80s (his first term), Indira Gandhi was the PM. And in Chadarangam, there are characters who are not only fashioned after her, the similarity extends to Nadendla Bhaskara Rao, the man who grabbed the Chief Ministerrsquo;s chair from under the nose of NTR, Chandrababu Naidu, the chief architect who made sure that NTR got his due in politics before Lakshmi Parvathi came into the picture, and Rajiv Gandhi, from whom NTR kept stealing the thunder in the late '80s and '90s. This checkerboard of characters may have worked to an extent if Raj Anantha had looked elsewhere for inspiration. Since 2014, the BJP has been in power at the Centre and has been criticised for its communal agenda and politics. However, eliminating this party and its kind of politics in a contemporary setting is unfathomable. In Chadarangamrsquo;s world, therersquo;s just one state for the Telugu people and itrsquo;s called Andhra Pradesh; however the goal seems to be to highlight the popularity of a film actor who picks up the microphone to deliver lengthy and powerful speeches. If you have a penchant for hard-hitting lines in political thrillers, then that would be a disappointment here as well, because the dialogues are plain vanilla in the name of blaming-and-shaming. People belonging to the INP blame Gangadhar and his party, TKS (Telugu Kranti Sangham, a stand-in for the TDP ndash; Telugu Desam Party), at every stage throughout the nine-episode season. And Gangadhar, in return, fires against INPrsquo;s operations that favour dynastic politics more than anything else. The entirety of Gangadharrsquo;s acting career is shrunk to the size of just one episode where there are a bunch of scenes that inform you about the pinnacle of stardom he has reached. The reason for using the word ldquo;informrdquo; in the previous sentence is to give you the actual impact of those 40-odd minutes. Raj Anantha squashes the difference between showing and telling so much that all the scenes end up looking poorer than short films made by amateurs and released on YouTube. But, thankfully, itrsquo;s only the pilot that appears solidly foolish. The following episodes are somewhat bearable. Also, the creator doesnrsquo;t utilise the long list of actors ndash; Nagineedu, Ravi Prakash, Sunaina, Kausalya, Chalapathi Rao, Ramya Pasupuleti, etc. ndash; well. Some of them get independent storylines in the beginning that are later merged into the thread written exclusively for Gangadhar. But therersquo;s something amiss always. And you get a sense that itrsquo;s not the fault of the actors. When Bapineedu (Ravi Prakash, who focuses on getting his Chandrababu Naidu act right) takes matters into his own hands and tells his uncle (not the father-in-law here, as he plays Gangadharrsquo;s nephew) to not worry about the horse-trading of the MLAs during the formerrsquo;s stay in a foreign nation, therersquo;s a stroke of genius ndash; Bapineedu is a problem-solver and he does it by hook or by crook. Yet, his ideas keep getting butchered by Gangadhar every now and then. Itrsquo;s as though therersquo;s nobody nobler than the man who got his ears pierced for a scene in a mythological drama in his heydays as an actor. These random bits of buildup are shoddily added into the narrative to say that hersquo;s a larger-than-life hero who got into politics to serve the Telugu people. There are no ulterior motives for such characters in such shows, certainly, ahem-ahem. Nonetheless, if Raj Anantha had simply told us to watch the two Balakrishna starrers directed by Krish, hersquo;d have still made his point. And yoursquo;d have been spared from reading this review!

[deweydguinn]

Ranker: How to make a Google algorithm-proof website

Source: First appeared at

Any SEO or webmaster who has ever had a website affected by a Google algorithm change – or feared being affected by one – has probably wished that they could find a way to make their website “algorithm-proof”.

Still, surely there’s no such thing as a website that’s never impacted by Google algorithms, right? As long as your site is indexed by Google, it’s at the mercy of the algorithms that Google uses to determine website ranking, all the more so if you happen to rely heavily on organic search traffic for your business.

The art – or science – of search engine optimization is about determining as best you can what those algorithms are looking for, and giving it to them.

Yet one website believes it has found the formula for making its content “Google algorithm-proof”. Ranker is a website made up of dynamic, crowdsourced lists that users can vote on, about everything from pop culture to geography, history to sports, celebrities to science.

And according to its CEO, Clark Benson, Ranker has never suffered a negative effect from a Google algorithm change, growing its traffic steadily without interruption over the course of eight and a half years.

Search Engine Watch caught up with Benson to find out Ranker’s secret to success, and whether there is a formula for creating an algorithm-proof website.

Rankings, not review sites

So what is Ranker, exactly?

“Ranker’s primary reason for being is to crowdsource anything that makes sense to rank,” says Benson. “Any topic that people are really interested in.

“The unique angle that we’ve pursued is that instead of having this being one 23-year-old blogger’s opinion of the best new TV shows of the year, or whatever it happens to be, we would have a dynamic list that visitors could vote on, potentially add items to, and re-rank.

“The end result is a very wisdom-of-crowds-based answer which is always changing and dynamically moving along as tastes change, and as more people vote on things.”

Voting on a list of ‘Historical events you most want to go back and see’ on Ranker

Lists have been a time-honored draw for magazines and other print media over the years, but it was when the internet came along that they really exploded – spawning dozens of list-oriented viral websites and the much-mocked listicle, which became a staple of online journalism. However, Benson – a self-described “lifelong list nerd” – was frustrated by the fact that these lists only ever represented one person’s opinion.

In a similar vein, he found review websites unhelpful, as user-generated reviews represented a single person’s subjective opinion in a format that wasn’t conducive to making a decision.

“Part of the reason to build Ranker was my frustration with review sites, because when I’m looking for an answer to something, like which TV show to watch, I don’t want to read a lot of text reviews.

“I also feel that in typical five-star rating systems, everything tends to be clustered around three and a half to four stars, so you don’t get any true granularity on what is best.”

In a world increasingly “cluttered with choices”, therefore, Benson was convinced that rankings were “the simplest way to dissect a choice in a category, without losing the credibility of the answer”. And so he built Ranker as a website where the wisdom of the crowd could determine the ultimate ranking for any list of items, on any topic.

The secret to Ranker’s SEO success: Content freshness

Since Ranker’s launch in 2009, the site has amassed more than 100,000 rankings across dozens of broad categories, encompassing almost any topic that people could have a passion for.

When the website first launched, however, it had very few resources, and Benson explains that he had to learn SEO from scratch in order to give the website a strong foundation.

Luckily, earning traffic was never a problem for the site, because the type of content published on Ranker was uniquely suited to catering to Google’s algorithms.

“We’ve never been hit by any algorithm changes – we’ve always grown our organic search traffic year over year over year, steadily, for the eight and a half years we’ve been live.

“You never exactly know what works in SEO, because Google doesn’t tell you what works, but I’ve always believed that the best intelligence on what to do comes from the public statements Google makes – their best practices.

“And one of the key factors that Google says is in their index is freshness of content. Content has a lifespan. In our case, because our rankings are dynamic and always changing – people are adding things to them, voting things up and down – this makes for perpetually fresh content.

“We have a lot of content that is six, seven, even eight years old that is still doing as well as it was years ago, and in some cases it’s even growing in traffic.”

One of Ranker’s most evergreen pieces of content is a list ranking the ‘Best Movies of All Time’ – which is more than 5,000 items long.

“Obviously that’s a topic that there’s a lot of passion and a lot of competition for [in search rankings]. And in the last few years, we’ve been on the top three or so results on Google for that term.

“We’ve watched that page just grow in rankings over the span of seven or eight years. I can only guess it’s because the page is always changing.”

User-curated content

At the time of writing this article, Ranker’s front page is currently spotlighting a list of best-dressed celebs at the 2018 Oscars, a best TV episode names ranking, and a list of possible game-changing deep space observations to be made by the Webb Telescope.

Anyone can add an item to a list on Ranker, although Ranker’s content is not purely user-generated. Ranker has an editorial team which is made up of people who, in Benson’s words, “have a mind for cataloging things” rather than people who specialize in writing a lot of prose.

Lists are typically started off by one of Ranker’s editors, and when a user wants to add a new item to a list, it’s cross-referenced with Ranker’s database, a huge data set made up of more than 28 million people, places and things. If the item isn’t found in the database, it’s added to a moderation queue.

Rather than UGC (user-generated content), therefore, Benson thinks of Ranker’s lists as something he terms UCC – user-curated content.

How did Ranker build such a huge data set? Beginning in 2007, a company called Metaweb ran an open source, collaborative knowledge base called Freebase, which contained data harvested from sources such as Wikipedia, the Notable Names Database, Fashion Model Directory and MusicBrainz, along with user-submitted wiki contributions.

This knowledge base made up a large part of Ranker’s data set. What’s interesting is that Freebase was later acquired by none other than Google – and is the foundation of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Additionally, not every list on Ranker is crowdsourced or voted on. Some lists, such as Everyone Who Has Been Fired Or Resigned From The Trump Administration So Far, don’t make sense to have users voting on them, but are kept fresh with the addition of new items whenever the topic is in the news.

Can other websites do ‘Ranker SEO’?

Benson acknowledges that Ranker’s setup is fairly unique, and so it isn’t necessarily possible to emulate its success with SEO by trying to do the same thing – unless you just happen to have your own crowdsourced, user-curated list website, of course.

With that said, there are still some practical lessons that website owners, particularly publishers, can take away from Ranker’s success and apply to their own SEO strategy.

First and foremost: content freshness is king

As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, the freshness of Ranker’s content is probably the biggest contributing factor to its success in search. “We’re convinced that the dynamism of our content is what really lets it just grow and grow and grow in search traffic,” says Benson.

“While our approach is somewhat unique to the way Ranker works – we have a bespoke CMS that makes lists out of datasets – I’m positive that there are other ways to apply this kind of thinking.”

To put content freshness front and center of your content marketing efforts, make sure that your publication or blog is well-stocked with evergreen content. For those articles or posts that are more time-sensitive, you can still publish a refreshed version, or look for an up-to-date spin to put on the old content, for example linking it in with current events.

According to research by Moz, other factors which can contribute to a positive “freshness” score for your website as a whole include:

Changes made to the core content of your website (as opposed to peripheral elements like JavaScript, comments, ads and navigation)

Frequency of new page creation

Rate of new link growth (an increase in links pointing back to your site or page)

Links from other fresh websites, which have the ability to transfer their “fresh value” (Justin Briggs dubbed this quality “FreshRank” in 2011)

Internal links trump external links

Other than content freshness, Benson attributes Ranker’s SEO success to one other big factor: its intricate network of internal links, which Benson believes are far more valuable to SEO than an impressive backlink profile.

“I think a lot of people who are new to SEO focus too much on trying to get outside links, versus optimizing their own internal infrastructure,” he says.

“We have a very broad site with millions of pages – not just lists, but a page for every item that’s included in a list on Ranker, showing you where it ranks on all of our different lists.”

The Ranker page for Leonardo da Vinci

“We made the mistake early on of leaving all of those pages open to Google’s index, and we learned over time that some of them are very thin, content-wise. New links are added to them, but they’re thin pages. So we quickly adopted a strategy of noindexing the thinner pages on our site – so they have utility, but they don’t necessarily have search utility.

“We’ve really focused a lot on internal link structure and on interlinking our content in a very intelligent and vertical-driven, page-optimized way. We’ve put a lot of engineering and product resources towards building a robust internal link structure that can also change as pages become more valuable in search.

“Outside links are very important, but they’re increasingly difficult to get. If you have good, unique content, and a strong internal link structure, I think you can get by with far fewer backlinks. Ranker has a lot of backlinks – we’re a big site – but we’ve never tactically gone out to build backlinks. And we get more than 30 million organic search visits per month.”

Think about how your content will appear to searchers

Benson emphasizes the importance of paying attention to basic on-site optimization like crafting good title tags and meta descriptions. These elements dictate how your website appears in the SERP to users when they search, and so will form the first impressions of your content.

“When it comes to creating new content, our editorial team definitely focuses on best practice with regards to title tags and meta descriptions – the basic stuff still applies,” says Benson. “Anyone doing editorial still needs to think about your content from the lens of the searcher.”

Optimizing for Google’s rich results and using Schema.org markup are additional ways that website owners can make sure that their website listing appears as attractive as possible to a searcher encountering it on the SERP.

The future is psychographic

What plans does Benson have for the future of Ranker? Up to now, the site has been concentrating mostly on search and social distribution (Facebook is another big source of organic traffic), but are now beginning to focus more on ad sales, media tie-ins and getting the brand name out there.

“We’re always focused on growing traffic, and we’re certainly investing a lot more into our brand,” says Benson.

However, the most exciting future project for Ranker is something called Ranker Insights – a psychographic interests platform which makes use of Ranker’s thousands of data points on what people are interested in and like to vote on.

Drawing connections between people’s interests on Ranker Insights

Big data on anything is extremely valuable in marketing, but big data on the things that people like is near enough invaluable – particularly in a world where psychographics (classifying people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other aspects of their psychology) are increasingly more important than demographics (classifying people according to things like age, gender, race and nationality).

“The marketing world in general is steering a lot more towards psychographics rather than demographics,” says Benson. “Netflix doesn’t care what country you live in – when it comes to marketing or even recommendations, all they care about is your tastes. They stopped using demographics entirely years ago – and clearly they’re doing something right.

“We feel that in an interconnected world, what you like says at least as much about you as your age or your gender.

“And in a world where what you like tells people how to market to you and how to reach you, we have very, very granular, deep data on that front. There’s a lot of different applications for insights like this in a very data-driven world.”

Ranker: How to make a Google algorithm-proof website

[kellykperez]

Ranker: How to make a Google algorithm-proof website

Any SEO or webmaster who has ever had a website affected by a Google algorithm change – or feared being affected by one – has probably wished that they could find a way to make their website “algorithm-proof”.

Still, surely there’s no such thing as a website that’s never impacted by Google algorithms, right? As long as your site is indexed by Google, it’s at the mercy of the algorithms that Google uses to determine website ranking, all the more so if you happen to rely heavily on organic search traffic for your business.

The art – or science – of search engine optimization is about determining as best you can what those algorithms are looking for, and giving it to them.

Yet one website believes it has found the formula for making its content “Google algorithm-proof”. Ranker is a website made up of dynamic, crowdsourced lists that users can vote on, about everything from pop culture to geography, history to sports, celebrities to science.

And according to its CEO, Clark Benson, Ranker has never suffered a negative effect from a Google algorithm change, growing its traffic steadily without interruption over the course of eight and a half years.

Search Engine Watch caught up with Benson to find out Ranker’s secret to success, and whether there is a formula for creating an algorithm-proof website.

Rankings, not review sites

So what is Ranker, exactly?

“Ranker’s primary reason for being is to crowdsource anything that makes sense to rank,” says Benson. “Any topic that people are really interested in.

“The unique angle that we’ve pursued is that instead of having this being one 23-year-old blogger’s opinion of the best new TV shows of the year, or whatever it happens to be, we would have a dynamic list that visitors could vote on, potentially add items to, and re-rank.

“The end result is a very wisdom-of-crowds-based answer which is always changing and dynamically moving along as tastes change, and as more people vote on things.”

Voting on a list of ‘Historical events you most want to go back and see’ on Ranker

Lists have been a time-honored draw for magazines and other print media over the years, but it was when the internet came along that they really exploded – spawning dozens of list-oriented viral websites and the much-mocked listicle, which became a staple of online journalism. However, Benson – a self-described “lifelong list nerd” – was frustrated by the fact that these lists only ever represented one person’s opinion.

In a similar vein, he found review websites unhelpful, as user-generated reviews represented a single person’s subjective opinion in a format that wasn’t conducive to making a decision.

“Part of the reason to build Ranker was my frustration with review sites, because when I’m looking for an answer to something, like which TV show to watch, I don’t want to read a lot of text reviews.

“I also feel that in typical five-star rating systems, everything tends to be clustered around three and a half to four stars, so you don’t get any true granularity on what is best.”

In a world increasingly “cluttered with choices”, therefore, Benson was convinced that rankings were “the simplest way to dissect a choice in a category, without losing the credibility of the answer”. And so he built Ranker as a website where the wisdom of the crowd could determine the ultimate ranking for any list of items, on any topic.

The secret to Ranker’s SEO success: Content freshness

Since Ranker’s launch in 2009, the site has amassed more than 100,000 rankings across dozens of broad categories, encompassing almost any topic that people could have a passion for.

When the website first launched, however, it had very few resources, and Benson explains that he had to learn SEO from scratch in order to give the website a strong foundation.

Luckily, earning traffic was never a problem for the site, because the type of content published on Ranker was uniquely suited to catering to Google’s algorithms.

“We’ve never been hit by any algorithm changes – we’ve always grown our organic search traffic year over year over year, steadily, for the eight and a half years we’ve been live.

“You never exactly know what works in SEO, because Google doesn’t tell you what works, but I’ve always believed that the best intelligence on what to do comes from the public statements Google makes – their best practices.

“And one of the key factors that Google says is in their index is freshness of content. Content has a lifespan. In our case, because our rankings are dynamic and always changing – people are adding things to them, voting things up and down – this makes for perpetually fresh content.

“We have a lot of content that is six, seven, even eight years old that is still doing as well as it was years ago, and in some cases it’s even growing in traffic.”

One of Ranker’s most evergreen pieces of content is a list ranking the ‘Best Movies of All Time’ – which is more than 5,000 items long.

“Obviously that’s a topic that there’s a lot of passion and a lot of competition for [in search rankings]. And in the last few years, we’ve been on the top three or so results on Google for that term.

“We’ve watched that page just grow in rankings over the span of seven or eight years. I can only guess it’s because the page is always changing.”

User-curated content

At the time of writing this article, Ranker’s front page is currently spotlighting a list of best-dressed celebs at the 2018 Oscars, a best TV episode names ranking, and a list of possible game-changing deep space observations to be made by the Webb Telescope.

Anyone can add an item to a list on Ranker, although Ranker’s content is not purely user-generated. Ranker has an editorial team which is made up of people who, in Benson’s words, “have a mind for cataloging things” rather than people who specialize in writing a lot of prose.

Lists are typically started off by one of Ranker’s editors, and when a user wants to add a new item to a list, it’s cross-referenced with Ranker’s database, a huge data set made up of more than 28 million people, places and things. If the item isn’t found in the database, it’s added to a moderation queue.

Rather than UGC (user-generated content), therefore, Benson thinks of Ranker’s lists as something he terms UCC – user-curated content.

How did Ranker build such a huge data set? Beginning in 2007, a company called Metaweb ran an open source, collaborative knowledge base called Freebase, which contained data harvested from sources such as Wikipedia, the Notable Names Database, Fashion Model Directory and MusicBrainz, along with user-submitted wiki contributions.

This knowledge base made up a large part of Ranker’s data set. What’s interesting is that Freebase was later acquired by none other than Google – and is the foundation of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Additionally, not every list on Ranker is crowdsourced or voted on. Some lists, such as Everyone Who Has Been Fired Or Resigned From The Trump Administration So Far, don’t make sense to have users voting on them, but are kept fresh with the addition of new items whenever the topic is in the news.

Can other websites do ‘Ranker SEO’?

Benson acknowledges that Ranker’s setup is fairly unique, and so it isn’t necessarily possible to emulate its success with SEO by trying to do the same thing – unless you just happen to have your own crowdsourced, user-curated list website, of course.

With that said, there are still some practical lessons that website owners, particularly publishers, can take away from Ranker’s success and apply to their own SEO strategy.

First and foremost: content freshness is king

As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, the freshness of Ranker’s content is probably the biggest contributing factor to its success in search. “We’re convinced that the dynamism of our content is what really lets it just grow and grow and grow in search traffic,” says Benson.

“While our approach is somewhat unique to the way Ranker works – we have a bespoke CMS that makes lists out of datasets – I’m positive that there are other ways to apply this kind of thinking.”

To put content freshness front and center of your content marketing efforts, make sure that your publication or blog is well-stocked with evergreen content. For those articles or posts that are more time-sensitive, you can still publish a refreshed version, or look for an up-to-date spin to put on the old content, for example linking it in with current events.

According to research by Moz, other factors which can contribute to a positive “freshness” score for your website as a whole include:

Changes made to the core content of your website (as opposed to peripheral elements like JavaScript, comments, ads and navigation)

Frequency of new page creation

Rate of new link growth (an increase in links pointing back to your site or page)

Links from other fresh websites, which have the ability to transfer their “fresh value” (Justin Briggs dubbed this quality “FreshRank” in 2011)

Internal links trump external links

Other than content freshness, Benson attributes Ranker’s SEO success to one other big factor: its intricate network of internal links, which Benson believes are far more valuable to SEO than an impressive backlink profile.

“I think a lot of people who are new to SEO focus too much on trying to get outside links, versus optimizing their own internal infrastructure,” he says.

“We have a very broad site with millions of pages – not just lists, but a page for every item that’s included in a list on Ranker, showing you where it ranks on all of our different lists.”

The Ranker page for Leonardo da Vinci

“We made the mistake early on of leaving all of those pages open to Google’s index, and we learned over time that some of them are very thin, content-wise. New links are added to them, but they’re thin pages. So we quickly adopted a strategy of noindexing the thinner pages on our site – so they have utility, but they don’t necessarily have search utility.

“We’ve really focused a lot on internal link structure and on interlinking our content in a very intelligent and vertical-driven, page-optimized way. We’ve put a lot of engineering and product resources towards building a robust internal link structure that can also change as pages become more valuable in search.

“Outside links are very important, but they’re increasingly difficult to get. If you have good, unique content, and a strong internal link structure, I think you can get by with far fewer backlinks. Ranker has a lot of backlinks – we’re a big site – but we’ve never tactically gone out to build backlinks. And we get more than 30 million organic search visits per month.”

Think about how your content will appear to searchers

Benson emphasizes the importance of paying attention to basic on-site optimization like crafting good title tags and meta descriptions. These elements dictate how your website appears in the SERP to users when they search, and so will form the first impressions of your content.

“When it comes to creating new content, our editorial team definitely focuses on best practice with regards to title tags and meta descriptions – the basic stuff still applies,” says Benson. “Anyone doing editorial still needs to think about your content from the lens of the searcher.”

Optimizing for Google’s rich results and using Schema.org markup are additional ways that website owners can make sure that their website listing appears as attractive as possible to a searcher encountering it on the SERP.

The future is psychographic

What plans does Benson have for the future of Ranker? Up to now, the site has been concentrating mostly on search and social distribution (Facebook is another big source of organic traffic), but are now beginning to focus more on ad sales, media tie-ins and getting the brand name out there.

“We’re always focused on growing traffic, and we’re certainly investing a lot more into our brand,” says Benson.

However, the most exciting future project for Ranker is something called Ranker Insights – a psychographic interests platform which makes use of Ranker’s thousands of data points on what people are interested in and like to vote on.

Drawing connections between people’s interests on Ranker Insights

Big data on anything is extremely valuable in marketing, but big data on the things that people like is near enough invaluable – particularly in a world where psychographics (classifying people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other aspects of their psychology) are increasingly more important than demographics (classifying people according to things like age, gender, race and nationality).

“The marketing world in general is steering a lot more towards psychographics rather than demographics,” says Benson. “Netflix doesn’t care what country you live in – when it comes to marketing or even recommendations, all they care about is your tastes. They stopped using demographics entirely years ago – and clearly they’re doing something right.

“We feel that in an interconnected world, what you like says at least as much about you as your age or your gender.

“And in a world where what you like tells people how to market to you and how to reach you, we have very, very granular, deep data on that front. There’s a lot of different applications for insights like this in a very data-driven world.”

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/06/ranker-how-to-make-a-google-algorithm-proof-website/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2018/03/ranker-how-to-make-google-algorithm.html

[sheilalmartinia]

Ranker: How to make a Google algorithm-proof website

Any SEO or webmaster who has ever had a website affected by a Google algorithm change – or feared being affected by one – has probably wished that they could find a way to make their website “algorithm-proof”.

Still, surely there’s no such thing as a website that’s never impacted by Google algorithms, right? As long as your site is indexed by Google, it’s at the mercy of the algorithms that Google uses to determine website ranking, all the more so if you happen to rely heavily on organic search traffic for your business.

The art – or science – of search engine optimization is about determining as best you can what those algorithms are looking for, and giving it to them.

Yet one website believes it has found the formula for making its content “Google algorithm-proof”. Ranker is a website made up of dynamic, crowdsourced lists that users can vote on, about everything from pop culture to geography, history to sports, celebrities to science.

And according to its CEO, Clark Benson, Ranker has never suffered a negative effect from a Google algorithm change, growing its traffic steadily without interruption over the course of eight and a half years.

Search Engine Watch caught up with Benson to find out Ranker’s secret to success, and whether there is a formula for creating an algorithm-proof website.

Rankings, not review sites

So what is Ranker, exactly?

“Ranker’s primary reason for being is to crowdsource anything that makes sense to rank,” says Benson. “Any topic that people are really interested in.

“The unique angle that we’ve pursued is that instead of having this being one 23-year-old blogger’s opinion of the best new TV shows of the year, or whatever it happens to be, we would have a dynamic list that visitors could vote on, potentially add items to, and re-rank.

“The end result is a very wisdom-of-crowds-based answer which is always changing and dynamically moving along as tastes change, and as more people vote on things.”

Voting on a list of ‘Historical events you most want to go back and see’ on Ranker

Lists have been a time-honored draw for magazines and other print media over the years, but it was when the internet came along that they really exploded – spawning dozens of list-oriented viral websites and the much-mocked listicle, which became a staple of online journalism. However, Benson – a self-described “lifelong list nerd” – was frustrated by the fact that these lists only ever represented one person’s opinion.

In a similar vein, he found review websites unhelpful, as user-generated reviews represented a single person’s subjective opinion in a format that wasn’t conducive to making a decision.

“Part of the reason to build Ranker was my frustration with review sites, because when I’m looking for an answer to something, like which TV show to watch, I don’t want to read a lot of text reviews.

“I also feel that in typical five-star rating systems, everything tends to be clustered around three and a half to four stars, so you don’t get any true granularity on what is best.”

In a world increasingly “cluttered with choices”, therefore, Benson was convinced that rankings were “the simplest way to dissect a choice in a category, without losing the credibility of the answer”. And so he built Ranker as a website where the wisdom of the crowd could determine the ultimate ranking for any list of items, on any topic.

The secret to Ranker’s SEO success: Content freshness

Since Ranker’s launch in 2009, the site has amassed more than 100,000 rankings across dozens of broad categories, encompassing almost any topic that people could have a passion for.

When the website first launched, however, it had very few resources, and Benson explains that he had to learn SEO from scratch in order to give the website a strong foundation.

Luckily, earning traffic was never a problem for the site, because the type of content published on Ranker was uniquely suited to catering to Google’s algorithms.

“We’ve never been hit by any algorithm changes – we’ve always grown our organic search traffic year over year over year, steadily, for the eight and a half years we’ve been live.

“You never exactly know what works in SEO, because Google doesn’t tell you what works, but I’ve always believed that the best intelligence on what to do comes from the public statements Google makes – their best practices.

“And one of the key factors that Google says is in their index is freshness of content. Content has a lifespan. In our case, because our rankings are dynamic and always changing – people are adding things to them, voting things up and down – this makes for perpetually fresh content.

“We have a lot of content that is six, seven, even eight years old that is still doing as well as it was years ago, and in some cases it’s even growing in traffic.”

One of Ranker’s most evergreen pieces of content is a list ranking the ‘Best Movies of All Time’ – which is more than 5,000 items long.

“Obviously that’s a topic that there’s a lot of passion and a lot of competition for [in search rankings]. And in the last few years, we’ve been on the top three or so results on Google for that term.

“We’ve watched that page just grow in rankings over the span of seven or eight years. I can only guess it’s because the page is always changing.”

User-curated content

At the time of writing this article, Ranker’s front page is currently spotlighting a list of best-dressed celebs at the 2018 Oscars, a best TV episode names ranking, and a list of possible game-changing deep space observations to be made by the Webb Telescope.

Anyone can add an item to a list on Ranker, although Ranker’s content is not purely user-generated. Ranker has an editorial team which is made up of people who, in Benson’s words, “have a mind for cataloging things” rather than people who specialize in writing a lot of prose.

Lists are typically started off by one of Ranker’s editors, and when a user wants to add a new item to a list, it’s cross-referenced with Ranker’s database, a huge data set made up of more than 28 million people, places and things. If the item isn’t found in the database, it’s added to a moderation queue.

Rather than UGC (user-generated content), therefore, Benson thinks of Ranker’s lists as something he terms UCC – user-curated content.

How did Ranker build such a huge data set? Beginning in 2007, a company called Metaweb ran an open source, collaborative knowledge base called Freebase, which contained data harvested from sources such as Wikipedia, the Notable Names Database, Fashion Model Directory and MusicBrainz, along with user-submitted wiki contributions.

This knowledge base made up a large part of Ranker’s data set. What’s interesting is that Freebase was later acquired by none other than Google – and is the foundation of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Additionally, not every list on Ranker is crowdsourced or voted on. Some lists, such as Everyone Who Has Been Fired Or Resigned From The Trump Administration So Far, don’t make sense to have users voting on them, but are kept fresh with the addition of new items whenever the topic is in the news.

Can other websites do ‘Ranker SEO’?

Benson acknowledges that Ranker’s setup is fairly unique, and so it isn’t necessarily possible to emulate its success with SEO by trying to do the same thing – unless you just happen to have your own crowdsourced, user-curated list website, of course.

With that said, there are still some practical lessons that website owners, particularly publishers, can take away from Ranker’s success and apply to their own SEO strategy.

First and foremost: content freshness is king

As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, the freshness of Ranker’s content is probably the biggest contributing factor to its success in search. “We’re convinced that the dynamism of our content is what really lets it just grow and grow and grow in search traffic,” says Benson.

“While our approach is somewhat unique to the way Ranker works – we have a bespoke CMS that makes lists out of datasets – I’m positive that there are other ways to apply this kind of thinking.”

To put content freshness front and center of your content marketing efforts, make sure that your publication or blog is well-stocked with evergreen content. For those articles or posts that are more time-sensitive, you can still publish a refreshed version, or look for an up-to-date spin to put on the old content, for example linking it in with current events.

According to research by Moz, other factors which can contribute to a positive “freshness” score for your website as a whole include:

Changes made to the core content of your website (as opposed to peripheral elements like JavaScript, comments, ads and navigation)

Frequency of new page creation

Rate of new link growth (an increase in links pointing back to your site or page)

Links from other fresh websites, which have the ability to transfer their “fresh value” (Justin Briggs dubbed this quality “FreshRank” in 2011)

Internal links trump external links

Other than content freshness, Benson attributes Ranker’s SEO success to one other big factor: its intricate network of internal links, which Benson believes are far more valuable to SEO than an impressive backlink profile.

“I think a lot of people who are new to SEO focus too much on trying to get outside links, versus optimizing their own internal infrastructure,” he says.

“We have a very broad site with millions of pages – not just lists, but a page for every item that’s included in a list on Ranker, showing you where it ranks on all of our different lists.”

The Ranker page for Leonardo da Vinci

“We made the mistake early on of leaving all of those pages open to Google’s index, and we learned over time that some of them are very thin, content-wise. New links are added to them, but they’re thin pages. So we quickly adopted a strategy of noindexing the thinner pages on our site – so they have utility, but they don’t necessarily have search utility.

“We’ve really focused a lot on internal link structure and on interlinking our content in a very intelligent and vertical-driven, page-optimized way. We’ve put a lot of engineering and product resources towards building a robust internal link structure that can also change as pages become more valuable in search.

“Outside links are very important, but they’re increasingly difficult to get. If you have good, unique content, and a strong internal link structure, I think you can get by with far fewer backlinks. Ranker has a lot of backlinks – we’re a big site – but we’ve never tactically gone out to build backlinks. And we get more than 30 million organic search visits per month.”

Think about how your content will appear to searchers

Benson emphasizes the importance of paying attention to basic on-site optimization like crafting good title tags and meta descriptions. These elements dictate how your website appears in the SERP to users when they search, and so will form the first impressions of your content.

“When it comes to creating new content, our editorial team definitely focuses on best practice with regards to title tags and meta descriptions – the basic stuff still applies,” says Benson. “Anyone doing editorial still needs to think about your content from the lens of the searcher.”

Optimizing for Google’s rich results and using Schema.org markup are additional ways that website owners can make sure that their website listing appears as attractive as possible to a searcher encountering it on the SERP.

The future is psychographic

What plans does Benson have for the future of Ranker? Up to now, the site has been concentrating mostly on search and social distribution (Facebook is another big source of organic traffic), but are now beginning to focus more on ad sales, media tie-ins and getting the brand name out there.

“We’re always focused on growing traffic, and we’re certainly investing a lot more into our brand,” says Benson.

However, the most exciting future project for Ranker is something called Ranker Insights – a psychographic interests platform which makes use of Ranker’s thousands of data points on what people are interested in and like to vote on.

Drawing connections between people’s interests on Ranker Insights

Big data on anything is extremely valuable in marketing, but big data on the things that people like is near enough invaluable – particularly in a world where psychographics (classifying people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other aspects of their psychology) are increasingly more important than demographics (classifying people according to things like age, gender, race and nationality).

“The marketing world in general is steering a lot more towards psychographics rather than demographics,” says Benson. “Netflix doesn’t care what country you live in – when it comes to marketing or even recommendations, all they care about is your tastes. They stopped using demographics entirely years ago – and clearly they’re doing something right.

“We feel that in an interconnected world, what you like says at least as much about you as your age or your gender.

“And in a world where what you like tells people how to market to you and how to reach you, we have very, very granular, deep data on that front. There’s a lot of different applications for insights like this in a very data-driven world.”

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/06/ranker-how-to-make-a-google-algorithm-proof-website/