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tinyshe · 4 years

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This is dedicated to all you Americans that are whining about “living in a communist country” and what a dictator Trump was; I offer the following for you to think about.

I Grew Up in a Communist System. Here’s What Americans Don’t Understand About Freedom Only in a free-market system can we truly achieve individual liberty and human flourishing.

“Individual freedom can only exist in the context of free-market capitalism. Personal freedom thrives in capitalism, declines in government-regulated economies, and vanishes in communism. Aside from better economic and legislative policies, what America needs is a more intense appreciation for individual freedom and capitalism.

“I was born and raised in communist Romania during the Cold War, a country in which the government owned all the resources and means of production. The state controlled almost every aspect of our lives: our education, our job placement, the time of day we could have hot water, and what we were allowed to say.

“Like the rest of the Eastern European countries, Romania was often referred to as a communist country. In school, we were taught it was a socialist country. Its name prior to the 1989 Revolution to overthrow the Ceausescu regime was the Socialist Republic of Romania.

“From an economic standpoint, a petty fraction of property was still privately owned. In a communist system, all property is owned by the state. So if it wasn't a true communist economy, its heavy central planning and the application of a totalitarian control over the Romanian citizenry made this nation rightfully gain its title of a communist country.

Socialism Creates Shortages

“Despite the fact that Romania was a country rich in resources, there were shortages everywhere. Food, electricity, water, and just about every one of life's necessities were in short supply. The apartment building in which we lived provided hot water for showers two hours in the morning and two hours at night. We had to be quick and on time so we didn't miss the opportunity.

“I get it, maybe we didn't need to be fashionable. But we needed to eat.

“Wrigley's chewing gum and Swiss chocolate were a rare delight for us. I remember how happy I was when I'd have a pack of foreign bubblegum or a bar of delicious milk chocolate. I'd usually save them for special occasions.

“Fruity lip gloss, French perfume, and jeans were but a few of the popular items available only on the black market and with the right connections. God bless our black-market entrepreneurs! They made our lives better. They gave us the opportunity to buy things we very much desired, things we couldn't get from the government-owned retail stores which were either half-empty or full of products that were ugly and of poor quality.

“The grocery stores were not any better. I get it, maybe we didn't need to be fashionable. But we needed to eat. So, the old Romanian adage "Conscience goes through the stomach" made a lot of sense.

“During the late 1970s, life in Romania started to deteriorate even more. Meat was hardly a consumer staple for the average Romanian. Instead, our parents learned to become good at preparing the liver, the brain, the tongue, and other giblets that most people in the West would not even consider trying.

“For a family of four like us, our rationed quota was 1 kilogram of flour and 1 kilogram of sugar per month.

“When milk, butter, eggs, and yogurt were temporarily available, my mom—like so many others of our neighbors—would wake up at 2:00 a.m. to go stand in line so she'd have the chance to get us these goodies. The store would open at 6:00 a.m., so if she wasn't early enough in line she'd miss the opportunity.

“In 1982, the state sent their disciples to people's homes to do the census. Along with that, food rationing was implemented. For a family of four like us, our rationed quota was 1 kilogram of flour and 1 kilogram of sugar per month. That is, if they were available and if we were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when they were being distributed.

“The one television channel our government provided for us often focused on programs related to crime and poverty in the western world. After all, people were poor and suffering because of capitalism, so we were told, so we needed socialism and communism to solve the inequalities of humanity.

Capitalism Advances Private Property

“Considering the shortages created by the government-controlled economy of my birth country, I came to understand and appreciate capitalism, the one system that had the most dramatic effect in elevating human civilization.

“Private property and private property rights are at the core of capitalism.

“The layman definition of capitalism is the economic system in which people and businesses engage in manufacturing, trading, and exchanging products and services without government interference. A free-market capitalist system works in a more efficient manner when not tampered with by government or central bank intervention in the credit markets, monetary policy, and interest rate fixing.

“Private property and private property rights are at the core of capitalism. When in school, we learned that private property makes people greedy and is considered detrimental to society. Private property was associated with capitalism, the system that our textbooks claimed failed.

Allocation of Resources

“Romania was rich in natural resources, yet the difference between our standard of living and those from the West was quite dramatic. It was indicative of a flawed economic system that most countries in Eastern Europe adhered to during the Soviet Era. But one may ask why was there so much poverty when natural resources are so abundant?

“The free market, however, directs the allocation of resources via the amazing process of supply and demand.

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Efficiency is thus of primary concern when the goal is economic progress.

“In a centrally-planned environment, the various government individuals who are assigned the task of planning the economy could not possibly know how to properly allocate the scarce resources of an entire nation, no matter how smart or educated they are. Shortages are one of the consequences of improper allocation of the scarce resources.

“The free market, however, through the multiple spontaneous interactions of businesses and consumers, directs the allocation of resources via the amazing process of supply and demand. It is precisely due to the profit and loss events that economic efficiency is stimulated.

Free Markets Attract Capital

“Due to its profit incentives, capitalism encourages innovation. Innovation leads to progress and an increase in the standard of living. But progress and the climate which offers humans a high standard of living cannot be created without the capital to transform and turn resources into the final products that give us the—relatively—cheap energy and food, smartphones, fitness gyms, and overall the life we currently afford. Capital moves in the direction of less regulation, less government intervention, and less taxation. In short, capital moves to where there's more economic freedom.

“Capital is chased away due to the high risk associated with governments who engage in high levels of controlling their economies.

“In contrast, communism, socialism, fascism, or just about any government-controlled system lacks the profit incentive. The people, who are the human resources, have no desire to engage in a business where the reward is not attainable (unless it's done in the black markets). They accept the state and its bureaucratic cronies to dictate their faith.

“Capital is chased away due to the high risk associated with governments who engage in high levels of controlling their economies and, often, corruption. The overall standard of living is dramatically lower than in most capitalist places, and the poverty is higher. Consequently, the collectivist country falls into an economic and social trap from which it is hard to escape. Only capitalism can save a nation from the failure of its central economic planning.

Capitalism Helps Us Be Better Individuals

“Similar to the old Soviet lifestyle, let's remember what the typical Venezuelan family of our times worries about on a daily basis. Food to put on the table and the safety of their children. They wake up in the morning wondering how many meals they can afford that day, where to get them from, and how to pay for them.

“Capitalism makes it possible for us to challenge ourselves, to have goals, and to put forth the sweat in order to achieve them.

“We, the lucky ones to live in a relatively free-market system, don't have these kinds of worries. We go to work, get leisure time to be on Facebook, watch TV, be with our families, read books, and enjoy a hobby or two. In short, we have the personal freedom to engage in and enjoy a variety of life events because of capitalism.

“But there's another important motive to desire to live in a capitalist society. We are free to create and come up with all kinds of business ideas, no matter how crazy some might be. Because we don't have to worry about tomorrow, we have—or make—the time to read, explore, and innovate.

“Capitalism makes it possible for us to challenge ourselves, to have goals, and to put forth the sweat to achieve them. It gives us the freedom to try new things and explore new opportunities. It gives us the chance to create more opportunities. It helps us build strong character because when we try, we also fail, and without failure, how do we know we've made mistakes? Without failure, how do we know we must make changes?

Individual Freedom Can Only Exist in the Context of Free Markets

“Before immigrating to the U.S., I had to go through a rigorous process. One of the events was the immigration interview with the American counselor who, among many other questions, asked why I escaped Romania and why I wanted to come to America. My short answer was freedom. Then he posed the interesting question: "If America was to go through a period of economic devastation with shortages similar to Romania, would you still feel the same way?" I didn't think too much about it, and I said, "Yes, of course, as long as I have freedom."

“Capitalism is the path to the individual rights and liberty that build the solid foundation of a free society.

“In retrospect, that was a dumb answer on my part. After several decades, I came to believe that the human condition of individual freedom can only exist in the context of free markets. Shortages are created by the intrusion of the state into the complex activity of the markets, whether it's price controls or poor allocation of resources.

“When shortages are powerful and long enough to dramatically affect lives, people resort to revolt. Large revolts call for serious governmental actions including, but not limited to, eroding or completely eliminating individual rights (the right to free speech and to bear arms), the institution of a police state, and the enacting of a powerful state propaganda system. Capitalism is the path to the individual rights and liberty that build the solid foundation of a free society.

Is America a True Capitalist Economy?

“The short answer is no. Most of the world refers to the American system as being a capitalist one. Based on my short definition of capitalism, it is obvious that it is not quite a pure one, and I wish to clarify that the U.S. is not a truly free-market capitalist system.

“We still maintain stronger capitalist traits than most, however a few other nations who lead the way in economic freedom have surpassed us.

“The economic policy of the 19th Century with limited regulations and minimal taxation attracted the needed capital to our country. The Industrial Revolution made spectacular advancements in human conditions due to the capital concentrated in the region. America lost its number one place due to legislating higher regulations, taxation, and protectionist policies.

“But we are still enjoying some of the fruits today. Compared to many countries in the world, we still maintain stronger capitalist traits than most, however Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, New Zealand, and a few other nations who lead the way in economic freedom have surpassed us (see the latest statistics).

What America Needs

[besides a swift kick up the arse, my note]

“It starts in our own backyard, in our home, in our small group, in our community.

“Aside from better economic and legislative policies, what America needs is a more intense appreciation of individual freedom and capitalism. Such a crazy idea is not acquired through public schools or becoming a public servant. Young people don't need more years of schooling with more worthless college degrees and student loans in default. America needs more entrepreneurs and businessmen. It needs more people with drive and ambition, more self-starters, more innovators, more people who are willing to take chances.

“It starts in our own backyard, in our home, in our small group, in our community. It starts with loving, involved, and dedicated parents who'd instill the values of personal responsibility and delayed gratification in their children. It continues with an education that entails both theory and hands-on practice in environments conducive to learning how to think independently and how to acquire life- and work-skills. It evolves into a purpose-driven life rich in learning and experiences. And this may be just the beginning of attaining the intellectual maturity to perceive the value that free markets and individual freedom afford most of us.”

#socialism #communism #communist #evils of communism #wake up america or your stupid citizens will drag you into this hell called communism

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livingmybestfictionallife · 4 years

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Knife in a Gun Fight --The Commodore

Summary: In 1929, the Nevin-Klaff Gang, a collection of bootlegging cousins from the farmlands of Texas find themselves on the run and in need of help.The gang finds their way to St. Paul, Minnesota where the make the acquaintance of notorious, underground, bootlegger smuggling gang, The EST. Immediately, the leaders of these two gangs, Siobhan (Shiv-on) “Shiv” Nevin, and Colson “The Gun” Baker, can’t stand one another. When their subordinates go behind their backs to agree to work together, Shiv realizes how dangerous it can be to be a knife in a gun fight.

A/N: I apologize for how this was def. not posted when I originally anticipated. I had a major plot hole I had to fix and basically rewrite this chapter!

Built in 1920, the Commodore was a quaint place for passersby to take refuge during their journeys; however, after the hotel’s bar was shut down, it was secretly relocated underground to become an exclusive, and on occasion, nefarious, speakeasy. All of the gamblers, bootleggers, and gangsters that Saint Paul attracted knew of the speakeasy, but more importantly, they all knew of The EST.

Almost as well known as the Nevin-Klaff gang, the EST was a staple of the mid-west’s criminal underground. The EST began in Cleveland as a collection of bootleggers and smugglers, each trying to escape their own predetermined fates, and arrived in Saint Paul roughly two years ago. Siobhan had heard the rumors of the EST’s near invisible smuggling and bootlegging operations, and they served to be accurate given how little media attention the received. Sure, Saint Paul was her first pick of a hideout because of it’s magnetic pull to the criminal world, but when she realized the EST was there, that was when she devised an escape plan.

Since the collective Nevin and Klaff siblings began working together, Shiv could feel Walter and Eddy’s fear--they would never admit to it in order to not feel as if they were burdening their older brothers--and the discontentment George and Art constantly repressed from the younger three regarding if they’ll make it out alive. She knew it was up to her to save all of their asses. She knew George was one snarky comment away from getting a hole blasted through him--by the cops or another gang, it didn’t matter; he was a smart-ass to everyone. Art was intelligent, but didn’t have the patience to see more than two minutes ahead of each action he took, Eddy and Walter were by no means children, especially after everything they’ve witnessed and experienced, but neither had the brains to figure out where to go or what to do next. Shiv was the planner, the decisive, witty, strategic thinker the gang needed to escape the country without striking interest in the wrong people.

Who else do undesirables go to for help other than more undesirables? she thought not long after arriving in Saint Paul. The EST was far from her first plan, but it was the safest one she could come up with.

“Just mingle,” Shiv reminded her brothers and cousins as they entered the Commodore speakeasy. The large, open room was flooded with people of various different walks of life. In one corner, a known gangster spoke freely with what appeared to be financial businessmen, near the billiards table, housewives and flappers cheered while their men competed, and throughout the crowd, men and women spoke, danced, and drank as if the law could not reach them down here, beneath the streets of Saint Paul, Minnesota. “Don’t draw attention to yourselves,” Shiv stated with a glare in George’s direction as she followed the men down a short flight of stairs.

“Where are we meeting up and when?” Walt asked as a young, redheaded woman caught his eye.

“If you meet anyone in EST, try and set up something for tomorrow” Siobhan said softly under the music. “Breakfast, river dancing, anything” she continued slightly sardonically with a scoff. Already Walt and Eddy peeled themselves away from the group and made their introductions to the young woman and her friend. George and Art also pulled away from Siobhan to begin a game of billiards at an open table.

Shiv took a deep breath and slowly approached the bar. Her reflection bore back at her from the mirror behind the bar, and she quickly examined herself. Her long, toned arms had lost their tan from working under the hot, Texas sun, however the muscle remained, especially after having to carry the Nevin-Klaff gang on her shoulders for the past eight or nine years. Her long, dark hair was tied up elegantly--something her younger cousin learned to do as a child when his mother asked him to help her with her hair on Sundays--and a hint of makeup accentuated the twinkle in her doe eyes. A soft, cap sleeve evening gown hung from her shoulders in shimmering, golden beaded hues before transforming into a flowing swirl of pale blue tulle. The gown hugged her body gently before it fell to gather around her feet, and despite the few eyes she’d caught glancing her way, she grew anxiously uncomfortable in the attire.

For the past near decade of her life, Shiv had been carrying out secret plans of illegal activities; she never had a moment to reflect on her appearance or the appeal she had towards others. Often, her brothers and cousins would meet flings wherever the group sought shelter, but Shiv didn’t have the luxury of forgetting her surroundings and abandoning all concerns. People brought out the worst in her; it was a fact as inarguable as the sky being blue or the grass being green. Being raised on a farm, as the only child in her household, she not only endured the worst from her peers for being poor, but also was not shielded from her brothers’ and cousins’ ‘boys-will-be-boys’ antics. She grew up to be tough and level-headed, but more so, Shiv’s experiences with people outside of her family--and sometimes even within her family--led her to putting up the harshest of fronts and strongest walls imaginable.

“Can I get you something ma’am?” the bartender asked as Shiv’s eyes flicked away from the table top and to the young man before her. He couldn’t have been much older than Walter or Eddy, but he seemed much younger due to the lack of farm-built muscle that defined her family.

“Just a double whisky, neat,” she stated monotonously with a small smile in exchange for her off-putting tone. With a nod, the bartender sauntered away to pour the drink, and Shiv turned on her heel to examine the room once more. George and Arthur were playing against one another and attracting a large crowd of predominately female spectators, Walter sat at a booth with the redhead he saw upon entering the bar and laughed with her at a story she appeared to be telling, and Eddy wasn’t very far away from Walt, carrying back a round of drinks alongside a blonde girl who seemed rather taken with him.

“That’s a pretty strong drink,” a deep voice said from over Shiv’s shoulder as she turned around to take her glass from the bartender and meet the stranger’s eyes. The man beside her was folded into the bar and had pulled a nearby stool towards him with his long legs in order for him to sit as he sipped from his own glass. He wore a stone grey three piece suit with a black tie, wore his blonde hair slicked back and to the side, and seemed all too sure of himself for Siobhan’s taste.

“Not strong enough if you ask me,” she commented in a dry and rather unremarked tone as she refrained her natural instincts to continue to scope out the man beside her.

“It’s not too often that I see a nice girl such as yourself drink a man’s drink,” he said with a small chuckle. Slowly, Shiv’s eyes drifted to her right as she held her breath and clenched her jaw.

“What in the world would lead you to assume that I’m nice? And why the hell do men think they have a monopoly on everything?” Shiv questioned without an ounce of emotion rising from her tone.

“Can’t you just take a compliment?” the man huffed as he rolled his eyes and took a small swig of his drink.

“I’d love to, but unfortunately, there was nothing of substance in anything that you said for me to even assume to be a compliment,” Shiv stated as monotonously as she could.

“What is your problem?” The blonde man with his hair slicked back and to the side grumbled as he poured the rest of his drink down his throat and narrowed his eyes in curious observation at Siobhan. As she quickly lost whatever patience she had left after dealing with George all day, Shiv exhaled sharply, tossed back her whisky, and stared the man in the face.

“You’re my problem,” Shiv stated in response to the man’s question.

“Me?” he quickly questioned in return only to get an annoyed glare from the woman across from him.

“Yes, you. It was more than obvious that I wanted to be alone; did you not come over here because you figured I was the only woman in this place completely isolated?”

“Maybe I wanted to talk to you,” the man attempted to explain away her accusations.

“Maybe you did,” she sighed and rolled her eyes, “after your silver tongue and semi-suave persona failed in picking up either of the women chatting at the table behind us.” Hesitant to admit his shortcomings with the brash woman before him, the man narrowed his eyes at her and pursed his lips, as if prompting her to continue. “There’s a mirror on the bar, I couldn’t have ignored that train wreck even if I wanted to.”

“Did anyone teach you how to smile?”

“Did anyone teach you how to pick up on basic social cues?”

“Damn, why are you so mean?” the blonde man gasped in aggravation.

“It’s what the world does to you, pretty boy. Maybe you’ll learn that one day,” she said before standing up and leaving a tip on the bar for the bartender.

She didn’t want to come out tonight. Befriending EST was not apart of her original plan; it was just some bullshit addition George wanted in order to feel like he was contributing something to protecting his brother and younger cousins. A simple ask-around-town and introduce-yourself before asking for a favor would have worked. Personal, human interactions were obsolete. It didn’t matter one way or another if they were best friends or simply business partners, but George threw a fit and threatened to take off on his own, which subsequently terrified Walter of losing his brother and then sent Arthur and Edmund into a panic about separating from their cousins.

“I should have let him leave,” Siobhan muttered to herself as she paced towards an empty booth in the darkest corner of the speakeasy. There was a distinct difference between each Nevin-Klaff member’s reason for being in this criminal boat, and Shiv was near certain of each person’s motives.

Walter didn’t want to be left out. Being the youngest instilled a fear in Walt about being the only one not able to do something out of the Nevin-Klaff cousins. Edmund knew the work he would have to pick up around the farm with George, Arthur, and Siobhan gone would be too much for him to handle, and he wasn’t about to handle the brute of harvest on his own. Arthur only continued to help George in order to keep him on the right track. George wasn’t the brightest, and he certainly didn’t know what he was doing in the beginning. Shiv always figured he assumed he could stash jugs of whisky or moonshine in the bed of a truck, drive two counties over, and collect some cash. Without Art to be a sound moral compass with more than half a brain, George would have been locked up not too long after he started. Shiv never really clicked with George. Throughout their childhood, she never understood why the family favored him so much, but she did know they were unaware of the many secrets he harbored from them. Initially, he stole from his parents--it wasn’t much, but taking anything from a dirt poor farmer was more than enough to ruin him--and then got into bootlegging as a way to get enough money to payback his parents without them knowing.

There wasn’t a doubt in Shiv’s mind that, if the gang were to go their separate ways, George wouldn’t stick to the harmless crimes they commit now. He’d go on to rob trains or banks, make a mistake and kill someone or end up being killed. That’s the only reason she didn’t devise a way to travel in smaller groups or spread out across the country, because whoever was stuck with George would be screwed.

“He has dumb-ass plans anyway,” Shiv sighed to herself as she reexamined George’s idea of becoming friends with EST. Allies, sure, Shiv could understand that, but friends? This wasn’t a school playground. This is 1929 Saint Paul, Minnesota and they were wanted in who knows how many states. There’s not any time fro friends, and their idea of going to a speakeasy and flushing out the people they’re essentially stalking in order to get close to wasn’t going to come to fruition tonight. “Screw this,” Shiv huffed as she slammed her hands down on the table in front of her and sprung to her feet. “I didn’t want to come. I told him this was stupid. No one ever listens to me, even when my only job requires them to listen!” Over and over, more and more complaints flooded Shiv’s head as she made her way to the exit. She grumbled each one under her breath and did her best to ignore all of the concerned glances being exchanged her way; all except for one. The baby blue-green eyes of the man who had pissed her off by reminding her all too much of George noticed her leave, and wore the smallest expression of guilt on his face.

Shiv noticed him, and it made her even angrier.

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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Lets debunk the BS from this. Up top a lot of this BS comes from Bob Chipman/MovieBob who is the guy who if you recall said:

- Superheroes like Superman (and thus by extension Spider-Man who marry civilians were jerks for putting their spouses through the same stuff soldiers’ spouses go through

- Spider-Man appeals best to teens (even though he provably doesn’t since most people get into him before their teens and he appealed to college students in his heyday)

- The Spider-Marriage was nothing more than a forced publicity stunt

- Sins Past is worse than OMD

- Spider-Man is about passive aggressive power

- And the best one, ever since OMD Peter and MJ had become ‘more interesting’

That all being said lets dive into this:

Someone asked the panel what a queer reading would add to the character of Miles…Jesus…that’s just the greatest sign of hope for this podcast isn’t it? Shoot me now…

Miles was not 3 dimensional when he was created. Even if you disagree it is nonsense to say that Peter wasn’t three dimensional when he was first created. Just look at how much Stan explored Peter’s psychology in this singular panel from ASM #50

Look at that. Peter Parker pulled between the two sides of his life. Making a judgement of someone. But then calling out his own judgement of them and acknowledging maybe he’s in the wrong.

This was 1967!

That isn’t three dimensional?

Additionally other people would disagree that Peter wasn’t three dimensional early on.

And even if you disagree with that it’s nonsense to say he hasn’t SINCE become three dimensional or that retaining his origin story (which Miles broadly uses as the basis for his story in every version of his character) somehow holds him back from being three dimensional. If nothing else Peter was at least multifaceted for the time period.

Spider-Man wasn’t an example of stories about a 15 year old made for 7 year olds. Spider-Man was intended to be a senior in AF #15 and the stories were written by Stan for at worst an older audience but at best basically just for him.

Stan Lee confirmed that AF #15 was written not as a one off but as something that if successful COULD become an on-going series.

Its BS to say Peter makes no sense as a character because he makes sense about as much as any character within the confines of the superhero genre can. MILES doesn’t somehow make more sense whatsoever.

No. Spider-Man wasn’t merely a thrown together ‘hey here is a teenage superhero story with a downer ending’ it was a story about selfishness, responsibility and appealed via it’s relative normalcy and lack of idealization of the superhero protagonist.

The psychology and thematic idea of his exclusive powers (invisibility+venom blast) is the same…how? How is disappearing and repelling people the same thing? They keep saying that in the podcast as though it’s obvious and it’s really not

Great Power=Great responsibility isn’t Peter’s catch phrase it’s the philosophy underpinning everything he does

‘The young end millennials have been thrown under the bus by society so the optimism is reserved for the young end millenials like Miles and Gwen’ oh but also ‘you need 5-10 years added to each character to have this make sense and also Spide-Ham doesn’t quit fit’…So…the theory doesn’t make sense then does it. Also, what optimism is there for teen millenials in the late 2010s? We are all shit scared Global warming needs to be fixed within the next 10-20 years. The young end millenials will not be in much of a position to do that. Maybe not the high-end millenials either. The power rests in older Gen Xers or even older generations. So this ‘generational’ theory is bullshit. Yeah, Miles as the next generation maybe makes sense but not when you apply real world concepts of who the different generations are. Especially considering that’s made up bullshit anyway.

‘Blah blah blah for most of my life I’ve been uninterested in Spider-Man because I’ve believed him to be WHITE MALE teenaged wish fulfilment.’…*internally groans*…oh boy…this woman is one of those types huh. Frankly I, and I would advocate others too, take a salt shaker with them whenever they hear someone say something like this. But more importantly Spider-Man is seriously NOT what she describes. For starters Peter was a senior in high school when he began and shouldered adult responsibilities when his father died. That’s wish fulfilment? That’s a BURDEN. The reason that spoke to so many people was because he was just different and because his imperfections made him more relatable. The whiteness idea is also bullshit since he was intentionally or otherwise subtextually Jewish and has spoken to countless people of all colours across the generations. He very particularly has a HUGE following among African Americans which was partially what prompted the creation of Miles Morals in the first place! Shit, the showrunner for the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon was black for God’s sake. Many of the head honcho creators for ITSV were people of colour who were clearly MASSIVE Spider-Man fans!

‘As a woman Spider-Man didn’t resonate with me’. Spider-Man is male. And he acts in ways a male would in the context of the situations. But the character as a whole, in his deepest themes and concepts, is a universal character. He does and has spoken to people across race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, culture and generations. Spider-Girl, Mayday Parker, was her father’s daughter and far more similar than different to him. She spoke to male and female readers. Peter Parker himself has had female fans since his inception. There is no end of female fans here on tumblr or in other online spaces that are the proof of this, to say nothing of old letters pages.

Miles feels more like a real kid and fits together better than most other versions of Peter Parker?...how? I don’t like USM the comic but hwo the fuck do you take that, Spec Spidey, the 1994 cartoon and the Raimi movies (that MovieBob adores btw) and say ‘it doesn’t fit together properly like Miles’. Dude, Comic Book Miles Morales is a teenager in New York who goes to a bordering school for scientifically gifted kids and yet is supposed to be an everyman. That fits together well? He risked his life before being motivated to do so which is how most 13 year old woudn’t have acted. Then he feels guilty about Peter dying but his BFF explains it’s not his fault and he accepts this but then goes on to become Spider-Man anyway. And somehow this equates to guilt+responsibility. THAT’s better put together? His character got web-shooters two different ways by the same writer and the guy he was a legacy to was resurrected within like 3 years of Miles’ debut. That’s well put together? This makes more sense and is more believable than a kid who’s Dad dies because he didn’t use his gifts altruistically, so he spends his whole life striving to use them altruistically?

Blah blah blah MovieBob spewing more shit about how Peter is a teenage wish fulfilment power fantasy even though he clearly isn’t from a modern POV and REALLY wasn’t in the early 1960s.

By extension arguing Peter is an adult male’s retroactive teenaged wish fulfilment fantasy of working stuff out is so plainly wrong. Peter Parker in the early 1960s didn’t have everything figured out. The whole world was against him totally unfairly. He needed Aunt May or the Human Torch at times to give him pep talks. His social life was barely existent! You wanna see a middle aged man’s retroactive young wish fulfilment fantasy? Go read Brand New Day, which MovieBob claims was superior to the pre-OMD era. What is the wish fulfilment here? That attractive young women like him? Is that it? That one thing vs. all the horrible shit beating Peter down?

Bob claims there was a lot more Steve Ditko in the early issues of his run compared to Stan Lee because Peter was very angry. First of all Ditko was such a private person claiming he was definitely angry and that the anger was all him is a MASSIVE speculation. Especially considering Stan wrote Spidey as angry plenty after Ditko left. More importantly, Peter wasn’t angry in the early Ditko issues except for maybe issue #8. He had his moments sure, but it wasn’t at all consistent. He wasn’t raging out or smashing shit like he did later in Ditko’s run. He was more anxious and neurotic in those early issues which is comparatively closer to how Stan and Romita handled Peter in their earliest issues together. Peter and the whole world of Spidey got angrier towards the end of Ditko’s run. You know when Stan was letting Steve plot stuff more and more…It’s almost like Bob is full of shit or something

Bob tries to claim by the time ITSV was being written the kinks in Miles’ character had been worked out in the comics. Nah fam. If anything they’d been exacerbated. In reality it was the ITSV writers who took the wonky early Miles character and worked out those kinks themselves, creating an overall superior rendition of the character. A viewpoint I am not alone in.

‘The Prowler has never been a particularly noteworthy villain in the comics’ That’s because he’s not a villain. He was kind of a villain in his debut but he very quickly became an ally to Spidey

The panel then get into a very pretentious discussion about how ITSV preaches you arne’t stapled to your origin, you are not your trauma. That claiming that is pretentious ala Zack Snyder. But like…isn’t that the POINT of super hero origins? That they contextualize everything about the heroes thereafter? Isn’t carrying his trauma with everything they do practically the point of Batman and Spider-Man’s origins; you know the 2 most popular heroes? Uncle Ben’s death IS stapled to Spider-Man because it underlines everything he ever does. Shit it doesn’t even make sense when applied to Miles in ITSV. He does what he does because his Spider-Man died and then so did his uncle. There is even a whole scene in his dorm room where each Spider-Hero relays the grief that shaped their own lives. I’m not saying you need death and tragedy to be Spider-Man. But that’s neither a bad thing nor something that ISN’T applicable to Peter nor ITSV Miles. Aren’t these idiots supposed to be film buffs? How do you screw up such a basic reading like that?

One of the pundits claimed the movie preaches acting heroically in spite of your tragedies not because of them. Again though…that’ not Spider-Man. Peter is a hero specifically because his uncle died. Miles endeavours to become Spider-Man because his Peter died. His Uncle Aaron’s death further fuels him and allows him to make to final leap of faith. Yes, Peter B. continues to be a hero in spite of his failings but it is only his experiences with Miles that make that possible.

‘They don’t need the tragedies to be heroic they are already heroic in their own right. Look, I don’t disagree with that more broadly. Mayday Parker didn’t need tragedy to be a hero. But in terms of the specific characters in this movie? That’s clearly not true:

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This whole ‘in spite of tragedy’ shit is so pre-Marvel DC comics it hurts. Heroes who just innately do the right thing because it is the right thing to do is a dated and archaic invention Spidey and the other Marvel heroes were reacting against.

‘Spider-Man Noir detracted from the film’s message of diversity because he was a brooding WHITE MAN who prowled the night to enact fist based justice!!!!’ Do I even need to say anything to that? First of all literally every hero in the movie enacts fist based justice. Why does Noir operating at night make him worse than Peter B? Why does him being male make that worse than Peni or Gwen? Why does him being white make that worse than Miles or Peni? And as for detracting from the message of diversity, shockingly diversity can be found within the same ethnic or gender group. You know white/male people aren’t a monolith and all that. Plus creatively you want PERSONALITY diversity more than anything else. In this movie in particular you want shorthand conceptual differences too. ‘Spider-Man but an anime mech girl’ ‘Spider-Man but a noir character’. ‘Spider-Man but a cartoon pig’. This is how asinine this disgusting modern day mentality is.

Wow…MovieBob defending Noir from the asinine comment. I’m genuinely surprised. Too bad he doesn’t use the most obvious defence of ‘that is obviously a ridiculous statement to make you moron’

The next topic of discussion was related to Marvel moving away from Gwen as Spider-Man’s dead girlfriend. I spoke a lot about Bob’s ice cold take on that in this post.

He claims they introduced Spider-Gwen because the idea would be taboo and thus would get people talking. HA! Spider-Gwen was done as just a general idea not something to spark controversy. It wouldn’t even BE controversial. Marvel brought back a version of Gwen within 2 years of her death. They brought her back again 15 years after her death. They brought her back again 22 years after her death along with other versions who melted because it was the Clone Saga. During and after all those times they had AUs of Gwen in What If, Age of Apocalypse, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and other such stuff. An explicitly AU of Gwen Stacy in 2014 was one of the most aggressively uncontroversial things you could do.

Gwen’s ballet shoes differentiate her from every other Spider-Man ever. I mean yes in terms of being a dancer I suppose but in terms of being dedicated and studious, training hard and earning immense physical control? There have been plenty of versions of Spider-Man pre-2018 who are like that.

The only way you can make Spider-Gwen work going forward is by not tying it to her death in the canon? Boy…too God damn bad her debut and origin is entirely built upon that. Her origin in the comics and in the movies is built upon a role reversal because it is Peter who dies to motivate her. Film audiences would’ve still grasped that role reversal because it was only 4 years ago Emma Stone’s highly popular rendition of the character died. And that was in the last pre-MCU Spider-Man movie to boot!

‘The only Iron Man story anyone cared about was Demon in a Bottle’ Actually they only cared about that story and Armor Wars. But yeah, the MCU version is lesser for neither having his alcoholism nor a crippling heart condition. The mere fact people became complacent about that doesn’t mean it wasn’t reductive.

‘These are fictional characters they need to grow and change with the times to remain popular’ Gwen Stacy sucked shit in the 1960s-1970s and was then killed off and defined by her death. Somehow she still wound up becoming a fan favourite by the 90s and 21st century. Spider-Gwen sucks as a character but not in concept. I never had a problem with the concept. But the idea that she needed to exist to keep Gwen popular is bullshit because Gwen had somehow become immensely popular in spite of being a nothing character. And that even presumes anyone needed to perform maintenance on Gwen to keep her popular. No we didn’t. She was an irrelevant character beyond her death. It’s like saying we need to change Uncle Ben or Bruce’s parents to keep them popular.

Gwen’s affect on Peter Parker was important for awhile but we aren’t that society anymore. It’s not a fucking societal concern! Putting aside how a 2014 movie did Gwen’s death just a few years before ITSV, Gwen’s death is about a universal human experience. Death, grief, moving on. Oh, I see. This halfwit mistakenly believes Gwen is an example of women in the refrigerator.

Gwen died because Peter had this perfect lovely girlfriend and everything was too great for him and they didn’t know how to write beyond that. An oversimplification. Gwen died because they needed to shake things up for sales in general. Because Conway shipped Peter with MJ. And a 20 year old Spidey in 1973 really was too young to be killed off. Oh and you know she was written like shit. Yeah that’s the part no one ever talks about. Gwen is played up as this underserving victim of a character but she sucked shit.

It’s almost the 2020s! So fucking what? People still lose loved ones in the 2020s? I’m not even saying Spider-Gwen should have died in ITSV or revolved around her counterpart dying. I’m saying this dumbass is wrong for bringing it up as though killing Gwen off is dated on principle. But this is the same moron who unironically said ‘I never connected to Spider-Man because he is a teenaged white male wish fulfilment fantasy’. I’m sure she got top marks in her gender studies class

‘sOme PpL nEEd 2 gEt oVa iTTTTTTT’ I genuinely wish this person would wake up mute someday.

‘We could do a whole movie about Spider-Gwen’. I don’t respect where this opinion is coming from but I don’t necesarilly disag- ‘Get Seanen Maguire to write it’…nevermind. This gets even worse when you consider Maguire had only been writing Gwen for literally 3 issues at the time this podcast was released. Of the back of three issues you are declaring this writer qualified to write an entire movie about the character? Not even Jason Latour who created her. I smell someone who just jumped on the bandwagon or worse is blinded by agenda and ideology.

‘Gwen could’ve done with 5 more minutes’ It’s not her movie! It’s Miles’ movie and secondarily Peter B’s movie because he is Miles mentor. It is through their mutual relationship that Miles learns to be Spider-Man and Peter learns to be Spider-Man again.

It never made sense for an 80 year old woman to be raising a 16 year old boy! Aunt May in the 1960s wasn’t in her 80s. She just looked that way because, duh, standards of health were different back then. A 40 year old now looks much younger and in better health than someone who potentially might’ve been born in the 19th century circa 1962! A working class woman no less…With chronic health problems! Even if she was in her mid-late 50s her looking like that was totally believable in context! And her raising Peter was also entirely believable depending upon how old Ben and May were when Richard and Mary were born. It’s not beyond possibility at all that there was 15-20 years separating Ben and his younger brother, meaning if Peter was born when Richard was 25, Ben and May would’ve been in their 40s. Thus by the time Peter was 15 they’d be in their 50s or 60s.

These idiots keep treating Peter from Miles’ universe as a bona fide version of 616 Peter when it’s blindingly obvious he’s supposed to be an idealized rendition of the character. A version intended to be a juxtaposition to the version we all know walking into the movie.

Peter B. Parker having a more traditional version of Aunt May as opposed to a more proactive and involved version has left him with a sense of giving up. Er…no. It’s pretty obvious Peter B. Parker is the Spider-Man we know and love who normally doesn’t give up but one string of failures after another has brought him to his lowest. But he rises back up again. Look Peter is supposed to be a representation of human beings. Human beings need people and need emotional support. When you lose those people and are alone you can go to a very dark place. That’s Peter B’s story. If Aunt May had been more involved but everything else went wrong (including her death) he’d have still wound up in the dark place he went to. Blonde Peter might’ve weathered May’s death better in theory but he had OTHER stuff in his life to keep him afloat. Peter B lost most everything. What horseshit it is to argue if Aunt May was different he’d have not given up.

There was no purpose for Aunt May being as old as she was or on the cusp of death in the original comics. Er…yeah there was. She was that old because it made her more vulnerable and thus accentuated the loss of her husband and the need for Peter to be her support network. It also internally justified why she was so frail and unwell. Old people usually have health problems. Duh! But then Bob admits there is a reason for those decisions. So he is contradicting himself.

Bob presumes Blonde Peter told Aunt May his secret even though there is no evidence in the movie to support that idea.

Kids today aren’t resentful of their grandparents like older generations were, that’s why Aunt May is played differently now. Um…Peter was never resentful of Aunt May in the first place. He sincerely loved her and felt he needed to pay her back for all she’d done for him.

‘Kids today have cool grandparents because 50% of them would have been hippies.’ Hippies aren’t cool. And never were. They were pretentious losers that hid behind causes as an excuse to do drugs and have lots of sex. Over half a century later the world they claimed to fight for and want to build has yet to materialise and in fact is in a lot of ways far worse off than it was before their generation rose to the seats of power. The hippy generation are part of the baby boomer generation that are so thoroughly mocked today. The people in power who’ve fucked up the job and housing market for consequent generations. These idiots literally spouted a dumbass theory earlier on about how first wave millenials have been thrown under the bus. Who do you think did that? The baby boomers, many of whom used to be hippies! And NONE of this demands Aunt May has to be different. I have no problem with her being different in ITSV. But the idea of someone who used to be a hippy being doting? Being a worry wart? Why the Hell is that a dated concept?

These idiots clearly view the world aggressively through an identitarian and group weighted lens as opposed to how the world really is. I.e. 7 billion+ individuals

There was a weird amount of focus upon gangsters in the Spec Spidey cartoon considering it was for kids. Not really, the show was reverential of the original comics. The original comics (which were for children) had lots of gangsters

To the people who bitch and moan about getting another Spider-Man it doesn’t take away from the one you had before. No one was complaining about Miles as another Spider-Man in this movie. People weren’t claiming it ruins the Raimi movies or something. People resent it in the comics because it waters down the brand and makes Spider-Man himself less special when he is an ONGOING character. It’d be one thing maybe if the torch was passed from person to person. But nowadays it’s literally all of them co-existing.

Blah blah bah symbolism of a young black boy fighting a big WHITE business MAN. Blah blah blah this is the type of bad guy Miles would fight in real life blah blah blah…Jesus Christ… these people really just buy that type of Kool-aid in bulk don’t they? As if Miles, were he ‘real’ wouldn’t fight anyone who’s doing bad things. FFS they just got done talking about Tombstone from the Spec cartoon. Tombstone is an African American! And he’s in this fucking movie. He’s not some weird fantastical guy, he’s a regular gangster who happens to be albino. That’s it. Miles fights him in this fucking movie! Miles first major adversary in the comics was the Prowler who was another African American. Miles wouldn’t JUST fight ‘evil white businessMEN’

‘As far as I know about Doc Ock from Superior Spider-Man, which is excellent’ Wow. So, as would be obvious with anyone with a working brain and some prior knowledge of Otto, Superior is garbage. And saying you are basing your assessments of Otto on Superior is like saying you have never known about the character

Doc Ock is in so many Spidey stories as a scientific assistant to other people because the Green Goblin is always either dead or completely untrustworthy. Bob really just said that huh? This is further proof Bob has read precious little Spider-Man material. Doc Ock is NOBODY’s assistant. Even in Secret Wars he had to be threatened into compliance by Doom himself when Ultron was his attack dog. Doc Ock isn’t recruited by other people for his genius, he is the mover and shaker. He recruits other people and is the man in charge. And who the fuck is looking to get the help of Norman Osborn because he’s a scientist? Not to mention Norman is untrustworthy, oh but Otto?????????? The guy who tried to nuke NYC???????? WTF is Bob talking about?

Since we are in the ‘age of heroes’ (whatever THAT means?) it is impossible for Spider-Man to not be mentored by some other hero. Er…yeah it is? This is obviously a defence of MCU Spider-Man and it holds no water. First of all DC and Marvel have had young heroes show up when there are a plethora of heroes around they’ve not had mentors. Second of all it’s entirely possible for Peter to not WANT a mentor and it’d be entirely believable that the other heroes might not see themselves as mentors or might mistrust him.

The Spider-Heroes take their grief and turn it into action. WHOA WHOA WHOA! Didn’t these guys say earlier that the movie preaches the heroes are more than their trauma? That they aren’t stapled to their origins? That they move on from it? What’s this change of tune all of a sudden?

Miles Dad was probably made into a cop to avoid having a difficult discussion about how the police would react to a black super hero or a black Spider-Man. Yeah, or it’s because you know…his Dad worked in law enforcement in the comics so you know…faithfulness. Also the police don’t discriminate against black heroes in the MCU except Luke Cage. Also, also not every fucking cop is racist. Also, also, also how would they know Miles is black his costume covers his whole body!

Miles Dad was super authoritarian. Dude. He didn’t like vigilantes and he followed basic rules like stopping not abusing police sirens. That’s hardly akin to being a jackbooted fascist.

Miles would’ve had a different relationship with authority and the police if his Dad hadn’t been a cop. Er…no not necessarily. First of all being the son of a cop doesn’t mean he’d have not experienced institutionalized racism from the police. Second of all even if he had experienced that he could still believe in justice and taking down obviously evil and dangerous people like Kingpin.

They never touched upon institutional racism from the police in Luke Cage which was for adults. Er, yes they did. The rapper in the later episodes of season 1 (the Bulletproof Love guy) stated he wasn’t going to call the police. The police were stopping and searching black men in their hunt for Cage. Black people wore shirts with holes in them in order to protect Cage and defy the cops. The rap mentioned how nobody was interested in protecting their neighbourhood.

Nobody wants the tell a superhero story about institutional racism within the authorities. Isn’t that literally Luke Cage’s origin? Didn’t Black Panther mention that earlier in the year ITSV was released.

I’m going to disagree that Miles fighting Kingpin was unnecessary because of the cultural connotations we talked about….God…You couldn’t just say ‘the main hero obviously has to defeat the main villain. Duh!’…

Dan Slott is a dang genius! As if you needed more proof these people are unqualified to talk about Spider-Man…

Spider-Verse’s (the comic’s) fan service is what happens when you get Spider-Man fans to do the story vs. ITSV. Nah fam. ITSV is what happens when you get real fans who are talented vs. Spider-Verse is what happens when you get a real fan who fundamentally misunderstands the characters and is a hack

There is no real Peter Parker. Who cares! The real Peter Parker is the original because he is the one everyone else is derivative of and therefore based upon. And fans AND creators and Marvel itself clearly care about that because they sure as fuck didn’t kill him off so Miles could replace him. They killed off the secondary and surplus Ultimate Peter Parker. Treating the original version as the true one doesn’t invalidate any other versions because they can still be great characters unto themselves. But given how disgustingly SJW this whole podcast has been I am unsurprised they go in for this participation trophy form of analysis where everything is equal all the time.

It also doesn’t invalidate the idea of Spider-Man being anyone. Spider-Man CAN be anyone. But not everyone can be Peter Parker. If we are going to say otherwise the praise these jackoffs lauded onto Miles for how his specific identity was explored is invalidated. Peter is Peter. Miles is Miles. They can both be Spider-Heroes worthy of the mantle.

Because Miles is a POC people who don’t look like Peter can believe they can be Spider-Man. I’m not arguing against Miles but seriously, that was the case before Miles existed. The showrunner of Spider-Man 1994 was an African American and he related to Peter Parker in the 1960s. Poc can relate to Spider-Man regardless of skin colour.

The original comic book version of Spider-Man isn’t the true one just because he is the original. Er….yeah. It seriously does precisely BECAUSE he is the version all the other ones are derivative of. Hence he’s from the PRIME universe. Shit the Spider-Verse comic book the movie takes mild inspiration from literally says that. Granted it then contradicts itself but the point still stands. Because he is the original one he IS the true one because without him the others would not exist. He is the canonical one!

The true 616 Spider-Man will never be in any adaptation because there is too much continuity…Yeah…so? How does that make him not the original one in the broad context though when you compare every version?

Continuity is the killer of enjoyment when it comes to movies. No, this podcast is the killer of enjoyment. And btw, maybe ask all the people who went to see Infinity War earlier in the year ITSV was released and ask them if continuity ruined that movie for them. This is such a lazy, myopic attitude.

If continuity is used to exclude people it is bad. Good job nobody was ever saying ITSV shouldn’t exist because Miles isn’t Peter then

Infinity War is a fine movie even if you do not know who everybody is. No it isn’t. Infinity War is wholly inaccessible if you do not know who everyone is because it’s throwing dozens of characters at you with little-no context provided.

Black Panther is better than Infinity War, this proves continuity is bad. No. Black Panther not having to have it’s story wrapped up in everything else in the wider universe was what helped make it better. FFS, Winter Soldier is better than Avengers 2012 and that still relies upon plenty of continuity. Civil War is better than Thor the Dark World and the latter has way less continuity than the former. It’s not about having continuity it’s about how you use it. Black Panther was world building in it’s own corner. It wasn’t plugged in so directly to the wider universe the way Homecoming or FFH was. THAT’s what made it good but that’s not a continuity issue that’s a world building issue.

Continuity is toxic when you use it to claim a long running fantasy series didn’t satisfy you. Uh huh, hey do you wanna ask all the people who hated Game of Thrones’ final season that?

Oh, and one of the pundits, the one who bleeted on about Spidey as a ‘tEEnAgE WHITE mAle wish fUlLfiLmEnt fantasy!’ is a Hollywood actress. Now her views make waaaaaaaaaay too much sense

In conclusion…Sigh…For a podcast called School of Movies I think these guys need to go back to kindergarten.

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masterofmunson · 7 years

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Wanted (15)

Steve Harrington x Reader, Billy Hargrove x Reader

Summary: She wants Steve. Billy wants her. The Upside Down has other plans for her.

Warnings: a little (a lot) of ooc billy, underage drinking, allusions to alcoholism?, reader’s a brat, language, a dash of insecurity, fluff ;), a mini cliffhanger, that’s it? I think?

Word Count: 5.2k+

CATCH UP HERE

Another month passes and although it’s been two months since the gate closed, her nightmares haven’t gotten any better and she’s still having visions every now and then. Each one terrifies her into silence and hiding her demons seemed to be her best option.

Steve, Kaitlyn, and Trevor noticed a shift in her and it frightened her to think that it was that obvious. She blamed the lack of sleep on the piles of homework she had and the hours she picked up at the skating arena.

Hiding it from Billy seemed even more difficult. Ever since his apology, he became a staple in her life and her in his. He still hung around Tommy, Carol, and their crew, but he’d go out of his way to say hi to Y/n in the hallways whenever they saw each other. He essentially made her off limits to Tommy and Carol’s cruel jokes and Y/n was extremely grateful for it.

They’d make time for each other—whether it be in or out of school. They’d go to Benny’s whenever they could for an early dinner while he waited for Max to get out of AV Club and he hated whenever they had to leave. He loved spending time with her, he felt safe and open with her. He felt like a better person with her and she made Hawkins just a little bit more bearable.

It took her a little while for her to open up to him, but he was patient and reassured her that he wasn’t looking to get anything out of her. He just wanted to have her as a friend.

As her nightmares and visions worsened, her ability to hide them did as well. It showed in her eyes and definitely in her patience. She was snappy and snarky. She had no time to deal with anyone’s bullshit.

Hiding it from Billy whenever he stayed the night seemed almost impossible. She’d stay up for as long as she could until she dozed off in Billy’s arms and wake up again to him shaking her awake. He’d ask if she wanted to talk about it and she’d shake her head, fighting the tears from falling down her cheeks. Her body would shake and tremble and she’d hold onto Billy like a lifeline until she’d fall asleep again.

It tore his heart to pieces to see her so torn up over her nightmares. He wanted to help, but she never wanted to talk about them. Y/n always said that him being there was enough, but he couldn’t help but feel guilty. He wanted to do more for her and she wouldn’t let him.

Instead, she turned towards alcohol. She partied whenever she could and drank her consciousness away. She was a different person entirely.

She was wild. She was obnoxious. When she was drunk, all the boys wanted her. Even though it was nearing the end of January, she dressed like it was the start of June. She wore fishnet tights underneath her shorts and a thin crop top to at least give the allusion that she was trying to cover up her chest. It was so unlike her usual attire—a jeans and a t-shirt.

At first, her friends and Billy didn’t think anything of it. They all thought she looked great. It was good to see her so confident. She looked and felt relaxed at the first party they all went to which was great to see--until she continued going to parties like it was her only hobby.

She partied like her life depended on it. She drank until she couldn’t stand and her legs always ached the following morning. Her head always felt like it was on fire the morning after. Hungover and sluggish walking down the stairs and out the door to Steve’s car, she’d always mumble a quiet good morning, sipping at her coffee and tugging at the sleeve of her winter coat.

It scared her friends to see such a drastic shift in her lifestyle and in the back of Billy’s mind, he felt like he was responsible. He was a partier. He was Keg King Billy for a reason and now that Y/n could potentially take the title as Keg Queen with her sudden interest in partying, scared him. He wasn’t afraid of his reputation if she happened to take the new title, other things were more important to his rep than that, he was afraid that her friends would blame him for her new hobby.

When her friends and the kids found out about Y/n’s budding friendship with Billy after the whole fiasco at the skating fundraiser, they were pissed and angry. They didn’t understand why she was giving him a chance that he didn’t deserve. He was an asshole and he knew it, but he wanted to be better and Y/n recognized it and wanted to help by being his friend.

Steve and Trevor were the most hostile towards him. They threatened to kill him--among other things--if he tried anything with her or hurt her. She was a nice person and she didn’t deserve to be fucked with.

They knew that she was a smart girl--hell, she was graduating early--and they knew she could look out for herself, but they couldn’t help but look out for her. She deserved the world, and Billy Hargrove didn’t deserve her, and they made the message quite clear early on into the new friendship.

He understood them and made it very clear that his intentions were pure, even if he was Billy Hargrove. He was just looking for a good friend to have and she was kind enough to be there for him, even if he did find her attractive and sexy and beautiful. He wasn’t going to cross any boundaries that she had put up, he respected her and in return, she respected him.

As her drinking and partying habits worsened, his worry, along with her other friends’ grew tenfold. They all wanted to know what caused the sudden shift. They all wanted to help and fix whatever was happening, but Billy was Billy, and he wanted to be the first one to try and do something about it. He cared about her and her safety, and he wanted to show it.

So during the school day on the Friday of Adam Roberts party, Billy approaches her with a timid smile and nervous hands. Earlier in the week, he had promised to go to the party with her, but the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to go. He wanted to spend time with Sober Y/n, not Drunk Y/n.

Sober Y/n was sweet and sarcastic and still loud and funny. She was great to be around. She was like a light in his dark world and he gravitated towards her. All he wanted to do was hold her and protect her from the dangers and demons that she always seemed to be fighting.

Drunk Y/n was still loud and sarcastic, but it was ten times worse. She was uncontrollable. She was whiny and childish and never knew when it was time to go home and stop drinking. Sometimes, though, she was mean. She wasn’t mean to the point that it got under Billy’s incredibly thick skin, but she was a brat, and the boys that preyed on drunk girls like her, ate that shit up. Those kinds of guys that preyed on those kinds of girls scared the living daylights out of him.

He always made sure to keep his eyes on her, whether or not they were together at a party. He constantly worried about her safety. She was a target for slime balls to snatch up and take advantage of her, but if he was in the picture, they’d stay away. He’d usually keep a hand on her to make sure all of the boys could see who she came with and leave his jacket around her shoulders just for good measure. He wanted to make sure that even if he wasn’t around, he was close by, and his jacket did just that. It kept away all predators.

Now, though, he’s hoping his charming smile would do the trick on her and change her mind about going to the party in the first place.

He had the conversation he wanted to have with her down to the tee. He’d ask how her day was going so far and she’d tell him, and then she’d mention how excited she was to go to Adam Roberts party with him. He’d give her a nervous chuckle, rubbing his hand at the back of his neck and she’d ask what was wrong. He’d tell her a half truth, something along the lines that he didn’t really want to go to the party anymore. He didn’t feel like getting drunk or being around kids that he hated. He’d then propose his much better plan for the two of them. They would go over to the movie theater and buy tickets for whatever movie she wanted to see and after the movie was over, they’d screw around in the department store trying on ridiculous clothes before heading over to Benny’s for dinner. After that, they’d go to her house and call it a night and fall asleep talking about anything and everything. It was perfect.

Running a hand through his unruly set of curls, he walks over to her, leaning against the next locker over. She squats down to her locker and grabs a textbook, smiling at him as she does so. He smiles back and glances inside her locker.

There’s various polaroids tapped on the inside door of her with Steve, Trevor, and Kaitlyn, but the one that sticks out to him is the most recent addition. It’s of the two of them and it makes his heart melt. Her arms are wrapped around his shoulders and her whole face lights up at the camera. He’s holding her torso and he’s laughing at her. It was one of the rare times Max hung around the two of them and Y/n begged for Max to take a picture of the two of them. It turned out just exactly as she wanted and she tucked it into her pocket and then she playfully ordered Billy to take a bunch of the two girls together. He just laughed and rolled his eyes.

“What’s up, B?” Y/n asks with a soft smile, leaning against her own locker and pulling him back to the ground.

He blinks at her and laughs nervously. “Good, how’re you doing? How do you think you did on your biology test?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Okay, I guess. I won’t find out how I did until Monday, though.” Her face lights up. “Are you excited for Adams party tonight? I heard that he’s been making jello shots all week!”

He rubs the back of his neck, swallowing hard. “About that, I was thinking we could skip the party and go do something? I know you wanted to see that new movie with Anthony Michael Hall, The Breakfast Circle? I don’t really want to drink tonight. Just you and me time without the people that I hate. We could go to Benny’s afterwards.”

“Do you mean The Breakfast Club?” she asks. He nods with flushed cheeks. She raises a quirked brow at him and hugs her books to her chest. “But you hate John Hughes’s movies.”

He shrugs. “So? I just want to spend time with you without alcohol being involved.”

She steps away from him, her brows pinching together. “What is that suppose to mean?”

“That came out wrong, I’m sorry.”

“No, it didn’t. Are you saying that I only hangout with you because I want to get drunk?” she questions, trying to keep her voice steady and her legs from trembling.

“No, no, sweetheart,” he shakes his head, shutting her locker and stepping towards her. “Please don’t assume that because it isn’t true. It just feels like all you want to do it party and drink and I’m just not in the mood and--”

“Then don’t go,” she cuts him off with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll just go by myself. I’m sure I’ll find someone to take me home or I can just crash at his place. Adam won’t care, he’s got the hots for Kaitlyn so he’ll let me stay the night if it gets him brownie points.”

“Y/n, I want to spend time with you. I don’t want to drink with you. You’re a brat when you’re drunk and I don’t want to deal with that,” his voice is firm and he’s clearly annoyed with her not to notice the hurt that crosses her face.

“Fine, you won’t need to. Adam will take care of me. I’m sure he likes taking care of brats,” she snarls, stomping off to her next class, leaving him behind.

Billy groans, hitting his fist against her locker stubbornly and tugging at his curls before turning the opposite direction to his next class.

Following school, Y/n was quick to leave the classroom she was in, making sure to avoid all potential spots that she might run into her friends and Billy, even if it meant waiting an extra 30 minutes in the scary bathroom by the exit the druggies use to sneak out of during school to share blunts for ten minutes. She hadn’t even made a stop at her locker when the final bell rung. She just wanted to make sure that she wasn’t seen.

Picking up her things and pushing off of the wall from her squatted position, she unlocks the stall and steps out, heading to her locker. Her eyes look back and forth between the intersections to make sure that no one’s walking around that she may be friends with.

Letting out a deep breath once she reaches her locker, she drops her things and unlocks her locker, grabbing her things for the weekend.

Tugging on her coat and zipping it up, she swings her backpack onto her shoulder before sneaking out the back exit just for good measure.

The trip home is quick and she’s nearly out of breath when she stumbles through the door. She drops her bag to the floor, kicking her boots off at the carpet and hanging up her coat, she walks into the kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it up with water.

Her mother stares at her from the kitchen table, glasses at the bridge of her nose with a quirked brow. “You alright, sweet pea? Don’t you usually hang out with Billy for the night?” her mother asks innocently, setting the newspaper down.

Y/n fights to simultaneously groan and rolls her eyes at the same time when she opens up the pantry and grabs the bag of homemade trail mix her mother always makes.

Ever since her and Billy became friends, her mother seemed to always ask about him. He was charming and acted like a complete gentleman around her parents. He still snuck in through her window sometimes, but it was only if he had to spend the night because Neil Hargrove decided to beat him for no particular reason other than the fact that Billy was his son.

Maybe it was his sly smirk that made any women’s knees grow weak that her mother was so fond of. Maybe it was the way he seemed so interested in all the stories that she’s heard over and over again from her parents. It could also be that he seemed to be the only other boy in her life that wasn’t Steve or Trevor or a group of rowdy 7th graders.

She sighs, plopping down into the seat next to her mother. “We were suppose to go to Adam Roberts party tonight and he doesn’t want to go and I’m pissed,” she grumbles, mumbling a half truth as she stuffs a handful of trail mix into her mouth.

“You’re mad because he doesn’t want to drink with a group of irresponsible teenagers and you do?” her mother questions with a raised brow.

She huffs, crossing her arms and glaring at the table. “When you put it like that, you make me sound like a jerk, Mom.”

She laughs and reaches over to squeeze her daughter’s shoulder. “I think you owe him an apology.”

Y/n rolls her eyes, grabbing the trail mix and stomping up the stairs.

She wasn’t going to apologize--not yet anyway. She wanted to party, and what she wants, she gets, whether or not Billy was with her, and she was going to have fun, no matter what.

As eight o’clock nears, she slowly starts getting ready for the party. She had called Tina and asked her to pick her up, promising that Billy would meet them there so Tina could shamelessly flirt with him while Y/n got piss drunk. She agreed excitedly and hung up the phone.

Now, dressing in her best party clothes, a tight black skirt and a bright red crop top that barely covered her chest with her make up already done, she was definitely ready to party. She grabs the black jacket hanging on her vanity, pushing her arms through it before hurrying down the stairs and out the door.

She waves at Tina and climbs into her car with a grin, slamming the door shut and tugging at the jacket. It was too long at her arms and stopped at the ends of her skirt. Her eyes widen and she takes a quick sniff into the sleeve of the jacket. Her throat tightens, this wasn’t her jacket, it was Billy’s. He had left it at her house. She was in major deep shit.

Tina narrows her eyes at her, eyeing the infamous jacket that rested in her arms. “Is that your jacket?” she snaps, glaring at her.

“Yes,” Y/n answers, staring back at her. “Why wouldn’t this be my jacket?”

“It’s huge on you, Y/n.”

“Well, it’s my dad’s. I have a similar jacket so we must’ve just mixed it up. It’s fine, Tina. Let’s go, I don’t want to be late,” she shrugs it off and stares out the window.

Truth be told, she never cared if she was on time for high school parties. No one cares about her arrival so it’s not like it matter when she did anyway.

Tonight, though, she cares. Billy knows when she shows up to parties because he was the one that always took her. She wanted to get to the party as early as possible so she wouldn’t have to deal with him sober. She wasn’t in the mood and she wanted to drink her nightmares away. Drinking gave her a little peace from the madness in her mind.

Climbing out of the car, she runs into the already booming party. She makes a beeline for the bar. She looks at Tim Simmons and points around the bar. “What’s the strongest stuff you have? Has the Fuel been made yet?” she shouts over the loud music.

Tim grins, holding up a clear plastic bowl filled with various alcoholic beverages swished together. Her face lights up and he pours her a cup. She raises the plastic cup towards him in silent thanks before turning on her heels into the party.

Music thunders through her ears and she sways her body to the beat. Bodies bump into her and she melts into the sea of students.

She brings the cup up to her mouth and takes a generous sip. The alcohol burns down her throat but a satisfied smile crosses her face with every gulp she took.

She was losing herself and it was exactly what she wanted. She couldn’t remember her demons or nightmares coherently when she was drunk and it was the only way she knew how to deal with them.

She’d get close to being blackout drunk when everything seemed to float and feel like heaven. It was like she was getting a sliver of peace from her fucked up consciousness. All it was was butterflies and rainbows and it always felt like she was flying.

Nearing her fourth or fifth drink of the Pure Fuel was when Billy arrived. His face was turned down into a frown and he looked extremely flustered. He had a tight, long sleeved, red button up on with dark jeans and a brown leather jacket since he left his black one at Y/n’s house.

Ignoring the calls of his name, he searches the room for her. Paranoia settles in his bones as he steps through the crowd in search of the girl he considers his only friend. It was like he was parting the Red Sea when students stepped out of his way as he walked around the room.

He finds her dancing and drinking shamelessly with the host of the evening, Adam Roberts. The alcohol in her plastic cup spills over on to her hand and she laughs loudly, finishing off the rest of her drink and letting the cup fall out of her grasp, she stumbles on the makeshift dance floor.

Billy swoops in, grabbing her by the arm and holding her up straight. Her face turns down into a frown, ready to curse out whoever grabbed her. Her frown disappears the moment her hazy eyes meet Billy’s and her entire face lights up.

“Billiam!” She giggles drunkenly, throwing her arms around his neck. She tugs him closer to him and he holds onto her firmly. “I’m glad you showed up, I missed you. Parties aren’t as fun if you’re not with me.”

Billy nods, brushing strands of her sweaty hair behind her ear. “Let’s go home, yeah? You’re gonna have a killer headache tomorrow. I’m cuttin’ you off, Y/n.”

“No!” She whines, pouting like a child. Her hands grab at his jacket clumsily in an attempt to push him away. “I want to party! Adam and I were havin’ a fun time! Leave me alone, Billy!”

“Baby, c’mon. You’ve had enough to drink. We can put in whatever movie you want until you fall asleep,” he sighs, holding her face in his rough hands.

“Can you dance with me for a bit?” she slurs with big, hopeful eyes.

He smiles, nodding his head. “Sure, Y/n.”

She wraps her arms around his neck and his hands rest on her waist. The music shifts to a slightly slower song and he takes a deep breath, shaking away his nerves.

Her head drops against him and he hugs her to him, swaying back and forth. She squeezes the back of his jacket and he hums. He smirks, tucking his hands into the pockets of her—his—leather jacket.

“Should I call you the jacket snatcher?” he teases in her ear, squeezing her sides.

“It’s not my fault you left it at my house,” she grumbles with a frown. “You can have it back when I’m not drunk.”

“Ah! So you admit that you’re drunk?”

“Shut up and go get me some water before I fall out the door.” She frowns and he smirks at her before heading into the kitchen to get her a cup on water.

Standing in the middle of the dance floor by herself, she sways slowly to the music. The alcohol she’d consumed prior to Billy’s arrival is swimming through her veins and she feels like she’s floating.

A hand tugs on her arm and she twists around, nearly falling on the floor. She stumbles, grabbing at her knees and pulling her hand out of the harsh grasp.

Her eyes meet with a very pissed off looking Tina. Her face is a flushed pink and her jaw ticks. Her arms are crossed and she’s glaring at Y/n. “I thought you said that you would set me up with Billy!” Tina whined. “That’s the whole reason I drove you to the party!”

“I’m not whoring out Billy, Tina,” Y/n scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“Why not?!” she screams, causing heads to turn. “Are you and Billy fucking? Is that why? Do you not want to share?!”

Heat creeps up to the back of her neck. Her jaw ticks and she huffs out a breath. “No. It’s not like that. We’re just friends.”

Her throat tightens. The words taste bitter the moment they leave her mouth.

Friends. That’s all they were. That’s all they ever would be. He couldn’t possibly have feelings for her. She wasn’t even his type.

Even in her drunken state, she recognizes her harsh reality; Billy Hargrove would never see her in the way she sees him, whether or not she was sober or drunk.

“Good! You’re not even his type!” Tina hisses. “He’s only friends with you so he can deflower you in the future, Virgin Mary. He doesn’t want someone like you.”

Y/n grits her teeth, sizing her up with her wobbly, drunken legs. She scrunches her nose at her and pokes her in the shoulder. “What is that suppose to mean? Who are you saying he wants?” Her voice is slurred and she struggles to see straight. Everything shifts with the sway of her legs.

Tina smirks, crossing her arms over her chest. “He wants someone that has just as much fire and fiery as he does. He wants someone that will just strut up to him and kiss him like their life depends on it—even if it’s in front of people. He wants someone who is strong and loud. He doesn’t want a timid, prude girl that’s afraid to have control. He doesn’t want you, Y/n.”

Y/n huffs another breath out, gritting her teeth and locking her jaw. “Oh, yeah?” she challenges with a raised voice. “We’ll see about that, sweetheart.”

She turns on her heels, stomping her way towards the kitchen. She finds Billy filling up a black plastic cup with the tap water from the sink.

The group that surrounded Y/n and Tina slowly follows her towards the kitchen. Nosy ears and prying eyes watch on and Billy turns towards her, a bright smile crosses his face. “Sweetheart! I’m sorry I’m takin’ so long. It took forever for me to find new cups—”

She cuts him off, throwing herself at him. Her fingers dig into the fabric of his shirt and she pulls him down to meet her mouth.

Their mouths mesh together and electricity runs from the tip of her toes to the top of her head. Billy tastes like Spearmint and the cigarette he probably smoke before he walked into the party.

His strong musk devours her, tugging at her chest and the hairs on her arms. She wants him to hold her close so all she can feel, hear, smell, and taste is him. Y/n wants to be devoured by Billy and only Billy.

Her fingers wrap around the back of his neck, tugging at loose curls and the soft skin at the nape of his neck.

Billy’s own mouth is pressed firmly against hers. The cup falls from his hand and crashes to the floor, spilling over the tile. His eyes fall shut and he holds her face with one hand and uses his free arm to squeeze her against him. He tastes the Fuel on her lips and inside her mouth and it burns his tongue.

His brows push together in sudden confusion and he pulls away, out of breath with swollen lips. She chases after his mouth and he turns his head so her mouth rests on his check. She whines and threads her fingers through his hair.

“Stop, Y/n. I’m not doing this while you’re drunk. I’m not taking advantage of you,” Billy breathed, letting the taste of her lips settle on his mouth. His fingers run through her hair and she pouts.

“Sober me is too much of a scaredy cat to admit my feelings for you,” she grumbles with a frown. “You did what I told you to do, though. You made me like you and I like you a little too much.”

Billy frowns too, running a thumb over her cheek. “Why’s that, Princess?”

“��Cos I’m not desirable or sexy. I’m not Tina or Macy or any other girl that’s like them. I’m me.”

His frown deepens and he holds her face firmly in his rough palms. Tears swim inside her eyes as she looks at him.

He sighs, pulling on her chin, pressing a soft tender kiss on her mouth. She holds onto his jacket and he presses his forehead against hers. “And you’re perfect the way you are. I like the you you are now.”

Her face lights up and a drunk smile crosses her face. “Really?”

He nods his head. “C’mon, we’re making a scene and I want to get you home. We’ll talk about this again in the morning when you’re grumpy and sober.”

He wraps an arm around her torso and helps her out of the house. Her head rests against his shoulder and her legs are wobbly as they walk towards his car.

Billy unlocks the passenger side door and pulls it open, setting her inside. He reaches for the seat belt and pulls it across her body. She giggles and pats him on the cheek. He shakes his head and shuts the door before getting into the driver’s seat.

He huffs out a breath and Y/n stares at him through glossy, drunken eyes. A fond smile pulls at her cheeks and she rests her head on the shoulder of the seat. “You’re always takin’ such good care of me. A proper gentleman.” She slurs, reaching for his right hand and lacing their fingers together. “Holdin’ me when I’m havin’ nightmares and shakin’ me awake when I’m screamin’ and cryin’. You always make sure to ask if ‘m okay when I get a little spacey when ‘m havin’ my scary visions. You always bring me back. Always. You make me safe, make me feel at home. I hate havin’ to lie to you ‘bout it though. Makes me feel shitty.”

His brows crease together and he stares at her like she has two head. He knows that he should be taking what she’s saying with a grain of salt considering how trashed she is, but now he’s curious and wants to know what she means.

“What’re you talking about, Y/n? What visions? What are you keeping a secret?” He coos gently, pulling his hand out of hers and tangles it into her hair, trying to coax an answer out of her.

He tugs at her hair gently and she hums, closing her eyes and melting into his touch. “The Upside Down,” she whispers with a giggle. “The Mindflayer has plans for me. I’m his new host. He just needs to get stronger and than the Gate will open again. This time no one will be able to stop him. He’s ready.”

Billy sighs, shaking his head and kissing her forehead before inserting his key into the ignition. He should’ve known better not to ask. She was drunk and spewing out what sounded like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. All of what she was saying went completely over his head, but he understood certain terminology he could pick out from all the times he picked Max up from the Wheeler’s residence.

The car roars to life and his fingers find hers again. She tugs on his arm and rests her head against it. He smiles softly at her and backs out of the driveway.

This time, he’s careful going down the street.

AHHJHHHHHHHHHH DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS PART?!!?/ (15 IF YOU WANNA BE TECHNICAL) BUT AH!!!!!!!!! I WAS SO GIDDY WRITING THIS CHAPTER OMG!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!!! COMMENT, REBLOG, SEND ASKS, YELL AT ME, DO. WHATEVER!!! I WANT YOUR REACTIONS!!!!

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ashtoedsros · 4 years

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treasure at tampines pdf

Once you start house hunting there is no doubt one of your first stops will be at a new homes website or community to see what they have to offer in the area you would like to live in. In fact, new homes have stepped up to win the hearts and minds of homebuyers for the better part of the past decade where we've seen an unprecedented explosion in new home construction and buying. What was once considered a luxury reserved for the rich and famous, new construction has opened the door to all price ranges and styles including luxury high-rise condominiums, townhouses, active adult communities and single-family homes.

There are a tremendous number of benefits to owning a new home including the ability to customize the home to your liking, meeting all the new neighbors as they move in and substantial savings in utility costs with new homes now being built to a higher, more energy efficient and green standard.

It's your house. No, REALLY your house. - When you buy a resale home you are purchasing a home that someone else crafted to suit his or her lifestyle. Sometimes it's just perfect and exactly what you are looking for but more often than not there are a few "Why did they do that?" issues with a home that you will have to renovate or remove when you move in to fit your lifestyle. When you build a new home you will be able treasure at tampines at east to choose exactly what you want and where you want it so you can move in and not have to touch a thing.

Everyone else is new too! - Resale communities are great because you can see the neighborhood, how people care for their homes and everything is already established but those same benefits can prove to be cons when you are the only new neighbor on the block. Moving into a new home grants you the privilege of meeting the neighbors when they are also looking to meet new people and settle into the community. There won't be any pre-established social circles to work your way into and you will be discovering new things about your neighborhood at the same time everyone else does.

Newer homes are more attractive when you resell... - Life happens. You might have to relocate or you make a lifestyle change a couple short years after you move in. The good news is that newer homes are more attractive to prospective homebuyers because it's their opportunity to buy a newer home without the price premium associated with new construction. Better yet, you've already purchased all the appliances and upgrades for the home and many parts of the home are still under warranty making the home a great inclusive value. This will compare favorably to older resale homes that may require renovation or updating to make it livable for the modern homebuyer.

Location, Location, Location! YOU choose! - When you shop for resale homes the homes you find are obviously fixed to their current location. How many times have you seen a great resale that would be absolutely perfect if it were a little closer to the community clubhouse or offered a larger back yard for the kids to play? New homebuilders typically offer a range of model homes to choose from and you can usually place that model on a lot of your choice. Now you can have the home of your dreams in the cul-de-sac you've always dreamed of!

In the current market new homes may be a better deal than resale homes. - That's right, the market shift has turned the tables. Now buyers have the market in the palm of their hands and can get some really outstanding deals on homes but you have to know where to look. Resale home owners may be willing to deal but in the past thirty days I have been able to successfully negotiate $69,117 off the asking price of a new home for a client and then shortly after located a home for another client and negotiated $91,000 off the asking price and we are still in negotiations to get even more from the builder. By the way, these home prices included upgrades! I have never met homeowners who were willing to accept a substantial reduction on the price of their home to the tune of more than $60,000. As a matter of fact, many homeowners have overpriced their homes on the market because they owe more than the home is worth and they cannot afford to go lower in price.

Buying Tip: To score a new home deal you can't walk in and offer builders $400,000 under what they are asking for the home. Fantastic deals can be found however if you find the right buyer's agent who specializes in new homes because their experience, relationships with builders and negotiating ability will help you save thousands of dollars.

That brown carpet and tiny kitchen? Soooooo 1970s! - Kitchen big enough for one? Small closets, shower only bathrooms and carpet everywhere? Not for today's homebuyer! The modern lifestyle is drastically different from what it was even ten years ago and resale homes often lack the oomph and space to satisfy. Today's homebuyer wants a bright, open kitchen with breakfast bar and high-end appliances. We now do most of our living in the kitchen! Soaking tubs in the master suite and walk-in closets are now considered standard staples of the modern home. New homes often feature these amenities as a part of their standard offering and are even starting to prepare homes for the future including the addition of whole house networking and walk-out basements that can be finished as future living space.

New homes save money with efficiency and green building techniques. - Many new homes are taking advantage of the Energy Star standard which sets forth a number of requirements that products like windows and doors must adhere to in order to achieve an Energy Star rating. In addition to Energy Star many builders are now offering green building and living options like the installation of solar panels on the roof of a home to harness the sun's energy and convert it to electricity. If you install enough solar panels you may just have the electric company paying you for the electricity you are producing! These features are often very costly to retrofit a resale home with if it wasn't initially built to these standards.

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yakaso-technology · 4 years

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How Do You Hide Security Camera Wires Outside for High Efficiency?

Security cameras, without doubt, are now one of the few best means to monitor and secure your property. Commonly known as CCTV [closed circuit TV], they allow you to see live videos, as well as record what’s happening around your home or workplace. Hence, making possible no activity occurs behind your back, plus keep credible evidence in the event of a break-in. In this article, we will share a quick installation guide and how to hide security camera wires outside for high surveillance efficiency.

The majority of the latest CCTVs are plug-and-play, for sure. But, at times the providers forget to mention some crucial details and you end up compromising the effectiveness of your monitoring device.

For a model, most providers provide their surveillance cameras with a user manual to help you in the setup process. Nonetheless, their guide is sometimes so bare and it fails to mention installing inside the house is relatively easier than outdoors. And if it’s a POE camera, well, they may not say you can use your device without having to connect with an NVR.

How to Install Wired Security Camera Outside

Other than the various types, designs, and models, surveillance cameras are available in two different categories- wired or wireless. Although they both have a similar goal, their setup and performance are quite different since one transmits footage via a cable while the other uses a wireless [radio] signal.

For this article, we are going to talk about wired cameras as they are more convenient for outdoor use. Also, we will assume the cables provided with the surveillance kit are enough for your needs. Hence, you won’t need stripping or crimping any of the RG-59 [Ethernet] cables.

You may also interest: how to install wireless security camera system at home

Here is a quick detailed guide that should help you install your security camera easily and effectively:

Discern your central surveillance hub: this should be your first step even before you order your system. It highlights the place you would like to place your DVR/ NVR station without disrupting the interior arrangement of your house. The main advantage of it is to help you determine the best route of wiring, plus the overall length of the cables needed. If you would like to be remotely accessing your cameras, the recording station should be within range with your internet router.

Check and test: the last thing you would want is installing your surveillance cameras and then come to realize they don’t work. Therefore, connect your cameras while they’re still on the table and see how they perform. Check the clarity of the image and confirm the recording capabilities are what you paid. Then,

Make cable Passage: Take out your drill and bore a hole in the position where your outlet for the cables will be. If it’s a PoE camera, the process should be even easier as the device uses a Cat 5/6 Ethernet cable for both power and imaging. Hence, you won’t need to worry about electrical connection unless the distance between the camera and the NVR is very far. Your hole, however, should be large enough to accommodate all the wires you want to pass through without any force.

Mark the mounting point:

Go to the place you want to mount the individual camera/s and mark where each screw should go. If you’re using Hikvision or YAKASO , this step should be simpler since their cameras come with a drilling template. Thus, you will just be making the holes.

Your drill bits, by the way, should match the size of the screws or the anchors [if using on brick or stucco] for a firm hold.

Now fix: take your camera or mounting plate [if provided] and screw it onto the wall. If you were installing the cameras around your compound, the next thing is to take care of the wires. It’s not safe to leave them dangling as they can trip someone or else the children start playing with them.

Hold in position: So, then thread the camera wires along the wall using cable clips or a staple gun if you have got one.

Finally, plug the cameras back to the NVR or DVR station and check if everything is working fine as expected. In case you notice the monitor flickering instead of a steady display, the issue is probably from insufficient camera power. So, you might need to boost it by plugging into the nearest outdoor outlet.

Please Note:

Most IP PoE cameras from reliable brands don’t necessarily require an NVR to work. You can connect with a PoE switch or injector and your home router. Then, stream the footage to an internet-enabled device [smartphone/ PC] and enable recording in the cloud serves.

Moreover, a PoE switch usually delivers a high power output, with some transmitting up to 30W over the Cat5 Ethernet cables. Therefore, the tool might come in handy when installing your cameras farther from the NVR.

How to Conceal a Security Camera for the Better

Usually, a security camera provides a better experience if it remains invisible to the uninvited guests- that being intruders and trespassers. In some cases, however, a system might have spectacular performance but it lacks secrecy due to its exterior design and color.

If you were hoping to use the security camera for discrete monitoring, it means your needs are yet fully fulfilled. Hence, you still need some tricks to make the system invisible and prevent it from attracting unwanted attention.

The various ways you can hide your outdoor security camera include:

Hiding under eaves/ ceiling: this is the simplest, especially if the camera and the ceiling/ eaves have a similar color. It can also be useful when using a mini cam or domed cameras, whereby it will inhibit recognition from a distance. Conceal with nature: the method involves blending your devices with the trees and bushes. It can also work out, but it produces the best result when applied to battery-powered surveillance cameras.

Disguise with a Birdhouse: this idea can surely help as it’s the last place an intruder would suspect. With proper design, it can even protect your security came from harsh weather conditions, like rain and severe sun rays. Thereby enhancing its longevity in the long run.

Dress Camouflaged Skins: overall, this is the best technique when you want your camera to blend perfectly in its surroundings. Most of these skins come in different colors. So, you can easily match with your wall or nature without any compromises.

Six Ways to Hide Security Wires Outside

Basically, a security camera will remain no secret if the wiring is out visible. Some of the ways you can use to hide the cables include:

Painting: the method involves covering the wires with a paint that has the same color as the background wall. It helps retain the aesthetic appeal of your building while at the same time make the cables less visible to the intruders at a distance. You just have to ensure they [wires] are neatly clipped along the wall.

Use the raceway system: even when the painting is the simplest, most professionals prefer this method when installing security cameras outside home. It mostly comprises a plastic material, meaning they are simple to cut and mount along the wall. Also, the system offers multiple functions, including concealing and protecting the wires from environmental, as well as physical threats.

Passing through Plastic tube: similarly, the method is common with electrical technicians due to its multifaceted nature. It’s good for routing, concealing, as well as protecting the cables from damage. Nonetheless, the technique is a bit complicated as it involves running the tube through the wall. Then, you pass the cables through it until they come out of the other end. Therefore, you can better use the means before connecting the cameras to the NVR or DVR recorder.

Running within the ceiling

This one can only be effective when you have a false ceiling and you want to install the cameras around the house. It works best when the DVR or NVR is on the other side of the wall. Thus, you won’t need too much drilling or playing with the dirt.

Burying might come in handy as well: that’s right, but be ready to give out some of your blood, sweat, and time. You can use the method by just laying the wires on the ground or by first passing them through a plastic pipe. It’s very effective when mounting cameras at the driveways where there is no wall to clip the wires.

Install a wire-free security camera: if you want your compound to be free of any wires, the best thing you can do is installing a completely wire-free camera. In other words, you use a wireless CCTV camera that runs on batteries or solar energy. With such a system, you won’t struggle with the cabling and you have the advantage to mount at any hidden location you desire.

Conclusion

Just as the name, a security camera aims at helping improve the safety of your property at home or business place. As such, you should not leave it so exposed as it’ll be the first place of interest for the city burglars.

From the article, however, we have shared details on how to hide security camera wires outside the building. It’s a very crucial step when it comes to the overall performance as it helps prevent damage from weather conditions. And also it makes sure your building and its compound look neat with no dangling wires or a ghastly mix-up of colors.

We duly hope you have found the short discussion informative and with the solution you will seeking. Happy monitoring!

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#Surveillance cameras

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stevedonnellyfaith-blog · 5 years

Text

What Remains Hidden

I spent the least enjoyable portion of my week in a termination interview for an employee, with whom I had worked for a number of years. The man had run afoul of our 10-point no fault attendance policy. The employee, who is a friend, had scored an impressive array of points in all sorts of amazing circumstances within a relatively short period of time. He was like the Michael Jordan of attendance infractions – raining in the points in one and two point weekly episodes. His stories ranged from the incredible to the improbable, but as usual he and his union representative focused in on the couple of points that might be in doubt so that the man could remain an employee of our company.

I encouraged both of them to pursue their grievance, because I respected the excellent work that the employee had done for us previous to his most recent run of total unreliability, poor workmanship and serial distraction. My friend, an ex-con and recovering addict, had been a great talisman for human potential and second chances until his struggles in the last eight months.

But really, I explained to them both, gaining my friend an extra couple of weeks of employment really seemed like a lot of bother and paperwork prior to his inevitable final flameout with the next one or two point incident. I posited that the employee needed to fix whatever the root cause was that was making him the second most prolific scorer of attendance points in the history of our facility. My friend’s visage flickered brighter momentarily and he blurted out, “You mean I should do something to resolve all this car trouble I’ve been having.”

“No,” I replied, “that is probably not what you need to take care of.” What was hidden remained concealed; my intervention failed. We finished up the required paperwork and the transacted our final goodbyes. After he left, I prayed to Pam to intercede for my friend at whatever level she has access. In the short term, his future looks pretty bleak.

My bereavement meeting with widows and widowers in the Hall at 6PM of Thursday was a much brighter chapter of my week. The meeting doesn’t take long, but it is a good chance to review the ups and downs of my life with some other people who are walking similar paths. This week we discussed how to get through the holidays, a uniquely challenging season for people in our circumstance.

In our discussion of family vendettas that sometimes occur at Thanksgiving, it struck me that hidden things can contribute to family friction as well. Like rocks submerged in navigable waters, underlying and unspoken issues can ruin family harmony and destroy relationships. One person described a death of a father that occurred two days before a family gathering several years ago. A couple of siblings immediately engaged in an argument that has separated them for the several years since. Was the father previously acting in a way that prevented the full exercise of an otherwise underlying bitterness in the family? Were the siblings, like my daughter Abby and I did after Pam’s death, choosing to argue over some unimportant minutia as a distraction from their overwhelming grief. The road to reconciliation is different depending on the underlying true cause of the disagreement, a cause that must be brought to light for resolution.

Unspoken issues and unconscious motivations are ubiquitous to the human condition. I met two friends for lunch the other day, and in our discussion it became clear that both men were being shaped by the Holy Spirit in particular ways without an apparent root cause. Through our conversation over several hours, more and more puzzle pieces were added to their stories so that a vague idea of what God was trying to accomplish became more discernable.

The first man works for law enforcement in one of the most violent neighborhoods of our local area, yet he is walking ever closer to the Lord in his daily life. While waiting for our other friend to arrive, he and I discussed a recent shooting that he had witnessed and how our reaction to the tragedy differed so greatly from the laughing perspective of a person who had uploaded video of the same incident onto YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvEKq5CeGJo&sns=em). (Violent content)

My friend had been driven to pray the Hail Mary aloud during the ordeal. By contrast, for the person filming the car-jacker dying in a hail of bullets, the incident was pure entertainment. I have struggled with the purpose of why the Holy Spirit moved my friend to his quiet act of piety for several weeks, but in the course of our conversation it became apparent to me that my friend’s outlook on his whole career had been altered by being inspired to make a few simple prayers. He has spent the ensuing time considering the plethora of poor corpses that he seen over the years and has begun to pray for their many souls. Before the incident my friend had protected his sanity at work with a Kevlar vest of emotional detachment. Now the policeman was allowing the plight of perpetrators and victims alike to touch him in a very human way. I expect that the Holy Spirit is preparing him for additional service to the community in a new role. Instead of merely maintaining the simple peace of the community; his future will involve leading others to the profound peace of Christ.

My other friend arrived later and described the gravity like pull he feels in his life towards devotion to the Virgin Mary. Although, he was Catholic as a young child, his family made a few years long foray into the Protestant faith. He returned only in recent years carrying much of the same anti-Marian baggage that I also lugged around for thirty or so years. Lately, my friend has been feeling irresistible urges to pray to Mary for a very specific thing that have been subsequently granted in dramatic fashion. He has also received a free copy of Tim Staples’ new book, Behold Your Mother, under unusual circumstances. Through seeming coincidence, he was likewise put into a situation regarding the visit of the Fatima statue to IHM that removed his visceral dread of praying to Mary and Jesus through painted or sculpted representations of them.

None of these dominos that appeared to be buffeting my friend towards a vocation in the Blue Army made sense to me. Why was my friend such a high value target for conversion to devotion to Our Lady? Finally, he confided in us that as a young child he had been awed by a beautiful Christmas card of Mary holding Jesus. He subsequently, cut Mary out, pasted her up above his bed and prayed to Her nightly. By appearances Mary is not making a new claim to a convert; she is exercising a latent consecration that has lain dormant for decades. My friend has always had an underlying Marian devotion and he is going through a process of rediscovering the childlike faith that he had once possessed - a faith of simplicity that is the sweetest oblation to Our Lord.

In my case, forever the observer, my subterranean tensions remained hidden at our lunch. I spent the weekend pondering the lingering questions about my own vocation. In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis draws a simile between being a widower and having a leg amputated. I guess I have reached the emotional state he described as functional hobbling. I now know that I can effectively hop through my work day – no matter how full of dysfunction. What remains uncertain is whether I can stumble along effectively as I resume my duties as a parent of a nine-year old girl or whether I can go a step further and emotionally juggle answering God’s call to seek ordination as a deacon. To be effective in either role, there seems to be a necessity for a prerequisite joyfulness and hope that I seem to be lacking. Still my current inclination is to step over the gunwales and into the waves and try to walk towards Jesus in hopes that I find something in His eyes to replace my inner storm with serenity.

Finally, I had another experience with hidden issues over the weekend. Scrolling through people’s personal errata on Facebook, I happened across a video link that promised hope for divorced people. Because I am so emotion starved, the video, called Rejoice, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxLwqGsRkQ) seemed to exercise a gravitational pull at my heartstrings. The attraction disconcerted me as the scourge of divorce is as irrelevant to my current personal situation as is a couples nights out. I felt compelled to watch the film even to the point of ignoring the timewasting Facebook game that has obsessed me for a week. I even rebooted when it froze and accessed it through several different links until I was able to watch the whole thing. In the end, I was reduced to strange tears as the video left me with an impression of hopefulness for the hero and heroine. This romantic rock submerged in my sub-conscious surprises me whenever I run afoul of it, but it used to make Pam smile whenever she could conn me into watching the Notebook or something similar. I will have to be more careful in my social media scrolling in the future.

#police faith #hail mary #catholic #grace #God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #Rosary #Men of St Joseph #suffering #purgatory #forgiveness

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kissared-blog · 7 years

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MURDERER !!

Murderer ! || 16. My muse will torture yours to death.

BOREDOM – the state of when an individual’s mind lacks entertainment , becoming quite dissatisfied with the activity they are currently doing– or so how HE sees things . there was nothing INTERESTING to do , but respect the work of art he created . scooting his wooden chair closer to the wall , he admires his delightful , ARTISTIC masterpiece ( art was creative after all ) . The love-craved stalker was such a BEAUTY to see – especially when he was nailed into the wall like a perfectly painted portrait . his SKIN was stretched , tainted purple from the rusty ol’ metal spikes hammered into it . they PIERCED through the tissue , clotting up the blood and forcing the man to be pressed against the COLD, hard stone . Luckily for Myu , he didn’t have deal with seeing that TERRIBLE fashion sense any longer; the stalker was naked , but ( since his host isn’t that heartless ) he was dressed with the brightly , PINK panties of his last victim — NOW , isn’t that a nice touch ? ? PINK bows laced around the undergarment , stained with dried plasma – must be from … what was her name ? Loraine ? Emily ? Jessica ? Who knows ! ! It’s not like he cared to begin with. Rather , he praised himself for his own work . Yuuto hasn’t looked this good since … well … he’s NEVER looked good to begin with until now – he should be thankful for the amount of work that was put into this . NONETHELESS , this dullard was definitely NOT helping him out with his need . he is nothing like his older victims – no screaming , no begging – just that dark empty stare ( somehow … he liked it ) . FOR A MURDERER ,this one was very … different . he couldn’t exactly understand every DENSE scrape of Yuuto’s life choices . as much as he wished he could comprehend it – he simply could not . That obscure fixation upon love was just … stupid – in his opinion . To be attracted to such a LIE , he could almost weep for him – almost .

dark brown hues were stuck upon the man’s figure , trailing the curvy arch of his hips before they touched the rim of those LOVELY pink undies . Somehow , in a weird — yet nonsexual way , he believed they fit him . the way the colors contrasted with his skin – how the blood provided texture and a line to his profession – it was like a story ! ! the creepy stalker wearing prissy panties of the female he was OBSESSED with ( it was a flawless idea for a movie or some type of exotic novel ) . Oh ! ! how the article of ( proclaimed feminine ) cloth wrapped around his pelvis , squeezing against his crotch and SMUDGING it with the blotch of lady juices SOAKED into the material – the creep must have been LOVING that ! ! ! slender digits hauled up , gently touching his sides and tracing down his bones . he gave him a little pinch onto the side .

“ why aren’t you talking to me ? ? ” it upset him –ALL he’s done for his guy ! how DARE he give him the silent treatment ( he hated the silent treatment ) . childishly , he huffed his cheek out . “ I made you PRETTY to look at and you are upset with me – you should be upset with YOURSELF . “ for ALLOWING him to get this far , for TRUSTING him to not do anything – how could he not ? ? this way , Yuuto wouldn’t be able to leave him — he won’t go looking for some CHICK to FUCK UP . He can get FUCKED up right here , right now .

— It’s time to play , Satoko .

And oh how he LOVED to play games ! ! ! he moved his other hand down , grabbing a black stapler with a half - ripped target sticker on its rim and tapped its back against his chair . it added sound to the bothersome silence . his voice stayed low , keeping a serene ( but sad ) tune . “ I don’t know why you’re so upset with me … I’m only showing you my love – isn’t that what you want ? to be LOVED? ? you have this very weird obsession with love - it’s like you want to FUCK it . well … I’m showing you MINE and you are being V E R Y rude about it . “ did he NOT want his love ? did he NOT want him ? his slender fingers squeezed the silver part , it released tiny bent wires into the empty space — he’s testing to see if the stapler still works and hah ! it does . IF ONLY he would accept his love – LISTENED to him and was more entertaining … this wouldn’t have to happen . PITY – no one can understand the pain . “ I wonder … why you are so devoted to it . where you not loved as a child ? did your ex-girlfriend dump you ? “ he’s MOCKING him – treating him as if he was a love-struck CHILD . he isn’t going to do anything about it , HE CAN’T ! Guess he really NAILED it on this one — HAH ! ! frankly , he’s TOO invested in this boneless monster . Keeping him alive for THIS long was an unsuspecting twist of events ( he’s making sure he fixes that ) .

“ w e l l … I don’t believe love is a FEELING that people SUDDENLY get . I think , if you don’t mind me shitting about your moronic values , that it’s more or less … a foolish dream . People lust over bullshit like that all the time – love is definitely in it. You’re too INFATUATED with the idea that someone could actually LOVE you . Does anyone even LIKE you ? how can someone love you – if NO ONE likes you to begin with . how can humanity LOVE when everyone expresses hatred more than kindness towards one another . if anything , people LOVE to be hated – people LOVE violence and G O R E —- you don’t fit into those categories . you are just a half witted creature that NO ONE gives a SHIT about . creepy and ugly … “ he didn’t like him – those girls didn’t like him either. it was an unhappy case – one he HAD to SHITon and make it w o r s t . his fingers danced around the lace , picking at the string – pulling and SNAPPING it back . it hit his skin , causing a red mark to appear – he did it again . RED was such an alluring color . it supplies different shades to its beauty , matching ALMOST every piece of art he could produce ( it fit Yuuto nicely — but he needs MORE of it ) . “ I got an idea , you might like it . . . or you might hate it . SO ! ! here me out on this . girls like others who SMILE … you don’t really SMILE . If you smiled , maybe you would look attractive since you’re ugly . Let’s try and put a smile on your face ! ! you’ll PROBABLY be able to hit it off with the ladies then . “ as IF he’s giving him a choice on this matter , the guy CAN’T even move his head ! ! yet , that only made things easier to do .

raising from his seat , he gave it a little shove to the side . a small tray full of SURGICAL supplies followed him . He placed the stapler down upon it , fidgeting with the utensils to make sure they were in their ‘ proper position ‘ . with his index and thumb . he picked each one up and examined it . Some were too DULL , too ABSTRACT —- VERY UNFITTING for what he wanted ! ! —— UNTIL FINALLY he found a symmetrical thin knife . The blade SHINED , reflecting off of the little light in the room . His hand gripped the stalkers face , firmly holding it in place as he raised the knife to those succulent lips of his . the tool wriggled itself into his mouth , carving the corner and slicing UP into the cheek . He wanted to make a faultless smile . blood sprinkled down , pale tissue gaped open to form a sinister grin . placing the knife down , he took the stapler and ( without warning ) RAMMED it into his cheek . the tiny wire pricked his skin , held the sliced parts together . he trailed upwards with the staples and repeated the process on the other side . he took a step back , hues gazing at – what he calls an improvement . Hell of a view ! ! QUICKLY , he grabbed the mirror on his tray to show him . “ do you like it ? ? tell me how it looks . ” N O T H I NG – no thankful words were delivered – only little whimpers and flinching from the p a i n ( could he not handle pain ? he’ll end up showing him REAL pain soon ) . he was repaid back with SILENCE for all of his hard work . he tried his BEST to make this ugly FOOL look … decent . and STILL , he couldn’t respect him with a reply ?

——-he’s HURT ! !

“ you won’t speak to me ? ? you aren’t going to tell me how it LOOKS ? ? “ AND if he WASN’T going to speak to him , then OKAY ! ! he won’t make him speak … actually , he shouldn’t speak at all . thrusting the mirror aside , he grabbed his chin and forced his hand to insert within the male’s mouth . nails dug into his wet tongue , scratching and tugging it out as far as he could . “ If you don’t want to speak , then so be it . “ He released his grip on his chin , raising his arm up and SLAMMED his elbow onto the top of his head— repeatedly , he kept on striking his skull ( he hoped it would break ) . the strength of the hard blows forced the mouth closed , jaws CHOMPED down onto the tongue and severing it off with o n e m o r e STRONG TUG. BLOOD spurted out , filling up his mouth with a raw taste of IRON . it dripped out, drooling onto that bare chest of his . Now , Myu held the tongue of a bruised man , he swayed it around in front like a PRIZE —- try to fucking speak now , asshole . “ Cat got your tongue ! ! “ a rather slim and unwelcoming one , it wasn’t even the right color he wished it to be . “…do you want it back ? ? “ he couldn’t say NO to that frantic look on his face , so gladly , he will return it . hovering his fingers over the rusted nails , he pressed down on them for the metal to sink in DEEPER into his injured flesh . he was hoping the mouth would open due to the immense pain caused in different areas . Once it did , he formed a fist with the tongue pointing out and JOLTED his arm forward . his fist met the entrance , jamming itself into the damp passage flooded with red liquid . ALL that lovely juice spilled out , coating his hand and painting his floors with the left over droplets . The saliva and plasma mixed , creating a goopy form that soaked him . his clenched hand kept shoving down , followed by the rest of his upper limb . he aimed to release the tongue into the gullet , making him EAT it — BUT , he was SUFFOCATING him instead. he could feel the vibrations against his arm , the tightness sucking him up — it was almost like taking someone virginity ( and he’s enjoying every second of it ) .

SUDDENLY , the moving stopped and that last cry for air was cut off . quietness circulated in the room and the tension died … playing artist was done – his GAME was finished . he pulled his arm out , shaking off the red fluid . he placed the severed muscle in a tiny jar on his tray , save keepings .

“ poor satoko … I guess I took your BREATH away . “

#oshikakei #makes a pun at the end #bye #im done #is this good because i dont even know anymore #i just wanted to make a pun hAHH #murd e r m e #( 。 ❀ || BAR MAIDEN. ᵛ¹ ﹕ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜᵉʳᵉᵃᶫ ᶜʰᵃᵖ 。 )#( 。 ❀ || PUT A FINGER IN THE SWEAR JAR. ᶦᶰᵇᵒˣ 。 )#// gore #// blood #// suffocation #// death #// murder #// torture #// long post #// long af post #jesus christ #// body horror

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grrlwonder-archive · 8 years

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RULES. repost, don’t reblog. tag ten. TAGGED. the bae @magicxecustos TAGGING. @perfectforayear, @thirdwcnder, @theredwonder, @yallneedahero, @favdream, @thegreatunxter, @notbctmcn, @twerpzilla, @illuminatedflight, @xmarksthescott, @futuresuper, @canary-noir, @cacciatriice

BASICS.

FULL NAME. stephanie alice bellinger NICKNAME. steph, stephie, stephers, eggplant wonder AGE. 22 (verse dependent) BIRTHDAY. august 17 ETHNIC GROUP. caucasian NATIONALITY. american LANGUAGE / S. english, swahili, basic spanish & french SEXUAL ORIENTATION. heterosexual, bicurious ROMANTIC ORIENTATION. panromantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS. single (verse dependent) CLASS. lower HOME TOWN / AREA. gotham city, new jersey, usa CURRENT HOME. an apartment in the city with a rather lousy landlord PROFESSION. law school student

PHYSICAL.

HAIR. honey blonde with golden reflects, about mid-back in general length EYES. generally described as blue, though they tend to look teal in certain lighting. too round to be almond shaped, too wide to be considered round. bright & almost child-like, but they’re often narrowed in suspicion NOSE. once it was cute & button-y, now it’s a little too long & wide. it has suffered too many fractures, most visible one the bridge now FACE. round with rather chubby cheeks, a pointy chin, wide forehead, & slight widow’s peak LIPS. full & a little round. if she’s not wearing only chapstick, she has on a deep, almost burgundy shade of lipstick, or a bright red lipstick. they tend to be chapped from picking & biting at them COMPLEXION. fair, but she tends to tan easily during the summer BLEMISHES. there are a few scars from missions gone wrong, one faded one from when she had chickenpox and picked at when she was five SCARS. her entire body is littered with soft, faded scars. from knife to bullet wounds. there’s a particularly nasty knife slash that goes across her chest; it starts on the middle and ends just short of her left nipple. TATTOOS. when her daughter turned 1y/o she used a fake a id to get the outline of a star on purple on her right shoulder blade HEIGHT. 5′5″ WEIGHT. 129 lbs / 58.5 kg BUILD. slender, small waist & wide hips, well toned FEATURES. tends looks fairly average from an outside perspective, especially because she tends to slouch a little as to not attract too much attention ALLERGIES. USUAL HAIR STYLE. down, doing its thing, or up into ponytail or braids USUAL FACE LOOK. serene & approchable USUAL CLOTHING. she wears a lot of muted colors & denim. the occasional leather jacket is a must, along w/ her staple military-green jacket

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S. major abandonment issues. failure. the sound of drills. scalpels, needles, & other medical equipment ASPIRATION / S. to do & inspire good on others. prove to the world that your background doesn’t define you POSITIVE TRAITS. witty, chatty, friendly, approachable, upbeat, resilient, persistent NEGATIVE TRAITS. sarcastic, quick-tempered, vengeful, cynical, stubborn MBTI. enfp-a the campaigner ZODIAC. leo TEMPEREMENT. sanguine SOUL TYPE / S. hunter, caregiver, helper all at 17 ANIMALS. eagle VICE HABIT / S. social drinker, former smoker FAITH. agnostic GHOSTS? was one once AFTERLIFE? been there, done that REINCARNATION? don’t wanna find out yet ALIENS? one is her best firend POLITICAL ALIGNMENT. fairly liberal. anarchic, even ECONOMIC PREFERENCE. indifferent SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION. shrug emoji EDUCATION LEVEL. high school diploma, law student

FAMILY.

FATHER. arthur brown MOTHER. crystal agnes bellinger SIBLINGS. none EXTENDED FAMILY. not in too much contact with her aunts & uncles, grandparents are deceased. cassandra cain is considered an surrogate sister NAME MEANING / S. stephanie: french origin, crown. alice: english origin, of noble kin HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? none

FAVOURITES.

BOOK. the adventures of alice in wonderland MOVIE. none 5 SONGS. one girl revolution - superchick, don’t hurt yourself - beyoncé, royal jelly - deap vally, cool girl - tove lo, uprising - muse DEITY. - HOLIDAY. new years MONTH. - SEASON. fall PLACE. the top of wayne tower WEATHER. as long as it’s not too hot or cold, she’s okay with whatever SOUND. the laughter of children by the closest playground SCENT / S. sweet / candy TASTE / S. warm mashed potatoes with gravy FEEL / S. silk, cotton, warmth ANIMAL / S. cats NUMBER. - COLOUR. eggplant

EXTRA.

TALENTS. playing the piano. great marksman. quick learner BAD AT. handling abandonment & rejection. thinking before talking TURN ONS. suits!! confidence. intellect TURN OFFS. disregards for others. cockiness. HOBBIES. doodling. training. reading TROPES. action girl. the chick. girly bruiser AESTHETIC TAGS. cityscape, bruises, neon, bats, shadows, denim, leather GPOY QUOTES. “believe you can and you’re already halfway there.” – theodore roosevelt

FC INFO.

MAIN FC / S. gigi hadid ALT FC / S. nicola peltz OLDER FC / S. margot robbie & charlize theron YOUNGER FC / S. - VOICE CLAIM / S. -

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1. if you could write your character your way in their own movie, what would it be called, what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about? A1. action movie all the way. it would feature the batman: eternal story w/ some major changes regarding steph’s involvement; mainly i would mingle in some of preboot history. occasional flashbacks to stephanie’s god awful childhood to provide background on why she’s so angry at arthur. crystal wouldn’t disappear by the end of it.

Q2. what would their soundtrack / score sound like? A2. a healthy mix of soundtrack music especially composed for the movie & some post-punk, rock, hip hop to add to the atmosphere of gotham

Q3. why did you start writing this character? A3. i’ve said it many times before, i was always fascinated by the idea of there ever being a girl robin in the comics that i had never heard of. when i learnt she was batgirl, by heart-eyes levels went off the roof. the more i read about steph, further i liked & identified with her. whens entered roleplaying she seemed like a nice fit for me to grasp as i continued to get more involved in comics. i didn’t plan to fall so much in love with her character, but after writing her for 4 yrs, i’ve become practically a one woman stephanie brown defense squad

Q4. what first attracted you to this character? A4. two words: girl. wonder

Q5. describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5. she tends to speak & act without thinking, mostly in the heat of the moment. while sometimes it is blessing, some others she has ended up severely damaging other people & her relationships with them. this has made her be a little more guarded with her feelings, evading to even say the good things.

Q6. what do you have in common with your muse? A6. i also tend to put my foot in my mouth, though it takes me far more to realize i’ve done it. i try to keep an optimistic look at things too, but inside i’m cynical as they come. i can also be just as hardheaded tbh

Q7. how does your muse feel about you? A7. i think she likes me--most of the time. when i’m not putting her thru needless pain & suffering just cuz it’s entertaining for me.

Q8. what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with? A8. goddamn--well, there’s a lot of people i’ve interacted w/ over the years, so it’s hard to pick & choose. there’s definitely a lot of people i loved interacting w/ that now are sadly gone, & there’s nothing i can do about that. but anyways, let’s see if i can do this

there’s cass, who is as close as it gets to having a sibling for steph. they’re always Up to Something; either between them or against each other. when things get low for one, they’re always for each because they know what it’s like to be seen by others (& amongst the bats themselves) as potential trouble. they’re truly the epitome of the term hetero life partners.

then there’s tim. they have had their ups & downs, but they’re finally at a stable place where they can call each other close friends once more. joint patrols are only made awkward by the fact they are naturally awkward people. (also the earth 3 threads are 👌👌 certified gold)

on the other hand we have tim who is both a blessing & the bane of steph’s existence. everything is made 10x worse by the fact that they there’s a major lack of communication & repressed feelings between them. but hey, even if they took one step forward & two steps back, there has been some progress made.

we also have kon who is slowly but surely becoming one of steph’s favorite people. he’s alway down for some shenanigans. he’s for steph to be around, and he’s definitely made up for the time he had her flying unwillingly.

lately addison & steph have had some super interesting interactions. steph sees a lot of herself from back in her spoiler days in the young vigilante, beyond the obvious physical similarities. she wants to help her reach her potential in a more consistent manner than she had herself--now if only addy would let her know wtf is going on, that would help.

this is getting super long so i’m just gonna quickly mention sheri, tim, kuvira, kory & scott (im prolly missing a few people but this is too long already forgive me. basically, if ur tagged in this thing ilu ok 💖)

Q9. what gives you inspiration to write your muse? A9. i guess seeing the people above & just people i want to interact w/ really brings out my muse. reading & re-reading comics definitely does help too; i constantly have this nagging feeling to fix where dc fucks steph up tbh

Q10. how long did this take you to complete? A10. i dunno--like 2-3 hrs?? i drafted this & came back to it a couple of times lmao

#*let the puzzlement fit the crime. ❪ m; hc ❫#*kiss me sexy batman. ❪ ooc ❫#electroqueueperang #long post --

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onlinemarketingcourses · 6 years

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Internet Marketing Pt 1

The Internet is a great place to do business, whether you're a retailer selling a particular line of products or a service provider making your living on the Internet. There is, however, one age-old problem with business that never seems to go away: people won't buy what they don't know about.

This is where Internet marketing comes in.

Internet marketing basically involves using various tools and services to let your business reach a wider base of potential customers. Good Internet marketing will bring in a significant number of clients, keep them interested and then make more than happy to purchase more of your products.

A not-so-good Internet marketing program, however, will be a complete waste of time and money. In the worst case scenario, you could even end up doing more harm than good to your business if the marketing strategy is poorly thought out.

Strangely enough, most people actually fail in their Internet marketing strategies not because they lack the knowledge or the technical capabilities to make good use of Internet Marketing.

SEO, HTML, opt-in lists, landing pages - all of this will not matter if the would-be marketer does not know how to actually succeed with the tools at his or her disposal.

Let me be clear: this article is not a technical manual on the finer points of Internet marketing. No tutorials, no tests, no benchmarks.

This article aims to supplement your technical know-how and give you an idea of what to do with your skill and knowledge. It will allow you to channel your efforts and create far-reaching plans.

In short, this article will teach you how to be successful in your first year in Internet marketing.

The Mindset of a Successful Internet Marketer

A successful marketer needs a vision to be able to succeed.

No, I am not talking about some grand, messianic vision or something. I am talking about a vision that will define where all the Internet marketing efforts will go to.

This vision will allow you to focus your efforts into something more productive, and will allow you to truly succeed in Internet marketing. But before you can define your vision, you must first assume the mindset of a successful marketer.

This mindset is in turn composed of different frames of thought. Here are some of the more important ones:

Honest and Sincere The very first thing I have to tell you is that no truly successful Internet marketer is a sham and a fraud. The stereotype of the Internet marketer that sidelines as a ruthless vulture and snake-oil salesman is an image that is, sadly, more commonly adopted than I would like. But let me tell you that being a successful Internet marketer means being successful for the long run - and you cannot be successful in the long run if you start your career as a fraudster. The rewards from fraudulent sales or deceptive marketing strategies are immediate and attractive, but you cannot build a marketing empire with foundations laid on lies and deceptions. An Internet marketer with a name built upon reliable business and customer satisfaction will yield more rewards in the long run than an anonymous ghost who has to change names every now and then lest he/she face criminal charges.

Willing to Experiment One of the marks of a successful Internet marketer is the willingness to try things out. Many would-be marketers spend months (even years) studying how to be effective in Internet marketing. This is all well and good, but all this will be for nothing if you are not willing to put your skills out on the open market where it will be actually tested under pressure. The truth of the matter is that there is not absolute recipe for success as an Internet marketer. You just have to grit your teeth and dive into the whole mess. You learn faster, and you will be able to find out what works and what does not in your particular line of work. Even your mistakes cannot be considered as failures if you learn from them and use that knowledge to better yourself.

Reflects and Learn From Mistakes Just because an experiment of yours fails does not mean you should just up and forget it. The whole point of experimenting is to find out what works and what does not. If something you just implemented does not work, like a weak landing page or faulty search engine optimization, then you have to go back and trace where the mistake stemmed from. This is why it is absolutely essential that you reflect upon any problems you encounter in your Internet marketing campaign. What went wrong, how did it go wrong, how can I fix it and how can I improve on it? These four questions are staples when it comes to reflecting on and learning from any mistakes.

Seeks Excellence in All That Needs to Be Done Good enough is a far cry for very good, even though both are "good" in a sense. Excellence is when you give your best to everything you do. This excellence is not optional if you want to be a successful Internet marketer. You don't cut corners, you don't do a sloppy job and you don't say "this is good enough." Excellence is basically about making sure that you do as good a job as you can. This pursuit of excellence will always drive you to find better and better ways of doing things, greatly increasing productivity and efficiency. Best of all, your customers will immediately recognize your this excellence and will be more willing to at least check out what you have to offer.

Sets Competitive Standards to Meet There is another reason you need to seek excellence - the best and most threatening of your competitors also do the same. You must always understand what your competitors are up to. You have to know what they offer, how they do things, how they market themselves and even how successful they are. If excellence will push you further up in your marketing efforts, then your competition will define the bare minimum you need to work with. This is especially useful when you are new to Internet marketing. Your competitors will most likely have been around for quite a long time already and will have spent a significant amount of time and money to get where they are now. All you need to do is analyze how they do things and you will be able to benefit the most from your competitor's existing practices.

Understands the Needs of the Customer This is cliché, I know, but it is something so many new Internet marketers overlook that it is worth pointing out once again. All people have needs. If somebody comes along selling something that will satisfy my needs, then I will be more than happy to part with my hard-earned money. This simple fact underscores the importance of spending time, money and effort reaching out and understanding the needs of your target customer base. Many first-time Internet marketers also have this frame of thought where they believe that exploiting their customers and wringing money from them as quickly as possible is the only way to survive. This thinking cannot be more flawed. Any kind of business, Internet marketing included, will only survive if trust is built between customer and client.

Reaches Out and 'Touches' Customers This is another cliché, yes, but it is nonetheless important: your customers must feel that you actually give a hoot about their satisfaction. I have come across so many marketing tactics that look and feel stale and too focused on selling a product. The marketers here have made a fatal mistake: they got too absorbed with exploiting the needs of the customer rather than connecting to these needs. You must always show that the products and services you offer are solutions to a problem, not just tools you use to squeeze money out from customers. It is also worth note that you should not try too hard to "sell" your product to a potential client. I have come across numerous sales pages with a ton of testimonies, videos, promos, guarantees and smiling faces all promising one thing or another. The marketers behind these pages were trying so hard to convince me to buy their products that I simply got turned off and left the page before even finding out what they wanted to sell to me.

Transparent About Everything People will be more willing to buy a product if they know exactly what they are getting. Many marketers love to use fancy prose, grand promises and technical jargon to bedazzle potential customers. This isn't such a bad thing in most cases, but all this grandstanding will be for nothing if the potential client does not understand what the heck they are looking at. Be as transparent as you can about what you sell and you will find customers much more willing to do business with you. This is especially important for product pricing and fees. You would be surprised at how many sales pages exist on the Internet that do not list the actual costs of purchasing a product or service. Lots of promises and lots of testimonies, yes, but the lack of information on something as basic as pricing is enough to turn most people away from the site.

Builds a Network of Partners Internet marketing is not a one-man (or one-woman) job. You will need the help of a lot of people to make yourself truly successful in this field of work. Once you get down to the more complicated aspects of Internet marketing, you will inevitably find yourself working with a whole host of people: content creators, writers, shippers, reviewers, accountants, customer care etc. Everyone you meet is a potential partner, so always take the opportunity to create and expand your network whenever you can. Even fellow Internet marketers can prove to be useful partners. You could swap customers by selling products and services that complement the business of the other market. For example, marketer A sells fiction ebooks via Amazon while marketer B sells leather covers for the Amazon Kindle. Both marketers could work together to promote each other's products; effectively sharing their customer base with each other.

Emotionally Balanced About the Business Nobody is a heartless machine, but breaking down into an emotional wreck all the time can't be good for business. A successful Internet marketer needs to be completely objective when it comes to making business decisions. Your personal life must not seep into your work, especially when your marketing efforts start to get distorted in the process. Beliefs, opinions, biases and even political affiliations must be kept separate from work, otherwise they could blind you from seeing things as they really are.

This also goes for the success and failure of your Internet marketing ventures. Internet marketing is a fast-moving world, which means things die off as quickly as they are born. Look long and hard at your marketing programs and be impartial about which ones are worth spending energy on and which ones need to be dropped.

Uses Money Productively and Efficiently One of the more common problems with Internet marketers is that they do not know how to use their money wisely. Let's say you have earned a cool thousand dollars in sales from your most successful marketing campaign. Bills and taxes are paid, and you still have $500 left over. What will you do with this money? Will you purchase educational materials, obtain marketing tools and hire people to handle the time-consuming tasks, or will you blow it all on a fancy tablet PC? Remember that the money you earn is not something you have to spend right away. It is a resource that you can use to make your marketing campaigns even more successful in the future. You could even use that money to save up for retirement or as a mortgage down payment. Whatever you decide to do, just make sure that you always 'invest' your money in something that will be truly beneficial to you.

Willing to Innovate and Create There are a lot of marketing programs out there that can introduce you to the basics, but do not ever forget to be creative. There is often no need to reinvent the wheel, and there are plenty of instances where you can learn from the experiences of the successful (and not-so-successful) marketers out there. But you do have to remember that people are constantly learning and evolving as well. What might have worked two, three years ago will be done to death by now - especially considering the breakneck pace of evolution over the Internet. It is for this reason that a successful marketer is always willing to try out new things. These new things may not always be successful or turn a profit right away, but they will always impart valuable knowledge to the marketer at the end of the day. This is especially important when you consider the next frame of thought that is present in the mindset of successful Internet marketers.

'Hungry' for More and More Knowledge The last but most certainly not the least of important mindsets of a successful Internet marketer is the ever-increasing desire to learn more about his or her business. You must never, ever stop thinking that you know enough to keep you on top of your business. The world of business is ever-evolving, with new players (and competitors) coming in with their innovative and creative methods. The last thing you want to do is to fall behind the competitive curve simply because you are not on top of the latest news and information regarding your business. It is for this reason that you must always be hungry to learn whatever you can about your business.

Talk to your customers. Know what makes them happy and what frustrates them.

Find out how you can be operate more effectively on a day-to-day basis.

Learn how to make more with less.

These are but a handful of areas that you can focus on.

Be hungry for knowledge, and you will be able to stay on top of the game at all times.

See more source : Internet Marketing Pt 1 Home NN Online Marketing Courses

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123soliloquy · 6 years

Text

John

June 26, 2013 The Defense of Marriage Act is repealed and it is the first time I have gone out to do what I would be called to do many times in response to the news: I went clubbing. My friend Spencer took me with his friends to a gay club called Headhunters. Tonight was a Bojangles night so even though I was only 19 I was allowed inside to dance and boy did we dance. I had a massive crush on Spencer and he put his whole booty right on me on the dance floor and I just about died from being flustered. My tall friend Tyler was also there and whenever Spencer started dancing with someone new I would volley over to Tyler to never lack a dance partner. At certain times a third friend would join us and I would be in the middle of a gay little grinding sandwich with Tyler’s hands so firmly on my hips in a way that I was utterly enamored by. This club has GoGo dancers — cute boys wearing nothing save for expensive underwear and sensible shoes. One such dancer was a svelte cherub looking twink with a mop of hair. He was thin everywhere with the kind of abs you get not from exercise, but a fast metabolism, and yet chubby cheeks and an eager smile. He was lightly coated in the glaze of sweat and nothing beyond blue brief undies dancing his way around a pole on the other side of the club when our eyes met.

I was new to Gay culture and did not know that it was a frequent occurrence to lock eyes with someone attractive and look at them unwavering with the confidence to make Beyoncé blush. I was not familiar yet with this staple of the community, but I am fast learner. He look at me and I looked back, then away, then back, then at Spencer, then back and he started to slowly close the distance. I retreated to my gay sandwich with Tyler and when the GoGo dancer arrived in our circle Spencer took him for a whirl. They both had moves and to see this modelesc figure up close wearing so little I knew my face was as red as the scarlet button up shirt I was certain to be sweating through. I went to the bathroom to wash my face and well go to the bathroom. When I came out Spencer was dancing alone and Tyler was dancing with our other friends and the GoGo dancer was no where to be seen. I started walking and then I saw him Again from across the room. He was dancing with someone new, but we locked eyes and he walked right away from them as though they were never part of this equation.

He walked with such confident focus while other people moved out of his way, not unlike the protagonist of an action movie whose stride and debonaire sunglasses seem uninterested in the explosion occurring behind them. He walked up to me and said nothing. Just wrapped his wrists around my neck and we started to dance. Never breaking contact. His hips swayed and I took in every atom of his body looking him up and down and then seeing his eyes fixed only on mine. He smiled. I gulped nervously and lowered my eyelids as our faces automatically drew closer. We kissed. We kissed and he drew my hands to his hips. We kissed and he put his stomach to mine. We kissed and the rest of the club disappeared. It was him and it was the music and it was I all together in this moment, but it was not just a moment. I kissed this carved seraphim statue for at least ten songs. Dancing ever more risqué. My hands finding his ass. Finding my way inside his undies. He moved to plant his ass right on the bulge of mine that had become exceedingly less manageable and most definitely obvious to him as his hand was just slithering down to it before his ass found it the better dance partner. We grinded properly in the true fashion in which the line between sex and dancing is as thin as the clothes we still barely wore. With his v-lined hips in my hands he bent and snapped and waggled until every ounce of me wanted him then and there. To touch more. Experience more. My hands reached toward his groin, but he held them instead. Turning around and immediately we were connect again by the lips, tongues, and breathe. At this point he was drenched in sweat and I was just the same. People had made a circle around us to avoid and though I am normally the conscientious person, I could not be bothered in this moment. That is, until his hand rediscovers my bulge and rubbing it up and down his lips leave mine and he finds my ear to whisper ever so softly the first words I ever hear from him “want to go somewhere and take care of this?”

I look up suddenly awake from an incubus spell. The tender “virgin” not ready for penetrative sex and I was damn close to it in public no less. I looked for my friends that were far far away. And I tell him that I need to find my friends as I should actually head home soon. He asks for my number and a pen to write it down. I do not have a pen so he disappears in search and I find Spencer and tell him we must leave immediately. I was too afraid that the GoGo dancer would come back and be devilishly cute. Spencer walks me to the gate and the dancer runs up behind us just as we are almost gone. He has his pen. I write down my number. I walk home while Spencer returns to the dance floor. Brush my teeth. Twice. And then fantasize about the night I just had. Feeling shame for the display and pride for the daring. Horror at the proposition and extraordinary curiosity at the possibility. I felt sexy as all hell and shallow thinking I did not even know the name of the person who had so much been a part of my night. I fell asleep thinking about him and woke up to a text saying “Hi, this is John! The boy from Headhunters!” I told him immediately I am not some easy boy and he responds caring and understanding and altogether kind. I am that easy boy now, but back then I was not and I was not yet ready, but John being kind and sexy both helped me get there. We are still Good friends to this day.

#4 #writing #text post #kissing #making out #gay #clubbing #club #twink #boy #cherub #sexy #gogodancer #gogoboy

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backbenchershq · 6 years

Text

Internet Marketing Pt 1

The Internet is a great place to do business, whether you’re a retailer selling a particular line of products or a service provider making your living on the Internet. There is, however, one age-old problem with business that never seems to go away: people won’t buy what they don’t know about.

This is where Internet marketing comes in.

Strangely enough, most people actually fail in their Internet marketing strategies not because they lack the knowledge or the technical capabilities to make good use of Internet Marketing.

SEO, HTML, opt-in lists, landing pages – all of this will not matter if the would-be marketer does not know how to actually succeed with the tools at his or her disposal.

Let me be clear: this article is not a technical manual on the finer points of Internet marketing. No tutorials, no tests, no benchmarks.

This article aims to supplement your technical know-how and give you an idea of what to do with your skill and knowledge. It will allow you to channel your efforts and create far-reaching plans.

In short, this article will teach you how to be successful in your first year in Internet marketing.

The Mindset of a Successful Internet Marketer

A successful marketer needs a vision to be able to succeed.

No, I am not talking about some grand, messianic vision or something. I am talking about a vision that will define where all the Internet marketing efforts will go to.

This mindset is in turn composed of different frames of thought. Here are some of the more important ones:

Honest and Sincere The very first thing I have to tell you is that no truly successful Internet marketer is a sham and a fraud. The stereotype of the Internet marketer that sidelines as a ruthless vulture and snake-oil salesman is an image that is, sadly, more commonly adopted than I would like. But let me tell you that being a successful Internet marketer means being successful for the long run – and you cannot be successful in the long run if you start your career as a fraudster. The rewards from fraudulent sales or deceptive marketing strategies are immediate and attractive, but you cannot build a marketing empire with foundations laid on lies and deceptions. An Internet marketer with a name built upon reliable business and customer satisfaction will yield more rewards in the long run than an anonymous ghost who has to change names every now and then lest he/she face criminal charges.

Seeks Excellence in All That Needs to Be Done Good enough is a far cry for very good, even though both are “good” in a sense. Excellence is when you give your best to everything you do. This excellence is not optional if you want to be a successful Internet marketer. You don’t cut corners, you don’t do a sloppy job and you don’t say “this is good enough.” Excellence is basically about making sure that you do as good a job as you can. This pursuit of excellence will always drive you to find better and better ways of doing things, greatly increasing productivity and efficiency. Best of all, your customers will immediately recognize your this excellence and will be more willing to at least check out what you have to offer.

Sets Competitive Standards to Meet There is another reason you need to seek excellence – the best and most threatening of your competitors also do the same. You must always understand what your competitors are up to. You have to know what they offer, how they do things, how they market themselves and even how successful they are. If excellence will push you further up in your marketing efforts, then your competition will define the bare minimum you need to work with. This is especially useful when you are new to Internet marketing. Your competitors will most likely have been around for quite a long time already and will have spent a significant amount of time and money to get where they are now. All you need to do is analyze how they do things and you will be able to benefit the most from your competitor’s existing practices.

Reaches Out and ‘Touches’ Customers This is another cliché, yes, but it is nonetheless important: your customers must feel that you actually give a hoot about their satisfaction. I have come across so many marketing tactics that look and feel stale and too focused on selling a product. The marketers here have made a fatal mistake: they got too absorbed with exploiting the needs of the customer rather than connecting to these needs. You must always show that the products and services you offer are solutions to a problem, not just tools you use to squeeze money out from customers. It is also worth note that you should not try too hard to “sell” your product to a potential client. I have come across numerous sales pages with a ton of testimonies, videos, promos, guarantees and smiling faces all promising one thing or another. The marketers behind these pages were trying so hard to convince me to buy their products that I simply got turned off and left the page before even finding out what they wanted to sell to me.

Transparent About Everything People will be more willing to buy a product if they know exactly what they are getting. Many marketers love to use fancy prose, grand promises and technical jargon to bedazzle potential customers. This isn’t such a bad thing in most cases, but all this grandstanding will be for nothing if the potential client does not understand what the heck they are looking at. Be as transparent as you can about what you sell and you will find customers much more willing to do business with you. This is especially important for product pricing and fees. You would be surprised at how many sales pages exist on the Internet that do not list the actual costs of purchasing a product or service. Lots of promises and lots of testimonies, yes, but the lack of information on something as basic as pricing is enough to turn most people away from the site.

Builds a Network of Partners Internet marketing is not a one-man (or one-woman) job. You will need the help of a lot of people to make yourself truly successful in this field of work. Once you get down to the more complicated aspects of Internet marketing, you will inevitably find yourself working with a whole host of people: content creators, writers, shippers, reviewers, accountants, customer care etc. Everyone you meet is a potential partner, so always take the opportunity to create and expand your network whenever you can. Even fellow Internet marketers can prove to be useful partners. You could swap customers by selling products and services that complement the business of the other market. For example, marketer A sells fiction ebooks via Amazon while marketer B sells leather covers for the Amazon Kindle. Both marketers could work together to promote each other’s products; effectively sharing their customer base with each other.

Emotionally Balanced About the Business Nobody is a heartless machine, but breaking down into an emotional wreck all the time can’t be good for business. A successful Internet marketer needs to be completely objective when it comes to making business decisions. Your personal life must not seep into your work, especially when your marketing efforts start to get distorted in the process. Beliefs, opinions, biases and even political affiliations must be kept separate from work, otherwise they could blind you from seeing things as they really are.

Uses Money Productively and Efficiently One of the more common problems with Internet marketers is that they do not know how to use their money wisely. Let’s say you have earned a cool thousand dollars in sales from your most successful marketing campaign. Bills and taxes are paid, and you still have $500 left over. What will you do with this money? Will you purchase educational materials, obtain marketing tools and hire people to handle the time-consuming tasks, or will you blow it all on a fancy tablet PC? Remember that the money you earn is not something you have to spend right away. It is a resource that you can use to make your marketing campaigns even more successful in the future. You could even use that money to save up for retirement or as a mortgage down payment. Whatever you decide to do, just make sure that you always ‘invest’ your money in something that will be truly beneficial to you.

Willing to Innovate and Create There are a lot of marketing programs out there that can introduce you to the basics, but do not ever forget to be creative. There is often no need to reinvent the wheel, and there are plenty of instances where you can learn from the experiences of the successful (and not-so-successful) marketers out there. But you do have to remember that people are constantly learning and evolving as well. What might have worked two, three years ago will be done to death by now – especially considering the breakneck pace of evolution over the Internet. It is for this reason that a successful marketer is always willing to try out new things. These new things may not always be successful or turn a profit right away, but they will always impart valuable knowledge to the marketer at the end of the day. This is especially important when you consider the next frame of thought that is present in the mindset of successful Internet marketers.

‘Hungry’ for More and More Knowledge The last but most certainly not the least of important mindsets of a successful Internet marketer is the ever-increasing desire to learn more about his or her business. You must never, ever stop thinking that you know enough to keep you on top of your business. The world of business is ever-evolving, with new players (and competitors) coming in with their innovative and creative methods. The last thing you want to do is to fall behind the competitive curve simply because you are not on top of the latest news and information regarding your business. It is for this reason that you must always be hungry to learn whatever you can about your business.

Talk to your customers. Know what makes them happy and what frustrates them.

Find out how you can be operate more effectively on a day-to-day basis.

Learn how to make more with less.

These are but a handful of areas that you can focus on.

Be hungry for knowledge, and you will be able to stay on top of the game at all times.

Source by Matteo Grasso

The post Internet Marketing Pt 1 appeared first on The Backbenchers.

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5hit-i-l00k-at · 7 years

Text

2019 ford raptor release date

New Post has been published on http://www.fordissue.net/2019-ford-raptor-release-date/

2019 ford raptor release date

2019 ford raptor release date – Ford has a world-wide presence by means of production services in most locations world wide, such as Australia in which it generates the in the area made Falcon passenger car and power variety, as well as Property SUV. Typically the company features a all-inclusive variety of locally produced and also brought in passenger vehicles, SUVs and light-weight advertisements. These passenger car variety contains the compact Fiesta hatch, the little Focus hatch, mid-sized Mondeo hatch and also the full-size Falcon sedan. SUVs add the Ecosport, Kuga, Everest as well as Territory. The lighting commercial range comprises of the iconic Falcon utility, Ranger two-wheel drive as well as four-wheel drive utility along with cab-chassis versions, and additionally European Transit vans along with cab-chassis.

Pertaining to additional than 100 years now, Ford Motor Company has become advertising mass-produced automobiles within the United States and around the entire world. Often known as on the list of Major 3 American brands, Ford offers attracted a lot of faithful buyers using a great deal of autos that supply sizeable value. These automaker’s trucks along with SUVs are already particularly common. For decades, Ford’s F-Series truck have been all of the best-selling vehicle in the us.

The company was founded simply by Henry Ford throughout 1903. Ford dreamed of building a car for that masses, and that is certainly precisely what he did, such as with all the immortal Design T of 1908-’27. The latter was bought by means of 16.5 million Americans throughout it’s 20-year lifespan and was cost-effective plenty of regarding Ford’s very own factory staff to order. Ford’s early on many years were additionally recognized by simply its release of the relocating construction line. It turned out the first to utilize this a lot more cost-effective method of production, and its innovation had been a mainstay of the making procedure.

Ford broadened in to the luxury-car market having its buying Lincoln Motor Company in 1925. Within the next few years, these company broadened it’s focus even more by creating the Mercury department to make mid-priced cars. From the late ’30s, Ford had introduced the fashionable Lincoln Zephyr, introduced a low-priced V8 engine as well as created additional than 25 million autos.

The 1950s found the roll-out of the celebrated Thunderbird. Offering sleek design as well as spirited performance betrothed for you to available high end features including power windows along with a signal-seeking radio, all of the car was obviously a massive strike. Another label of in which few years, these Edsel, met having a somewhat much less enthusiastic wedding party. Within the wake of abysmal sales, these Edsel was stopped a few months straight into its third style year.

Ford gotten it’s footing noisy . 1960s while using introduction from the compact Falcon, a model that’s cordially been given from the public. From the center of the 10 years all the automaker acquired given enthusiasts one thing to cheer about using the launch from the sporty Mustang, a car of which proceeded being the most significant retailers of its day. Buyers loved these Mustang’s lower price, offered effective V8 engines in addition to cool styling. These Mustang even made a brand-new vehicle class: the horse car.

From the 1970s, Ford, such as other household auto producers, was starting to suffer the end results of fixing consumer preferences along with brand-new federal rules. A lot of it’s cars grew to become eye shadows of these previous faces. But the seed products of rebirth were being grown within this 10 years. In 1979, all the company purchased a stake in Mazda; this kind of transfer would certainly later support Ford substantially within co-development jobs. These company in addition emerged with an all new mindset of global competition.

Because of the mid-to-late ’80s, Ford was displaying innovative power with its famous Escort together with Taurus styles although additional broadening its empire with the purchase of all the Aston Martin and also Jaguar companies. On the other hand, it’s full-size LTD sedan (later relabeled these Crown Victoria) continued to be a staple of taxi companies along with police forces all through America.

Ford rode a trend of recognition in the 1990s, thank you simply to the enormous achievement of their Explorer midsize SUV. The truck played a crucial role in ushering in the era from the SUV. Inside 1999, Ford extended it’s family again by purchasing Volvo’s car division, along with, within 2000, it obtained Land Rover. For a little bit, there was clearly speak of Ford even acquiring General Motors’ place since the No. 1 automaker in the world.

But the|However the} new millennium initially saw a downturn for Ford. Elevated competitors, a continuing functioning reduction for Jaguar, legacy charges at the same time as a reliance on SUVs regarding profit got their own toll. To produce, the company supplied Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and also Volvo as well as introduced a wave of effective brand new items. Versions like the F-150, Fusion, Fiesta, Focus, Flex and Mustang have permitted Ford to regain its wellness along with standing like a incredibly competitive manufacturer.

Ford Focus RS Review

Full Race Motorsports provides an in depth aerodynamic physique kit that contains bits like a front race splitter as well as side splitters which assist enhance the sizzling hatch’s downforce. A rear diffuser is also integrated within the supplying, as is actually a cosmetic livery design that’s exhibited throughout Stealth Gray physique finish getting a black roof at the same time as a Fire Orange strips running via the whole physique within the Focus RS. A “Full Race” decal inside the reduced edge within the windshield completes all the exterior upgrades that Full Race Motorsports is supplying. I’m guessing, also, the color alternatives can vary based on the customer’s wishes. The tuner commissions it from BASF, which can be recognized during tuning groups as one particular of the ideal within the company with regards to automotive physique wraps.

Mountune may possibly not possess the most well-known recognize within the aftermarket tuning group, however do not allow the comparable privacy distract you exactly what the tuner is usually totally effective at. We presently saw what happens in the event it will get its hands inside the Ford Focus RS. That did so last yr with Ford Performance along with were able to squeeze out 375 horse power as well as 376 pound-feet of twisting. Now it truly is back getting a higher and far much better upgrade for the sizzling hatch as calls to acquire a 400-horsepower Ford Focus RS possess lastly already been answered.

The extent of Mountune’s new improvements for the Focus RS covers lots of ground so far as mechanised changes are concerned. There’s incredibly small within the way of aesthetic enhancements, so buyers are advised to discover all of them in other places, whether it is by Ford or yet another aftermarket company. However, the actual program’s lack of versatility shouldn’t take place against it, not making use of the guarantee of extraordinary energy and performance.

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candello · 7 years

Text

2019 ford raptor release date

New Post has been published on http://www.fordissue.net/2019-ford-raptor-release-date/

2019 ford raptor release date

Ford Focus RS Review

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