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zippdementia · 4 years

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Part 78 Alignment May Vary: Transition

This is the continuing saga of three (sometimes hapless) adventurers who are beginning to find out they are part of a greater story, one that began eons ago and one that will shape the destiny of the entire world of Toril. In today’s post, we begin to move towards the end of our current story arc and the beginning of the final chapter of our game. But we’ve still got some business to take care of first...

Last time, our players were left on the brink of entering Stardock, so named because it is literally built into an asteroid floating in space. Perfect for our setting! Now, here’s the thing... coming into Stardock, they are in a funny position. They’ve restored most of their hitpoints and Imoaza has her spell slots back. They have several health potions. But they are also missing a team member, Milosh, whose whereabouts are unknown after his capture by the Githyanki. And they have been warned that a mighty brood of Red Dragons patrols Stardock. Their chances of success in a fight are minimal.

So that leaves sneaking around. Imoaza still has a Githyanki soul trapped from the last battle and now she questions it, asking what the best route to the prisoners is (their intentions are to get them and get out... they don’t plan on dealing with Al’Chaia). The answer she gets is honest, but also a little uncertain. One way will take them through a rarely occupied part of Stardock but then into a training center. The other takes them through the usually occupied mess hall. Both choices may lead to sneaking or, failing that, a fight. Ultimately the heroes chose to go through the training center.

There’s some good moments on the way to the center. The ambiance gets set really well: they start on the edge of a dragon’s lair and can feel the heat emanating all around them. They are terrified that any moment they will come across the dragon! As they leave the dragon’s lair, things get cooler and darker and eventually they trade the tension of the heat for the mystery of cold, abandoned caverns. At one point, while wandering through a rocky cavern, a strange floating eye pops up out of nowhere, observes them for a moment, and then disappears as rapidly and mysteriously as it came. They have no idea what that means, but figure it can’t be good. At another point, there’s a moment of humor, when Carrick finds a secret door in the floor of a cavern and tries to lift it... forgetting he’s standing on it (the result of a critical failure in the strength roll).

But eventually they come to the training center, find it VERY occupied (7 or 8 Gith warriors are here, training), and have to decide what to do. They end up coming up with a plan to use a mixture of the Mindflayer’s mind blast skill and Imoaza’s summoned Cthulian darkness to blind and entrap as many of the combatants as possible, then hopefully take down the stragglers and get through the room. It’s not a bad plan, but it doesn’t go off well, thanks to some poor rolling on their part and some great rolling on my part.

This leads to a mighty mess of a confrontation that takes up most of the session. Githyanki are leaping out of Hadar’s darkness while tentacles reach for them and try to pull them back in. They use jump to latch onto handholds on the walls and ceilings and from there leap to attack the players. Imoaza is using her eldritch blasts to knock them back into the pool of darkness, where they are pulled, screaming, to their deaths. The Mind Flayer levitates around the room, trying to eat brains and blast minds, but ends up rolling so poorly he is pretty much just an extra target for the Githyanki to focus on instead of the players. Carrick wades into battle and takes down two of the Githyanki before being surrounded and struck down himself. Imoaza can’t seem to summon Drosselgreymer: every time she tries, the Rod of Storms leaps into her hands instead and eventually, frustrated, she unleashes its potential, blasting the arena with lightning and thunder. There is a great moment when two more combatants enter the fray, powerful Gith magic users, but the door they enter through leads directly into Hadar’s Darkness and they spend a couple rounds getting slammed around in there before they break free.

Ultimately, the situation doesn’t look good: Carrick is stable, but unconscious. Marky the Mind Flayer is set upon by an injured Githyanki knight, who finally chops his head off. Imoaza is pinned to a wall by the telekinesis of the Gith magic users (one of whom is invisible) and two Gith are descending on her with the intent to knock her unconscious and take her prisoner. The players are badly outnumbered despite their good plan!

The way this fight progresses is part of D&D’s unpredictability and that’s not bad, but there are a few things I have taken from the combat to improve in the future. Let me cover those before I get to the conclusion of the fight.

Improving Combat

The combat we have this session is epic and less one sided than the players think... but the perception that it is one sided is a problem, and when this happens in a game it almost always comes from miscommunications between the players and the GM. In this case, there are several things that don’t get communicated well:

This room has many straw dummies in it, spread around and big enough they could potentially be used for cover or lit on fire for a distraction. I only mention the straw stuffing once, and so the players don’t connect the description of this to a potential tactic. I’m also not clear about where they stand around the room.

The Gith are training in full armor and weapons. The players don’t realize this and when I mention the straw dummies wield wooden staffs (another hint that fire could be good here), they think I’m talking about the Gith. So they aren’t that afraid of darting into the middle of them!

The Githyanki are totally surprised by the players, and while they react quickly due to their training and battle expertise, they are afraid for most of the combat.

The ultimate lesson is to be clear, to be OVERLY clear. Players won’t always ask questions, even if you encourage them to (as I usually do) because they may not have any questions, but that doesn’t mean the picture in their head matches yours. Describe everything TWICE, lay out potential plans to illustrate the scenario (but don’t spoon feed the players ideas of what you want them to do), and make sure the players know their options. I talked about this a bit on a recent episode of Adventurous Appetizers, that knowing their options is what keeps players from feeling frustrated at the outcome of a fight. In this case, they felt a little frustrated because they didn’t fully understand the scenario and so, even though their plan was a good (if poorly rolled) one, they felt a little cheated out of the opportunity to enact other plans which maybe they would have used instead if they better understood the situation.

Similarly, throughout the combat, I could have made things seem more frenzied for the opponents: if they had been screaming in fear and confusion or crying out that this might be the first wave of a larger attack (as they probably feared it was), it would have highlighted how well the players did against the odds and even given them a chance to roleplay during combat, maybe using intimidation to increase the enemy’s fear and halt their good tactics. I hate missing roleplaying opportunities but combat is an easy place to do so what with everything else going on and you having to use the other side of your brain to do all the logistics. I’m always trying to remind myself to roleplay during battle. Easier with 20/20 hindsight having had a few weeks to think over the combat though.

The other thing I could have changed is lowered the difficulty of the room on the fly by giving the Gith the wooden staves the players thought they had, but I didn’t realize this was what the players thought until combat was over and they asked about it. This one is their fault, though, as I said a number of times during the fight that the Githyanki had blades and if the players had mentioned it early in the combat, I probably would have changed that, or at least given them a chance to use an inspiration point to put that into effect (tangent: I’m allowing inspiration points now to change the story slightly for things that have no rules, like knocking Githyanki off perches and into the tentacles of Hadar).

I wanted to post these notes because these are all helpful hints for DMs and good notes for me for next time! Still, at the moment, we have a TPK on our hands and we need to give the players a way out of it.

Ah! New Information!

At the beginning of this session, I took Milosh aside and we went back in time before the short rest to roleplay a little interrogation scene between him and Al’Chaia, whom he is brought before as a prisoner. Milosh ends up being a pretty hilarious prisoner. He takes things so literally and has so little ability to deceive or lie that Al’Chaia quickly dismisses him as a threat and instead tries to entice him to work with her. She wants him to free the prisoner, Ezria, and "escape” with him, at least to the point where he opens a portal to the Githzerai homeworld, at which point she intends to step in, kill or recapture Ezria, and secure the portal for her own uses. In return, she offers to take him to the homeworld of the Gith, where he can speak to their queen, peruse their libraries, and learn more about the Surveyors who built him.

Milosh agrees, but just to be sure he stays honest, Al’Chaia gives him a scrying crystal, allowing her to know where he is at all times. She doesn’t tell him what it does, but she warns him not to discard it. Milosh suspects its true purpose, and agrees to carry it. Then, Al’Chaia sends him to the jail cells, where he awaits Ezria, who is currently being mentally tortured in a vain attempt to get information out of him.

What Al’Chaia doesn’t tell Milosh is that she is using the time that Ezria is being tortured to set a trap: she summons the Great Mother Dragon of her brood (insert unpronounceable dragon name) and connects the crystal to her, with instructions to hover outside the asteroid wherever the crystal is and be prepared to use her spell of passwall to enter and attack if the crystal is discarded or the portal is opened. She also knows that the portal can only be opened in “weaker” space, a place where the fabric of time and space is weak enough to pierce and travel through. The one place this is is at the entrance to Stardock. So she goes there to wait, with two young red dragons and a platoon of Githyanki. She tells the other Githyanki not to fight the robotic Milosh and Ezria, but she doesn’t give them the same instructions about any other intruders. These she says “kill on sight.” She knows those intruders are there, but she figures the less companions Milosh has, the more likely he is to adhere to the plan.

Side note: in retrospect it would have been fun if there was a secondary place that the players discover on Stardock where the veil is weak and could be pierced, but I think it would have disrupted the pace we set for the mission. But a good thought for a future playthrough of Stardock.

All of this culminates in Milosh using a key Al’Chaia gave him to free Ezria and join the fight just as things look hopeless. Milosh darts into the training room and begins firing his mega-buster gunarm at the Gith wizards while Ezria unleashes the fury of a Githzerai monk against his enemies.

Then things get complicated. Milosh also freed two Mindflayers as he sped out of the prisons. This infuriates Ezria, but Milos h manages to convince him to stick to the mission and think of them as tools to use against his enemies. This goes against everything Ezria believes, but the Githzerai is wounded, exhausted from multiple psychic tortures, and terrified of the Githyanki gaining access to his homeworld. So he tentatively agrees.

This alliance is tested further still when the Mindflayers burst in upon the room and immediately set upon one of the injured Gith wizards, pulling her down and cracking open her skull to feast on her brains. Ezria’s most inner instincts tell him to fight now, to turn on the Mindflayers, and in a blind rage he nearly does so, with Milosh desperately begging him not to give in to his rage but to let the other Gith kill these Mindflayers, or come back later with an army of Githzerai. Only one set of words finally gets through to Ezria: “It is not the warrior’s way to lose the war just to win one battle.” With this, Ezria finally tears himself from the horendous death of his distant kin and joins Milosh in fleeing through the trapdoor, Imoaza and Carrick close behind (Imoaza killed the Githyanki knight who was dragging Carrick’s body away and revived him during the action with the Mindflayers).

As they come up through the trapdoor, they halt for a moment to heal each other and cast haste spells to let them speed through the dungeon. Then Milosh makes a mistake: he throws away Al’Chaia’s crystal.

Immediately there is a roar and the mother dragon appears in the room with them, blocking the exit. But the three race away, using haste to bypass her and tear down the final hallway to their exit. The mother dragon sends a blast of fire after them, a blast that severely wounds Ezria, nearly killing him, barely catches Carrick, and...

... kills Imoaza, who fails her dodge rolls.

Only, Milosh’s player asks if he can spend an inspiration point and change the story, intentionally failing his roll and throwing himself in the way of the blast. This sounds super appropriate to the story and they have one last inspiration so we allow it and Milosh takes incredible damage, his armor and outer layer melting, giving him a permanent -2 to Charisma, and leaving him looking like something out of Terminator. But he survives and Imoaza survives and the three race on!

But then they come to the Stardock portal and find Al’Chaia and her forces waiting for her. She opens her mouth to speak and Milosh launches a volley of arrows at her and her crew. Taking advantage of the distraction, Ezria opens the portal underneath the party. He turns to join them and gasps as a knife hits him in the back: a poisoned blade thrown by Al’Chaia with perfect precision. His life force fading, he knows that he still needs to protect the portal from being kept open by Al’Chaia and her Gith. So he leaps in and makes the ultimate sacrifice: he spends his life force to close the portal behind him. And because he gave his whole soul to do this last dead, he arrives back in his homeworld dead, unable to be raised by the powers of the Gith.

A Short Rest

The players get a long rest, courtesy of the Githzerai, who are grateful for their heroic actions in returning to them one of their one. The players sleep in the strange Githzerai world set in the Limbo in between space and time. They recover and they dream.

In fact, they dream the same dream, all three of them, of a statue of a woman, set in a garden surrounded by people making love. The love making turns violent and the people begin tearing at each other’s flesh, though still crying out in ecstasy, while the statue of the woman slowly changes its expression into a smile.

Only Imoaza, schooled as she is in dark magic, recognizes the dream as more than just a fancy or an effect of being in the strange environment of Limbo. There is a lingering of magic, almost like a suntan or a burn, left on her aura which tells her that she inadvertently touched powerful magic in her dream last night. This means something has contacted them, or brushed up against their sleeping minds. The thought perturbs her, but she keeps it to herself, not accustomed to having companions to help her think through her problems.

The three are taken back to their ship by the Githzerai and deposited on the bridge, while the Gith go to the reactor core to power up their crystal and send them, finally, home to Toril. How long has it been? In player time, seven months since they fought the Mind Flayer space marine that launched them into space. In game time... well, that is less certain. Knick Knack and Immerstal have given them impression that hundreds of years may have gone by on Toril in their absence. Only Milosh is not disturbed by the thought: “Ah! I have been asleep for hundreds of years already. A few hundred more will not hurt as long as the prophecy is still unfulfilled.”

But they have little time to contemplate or celebrate. As Krisp congratulates them on a job well done, Carrick notices something bareling towards the bridge from between asteroids. It looks like...

“It’s a ship!” he cries out, moments before it slams into the bridge and everything goes crazy.

Family Matters

Crashing through the bridge is a familiar gunship: it belongs to Hecate, Imoaza wayward daughter who has hunted her since Imoaza joined the party. Unsuccessfully hunted, I should add. Hecate has been a difficult encounter to design. As a boss encounter, she has had to walk a fine line between being not strong enough to TPK a party while being strong enough to withstand their brutal attacks. You would think that the answer here would be high HP and AC with maybe a low but consistent damage output, or having her use special abilities to target group weaknesses.

And yeah, you wouldn’t be wrong. That’s pretty much the basis for any Hecate fight. The funny thing is how inconsistent it is in practice, but then that’s pretty much been the take away of this entire post. D&D is unpredictable, unstable. It is not linear story telling: it is improv theater.

For a brief recap, here are all the various scenarios the party has encountered Hecate in and a basic rundown of how they were designed and how they went:

Encounter 1: Mountainside This encounter took place on the mountain path on the way to the Fane of Tiamet right after the Red Hand campaign. Here, I used Maralith statistics for Hecate, with the snake body option, and gave her a special sword that could cut through space, allowing her to basically dimension door/misty step in and out of combat. She was accompanied by a group of Yuan Ti and their Broodguards. The thought was that the multitude of enemies would make the combat harder. It didn’t. Imoaza and Aldric decimated the group enemies, while Carrick provided a nice unhittable target for them with his high AC. It was pretty much a disaster for Hecate, but gave me ideas of how to run future fights. Basically, everything needed an upgrade.

Encounter 2: Hell’s Tavern This encounter took place in the City of Ghosts, with a new and improved bounty hunter verison of Hecate. She had lost her blade, but she had gained a gun arm. I basically upgraded her to a mix of Orthon stats (Mordenkainen’s Tome) and the Marilith States, with some multi-attack thrown in to allow her to be competitive in the action economy. She also fought alongside an acidic troll. This was probably the most balanced fight the players had against Hecate and it took them using all sorts of tricks to beat her, leading to a tense and prolonged encounter which almost killed the party.

Encounter 3: Gunship This was the most interesting fight, as Hecate fought the players from her gunship while they controlled the demon train. I don’t know how balanced the fight was because it didn’t really use in book statistics but was more fluid with some of the moves and attacks being designed on the fly to fit the situation, but it didn’t really matter because it was heavy on spectacle, with the emphasis being on all the cool shit both sides could do to each other and how epic the whole thing felt. When Hecate’s ship went down in the desert, that didn’t feel surprising, but it didn’t feel unsatisfying, either.

This new fight with Hecate is supposed to focus on a few new things: one, she has Blackrazor at full power. Two, she has legendary actions. Three, she still has access to her gunship’s weapons (limited). And four, there is an environmental challenge based on the bridge depressurizing and also something... else. These black portals keep appearing in the bridge during the fight, sucking everything they touch into nothingness.

The fight ends up not going the way I expected. I expected it to be a challenge, maybe too much of a challenge I was afraid. Hecate is most interested in fighting Imoaza alone but of course Imoaza doesn’t go for that (much to the rage of Hecate) and the team takes her on as one. Even this was a little unexpected, as I thought some of the group would be held back by obstacles.

See, first thing that happens is Tinia and other magic users rush forward to secure the bridge from the pull of outer space, using their magics to erect a force field between the bridge and the vast expanse caused by the crash of the gunship. When they do, a number of heavy objects that were being pulled towards the void drop suddenly. One, a Fiona droid, slams into Carrick, knocking him down. A heavy computer bank crushes Milosh (he rolls a critical fail), trapping him underneath. Only Imoaza escapes the carnage, rolling exceptionally well and leaping across various objects to land in front of the gunship and taunt her daughter to come down and fight.

So for a moment, I think this is going to be a one on one fight, which I hadn’t anticipated but awesome! So Hecate uses her gunship to lay down suppressing fire in a line of plasma blasts behind Imoaza, turning this into an arena. But no: I forget how many movement options higher level characters have. Carrick misty steps away from an encroaching black portal and right past the plasma and Milosh misty steps out from under the heavy computer banks and rushes through the plasma, taking damage, but emerging with enough health to feel comfortable closing with Hecate. Within a round, Hecate takes something like a hundred points of damage from their combined onslaught. She uses some of her legendary actions to try and fight back, but bad rolls screw her over. The one thing she gets off is she uses a charm attack on Milosh and she convinces him to target Carrick, whom she says murdered the real surveyor. Milosh turns to attack Carrick. Meanwhile a black portal opens up underneath Imoaza and it looks like this fight is going to end up between Hecate, Carrick, and a charmed Milosh. But then Imoaza uses the group’s last inspiration to try and change the story. She tells me what she wants to do, and I declare a strength contest: not Imoaza’s strong suit, and something Hecate’s pretty good at.

And Hecate rolls a 3. Hah!

Imoaza leapt over a swing from Blackrazor. “You let Aldric die!” the sword screamed. “I was supposed to kill him!” Imoaza would have landed back on the floor of the bridge, but it was suddenly gone, sucked away into a black portal that yawned underneath her. So instead she landed on Hecate, gripping her daughter’s shoulders, their faces mere inches from each other. Hecate hissed. “You were never one of us,” she said. “You stole our weapon so that you could play pretend.”

“No,” Imoaza answered. “I stole the weapon because you weren’t worthy of it.”

Then she swung around to Hecate’s back and pushed off, leaping backwards and sending her daughter screaming into the pit.

And with that, the fight is over. That’s actually suitably awesome, and I love the way the fight ends before it really begins. Still, seeing how badly the fight went for Hecate even before this move, there are a few things I would do differently here in retrospect to make the fight better:

Give Hecate some better armor. I needed to bump her AC up a bit to make her harder to hit, something she totally would have thought to do after her last fight with the players. Oops.

Bring along some minions! Why oh why didn’t I have the ship launch little mechs into the arena or have Hecate hack some of the Fiona units? I can’t believe I missed a chance to have androids fight!

Have Hecate hang back. Yeah, I know Blackrazor is a close range weapon, but she should have known to fight this smarter. Hang back, keep range, use her gun arm to disable opponents and her charm to take over Milosh, then move in for the kill.

Overall, I think this would have made for a far more tactically interesting fight, with Milosh charmed and fighting Carrick and a couple of androids distracting Imoaza while Hecate moved around using range and occasionally closing in for a strong attack. With the players having had a long rest, I think they could have handled this and it would have been a more tense and memorable fight (maybe even with the same ending, which would have been even more impactful, if it interrupted Hecate in the middle of kicking butt). Sorry, players. But hey, maybe you’ll get a chance for a better one in the future.

In any case, the fight ends but the players still have dangers to face. Portals are opening up all over the bridge! Carrick is sucked into one, and Milosh dives in after him, using his grappling hook arm to attach to Hecate’s gunship. When he doesn’t emerge, Imoaza sighs and slides down the grappling steel wire after him.

Home...?

Darkness, and sound. Wind whistling might be how some would describe it, but it would be a kindness the wind didn’t deserve. This wind was howling, howling madly like a tortured thing. Milosh activates his eyes to see that he is in a hut of stone with a single heavy blanket forming a door that is flapping in the raging wind. His grappling hook has retracted, though he doesn’t know when that happened. In fact, he doesn’t know the when of anything. How long has he been... asleep? Is that the right word?

When Milosh eventually pushes past the blanket, he finds himself in another world. A world of grey and white, surrounded by shadows. Snow and sleet rains down upon them, picked up and spun into a flurry by the howling wind. Others are here, too, humanoids that seem to be preparing to leave on a journey. Wagons are being packed and hitched to mules. Provisions are being packed. There is a mighty fire that people huddle around, though others are preparing to dump buckets of snow and ice to put out the flames. Among the people huddled for warmth Milosh spots Imoaza and Carrick.

Their experience is the same as his: they remember entering the portal but nothing since. They do not know where they are, so Milosh grabs a passing man, a man with a weatherworn face and a thick beard with grey at its edges, and asks him where they are.

“Torill,” he barks. “Along the sword coast, on the pilgrimage.”

This has the players reeling. The Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms?! The world they’ll been trying to return to for... well... for a long time.

“Pilgrimage to what?” Milosh asks.

At this the man scowls.

“You’ve forgotten our lady?!”

“We’ve forgotten many things,” Imoaza says quickly and the man softens.

“I shouldn’t have judged, I’m sorry. The affliction takes us all in different ways but, ah gods, to have forgotten her ladyship you must truly be miserable. Here, you are on your way with the rest of us pilgrims to see the goddess Eshebala, so that she may claim our spirits and usher us into her bright kingdom away from all this suffering.”

Eshebala... Milosh searches his databanks and realizes he does know the lady Eshebala. In his time (which admittedly was centuries ago) she was already an old goddess, worshipped by lovers and would-be lovers for her power to recognize and bring true lovers together, and as a fertility goddess. But Imoaza also knows Eshebala, only she knows her as a Goddess of horror and despair, a dark name shunned even by the hardiest warlocks, for she is known as a being incapable of granting any power excepting that of wild uncontrollable chaos, whose own followers she has forsaken and to whom she grants no gifts or insight, except the gift and insight of madness.

Still, with nowhere else to go, the players join the procession, learning that the pilgrimage ends in Baldur’s Gate and that they are as of yet eleven days away from their destination. And that’s where we shall leave them for now.

#Eshebala #Dnd 5e #Dungeons and Dragons #Campaign journal #alignment may vary

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cosmosogler · 7 years

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hey guys. i had bad dreams and a lot of trouble sleeping!!! i woke up a bunch of times and every time i was tangled up in my pjs. my pants had somehow become backwards at the waist.

when i did get up i reached up to stretch and my shoulders, like, clicked back into place with an audible snap. i can’t tell if that hurts or not.

i was a little slow to get moving. while i was checking facebook this morning snoopy pooped next to my desk. i was pretty annoyed about that, especially since this was right after i’d fawned over her for a while. i’d only stopped because she got up to get water and i thought she was done being petted.

i showered and spent a long time in there just thinking. i don’t know what i was thinking about. i guess i was thinking about thinking in the shower. either way, it was a while.

then i made a quiche i’d bought yesterday. i think it may have made me sick. the cashier at the grocery store hadn’t put it in my freezer bag... along with the eggs. something in there doesn’t smell quite right but i haven’t found it yet. no, it’s not the eggs.

i was doing something but i don’t remember what it was!!! at 10:40 ish, or 11, somewhere in between there, i started packing for school. i decided i should probably dole out my trail mix rations finally since i’ve had the jar sitting in my pantry for 6 weeks. i love trail mix. not sure why i never took the time to separate it into servings. i even just enjoyed the process of measuring out 1/2 cups and putting them in bags to put in my lunch box over the next two weeks.

i biked over to campus but i was very leisurely about it. just didn’t have the drive to pedal as fast as i could i guess. good thing the physics building is downhill. i don’t quite have the stamina to stand on the pedals but i am trying to practice a little bit. getting pretty good at sharper turns at least, and i can hold my arm out to signal for a whole second now instead of just kinda... waving it and grabbing the handlebar again real fast.

and no part of me has gotten snagged in the pedals or chain in a week so that’s good!!!

once i got to my office i had a little trouble getting started with my work. i think it took 40-45 minutes... i again do not remember what i was doing other than browsing the internet. fatigued.

i did work for an hour before i stopped for lunch. i finished studying my class notes and adjusting a few things to account for understanding the material a little better. i wish i’d been more careful about transcribing what the professor had written previously... i left a few frustrated notes about how i couldn’t hear what he said, or his handwriting was too bad to make out, or how he’d written half an equation on the board and not ever finished it. but a few things i could have made better note of- like the slant of the tensor indices. i didn’t realize that was important until much later.

i do ask him to clarify sometimes, if i can’t read whether a word says “sine” or “mmnmnn”. and his Vs look like Ns. that REALLY trips me up because we use both of those a lot.

but i can’t ask every time.

i talked to suzanne about having all the grad students upload their class notes into an online database so we’d all have all the information we’d collectively written down. she said that’s actually a great idea and we have a scanner in the department for people who write in real old fashioned notebooks (like me).

might run it by luis and taylor later... one of them could probably help me set up some kind of dropbox or google doc collection.

my lunch was pretty great. i had a sandwich and a banana and had a terrible stomachache but felt a little more settled after the banana. i had to try real hard not to puke though for like an hour.

after that i finished my classical assignment due tomorrow. it took about an hour too. and another 40-ish minutes sprinkled through the rest of the day making small corrections as i discovered why i shouldn’t include a factor of 2 here and there.

suzanne watched me try to explain one of the problems to harrison and corrected me a few times when i got confused by terms i’d heard her use when she explained it to me. it got me flustered at the time because harrison looked like i was making it worse but at the same time i’m glad i had to articulate what exactly the problem was asking for and get my course adjusted right away as soon as i made a mistake.

still not quite sure what “geometric analysis” means, especially in comparison to, i think it was, “numerical analysis.” both of those involve popping variables into equations and making substitutions and getting an answer.

at about 2:30 i walked over to the union with suzanne and jennica in the rain. i was half under suzanne’s umbrella so when we got inside half of me was immediately cold and soggy. one sleeve of my shirt was just soaked but the rest was lightly sprinkled or just dry.

i’m wearing one of my favorite shirts today. it’s soft and gray and loose and it says in big white letters “DON’T BOTHER ME I’M BUSY” and there’s minions posing.

not sure what the minions are doing there but their frozen screams of karate rage match my mood at all times so i will allow it.

i’ve had this shirt for years. i wear it like literally every laundry cycle.

anyway i sat with my two classmates and talked about sand while they ate wendy’s. i don’t quite remember what started the tangent, but it involved me telling a joke about body surfing with my brother and getting slapped around by the waves and dragged along the beach haha.

when we walked back it wasn’t really raining any more. i originally didn’t mind the rain until it got ice cold over the span of three seconds. but anyway i got right back to it!!! i think. i mostly ate trail mix for a little bit and goofed off with harrison and talked about the classical homework. suzanne wants to work on the last two quantum problems tomorrow so i let that assignment be for now.

i compiled all the questions we’ve been assigned in classical so far and their solutions. i printed out just the questions from the first assignment to take home with me. i meant to work on it tonight but i ran out of time. that took forever though. i joked about it to harrison. i said “it’s so great to be working on a project that is not really doing actual practice problems.”

he said “yeah, i love dicking around instead of working.”

i said “that’s what it’s all about!”

i was kinda bummed that doing the homework took so long... and none of us had ANY energy at all. luis didn’t even come in. taylor came in in the mid-afternoon but then didn’t actually sit and do any work. rebika left before that. jennica was... riding up and down the hallway in an office chair flopping her arms around like a terrifying crab woman.

we’re tired.

eventually i was getting ready to leave when jennica wanted to talk about pirates for like 15 minutes. we ended up on pseudo-politics. not actually talking about any issues in particular, but rather how we approach them. i started getting pretty dark thoughts so i hopped on my bike and went home.

i mean, they weren’t any darker than the joke i’d made earlier.

taylor had said something. harrison replied, “who are you, my mother? if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”

i laughed and said “absolutely. of course, the joke is that i would have done it without all my friends. jumped off the bridge, i mean.”

we talked about how high the bridge was, and if it was over water or not. there were a couple “it doesn’t matter how high it was as long as you believe in yourself” comments because taylor was involved with the conversation.

anyway i offered to make muffins later in the week and then i went home at 6:30-ish. at 7:00 i started making TEMPEH TACOS!!!!

they were so good. oh man. i only exploded one thing too. i actually ate the entire meal even though it was way too much. i cleaned up the dishes bloated and happy and everything smelled like limes. because i’d put like a quarter cup of lime juice in with with the crumbled tempeh. which was only a big enough serving for one person.

i bummed around on the internet for a while after that, and then at about 9:30 i got back to work for a little bit. i made a complete rubric for the labs i gotta grade, so hopefully now it will be faster and more cut and dry. at about 10:10 i started writing here.

looking at my to-do list... i didn’t get as much done as i would have liked. things always seem to take twice as long as i plan for, even when i feel like i’m allocating a generous time slot to relatively minor things. like giving myself a full hour to finish half a classical problem that specifically asks for no (dynamical) equations. all i had to do was draw a triangle and do some trigonometry with suzanne.

being a master avoider has some downsides. like even when i want to focus on a project my brain is sneaky about avoiding it. which is why i spent 80 minutes putting together an easy reference for doing the practice problems instead of actually doing practice problems.

at least i recognized all the questions and had a vague idea of how i would go about solving them. i’m really, really hoping it doesn’t take twelve hours to do one old assignment like it did the first time around.

looks like grading will have to slide this week. i can do it for a little while every day but there’s no way i can get it all done on monday and get enough sleep to do my best on the exam on tuesday night.

i don’t WANT to screw around all the time. but it seems like that’s what keeps happening.

and no matter how much work i get done i should always have gotten MORE done.

something good about me today was MY AMAZING, FANTASTIC COOKING PROJECT. IT WAS SO GOOD YOU GUYS. IT WAS SO GOOD!!! it’s not quite what i remember making back at home a few months ago, but it was great in its own way and i think making the tacos either way will do it for me! maybe a little less lime juice next time. maybe that’s what was overpowering the earthy nuttiness of the tempeh. i even sauteed the onions for a little bit to take the edge off and that helped a lot toward making the crumbled tempeh taste more complete and less like a collection of onions and chili powder and limes.

oh! and i came up with a great way to avoid the Onion Tears. i put my fan next to my cutting board and had it blow the fumes out the window while i chopped. snoopy sat on the ottoman and watched me.

i think cooking a nice, for real meal for myself every now and then does a lot toward lifting my mood. i wish i had time to do it more often. even just putting my freezer stuff in the oven instead of the microwave can do a lot for the texture even though it takes four times as long.

i’m not sure how i got so good at this. maybe part of it is that my own food just tastes better because i know how much work i put into it. *i* went out and bought the stuff. *i* chopped up all the onions and the tempeh and boiled it. *i* set aside the serving i wasn’t using for leftovers later. *i* spent 35 minutes putting everything together. part of the flavor is just feeling good about making this thing for yourself.

but even the stuff i’d make at home mom seemed to like at least.

part of it might be that i know what a lot of things taste like and how much god dang chili powder i love to have on everything. and it’s kind of easy to judge from the smell how much, comparatively, of that thing i should put into my pan. i have a decent sense of smell. raised by dogs and all that.

and half the fun is realizing you don’t have something and improvising with what you do have. and seeing what happens when you do that.

and dumping piles and piles of chipotle rub you stole from your mom’s pampered chef set on everything.

by “stole” i mean she said “you can have this one and i’ll order a new one. and then another new one for myself.”

i wish i had more cooking vocabulary. i don’t have anyone to talk to about it and i don’t really know... what kinds of words to use when i do talk about it? like until a few hours ago i wasn’t really sure what the difference between “saute” and “fry” was. still not quite sure why “broil” is different from “bake.”

kind of feels like when i was at home and i didn’t have anyone to talk to about physics for eight months. and kind of feels like when i like a tv show and don’t have anyone to talk to about it for years. you get out of practice.

anyway it’s 11:15 and i’d like to be in bed real soon so i can start getting up early like a normal person again. if i get up at 8 the sun’s been up too long already and i’ve woken up like five times because it comes right through the window directly into my eyeballs.

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dontshootmespence · 7 years

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Passive-Aggressive Partnership

A/N: An anon request for a Spencer x Reader, where the reader is an M.E. and they don’t seem to like each other. They see each other a lot for cases. The tension builds and one case, when the two are alone, some stuff goes down. @coveofmemories @hanny-bananny

-----

“Again?” Reid asked, pouting that he had to be the one to go to the local medical examiner’s office for their case. They’d been working together on and off for years. As the top medical examiner in the DC area, Y/N was their go-to for any local cases. She was also cocky, obnoxious, loud and just all-around unlikeable - at least in Reid’s eyes. “She’s so obnoxious.”

Morgan laughed and shook his head. He’d always thought that the medical examiner and their very own doctor would get along well. She was a lot like him. She wasn’t cocky, she was smart, annoyingly so, just like Reid. Morgan didn’t find her obnoxious; he just found that she liked to correct people if she thought they were wrong...just like Reid. She was a little loud, but she’d grown up in New York, so that was her excuse for being loud; Morgan bought it. “You have to learn to interact with anyone we need for a case, Pretty Boy,” he said. “Can’t pick and choose.” Reid grimaced, which only caused Morgan to laugh harder.

“Plus, she’s awesome!” Garcia exclaimed. “I have her phone number. We text all the time. We’ve gone out for drinks and dancing a couple times. She’s great. I think someone has a crush and that’s why he thinks she’s so obnoxious.”

“I’m not in high school, Garcia. I didn’t even do that when I was in high school.”

Emily sat back in her chair, thankful to have the distraction of a benign conversation so she didn’t have to look at the grotesque nature of the crime scene pictures. “Well, in all fairness, you were a preteen in high school, so of course you didn’t.”

“Well,” Hotch said sternly, glancing in Reid’s direction, “We all have our orders. Let’s go. We need to get ahead of this unsub.”

As everyone pushed back from the table, Hotch and Emily off to crime scene number one, Rossi off to interview the first victm’s parents, and JJ and Morgan off to crime scene number two, Reid sat there, composing himself before heading off to deal with the obnoxious M.E. If he were to not see her for another 1,000 years, it would still be too soon.

Here goes nothing.

-----

As Reid took a deep breath outside the M.E.’s office in an attempt to keep his composure, he found himself smoothing out the wrinkles in the shirt and the hair out of his eyes for the fifth time in as many minutes. If he didn’t know any better, one might think he had something to prove.

Walking inside, he passed the sweet old lady that worked as the medical examiner’s secretary of sorts, giving a small wave before wiping the hair out of his face yet again. Dammit. Why wouldn’t it stay in place? More importantly, why did he care? He knocked on the door, waiting to hear her voice reverberate off the walls.

“Come in!” she screamed, looking up to see that it was he who had come to see her. “Dr. Reid. Nice to see you again.” That didn’t sound genuine. “You’re here for information about the young woman found at 459 Coolridge Road?”

“That I am,” he replied, staring her down in an attempt to show that he was just as capable as she was. Over their years working together, they always seemed to try and outdo each other. Whoever said that adults stopped with passive-aggressive arguments once they got out of their teen years - that they were better able to communicate - had never seen a standoff between Dr. Reid and Y/N. “What can you tell me?”

“Although I’m not the profiler,” she started, causing Reid to go off on a tangent in his own head. Right. You’re not the profiler. I am. “I’d say whoever your killer is, he has a lot of unchecked rage coursing through him. In addition to being tied up by the ankles and wrists, she was sexually assaulted with some kind of cylindrical object before being killed.”

“What was the cause of death?” he asked.

When she turned the woman’s head to the side, he could see a circular indentation. “Blunt force trauma to the nose actually. The indentation is likely not from the same instrument she was assaulted with; I’d say it was something with a circular base, like a trophy or something. The force with which she was hit pushed the ethmoid bone into her brain, which killed her almost instantly.” Throughout their years working together, Reid had always seen Y/N as methodical and emotionless, which he couldn’t understand, but when he looked up, he could see her grimace in disgust and pity; it was the first time he had seen her as a real person, instead of a robotic doctor.

“Last question. If you had to hazard a guess as to what weapon she was assaulted with, you would say?” he wondered.

Y/N swallowed hard, covering the victim’s face with the sheet before answering. “My best guess would be a hair curler, or something with the same relative diameter.”

“Oh god. Okay. You haven’t gotten the second victim in yet, have you?” he asked. When the door knocked, she explained that it was probably the second victim arriving. “Alright,” he said, thinking that for the first time, he didn’t actually hate being in her presence. “If you wouldn’t mind giving me a call after you’d finished examining the second victim, I’d appreciate it.”

With a quick nod and a thank you, Reid turned around and walked out of the office, ready to interview the second victim’s mother at Hotch’s request. Y/N had said nothing as he left the room, which made him realize how much he really disliked her, despite the new side of her he’d just seen. He’d have to go back later, but hopefully, they could nail down a profile first.

-----

After leaving Y/N’s office, Reid did as he was asked and interviewed the mother of the second victim before reconvening with the rest of the team back at the station. “We don’t have any information on the second victim yet,” Hotch said, as they started to go over all the information they had acquired through the day, “But we do have two women in their early 20s, who still lived with their parents, assaulted and killed in their own homes while their parents were away.” Immediately, he dialed the number to cal Garcia.

“Girl genius, at your service,” she said with her usual trademarked perkiness.

“Babygirl, can you look into the victim’s social media backgrounds for us. They were both attacked in their own homes when their parents were away and given their age, it’s likely that they put that information up online,” Morgan said.

“Doing a search now. I’ll hit you back when I have something.”

With a click, she disconnected the line, which was when Reid chimed in. “Y/N said that our first victim was tied up, sexually assaulted with something that in her estimate is a hair curler, and then died from blunt force trauma to the nose, causing the ethmoid bone to pierce her brain, killing her immediately. She was right. This unsub has a lot of backed up rage in him. He’s not going to stop until we catch him.”

“Agreed,” JJ said before deviating of the course of the case. “Did you say Y/N was right? And did you just say her name, instead of ‘that medical examiner.’”

“She was,” he shrugged, a heat rising to his face. “I can admit when someone else is right.”

Emily pushed back her chair from the table, walking over the board where pictures of both of the victims were hanging up. “We’re looking for a white man, 30s to 40s. Probably still lives with his own mother, and given the use of a hair curler, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was assaulted as a child with something similar.”

Everyone seemed to agree on the general profile, which would be further honed when Reid went back to the M.E.’s office to get information regarding the second victim.

As Reid left the station, the rest of the team was sent home at Rossi and Hotch’s insistence. None of them were good to the victims if they weren’t on their game - and it was getting late. All Reid wanted to do was go home, but first, he had to deal with Y/N one more time. At night. When she and he were both tired. Fuck.

-----

“Hello again,” Reid said upon entering Y/N’s office. Apparently, she was just finishing up the reports because the second victim had already been closed into one of the drawers.

“Let’s get this over with,” she yawned. “I am desperate to get home.”

“You’re not the only one,” Reid quipped, taking a deep breath in to try and control himself. “We all want to go home, but we all have a job to do.” Her head popped up angrily. Maybe it was the fact that she was tired. Maybe it was because they had both been passive aggressive with each other for years. He didn’t know, but before he knew it she was asking him what the hell his problem was.

“I don’t have a problem,” he insisted, his hands in his pockets forming fists in an attempt to control himself.

She stood up from her chair and got right up in his face. “Ever since the first time we saw each other, you have had an attitude with me. We’re two people just trying to do our jobs and I don’t need a fucking attitude from you every time you walk in the door. What have I done to deserve your anger?”

“You try and do the jobs of everyone else around you instead of sticking to what you know. I don’t need you profiling. I need you to give the medical information I need. On top of that, you are a goddamn robot when it comes to these victims. Today was the first time in all the years we’ve worked together that I’ve seen you show any kind of emotion and that really puts me off. I’m sorry if I can’t control my facial expressions, but it bothers me,” Reid said.

A fire rose in her eyes that she hadn’t felt in a long time, and he’d never seen in her before. “In order to do my job effectively, I need to close off from emotion, because if I let emotion get to me every time, I would’ve killed myself long ago. I may seem robotic to you, but that’s the way I survive!” In her anger, she’d gotten within inches of his face, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

Without thinking, Reid pressed his lips to hers before pulling away. A moment of tension hung in the air, before she initiated the next kiss, her tears falling between their lips. The heat between them grew as he turned her around and backed her into the wall, their tongues slowly finding their way into the other’s mouths. She gasped against his skin, wrapping her arms around his neck as he grabbed her hands and gathered them both above her head.

Her labored breathing resounded through his head as his lips made their way to her neck, which had started to bead with sweat under his heated touch. Never before did he think that this is where they would’ve ended up. Why had there been so much anger between them if this is how they connected? Were they only doing this out of anger? Or was there something else there that they’d never acknowledged before?

Before he knew it, her hand had wandered into the space between the top of his shirt and his collarbone, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Both knew that they were going to fast, and as if on cue, she pulled away from him, staring into his eyes before ducking out of his grasp and heading back toward her desk. “So... umm...your victim,” she stuttered breathlessly.

Reid would just have to figure out what that all meant later. She needed to pretend it didn’t happen for now and he needed to organize his thoughts...compose himself, which was considerably harder than he thought given that his cock was begging to be released from his pants. “W-What can you tell me about the second victim?” he asked. He desperately wanted her to speed talk so that he could leave.

Thankfully, she obliged his silent request. “Her cause of death and the assault are identical to the first victim. Both were assaulted with the same type of cylindrical object and both died from blunt force trauma to the nose, although your second victim was hit with something squared off. My best guess is that the killer comes prepared with the assault weapon, but uses whatever happens to be around when it comes to actually killing them. So, you can call me if you need any additional information, right?” she finally finished, tugging her lab coat closer to her body as she sat back down.

“Absolutely. Thank you very m-much for the information. I’ll be in contact with you soon,” he said as he left the room without another word. Speaking of robot. That’s what he’d just sounded like. What was that?

What the fuck just happened?

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fic #dontshootmespence #passive aggressive partnership

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sailorgreywolf-legacy · 7 years

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Legacy - Chapter 44

The image of the mysterious solider swam through Mexico's head for days after the encounter. Every time he closed his eyes to go to sleep, he could still see the final moment when he had turned back to look in breathtaking clarity. He awoke feeling the same energy coursing through his blood. Something about the man had left a very clear impression and an entirely novel feeling. He awoke and walked around until the buzz wore off. Even once they had left the city and the man behind, Mexico couldn't stop himself from thinking about him. Only the heat of battle distracted him from the memory. He knew his obsession was growing, but there was no help for it. It was a welcome day when Morelos announced the plan for the next campaign.

The map was laid out on the table with Morelos at the head of the table with his commanders around him. Mexico focused on the map, trying to not let himself think of anything else. Strategy was an exciting way to fill his mind. Morelos was speaking, "On the whole, we have been victorious as one army. But, this is slow. I have decided that we should split the army in three parts; hopefully, that will allow us to take the rest of the South." The people around the table all nodded or muttered in approval. Mexico had no reason to question the strategy either. He had learned over the past few months that he could put his trust entirely in the mortal. Morelos had proved that he was an excellent strategist and a purely patriotic soul. The combination was both potent and confidence inspiring. As it was, Mexico didn't feel the need to say anything in response to the plan. His silent consent should be enough. When Morelos's eyes met his, he nodded silently.

Orders were given and the room slowly cleared out, leaving Mexico alone with his leader. When he was sure no one else was in the room, Mexico spoke, "I assume I'll be staying with you?" He already knew the answer. With a bounty on him, Mexico would be far more at risk. He knew that no mortal would be capable of dragging him back to Spain, but that certainly wouldn't be reassuring to Morelos.

The answer soon came, "You will. I want to be able to keep an eye on you." He caught the look on Mexico's face and added, "You don't like it. You're a strong-willed person, but I don't think I misunderstand the situation. If you are captured, then we lose the chance at independence." He wasn't wrong, and Mexico knew it. It had become very clear that if Spain got Mexico back, he would likely drag the boy back to Madrid. That would effectively end the independence movement.

The protective gestures were at least coming from a good place. Mexico looked up at the mortal and felt a warm glow in his chest. He wondered how he had ever distrusted this man who believed in him, in the cause, so fully. He spoke, trying to give voice to the feeling in his chest, "I do appreciate you keeping me safe. I appreciate everything you've done for me."

Morelos looked almost shocked at the words. He responded after a long pause, "I didn't expect you to say that. What has changed?" Mexico realized how much the other had been holding back his affection. The boy had been acting very cold to Morelos, and on some level he realized that it was because he didn't want anyone to replace Hidalgo. Even without any affection from Mexico, Morelos had thrown himself entirely into battle after battle. How much the man had done without any reciprocation had not properly dawned on Mexico until this moment.

He responded, "I've been cold to you and I'm sorry for that. But I've realized that Miguel is gone and I need to stop expecting you to be him. You've done a lot for me and I do appreciate it." It wasn't as eloquent as Mexico had intended it to be, but it was at least heartfelt. Apologizing was not his forte, seeing as he rarely did it. Morelos smiled slowly and took a couple steps towards Mexico. He replied, "I've been waiting for you to say that." He stopped for a moment and looked down. When he looked back up at Mexico, something had shifted in him.

He pointed to one of the chairs and said, "There is something I want to tell you. You should sit." With his interest piqued, Mexico decided that he should trust the man and sit. Once he was seated, Morelos sat as well. The man reached out and put his hand on top of Mexico's where it was on the table. The contact was new, the pair of them had never made skin-to-skin contact, it was a paternal gesture that was both similar and different from the ones that Hidalgo had made. It was comforting and Mexico decided not to pull away.

Morelos spoke, "I am happy with the progress we have made, but military conquest is not the way to build a lasting state. We need to have an official declaration of independence. We need an official constitution or this will all crumble as soon as Spain leaves. There will be a power vacuum if we don't already have a structure in place." The words made perfect logical sense. However, it had a wonderful kind of confidence in it.

It was this that Mexico addressed when he responded, "How would we do that when we don't even have half of my land back under our control?" The mortal looked concerned and said, "I don't think we can do it now. When we have enough of the country under our control, we will bring representatives together to decide on a constitution." What was striking was the assumption that this would be complete possible with time and continued victory.

Again, when Mexico spoke he focused on this, "So, this is your ambition?" The other responded with a nod, "When we met, I told you that I wanted to bring you independence, and that is still true. But, I can't rely on military might entirely. If we were to establish a monarchy enforced by the army, then how are we any different from the tyranny that we are trying to throw off?" Mexico hadn't bothered to think about what he would do with independence when he finally had it. The kind of foresight had never seemed important. It still seemed that the actual victory was too far away to be thinking about what to do after it.

Mexico responded with another pleasant smile, "For both out sakes, I hope you get the chance to fulfill your ambition. But there are victories to be won before then, and that is what we should think about." He stood up, intent on leaving and informing Philippines of the plans that had been made. But, the mortal speaking stopped him, "I worry about you. You may be my country, but you are an individual first and you are far too militarily minded. You can't fight for the whole of your existence; it would be wise to consider options for peace." _______________________________________________________________________

America cut in, "He was right, you know. You always have been really aggressive." Mexico responded without even a second of silence, "I haven't had a military coup for at least a century; a fact that you seem to be fond of forgetting. I buried my tendency to fight." He turned slightly and fixed his gaze on the blonde, "You, on the other hand, have only gotten worse with age. I'm not the one who has been at war since the world wars." He was getting tired of pointing out the other's hypocrisy every time the story stopped, but now that he was this far, he couldn't stop. Telling the whole story was a very cathartic experience, and it really didn't matter what Alfred thought of it.

But the American seemed mollified by his own hypocrisy, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. But, even you must admit that you're confrontational by nature." This was, at least, true. There was no need to talk around it, and Mexico didn't attempt to, "Honestly, Alfred, my parents were both empires who ruled by constant conquest. A man who gained an empire by killing everyone who got in his way raised me. Do you really expect me to be tame when both my blood and my upbringing tell me the opposite?" America opened his mouth as though about to respond but then decided that it was better not to and resolutely closed his mouth.

Mexico took it as an invitation to continue the story, "Now, if you will stop distracting me with your tangents, I will continue the story that you asked for. The second campaign went very much like the first, victory after victory. But, what was even more important was the turning of the public will. The common people began to understand that independence would be best for them. We didn't have to fight for every town anymore." _______________________________________________________________________

The gates of Cuautla were wide open as the army reached them. The city was welcoming them with open arms. This was the kind of entrance that Mexico wanted to make. It felt good to be welcomed by his own people in this fashion. There was a bite of cold in the air, as it was getting late in the winter months, but nothing could put a damper on his spirits. The streets were lined with people as they rode in. The colors and flags of the independence were obvious from every window. There were cheers from the crowd, who surged forward to greet the incoming army. Mexico could feel his heart swelling in his chest. He was realizing that the nationalism and love of his people felt better than anything else.

Guerrero was right next to him, and the man leaned over and said, "Do you know what day it is?" Mexico shook his head in response. He had lost track of the exact days a long time ago. He knew it was December, but the rest had slipped away. The mortal responded with a slight smile, "It's Christmas Eve." The news was not completely unexpected, but it made him smile all the same. He replied, "Well, then it is a day to celebrate."

His attention was suddenly drawn away by a girl running up to the front of the crowd and saying, "Senior! Senior!" Mexico turned his head to see a young girl, just barely a teenager, was looking up at him with a smile. Her hand was extended towards him and she was holding a poinsettia. Mexico felt himself smile and reached out and took the flower. The single gift seemed to express the love of an entire population. It warmed his heart, even though he was well aware that this was only a single city that would mean little without victories following this.

He finally turned back to Guerrero to see that the man was looking at him with an expression of adoration. He spoke, "It seems that the people love you." The sparkle in his dark eyes expressed more, but Mexico dared not read into it farther. He could tell that the man was serious on some level.

He replied evasively, "They love what we represent. They love the idea of independence, as we all do." He said it to put an end to the conversation, even though he knew that that was exactly the reason affection was being shown to him. But, this was not sufficient, Guerrero replied, "I love my country as well, but you have your own magnetism." Before he could stop himself, Mexico said, "Those two are not as unrelated as you think." The other looked puzzled, but didn't pry into the statement.

They were offered the most opulent residence in the city, and they were soon settled. Mexico was standing in the front gardens of the manor house. From here, he could see the sun setting over the city that had been thrown open for him The warm feeling of welcome was still wrapped around him, making him feel light and strangely buoyant.

He heard the clearing of a throat behind him. It could be anyone, but there was certain femininity to the sound. So, when he turned to see Philippines standing behind him with a letter in her hand. He spoke, "Hello Piri, what do you want?" She sighed and said, "What I want has hardly seemed to matter to you. But I have a letter for you from your brother." The sentence was surprising because Mexico had not spared a thought for Texas in more than a year. The last he had heard of his brother had been the false lead that had doomed Hidalgo and Allende. He had not thought about his brother's involvement. He had no real desire to read the letter; it had been blissfully quiet without Texas.

He said to Philippines, "Have you already read it?" He didn't need to ask; he could see the broken seal. It didn't bother him that she was reading his mail, it saved him the trouble of reading the letters that he didn't want to read. She nodded and replied quickly, "It's wordy and rather desperate. Apparently Antonio captured him when he was delivering your offer to Alfred. He was just released and he begs to be able to come to you and be of use again."

It made perfect sense; if Texas had been captured then Spain would have gotten the entire plan of action and been able to make his decisive move. That was enough to make Mexico categorically consider his brother a traitor. But, there was another reason to deny Texas. If Spain released a prisoner, then he must have a reason. Most likely, he realized that Texas would immediately run back to Mexico and give away the boy's location. So, he responded to Philippines, "I'll write him later and tell him that there is no possibility of him coming back to me. I will have one of the other sections of the army pick him up if he tells me where he is. Until then, we can't risk contact."

Mexico stopped speaking when he noticed the look on the girl's face. She looked like this was exactly what she wanted to be hearing, a small smile was turning up the corners of her mouth. He changed the subject, "But you couldn't be more glad to hear that, could you?" She took a step closer to him and fixed her black eyes on him.

When she spoke, it was clear she was completely sincere, "I don't like your brother. He told me I had no right to care for you because I am not blood related to you. Everything has been easier without him." Mexico didn't disagree, but he was distracted by the fact that Philippines was talking slow steps towards him. The space between them was getting progressively smaller.

She abruptly changed the subject, looking up at him as she did so, "I have to ask you, Alejandro. What do you feel for Guerrero? I always tried to ignore the rumors that you preferred boys, but when I watch you two together, I can't help but think there is something there." Mexico was shocked by the question, because he hadn't thought it had been outwardly obvious. He hadn't properly defined his feelings to himself, so it was hard to come up with a response. Several seconds of silence stretch out, agonizingly long before Mexico finally said, "I'm not certain. I know he's important to me, but I can say why for sure."

One of her eyebrows rose, "You know that wasn't what I was asking. He's only mortal, his love won't be eternal." Suddenly, her tone seemed very critical. Mexico didn't want to be questioned or doubted, he did that enough on his own. Moreover, she was questioning him as an equal when he had established a hierarchy between the,. His choice of interests couldn't be anywhere near as damaging as the other mistakes he had made. He took a couple steps backward and hardened his voice, "That's enough, Piri. I'm focused on beating Antonio, I don't have time to contemplate romantic feelings for anyone."

The girl looked down at his feet and said, "Yes, I had noticed that." She turned and walked away, the wind catching her loose black hair as she did. Mexico couldn't shake the feeling that he had said something terribly wrong. However, he couldn't dwell on it. _______________________________________________________________________

Mexico paused without the other making any comment and said, "I could bore you with the battles we had in that campaign, but it should be enough to simply say that as before, we won over and over again. Even the risk of three smaller armies paid off." America caught the hesitant tone in the other's voice and said, "But that wasn't the end of it?" Mexico fixed his stony gaze on the blonde and replied, his voice reflecting a rage that was reawakened in the pit of his stomach, "Of course not. I underestimated my opponent again. Antonio waited until I brought my army back together at Cuautla, and then he made his move." This was supposed to be the transition into the next part of the story, but America had other things on his mind.

He spoke, "Does that mean Texas was back with you? I don't remember seeing him again until you were independent." Mexico snapped back, "You always think of him. But to answer your question, yes he returned." _______________________________________________________________________

Texas looked like he had been traveling for days, his hair and simple clothing were both disheveled. But as soon as he saw his brother, he took a few more steps and dropped to one knee. He spoke, "Thank you for letting me come back, brother." The light shifted across Texas's face and Mexico noticed something. He reached down and put his hand under his brother's chin. He forced the man to look at him. The yellow-green of a healing bruise was splashed across his cheek. Judging from the location, Texas's eyes had probably swelled up for a time.

Mexico finally spoke, "What happened to your face?" The brightness went out of the other's eyes as he realized the direction the conversation was going, "Antonio hit me. He didn't like me looking so much like you. He's not stable anymore since you broke his heart." Mexico felt no pity for his brother, because he had been thinking through the sequence of events and there was only one answer. The only way Spain could have known about the agreement with America well enough to manipulate it the way he did was if Texas had told him.

It was this that Mexico addressed, "And what did you tell him?" His brother immediately looked up and him and said quickly, "Nothing. I didn't tell him anything; believe me!" Mexico shook his head and took a step back, "You know I can't do that, Diego. The timing is too perfect."

Texas stood up suddenly, his eyes full of rage. He was level with his brother. Without any hesitation, he unbuttoned his jacket and threw it to the floor. He then pulled off his shirt, revealing his chest. The skin was littered with the marks of old bruises, some massive enough to be made by something other than fists. Texas spoke, "This is what he did to me because I wouldn't tell him anything about you. I took these blows for you, brother, so don't you dare call me a traitor."

After at least a year of being apart, it was bracing for Mexico to deal with his brother again. Usually, he would remain firm, but the obvious marks of abuse softened him. For a moment, he remembered that Texas shared blood with him and was his responsibility. He responded by reaching out and putting one hand on his brother's bare shoulder.

He replied, "I'm sorry for my suspicion. This war has become harder for me, and it has become difficult for me to trust anyone." As was his conditioning around his brother, Texas looked down now that his rage had cooled. He replied still looking at Mexico's boots, "I do understand how much it must have hurt you to lose Hidalgo." Mexico simply nodded, not entirely ready to talk about his losses with his brother. An uncomfortable silence stretched on between them, which Texas desperately attempted to fill, "I know we came to blows when I was last with you, but I promise it will be better this time. I have had time to reflect on my mistakes." Mexico nodded, but again said nothing in response. Hitting Texas was the last thing he had to regret at the moment.

Their conversation was interrupted by Philippines throwing open the door on the other side of the room and saying to the room at large, "Alejandro, you need to go talk to Morelos right now. There is bad news." She stopped in her tracks and looked directly at Texas and said, "Oh I didn't know you were back." Mexico was not oblivious to the hostile glances the pair were throwing at each other, but he chose to ignore it because whatever news Morelos wanted to tell him was more important than the petty rivalry. He walked past both of them to reach the door, saying as he did so, "I will be back, try not to kill each other while I am gone."

Mexico knocked on the door, even though he knew that Morelos was expecting him. It was a courtesy, which was quickly answered with the perfunctory, "Come in." As soon as he was in the room, Mexico said, "What's the news from the front, Jose?" The mortal turned and looked at him. Mexico noticed that there was a set of letters lying on the table, each definitely carrying news from messengers. He thought for a moment about walking forward and reading them, but he had a feeling that he was about to get the summary of the information.

Sure enough, Morelos said, "I have received news that Spanish forces are closing off all the routes to this city. They are slowly closing in on us. I expect we will see them in a few days." Mexico's heart sped up, possibly out of fear, as he realized the significance of this, "So, it's a siege?" The other nodded and responded, clearly trying to mask his own concern, "It appears that way, yes."

There was only one logical response to a siege, and that was to not treat it as a lost cause already. Mexico knew from firsthand experience that sieges could be broken. Certainly, the idea was to break the will of the independence movement and that couldn't be allowed to happen. So, Mexico said, "How long can we hold out before we will be forced to break the siege or surrender?"

The answer to the question was vital, considering that Spain had probably already made the same calculation it was essential that the Spanish forces be unable to effectively hold the siege. Morelos seemed to also recognize the importance of the question and carefully said, "At least a month, I'm not entirely certain after that." Mexico nodded and said, trying to keep all traces of uncertainty out of his voice, "Well, we will have to hope that that's long enough." With that, he turned and left.

As he walked back to his room, a single thought started to gestate in Mexico's mind. The siege was coming at the convenient time when almost the entirety of the insurgent army could be trapped in a single city. Texas claimed innocence, but it was strange that this news should come so soon after he returned. Considering the injuries that Mexico had seen, it was completely conceivable that Texas had broken down and turned informant. With treason possible, there was only one option left.

He stormed back to his room and found Philippines and Texas standing on opposite sides of the room glaring at each other. The years they had spent apart had apparently only made the situation worse. But as always, the feud between them meant nothing to Mexico. He had business to take care of with his brother, and that was the only thing on his mind.

First, he turned to Philippines and said, "Piri, I need a moment with my brother." She looked affronted until Mexico gave her a knowing look to imply the contents of his intended conversation and she understood. She then left the room.

Once she was gone, Texas turned to his brother with a slight smile. The sight of the dark, almost black, eyes and the smug, satisfied smile made Mexico feel slightly sick considering the treason he suspected. He didn't bother to speak; he simply took a couple quick steps and grabbed Texas by both shoulders. He slammed his brother against the wall. He could feel the force of the impact vibrate through the other's body. Given the barely healed injuries, the blow probably hurt. The expression of shock and pain on Texas's face confirmed that the position hurt him.

Mexico hissed, "Tell me, brother, what did Antonio promise you? What did he say he'd give you once you gave him me?" His brother's eyes went wide as the meaning of the words hit him. His voice sounded strangled when he responded, "I didn't tell him anything!"

Mexico didn't believe it, the simple denial was not convincing. He would have to confront his brother with the obvious evidence, "So it's just a coincidence that Spanish troops are surrounding this city just as you return?" Texas tried to nod, but Mexico's grip made it effectively impossible, so he said, "I'm loyal to you. Why would I betray you?" Still, the other did not relent.

He responded, "You are loyal because mother told you to be. Mother is dead now." Mexico looked straight into Texas's eyes and saw tears welling up in the corner of the boy's eyes. It was not what he was expecting. He had expected defiance or even admission. But, Texas said, "You're the only thing I have, brother." The pure emotion was enough to alleviate Mexico's suspicion, or at least part of it. Texas was at least afraid enough now to not step out of line.

As he took a step backwards, away from his brother, Mexico said, "Well, we shall see by the end of this siege. Consider your loyalties carefully, little brother. If you ever betray me, I will make you pay with your life." He left Texas standing stock still staring at him with an expression of shock.

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snarktheater · 7 years

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The Chemist — Chapter 32&Epilogue

We made it, folks. We're at the end of the tunnel, and finally, we're ready to put this snoozefest of a book behind us. I know I am, at least.

But first, one more chapter and an epilogue. What could go wrong?

No, really, what could go wrong, in this book? There hasn't been any real conflict throughout the story and everything's resolved. I expect the characters to be fine. And if they're not…well, I'll have something to celebrate, at least.

So Alex wakes up feeling safe, and marveling at how she can finally feel safe because they've taken out Carston and Deavers, and Pace is on his way out as well. Everyone's fine, Daniel's recovering more quickly than is believable (book's words, not mine), and Alex sees that Pace is in fact dead from an "aneurysm", a.k.a. Alex's poison. Cue banter.

“It would have been more fun to shoot him.” […] “Well, you did get to shoot Deavers.” “I was too stressed about Danny to really enjoy it, though,” [Kevin] mused.

What was that about you having kept your soul again? Oh, right, just fake praise given to the Mary Sue in spite of being completely undeserved. The usual, basically.

The book then decides to recap how Kevin got captured (he didn't manage to surprise Deavers, who had forty men at the ready—yes, really). And…again, is this really necessary? Was this such a mystery that you couldn't resist clarifying the details? I'm pretty sure this is what I would have assumed if you hadn't said anything, book.

Anyway. Their heist didn't make the news, on the other hand, and neither did Carston or his granddaughter's kidnapping. The latter was the most likely to make it, but then again, since Olivia was returned to her mom, I guess there was no reason to get the news involved. As for the former…well, duh, it was the CIA director on a disaffected CIA facility. Even if the circumstances are shady, of course no one will tell the news about it.

Oh, yeah, also we have a gaping plot hole in their security. You know, the obvious witness? Don't worry, he's cool.

Alex was bemused by how much the white-haired old man took in stride. None of them had tried to explain their unusual injuries or even make up a cover story, but Volkstaff asked no questions and showed no obvious curiosity.

Yes, apparently he's perfectly fine healing guys with bullet wounds no questions asked. What kind of vet is he, exactly? This raises too many questions. Not the least of which: he still knows who Kevin and Daniel are, which makes him a liability even without asking questions, so what're you gonna do about it? Well, by the looks of it…not much. After all, tying up all the loose ends is way more important—and by loose ends I mean the other heterosexual couple.

Val surprised Alex by volunteering to house them again, back in her palatial penthouse, now that it was safe. For a fee, naturally. Kevin seemed the most shocked at her offer. “Don’t let it go to your head,” she told him. “I want the dog.” […] Then she’d kissed him – long enough that it got uncomfortable for everyone.

Gee, I'm sure that's all there is to it. The dog. And yes, bonus consequence avoidance again with this, since they don't need to find another place to stay.

Skip to them back at Val's place, with Alex sort-of-not-really packing. Kevin comes to ask her where she plans to go next.

Alex twitched her shoulders noncommittally. “Nothing too specific yet.”

Wow, what a great planner you are. I can see how you survived all these years through your extensive ability to plan for everything. You're selling me this character to the bitter end, book.

Daniel is of course tagging along with her…probably. They haven't talked about it, because it's not like communication is a good thing in a couple, but Alex just assumes he'll come. Because why would he ever want to stay close to his brother who's now back from the dead for the second time? Well, the solution to that one is obvious.

“If it makes you feel any better, he seems to be assuming you’ll be there, too.” Kevin’s eyebrows eased back from their normal compressed position. “Really?”

Do these people have an issue against asking? Oh, wait, no, Kevin feels honored that Daniel still wants to hang out, for some reason. And it's convenient, because Kevin has an idea of a town they could go live in Colorado.

Cue the epilogue, which is told from the point of view of "Adam Kopecky". Who's this? Eh, no idea, but why wouldn't the show introduce a brand-new character for its epilogue? George R. R. Martin has done it in a few of his books, and that clearly means the practice is automatically good, right? All we know is Adam works for a reality TV chef. Oh, sorry, a "reality road show" chef. Whatever the difference is.

for Adam, it meant flexible hours, a quiet little office, and a near-constant stream of positivity.

Because reality shows are well-known for their positivity.

Anyway, Adam gets a call from one of his colleagues who tests various locations in advance for the show, telling him about a barbecue restaurant in the Denver region called "Hideaway". Gee, I wonder who could own that place.

the outside was forgettable. It could have been anyplace in the West.

Yes, okay, we got it. it's Alex and the Beaches' place. Of course, now they're called Nathaniel, Ellis and Kenneth Weeks. And yes, I guess that means Alex and Daniel got married at some point. And yes, Daniel's still the best cook to ever cook.

Hideaway had gotten Neil’s enthusiastic thumbs-up as well. Best food he’d had in the past three seasons.

Can you do things in moderation, Meyer? Like, ever?

Anyway, Adam calls a few restaurants to book a date with them, until he gets to the Hideaway, and of course, Alex/Ellis refuses to participate, because paranoia. But apparently she's not paranoid enough to…I don't know, mute her pone while she and Kevin argue about it. And Kevin also hasn't stopped calling her "Ollie", because that's how aliases work, right?

“What do they want?” “To feature the Hideaway, apparently.” […] “Oh,” the deep voice said, and his tone reminded Adam of the woman’s first response. Flat.

You're the worst at not sounding suspicious, guys.

Alex spins some bullshit about one of Kevin's ex-girlfriends and legal issues making her refuse the publicity that the show would provide them, which would be great if…you know, they'd actually come up with a decent cover story instead of Alex clearly bullshitting on the fly, and not that well.

“Yada yada; you get the picture. It’s all very delicate – sticky, you know, and no press is good press for now.”

Again: this woman supposedly survived for years on the run before the book started. I am so convinced right now.

“I’ll be in contact if we are ever in a position to accept.” The line went dead. She hadn’t even let him give her his phone number.

Is Meyer not aware that caller ID is a thing?

And we end the book with Adam shrugging it off and moving on to another place, hoping they'll be happier to get an invite. Because I guess he just needs some major ego stroking.

Really, this end is kind of perfect for this book. The ego stroking, of course, but also the complete lack of effort, both from the writer and the characters. Oh, and the way we end on a complete tangent and on a character we don't care about.

For once, I will point out acknowledgments, too, because Meyer mentions several doctors who she worked with to figure out realistic ways to portray Alex's chemicals. I…have some serious doubts. Unless their advice was "sure, whatever, just use antibodies". Either that, or she really did do the research and then did a seriously awful job at putting that research into the book. Considering the overall quality of the writing, either answer is perfectly plausible.

I'm just glad to be done with this book at long last. Remind me to never take on another Meyer book for a full snark, these apparently have a tendency to take me forever. I'll just move on to something else. Hopefully something that goes a little easier.

#the chemist #stephenie meyer #book reviews #ya books #young adult #books #young adult books #ya #reviews #book #book review #review #st: the chemist

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faunaflanaganarchive · 4 years

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final assessment

Who: Fauna Flanagan & Eric Anderson @ericxanders Where: Cafeteria What: Fauna and Eric sit down to discuss their final assessment Content/Trigger Warnings: Some reference to negative sexual experiences and kidnap

Fauna was a little bit nervous to open up to someone that she didn’t really know, sharing things that were serious or personal wasn’t really her style. Usually she opted for surface chatter without any real depth, but she wanted to do well on the assignment so she straightened her hair and promised to just suck this whole thing up. Coffee made everything better, so the little brunette took a long sip of her iced drink and waited for Eric to arrive.

Eric spotted the Irish submissive easily. They’d opted for an early morning coffee — something casual, in neutral territory that would hopefully put them both at ease when it came to answering questions. He jogged to close the distance between them, and sat down on the opposite side of the table. He slid a Tupperware container into the centre. ‘Caleb made cookies. I figured every conversation is better with cookies.’ He grinned, before offering his hand to her. ‘Eric Anderson. It’s a pleasure to actually meet you.’

Fauna gave Eric a smile when he arrived, face perking up more genuinely when he put the Tupperware onto the table. “Now I’ve never met Caleb but I’ve already decided that he and I share at least four brain cells.” Fauna said happily offering her hand back. “Fauna Flanagan, wonderful to meet you too Sir.”

‘I might be bias but I’m inclined to believe everyone would get along with Caleb. He’s wonderful.’ Despite everything, he still felt that very strongly. Her accent was distinct but it wasn’t impossible to understand. ‘How are you? How’re you feeling about this?’ He asked. ‘It’s a little daunting isn’t it? To bare your secrets to someone you don’t know?’

“I believe you, there’s a couple of lads I’ve yet to meet around this place that I think I’m probably missing out on. I’ll add Caleb to my list to seek out.” Fauna chattered, unable to stop herself from opening the container and taking a cookie. “I mean.. it’s not really my style. I’m best known for talking about basically anything other than personal shite. But I’m willing to give it a try.. and I’m just glad it’s not one of those assignments that would in some way require me to take my clothes off, because I’ve had enough of doing that with strangers for a lifetime.” She joked, already nervous. “What about you Sir? How are you feeling?”

He considered the question for a moment, thoughtful as always in his answers. ‘Honestly, I’m not feeling too bad about the whole thing.’ While he didn’t like he let people in and know the vulnerable parts of himself, the sort of conversation this test required was one he was familiar with. It was more about getting to know him as a Dominant, and that was something he’d been doing for years. ‘Why don’t I start? Maybe learning about me will make you feel more at ease to talk about yourself.’

Fauna munched on the cookie as she listened to him, it was nice to know that he was confident it made her feel like at least he would drive the conversation and also hopefully keep her from wandering off on the fifteen tangents she was already thinking of. “Sure so um.. how’d you end up here at school? You’ve been here quite a while right?”

‘Honestly, it’s kind of a wild story. Obviously, we all have to come here at some point — but I was pretty happy doing my thing in New York and I probably would have been for a few more years but Blaine, my brother — there was a kidnapping thing. Is it kidnapping when the person is an adult? Anyway, that sped up my timeline a little.’ He explained, already feeling ludicrous for starting with such a story. ‘But yeah, that was in January last year so I’ve been here a while.’ He grinned. ‘What brought you here?’

Fauna almost choked on the cookie in her mouth when he said that Blaine had been kidnapped, her eyes studying his face to check that he was serious. “Um that’s.. I’m so sorry to hear that Sir. I’m glad that Blaine is ok now?” She said nervously deciding that she might have to be honest with him about her own arrival if he’d shared something like that. “Well.. I was at medical school in Dublin but I ended up in a dynamic that was less than healthy for me. It got a bit intense so I left uni and I already had this reputation back home that I couldn’t really get away from.. so I asked my Dad if I could start over here.”15 August 2020

How did he respond to that? Especially when he and Blaine didn't really talk that much at all, nevermind about things as deep as that. 'It sounds like both of us were brought here but circumstances slightly beyond our control.' he guessed, reluctant to pry too deeply. It didn't seem like something she was comfortable talking about. 'How have you settled in here? In terms of your mark, and classes?' he prompted. 'I think I was pretty well prepared to come here. We were brought up very aware of how things worked in society, and while we didn't receive specific training like the Lynns, my Mama always thought I'd end up with the Dominant mark.'

“Sounds like it.” The little brunette agreed. “I always knew I’d be submissive, so it didn’t really take much settling in.. I’ve been the submissive party in dynamics before.” She admitted, wrapping her hair around her finger. “My Dad is a real system nut.. like he loves that shit. Classes are fine, I’d rather be back at med school but I guess there are worse things I could do than learn how to have better sex.” Fauna admitted with a little shrug. “You’re in a claim? What’s that like.”

He laughed at her assessment of what they learned here -- and he realised, possibly for the first time, that when you broke it down to a simple form, that's what they were doing. 'I can't imagine having to drop your education midway through to come here.' he nodded in commiseration. 'I do -- Caleb. Provider of the cookies.' he smiled. 'Honestly, it never stops requiring work. It's wonderful. Having that deep connection with someone, that trust -- and honestly having it recognised by other people, is nice. I'm sure you've heard about some of the drama surrounding us at the moment.' This was uncomfortable to talk about. Everyone he'd spoken to thus far had heard about what happened.

Fauna took a long drink of her coffee. “Honestly I just wish I’d gone at least a little through residency before I got my mark, it’s going to be harder now. People have expectations of what kind of life I should have now, who I should be with when I’m only really comfortable with one person.” She admitted, pulling her knees up to her chin. “I’ve heard a thing or two, I know Morgan went a bit bananas on him or something.. It must have been a bit shit to have your personal business aired in front of luke warm macaroni.”

'I know that your mark will make a difference. Caleb has aspirations of working for NASA -- and I know that they'll be hard pressed to find someone as capable, someone who'd work as hard but the fact that he's a submissive will make it that much more difficult for him.' he mused. 'I'm not sure I think that's a fair part of the system. Why are you only comfortable with one person? Have you tried to scene with other people?' he asked curiously. He knew all too well how easy it was to become most comfortable with one person and to focus your attention on them. 'Bananas is one work for it.' he half-laughed. 'It wasn't my favourite thing to have happened.'

“It’s a fucked up world, but there’s no point feeling sorry for myself. I think you can only try and do the best you can with your lot in life.” Fauna laughed a laugh that was more hollow than she would have liked at his next question. “That’s the funny thing about being here, everyone seems thinks that more is better. More scenes, more partners. Where I’m from more wasn’t good, and that’s not me turning my nose up at being sexually free.. I’m all for it, be with whoever, do whatever. But do it because you want to not because you think you have to. If you google me right now a number of explicit videos will come up of me trying sceneing or fucking. I wasn’t happy though, but I am happy now that I’m with Sawyer. Sex used to be this thing that I had to do, even when I first got here I had sex with people because I thought that it would make people like me. Now when I have sex it like.. means something.. sounds totally cheesy I know. But sceneing with Sawyer it doesn’t make me feel dirty, and I think that’s important.” Fauna responded.

‘I completely agree with you. I think when it comes to scene partners, more isn’t always better but I do think there are things you can learn about your mark, and how it fits you by exploring beyond one person. Scenes don’t have to be sexual.’ He explained. ‘I’ve done a few scenes with Sky Evans, none of which have involved nudity or sex or kink at all really. But I felt like I learned a lot from it. That’s the point I’m trying to make. Does that make sense?’ He asked.

Fauna nodded. “ I totally get your point and I’d be open to non sexual scenes with others especially because I’ll need them for points. Like if scene week came around again, I’d probably pick up a couple of non sexual things with Sawyers permission. And Sawyers not the only person I’ve scened with since I got here... I swear I’m not totally like starstruck... But I do just like believe in monogamy.” She shrugged being totally honest because it felt somewhat good. “So I guess I’d better ask what kind of scenes you like eh?”27 August 2020

‘I hope you understand I’m not trying to press you into behaving a certain way. It’s just — in my experience, people have a habit of forgetting that scenes don’t have to be sexual. And I understand why — we’re all young and sex is at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds.’ He laughed. ‘I like a lot of things.’ He continued. ‘My personal favourite is impact or pain play. Previously I explored a lot of public play and humiliation but those aren’t things Caleb enjoys as much so while I like them, they’re not something I’ve engaged with much recently.’ He explained. ‘You might class me as a walking cliche of a Dominant because I love orgasm control and denial. And short term TPE. I don’t think that’s something I could do long term but for short periods, it’s something I love. There’s nothing that compares to the feeling of having someone trust you enough to give all their decisions over to you.’ He concluded with a wistful smile. ‘What about you? I think I guessed that your ideal scene would be a role play one. Is that something you enjoy?’

“I didn’t get that vibe....I’m just a little cautious I guess. Because I’ve had a weird amount of people be opposed to my choices... “ She shrugged finishing her cookie. “I had you down as a Rigger, and I said your favourite scene would be impact based... so I wasn’t like madly off the mark I hope.” She mused, unable to not laugh when he brought up denial. “I mean I’m not going to pretend that I’ve not been working on a PowerPoint that explores the idea that all Dominants are secretly chaotic evil because no matter how nice ya’ll are.. you’re all into denial deep down.” She teased. “Are you serious? You guessed that? That’s so funny, literally my favourite kink in the whole world is roleplay. Me and Sawyer have like a whole rotation of characters. He has this thing for me dressed as Regina George from Mean Girls.. and I just like want him to dress up as a teacher read pride and prejudice to me and tell me how smart I am.” She laughed. “Though kink wise I’m pretty open I think, I like being choked, always up for a bit of TPE in the short term as well because I talk way too much for full time TPE, impact and I love overstimulation. Sawyer calls me Kitten and I wear the ears for him, put actual pet play is a no go.”30 August 2020

‘I’d probably say I’m more of a sadist, or maybe a caretaker.’ He assessed. ‘I’m definitely not a Daddy Dom so i don’t mean caretaker in that sense but the most important thing to me is taking care of Caleb.’ He explained. ‘I had you down as a brat.’ He admitted. He laughed as she went on to describe Sawyer’s love of Regina George. ‘I feel like I need to make a comment about him looking good with his hair pushed back.’ He teased.

Faunas face fell when he said he had her down as a brat, in Collins eyes that was the worst thing that she could be perceived as. “Oh... well.. I would really have hoped I didn’t come off that way. I um... i don’t know how I would consider myself. I guess you could put Kitten? I don’t know.. but please don’t put brat, I try really hard to be a good obedient submissive.” The brunette said nervously. “You should... he’ll probably get all het up.”

He watched her face fall and immediately felt guilty. With everything going on, he needed a win and Fauna had been so sweet — the last thing he wanted to do was make her feel bad. ‘Oh, a brat isn’t a bad thing. Not really.’ He assured her. ‘Or at least, that’s not how I meant it. Most brats I’ve met are good at playing the role. It’s not their whole personality and it doesn’t mean they’re a bad submissive. I didn’t really know much about you so I figured that sort of went along with role play.’ He clarified. ‘But if that’s not how you see yourself, I won’t put it in my final. I really don’t think you’re disobedient.’ He promised gently.

Fauna tried to fix her face, she knew that not everyone had the same idea about different words and she was sure that he hadn’t meant any harm. “I’m sure it isn’t... but it’s not how I would want to be seen you know? It’s okay.. I know you didn’t know anything about me, I’m just hoping you didn’t get a bratty vibe from the way I talk to Dominants.” She shrugged. “Thank you very much, it’s just not the way I’d like to be presented.” The brunette explained.31 August 2020

‘It wasn’t about how you talk to Dominants.’ He reassured her. ‘Honestly, you’ve been great to do this with. You’re sweet and obviously patient given you were willing to wait until I got my shit in order before we talked.’ He added with a slightly sheepish grin. He glanced down at his notes. They’d covered all the questions, and more than — he definitely felt like he knew Fauna much better than he had and it was interesting to see how his assumptions had played. ‘I was thinking — if you’re happy everything’s been covered, we could head into town and grab some breakfast together?’ He offered.

Fauna smiled, glad that it didn’t have anything to do with her conduct when dealing with Dominants online she’d hate if she had a bad reputation. “Thank you ever so much Sir, it’s been a pleasure doing this with you too. It was no trouble at all waiting for you.” The brunette promised and then smiled more widely. “Yup I think I have everything that I need, I’d love to go and get breakfast!” She responded family.

#gleedsmfinalproject #(( a meeting with eric ))

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lawrenceseitz22 · 7 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 148 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Adam: Hey everybody we are live and welcome to episode 148. Man we are closing in on 150 really quick, I know it’s not actually gonna be three years but it feels like it. Anyway sorry, quick tangent for everybody there. We’re creeping up on-

Bradley: [inaudible 00:00:14] will be three years.

Adam: Yeah that’s crazy. I saw that the other day and just we keep seeing the numbers go and don’t think about it and then I was like, “Man we’re getting awful close to 150.” Anyways, we’re glad everybody’s here, we got everybody here, we got Roman, we got Marco, we got Hernan, we got Bradley, we got Chris and got myself, I’ve been in Colorado that’s why I’m sporting this brand new hat.

And we’re gonna go through some quick announcements after we say hi to everybody. So I’m just gonna go down as I see you guys on my screen, so Chris how you doing?

Chris: I’m good, how are you?

Adam: Can’t complain, weather’s cooled off, I’m no longer sweating every second of my day so I’m kinda happy. Hernan, how about you, how are you doing?

Hernan: Hey guys, hey everyone, good, I’m here in South Florida, good timing right to be here in South Florida. [inaudible 00:00:59] We’re here, we’re gonna hold off as much as possible and yeah, we’re seeing how things develop but it’s looking … I mean it’s whatever right? You gotta be prepared and whatnot but yeah, I’m here.

Adam: That’s good, yeah we’re glad you came up to the US and now you’re in Florida so if you don’t get washed away you can come to Portland and hopefully you don’t get burnt in a forest fire, so you know we’re just showing you the best of everything.

Hernan: Right yeah that’s pretty cool, I didn’t think about it. I’ll try to get a bucket of water or something to bring over there. But it’s good to be here, I’m excited to get to hang out with you guys soon enough.

Adam: Good deal. Marco, speaking of weather, how’s it going man?

Marco: Big big thunderstorm rolling in man. Lots of fireworks, if I cut out, you know why.

Adam: So yeah if Marco suddenly disappears everybody knows what happened.

Bradley: Yeah it’s the Google gods pissed off.

Marco: You got the Google police. Nature.

Adam: Good deal, Roman how you doing man?

Roman: Oh not too bad man.

Adam: Good deal. Oh thought you were gonna say something. Alright last but not least, Bradley how are you?

Bradley: I’m peachy, happy to be here.

Adam: Alright, with that we’ll hop into it and we’re gonna run through the announcements everybody and then we’ll get into the questions. I know we got several in the last couple hours there so we want to get to those pretty quick. Unless you’ve been under a rock you probably know that the RYS Reloaded launch is over, that should have a sad horn sound cued up. But we heard from a few people that missed the launch or missed kind of the very end, you know they were on the fence, they weren’t sure whether they were gonna join or not. So the bad news is you can’t get it for the launch special. We had people emailing us, it’s just sorry that’s not fair and it’s not gonna happen.

But we did have enough people, we had people contacting us, so we’ve got a coupon and you can save a few hundred bucks if you were on the fence and you were thinking, “Hey now’s a good time to jump in.” Please do it, you got five hours. So if you’re watching the replay it might be too late but you’ve got until 9PM on the sixth of September, which is today. So I’ll post that in here in a second and if you want to do that I highly suggest you take advantage of that.

And then Marco, how are things going with the RYS group? I’ve been in there a little bit, I mean I’ve seen like Rob is going nuts with some stuff in there, and you guys are getting ready to do your first webinar in September right?

Marco: Monday.

Adam: Shoot, okay.

Marco: Monday will be the first one, we’re going to add power to what I call the loop. It’s already a power loop, because once you close it, happy things start happening to the money side. I can only talk in general here because I’m not gonna share things that people paid for in the free forum, it wouldn’t be fair. I mean if anyone is in the RYS Facebook group, please let people know what’s going on, some smart arse [inaudible 00:04:04] No no, nothing happening in there, don’t come in. Because they want to keep people out of course. I mean it’s that good, they’re using it to rank anything they want. And they’re asking just awesome questions, they get answered, I try to answer them within 24 hours. I just want to give as much support as possible.

Rob is in there also providing support. And just a word about Rob, Rob is a super … He goes above and beyond spamming. It’s like above and beyond the call of duty. There’s spammers and then there’s Rob, who figures out all kinds of ways to just mess with Google. And it’s just his mathematical nature, his research nature, the numbers games that he has to play every day in his day job, because he has a day job and this he does for fun. So it’s incredible, the stuff that we’re sharing, and what I’m going to share on Monday on how to power up Google my business, not only for local but nationwide, we’re going to try to go continental and global on Monday, so I mean that’s going to be fun.

So that’s what we’re up to man.

Adam: Outstanding.

[crosstalk 00:05:30]

Marco: No I’m just saying, if you want to join us fine and if they don’t, nearly 150 members that we already have will be very happy that you didn’t join.

Adam: Yeah and Rob’s got some good stuff coming too, I mean in addition to everything else that you’ve got planned Marco. I had a quick phone call with him today and so we’re doing some discussions about some landing page stuff, so I’m excited I’m gonna be trying to help him out with some of that stuff he’s testing.

That’s it for now.

Let’s see, hopefully everyone here saw this but if you’re within driving distance of Portland let us know, we’re gonna be there on September … Uh oh. Yep there went Marco.

Bradley: That’s what he gets for talking about all that spam.

Adam: Yeah. If you’re gonna be around Portland please let us know, hop in and I’m gonna put the link on the page. Come join us, we’re gonna do a live Hump Day Hangout, we’re starting to scout locations, it’s gonna be somewhere inside of Portland. So we’re gonna have some sort of a venue set up and we are going to get you more information, and we’re asking for a five dollar basically deposit because we only want people who are serious, we don’t want 150 people signing up and saying, “Sure I’ll be there.” We want people who are serious and we’ll go from there. So I think it’d be awesome, I want to have a few people show up, do the live Hump Day Hangout and then obviously talk shop, talk SEO marketing and probably beer.

Bradley: I was gonna say don’t forget the beer, I would put that at the first line item.

Hernan: Yeah I think that’s a great opportunity since most of the team is gonna be there, I think it’s gonna be a great opportunity for put faces to the names and then to get to network with each other because I think that networking has a lot of power. I know that ourselves, every time we meet we get a lot of stuff done for the next 12 months or six months, so if you guys get to come it’s gonna be a lot of fun but we’re also gonna get a lot of stuff done too. So it’s gonna be fun.

Adam: Yeah it’s-

Bradley: And anybody that signed up, sorry Adam, but if anybody signed up already I hope you read the fine print, it requires you to buy me a beer if you show up.

Adam: Bradley’s gonna be face down.

So I did forget something and I apologize for this. So with RYS Reloaded, I don’t know how best to describe this but Marco do you want to tell people basically what’s happened with the done for you services?

Marco: Well for some reason, and I can’t understand why because Chris and I are always pushing to raise the price as much as possible, and I’m even trying to raise the price of RYS Reloaded since we will be added content. And you know it’s ongoing in nature because I’m supporting the group, Rob is supporting the group. And so I’m thinking the price is too low, even where it’s going to be eventually at 3K. It’s way low. So I’m pushing to get that increased, somehow in pushing for all of these increases I forgot to ask for an increase for done for you services. So right now done for you services are still the old price even though we’ve instituted the new training.

Bradley: Into the [inaudible 00:08:46] you mean?

Marco: Yeah, the new training is being integrated or has been, that’s how they’re being done. Anything that was offered from launch day onward has been done according to the new standards. But we’re charging the same fucking, excuse me, frigging price. And I can’t believe that that slipped. And so we talked about it the other day, I asked for a raise and I got, what did we agree on, $50?

Adam: Yeah across the board it’s gonna be $50 and that’s gonna be taking place early next week.

Marco: Okay, alright. I would have liked 100 but I didn’t get my way, so it’s going to 50 but you can get them right now for the price where they are, and according to the new specs. There you go.

Adam: Yeah, so we’ll put out a formal reminder instead of … Obviously like Marco said we actually needed to do that but we realized we’re not gonna just do it and not say anything. We’ll send out a reminder but it is gonna happen quickly. So if you got some stacks or you’re doing some projects now would be a great time to head over to SerpSpace.com and get it ordered. If you’re joining us for the first time and you’ve never been to SerpSpace, please head over there, grab your free account, we’ve got free tools over there. If you’re listening and you’re not sure what SerpSpace is, if you have any questions, today’s a great time to ask. Roman is here, Roman can answer all of your SerpSpace questions as well as a ton of other awesome stuff.

And also if you’re just joining us for the first time check out support.semanticmastery.com if you ever have any questions, we put up some of the recurring questions or things we see a lot that are really helpful, and there’s diagrams and short video clips over there for some of these questions that can really help you out.

And with that, I think we are through with the announcements, do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I got one, or two actually. Well it’s about the mastermind, so anybody else before I?

Chris: I’m good.

Bradley: Okay so just a quick update on mastermind stuff because we got a lot of stuff coming up for the mastermind guys. Our primary focus going forward from this point on, besides continuing the education and RYS which is part of that program, is we’re gonna be developing out the mastermind more and providing a lot more value, and just improving it in multiple ways. So that’s something that we’re really gonna be focusing on over the next several months, and one of the things that we’re doing, well first of all tomorrow we have a mastermind webinar and I’m gonna be breaking down my prospecting funnel that I’ve been working on for about six weeks now, and it is absolutely crushing it. I’m generating a shit ton of inbound leads from this prospecting funnel that I’ve got set up for agency services. So SEO, video, video marketing, video SEO, press release or PR marketing services, that kinda stuff. And it’s working really well.

Now my sales process could use some work, that’s my next phase, because I’ve got the leads coming in now. Anyway I got the leads coming in now and it’s working really really well so anybody that is in the mastermind, be on the lookout for that tomorrow because I’m gonna break it down, we’re gonna go through that extensively tomorrow so that you guys can duplicate that same process if you’d like. It is just absolutely crushing it, I’ve never had such good results with cold prospecting as I have with this new funnel that I’ve built. So I’m gonna breaking that down, that’s number one.

Number two is starting on Monday, September 11th, we’re starting the mindset Monday series. That’s something that is going to be ongoing, I don’t see an end in sight for that. I’ve got at least 12 weeks scheduled, every single week I’m gonna be providing another mindset video. I’m not sure what format I’m gonna do, whether it’s gonna be like a webinar or just a recorded video. It’s like just gonna be a recorded video where I share some stuff from my study of mindset and success principles and habit forming and all that kind of stuff. And we’ve got a lot of really good feedback from when I announced this on the last mastermind webinar, many of our mastermind members said that that was something they were really looking forward to.

So that’s gonna be in the mastermind. RYS Academy members, the RYS Reloaded members, will get to see some of it, but in order to see the entire series you have to be a mastermind member, and then I know Hernan is going to take the torch or at least contribute to that series at the end of what I have planned so far. But again that’s gonna be an ongoing thing, I think it’s gonna be value added. I think that’s one of the things missing in a lot of communities and online programs that have to deal with programming is the mindset part of stuff. And because of the feedback we got from two weeks ago when we did the mastermind and I was kind of introducing or announcing this, I see that it’s gonna be a winner.

So anyways if you guys are interested in mastermind it’d be a great time to join now, because once we really start developing out the mastermind more we’re gonna be switching platforms and getting it out of Google+, we’re still trying to decide on the venue for that right now. But as we continue to improve it and there’s a good chance that it’s gonna go up. So we haven’t even discussed that at the moment, I’m just letting you know, if you’re interested in joining, now would be a really good time because we got a lot of new stuff coming up in the next several weeks, as well as just improving it altogether.

Alright anybody want to add to that?

Adam: I think we’re good.

Bradley: No, okay.

Is There A Plugin That Can Show A Thumbnail That Points Users To The Website Where The Video Is Embedded?

Alright so let me get into questions. We got quite a few already, so Angelina, she says, “Do you have info that will show me how to rank on first page of Google with my website?” Well we have lots of info, it’s a very broad question. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, so we do have lots of training for it, RYS Reloaded would be probably the fastest way right now. There’s also many other ways that we can do it, so I’m gonna continue with the question because that’s a very very broad question.

“I see lots of ranking in the show with thumbnail and when you click it it will be taken to your website where you have a video embedded. Is there a plugin or course that I can use to accomplish this?” Yeah actually it’s really funny that you asked this Angelina because we just covered this I think last week, if it wasn’t last week it was two weeks ago on Hump Day Hangout. But right now the best way that I know of is to use the … If you’re using WordPress site, WordPress as your site platform, then Yoast, the WordPress SEO plugin for Yoast or by Yoast has an add on or a plugin extension I guess they call it. I don’t know if it’s an add on or an extension or whatever, but it’s called the video SEO add on.

It’s not too bad if you’re just doing it for like one site or something like that but if you need to put it on multiple sites it can get expensive, because they require you to purchase a license for every site. And they have deals on like 10 packs and stuff, but if you go … We’ll just do a search real quick, I’ll demonstrate it, but it’s the video SEO plugin. I’m just gonna say Yoast. Let’s do that one.

And this is it here. And it’s a great plugin, if you’re using the WordPress SEO plugin it’s $89 for a single site license, they also have like package deals if you want to buy, if you’re doing it for multiple sites. But that’s exactly what you see here, it’ll show the video thumbnail, and then when you click the video thumbnail it will actually take you to the webpage or the post that the video is embedded on. There’s also, if you do proper object markup, video object markup with schema or structured data, then it’s supposed to show as well but I haven’t tested that in quite some time because whenever I’m attempting to do that or whenever I want to do that I have the Yoast video SEO plugin, so I’m able to use it on whatever site I want. So I haven’t done it with just the video object markup to see, does anybody know if that’s still valid?

Okay apparently not. I’m also looking for, what’s the other one guys? SISTRIX. You guys remember that? Let’s see if I can find that. Here we go, this one. This is another one. You’d have to test this but this is the video rich snippet generator for schema.org markup. It’s very simple, you put the YouTube URL in here. Guys I’ll post this on the event page, it’s http://ift.tt/28YA5nk. But you can paste a video URL in here, YouTube URL, hit generate code, it will spit out the structured data code that you can insert. And it’s supposed to show up like this as well, again I have not tested this in quite some time because I always use the Yoast plugin, but it’s supposed to do that as well.

The only thing I don’t like about this is the structured data, it’s basically like micro data. And so what happens is when you embed it into the post or the page, then it comes out formatted weird because it puts like an H2 and the CSS is always very strange, and it puts this great big space between the H2, which it marks up the video title as an H2 tag, but then there’s this great big space and it just depends I guess on what … It will conflict with some WordPress themes, because of the CSS. And so it’s difficult to modify that, so that’s part of the reason why I just started using the Yoast video SEO plugin instead of this, and I’ve been using that for the last couple years, is because this will kind of screw up the formatting of a page or a post a bit. But it should work.

So this is a free way to do it but you’re likely going to have some formatting issues with the page of the post that you’ll have to adjust or overcome or just live with. But then like I said the video SEO plugin or add on is also a good resource for that. It’s a good question though, we had that question just a week or two ago.

Would You Recommend Creating A Unique Google Stack For Each Location And Another One For All Of The Other Cities For Different Local Businesses?

Okay so that was it. Kyle is up, he says, “I have a few local clients, personal injury HVAT chiropractic that have multiple physical locations and serve many more cities throughout the area. Would you recommend creating unique Google stack for each location, then another one for all of the other cities? Would appreciate your thoughts, thanks for all you guys do.” Marco I’m gonna let you handle that one.

Marco: Yeah I’m not gonna answer it here because we’re working on that in the group, and that wouldn’t be fair to the group.

Bradley: Okay, there you go. Sorry about that Kyle, that’s a very specific question, so if you’re in the RYS Academy that would be a great place to ask it. And there is a webinar on Monday, which by the way I didn’t even know we had a webinar on Monday, I’m not sure if I can make it guys, I didn’t have it on my calendar. So just so you know.

Have You Been Using Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder?

Jeff is up, he says, “Just checking to see if you guys have been using Peter Drew’s Google site builder and if so what results have you been getting?” Marco’s been using that a lot, want to talk about it?

Marco: We’ve been testing it but mainly as a public link network rather than to power up the main RYS drive stack so to speak, because it’s all live frames anyway that we work with. And then link building on the problem … Again PLS, public link network, because we’re not hiding them, we’re leaving them out in the open and we will link to those and since they connect to the main G site they will power up the drive, everything that’s in drive and everything that’s connected to drive, and happy things are going on. Again, that’s going to be covered in one of the upcoming webinars, we have 12 planned. Link building will be covered and how to use G sites. Not particularly Peter Drew’s Google site builder, that just makes testing quicker. I want a G site with a full drive stack, even if it’s just for a public link network.

Adam: I’ve been using it more for link building than anything, is to create … One of the things I’ve been doing with it is you can create a site with I think up to eight pages, or you can create multiple sites. You can go either way. And I’ve been testing it and using it more for link building, so either for link building direct to a money site or to a Google Maps listing, or to a Google site that’s part of a drive stack. So whenever I need a stack I order it from SerpSpace and our guys build it, and then when I get that back the Google site that comes built with the stack, then I will build links to that using Peter Drew’s Google site builder. And then basically spam the hell out of the Google sites that were built as a public link network, a PLN, like what Marco just said. And it’s been working well for that.

And what’s crazy is because they’re Google sites, if you spam the hell out of them, so you build a crap ton of links to those Google sites, a lot of the times those Google sites end up ranking. And that’s what’s good about it guys, that’s why it’s powerful as a private link network, excuse me, a public link network type of builder, because you can spam the Google sites, the Google sites end up ranking, and a ranking site that is linking to your target URL is a good signal. So because it’s a Google property you can spam it and it will oftentimes rank for longer tail keywords and now because it’s ranked on page one the relevancy passes through to your target URL which can be like I said, it can be a money site, it can be a Google Maps URL, it could be the Google site from a drive stack, it could be whatever you want it to be. Those are typically my three target URLs.

So it’s a really strong … It’s a great way to build buffer sites quickly that you can then spam.

Marco: So maybe we should call them public ranking networks. So they themselves will rank. And actually what you’re creating and what I’m doing also which is basically the same thing, it’s dealing with the distance graph algorithm that I talked about. It’s coming on two years, when I talked about what was gonna happen with [inaudible 00:23:30] and how you had to change it up. And so that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, we just, as soon as we hear about it we just move on, start implementing things that will be ready for when Google decides, “Okay we’re going to kill that, this is how we’re going to kill it and we’re moving on and this is how we’re going to look at links now.” Right? We talked about this for quite a long time, how Google is [inaudible 00:23:52] in between links, how far they’re going. And that all has to do with the distance graph algorithm.

Bradley: Alright next part of that is, “Now that RYS Reloaded has come out, when we purchase from SerpSpace are all the new features included in the purchase?” You mean the done for you drive stacks? Yes, Jeff. Those are all implemented as of launch day, so drive stacks that are ordered now all have the new methods incorporated in them. Guys don’t think that if you ordered drive stacks prior to RYS Reloaded that they’re no longer any good, they’re still very effective, they’re still working. So you don’t need to go update those, it’s not necessary, it’s just anything that you order from this point forward or as of launch day forward, will be built under the new specifications.

How Important Are Hyper Local Citations?

Alright Mohammed’s up. He says, “Hey guys, how important are hyper local citations? I mean the ones where there’s a bit of effort to go through to get them like calling a company and getting papers ready, waiting on my own, all that. Using mostly newspaper and tourist directories so they have no online registration as the result. Worth the effort or should I be satisfied with regular [inaudible 00:24:55] citations that I get from BrightLocal?”

Mohammed, those are absolutely super powerful. Those hyper local citations are more powerful than anything you can get online through services, and the reason why is oftentimes the more difficult it is to get listed, the more valuable it is. Right? And that’s because it’s more difficult, you gotta jump through hoops. So if you’re willing to jump through the hoops those hyper local citations can be some of the most effective, because a lot of the times your competitors won’t be doing it either because their SEO guy is lazy or just doesn’t know about it. So if you’re willing to do that I can tell you hyper local citations are often all that is needed to push you over the edge or in other words to outrank competitors and to give you that edge. Hyper local citations.

That and also very industry specific citations. So what’s nice about hyper local citations is it doesn’t have … It’s more about a very focused geographic directory, so like a chamber of commerce for the local city, that’s a good one. Local blogs, those are also great. Local newspapers. Anything like that, even like the local Pennysaver type magazines and things like that, oftentimes will have a small fee to get listed in them, like $25 per year or something like that. It’s totally worth it because again most other SEO companies and marketing companies aren’t gonna go through that trouble to get their clients listed, because they’re gonna go the easy route and go to BrightLocal or SerpSpace or Loganix or Marketer’s Center or whatever and they’re gonna go order citations from there and those are very much automated, in many instances anyways.

So if you can go through, if you jump through those extra hoops to get listed in those or pay the fees or whatever, you should see a significant increase in ranking position. That’s been my experience anyway.

Something that you should also … If it’s gonna be a service that you’re gonna be providing because it works well, then I would train a VA to do that because it is a very manual process, so I would train a VA to do that kind of stuff and then that could be like their full time gig is just to create citations. Like first of all locate, hunt down hyper local citations, and then figure out what the process is to get listed, and then actually do the process, complete the process to get listed. Alright?

Can You Link To A Related Article And The Top Page In A Single Post?

Number two he says, “A few weeks ago you guys advised to include some variation in simple silos and link to other articles in the category rather than the top page all the time. My question is can I link to both a related article and the top page of the post or should I stick to one link?” No absolutely Mohammed, you can link to as many other articles within the same silo as you want. What I recommend is don’t force additional links into the post, it’s really unnecessary. If it naturally occurs like a good instance, if there’s a natural occurrence of a time that would make sense to link to another article or page, so either another post or another page within the silo, within the same silo, then it makes sense to do so. There’s no reason first of all to just put one link in every post. You can link to as many other posts that are relevant to that one, and if it’s in the same silo it’s likely that a lot of the other supporting posts are also relevant.

Now like I mentioned, you don’t have to force it in, but if you have a keyword or whatever that occurs in a post that you could use as a natural link point to another supporting article within the same silo, absolutely do it because that kind of mimics what we talk about with spider silos, like what we do with the drive stack stuff that you can get when you order done for you drive stacks right? It’s just interlinking all within the same silo, and it’s very very powerful.

So don’t force it, but if it occurs naturally it’s a great opportunity to kind of just spread the love around within the silo.

Roman: Yeah I find a lot that people are really conservative with links and they don’t necessarily need to be as much as they are.

Bradley: With on page, internal links you mean?

Roman: Yeah, exactly, with on page links. Why limit? I think it’s better to take that approach from that perspective than start really scared and worried that I can’t have more than five links or I can’t have more than this, and I think that stems from misconception of link juice back from way back when when everybody thinks that it’s [inaudible 00:29:45] It’s not true. If you set up a page on your website, that’s a linking opportunity for other pages on your website. And that’s how it needs to be viewed.

Bradley: I totally agree. I think a good internal linking structure is one of the most under utilized aspects of SEO. I see that mistake a lot, is that people aren’t linking enough internally, kind of like what Roman was just saying. Because again probably it’s just a traditional what do they call it, conventional wisdom, which is oftentimes wrong, especially in the SEO industry, that I don’t want to bleed the juice, the link equity that’s coming into this post too much. Well if it’s all within the same silo it’s okay guys.

I mean and look, it’s okay to link outside of the silo, I prefer to do that with a no follow link, but it’s perfectly okay to do that. And just the same as like outbound links from posts guys, it makes sense to link to multiple sources that can reinforce the theme of a post or page right? It’s up to you whether you want to do no follow or follow, I personally no follow them, I know Hernan, he has a difference in opinion, but I personally no follow outbound links but I like to link to lots of sources that can kind of confirm or validate the content. Because Google will crawl those links and they’ll go, “See okay well this content that he’s linking to is also relevant.” It reinforces or supports the theme of the post or the page. And so it just makes sense to do so in my opinion.

Roman: Absolutely, I mean if your main goal … A lot of times peoples goals are to get links from authority sites right? So it makes sense that we should also be linking out to authority sites. That’s another signal, right?

How Do You Know The Stats Of People That Click On The Video Tab In Search?

Bradley: Absolutely. Okay Laurie’s up. Hey Laurie, haven’t seen you in a while. She says, “Hey everyone, I asked this in the Facebook group but didn’t get an answer so I thought I’d try again. We have a potential client asking what the stats are for people to click on the video tab and search. The comment was I don’t know anyone who searches the video tab for anything other than how to do something, they’re only worried about organic rankings which eventually can happen with a video but not always that quickly. We tried to find info on stats for this video tab but nothing really comes up.” Does anyone have any insight on this, maybe a good way to answer this question?

I don’t have anything for that, I mean I search the video tab sometimes to see if … If I do a video SEO campaign and I don’t see the video on the first two or three pages from universal search, then I will check the video tab to see where it falls within the video tab. That’s called a vertical search, the video vertical search. And I’ll go look at that to see where it lands in there, and it’s interesting because sometimes you’ll see a video that’s like a number one in video search but you don’t find it at all in the top 10 pages, the first 10 pages of universal search. And what’s interesting is you’ll see like the video number two in the video search, will actually be ranked in the first couple of pages. But yours is actually above them in video search, but then it’s not showing up.

I just was looking at one this morning that is experiencing that specific phenomenon right now. And it’s interesting that that happens and it’s just because they are two different searches though. So the video search, it may be outranking all the others but then not showing in universal which typically means just give it time and it will end up showing up in universal search ahead or above the other videos that are listed underneath of you in the video search, if that makes sense. I know that probably sounded a bit confusing.

But as far as like if a client was to ask, I just never show them anything about the video tab. If I have an inquisitive client that looks on that kind of stuff and then asks about it, then I’ll just explain to them similarly to what I just did just now, which is that’s called a vertical search, you’re right, it’s not typically something that people will click to. We do as SEOs, we look through to it as kind of an indication as to how well our video is optimized, but really if it’s not showing in universal search, in my opinion, there’s traffic in YouTube.

So I do oftentimes talk to clients and say, “Listen, you’re not ranked in universal search on page one yet, however you are ranked …” And if you’ve done video SEO, if you’ve optimized a video properly you’re likely gonna be ranked number one in YouTube, especially for local stuff, for the specific keyword. And so I do point to YouTube though. I don’t point to video search, the vertical search from Google. I do point to YouTube though and say, “Look, while I’m still working on getting it ranked in Google search, then it’s showing in YouTube and YouTube can produce some traffic.” So I just try to avoid discussing the video tab at all unless they particularly bring it up. I don’t draw their attention to it, in other words.

Anybody else?

Hernan: I agree with you Bradley.

What Is An Effective Process To Send Out Proposals Without Having To Chase Clients?

Bradley: Scott says, “What is an effective process to send out proposals without having to chase them or be used by the prospect to shop around other proposals? I feel like I’m in a week position once I release a proposal.” Put a deadline on it Scott. Put a deadline on it, seriously. I mean that’s the best way to do it in my opinion, say, “Look, this is proprietary proposal, you got 24 hours to make a decision, to sign the proposal, or else this becomes null and void.” And you can put that right in the proposal, that language right in the proposal.

That’s how I’ve always done it, sometimes people are gonna go shop around anyways, but you have to stay strong on your position though. You have to. If you’re gonna do that you have to stay strong, you have to say, “Look, this proposal at this price expires in 24 hours.” That means if they’re gonna go shop around they better do it real fast, because otherwise the price goes up. I’m not saying that you won’t take them on as a client but I always put like a, “If you sign today then it’ll be this price, if you wait until tomorrow it’s gonna be this price.” Type of thing. That’s what I’ve done.

But what were you gonna say Roman? I’d love to hear it.

Roman: Yeah so I love the idea of urgency with that, that makes a lot of sense. One of the other things that I’m picking up on here is he’s saying that he’s got a weak position once he releases the proposal, and I’m wondering if he has a conversation with the client and then just sends them a proposal rather than walk them through the proposal. If you spend the time to walk a client through the proposal a lot of times you can close them right there on the spot if you have sales abilities. If not then it’s gonna be some period of time afterwards but you really need to walk them through the proposal. I feel personally that that is a very important part of the process, unless they’re completely sold beforehand.

If you know that they’re already sold and done, you can still walk them through the proposal because I think that’s a trust building exercise. If somebody hands you a 10 page document and saying that they’re gonna do all this stuff and yada yada yada, whatever it is that the proposal you’re sending them, it makes sense that you should walk them through it. Especially if your prices is thousands and thousands of dollars.

Adam: Also I just wanted to say too that Wayne put something up there on the page too which is good, he’s just basically saying he quit sending out proposals without going through it online or in person, and if the client [inaudible 00:37:24] at that just tell them that’s how we do business. So basically the same.

Bradley: Well I mean you can frame it as I’m protecting my propriety methods and processes, and so if you … I’m happy to jump on a join.me session or whatever, join.me is what I use, and just get on a session with them so they can see my screen and I can just walk them through the proposal. Sometimes if I have a good rapport with a prospect, like if it’s a referral client, which is typically how most of my proposals are generated because they were clients that were referred to me from existing clients and so I don’t really have to worry about that so much.

And so oftentimes what I’ll do is draft a proposal and then I’ll record just a screen cast video where I walk through the proposal and send it to them. But if I think that they’re shopping around, then I will do it on a live like join.me type presentation so that they don’t actually have a physical copy of it, I do, until they decide whether … If they agree to sign it then I’ll send it to them, if not then I’ll say, “Well then shop around, do whatever you gotta do and get back to me when you’ve made a decision. If you sign today it’s gonna be this price, if you sign tomorrow it’ll be this price.” Kind of thing.

Roman: And that’s really interesting too about the clients shopping around, because if a client’s shopping around then you need to be paying close attention to your positioning of what you’re selling. Are you selling yourself as a consultant, as a trust advisor to that person or are you selling yourself as an SEO service?

Bradley: A commodity.

Roman: If you’re positioning yourself as a commodity, exactly, then you’re gonna be compared to everyone else. People are going to shop around. And of course what do you think it’s going to be, it’s going to be the lowest price, right? And we all know that’s not how this works, but they don’t.

Bradley: One of the things I’ve found to overcome that is when doing a proposal I like to wow the client with how much reporting I can show them as far as like where they currently stand and the opportunities that I see that can be improved upon. For quick wins as well as long term gains, that kind of stuff. And that’s oftentimes how I’ll win a proposal or a client, because I’ll send them information. Like for example I did have a referral client for a preschool. I’ve never done any preschool work, like marketing for preschools before. But one of my oldest clients has given me, or referred them to me.

So I sent him a bunch of reports. He has two different locations, so he had two websites and I basically went through and analyzed everything fine tooth comb, I did a really nice reporting, and then I did a bullet point on a Google Doc as well as a screen cast video explaining everything. The video ended up being like I don’t know, 27 minutes long, it was crazy. It was way longer than I wanted it to be, but I sent it to him with all the reports plus the proposal or the doc with the line by line items and all that stuff. And he replied back and said, “Wow.” He goes, “I’ve talked to four other marketing companies and I’ve never had anybody go through as much detail.” And he was sold right then and there, and that was before I even pitched him on the proposal, that was just on the, “Hey this is what I see” type of thing, and that really really works well. Because you can create that kind of trusted advisor status that Roman was just mentioning.

Roman: Yeah it’s providing them insight into their own business right, at the end of the day. You’re showing them their own information and helping them understand it and what they’re seeing, you’re providing insight into their business, that you can’t stand from a stronger position than that.

Hernan: Yeah, if I can add because I think that this is a great conversation to have. I think that walking through the proposal is key, and I really agree that you either jump on the phone with them and tell them right there and then. I usually, what I like doing is to prescreen as much as possible, meaning I don’t talk to people unless they are 100% sure that I’m gonna charge them X amount of money, and that they need to be investing their money. I am that disqualifying when it comes to talking to people, even if it is on a consulting funnel, if they need to come up with a form, like I usually don’t talk to people or I try not to talk to people that they’re just hunting for prices or they’re just shopping around. So that’s number one. So I think that going through the proposal and adding as much value as possible on the proposal itself plays a big role, number one.

And number two I think Scott that if you’re, as Roman was correctly saying, if you’re positioning yourself the right way you shouldn’t be worrying on being strong because you’re pretty much the next logical or the only logical solution that understands their business and that they can make them grow. So I would combine those two and also if you are worrying about how strong your position is after you send the proposal, I think and this is my opinion, that your pipeline is not full enough, that you’re not getting as many calls as you could get or you’re not getting as many leads quote unquote for you to talk as you could possibly get, because that way you don’t get care about that proposal that much. If you’re sending like one proposal or you’re having like one conversation a week, that proposal could be a deal breaker, so you put a lot of stress on it.

But if you’re having conversations with clients that could potentially help them out and you’re out there enough so that you get enough exposure I would say for your market, then you will never have the problem of people shopping around because you become the only logical solution, and that’s the way you need to position yourself and that’s how you can charge a premium. Because if you go for the price tag there’s no way you can compete with people in Philippines, there’s no way you can compete with people in India, there’s no way you can do that. So I think that it has to do with how you position yourself, and yeah, walking them through the proposal and disqualifying them before getting to talk to you or even send them the proposal, I think that you’re gonna talk to less people but those people are gonna be like way more qualified to talk to you, if that makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah and the last part of that, I want to add just really quickly, is just to agree with Hernan and say that once you get enough leads that you’re talking with then no single lead is going to make or break your business. The way that you portray yourself, the vibe that you put out, the tone of your voice, the way that you speak, the confidence will show through when you know that you’ve got eight other prospects that you’re talking to or gonna be sending proposals out this week, then that one proposal isn’t such a big deal whether you win or lose it, and you can be more confident in your pitch or in your proposal in saying “this is it, take it or leave it.” I mean you don’t have to be rude, I’m just saying in your own attitude and the way you approach it will be at a much … You’ll be in a much higher position of strength because you’re not relying on that one proposal being accepted to make or break your business, if that makes sense.

Roman: Absolutely, confidence is huge.

Bradley: Yeah absolutely. Confidence is … And that comes with experience as well as filling your pipeline with enough leads. And that’s something that I’m working on for … Like I said we’re gonna be breaking down a prospecting funnel tomorrow in the mastermind that is just freaking crushing it. So my sales process still really sucks right now, I’m not gonna lie, but the prospecting side of it’s really starting to pan out.

R Bacon’s up, we got to roll through a couple of these.

Chris: Before you go on, let’s put it out there, you are making sales. Not as many as you’d like to, but you’re still closing.

Bradley: Yeah, yeah. I mean we’re burning through a lot of these leads rather quickly because we’re still fine tuning the sales process, but yeah I closed a big contractor on Friday last week, a big one, so that’s really good.

Do You Recommend Using Separate Tier I Rings For Each Subdomain Or Can You Create A Branded Ring That Can Be Used For Multiple Sites?

R Bacon says, “You mention using separate sub domains for each rank and rent site to protect them, do you recommend using separate tier one rings for each sub domain or can you create a branded ring to be used for multiple sites?” R Bacon I always like to do one branded ring for multiple sites, and then I try to accomplish my ranking goals with that one branded ring because first of all it’s less expensive, it’s less work, it’s less maintenance. I always try to achieve results with the least amount of effort, right? But what happens is if any one of the particular sub domain sites or locations that are gonna be on sub domains aren’t responding all that well to your content marketing syndication, all that kind of stuff, then you can always build a location specific ring or syndication network for that particular sub domain.

So that is my standard operating procedure. If I’m gonna build let’s say a four location set of sites, then I’m gonna do each one on a sub domain and then I’m gonna build the branded tier one ring and that’s it, and I’m gonna start content marketing from the root domain blog, typically, so that instead of content marketing from each sub domain I do it from the root domain from the blog that’s actually hosted on the root domain. And then from there I’ll just have categories that match up with each one of the sub domains and I’ll start posting content via those categories that will be specifically pushing links to the sub domain sites.

If something happens where one of those sites or two of those sites or whatever aren’t responding all that well, they’re not moving as quickly as I would like, then I’ll go have a location specific network, tier one branded network. And so it’d just be, like if it’s Joe’s Plumbing and you’ve got four locations and one of them is Fairfax, Virginia, and that one’s not really ranking all that well, then I’ll do Joe’s Plumbing Fairfax. You just add the location modifier to the brand and that’s what distinguishes it apart from … It still makes that connection with the brand, but it adds that location specificity to it which will help to give it an additional push. If that makes sense.

Let’s see, he says, “Also what identity to use for setting up terms of service page or to use one on a rank and rent site?” Terms of service page? Yeah I mean that’s pretty much standard, you need to have that terms of service privacy policy. DMCA is also another good thing to have. I put it on the root domain, and then I just link from each one of the sub domains to the root domain page, because it’s all the same brand. It’s not necessary to have a terms of service page on every sub domain, it doesn’t need to be. You can just put those on the root domain and link to those in the footer from all of the sub domain sites. And they’ll follow those links by the way, you don’t need to push juice to those.

Alright Robert’s up. Shit. Adam said there was a question about SerpSpace that needed answered.

Adam: Maybe if you want to spend some time on Robert’s question we can get to that in the mastermind webinar tomorrow?

Bradley: Which one’s Robert? Oh Robert’s in the mastermind?

Adam: Yeah I believe he just joined recently I thought, but we could copy that over and go into depth on that tomorrow I think would be a good one.

Chris: He just joined today I think.

Bradley: Well if Robert joined that’s awesome, welcome Robert. Yeah I’d love to cover … Just know that tomorrow I’ve got a full entire two hour webinar already planned, it’s gonna be difficult to get to many questions tomorrow. Of course we’re gonna leave some time for some questions guys but I’m gonna be breaking down the prospecting funnel tomorrow as well as walking through the best practices for setting up a new Google My Business listing as per the request of Damon Green, one of our mastermind members. And I promised him yesterday that I would do that on the mastermind tomorrow. So Robert, if nothing else you can repost this question as just a thread in the mastermind community and we can start chiming in there. And if we have time tomorrow during the webinar we will as well.

What Is The Best Way To Use RSS Authority Sniper With RYS?

Okay Siegfried says, “I watch RYS Authority Sniper webinar and [inaudible 00:49:47] you folks put on, what is the best way to use this with RYS?” Probably a good question for Marco.

Marco: Yeah actually we’ve never had the need to pull authority from anybody except Google into RYS. I mean that’s the whole point of RYS, it’s just living in the belly of the beast, and drawing from that power. But I’m sure, since we have a way to produce a feed burner feed, and you mix those with the Authority Sniper feeds, they would feed off each other. So I’m sure you could work that in but we generally don’t need to go that far to rank for most of the stuff that we’re targeting.

Bradley: Yeah. That rank feeder creates co citation which is a way to inject authority or pass authority back to your target URLs without there actually being a hyperlink from the authority properties. It’s kinda like guilty by association right? You associate your link among others that are relevant in authority or popular content, that type of stuff. And so that creates co citation and passes some of the relevancy over to your target URL even without there being a physical or a hyperlink between those sources. So I can see one thing that you could probably do though is using the rank feeder you could take some of your drive stack files, file URLs, and add them as sticky items inside the feeds along with sticky items in the feed, along with relevant content sources, the feeds from relevant content sources. Because those will update but your sticky items remain static. And so because it’s a Google property you can actually siphon some of the authority from those Google properties, even if it’s just drive files, I would stick with the higher quality drive files that can actually convert, like slides or drawings if they’re done well or maps even, things like that, those would be good sticky items to add into that rank feeder feed. If that makes sense.

By the way guys you could put Google Maps URLs in as sticky items. You can put maps URLs in there, Google sites, I mean there’s a lot of stuff you can do there with the rank feeder, it’s a very powerful tool, rank feeder is. I don’t use the RSS Authority Sniper, I do all my RSS locating manually, I get better results, but the rank feeder which is the monthly service, that’s super powerful.

We’ve only go about five minutes guys. I want to answer this question because he asked so I’m really sorry Ryan we’re gonna skip over yours and a few of you guys, I apologize for that but Adam said this-

Adam: Yeah real quick you guys, if you’re listening still or on the recording Ryan, if you guys don’t get your questions answered okay it’s first come first serve, but I’ll post the link. Go join the Facebook group if you have it, we’ve got a free Facebook group, hop in there and ask your questions, people will help you out if they have got answers for you, for giving you best blog fundamentals or getting you started. People can definitely point you in the right direction, so I’ll post that Facebook link right now.

Bradley: Yeah okay thanks, by the way, [inaudible 00:53:03] says, “Where would be the best place to go for a 3000 word article that is high quality?” Look I just posted this in our mastermind, one of our newer members asked a question similar to that, and I have a writer that I go to for authority content but she’s really busy right now so she’s been kind of tough recently to get me articles in a timely fashion. So this is the …

Excuse me let me try this real quick. And then I’m gonna jump on that other question Adam, sorry. NatashaNixon.com this is not an affiliate or anything guys I’m just telling you that I use the authority content service, so if you go to the services you’ll see authority content, and I use this service when I need something done quickly and my writer’s too backed up to get it to me. I use Natasha Nixon’s authority content service and you can go up to a 2000 word article. It’s 160 bucks but they’re good articles, like I’d say 90% of them come back with no revisions needed or just very very minor revisions needed. And you can probably contact her and find out if they … She’ll probably give you a custom quote on a 3000 word article if you needed it.

Roman: Yeah they’ve been around forever. I mean I’ve been using them since I got into SEO, so they’ve been around for a very very long time.

Bradley: Good service, it’s a good service.

Roman: And the worst part is it’s owned by a guy.

Bradley: Oh really? He knew that it would sell more if he portrayed himself as a female, right. That’s brilliant.

Okay Anthony’s up, we’re gonna answer this question and then we gotta wrap it up guys. Anthony says, “Hi, this question is about SerpSpace. First, single syndication networks ask for logo and company info, is this the brand or the company?” Well it would be the brand right but typically those are one and the same. They’re usually congruent. The brand and the company is usually the same. Now that’s not always the case but likely it is. But I would go with whatever the public facing brand is for the website, which is gonna be your point of origin for content. I would brand your network for that.

Can You Provide PDFs That Show The Complete Flow Chart For The Single Syndication Network Product And Other Products In Serp Space?

“I’m looking outsource to SerpSpace a brand authority product I am building so my networks will be for brands. Second, to help get the information together for my clients I would like to know all the fields that you require when ordering a single syndication network. Do you or can you provide PDFs that show the complete flow chart for the single syndication network product and other products?” That’s a really good idea.

Adam: Well that and also I’m just gonna say because we don’t have that so that’s something we can do but Bradley, since you got your screen up, can you go to SerpSpace? Because also I want to show off the sexy redesign that Roman just finished on. But also that, I forgot who was asking the question sorry. Anthony. You can go there and if you’ve already got your account, if you’re logged in you can go through there and see all the steps that you need to do. Or if you’re not sure, before you place your order, feel free to contact support on the site via the little pop up and they will totally walk you through it. And we’re happy to show you this stuff now and I’ll let Bradley now that he’s got it up go through there.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m sorry go ahead Roman.

Roman: No I was gonna say I was absolutely agreeing with that. Contact any of our support guys, I think for the most part they’re on about 18 hours a day so they can answer any questions you guys have. In regards to this specific field and things like that.

Bradley: Yeah and what I would recommend, I agree like having a PDF on that first page that you can click a link and it opens in a new tab or you can download it and look at the flow, like the ordering process flow chart essentially, that is a really good idea. So we can improve that.

Adam: Well I’m gonna give a little secret out too, you don’t actually, unless Roman you updated this, you don’t actually have to upload an image. So you can put something in and then click continue and see what the other fields are.

Bradley: That’s what I was just getting ready to say is you can just walk through this and just put demo text in for each one of these, until we get the PDF done or the flow chart done, you can just go through and just put demo text in each one of these fields, and just keep clicking continue. You don’t have to make the purchase at the end, you just click through and say, “Okay this is what I need, make a note of it.” But we will resolve that, that’s a great idea.

Roman: Yeah absolutely, and one of the next major pieces that I’m gonna be trying to work on is moving the order forms into the back end as opposed to on the front end. And that’s gonna make it easy for people to order this because they can save their orders in the back end, so they can come back to it later if they’re missing some key piece of information and just have it all displayed in one area. It’ll be a lot easier to order that way. So that’s the token system that I’m gonna be trying to move towards in the next few months.

Adam: Awesome, Anthony says he likes the new site so thumbs up Roman.

Roman: Awesome, thank you.

Adam: Cool, yeah the support over there’s really good Anthony. Just make sure … I mean we’ll obviously help you if you contact Semantic Mastery but if you are looking for SerpSpace stuff just head to the site, use that little pop up box if you have any questions and ping them and they’ll get you straightened up.

Bradley: And Wayne thank you for that awesome comment man, I’m really proud of this prospecting funnel that I’ve put together because that’s why I started building that new agency guys is because I kinda wanted a second chance. I built my agency from scratch the first time not really knowing what the hell I was doing, and now many years later I’m starting over again with a new agency because I wanted to build it right this time and make it scalable, and something that can be duplicated. And that’s part of the reason why I’m really stoked about this prospecting funnel because man if I would have known then what I know now, well I probably wouldn’t be here as part of Semantic Mastery because I’d be running some big ass agency. You know what I mean?

But you know it’s really really powerful and obviously the mastermind members I want to share it with you guys because I know a lot of you guys in the mastermind are doing client work and this should help to really fill that pipeline full of leads so that you don’t go through what … Who was it that asked about the position of strength? The proposal. Somebody was talking about the … Oh Scott Lanberg. The go to problem that Scott was having with being so … Placing all of your attention and energy on one proposal like we mentioned, if you’ve got multiple proposals to give out during one week then no one of them are so important that you stress out over it, and that’s really what having a pipeline full of valid leads is, will provide for you.

Adam: Real quick you guys, I know we’re about to push over but Bradley can you cover the Click Star Marketing? I just realized because we were talking about RYS stacks going up in price shortly, and he was asking, I assume he/she, was asking about drive stacks, so if we could touch on that real quick.

Can I Order The Google Site And Twitter SEO At A Later Date Or Do They Need To Setup At The Same Time?

Bradley: “Hey guys I’m interested in purchasing some drive stacks for some clients, can I order the Google site and Twitter SEO at a later date or do they need to be set up at the same time?” That’s a good question. Roman?

Roman: Yes so the Twitter piece of it can be ordered after the fact. So I would get the Google site though at the same time.

Bradley: Yeah. Absolutely get the Google site because that’s like part of … In my opinion that’s the linchpin of the drive stack now. I mean if you’ve got your own site builder and stuff like that that’s one thing but the beautiful thing about the Google sites is that it’s basically automated, all your drive files get added to the Google site automatically and it’ll save you a ton of work and time and it’s very very effective.

Roman: Yeah the Twitter SEO one, I just adjusted some of the syndication network stuff but basically we can leave a note just in there and I’m gonna have another check box to select for a Twitter syndication. It was in the old design but I had to scrap it briefly, so it’ll be back up soon.

Bradley: Nice. He says also, “How much more effective is a stack with a Google site?” Well we just answered that. “Will I be provided with the spreadsheet with each of the stacks in it?” Yes. You get a spreadsheet with all the links. That’s sent out with the delivery of the stack.

Alright we got to wrap it up guys, we’re already over. Sorry about that. Any question that didn’t get answered guys either save it for next week or post in the Facebook group and somebody will get to it. Okay thanks everybody for being here, appreciate it, and come join the mastermind if you have it. Tomorrow’s gonna be a really good day. And next week on Monday we start the mindset series so.

Alright thanks everybody.

Adam: Bye everybody.

Roman: See ya.

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 148 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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Announcement

Bradley: [inaudible 00:00:14] will be three years.

And we’re gonna go through some quick announcements after we say hi to everybody. So I’m just gonna go down as I see you guys on my screen, so Chris how you doing?

Chris: I’m good, how are you?

Adam: Can’t complain, weather’s cooled off, I’m no longer sweating every second of my day so I’m kinda happy. Hernan, how about you, how are you doing?

Adam: Good deal. Marco, speaking of weather, how’s it going man?

Marco: Big big thunderstorm rolling in man. Lots of fireworks, if I cut out, you know why.

Adam: So yeah if Marco suddenly disappears everybody knows what happened.

Bradley: Yeah it’s the Google gods pissed off.

Marco: You got the Google police. Nature.

Adam: Good deal, Roman how you doing man?

Roman: Oh not too bad man.

Adam: Good deal. Oh thought you were gonna say something. Alright last but not least, Bradley how are you?

Bradley: I’m peachy, happy to be here.

Marco: Monday.

Adam: Shoot, okay.

So that’s what we’re up to man.

Adam: Outstanding.

[crosstalk 00:05:30]

Marco: No I’m just saying, if you want to join us fine and if they don’t, nearly 150 members that we already have will be very happy that you didn’t join.

That’s it for now.

Let’s see, hopefully everyone here saw this but if you’re within driving distance of Portland let us know, we’re gonna be there on September … Uh oh. Yep there went Marco.

Bradley: That’s what he gets for talking about all that spam.

Bradley: I was gonna say don’t forget the beer, I would put that at the first line item.

Adam: Yeah it’s-

Bradley: And anybody that signed up, sorry Adam, but if anybody signed up already I hope you read the fine print, it requires you to buy me a beer if you show up.

Adam: Bradley’s gonna be face down.

Bradley: Into the [inaudible 00:08:46] you mean?

Adam: Yeah across the board it’s gonna be $50 and that’s gonna be taking place early next week.

And with that, I think we are through with the announcements, do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I got one, or two actually. Well it’s about the mastermind, so anybody else before I?

Chris: I’m good.

Alright anybody want to add to that?

Adam: I think we’re good.

Bradley: No, okay.

Is There A Plugin That Can Show A Thumbnail That Points Users To The Website Where The Video Is Embedded?

Would You Recommend Creating A Unique Google Stack For Each Location And Another One For All Of The Other Cities For Different Local Businesses?

Marco: Yeah I’m not gonna answer it here because we’re working on that in the group, and that wouldn’t be fair to the group.

Have You Been Using Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder?

So it’s a really strong … It’s a great way to build buffer sites quickly that you can then spam.

How Important Are Hyper Local Citations?

Can You Link To A Related Article And The Top Page In A Single Post?

So don’t force it, but if it occurs naturally it’s a great opportunity to kind of just spread the love around within the silo.

Roman: Yeah I find a lot that people are really conservative with links and they don’t necessarily need to be as much as they are.

Bradley: With on page, internal links you mean?

How Do You Know The Stats Of People That Click On The Video Tab In Search?

Anybody else?

Hernan: I agree with you Bradley.

What Is An Effective Process To Send Out Proposals Without Having To Chase Clients?

But what were you gonna say Roman? I’d love to hear it.

Bradley: A commodity.

Roman: Absolutely, confidence is huge.

R Bacon’s up, we got to roll through a couple of these.

Chris: Before you go on, let’s put it out there, you are making sales. Not as many as you’d like to, but you’re still closing.

Do You Recommend Using Separate Tier I Rings For Each Subdomain Or Can You Create A Branded Ring That Can Be Used For Multiple Sites?

Alright Robert’s up. Shit. Adam said there was a question about SerpSpace that needed answered.

Adam: Maybe if you want to spend some time on Robert’s question we can get to that in the mastermind webinar tomorrow?

Bradley: Which one’s Robert? Oh Robert’s in the mastermind?

Adam: Yeah I believe he just joined recently I thought, but we could copy that over and go into depth on that tomorrow I think would be a good one.

Chris: He just joined today I think.

What Is The Best Way To Use RSS Authority Sniper With RYS?

Okay Siegfried says, “I watch RYS Authority Sniper webinar and [inaudible 00:49:47] you folks put on, what is the best way to use this with RYS?” Probably a good question for Marco.

Roman: Yeah they’ve been around forever. I mean I’ve been using them since I got into SEO, so they’ve been around for a very very long time.

Bradley: Good service, it’s a good service.

Roman: And the worst part is it’s owned by a guy.

Bradley: Oh really? He knew that it would sell more if he portrayed himself as a female, right. That’s brilliant.

Can You Provide PDFs That Show The Complete Flow Chart For The Single Syndication Network Product And Other Products In Serp Space?

Bradley: Yeah. I’m sorry go ahead Roman.

Adam: Awesome, Anthony says he likes the new site so thumbs up Roman.

Roman: Awesome, thank you.

Can I Order The Google Site And Twitter SEO At A Later Date Or Do They Need To Setup At The Same Time?

Roman: Yes so the Twitter piece of it can be ordered after the fact. So I would get the Google site though at the same time.

Alright thanks everybody.

Adam: Bye everybody.

Roman: See ya.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148 posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnZU8p

0 notes

brendajhensonblog · 7 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 148 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: [inaudible 00:00:14] will be three years.

And we’re gonna go through some quick announcements after we say hi to everybody. So I’m just gonna go down as I see you guys on my screen, so Chris how you doing?

Chris: I’m good, how are you?

Adam: Can’t complain, weather’s cooled off, I’m no longer sweating every second of my day so I’m kinda happy. Hernan, how about you, how are you doing?

Adam: Good deal. Marco, speaking of weather, how’s it going man?

Marco: Big big thunderstorm rolling in man. Lots of fireworks, if I cut out, you know why.

Adam: So yeah if Marco suddenly disappears everybody knows what happened.

Bradley: Yeah it’s the Google gods pissed off.

Marco: You got the Google police. Nature.

Adam: Good deal, Roman how you doing man?

Roman: Oh not too bad man.

Adam: Good deal. Oh thought you were gonna say something. Alright last but not least, Bradley how are you?

Bradley: I’m peachy, happy to be here.

Marco: Monday.

Adam: Shoot, okay.

So that’s what we’re up to man.

Adam: Outstanding.

[crosstalk 00:05:30]

Marco: No I’m just saying, if you want to join us fine and if they don’t, nearly 150 members that we already have will be very happy that you didn’t join.

That’s it for now.

Let’s see, hopefully everyone here saw this but if you’re within driving distance of Portland let us know, we’re gonna be there on September … Uh oh. Yep there went Marco.

Bradley: That’s what he gets for talking about all that spam.

Bradley: I was gonna say don’t forget the beer, I would put that at the first line item.

Adam: Yeah it’s-

Bradley: And anybody that signed up, sorry Adam, but if anybody signed up already I hope you read the fine print, it requires you to buy me a beer if you show up.

Adam: Bradley’s gonna be face down.

Bradley: Into the [inaudible 00:08:46] you mean?

Adam: Yeah across the board it’s gonna be $50 and that’s gonna be taking place early next week.

And with that, I think we are through with the announcements, do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I got one, or two actually. Well it’s about the mastermind, so anybody else before I?

Chris: I’m good.

Alright anybody want to add to that?

Adam: I think we’re good.

Bradley: No, okay.

Is There A Plugin That Can Show A Thumbnail That Points Users To The Website Where The Video Is Embedded?

Okay apparently not. I’m also looking for, what’s the other one guys? SISTRIX. You guys remember that? Let’s see if I can find that. Here we go, this one. This is another one. You’d have to test this but this is the video rich snippet generator for schema.org markup. It’s very simple, you put the YouTube URL in here. Guys I’ll post this on the event page, it’s sistrix.com/video-seo. But you can paste a video URL in here, YouTube URL, hit generate code, it will spit out the structured data code that you can insert. And it’s supposed to show up like this as well, again I have not tested this in quite some time because I always use the Yoast plugin, but it’s supposed to do that as well.

Would You Recommend Creating A Unique Google Stack For Each Location And Another One For All Of The Other Cities For Different Local Businesses?

Marco: Yeah I’m not gonna answer it here because we’re working on that in the group, and that wouldn’t be fair to the group.

Have You Been Using Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder?

So it’s a really strong … It’s a great way to build buffer sites quickly that you can then spam.

How Important Are Hyper Local Citations?

Can You Link To A Related Article And The Top Page In A Single Post?

So don’t force it, but if it occurs naturally it’s a great opportunity to kind of just spread the love around within the silo.

Roman: Yeah I find a lot that people are really conservative with links and they don’t necessarily need to be as much as they are.

Bradley: With on page, internal links you mean?

How Do You Know The Stats Of People That Click On The Video Tab In Search?

Anybody else?

Hernan: I agree with you Bradley.

What Is An Effective Process To Send Out Proposals Without Having To Chase Clients?

But what were you gonna say Roman? I’d love to hear it.

And so oftentimes what I’ll do is draft a proposal and then I’ll record just a screen cast video where I walk through the proposal and send it to them. But if I think that they’re shopping around, then I will do it on a live like join.me type presentation so that they don’t actually have a physical copy of it, I do, until they decide whether … If they agree to sign it then I��ll send it to them, if not then I’ll say, “Well then shop around, do whatever you gotta do and get back to me when you’ve made a decision. If you sign today it’s gonna be this price, if you sign tomorrow it’ll be this price.” Kind of thing.

Bradley: A commodity.

Roman: Absolutely, confidence is huge.

R Bacon’s up, we got to roll through a couple of these.

Chris: Before you go on, let’s put it out there, you are making sales. Not as many as you’d like to, but you’re still closing.

Do You Recommend Using Separate Tier I Rings For Each Subdomain Or Can You Create A Branded Ring That Can Be Used For Multiple Sites?

Alright Robert’s up. Shit. Adam said there was a question about SerpSpace that needed answered.

Adam: Maybe if you want to spend some time on Robert’s question we can get to that in the mastermind webinar tomorrow?

Bradley: Which one’s Robert? Oh Robert’s in the mastermind?

Adam: Yeah I believe he just joined recently I thought, but we could copy that over and go into depth on that tomorrow I think would be a good one.

Chris: He just joined today I think.

What Is The Best Way To Use RSS Authority Sniper With RYS?

Okay Siegfried says, “I watch RYS Authority Sniper webinar and [inaudible 00:49:47] you folks put on, what is the best way to use this with RYS?” Probably a good question for Marco.

Roman: Yeah they’ve been around forever. I mean I’ve been using them since I got into SEO, so they’ve been around for a very very long time.

Bradley: Good service, it’s a good service.

Roman: And the worst part is it’s owned by a guy.

Bradley: Oh really? He knew that it would sell more if he portrayed himself as a female, right. That’s brilliant.

Can You Provide PDFs That Show The Complete Flow Chart For The Single Syndication Network Product And Other Products In Serp Space?

Bradley: Yeah. I’m sorry go ahead Roman.

Adam: Awesome, Anthony says he likes the new site so thumbs up Roman.

Roman: Awesome, thank you.

Can I Order The Google Site And Twitter SEO At A Later Date Or Do They Need To Setup At The Same Time?

Roman: Yes so the Twitter piece of it can be ordered after the fact. So I would get the Google site though at the same time.

Alright thanks everybody.

Adam: Bye everybody.

Roman: See ya.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

charlesswink19 · 7 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 148 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Bradley: [inaudible 00:00:14] will be three years.

And we’re gonna go through some quick announcements after we say hi to everybody. So I’m just gonna go down as I see you guys on my screen, so Chris how you doing?

Chris: I’m good, how are you?

Adam: Can’t complain, weather’s cooled off, I’m no longer sweating every second of my day so I’m kinda happy. Hernan, how about you, how are you doing?

Adam: Good deal. Marco, speaking of weather, how’s it going man?

Marco: Big big thunderstorm rolling in man. Lots of fireworks, if I cut out, you know why.

Adam: So yeah if Marco suddenly disappears everybody knows what happened.

Bradley: Yeah it’s the Google gods pissed off.

Marco: You got the Google police. Nature.

Adam: Good deal, Roman how you doing man?

Roman: Oh not too bad man.

Adam: Good deal. Oh thought you were gonna say something. Alright last but not least, Bradley how are you?

Bradley: I’m peachy, happy to be here.

Marco: Monday.

Adam: Shoot, okay.

So that’s what we’re up to man.

Adam: Outstanding.

[crosstalk 00:05:30]

Marco: No I’m just saying, if you want to join us fine and if they don’t, nearly 150 members that we already have will be very happy that you didn’t join.

That’s it for now.

Let’s see, hopefully everyone here saw this but if you’re within driving distance of Portland let us know, we’re gonna be there on September … Uh oh. Yep there went Marco.

Bradley: That’s what he gets for talking about all that spam.

Bradley: I was gonna say don’t forget the beer, I would put that at the first line item.

Adam: Yeah it’s-

Bradley: And anybody that signed up, sorry Adam, but if anybody signed up already I hope you read the fine print, it requires you to buy me a beer if you show up.

Adam: Bradley’s gonna be face down.

Bradley: Into the [inaudible 00:08:46] you mean?

Adam: Yeah across the board it’s gonna be $50 and that’s gonna be taking place early next week.

And with that, I think we are through with the announcements, do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I got one, or two actually. Well it’s about the mastermind, so anybody else before I?

Chris: I’m good.

Alright anybody want to add to that?

Adam: I think we’re good.

Bradley: No, okay.

Is There A Plugin That Can Show A Thumbnail That Points Users To The Website Where The Video Is Embedded?

Would You Recommend Creating A Unique Google Stack For Each Location And Another One For All Of The Other Cities For Different Local Businesses?

Marco: Yeah I’m not gonna answer it here because we’re working on that in the group, and that wouldn’t be fair to the group.

Have You Been Using Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder?

So it’s a really strong … It’s a great way to build buffer sites quickly that you can then spam.

How Important Are Hyper Local Citations?

Can You Link To A Related Article And The Top Page In A Single Post?

So don’t force it, but if it occurs naturally it’s a great opportunity to kind of just spread the love around within the silo.

Roman: Yeah I find a lot that people are really conservative with links and they don’t necessarily need to be as much as they are.

Bradley: With on page, internal links you mean?

How Do You Know The Stats Of People That Click On The Video Tab In Search?

Anybody else?

Hernan: I agree with you Bradley.

What Is An Effective Process To Send Out Proposals Without Having To Chase Clients?

But what were you gonna say Roman? I’d love to hear it.

Bradley: A commodity.

Roman: Absolutely, confidence is huge.

R Bacon’s up, we got to roll through a couple of these.

Chris: Before you go on, let’s put it out there, you are making sales. Not as many as you’d like to, but you’re still closing.

Do You Recommend Using Separate Tier I Rings For Each Subdomain Or Can You Create A Branded Ring That Can Be Used For Multiple Sites?

Alright Robert’s up. Shit. Adam said there was a question about SerpSpace that needed answered.

Adam: Maybe if you want to spend some time on Robert’s question we can get to that in the mastermind webinar tomorrow?

Bradley: Which one’s Robert? Oh Robert’s in the mastermind?

Adam: Yeah I believe he just joined recently I thought, but we could copy that over and go into depth on that tomorrow I think would be a good one.

Chris: He just joined today I think.

What Is The Best Way To Use RSS Authority Sniper With RYS?

Okay Siegfried says, “I watch RYS Authority Sniper webinar and [inaudible 00:49:47] you folks put on, what is the best way to use this with RYS?” Probably a good question for Marco.

Roman: Yeah they’ve been around forever. I mean I’ve been using them since I got into SEO, so they’ve been around for a very very long time.

Bradley: Good service, it’s a good service.

Roman: And the worst part is it’s owned by a guy.

Bradley: Oh really? He knew that it would sell more if he portrayed himself as a female, right. That’s brilliant.

Can You Provide PDFs That Show The Complete Flow Chart For The Single Syndication Network Product And Other Products In Serp Space?

Bradley: Yeah. I’m sorry go ahead Roman.

Adam: Awesome, Anthony says he likes the new site so thumbs up Roman.

Roman: Awesome, thank you.

Can I Order The Google Site And Twitter SEO At A Later Date Or Do They Need To Setup At The Same Time?

Roman: Yes so the Twitter piece of it can be ordered after the fact. So I would get the Google site though at the same time.

Alright thanks everybody.

Adam: Bye everybody.

Roman: See ya.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

anchorsawaytat1 · 7 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 148 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Bradley: [inaudible 00:00:14] will be three years.

And we’re gonna go through some quick announcements after we say hi to everybody. So I’m just gonna go down as I see you guys on my screen, so Chris how you doing?

Chris: I’m good, how are you?

Adam: Can’t complain, weather’s cooled off, I’m no longer sweating every second of my day so I’m kinda happy. Hernan, how about you, how are you doing?

Adam: Good deal. Marco, speaking of weather, how’s it going man?

Marco: Big big thunderstorm rolling in man. Lots of fireworks, if I cut out, you know why.

Adam: So yeah if Marco suddenly disappears everybody knows what happened.

Bradley: Yeah it’s the Google gods pissed off.

Marco: You got the Google police. Nature.

Adam: Good deal, Roman how you doing man?

Roman: Oh not too bad man.

Adam: Good deal. Oh thought you were gonna say something. Alright last but not least, Bradley how are you?

Bradley: I’m peachy, happy to be here.

Marco: Monday.

Adam: Shoot, okay.

So that’s what we’re up to man.

Adam: Outstanding.

[crosstalk 00:05:30]

Marco: No I’m just saying, if you want to join us fine and if they don’t, nearly 150 members that we already have will be very happy that you didn’t join.

That’s it for now.

Let’s see, hopefully everyone here saw this but if you’re within driving distance of Portland let us know, we’re gonna be there on September … Uh oh. Yep there went Marco.

Bradley: That’s what he gets for talking about all that spam.

Bradley: I was gonna say don’t forget the beer, I would put that at the first line item.

Adam: Yeah it’s-

Bradley: And anybody that signed up, sorry Adam, but if anybody signed up already I hope you read the fine print, it requires you to buy me a beer if you show up.

Adam: Bradley’s gonna be face down.

Bradley: Into the [inaudible 00:08:46] you mean?

Adam: Yeah across the board it’s gonna be $50 and that’s gonna be taking place early next week.

And with that, I think we are through with the announcements, do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I got one, or two actually. Well it’s about the mastermind, so anybody else before I?

Chris: I’m good.

Alright anybody want to add to that?

Adam: I think we’re good.

Bradley: No, okay.

Is There A Plugin That Can Show A Thumbnail That Points Users To The Website Where The Video Is Embedded?

Would You Recommend Creating A Unique Google Stack For Each Location And Another One For All Of The Other Cities For Different Local Businesses?

Marco: Yeah I’m not gonna answer it here because we’re working on that in the group, and that wouldn’t be fair to the group.

Have You Been Using Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder?

So it’s a really strong … It’s a great way to build buffer sites quickly that you can then spam.

How Important Are Hyper Local Citations?

Can You Link To A Related Article And The Top Page In A Single Post?

So don’t force it, but if it occurs naturally it’s a great opportunity to kind of just spread the love around within the silo.

Roman: Yeah I find a lot that people are really conservative with links and they don’t necessarily need to be as much as they are.

Bradley: With on page, internal links you mean?

How Do You Know The Stats Of People That Click On The Video Tab In Search?

Anybody else?

Hernan: I agree with you Bradley.

What Is An Effective Process To Send Out Proposals Without Having To Chase Clients?

But what were you gonna say Roman? I’d love to hear it.

Bradley: A commodity.

Roman: Absolutely, confidence is huge.

R Bacon’s up, we got to roll through a couple of these.

Chris: Before you go on, let’s put it out there, you are making sales. Not as many as you’d like to, but you’re still closing.

Do You Recommend Using Separate Tier I Rings For Each Subdomain Or Can You Create A Branded Ring That Can Be Used For Multiple Sites?

Alright Robert’s up. Shit. Adam said there was a question about SerpSpace that needed answered.

Adam: Maybe if you want to spend some time on Robert’s question we can get to that in the mastermind webinar tomorrow?

Bradley: Which one’s Robert? Oh Robert’s in the mastermind?

Adam: Yeah I believe he just joined recently I thought, but we could copy that over and go into depth on that tomorrow I think would be a good one.

Chris: He just joined today I think.

What Is The Best Way To Use RSS Authority Sniper With RYS?

Okay Siegfried says, “I watch RYS Authority Sniper webinar and [inaudible 00:49:47] you folks put on, what is the best way to use this with RYS?” Probably a good question for Marco.

Roman: Yeah they’ve been around forever. I mean I’ve been using them since I got into SEO, so they’ve been around for a very very long time.

Bradley: Good service, it’s a good service.

Roman: And the worst part is it’s owned by a guy.

Bradley: Oh really? He knew that it would sell more if he portrayed himself as a female, right. That’s brilliant.

Can You Provide PDFs That Show The Complete Flow Chart For The Single Syndication Network Product And Other Products In Serp Space?

Bradley: Yeah. I’m sorry go ahead Roman.

Adam: Awesome, Anthony says he likes the new site so thumbs up Roman.

Roman: Awesome, thank you.

Can I Order The Google Site And Twitter SEO At A Later Date Or Do They Need To Setup At The Same Time?

Roman: Yes so the Twitter piece of it can be ordered after the fact. So I would get the Google site though at the same time.

Alright thanks everybody.

Adam: Bye everybody.

Roman: See ya.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

zeek1991-blog · 7 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 148 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Bradley: [inaudible 00:00:14] will be three years.

And we’re gonna go through some quick announcements after we say hi to everybody. So I’m just gonna go down as I see you guys on my screen, so Chris how you doing?

Chris: I’m good, how are you?

Adam: Can’t complain, weather’s cooled off, I’m no longer sweating every second of my day so I’m kinda happy. Hernan, how about you, how are you doing?

Adam: Good deal. Marco, speaking of weather, how’s it going man?

Marco: Big big thunderstorm rolling in man. Lots of fireworks, if I cut out, you know why.

Adam: So yeah if Marco suddenly disappears everybody knows what happened.

Bradley: Yeah it’s the Google gods pissed off.

Marco: You got the Google police. Nature.

Adam: Good deal, Roman how you doing man?

Roman: Oh not too bad man.

Adam: Good deal. Oh thought you were gonna say something. Alright last but not least, Bradley how are you?

Bradley: I’m peachy, happy to be here.

Marco: Monday.

Adam: Shoot, okay.

So that’s what we’re up to man.

Adam: Outstanding.

[crosstalk 00:05:30]

Marco: No I’m just saying, if you want to join us fine and if they don’t, nearly 150 members that we already have will be very happy that you didn’t join.

That’s it for now.

Let’s see, hopefully everyone here saw this but if you’re within driving distance of Portland let us know, we’re gonna be there on September … Uh oh. Yep there went Marco.

Bradley: That’s what he gets for talking about all that spam.

Bradley: I was gonna say don’t forget the beer, I would put that at the first line item.

Adam: Yeah it’s-

Bradley: And anybody that signed up, sorry Adam, but if anybody signed up already I hope you read the fine print, it requires you to buy me a beer if you show up.

Adam: Bradley’s gonna be face down.

Bradley: Into the [inaudible 00:08:46] you mean?

Adam: Yeah across the board it’s gonna be $50 and that’s gonna be taking place early next week.

And with that, I think we are through with the announcements, do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I got one, or two actually. Well it’s about the mastermind, so anybody else before I?

Chris: I’m good.

Alright anybody want to add to that?

Adam: I think we’re good.

Bradley: No, okay.

Is There A Plugin That Can Show A Thumbnail That Points Users To The Website Where The Video Is Embedded?

Would You Recommend Creating A Unique Google Stack For Each Location And Another One For All Of The Other Cities For Different Local Businesses?

Marco: Yeah I’m not gonna answer it here because we’re working on that in the group, and that wouldn’t be fair to the group.

Have You Been Using Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder?

So it’s a really strong … It’s a great way to build buffer sites quickly that you can then spam.

How Important Are Hyper Local Citations?

Can You Link To A Related Article And The Top Page In A Single Post?

So don’t force it, but if it occurs naturally it’s a great opportunity to kind of just spread the love around within the silo.

Roman: Yeah I find a lot that people are really conservative with links and they don’t necessarily need to be as much as they are.

Bradley: With on page, internal links you mean?

How Do You Know The Stats Of People That Click On The Video Tab In Search?

Anybody else?

Hernan: I agree with you Bradley.

What Is An Effective Process To Send Out Proposals Without Having To Chase Clients?

But what were you gonna say Roman? I’d love to hear it.

Bradley: A commodity.

Roman: Absolutely, confidence is huge.

R Bacon’s up, we got to roll through a couple of these.

Chris: Before you go on, let’s put it out there, you are making sales. Not as many as you’d like to, but you’re still closing.

Do You Recommend Using Separate Tier I Rings For Each Subdomain Or Can You Create A Branded Ring That Can Be Used For Multiple Sites?

Alright Robert’s up. Shit. Adam said there was a question about SerpSpace that needed answered.

Adam: Maybe if you want to spend some time on Robert’s question we can get to that in the mastermind webinar tomorrow?

Bradley: Which one’s Robert? Oh Robert’s in the mastermind?

Adam: Yeah I believe he just joined recently I thought, but we could copy that over and go into depth on that tomorrow I think would be a good one.

Chris: He just joined today I think.

What Is The Best Way To Use RSS Authority Sniper With RYS?

Okay Siegfried says, “I watch RYS Authority Sniper webinar and [inaudible 00:49:47] you folks put on, what is the best way to use this with RYS?” Probably a good question for Marco.

Roman: Yeah they’ve been around forever. I mean I’ve been using them since I got into SEO, so they’ve been around for a very very long time.

Bradley: Good service, it’s a good service.

Roman: And the worst part is it’s owned by a guy.

Bradley: Oh really? He knew that it would sell more if he portrayed himself as a female, right. That’s brilliant.

Can You Provide PDFs That Show The Complete Flow Chart For The Single Syndication Network Product And Other Products In Serp Space?

Bradley: Yeah. I’m sorry go ahead Roman.

Adam: Awesome, Anthony says he likes the new site so thumbs up Roman.

Roman: Awesome, thank you.

Can I Order The Google Site And Twitter SEO At A Later Date Or Do They Need To Setup At The Same Time?

Roman: Yes so the Twitter piece of it can be ordered after the fact. So I would get the Google site though at the same time.

Alright thanks everybody.

Adam: Bye everybody.

Roman: See ya.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 148 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes