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shurisneakers · 4 years

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shut in [5]

Summary: When your high profile mission goes terribly wrong, you’re forced to hide in a safehouse with a man you’ve never met before. With seemingly nowhere else to go, you’re forced to work together to figure out who is trying to have you assassinated before it’s too late. (Sam Wilson x Reader, Hitman AU)

Warnings: cursing, threats, implied ptsd, violence

Word count: 2.9k

A/N: sam wilson nation how are we feeling after that trailer. only about a month to go for my two dumbasses to get the recognition they deserve!!

i also appreciate feedback so if you would like to, please consider dropping me an ask or comment ly guys!! also if you want to be on the taglist, it’s mentioned at the bottom of the chapter.

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Shut In Masterlist

“Where are they?”

“We don’t know, boss.”

Their eyes glossed over with rising anger, masking its earlier aloofness.

“I’m going to need more than ‘I don’t know’.” Their voice was acidic, dripping with faux politeness. A bad sign.

“Police say they pulled off the highway at one point and then they lost track of them because there were no cameras.” The agent looked at his partner who only nodded in confirmation.

“They could have ditched the car before going on foot,” the partner suggested rather unhelpfully, “We have no idea where they could be”

They were silent, mouth pressed in a hard line, leaving everyone in silence.

“Have I told you about the time my dad hired someone to fix the sink here?” they finally asked, looking away from the agents. “Some drunk fuck got in a fistfight and absolutely decimated the thing. Dad got someone to fix the hole in the wall and the fitting.”

They turned away, facing the wall.

“He did an alright job, that guy. Fixed up the place, installed a new sink. But there was a problem that he said he’d be able to fix only the next day, something about water dripping through an unsealed pipe.”

The agents just sat there on their chairs, feet cold. They knew where the story was going. It was a myth at their organisation, a cautionary tale to everyone who joined.

“My dad, he agreed. Said ‘Yeah sure, come back tomorrow’. Guy packed up his bag and was on his way out when my dad called him back. Asked him to hold out his hand for the money and then he just,” they paused, “cut one of his fingers clean off. Told him that he’d get his payment and his finger when the job was done.”

“I loved my father,” They skipped a beat before whipping their head around to look at the two agents. “But he was a coward. I would have shot him in the head.”

The agents looked paler than what they were a few seconds ago.

“If I tell you to do something, either do it perfectly or don’t do it all because the next time you’re here and those two are still alive,” they sneered, lunging forward to grab one of their collars, “I’ll blow your fucking brains out. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes boss,” the partner was barely audible, speaking for the one who was breathing heavily, looking like he was on the verge of passing out.

“Go on then.” They smiled, letting go of the agent’s collar as he stayed frozen in his place. They dusted their hands off before straightening up. “Don’t return without good news.”

The frustration of not knowing something was not one you were used to.

You were used to knowing. The satisfaction of a puzzle. The ease of a predictable pattern.

So when this mystery wasn’t getting solved within twenty minutes, it was starting to affect you. You spent hours staring at the ceiling, replaying every detail for months leading up to the case. Every client you shook hands with. Every coworker you greeted with a nod. Every vile sicko you had killed.

And yet, no matter how much you thought and rethought and rethought again, it simply didn’t make sense. There was a piece missing. A hidden variable.

Sam helped wherever he could. He offered up arguments and rebuttals. If you had a theory, he’d find the flaw or the lack of proof. He was keeping it reasonable. Only snorted when you suggested that maybe the president was involved in a large scale extermination of underground mafias. A absurd theory that had no roots in reality.

“You could point out any official on the damn senate and they would have some connection to our gang that you can dig up with one Red Bull and twenty minutes on the internet,” he had said. “It’s too much of a liability if we get caught. They’ll just get exposed for all the nasty shit they’ve been hiding under the carpet.”

You knew this, of course, and it didn’t help to be reminded of it again because it also meant that one more theory was ruled out. And with each theory ruled out, the further away you were from your answer.

It was frustrating.

Sam was in front of the TV, lounging on the couch with the copy of Pride and Prejudice in his hands. You were working on plausible solutions, drawing up flow charts to see what could be connected.

If Pierce wasn’t the common link then it had to be something else. You couldn’t proceed with the other spies theory because no one else immediately sprung to mind. There was one... but you decided against writing it.

If Ransone was telling the truth, and there was no way of knowing he was, Sam and you were unrelated and his being there was coincidental. You just had to rely on the employee-employer relationship you shared, if you could even call it that.

“Fuck,” you cursed loudly, tearing up the piece of paper and crumpling it. You groaned, holding your head in your hands. Your eyes were burning from straining it for too long and your shoulders were in pain from slumping over the table all day.

You took a deep breath, shaking your head before instinctively reaching for another sheet. Your hand came up short so you fumbled around the table blindly, trying to grab at a piece of paper without spending the extra effort of searching.

“You’re not getting another sheet,” Sam’s voice came from above you. “You’re going to watch some shitty movie, eat some soup and relax for today.”

“Give it back, Wilson,” you muttered, reaching out your hand.

“No. You can use your unhealthy coping mechanism when I’m not around to see it. Half of this is my mess too and I’m not going to watch you have a breakdown over it.”

He was going to be annoyingly persistent; somehow he had exhibited that magnificently over the last few days. You knew better than to argue with him over something that he had made his mind up about by now.

“I don’t want to watch a movie.” You let your head fall onto the table, wishing that the cool wood would do something for the headache you felt coming.

You heard him set the paper back down, not saying a word. Your head was throbbing and all you wanted was the frustration to ease. It was killing you.

“Come on. We’re going outside.” That piqued your interest. Sam had never invited you anywhere before.

“Where?”

“Y’know; the outside. I know you haven’t seen it in a while but see if these words jog your memory. Sun. Grass. Win-”

“I know what the outdoors is, Wilson.” You smiled against the table, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing it. “I’m asking where exactly we’re going.”

“You’ll see. Put some shoes on.”

By the time you looked up he was already walking away from the table, leaving you to follow.

You sighed. He sounded too determined and you didn’t have many other options.

Pushing your chair away from the table, you went to go put on your shoes. __

“If in care you were planning to, I’m just going to tell you right now that you can’t kill me.”

The both of you had been wandering along the path for a while. When you met him by the backdoor, he had a bag with him filled with who knows what.

He declined to tell you what was in it either, despite you asking thrice.

“Calm down, Keanu Reeves. That’s not what I was going to do.” Sam gave a short laugh.

“I’m serious. I know karate.”

“So do I.”

“Krav Maga.”

He hummed in agreement.

“Kickboxing.”

“Now you’re just insulting me. That’s level one.”

The path was littered with tree roots that stuck out of the soil, stray branches and leaves that crunched satisfactorily under your feet. One second of distraction and you were sure you’d fall flat to the ground.

You both continued for a few more minutes before he finally came to a stop.

It didn't look very different from the rest of the woods until something caught your eye. In front of you, one of the trees stood out. The bark had large concentric circles, resembling a large dart board. A few indentations were already made in it; clearly it was being used for practice regularly.

“Here you go,” he spoke from beside you, handing you a tomahawk. “Go ahead, throw it at it.”

You looked at the tiny axe in his hand.

“Think of it as adult darts,” he encouraged, “Here, I’ll throw the first one.”

He extended his arm in front of him, pulling his wrist back before effortlessly throwing it at his makeshift board. It was two circles away from the bullseye he had carved out. It must have taken a while to make.

“This doesn’t look very safe,” you commented as he picked up another one, launching it at the tree. You followed its trajectory, watching it embed itself into the bark closer to the centre than the previous turn.

“That’s what makes it fun.” This man had no regard for safety protocols. Given, these were things that came with the job but it didn’t mean you did it in your free time. “It helps, just try.”

“Why are you doing this?” you asked curiously, trying to assess his reaction. Pulling you out of the house for a bar game wasn’t exactly the type of thing people generally did for you.

“Because I wanted to.” He shrugged, not giving you any further explanation. “Try one.”

“Okay.” You followed his example, watching as it glided smoothly before landing close to his initial throw.

“Nice shot.”

A smile made its way to your face automatically as he handed you another one. You repeated your action, an unusual sense of pride establishing itself in you when it came closer to the middle.

“Now what?”

“Now we collect and do the whole thing again till you feel better,” Sam replied, making his way towards the tree and plucking the small axes out easily. His back muscles tightened against the material of his shirt in the process. It wasn’t a bad sight at all. “Endorphins and all that.

“Is this where you keep disappearing to?” you inquired, taking two of them from him when he returned.

“Sometimes.” He took aim before throwing it at the board. “There’s a few things you can do around here.”

“Your coping mechanism is extreme sports without proper guidelines.”

“You gotta do what you gotta do.” Sam took a step to the side, giving you space to take your turn.

“Have you always been this wise, or?” you teased, concentrating on the circles in front of you. Your shot came pretty close.

When you didn’t receive a reply, you glanced at him through your peripheral vision. He wasn’t moving, a thousand yard stare in his eyes.

“Hit it.”

“I can’t.” His fists were bleeding through the bandages wound around them. He could feel the tear in his skin, the burn of flesh against sweat soaked clothes.

“I said, hit it,” Emil commanded once more. Sam could feel his chest rising and falling steadily from beside him, his putrid breath making him want to vomit.

“I can’t.” He could barely stand up. Exhaustion seeped through every muscle in his body.

“You’re weak,” his trainer spat. “Nothing but a fucking child.”

“He’ll die.” Sam looks down at the boy, bloody and mangled on the floor. He had passed out ages ago but that did nothing to stop them from forcing Sam to continue relentlessly.

“It doesn’t deserve mercy. You hear that Wilson?” He leered right into his ear. “Do you fucking hear that?”

Sam flinched, nodding his head. The saltiness of his sweat was fresh on his tongue, burning where it dripped onto his busted lip from his forehead.

“So fucking finish it.” He knew that if he didn’t listen this time, there would be consequences. He didn’t want to find out what it was because he had no doubt it would pain a hell of a lot more than bruised knuckles.

“No,” he whispered, eyes wandering over the body on the floor. “I won’t.”

“What’d you say?” Emil straightened up, taking a step towards him.

“I said no.” Sam turned around on his heel. He could barely stand straight but the spite running through his veins was driving him, giving him enough energy to not collapse right there on the spot.

“He said no,” his trainer repeated, leaning away from Sam. “He said no.”

He turned to look at Ransone. Sam had forgotten he was there in the darkness of the room, observing the fight for the past two hours.

“He said no.” He started chuckling. His chuckles soon gave way to hideous laughter. Stomach clutching, tear inducing laughter.

Before Sam could even realise the change in attitude, Emil’s entire demeanour shifted. He stepped forward, forcefully gripping Sam’s neck. He shoved him backward until his back was pressed against the wall, no doubt bruising his spine further than what it was.

“Say that again, you fucking idiot,” he growled. But Sam couldn’t say anything. He could barely breathe. He was terrified, but determined not to let it show on his face. “When I say something, you better fucking listen.”

His trainer observed his expression for a few more seconds. Sam didn’t open his mouth.

His trainer finally loosened his grip, letting go of his neck.

Sam’s knees nearly buckled but he kept his balance, coughs racking through his body. He felt lightheaded, swollen eyes watching Emil walk towards the body on the floor. The only friend he had.

“Maybe this oughta teach you a lesson.” Emil flashed a quick smirk at Sam before raising his fist above Riley’s face.

Within a split second a guttural cry escaped his throat as he launched himself at the much larger trainer, taking him by surprise. The pure rage he was feeling had him seeing only red, the adrenaline steering his body on autopilot.

With their position suddenly switched, Sam found himself on top of Emil, bloody fists beating down on his face without a break. The pain didn’t even matter anymore.

“Fuck you,” he screamed, not giving him even a second to defend himself. “Fuck you, you fucking dickhead.”

When he could feel his trainer raising his arm to grab from behind, he took a pause from pummelling his face to grab his arm, twisting sharply it till he heard a crack. The roar escaping Emil’s throat didn’t dissuade him from finishing what he started, returning to landing a punch wherever he could.

He didn’t even know how long had passed before his body was being pulled away, kicking and cursing.

“You see how good it feels Wilson? You feel that relief?” Ransone held him tightly as he squirmed furiously trying to get back to beating the shit out of that asshole on the ground. “Next time you’re angry, remember that’s the only way to feel good. If you’re in pain, you cause pain.”

Sam’s flailing was reducing as the adrenaline wore off. The exhaustion was beginning to take hold of his body as he looked at the onslaught of blood splatter everywhere, two bodies side by side on the ground. He did this to both of them.

“Violence is your only friend. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Ransone let go of him. His feet gave out beneath him, chest rising and falling heavily. His shoulders ached as he dragged his body towards Riley, praying to every force in the universe that he wasn’t dead.

He was still breathing. Sam nearly cried out of relief, collapsing next to him. Ready to defend him if Emil woke up.

“Next time you want to let out some anger, come find me,” Ransone called out. “I’ll find you your next victim.”

“You okay?” You waved your hand in front of his face. “Earth to Wilson.”

It seemed to work as he snapped back, blinking rapidly.

“You zoned out a little there. Everything alright?” you asked. He looked at you blankly for a second before realising what you asked.

“Yeah.” He gave you a half smile. “Yeah, I’m good. You done with your turn?”

The light that was there behind his eyes a few minutes ago had dimmed considerably. He looked weary. You recognised what had happened, what he was probably thinking of. You didn’t bring it up, not risking the chance of him reliving it.

“Kinda.” You pointed towards the target where a tomahawk was sticking out of the centre.

“Damn,” he whistled, resting his hands on his waist. “Best of three?”

“Didn’t know it was a competition.” You went to collect it. It was harder to pull out than you thought. You wondered how many times Sam had practiced it to make it look so effortless.

“Only if you want it to be.”

“Nah.” You walked towards him, handing two of them back to him. “Maybe next time.”

“Next time, huh.” He tested his throw before letting go of the handle. Bullseye. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

You only smiled.

Next part

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mimicutie · 4 years

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Pit is Autistic - A “Brief” Analysis

Kid Icarus: Uprising is my favorite game of all time, and one thing I love about it is the characterization of Pit. Specifically, I see him as autistic. Of course, this is just a headcanon of mine, but I wanted to write out a little discussion explaining why I see him as such as well as show some of the autistic traits he demonstrates in Uprising (and the occasional reference to the Guidance conversations from Smash).

(fair warning, this is not very brief)

Difficulty Understanding Words and Jokes

It’s made abundantly clear that Pit isn’t the best at picking up sarcasm or jokes. At times, he struggles with understanding words, phrases, and context. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 11.

Pit: Good! There are survivors! Palutena: They’re a stubborn bunch hanging on like that. [...] Pit: Uh… stubborn? Palutena: Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.

Here, Pit doesn’t understand what Palutena means by “stubborn.” It’s pretty common for autistic people to struggle understanding parts of speech, such as words being used in different contexts than what they’re used to.

Medusa: Hmm… Now this is a little… bizarre. Pit: I know right? The mouth on that guy! I’d never talk like that! Medusa: That’s not what I meant. Palutena: Sorry. He can be a little… thick.

Once again, Pit is misinterpreting the situation. He doesn’t understand what Medusa is alluding to, thinking that she is talking about Dark Pit’s brash behavior. Palutena’s last comment hints that it’s very common for Pit to misunderstand people like this.

Pit: I’m Pit, servant of the goddess Palutena. I’m here to defeat Dark Lord Gaol. Magnus: So you’re here for a slice of the pie too? Pit: Huh? Pie? Where?

Chapter 2 has several examples of Pit not picking up on obvious jokes or idioms, and here’s one. Pit takes the idiom literally, not understanding what Magnus really means at first.

Viridi: Pit certainly is devoted to you, Palutena. Hades: Only because she squeezes his head wreath when he doesn’t follow orders. Palutena: You mean like… THIS?! Pit: No no no no no! You’ll squeeze my brains out! … (sigh) Why do I always fall for that?

In this example from Chapter 15, Palutena is clearly messing with Pit, but as he stated, he always falls for her jokes. Even though it’s clear she is just teasing, Pit can’t pick up on the fact that she isn’t being serious. He consistently struggles with understanding tone.

Pit: This is so annoying. Lady Palutena, help me out here! Palutena: Deploying the Palutena Super Sensor… Pit: I didn’t know you had a super sensor! Palutena: Hee hee. I don’t. You know I like to make stuff up. Pit: I can’t believe you’re messing with me at a time like this!

This dialogue from Chapter 13 is just another example of Palutena clearly joking while Pit does not pick up on it. Even though Palutena has done this time and time again, Pit still struggles to tell when someone, even a person he is incredibly close to like Palutena, is just messing with him. These are just a few examples. Pit commonly struggles with understanding language and tone throughout the game.

Using Words Differently

We can see that Pit has his own unique vocabulary with his own creative phrases like, “Calamaried!” “Re-defeated!” “Pulverazed!” and so on. Pit also makes LOTS of noises throughout the game, all of his “woohoo”s and “woah”s and whatnot. It’s just how he communicates, even if it's a bit particular or different.

Expressiveness

Pit is excitable. Like, really excitable. Sure, he’s a fun video game protagonist, but he’s always very happy-go-lucky and upbeat in a way that reads to me as autistic. Just look at how he jumps in excitement!

And when he gets the Three Sacred Treasure?! Gifs can’t really do the excitement in this scene justice. (link in case tumblr embed isn’t working)

youtube

Additionally, while Uprising doesn’t have a lot of cutscenes with Pit just standing around talking, in the ones where he does he is usually very expressive, using his hands to talk and whatnot. Added with his excitability, I feel that this shows us that Pit is so expressive and emotional because he’s autistic!

Extra Help

Pit needs more help with understanding things in comparison to others. Palutena often goes out of her way to guide Pit, whether it be giving him directions or explaining how to defeat an enemy. While Palutena’s advice does work as a guide for the player, it’s clear that Pit needs the help more than someone else his situation might. The clearest proof we have of this comes from Chapter 22.

Palutena: Watch out for that heart-shaped crystal barrier! You see, it’s— Dark Pit: Reflecting my shots back at me, right? Palutena: Well… yes. Dark Pit: I got it, so stop telling me what to do!

Palutena is expecting Dark Pit to be like Pit, where she needs to explain to him what’s going on and offer her guidance. However, Dark Pit was able to figure out a strategy to defeat Pandora all on his own. Palutena is very aware that Pit needs a bit more help and prepares accordingly for him.

Accidental Rudeness

Many times throughout Uprising, Pit is shown speaking “rudely” towards gods or characters who have authority over him.

Pit: Oh, great! You’re the guy I’m looking for. Listen, I have a favor to ask you. Would you mind if I borrow your chariot for just a little while? Chariot Master: Your foolishness is matched only by your rudeness. How dare you charge in here, flinging unreasonable requests at me? [...] Viridi: You can’t really blame him for being upset. That was kind of rude.

Here, Pit is talking to the Chariot Master very casually, treating him like a friend despite the fact he is breaking into the Chariot Master’s tower and asking him for a precious artifact. Pit doesn’t see it as rude but Viridi and the Chariot Master clearly do. He is breaking an unwritten social norm by talking so casually to someone of high authority. Autistic people often misinterpret social situations or don’t act appropriately, sometimes resulting in “rude” behavior. There are several examples of this throughout the game, such as in Chapter 24…

Pit: You know, the Three Sacred Treasures weren’t exactly durable. Can you please make sure that this new weapon won’t just fall apart? Dyntos: Palutena, you’d be wise to put a muzzle on your chicken. Palutena: I apologize for him. Again. Pit: I… I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to be rude.

To Pit, he is just stating a fact. However, it comes off to Dyntos as Pit being rude or even insulting his work. This is something that autistic people often do; they are blunt or honest about something, which is again mistaken as being rude.

Pit is also seen being more blunt when under emotional stress, such as in Chapter 20.

Pit: I trusted you because I knew you were on the side of justice, and… and light! But something is blocking that light now. This isn’t the real you. Viridi: Someone cue the strings… Pit: Would you mind holding the commentary for two seconds, Viridi? Phosphora: There are goddesses you’re talking to here, Pit. Watch your tone. Pit: Butt out, Phosphora! The goddess of light has turned dark. Skyworld is destroyed! Everything is wrong, and it’s up to me to make things right! Palutena: Oh, Pit. You’re just as naive as ever. Pit: I’m not naive!

Phew. This scene is pretty noteworthy to me because throughout the game, Pit is never really that angry or upset. He does show hostility, but he never really snaps at anyone, much less gods, like this. But when his home is destroyed and Lady Palutena is not herself, his emotions get the better of him. He doesn’t even seem to care that he is being “rude” to Viridi. I definitely see this moment as Pit having an outburst because of the stressful situation he is under.

Scripts / Scripting

The most obvious example of Pit using a script is with his “rally cries” that he prepares before fighting enemies. Look at the idol description for this AR Card.

He practices his rally cries a lot in order to be prepared for battles with bosses. Pit even mentions practicing his rally cries in a later chapter.

Pit: Cells of Hades, hear my words! And, um… see my actions! Uh… something, something… I’m going to rain death on you! I can’t remember all the words, but that’s the general gist. Hades: My innards have so longed to hear your battle cry. How could you forget the words? Pit: I didn’t have time to rehearse. I’ve been busy fighting evil, okay?!

While some may see the rally cries as meaningless fun, I think it could be seen as Pit having a script that he likes to fall back to when facing enemies.

His many references and quotes to video games could be seen as scripting, too. There are lots of instances in Uprising, and especially in Palutena’s Guidance, where Pit quotes famous video game phrases or imitates sounds. Which leads me to…

Special Interest

Pit’s special interest is video games. While Pit’s very vast knowledge of video games could just be because of Uprising’s fourth-wall breaking style of humor, I think it could also be seen as Pit having an intense interest in games. He references various video games such as Metroid, Nintendogs, and Super Smash Bros. in-game. He seems to enjoy bringing up video games or referencing video game mechanics whenever he can, which is very similar to how autistic people enjoy bringing up their special interests in conversations whenever possible. Additionally, while the Palutena’s Guidance conversations aren’t 100% accurate to canon, Pit constantly references and alludes to various video games in them, such as quoting Reyn in Shulk’s conversation or Peppy and General Pepper in Fox’s (which ties back to him scripting). It’s clear that he loves video games and talking about video games!

Pit: Those Aurum troops are doing their best Game and Watch impression! Viridi: Check out the gaming IQ on this guy! You’re a regular video game historian!

See, even Viridi is impressed with his video game knowledge! :D

Sensory Issues

Throughout the game, Pit seems to have an obsession with hot springs. It is never outright explained why he loves them so much, but I’m led to believe it is because of sensory reasons. Many autistic people use extreme temperatures to help soothe or calm themselves, such as cold showers or hot baths. It can often help with sensory overload. Hot springs, similarly to hot baths, may be a way to help soothe Pit and keep his sensory issues to a minimum.

Pit’s habits with his tunic seem to hint towards sensory issues, too. He doesn’t like to be without his robes, stating that he keeps them on even when he’s in the hot spring. When his clothes seemingly get messed up in Chapter 21, he gets upset, exclaiming that it’s his only tunic. Wearing the same clothes or same types of clothes/fabric is pretty typical for autistic people, and Pit wearing the same tunic everyday is similar to that.

Additionally, Pit’s habits with food could be because of sensory differences. He very well could be hyposensitive to food and tastes, which is why he eats a lot and doesn’t seem to care about what he eats (as long as it isn’t vegetables, according to the Revolting Dinner short ;D ) .

Small Social Circle

Pit doesn’t have a whole lot of people he can rely on. Before Uprising, the only person he seems to have any affinity for is Palutena. Other than that, he doesn’t seem to talk to anyone else. We don’t have a clear picture on what his relationship with the Centurions is like, but based off of the Revolting Dinner short and Chapter 17, he only really talks to them when he’s working as the Captain of the Army and not as a friend.

While yes, Pit is the only angel left in Skyworld, I still think it’s important to bring up that Pit only really has Palutena to rely on. By the end of Uprising, he has Viridi and Dark Pit as well, but his only clear and completely positive relationship is his mother-son bond with Palutena. I see this as Pit struggling to really befriend others. He’s had over two decades between the original game and Uprising to befriend the Centurions, but again, he only really has Palutena. It’s pretty typical for autistic people to have very small social circles, consisting of just one or two friends. Palutena seems to fit the role of mother and best friend for Pit, and she even remarks that he should make more friends in Chapter 4.

Working Alone

This is a small one, but still something that I think is worth pointing out. Pit seems very adamant on accomplishing his missions on his own, telling Dark Pit on two separate occasions (Chapter 9 and Chapter 21) that he can handle the situation by himself. Similarly, it’s common for autistic people to prefer working by themselves rather than with others. Paired with the previous point about having a small social circle, this just reads to me as Pit not feeling too comfortable in situations with others.

Conclusion

There’s a few other points that I feel I could bring up but overall I think these are my main points summed up (and yes, I said summed up. this used to be over 2500 words) ! Thanks so much for reading! If you have any other traits that you think Pit has that I didn’t mention, feel free to share them, I’d be more than happy to hear! ^_^

#kid icarus #kid icarus uprising #pit #kiu #autism headcanon #autistic headcanon #LOL idk what else to tag this as #thank u to anyone who reads ; __ ; this is .... a Lot

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timeagainreviews · 5 years

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Sifting through the Dregs

For series twelve of Doctor Who, I have opted to take a casual approach. I've avoided spoilers as much as possible. Although I caught the trailers, and the odd press photo, I've managed to stay away from things as simple as episode descriptions, writers, or even episode titles. I want to come into each story with as little expectation as possible. This is so that I might avoid hype, both of the negative and positive varieties. So when I read the words "Part One," after "Spyfall," it was genuinely a surprise. And when I read the words "Orphan 55 by Ed Hime," I was suddenly very hopeful.

If you remember from series eleven, I was a big fan of Ed Hime's episode "It Takes You Away." I praised its brazen absurdity, likening it to something Douglas Adams may have done. The episode is rather divisive in the fandom, as some might call it one of the worst episodes ever. Obviously, I disagree. Ed Hime stands out to me as exactly the kind of writer Doctor Who needs. Someone with a bit of a taste for the absurd, while still managing to capture human moments. Ironic then, that despite my best efforts to approach the episode without expectation, the hype I would most contest with would be my own. Does "Orphan 55," live up to my expectations? Let's get into it!

As I said, Ed Hime lends a sort of mad weirdness to Doctor Who that I feel a certain section of writers possess. Think your Lawrence Mileses, your James Gosses, or even the occasional Steven Moffat. These are writers, who for better or worse understand one thing about Doctor Who- it's weird. Strangely, one of the common most aspects ignored by Doctor Who writers is the absurdity. A blue police box wrapped around an impossible machine, piloted by an ancient trickster somehow becomes mundane. Doctor Who's weirdness is an integral element that has been around since its inception. That's why when the gang gets teleported by a contest cube Graham has assembled, and the first person we meet is a furry, I feel we're already onto a good start. Especially when they just finished cleaning up the biggest calamari ever from the TARDIS floor. (Anyone else think of the Nestine Consciousness?)

Characters like "Hyphen with a 3" or "Hyph3n," remind me of some of the '80s era's odder characters. I could easily see her and her tail living in "Paradise Towers," or perhaps riding a bus in "Delta and the Bannermen." But another reason I love her is that she's not just a furry, it's part of her identity. You don't get the idea that she's an outlier like real-life Trekkie, Barbara Adams, who famously wore her Star Trek uniform to jury duty and her place of work. Instead, you get the feeling that in the future, people respect identities. To use Star Trek again, I remember watching an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise," where the character Trip has a crisis over whether or not a girl "was a man." When you compare this to the dialogue we're having about transgender rights in 2020, you're automatically reminded that Enterprise came out in 2001. By today's standards, furries are still seeking acceptance. Seeing Hyp3n in a partial fursuit may seem absurd now, but in its own way, it's futuristic. How very Doctor Who.

Things in this future, however, aren't all progressive acceptance of our fine furry friends, there seems to be trouble in paradise. As I said, the gang is greeted by Hyp3n, a sort of porter for a relaxation destination called "Tranquility Spa." The companions immediately take to the spirit of things, as they settle in for a bit of rest and relaxation. The Doctor, of course, starts snooping around. Meanwhile, a security team of two, Kane and Vorm are responding to "another security breach." Whatever it is requires machine guns, which seems like quite a lot. And if you're like me you'll spend the next half hour trying to figure out where you've seen Kane before. I'll help you out- it was Lydia from Breaking Bad. You're welcome. I just saved you a trip to IMDb.

The next scene introduces us to a concept that will run strong within this episode- Yaz as a gooseberry. We see a couple of pensioners, Benni and Vilma, enjoying their spa getaway. Just as Benni is about to ask Vilma to marry him, Yaz stands right between them. I mean, I know the pool is for everyone, but read the vibe, Yaz. Jeez. Meanwhile, Ryan is checking out the interior of Tranquility Spa. The bar looks like the kind of place art vampires go to get lemongrass enemas. It reminded me a lot of "The Leisure Hive," with a budget, or even a more modern twist on the Centre of Leisure from "Time and the Rani. So much of this episode reminded me of classic Doctor Who.

Ryan notices a vending machine, but as he's retrieving his food is infected by a hopper virus. The Doctor explains the virus is capable of jumping from computers to humans. After expelling it from his system, the Doctor bags it to take to whoever is in charge. While Ryan is sucking his thumb to reduce the hallucinogenic side effects of the virus, he sees a cutie in a similar situation, a young woman by the name of Belle. It's pretty obvious at this point that Belle is to be a sort of romantic interest for Ryan, and who can blame him? She lives up to her namesake!

Everyone is rounded up for a "tranquillity drill," to a safe location while Kane and Vorm run through the lobby with their guns in tow. As with most companions, travelling with the Doctor embeds a deeper curiosity. Much like the Doctor would, Ryan questions what type of drill requires guns. This question entices Belle to follow him as they investigate. I really liked this pairing of the two of them as their chemistry was natural, despite Ryan's repeated failures at chatting her up. It only added to their charm.

The Doctor confronts Hyp3n who seems just about as confused and nervous as many of the guests. Whatever she's hiding is only because she's been instructed to by her superiors. Considering the hopper virus and drill, the Doctor deduces that the spa is under attack, and demands to know what they're hiding. Who would want to harm a spa? The spa has been using an ionic membrane to keep out unwanted visitors, visitors which appear to have breached the membrane. Now under a full-on attack by a group of monstrous beings, guests become casualties. Not only is the base under attack, but the viruses have also handicapped the systems, disabling the emergency teleportation devices. With everyone trapped the Doctor has to work fast to stop the killing, as well as survive.

Graham finds a pair of green haired servicemen in the form of Nevi and his son Sylas. Their entire character design once again had me thinking of classic Doctor Who characters such as the Swampies from "The Power of Kroll," or the Karfelon androids from "Timelash." I liked wondering if they were a kind of species that has naturally green hair, or if they had father/son hair dying nights. In this brief interaction, you learn that Sylas is the better mechanic between the two of them, but that Nevi does a bad job of acknowledging this. Graham gathers them and others to evacuate while Ryan and Belle hideaway in a sauna of sorts. While there, they confide in each other that neither of them is nearly as impressive as they initially led on, and the truth strengthens their bond.

Sadly, as Graham is rounding people up, Benni gets separated after backtracking to pick up Vilma's hat. As life signs extinguish across a computer screen, highlighting the trail of carnage, the Doctor finds a way to push back the onslaught. By repairing the ionic membrane, the creatures, known as Dregs, are physically pushed out of the spa by a force field. The crisis averted, the survivors search for the bodies of their loved ones. Much to Graham's relief, Ryan and Belle have both narrowly avoided the claws and teeth of an angry Dreg. Benni, however, is nowhere to be found.

After discovering a hole, which looks like a tear in reality, our heroes discover that Tranquility Spa is actually an illusion. A dome separates the spa from a hostile planet far too polluted to inhabit. This abandoned, or "orphan," planet is designated "Orphan 55." This is the reason guests are teleported to the spa- to cover up its seedy location. However, it would appear that whatever the Dregs are, they seem to be apex predators, able to survive the hostile environment of Orphan 55. And they want the spa and its inhabitants gone.

The Doctor makes Kane drive them out into the wasteland to find Benni, as his oxygen tank would allow him to survive outside of the dome for some time. It was a thin chance, but it might be enough to save at least one person among the carnage. I was really hoping for some silly "Moonbase," style helmets, but instead, we got these minimalist blue breath right strips across the bridge of the nose that linked to small wrist canisters as supplied by Nevi and Sylas.

The trip out onto the surface reminded me a lot of the great Russell T Davies episode "Midnight." And much like Midnight, the confined space of a vehicle traversing harsh conditions offers plenty opportunity to explore the people within. Remember how I said Yaz is a gooseberry? She wastes no time getting right between Ryan and Belle. I honestly can't tell what's going on between Yaz and Ryan at the moment. Last season, there was a bit of a "Will they or won't they?" vibe between them. But series twelve seems less interested in coupling them off. First, we had the Master and Yaz getting weirdly touchy-feely, which surprisingly never comes up again. And now we've got Yaz teasing Ryan in front of Belle like a jealous school girl. We learn that along with sucking their thumbs, Ryan and Belle also share having a dead parent in common, so that's something.

The vehicle picks up a bit of barbed wiring leaving it, as the Doctor put it- completely knackered. Keeping with the Midnight vibe, the surface of the planet is too dangerous due to monsters and killer sunlight. Afraid for her own self-interest, Kane wants to abandon the search mission, but a pleading Vilma begs her to continue looking for Benni. After callously accepting Vilma's necklace as payment, Kane agrees to continue with the rescue mission. The crew abandon their vehicle and run for the safety of an underground service tunnel, but Dregs attack from every direction causing them to return to the safety of the vehicle. But that safety won't last long.

It's then that they hear Benni calling for Vilma. He asks her to marry him and then asks them to shoot him as well. It's a morbid moment as you realise the only reason the Dregs have kept Benni alive is to taunt the survivors and prolong his suffering. I don't really understand what the point of having them run back into the vehicle actually was. They basically run back out a moment later with the new plan of Kane and Vorm covering with gunfire. I don't understand why it was so important that they leave one location just to return moments later.

As Kane and Vorm blast Dregs, the rest of the crew run to the safety of the service tunnel. In the scuffle, Vorm dies, but Kane catches up just in time to open the tunnel. The entrance to this tunnel had me thinking of the opening of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers." I kept waiting for Rita Repulsa to pop out and say "Ah! After 10,000 years I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!" They make it down into the tunnel where there is a short-range teleporter nearby. Vilma asks Kane if she saw what happened to Benni, and Kane coldly tells her not to worry, that she shot Benni as he requested. It's at this time that Belle steals Kane's gun. She reveals that Kane is her mother and that she's here for revenge for abandoning her and her father. Belle teleports back to the spa taking Ryan with her. Seeing as the teleporter only had enough juice for one go, the rest of the crew must go deeper into the tunnel to find their way back.

Back at the spa, Belle reveals a huge bomb she plans to use to blow up the spa. Poor Ryan, he just met this girl and already he's dealing with her baggage with her mum. I kid, but damn girl, take a guy to a movie first. It's lucky for the Doctor that this adventure isn't actually from the '80s. Had it been Ace in this position, she would have seen the bomb and said "Wicked!" while offering up Nitro 9 to add to the destruction. Instead, Ryan pleads with her not to blow up the spa, dooming everyone involved.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and crew discover a plaque written in Russian, cluing them in to the fact that not only is the planet abandoned, but it was also abandoned by humanity. Orphan 55 is in fact, Earth. This revelation hits Graham and Yaz hard, as they never imagined the fate of the world to be so ugly. Their grieving is cut short by the appearance of Dregs, who Vilma bravely sacrifices herself to, to save the others. The Doctor, at this time also appears to be running out of air. It appears that the ability to be the loudest talker isn't always helpful when oxygen preservation is to be considered.

The sole reason for her running out of oxygen serves only to discover the Dregs breathe out oxygen. She discovers this when she finds a Dreg conveniently hibernating within the tunnel. Why this is important is that it gives a bit of insight into the Dregs' motivation. Kane's big plan was to make a spa that slowly terraforms the planet, which would harm the Dregs. It also explains the trees seen on the surface of the planet. That or these trees are also apex predators able to adapt to anything. Using her Time Lord brain magic, the Doctor looks into the mind of the Dregs and affirms what she feared most- they evolved from humans.

Everyone has now made their way back to the spa. The Dregs are closing in and they need to fix the teleporter. We're treated to a series of people once again leaving and returning to the same location for the sake of upping the tension. Kane appears to sacrifice herself and Sylas gets in an argument with Nevi once more over being told he's not a mechanic causing him to run away. But both of them are ok, as they both return unscathed. Yaz and Ryan wheel Belle's bomb to try and take out a few of the baddies. It's kind of a clusterfuck if I am honest. Lots of characters get taken in and out of scenes merely to pad time and add to the tension. It's not egregious but could have been edited better.

Sylas appears just in time with a solution to use the hopper virus to convert fuel for the teleporter. I was happy they brought the virus back, even if they don’t make a whole lot of sense. Were the Dregs weaponising the hopper virus? Were the viruses remnants of human civilisation? Regardless, I’m glad they brought it back. Sadly, this entire end sequence acts as evidence that perhaps there are too many companions in the TARDIS at the moment. Graham's job is to stand over Nevi and Sylus saying things like "That's right lads!" Yaz and Ryan are basically running around doing busywork, while the Doctor and Belle are having a stand-off with a Dreg. The Doctor manages to equalise the air in the room so that it is mutually beneficial to keep her and Belle alive. What the Dreg breathes out, they breathe in, and vice versa. This stalemate allows them the ability to leave. With the teleports up and running, the Doctor and her crew are transported back aboard the TARDIS, but not before Belle steals a kiss from Ryan. Are she and her mother going to be okay? We're left to wonder.

The victory celebration is short-lived as the companions remember the fate of the earth. Now, I need to preface what I'm about to say with the following- I fully believe climate change is a thing. I say this because we need to talk about how Doctor Who handles the subject. I've seen a lot of people (see: morons) complain about when Doctor Who gets "too political." They seem to think anything they don't like is political. The Doctor being a woman is political to them. But as I said with episodes like "Rosa," and "Demons of the Punjab," it's not that Doctor Who shouldn't be political, it's that it's simply not very good at it.

I can appreciate that the message of climate change is a real and pressing matter, but the cautionary edutainment way in which they present the information was so cringe. It felt so unnatural and tacked on. In their desire to address the audience directly, they lose a level of reality that makes the dialogue seem fake. These scenes always feel badly acted to me, but it's the fault of the dialogue. There's no good way to break the fourth wall without also sacrificing the characters' voices. It's like one of those adverts where you have two people talking far too candidly about something like their period flow, or constipation. It's a way to disseminate information about a product or ideology, but don't mistake it for dialogue. Nobody talks like this.

All in all, this was your standard "base in peril," episode. While not as transcendent as "It Takes You Away," I believe Ed Hime has given us another solid episode of Doctor Who. It's hard for me to tell if Hime's ability to write action was wanting, or if it is simply the fault of the director, but it definitely suffers at points due to the janky pacing. Pacing has really been an odd sticking point for series 12, and I hope they work it out. Even still, I was hoping that after the two-parter of "Spyfall," we would get something a little more grounded. Having this odd little contained storyline with little homages to classic Who is actually more than I had hoped for. It also gave us a new character in Belle, whom I expect to see return eventually. And despite the heavy-handed and unnatural way in which they dealt with climate change, I understand that it's a family show. In keeping with classic Who, it aimed to be educational, and for that, I cannot fault it.

#doctor who #Thirteenth Doctor #Jodie Whittaker #Bradley Walsh #tosin cole #mandip gill #Graham O'Brien #Ryan Sinclair #yaz #yasmine khan #orphan 55 #ed hime #dregs #series 12 #TARDIS #BBC #Time and Time Again

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bedlamgames · 4 years

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Q&A #103

Today we have the Twine conversion, lesbian training mantras, social lube, a bunch of random stuff from the discord, and a whole lot more.

[Anonymous said]: I'm really curious what the tally means for your twine conversion posts. Can't seem to figure out what its suppose to represent progress wise...

- Answered this last Q&A. Because of you asking I’ve now also added the explanation to what it’s about to every stream post so I hope that helped with understanding what’s going on with that.

[Anonymous said]: Suggestion: For races that start with a random corruption (ie: Succubi), have an option in full custom to spend points to either narrow what that corruption is (to be one of the four types, for example) or to outright pick one (for a much higher cost).

- That’s a good idea. Being able to pick specifically I think would be too much. There are ALOT of corruptions so that would mean many many menus to be able to select everything. Being able to pick one of the four types seems fair to me as something to spend points on in Full Custom. Added it to my notes.

[Anonymous said]: Have a succubus slaver who used to be a lamia. On level up, she had the option to get the Fleet trait, which I thought was off-limits for Lamia due to their body shape. I think it's a bug?

- Good spot and should be fixed as of the last update.

[Anonymous said]: Noticed a bug with No Haven 0.903: If you select a human (or once-human) for your character, and then quick restart, your next character will keep the human's Racial aspect Social Lube. On the topic of that Racial, it says " includes one human, and three other different races/subtypes gain an additional Success" Does that mean one human and three non-humans, or one human and three slavers each of a different race from each other?

-Took me awhile to work this out as going from human to human seemed fine. However you’re right that those with a heritage like demi-angels or succubi will incorrectly keep the previous racial.

The second so as long as you have at least one human you can get the buff by say having a northerner, noble, wastelander, and convent.

[Anonymous said]: hi bud, xfto/x421 here, its been a long time i guess. wanted to ask about the status of the no haven/twine conversation. i joined your picardo lately but couldnt post some reports since you dont allow guest-posts. well anyway, the report is about something ridiculous i have found after some restarts, the chosen main charakter (lamia) starts as male with the hard carry aspect(immense shaft) and different description than the ones the perks would give. 1/2

another question, feels like i asked something similiar in the past, how about the integration of different artpacks/access to older pics, or deletion of those that never get used? i guess that would requiere some more access to the game than you allow atm. maybe with twine? do you have a roadmap on tfgames or somewhere for the future of no haven? i know there are some more races you want to implement and improve some systems, but thats it, hope you are doing well in these times. 2/2

I do an update on the patreon every two weeks which is linked on the twitter. You do not need to be a patron to read these and is the best way to stay informed about what I’ve been up to. That includes the status of the conversion. To quickly sum it up;

It's at a stage where all the RAGS to Twine code conversion is basically done. What I need to do now is translate all that work into something playable and there's currently big logic issues with a bunch of the conditions and passages. So what I'm currently doing is trying to tidy up the visual look of the code with a bunch of idents with the theory that will make finding the errors easier.

Alas it’s not me disallowing guest posts... Picarto had some massive stonking issues and so they locked things down hard due to that preventing guests from chatting. I suggest a throwaway email site to get around that.

I don’t think there’s any art in the game file that’s not used as I try to keep on top of deleting the old ones. Not really down for doing art packs of the old ones as due to that not being my art so I see them as placeholder only until they can be replaced by commissions.

I probably do need to do some kind of roadmap sometime. I’m less keen as it’s kind of a dirty word these days as due to the miss-use of them by others it’s got some bad connontations, but I’m also aware the alternative which is me randomly mentioning stuff on discord/picarto streams leaves the vast majority of my audience in the dark which is also really not ideal.

[Anonymous said]: [no haven 0.903] [Crit no longer grants Bimboborn] okay, but how do I get bimboborn now?

- It’s a corruption. Specifically Blessings of Perversion.

[Anonymous said]: With the change to training where hypnotic slavers can fully embed the relevant mantras for blowjob, bimbo, and sissy training, could we also get that for lesbian training?

- Yes that’s the plan when I do the third part of lesbian training. Got a set of commissions planned just got to sort the funding and work out who I’m getting to do it.

[Anonymous said]: hey bud, x421 here, again, might be already fixed because thats from no haven .903, but i recently had the witch queen super rare quest, you might want to proof read the quest and results, there are a few typos. i really did enjoy the writing nonetheless, just a quick question about that quest, as far as i understood this one, you only change your odds of the final result depending on how good you do on your way to the final, but the reward in the end only depends on the final result? 1/2

2/2 it just dawned on me that its been a while since you made an Q&A post so i guess i ll go and lurk on the tfgames forum in the next days, just one last question: i asked early in development about camp upgrades and you were not that convinced about that stuff, i understand you want the slaver camp as some bandit camp and not some castle/bastion or whatever, but since you added camp upgrades, maybe add proximity to a certain region? or something to spend supplies and gold in a 13month+ run?

- Hah! Okay will give it another read through.That’s correct yes. There’s also rewards on the way if you Critical those parts.

There is a new gold sink coming soon in an upcoming update. I’ve also got plans for more camp upgrades coming later.

[From the Patreon]: I'm that guy you replied to about the patch notes in Q&A 101. Solid updates. Bugs in the outfit system has driven me nuts since like, 2015, has it been that long already? I think it has. I like collecting them and something always blows up. This time, I ended up with a slaver wearing both the ooze outfit and ponygirl outfit. So there's that. Also I was disappointed the new Quicker then You'd Like wasn't interactive. Solid in any case though, thanks!

- I'll get them all one day I swear! Don't suppose you remember the chain of events that led to that? New QAYL was a patron requested one with the idea of having a big pay off for playing submissive which often involves playing sub-optimally.

[From the Patreon]: 1-ive been noticing when you choose to repick choices for an slave training assignment the slave gets added to the list of choices 2-also just how rare is the post-slave princess city assignment, cause i can never seem to get it even after selling multiple slave princesses 3-another thing is that the nightly puppet-leader stat is almost impossible to get again(either that or i have bedwarmers incapable of usurping me even thought i my current stats mean i couldnt win against even the subbiest slave)

- Will check 3 as you've not been the only person to mention that. 2 I know exists for sure as other people have definitely got it. Should be no rarer than any other rare City assignment, and thanks for the spot on 1.

[From the Discord]: Top 3 Animes of the 2010 to 2020

Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica the series was staggeringly good. Just redefined what anime could be to me. Film is a... well it was a thing. A beautiful thing with an ending which I still quite know how to feel about.

Shirobako. It’s about creativity, craft, and about how people can come together to make something. It might not be something good, but dangit it’s been made and that’s worthwhile. It’s also from personal experience by miles the most accurate depiction of working in an office I’ve ever seen.

Oh man this is very very hard deciding on the third so pick one of the following and I could probably make a strong case for it.

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, Darling in the FranXX (yes really, yes even the ending), Lupin III: Part 5, Kill la Kill, Monster Musume, Flip Flappers, Demi-chan wa Kataritai, Zombieland Saga, or Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai.

Also while I was taking the question to mean series both Your Name and Promare are absolutely phenonemal films.

[From the Discord]: Best recent Eurovision Act

Lena. Always Lena.

[From the Discord]: What's the agricultural technological level of No Haven like

It’s not hit industrialization yet. What makes the difference is and allows cities like Aversol and even bigger to exist is that the organization of the human empire is far better than it has any right to be for the other levels of development being able to keep an incredibly complex supply chain constantly flowing even if on the ground level it barely seems to be moving at all. There are also some much, much larger farms both on the Great Plains and further to the north compared to the much more isolated single/couple of households ones that your slavers raid.

[From the Discord]: What have been some of your all-time favourite assignments, both in terms of working on them and how they turned out?

Love When Week’s End Comes for a recent one. Writing all the results in colour commentary (and all the variations for weather, events and outcomes) was a real challenge and I do like how it came out.

Witch-Queen and Arisin’ for being the first times I tried to go for a different, more potentially disturbing/freaky mood, and I’m pleased with the results.

Sable Masquerade as I really like the ‘bad end’ I came up with. Actually I like the whole thing as while the pitch from the patron obviously helped, a lot of it was inspired by a random superhero bondage party picture I saw on HF, which I decided to run with, and had a bunch of fun exploring.

[From the Discord]: Weirdest bug and most difficult bug

The one that resulted in a male wisp riding a griffon was a fun one.

Most difficult has to be the clothing management which as a previous question suggests I’ve still not entirely solved.

[From the Discord]: If No Haven was an MMO, what race/class would you play?

Kreen rogue mainly as I really like the edit I did for the portrait which MidnightonMars later translated into a commission.

If not definitely a lamia.

[From the Discord]: Knowing what you do now about the design of the game, are there any game mechanics you wish you'd have implemented differently?

Clothing management. So very much clothing management. I’ve redone it entirely twice now, and it’s still not where I want it to be.

[From the Discord]: What was your inspiration for creating the setting of No Haven? Has the direction the game has gone varied from your initial idea? If so what has been the biggest change?

- It started off with adapting the chan game Deeper Dungeons which was basically a certain popular mmo with nothing different about it outside of it being porn along with some possibly unwise options of personal abuse. I first changed it by ditching gnomes for neko which to my mind was a clear upgrade. There even used to be an examine refference in the RAGS version to suggest they’d been in the region of the dungeons before being driven out.

Then it was a gradual process of adding with the occasional subtractions to get it closer to a more Warhammer feeling setting which has always been a major love of mine when I was still doing Whorelock’s in RAGS.

With No Haven it was a case of building on what I’ve done there and expanding upon that with the race lore and assignment descriptions. Biggest was probably when I did the favoured/unfavoured stuff and added a ton of extra backstory to various races to justify the choices made there.

#Q&A

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bossladytae · 5 years

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Five Key HijiTae Moments

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I’ve been shipping Hijikata x Tae /土妙 since 2007, and as self-proclaimed captain of this ship, I’ve sailed without expecting a canon ending. Indeed, I expected nothing more beyond the Yagyuu arc, but Sorachi gave me even more moments to be thankful for - five of which are compiled in this post as a final send-off.

Before I begin, I wish to convey my gratitude to @arirna, who is the chief officer of the HijiTae ship, as well as the Tsukuyo to my Tae, our ladies whom we adore so much. I’ve much enjoyed all our numerous discussions on many topics. You make great gifs (thanks for granting my requests! And for allowing me to use and link them in this post because I couldn’t figure out how to embed just one gif from a single post, woe is me), and you’ve long been a staunch supporter of the ship. I will never be able to thank you enough, my friend!

Now then, to the Moments:

I’ve written a summarized analysis of HijiTae and why I like them as a ship before, along with brief mention of other viable Tae and Hijikata ships heavily implied in canon (Kondou, Kyuubei, Mitsuba), so I’m not going to get into them for this post, which is purely to celebrate each HijiTae moment, counting down to what I feel is the most important one.

(5) Episode 18, the “Underwear Thief”

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“Tear him apart.”

“Dismember him and stomp him into the ground.”

“Hey! Both of you are getting very scary!”

Hijikata and Okita are not present in the original manga story arc, but they are added to the anime (no doubt to appeal to audiences with their growing popularity at the time). This is the first instance that made me see the appeal of their potential relationship, as well as the potential friendship that can result from their rare interactions. Early on in the series, I had no particular ships in mind until I watched this episode. Hijikata and Tae start talking about the best ways to torture somebody, and they eventually get so out of hand with their discussion, complete with shoujo anime bubbles and all, that Shinpachi breaks them up because they are too terrifying together. And, indeed, they would be the most terrifying couple in the country.

(4) Character Poll Arc

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“As long as you are around, Shinsengumi, including Kondou-san, won’t be able to stand alone at the top.”

“So you intend to eliminate the woman who is the source of your boss’ scandalous behaviour? I would expect no less from the Demon Vice-Chief. You’re used to doing dirty work.”

Dashing the Fourth Wall to pieces, this arc addresses the original concepts behind some of the characters, particularly those that are based on real historical figures. When Tae rallies Kyuubei, Kagura, Tsukuyo, and Sacchan together to stand against the men, Hijikata and Katsura soon accost them – one to Tae and the other to Kyuubei, and both line-ups make the best sense for each character. Katsura and Kyuubei bicker over their shared characteristics, and they also know each other better since Katsura was once invited to Kyuubei’s birthday party. Tae also knows Katsura, but she’s very familiar to the Shinsengumi for obvious reasons. Hijikata and Tae facing off allows Kondou to seamlessly return to the scene, since he has closer ties to Hijikata and Tae.

What I enjoy about this interaction is the way Tae is fearless around Hijikata; his demon nickname and reputation don’t intimidate her. She knows just how to push his buttons, too, teasing him about his voice actor and how historians have a bone to pick with such brazen depictions of famed samurai. As for Hijikata, he reveals that he knows just how much of a powerful force she is, wielding great influence over the Shinsengumi, impacting their reputation with their commander under her thumb.

This interaction shows the potential for fun bantering and bickering between them. They don’t hesitate to challenge one another, and as we see in the top two moments below, they also don’t hesitate to support or defend one another/what’s important to them for the other’s sake.

(3) Timeskip Arc

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“Please, for our child’s sake, we have to run away! To a world without gorillas!”

“Did you think something like this would fool me? Give me the kid and scram. I’ll look after him.”

Never in my wildest imagination did I think Sorachi would give us a canon child for this ship. Togoro is the hypothetical son of Hijikata and Tae in an otherwise hilarious farce of a story arc. Tae is noted to be pregnant and married to Kondou, and then gives birth within an hour to a baby whose father is revealed to be Hijikata. She wants to run off with him and raise their child together. Hijikata refuses, saying he will raise the child as a single father. And then he proceeds to name the child (as a fifteenth son and as a combination of his and Tamegoro’s names) and begs Shinpachi to let Togoro live.

Some people say Tae’s ambition was to have a child with Hijikata. To me, it’s more like she envisioned a soap opera plot line, typical of the drama series she watches, especially since when she and Hijikata first talk in the Yagyuu arc, she imagined Kondou and Hijikata vying for her affections in true theatrical style. She could have had that baby with somebody else, but once again, Hijikata is in the mix, and probably made for a more dramatic soap opera story line of a woman caught between the police chief and his deputy.

As for Hijikata’s ambition, well, it’s a little hard to say since he and Shinpachi were the stand-in for the audience, trying to unravel this mystery of a wart-infused world only to find that they had become warts themselves. At least we see that Hijikata, once confronted with the possibility of fatherhood, was willing to take responsibility. He’s not explicitly interested in Tae as a romantic prospect, and I don’t expect it since Sorachi would and should have written obvious interest (something that people can’t deny) between them right from the start, so that it would make sense later.

But, it doesn’t change the fact that Togoro is Hijikata and Tae’s hypothetical son and theirs alone, warts and all.

(2) Farewell Shinsengumi Arc

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“If you really do want to drink, I don’t mind spending a while with you.”

“If you poured it for me with that face, I wouldn’t be able to drink it.”

There are few moments that have triggered Hijikata into fierce emotional reaction. He has shed tears for Mitsuba, the Shinsengumi’s disbandment and Kondou’s arrest, and Kondou’s revival. He’s gotten angry on behalf of not only Kondou, but also Tetsunosuke for what Isaburou was doing and saying to him. Hijikata is short-tempered, most of the time for comedic purposes, and he’s endured many ordeals in his young life, so it takes a lot to push him over the edge into true sorrow and true rage.

Nobu Nobu cuts the neck (actually does cut it in the manga) of a teary-eyed Tae, who defended Kondou and his reputation. She knows she could easily lose her life for going against the Shogun. That was the reason Hijikata had held back on doing or saying anything. Perhaps he feared anything he might do would advance Kondou’s execution, threaten the remaining Shinsengumi, and further endanger civilians’ lives. Feeling he could do nothing, he stood there, taking the shame and the mockery from both Isaburou and Nobu Nobu – that is, until Tae’s life is threatened. And, finally, Hijikata reacts with a terrifying gleam of rage in his eyes.

This is the kind of trope that comes standard with any kind of ship, romantic or platonic, when someone shows great concern and fury for another being threatened. If this were another series, people would be proclaiming “canon” all over the place, but in this fandom, very few acknowledge this scene, and they skip over to other parts instead. But that doesn’t make Hijikata or Tae’s acts insignificant.

As for Tae, we’ve seen her shed tears of sorrow for Kyuubei, for Hajime, and now for Kondou. While it has taken many chapters to reach this point, it’s clear she respects and believes him to be a good man. Standing up to a tyrannical shogun at this point in the story could mean immediate execution. Tae risked her life to defend Kondou, to stand up for what she believed in, and it did not go unnoticed. We know how devoted Hijikata is to Kondou, how his arrest left Hijikata in such a broken state of mind, but Tae’s defense and life-threatening moment sparked something once more; the catalyst needed for when the rest of the Shinsengumi reignited that fire within.

Of course, it could have been anyone else, and Hijikata would have done his best to ensure no civilians are harmed. But he wasn’t able to move or act during that time of mockery by his enemies. He said and felt he couldn’t do anything at all with Kondou gone. But I think hearing Tae’s impassioned speech, sharing in her belief that Kondou would never conduct himself so shamefully, inspired him to act. He knows Tae is important to Kondou, and I like to think Tae is important enough to Hijikata as a comrade, as a friend—and the potential for more is what fans love about this scene.

Kozenigata did call the Shinsengumi, “her police,” and that includes Hijikata. It’s why she played a role in the Farewell Shinsengumi arc, and in the Silver Soul arc, she welcomed them back home to Edo. The Shinsengumi admire, fear, and respect Tae, and so her police they remain.

(1) Yagyuu Arc

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“I…am the worst, aren’t I? In the end…going off on my own…I got other people hurt because of it. Causing trouble for Kyuu-chan…and for everyone else. Even though I couldn’t see it through until the very end, I did it with such half-hearted conviction… What I did in the end wasn’t for anyone’s sake.”

“You’re not a Buddha. Did you think you could save everyone in front of you? No matter how many bones you break trying, there are things you can save and things you can’t. So what? Is your way of life so fragile that it would break with this? Now, if there was someone who could be saved by your so-called half-hearted kindness…what would you do?”

This is the official first HijiTae moment within Sorachi’s manga canon: the Yagyuu arc launched two new Tae ships. You’d think the previous moment would be the culmination of everything, but it is the beginning that I find the most important because it shows that Hijikata and Tae are capable of civil conversation and speaking to one another as equals.

We first start out with a comedic exchange in which Tae thinks Hijikata has come to battle for her heart against Kondou, followed by a brief banter of which drama series best suits Kondou and Tae’s imaginary tales. But the point of his visit is to convince Tae to marry Kondou just to help him avoid marrying a gorilla. He earns bonus points for saying that “No means no” when a woman declines.

Later, after the main events of the arc, Tae invites everyone back to Snack Smile to apologize to them, but they’re present at Kondou’s wedding. Only Hijikata goes, and I think he went back because he knows Tae has a good heart. He doesn’t ask her specifically to marry Kondou again, but he listens to her outpouring of feelings over the situation. He then gives practical advice, and in a roundabout way, asks if she will consider just saving Kondou from his wedding at least. And Tae does.

What I love about this arc is their conversations – from casual and fun to serious and thought-provoking – and it didn’t take them hundreds of chapters to reach that point. They arrived there easily and naturally. This quiet moment of introspection they share was more than enough for me to solidify my love for them, and that fondness for the HijiTae ship has continued on for almost twelve years.

BONUS: Soul Switch Arc

A bonus only because it doesn’t strictly involve the two of them alone.

People often forget that Tae only blushed after Hijikata-in-Gintoki’s-body flirted with her. She was charmed by Hijikata’s way of flirting, which was very genteel and sincere and a bit impassioned, much like the way he wrote Shinpachi’s letter for Kirara. When Gintoki-in-Hijikata’s body attempted his usual way of flirting, Tae was unimpressed, aside from being skeptical that Hijikata would truly proposition her. However, once she took it as truth, she was more than willing to consider him a prospect.

In my opinion, Gintoki on his own really doesn’t do anything for Tae since the only moments she was romantically attracted to him was when he lost his memories and original personality, and when he was actually Hijikata. She has also mentioned desiring a partner with a stable income, and I can see someone more traditional, not to mention stricter in handling one’s responsibilities, fitting in better with her lifestyle (hence why Kondou and Kyuubei are the other commonly teased ships), whereas Gintoki is more unconventional about life, going at his own pace. Tae always bases her life around goals and working toward them; she’s not the type to sit around, doing nothing, waiting only to welcome people home when she has a life and dream of her own, too.

There are some other minor interactions (not to mention that Otose and Tatsugoro parallel), but these five are the most important and relevant.

And there you have it. This is a summary of why I enjoy the Hijikata x Tae ship so much. They are both people who hold fast to their convictions, and who do their best to be strong for others’ sake, both leading, respectively, a district and a military police force. They are capable of comedic and civil conversations with one another; prone to bickering but also fighting for one another’s cause based on what they feel is right. At the very least, they remain friends and comrades in the end.

Nothing changes what Sorachi wrote about and for them. It was all his decision, not mine, and if others can celebrate moments for their ship, then there’s no reason I can’t, either. All the negative arguments people throw at me, I have addressed before, so I will not waste time doing so again. I’m not obligated to respond or justify a fictional ship to strangers on the Internet at their demand. Fandom is not a monolith required to bend to a single person’s will, and liking one ship doesn’t cause the erasure of others (that line of reasoning is beyond ridiculous). If you don’t like the ship, the simplest thing is to move on with your life and forget the ship exists.

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johnsaye · 5 years

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Making Choices

Saw some cool stuff this week. I’m excited now that we are getting their new solo Joker movie. For some reason, I never thought it would work, but now that I’ve seen a great trailer, I think it’s going to be a smash. I’m not a fan of giving the Joker a history, and a definite name. I think he’s less of a genius madman when he has an identity. I think that mystery is part of the story. This one though… it might be an Oscar grab, but I think it might be a good one.

This week I’ve thought a lot about doing some choose your own adventures and creating other interactive fiction. I messed with the Kindle Create app to find out if it could deal with the links. I just thought of something… the whole Internet is one big to choose your own adventure with a billion different endings.

Website

Finally got the SSL set up on the site. It took a while, but that’s what I get for transferring my domain over the Labor Day weekend. In the end, I’m much happier with the layout like this, and I’m looking forward to years with this new site. I’m thinking about making sure it get about a blog out each week, if for no other reason to make sure that I’m talking, and getting out there.

Health

This week among therapy sessions and getting baths, that kind of thing, I went to get the process started to get a new set of braces. I’m getting a new resting brace for my curled up left hand, and a new regular brace to hold my stylus. My fingers are still going to be the last things back as I recover, but in the meantime, I’ve got to do something about it, and since I believe there might be an enlightened civilization living in a couple of the smellier patches. I’ve done well with this one, and now it’s simply some for another.

I am bananas. I just want everybody to know. I grew up playing computer games. I had an Atari 2600, and I’ll probably get all nostalgic about that later, but what I remember better than almost anything else are the Interactive Fiction games from Infocom. You’d sit there, and type N, S, E or W to get around from area to area, a lot of ‘get all,’ to pick everything up, inventory lists where you’ll eventually run out of space in. There’s a lot of using this object on that, and it’s all in text. The thing is, with rules in place to govern the behavior of certain monsters or characters, these stories can take on a life of their own in your reading mind’s eye. One of the best of these games to ever come out was based on characters created by Douglas Adams for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a playful nod to the original stories, but to me, they felt like when you were playing it, that the book was reading back at you.

Thirtieth Anniversary of the Hitchhiker’s Guide Game can be played here: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/interactive/embed/container.html?url=//downloads.bbc.co.uk/interactive/h2g2/main.js&height=577px&width=944px&path=//downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio/games/h2g2/

Remember these things?

The original games came on ancient five-inch floppy disks, that my kids will never relate to, ever, and each game came with props, slide rules, themed hint books, an example instruction book about how to play, and maybe a button or a pair of sunglasses. These things were amazing. What they couldn’t deliver in high-end graphics (which didn’t exist anyway) the could make up for in stimulating your imagination directly. I loved these things in addition to other interactive fiction like choose your own adventure books. I wondered and wonder still, can I make the same kind of magic happen? I don’t know, but I want to try. I’ve played around with Inform and with TADS. I think I can do it, but it’s so clunky! I’ve really got to practice, but first I need to wrap my brain around the puzzles I want to do. You’d think I would have thought about this before, but there you go.

Writing

I’m splitting my concentration lately between about four projects that I want to say I’m adding words to. I’ve got a seat-of-the-pants story, a story with a clearer outline, that still has some hokes in it that I don’t know how to fill, the desire to do a classic style choose your own adventure, and a text adventure. I realize this last one is something of a thirty-five-year-old goal, and I’ve always wanted to write one of these things, but there you go. I know, I should just pick one and do it, but that doesn’t make it easy, besides the fact that November is coming up, and I’ll be starting up my NaNoWriMo novel anyway, and generally concentrating on that, so I suppose that’s a fifth project that’s got me thinking in multiple directions. I want to do that, to put lots of effort into that because I get such a great catapult into the next part of the year when I do that. I’m going to go do that outline.

I keep thinking this year I want to do some kind of Alice in wonderland meets the matrix combination where I allow every crazy surrealistic thing that wants in to get in. That and I am still toying with getting my first draft done while on camera.

So far this week I’ve got several thousand words written into a story, with a pretty good outline, so I’m happy with that.

Reading

I’m still reading Catcher in the Rye again. I’m taking my time. I try each day around therapy sessions to write fresh copy, do at least one editing pass on a chapter of something else, and then read, but that’s usually quiet time… so… naps…

Cinema

youtube

This thing looks awesome. Now I just gotta figure out what to choose next, right?

source https://www.johnsaye.com/making-choices/

#Journal

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maevefiction · 6 years

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Your Light in the Mist - Chapter 6

I had said goodnight and closed the door on a still speechless Tom, then slid down the back of it and hit the floor with a gentle thud. I sat there like a rag doll, arms hanging loose at my sides, chin resting on my chest as my synapses fired like a fourth of July fireworks show gone awry. I felt like one of the Synths from HUMANS when their code went bad.

Half an hour went by before the world began to come into focus again, and I slowly began to take the vast amount of shit that required my attention into consideration. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.

“Am I insane? How the hell am I going to tie up all my loose ends and do two seminars in two days? What the fuck was I thinking?!?” My phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my bag…it was Tom. Right. That’s what I’d been thinking. I tapped the answer button.

“What can I do to you, Thomas?” I slapped my hand to my forehead when I realized what I’d said. Nothing like a classic Freudian slip to start off our very first phone conversation.

There was a moment of silence, then a sharp intake of breath that was deliciously tantalizing…which I desperately tried to ignore as I scrambled to recover.

“Whoops. Perhaps I should rephrase that. What can I do FOR you, Thomas?”

“I…I…” He cleared his throat. “Christ, Maude, are you trying to kill me? It took me all this time to cease picturing you strutting naked through your suite and regain enough of my composure to hit the call button.”

I grunted out a hmpf. “If it’s any consolation, I’m still sitting with my back against the room door. Because that happens to be where I landed when I slid down it after closing it in your face. Now my legs are asleep and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get up.”

“Serves you right, you wicked temptress.” He laughed, then paused. “I know you’re ridiculously busy, but I…well, I suppose I just wanted to hear your voice again so I could reassure myself that this unimaginably marvelous day actually happened and I didn’t dream it all.”

I groaned. “Really, Hiddleston? How the fuck I am I supposed to top that? Anything I could conjure up would pale in comparison, so I’ll simply state that I understand and concur.”

“Good. Now, shall I pay you a visit and help you attain a more desirable position?” I didn’t need to see his face to know he was smirking.

“Thomas. Stahp. I have no time for a cold shower break.” He laughed.

“I guess that makes us even, then. I’ll let you get back to work. Goodnight, Maude.”

“Goodnight, Tom. And if you find you need something to keep you occupied, feel free to make me a list of at least five websites you like the looks of. Don’t forget to include exactly what you like and why you like it.”

He huffed. “Did you just assign me homework? Because it sounds very much like you assigned me homework.”

“Let’s call it project participation instead. Better?”

“Marginally.” He paused for a few seconds. “May I call you tomorrow after your seminar?”

“I’d be rather pissed if you didn’t.”

“And I’d be terribly disappointed if you weren’t. Goodnight again, Maude. Try and get some rest.”

“You too. Goodnight again, Tom.”

I hit end call and began the arduous process of hefting myself off the floor. It was even worse than I anticipated, and I was reasonably sure I bore a strong resemblance to a newborn calf standing up for the first time. Once I felt steady enough, I pulled my dress over my head, yanked off my bra and grabbed a T-shirt off the floor. I sniffed it…not bad. I slipped it on, grabbed my messenger bag and plopped down at the desk.

*************************************************** My first mission was to find a videographer willing to work on extremely short notice. I’d decided to have these last two seminars recorded, hoping one or an edited combination of both would be good enough to post on my website for sale. Consulting was out of the question, but there was no reason to not make some residual cash after so many years of perfecting my lectures. Plus, it alleviated the bit of apprehension I felt at pulling the plug on everything in the blink of an eye. I found one that was open until 11 PM and had experience with marketing production - Kamana Media. I dialed the contact number, fingers crossed.

The rep seemed very excited when I told him what I wanted, but balked when I casually mentioned that I needed it done tomorrow and Wednesday. It took some seriously high levels of Maude-schmooze and tripling their normal rate, but they’d be at the hotel tomorrow morning at 9 AM.

Next came editing my presentations to remove all references to consultations, followed by a search for a shopping cart that worked with both my merchant account and design software. Then came my favorite part…getting the cart customized, adding items, and figuring out how to embed the code to my site files so it would display exactly the way I wanted. The next time I looked up, it was 1 AM and I still had some text modifications to complete, in addition to a ‘hey, so sorry, but I’m outta here’ letter to post on the site and across all my social media accounts. My phone vibrated, dancing its way nearly out of my reach. I picked it up, hoping it wasn’t a last minute kiss off text from the Kamana people, though they closed two hours prior.

Went out for a night walk and noticed that your lights are on. You can’t possibly still be awake at this hour, can you? –T

I’m not sure awake is an accurate representation of my state of consciousness, but I am not currently sleeping, so…technically, yeah. –M

I waited for his reply for a few minutes, but nothing came through. Figuring he might have gotten a call or had fallen asleep, I set the phone back on the table and returned to work. The text changes were easy, but then I realized the menus needed to be adjusted to remove several links. My ability to focus was fading fast, so I cranked up the volume on my iPod, hoping it would give me enough of a boost to power through. I ignored my mother’s voice in my head saying ‘Turn that down, young lady. Do you want to end up deaf? Everyone will think I’m a terrible mother!’ Junkie XL’s ‘Beauty Never Fades’ came on and I sighed happily…exactly what I needed. I put it on repeat.

The third time through I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye…my phone was doing the jig again. I paused the song and nabbed it just as it started to go over the edge of the desk. There were six texts, all from Tom.

“Damn.” I frowned and began to scroll through them.

I’m out in the hallway with a little surprise for you. Hope that’s okay. –T

Hmm, you aren’t answering your door. –T

Does that mean it’s NOT okay? – T

Still knocking. Can’t be too loud, don’t want to wake the neighbors. –T

Hope you’re alright in there. Starting to fret a bit. Ease my mind and reply, please. –T

Maude, I know you’re in there, I can hear you singing. –T

The phone vibrated in my hand as I yanked out my earbuds, got up, and headed for the door. I undid the bolt and flung it open to find Tom in a white V-neck and navy shorts with an orange-red stripe, pacing and staring at his phone. He raised his head, exhaling seemingly with relief when he saw me. I spotted a carryout tray with two cups in it on the floor, as well as what appeared to be a bag of Lindor truffles. When I lifted my head to meet his gaze and instead caught him in the act of looking me up and down, I suddenly remembered that I was clad only in a thin T-shirt and panties. His eyes finally met mine again, lips parted just enough for his tongue to slip out and graze over them. I began fanning myself with my hand.

“Is it me or is it ridiculously warm tonight?” He said not a word, continuing staring at me with an intensity that made me want to push him down and ride him like a pony right there in the hallway.

“Yeah. Anyway. I had my iPod turned way up so I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel, as they say, and totally didn’t hear you knocking. And my phone was on vibrate too. Not that I would have heard it ring if it wasn’t. So. Really, really sorry about that.” I pointed to the truffles. “Please tell me that those are for me. And that the beverages are caffeinated.”

He shook his head as if to clear it and smiled as he put his phone in his pocket, then bent over to pick up the carryout tray. He took two steps towards the door. “Yes, and yes. But I’m afraid you can’t have them unless you invite me in.”

I snorted, stepping back to hold the door for him. “I’d invite Freddy Kruger in if he had Lindor Truffles and caffeine.” He didn’t move. “What? Damn you British and your impeccable manners. Thomas, would you care to enter my temporary domicile?”

He grinned. “Why yes, I thought you’d never ask.” I stuck my tongue out at him.

“You’d best get in here before I snatch that tray out of your hands and slam the door in your face.” He chuckled. I poked him in the chest. “I wasn’t joking.”

He patted my upper arm. “Oh, I’m aware. That’s why it’s funny.” He set the tray on the desk. “You have quite a lovely singing voice, by the way. Have you had any vocal training?”

“Thanks. And no, unless you count the band I was in a thousand years ago when I was young and didn’t know any better. Or when I’m driving. Or working. Or in the grocery store.” I rolled my eyes. “Or everyone’s favorite, when I think of the perfect song for the moment and belt it out no matter the location or company.”

He was leaning on the desk, legs and arms crossed, head tilted. “Do you like to dance, Maude?”

“No, I don’t like to dance.” I watched his face fall a bit. Such an easy mark. “I love to dance. Sometimes I even dance and sing at the same time. It all depends upon how the spirit moves me. Right now it’s moving me towards those truffles, though. Will you do the honors and open them, please?”

I put my phone on the table, walked over to the wardrobe, pulled a pair of cut-off sweatpants out of the drawer and slipped them on. Tom grabbed one of the oversized wing back chairs and dragged it over to the desk for himself. I sat back down in my spot, pulled the earbud jack out of the iPod, put it into shuffle mode and lowered the volume from ‘dance club’ to ‘study session’. He proffered the bag and I took a handful of truffles. I unwrapped one and popped it in my mouth.

“Ung. These are SO good.” I swallowed. “How did you manage to score these at one in the morning?”

“I’ll have you know that they are from my own personal stash. Which I normally never share. With anyone. But, being that you were generous enough to share your cookies with me earlier, I felt it was only fair to reciprocate in kind.” I nodded.

“Let’s not forget about the baked mozzarella, the parmesan fries and the fettucine alfredo I ‘shared’. Totally against my will.” I devoured two more tiny balls of chocolatey goodness. “So, you travel with candy. I would have accepted Luke’s offer immediately and without question if I’d known that.”

He laughed and handed me one of the to-go cups. “Earl Grey tea with a splash of cream. I figured you’d take it with sugar but wasn’t sure how much, so I brought these.”

He pulled a handful of sugar packets out of his pocket and put them on the desk. I took the lid off and took five sugars from the pile. They were warm to the touch, and knowing they had just been so close to his skin made me a little lightheaded. Or maybe it was just lack of sleep. Sure, Maude, keep telling yourself that. I shook my head.

“Damn, did I get that wrong? Luke said you asked for tea earlier so I assumed…” I cut him off.

“Nope, I’m a tea all the way. Coffee makes me ragey for some reason. Let me guess, you travel with teabags too?” He grinned.

“Indeed I do. I got the cups, tray and hot water from the all-night gas station down the road.”

I furrowed my brow. “So you did all this in, like, 15 minutes?” He held his hands out and shrugged, blushing slightly.

“Actually, I stopped at the gas station on the night walk I mentioned when we were texting.” I put the lid back on my tea and swirled it around to mix in the sugar. He pulled a plastic stirrer out of his other pocket and handed it to me, sighing as he realized I’d most likely have guessed that this encounter wasn’t at all spontaneous after hearing what he’d just said. He smiled self-consciously.

I reached out to put a hand on his knee, but he had begun sliding out of the chair towards the desk so he could grab his beverage and it wound up on his bare inner thigh instead. I could feel the muscle tighten under my hand, his hips thrusting upward reflexively in spite of his valiant effort to resist. I bit my lip and closed my eyes, opening them when I felt his hand on top of mine through his shorts. His jaw was clenched, nostrils flaring as he tried to control his breathing. My pulse was pounding in my ears and in my head and in my chest…and, most noticeably, in my groin. We exhaled in unison. He spoke first, taking my free hand in his.

“Maude, I…I am so, so sorry…I didn’t…” I shook my head vehemently.

“Thomas. Please. Don’t you dare apologize for what was perhaps the most sexually exciting moment of my life.” I bit my lip again, leaned in closer and raised an eyebrow. “So far.” He began rubbing my wrist with this thumb, his face a kaleidoscope of emotions.

“You…you’re…you aren’t offended?” He looked puzzled.

“By the fact that just putting my hand on your thigh earned me a pelvic thrust? Um, no. Nope. Not even a little.” I squeezed his hand. “Why would you think I’d be offended by a physical expression of something we’ve been bantering back and forth about for hours? And let’s not forget that you’ve literally seen me naked already.”

He shook his head. “I’m…I…damn. That’s not really what I meant. I was more referring to the idea that I’d arrived with tea and truffles not to spend time with you, but instead as a ruse to get you into bed. I didn’t. Honestly. I just don’t want you to think less of me, or that I don’t respect you, or that this is how I conduct myself with women I’ve just met, despite what most of the world seems to believe, and most importantly I absolutely don’t want you to conclude that I think you’re just another notch on my belt and that all I want from you is sex because that couldn’t be further from the truth …god, I’m fucking this up royally, aren’t I?” His chin fell to his chest.

I let go of his hand so I could touch his face. “You most certainly are not.”

We were both silent for what seemed like an eternity, La Roux’s “Tigerlily’ playing softly in the background.

“I could be here when you call I’ll make you top of the list And in the crush of the dark I’ll be your light in the mist I can see you burning with desire for a kiss Psychobabble all upon your lips”

He slowly raised his head as the chorus repeated, wrapping his fingers around my wrist and holding my hand to his face. I’d heard the song a hundred times, and sung it nearly as many, but suddenly the lyrics held meaning I could have never envisioned. The look in his eyes told me they resonated with him as well.

I slid the hand that was still on his thigh out from under his shorts and got up from my chair, closing the space between us in a single step. He looked up at me, eyes wide, as I climbed into his lap and straddled him. I felt his arm wrap around my waist as I leaned in and touched my lips to his. They were warm, and soft, and I couldn’t resist running my tongue across them. He opened his mouth to me in invitation, and I accepted with boundless enthusiasm. He tasted of chocolate, with a faint hint of something spicy I didn’t recognize. He bit my bottom lip before thrusting his tongue out to meet mine, and I seized the moment to capture and begin sucking on it. He groaned loudly and yanked the tie from my hair, freeing it so he could bury his fingers in my curls. Time seemed to have come to a screeching halt as we devoured each other, completely lost in the moment, until our teeth crashed together with such force that it made my ears ring and brought us back to reality.

I was panting like I’d run a six minute mile. “Shit. You okay?”

His chest heaved as he grinned. “I am positively divine, thank you.” I responded by grinding my pelvis against him, then pushed myself up and off his lap. “Maaauuuuuuddde. Where. Are. You. Going.”

I shimmied out of my sweat-shorts and returned to my spot, grinding against him again. “Mmm, that’s much better.” I dragged my hand down his chest and stomach, smirking as I slipped it under the hem of his V-neck. “May I?”

He leaned forward and lifted his arms over his head. I peeled it off slowly, drinking in the sight of his naked torso. Tossing the shirt to the side, I leaned in and licked the hollow above his collarbone. He gasped, and I traversed to his left nipple, first biting it gently, then suckling. His long, low moan was intoxicating, making me dizzy with want. I felt the warmth of his hand on the skin of my back as he pushed my T-shirt upward. I pulled back and raised my arms above my head before he even had a chance to ask for permission. He laughed.

“Eager, are we?” His voice was deeper than usual, throaty and full of ardor.

“You have no idea.” I was blinded momentarily as he finished removing my shirt. When my view was once again unobstructed, the intensity in his stare as he gazed from my breasts to my face then back again made me wonder if spontaneous combustion was in my near future. He let out a low whistle.

“Oh, but I believe I do, Maude. I believe I do.” He took one in each hand, running a thumb over each already rock hard nipple, then pulled me forward to take one in his mouth. It was my turn to gasp, and I wound my fingers in his hair, holding him to me. He alternated from one to the other, and I felt his hand creep down my stomach, finally reaching my mound and cupping it gently. My panties were soaked through. He let my nipple go with a pop and looked up at me, eyes dark and pupils blown wide with desire.

“My apologies, you were, in fact, correct…I had no idea.” He slid his hand under the elastic waistband, whining audibly when it met skin that was waxed bare and dripping wet. He tugged at the fabric, unable to utter anything other than “Off. Please.”

I stood, pushing them down over my legs, then kicked them off. I paused for a moment to take him in, my eyes resting on the bulge tenting his shorts that made it glaringly obvious he had opted for going commando this evening. I stepped between his legs, leaning down to slip my hands under his shorts at the waist. I hesitated, knowing we were near the point of no return but hadn’t covered all our bases. I looked up at him.

“So. Tests?” It took him a moment to piece together what I was getting at.

“Yes. Last year. Clean. No one since. You?”

“2010. Clean. No one since. On the pill.” His eyes widened in surprise and I didn’t wait for him to comment. “Yes, five years. I’m very…particular.” I grabbed onto his waistband and pulled with one hand, tapping his hip with the other. “Lift.”

He raised his hips up and I eased the shorts over his erection, then slipped them off his ass and down his legs. He smiled as I licked my lips, then grunted as I took him in hand. At least eight inches of glorious purpose, and almost too thick for me to get my fingers around. I leaned in to whisper in his ear as I stroked up and down, squeezing, pausing now and again to run my thumb over his weeping slit.

“It’s no wonder Loki thinks he deserves a throne. THIS is the cock of a king.” He growled, a sound so low and deep that I could actually see his chest vibrating, and began to lift himself up off the chair.

I let go of his cock and put both hands on his shoulders, pushing him firmly back into a seated position as I nestled my knees on either side of his hips. He raised his brows quizzically, eyes narrowed.

“No bed?” I shook my head. He looked down at himself, then back at me, concerned. It finally dawned on me what he was getting at, and I supposed that his size might be a challenge for some women if they weren’t sufficiently aroused. I shook my head again and rubbed my soaked pussy up and down his shaft, groaning as the tip hit my clit over and over.

“Nope.” Groan. “I’m good.” He reached between us, sliding two long fingers inside me. I came instantly, and the look on his face was priceless.

“Di..I…did you…did you just…” I rolled my hips and squeezed his fingers, grasping his face with both hands as I leaned in to pull his bottom lip into my mouth briefly. He moaned as he withdrew his fingers and brought them to my lips. I licked at them, then sucked them clean greedily. I felt him shudder as I rose up on my knees. He breathed deeply, inhaling and exhaling for a few moments as he tried to pull himself back from the edge.

“Maude.”

“Tom.”

“Not going to last long.”

“Don’t care.”

“I…I…Mau…”

I kissed him sloppily, cutting him off, then spoke.

“Thomas. William. Hiddleston. Shut up and fuck me already.”

Before I even got the ‘me already’ out the head of his cock was poised at my entrance, and our eyes locked as I pushed down and he pushed up, meeting no resistance and fully seating himself in a single thrust. He stared at me in wonder, mouth agape, gasping and grabbing onto my hips as I began to ride him.

“Maude…that…you…how…all of me…GOD…feels incredible…you…so warm…so WET.” He began thrusting, and I squeezed, matching his rhythm. His eyes rolled back in his head for a few seconds, then met mine again. “Close. Too close.” He maneuvered his hand between us again, rubbing my clit furiously with two fingers. I rolled my hips faster, chanting his name as my walls clenched around him.

“Tom. Tom. Tom. Tom.” Words quickly failed me and my chant devolved into a monosyllabic keen. His thrusts faltered, stuttering, and he cried out.

“Oh, Maude, god, Maude, oh FUCK, oh Maude…” I felt him pulsing inside me, come jetting in long, slow spurts, the edges of my vision going dark, hearing screaming as I came that I didn’t initially recognize as my own.

*************************************************** When I began to emerge from what I thought was a post-coital haze, Tom’s arms were wrapped tightly around my limp torso, holding me to his chest. My head lolled on his shoulder, his chin nuzzling my neck. I raised a leaden arm and set about rubbing his back. I felt him smile.

“Well hello there.” His voice was just above a whisper. As I raised my head to look at him, my body shifted and I realized he was still inside me. He smiled sheepishly when I met his gaze. “Sorry about that. I didn’t want to wake you.” I yawned.

“Mmm, I’m totally fine with staying this way forever.” I leaned back, cocking my head, puzzled. “Wake me? What do you mean, wake me?”

He grinned and kissed the tip of my nose. “It appears the vigorousness of our…activities…combined with the lateness of the hour exhausted you completely, resulting in your dozing off for a bit.”

I groaned. “Um, how long was I, you know, dozing?”

He traced my spine with his fingertips. “About fifteen minutes or so.”

I covered my eyes with my hand and shook my head. “Fuck. Me. Sideways.” He leaned in to whisper in my ear.

“Let’s save that for next time. You, darling, need to get some sleep.” I sighed, figuring he’d be out the door as soon as I was off his lap. I tried to reach my T-shirt, which was behind me on the floor, intending to use it to contain some of the mess when I got up. His was already in his hand. “Here, let me help.”

I lifted myself off him slowly, wondering how it was that my legs weren’t asleep. He gently nudged the shirt in place as his cock slid out of me. He was at half-mast. I bit my lip and rocked my hips. He chuckled as he put his hands under my arms to help me stand.

“Don’t tempt me, woman. It’s taking every ounce of my willpower to refrain from fucking you into that mattress all night long.” I whined. “But you have a very long day ahead of you and it’s well past 2 AM.” He walked me to the bathroom, closing the door after I went inside. I bundled up the shirt, tossing it on the floor as I sat on the bowl to pee, wiped, flushed, then brushed my teeth quickly. I opened the door, fully expecting him to be gone.

He was standing right outside, waiting, and kissed me quickly. “Do you have an extra toothbrush I can use?” I shook my head. “May I use yours, then?”

I nodded. “Sure. Yeah.”

I stood in my stupor, listening to the toilet flush again, the water running, him spitting…and suddenly there he was, naked, smiling, beautiful, and herding me over to the king size bed. He pulled back the covers, motioned for me to climb in and glanced at the clock.

“What time do you need to be up?” I blinked.

“Um, seven? I guess?” He set the alarm and stood next to the bed. I just stared at him. He grinned.

“Well, are you going to move over or would you prefer that I get in on the other side?” I moved over and rolled onto my side. He climbed in and nestled in against my back, arm around my waist. He kissed the top of my head.

“Goodnight, my Maude.”

I was sound asleep before I could return the sentiment.

#your light in the mist #chapter 6

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theaceman42 · 3 years

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Examining Youth Culture

For my first assignment in Media & Society, I was told to watch 5 different movies centered around youth culture. These movies were Euphoria, The Breakfast Club, Mid90s, KIDS, Mean Girls.

1. Which character in any of these stories do you identify with the most and why?

In all honesty, I can’t really find one character that I can relate to the most, because most of them seem to be eerily similar in their problems. The two that are closest for me however are Caty Heron from Mean Girls and Claire Standish from The Breakfast Club. Both characters suffer from two things: friends and peer pressure. Caty is a new student at high school but is relatively new to public school in general due to being homeschooled by her parents and living in Africa for over 12 years. She has trouble making friends, and lacks the social skills of other students until she meets the “Plastics”. This was a group of popular mean girls whom she ultimately befriends: Regina, Gretchen, and Karen. On top of that, Caty also befriends Janis, a social outcast who was Regina’s former best friend turned rival. Not even halfway into the movie, you can already tell that the Plastics are influencing Caty. They tell her a bunch of ridiculous rules she has to follow, such as wearing pink on a specific day and not being allowed to wear hoop earrings at all. Caty doesn’t see anything wrong with this as she’s not used to being with other people, let alone having friends. Eventually halfway into the movie, Caty ultimately agrees to help Janis sabotage Regina’s popularity. This results in the latter losing her friends, and Caty unwittingly recreating herself in an image of Regina. But by the end, Caty returns to herself and the Plastics disband.

For Claire, we don’t actually see her problems unfold, instead they are told. Much like Caty and the Plastics, Claire is a popular girl and suffers from peer pressure from her friends. She agrees with them constantly because of this all in order to keep her popularity up. However this ends up with her in detention in the film, as her friends pressured her into going shopping rather than going to school. On top of that, she’s constantly used by her parents as a bargaining chip to get back at one another. To summarize, Claire is a victim of social life and has never really made any of her own decisions until the end of the film, where she breaks her pristine image by kissing John Bender.

For me, the reason I relate to these characters the most is through my time in middle school. Ever since junior year, I’ve also considered middle school to be this “buffer limbo period” where kids have to figure out who they are as a person and where they stand in the world. No one’s the same when they leave middle school, you enter in a kid and leave as a teenager. I myself had to go through this ordeal and I remember it thoroughly. Sixth grade felt normal in some ways, but I could tell it was only the tip of the iceberg. It wasn’t until seventh grade where I started to have internal conflict and problems with making friends. I went through about three friend groups in middle school. One of them seemed good to me until I realized they honestly couldn’t care less about me. Since then up until I’d say the end of my freshmen year, I had a lot of distrust towards people, I couldn’t tell who wanted to be my friend and who didn’t. This would come crashing down in eighth grade, when I got into a fight with another student, who hung out with the people I was with. The student got in my face and in an attempt to get them away from me, I pushed them. They in retaliation punched me in the face. However during that time, I was forming a bond with other students who knew each other without me even knowing, all while I tried to make friends being someone who I wasn’t. I came out of middle school with a group of friends I’m still in touch with today. Throughout high school I also formed friendships with other people and respect with others who were mean to me and other students.

2. Identify three (3) common themes that are present in these stories and elaborate if they are relatable to contemporary youth culture. Draw from your personal experiences and elaborate on how these themes may have impacted your adolescent life

Three common themes throughout these stories are choice, redemption, and fear. Choice is an important aspect of our lives where we pick something that can affect us in any way shape or form.

Euphoria is a prime example of this, Rue the narrator and one of the show's main characters talks about the choices she made that made her take drugs. She explains how it made her feel great, like there was nothing wrong with her. This would lead to Rue falling unconscious and taken to the hospital and ending up in rehab.

Another good example of this is Mid90s, Sunny Suljic plays the role of Stevie, a 12-year old boy living in 1990s Los Angeles, who’s abused by his brother. Stevie then meets a group of older teen boys who are skateboarders and become part of their group. As the story progresses, Stevie eventually begins doing drugs, smoking, and drinking. By the end of the movie, the choices Stevie and his friends make end with them in a car accident and the former injured. I had to make a lot of choices in life, and I think everyone can say the same. What kind of ice cream do I get? What shoes to wear? Choosing who and who not to hang out with, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Because I didn’t know what would happen to me. The movie ends with them all reconciling with their internal issues, but it's unclear whether or not they will change. Redemption is something that everyone seeks. When anyone, even yourself, does something wrong, you might regret it and try to apologize for what you had done. Caty in Mean Girls is a good example of this, after the events of the Burn Book were revealed to the entire school, the Plastics turned on one another, and everyone was angry at her actions. Caty ultimately apologized for what she had done and opted to say that everyone was beautiful in their own way. I can relate to this, just not in the way Caty did. I’ve lied in the past, either to my friends and to my own parents, sometimes about grades. When they found out, I tried to apologize and they often accepted it...to some extent. Then there is fear, the fear of what could happen and of the unknown. Sometimes fear can stem into our choices. Let me iterate, I had to choose who I would hang out with, which was very hard. Why? Because I was afraid of what would happen to me. How would I turn out in the end? Would I be evil? If I chose poorly and ended up doing something I shouldn’t then I would end trying to seek forgiveness.

3. First, explain how a soundtrack of a film/TV series impacts the narrative of a story. Second, create an Apple/Spotify playlist of songs that best define your adolescent experience, and embed this playlist onto your blog.

Since the invention of the story, the play, and entertainment in general. Music has been a central part of all of it. When the first movies came out, the only sound people could hear was just the background being played, as there was no way to record or hear one’s voice at the time. Music basically takes what a story is telling, and adds depth to it. Allowing people to get a feel of what’s going on, and adding the setting.

A good example of this is the movie Dunkirk, which tells the story of the British evacuation of France during World War II. What makes this movie different from others, is that it doesn’t rely on dialogue. There is little to no dialogue said at all, as the director and writer of Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan wanted to tell the story through music and cinematography. One tool Nolan used greatly alongside this was suspense. Here’s one scene from the film that shows music combined with suspense.

youtube

The music used in this scene is just amazing. It shows the tension and fear of the Germans trying to stop the British from leaving.

Here is a link to some music that I can relate too and my adolescent years.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Hs6iqrwosis1UU7TCu9KJ?si=4ebaac892a434305

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linkfaillencwx949 · 3 years

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link building packages prices: Expectations vs. Reality

The first essential parameter is anchor text. This is the text that in fact connects to your page. This text informs to everybody what your page is about. Anchor text is greatly used by online search engine for additional ideas about the content on your page. For that reason it makes good sense to utilize meaningful and relevant anchor texts that describe the content on the target page. Normally the main keyword is used to develop a relevant backlink to the target page. You must never ever use only one word phrase to create links. Use different mix, let them look natural. Sadly, you don't have control over what text will other web designers use to produce link to your site. This is not so bad, you have a link and wide variety of anchor texts is welcome.

It marks links that ought to not be followed or taken into account by search engines. The circumstance is not so bad because every link counts and even nofollow links are required to make the backlink structure look natural.

The page where the link is situated is likewise essential. If the page material is related to the material of your page then the link is more appropriate and has more worth.

Link structure services are an option when you do not have time or possibility to produce links to your page, or when you have many websites that require off-page optimization. So the benefit of using such services is that they will create numerous links to your websites and if done effectively you will be placed greater in search results.

There are also some disadvantages in using link building services. With some services you might get lots of links from different link directory sites, but such links have little value. Such links are worth significantly less than links on pages with comparable material.

In this article, we discuss search engine optimization link building methods that you can execute.

Possibly you've checked out an article or more by seo (" SEO") professionals stressing the value of link structure to the exposure of your web site on the significant search engines. If, for instance, you take place to navigate the Google online documentation to the "Webmaster Help Center" you will see the Google reaction to the question "How can I enhance my website's ranking?" The Google action includes the declaration "In basic, webmasters can enhance the rank of their websites by increasing the number of top quality sites that link to their pages.2".

" Link structure" then, is the procedure of developing "incoming" links to your web pages in order to drive traffic to your website and improve your search engine ranking. Sounds simple, however there are numerous various complex online link structure programs and techniques it's mind boggling! And, some strategies, even genuine strategies carried out incorrectly, might in fact render incoming links entirely worthless.

I started this article meaning to cover the 5 W's - who, what, when, where and why. This article is designed to provide insight into the following questions:.

1. Who should connect to my websites?

2. What should the link require?

3. When should I add a link to my site?

4. Where should a link appear?

5. Why should you care?

6. How can organizations establish their own inbound links?

No doubt, reasonable minds can disagree with a few of the viewpoints and strategies contained in this short article. I direct your attention to footnote referrals to numerous online short articles that I discovered handy. I encourage you to evaluate these posts so you can draw your own conclusions. I do hope you conclude that there are a variety of legitimate link building methods that you can tackle!

Why Should You Care?

Sorry, I have skipped over who, what, when and where to begin instead with "Why?" After all, if I can not make the case that connect building is necessary, you certainly will not read the rest of this post!

It is believed that, in the eyes of the major online search engine, the number and quality of the incoming links that point to your website are indicative of the merit of your site. I know, it seems like an appeal contest - possibly this stimulates memories of the ridicule you had for your high school prom king/queen election process. Popularity and Page Rank aside, you are interested in driving qualified traffic to your website and establishing relationships with companies that offer complementary services and products. Link structure methods are developed to accomplish this.

Who Should Link to My Web Pages?

It is believed that links from "authoritative" websites and "related" market websites bring the most weight. An "authoritative" website may be an instructional organization (.

As for "related" websites, partners, vendors, however not rivals are good "mutual connecting" (discussed later on) chances. Their sites must be associated with the items and/or services you offer.

Examine the incoming links to the page where you would like to see your link. How do you research study incoming links to your potential connecting partner?

There are some outstanding SEO link building tools out there! Netconcepts supplies a totally free "Link Popularity Checker" at. Another website is LinkPopularity.com. Utilize these tools to evaluate the quality of the links to the page prior to you request a link! While you're there, take a look at the link popularity of your web pages and those of your competitors.

Note that lots of SEO experts think that you must stay away from a websites that already has too many links. How many is a lot of? According to an article in Website Magazine, "... it is best to avoid any pages with more than 20 outbound links.3".

You'll remember that we pointed out the term "PageRank" earlier in this post. The Google PageRank scoring system is utilized to quantify the relative significance of a web page. You can identify PageRank by downloading and using the free Google ToolBar ().

Should you consider PageRank while determining whether to request a link on a page? One factor to the online article "Over 125 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies", Dixon Jones, suggests that the PageRank of the web page where you would like your link to live must be between 3 and 10.4 In his short article "The Nitty Gritty of Link Requests", Chris Boggs suggests that PageRank is not as useful as it utilized to be but "PageRank is still a good guide.5".

Many Internet marketing specialists continue to suggest that you send your website to the proper category within the major directories as well as to vertical engines and market directory sites. Some may require you to add a reciprocal link to their directory.

In his article, "SEO: Weaving a Web of Links", Stephan Spencer warns against looking for links from "complimentary for all" links pages that are jam-packed filled with links.6. Once again, take note of PageRank and topic importance. Keep an eye out for automated submission programs that submit to unimportant search engines and directory sites.

What Should the Link Entail? What Should You Put on Your Link Page? As soon as you have actually targeted an incoming link opportunity, you will wish to suggest the link location and the specific link language you wish to appear on their site. Make it easy to execute your link - place HTML on your website that your partner's webmaster can cut and paste onto their web page.

Embed your keyphrases into the link text. The topic of web page optimization is beyond the scope of this article, make sure the page the link points to (the "Target Page") is "enhanced" for those keyphrases. The target page need not be your website home page. Not exactly sure how to figure out the best keywords for your service? I discuss this extremely concern in my short article "Web Page Keywords - Do's and Do n'ts" which you can review at.

The concern "What needs to you put on your link page" presumes that the linking relationship is "mutual". Not all links will be reciprocal - we'll talk more about link building strategies that involve the production of beneficial online content encouraging "natural" link development without reciprocal arrangements. Your plans with partners, alliances and some directories may well be "mutual". To put it simply, "I'll indicate you if you indicate me.".

Prior to you approach a partner for a reciprocal link, you might want to produce your link to their website ahead of time demonstrating the strategies described in this article. "One excellent turn is worthy of another" - include a couple of carefully drafted paragraphs of descriptive information for each link.

When Should I Add a Link to my Site? But for my requirement to have an appealing title, this area is better named "How frequently should I add incoming links?" Experts these days are discussing "natural growth of incoming links" and "organic link acquiring" and "Emulating Natural Growth in Link Building", as search engine optimization authority Chris Boggs recently wrote in Website Magazine.7 Sounds downright "earthy", doesn't it?

It's clear that link structure is a slow and stable lawn roots procedure and some professionals maintain that link development ought to follow a natural, free variety, pesticide-free development (OK, I included the italics for enjoyable). Boggs writes that efforts to quickly acquire links "are in some cases simple for search engines to discern ..., particularly if the links are in a recognized network of sites that exchange links.8" Suddenly including 100 new links to a site that for 6 six years has had 5 incoming links may trigger a search engine to punish you for your participation in a "link-farm." However, including a couple of pertinent links once in awhile does appear to be consistent with natural growth.

Where Should the Link Appear? Make sure your prefab HTML link consists of detailed details that goes above and beyond a simple link and make sure you offer to reciprocate with a premium http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=seo link building descriptive link.

Check to ensure the agreed-upon area is a page that has been indexed by the major search engines. In particular, it needs to not be a page that only confirmed users (login & password) can see.

There are numerous bytes of available online details related to link building strategies. Your peers will examine your website in the exact same or similar way as is described in this article. They will examine the amount and quality of incoming links to your web pages.

Here are some tips that both improve the effectiveness of your web site content and help you develop incoming links to your site.

1. Publish a "How To" or a "Review" Article Someone in your company need to like to write! Include your short article to your website and publish it! There are numerous websites dedicated to releasing articles free of charge. Numerous allow you to include a short bio AND a link to your site. The Article Banks site (articlebanks.com) includes useful information and resources related to releasing your article online.

Not exactly sure what to blog about? Start with your most popular keyword search link pyramids expressions and develop a topic that your customers regularly raise. You offer GPS gadgets - compare and contrast the 2 most popular makers who likewise occur to be popular web searches. You are a CPA- how about a "leading 10" list of individual tax misunderstandings? Do your best to make your content unique, original, beneficial and entertaining.

Transform your article to PDF format that online visitors can download and print. Consult with your web designer about including "e-mail to a good friend" performance.

youtube

2. Post in a Relevant Online Forum or Newsgroup Join an online neighborhood appropriate to your website and end up being a regular, contributing member. Ensure to include your website URL in the signature location of each of your posts.

Post in a Relevant Blog? Your site URL can be included in blog contributions however be cautious here. Search engines are more and more delicate to "Blog Spamming.9 Chris Genge, a contributing SEO author in the article "Over 125 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies", writes "Even though blogging is all the rage these days, I think it will go the method of link farms in the not-too-distant future, especially if/when the SE's figure out that it is simply another case of spamming.

4. Release in an "e-zine" Some of the most popular websites pertinent to your service might not have a link program. Offer rather to contribute an unique topic to their regular monthly e-zine (e-mail newsletter). Include your bio and a websites link.

5. Write a testimonial or evaluation for a trusted product/service Many companies are eager to release testimonials on their website. Ask to consist of a link back to your appropriate websites.

Finally, make sure to track your link building development. Create a spreadsheet for this function. You will no doubt need to follow up on your link demands. Capture details including the details you went into and the date you sent your request. Politely advise link partners of their commitment to connect to your site and point them to the inbound link from your site to theirs. Run your favorite link appeal and page rank tools to monitor your progress.

Conclusion If you are at all thinking about driving qualified traffic to your web site and in developing relationships with suppliers of complementary services and products, you must spend some time discovering web page link structure methods. In this post, we talk about the who, what, when, where and how's of SEO web page link building. Link structure is a lot easier if your site is a valuable source of topical info and you have actually achieved a high level of knowledge.

In the "How Can Businesses Develop Their Own Inbound Links?" area of this article, I provide a number of tips designed to assist you accomplish that end. They say "The devil is in the details." When it comes time to handle the process of getting and including inbound links to your websites, there are numerous details that will influence the success or failure of your program. You must thoroughly pick your link partners and directory sites and be prepared to recommend the link page location along with the makeup of the link itself.

It's fine to methodically forge relationships and build a neighborhood with complimentary web websites. There is growing evidence that link structure in an "abnormal" way will hinder your search engine visibility and negate your efforts.

Footnotes:.

1 Pease remember that this content is provided for educational purposes in order to introduce you to crucial seo ideas. There are numerous factors that affect search engine results and page rank - we can not promise that the methods described in this short article operate in all cases. Thank you! -Bill Schwartz, EBIZ Machine.

2 See.

3 Boggs, Chris, The Nitty Gritty of Link Requests, Website Magazine, December 14 2005,.

4 Robin Nobles, Eric Ward and John Alexander, Over 125 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies,.

5 Boggs - see above.

6 Spencer, Stephan, SEO: Weaving a Web of Links, useful ecommerce, March 12, 2007,.

7 Boggs, Chris, The New Holy Grail of SEO?, Website Magazine, February, 2007, p. 12.

8 Boggs p. 13.

9 Boggs, Chris, The Nitty Gritty of Link Requests, Website Magazine, December 14 2005,.

10 Robin Nobles, Eric Ward and John Alexander, Over 125 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies,.

#link building #link building packages #seo link building #seo link pyramids

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miss-musings · 7 years

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The Similarities between TBL’s Red and Mr. Rochester, a.k.a. A Classic Byronic Hero

Several in the Blacklist fandom, myself included, have compared our protagonist “Raymond (Red) Reddington” (James Spader’s character) to the likes of Edmond Dantes and Mr. Rochester.

The reasoning behind this, other than sharing some parallel plot points (such as being a sailor, being labeled a criminal by his government, going into exile, wanting revenge and/or relief, etc.) … Red shares a lot of the traits of a Byronic hero.

According to the Wikipedia entry for the Byronic hero, various iterations of the character-type are described as:

“a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection …a solitary figure, resigned to suffering … the “fallen angel” … [with a] violent temper and [capable of] seduction … [has] occasional outbreaks of remorse [that] reveal a tortured character, echoing a Byronic remorse … a remarkable blend of both villain and hero, and exploration of both sides of the Byronic character.”

Here are some other slides I found that give descriptions and examples of Byronic heroes. I take no credit for any of these slides:

Now, obviously, the Byronic hero is a bit fluid, meaning that not every single example of one fits every single characteristic in each description. But, I truly see Red as a Byronic hero. (I bolded all the traits in the description that I think fit him.) The Byronic hero is sometimes seen as the predecessor or primogenitor or at least the “cousin” of the modern-day anti-hero, which Red DEFINITELY falls into. He’s by all accounts a “bad guy” and yet we love him and we want him to win.

But in a recent post, I used the similarities between Red and a very early example of a Byronic hero, Mr. Rochester of “Jane Eyre,” as evidence for why I think Red is the romantic lead in our story, and why he and Liz getting together in some form or fashion (a.k.a. Lizzington) is the endgame.

Looking at it more closely, if we assume that Liz is Red’s love interest, as Jane is Rochester’s, more similarities and parallels become evident:

His love interest works for him in some regard

He is about twice her age

He sees her as his “second chance,” etc. (we’ll dive into that more in a second)

In comparison to the female protagonist and the other characters, he is considered to be very worldly and well-traveled

He travels, in part, to escape both his inner and outer demons

He was previously married and had several trysts and relationships with various women until meeting the protagonist

(Seemingly) flirts with his female acquaintances to make the protagonist jealous

Once meeting her, he becomes completely devoted to the protagonist, and has eyes for no other woman

One thing that has always struck me about Red on TBL is that, while we do get references to him being in relationships and having sex with women in the past, we REALLY don’t see Red engaging in relationships or trysts since meeting Liz in the pilot. Maybe he does it off-screen, and there is that shot of Luli in 1x05 where she walks through the room in one of Red’s shirts… but, other than that, NOTHING! Yes, he flirts. Yes, he makes sexy comments and allusions. Yes, he dances with Madeline seductively and closely in 1x14. But, for a man who admits that he views sex as a drug, and his FAVORITE AND GO-TO DRUG at that, he has been relatively chaste on-screen.

The show clearly has no problem showing couples hooking up so long as its “family-friendly”. They showed Ressler and Samar getting together. They’ve shown Liz and Tom having sexy times on several occasions. They insinuated sexual activity between Aram and his shitty girlfriend. …So, why have James Spader, who once played a character that said “Everything is sex,” be relatively celibate and not get in on the action???

If the show wanted to quell the whole “Lizzington” uproar, all the showrunners would have to do is have Red tell Liz he’s her dad or relative or father-figure or whatever, and then give him a nice, steady, likable love interest. Piece of cake.

Anyway, back to the Byronic hero.

While their backstories differ greatly, Red FEELS and SOUNDS a lot like Mr. Rochester, or other Byronic heroes in general. Like Dantes, he seems to have some kind of elaborate “long-game” of revenge that targets the people who did him wrong but who are also legitimately evil and are doing the world harm; while at the same time, he’s intent on protecting the lives of the innocent. Like Dantes, maybe Red has or soon will become too wrapped up in his mission of revenge and will need others to show him the light.

But, as for his similarities to Mr. Rochester, as I pointed out in the other post, Red has these long, grand monologues about what he has become, who he used to be, and who he wants (Liz to help him) to be again.

(EDIT: I previously had tried to embed videos before, but they didn’t come up on either mobile or desktop, so I’ve just added links to the YouTube videos instead.)

Examples include:

The Ugly Fish monologue in 2x09

The North Star monologue in 3x02

He also tends to wax philosophical about the guilt he feels, and how he is making or has tried to make amends, and how the life he leads has caused him to feel less-than-human, etc.

Examples include:

The “…just a nice gesture” monologue in 2x16

The “I’m a violent man” monologue in 3x12

And because of all this, he feels very much like a wandering, tortured soul… as we learn very vividly from the infamous “Parable of the Farmer” in 1x04.

All of these is, of course, very much like Mr. Rochester from “Jane Eyre.”

Here are some passages from “Jane Eyre” where Mr. Rochester is talking about the woman he loves. At the time, Jane is in love with him, but she believes he is in love with someone else (Blanche Ingram). In reality, though, Mr. Rochester has been in love with Jane since he first met her, and decided that jealousy would be the best way to 1) see whether Jane loved him, and 2) if she did, to make that love grow and become more apparent.

(BTW, just gonna put these two completely random pictures here:)

Here’s the first one, in which Rochester is talking to Jane after she saved him from a fire in his bedroom.

(BTW, the narration is written from Jane’s first-person perspective.)

[Rochester:] “But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.”

He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, them in both his own.

“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”

He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but his voice was checked.

“Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case.”

“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight!”

And, now, in this second passage … this is after Rochester has been (sort of) “courting” Blanche in front of Jane, and Jane and he are sharing a quiet, peaceful moment together after a very strange and stressful night.

Here, Rochester starts talking VERY VAGUELY about the shitty things that have happened to him, how he’s tried to find solace in worldy things and ultimately, only now, has he found happiness and peace with the woman he loves. Jane ~assumes~ he’s talking about Blanche, when in reality he’s talking about Jane:

“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a crime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is error. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?…

“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?”

“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.”

“But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—”

He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.

“Little friend,” said he, in quite a changed tone—while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic—“you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?”

Now…

(SPOILER WARNING FOR JANE EYRE)

What Rochester is ACTUALLY talking about, in reference to what he experienced as a young man, was – about 20 years before the events of the novel – he traveled from England to the West Indies and was convinced by his family and others into marrying a woman whom he later discovered was clinically insane. He tried to live with her initially, but later brought her back to England and paid a servant to watch her and not tell anyone about it, never told any of his friends or other servants he was married, and then runs off and roams about the world for 20-ish years having trysts and trying to find solace where he could. And then – after he meets Jane – he tries to marry her without informing her that he’s already married.

So, after Jane finds out during the ceremony – through the providence of someone outing Rochester for his treachery – the two have a discussion about where their relationship will go from here. Rochester wants to “marry” her or at least have her live with him, away from people; but, she’s not down for it. This is what he says as part of his long-ass explanation as to why he did what he did:

“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. … After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

Just in these four phrases I bolded from Rochester’s monologue to Jane about what he did, I saw parallels to four very notable Red quotes: (in order) when he tells Fitch “you cannot possibly fathom how deep that well of my truly goes” in reference to his desire to protect the things and people he loves in 1x20; the “I have you” in 1x03; his description of Liz to Sam in 1x08; and the “love is having no control” moment in 2x08.

(End of Spoiler Warning)

This is all a very long way of saying that I have no idea whether the writers intended for Red to have parallels to the Byronic hero or to Mr. Rochester specifically.

But, he does.

Red is clearly keeping secrets from Liz the way Rochester kept them from Jane. We’re not yet sure what these secrets are (many, including myself, believe it’s that he stole the identity of Raymond Reddington, who is Liz’s biological father).

And, despite a very large age gap, these two have been set-up as the romantic couple of our show, as Rochester and Jane were. Right now (in S5a), Liz believes Red to be her dad; and, in Jane Eyre, Rochester remarks to Jane how he’s old enough to be her father. (He’s like 40 and she’s around 18-20.)

And, just as with Rochester, Red is hoping to find some kind of re-humanization with Liz... that she will restore him to what he once was. People don’t say things like that to friends or family members, so it becomes very strong evidence that Red and Liz are meant to be our end-game.

Another quick thing I’d like to point out is that, in the novel, Jane has very few friends, and as of S5a, the only friends Liz has ever had on the show… consistently … are people from work. (And I guess you could count Tom.) She’s an orphan, like Jane. She doesn’t really have anyone to call “family” or “home.” (Other than Tom, but he’s dead now.) In S1 through S2a, we saw how alone and isolated and tricked and manipulated she felt, just as Jane does throughout various points in the novel.

Now, obviously, there are PLENTY of differences. This is a crime-drama procedural after all. Liz is a full-grown woman with a child of her own. She’s not an 18-20 year old governess who has never gone beyond her schoolhouse and childhood home. She’s not completely naive; she’s not completely without family and friends. When compared to Jane, she’s seen and done plenty.

But the fact that Red and Liz have these strong individual parallels to Rochester and Jane, respectively, and the fact that there are so many parallels between them as couples – ie, he’s keeping secrets from her; he’s besotted with her and sees her as his redemption, etc. – makes me wonder whether this WAS intentional to some degree.

Even while many TBL fans have been watching and screaming at the screen, “JUST SAY HE’S HER DAD ALREADY!” and then breathed a long sigh of exasperation and annoyance when the question was finally answered in 4x22... I’ve been sitting over here with these weirdly intertwined images stuck in my head:

#mr. rochester #rochester #jane eyre #raymond reddington #elizabeth keen #masha rostova #red reddington #james spader #byronic hero #megan boone #the blacklist #nbc the blacklist #charlotte bronte

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localwebmgmt · 4 years

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Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 329

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 329 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

if you understand what I’m saying, Give me a one. You can give me a tool, or you can give me another kind of one. Now, when I’m, at least I’m not. I’ll admit it. I’m the worst marketer in the world. I know how to rank shit. But I suck at marketing. At any rate, welcome to Wednesday’s Hump Day Hangouts. Your reason to like Wednesdays, that’s why you’re here. Let me just go from left to right, as I see you, and introduce my partners, and see what they have to say her name. What’s up?

What’s up, dude, so I’m good. I’m excited to be here. You know, it’s always good. It’s always good to be on Hump Day Hangout, it’s always good to hang out with you guys. And to, you know, give back a little bit to the community that gives us so much so really excited to be here.

Cool, Chris, what’s up, man? Good here.

Doing something really exciting at the moment building my own ghetto gym. because well, Corona is like all the restrictions, everything is still shut down. And like, I don’t know, like currently, it’s like the fifth of April or something like that, then I bet it’s gonna be till May or something like that. So I’m not waiting any longer. So like, I’m looking forward to squatting again, proper bench press, and stuff. So super excited. Cool. Bradley. What’s up, man? What’s up, man? Busy as all hell. But it’s, um, it’s exciting. Got a lot of things cooking. So glad to be here. It’s good to be busy. And as you can see, guys, it’s Groundhog Day in Costa Rica. For over a year I’ve been showing away.

I don’t want I won’t give you too much light. Because I don’t want you to think that Mark was heading off into the light. But you guys can see it. It’s beautiful. It’s sunny. What can I say? It’s the price I paid for the life I live. Guys, it takes work to do this shit.

Is that easy, and it’s not free. But once you get the process in place, then the process takes care of everything. So you can step away and enjoy some of this. You go off to the beach, you go off to the mountains, you go and explore the jungles and the volcanoes and everything that this beautiful country has to offer. And anyway, if you want to know more about how it is that we do the do, then head on over to MGYB.co. That’s our store that I’ve done for you store. I just literally got done ordering link building package from MGYB about an hour ago. So it’s exactly what we use. It’s in the process is everything that we give you. And we give it to you for free. We tell you what the process is. We’re not going to show you how. But we tell you why. It’s not that it’s something nobody else will do. Nobody will tell you why we tell you why. We’re directly affecting the algorithms in a positive manner rather than in a negative manner. That’s what we’re doing, how we do it. It’s MGYB to but if you want the secret sauce, we’re not going to give you that how to cope with it. No, we’ll put it together for you. If you want the training then you have to come to semantic mastery comm our mastermind or you join the heavy hitter club or you join us if you’re not joined, but order our done for you services. And please if you’re listening to this, it’s like Caroline said we want to give back to the community. The whole purpose for this from day one was to give back to the SEO community that has given us so much. And so that this is it. So head on over to YouTube, help us grow, and help us stay free. Click that like button hit on that bell so you get a reminder whenever we’re coming on. Please do that. Help us out? Right. We help you so please help us and without further ado, let’s Oh wait, wait, wait a minute. I got a teaser. I got a teaser. And the end of the month. end of the month. Betty we just talked about it yesterday. You want to steal the thunder.

end of the month. And oh because of oh I’m sorry. I was thinking you were the end of February that just occurred. I didn’t realize you were talking about the end of March. So yeah, we’re uh there’s Adam. He’s coming now. He must get his hamsters running fast enough on the net. Don’t let it man just keep him waiting. Yeah, I’m sorry. I understand what you’re saying now. So yeah, the end of this month Syndication Academy relaunch or, I mean, let’s just lay it out there is it they completely 100% updated for 2021 and with a unique kind of presentation twist that we haven’t done in the past and should be good. I’m really looking forward to it is a kind of a new way for us to present training material and I hope it will be received well we’ll find out but um, it’s going to be awesome because we’ve we put a lot of additional methods and techniques and such into Syndication Academy this time. So we presented her already, right in Hump Day Hangouts. We just want people to know it’s launching we’re actually going to do it will first be done internally before goes public take advantage of the internal launch because that’s always a better price point that it will be when it goes public. The person doing the training she was brought in, because she was an outsider, because we wanted someone who had never seen the training, didn’t know what Semantic Mastery What didn’t know what SEO was, we wanted her and we wanted her going through the training, and updating, updating the training while she was going through it. Why? Because we want her available on Facebook, and she is going to be available in the group. So that when people come up with problems, she will know in detail how to deal with the problem. And she will be there to help people get through the problems. We have over 300 websites, I believe, I believe it is as webinar updates guys, we have over 300 websites that she will be going into and showing them how they can manipulate it, how can they how they can be manipulated and added to your internet profile to broaden the entity. And that’s what this is all about. The name of the game now is who has the best entity in the web. That’s the name of the game. The person who builds the strongest, most powerful entity rounded out in the way that Google expects is the one who wins. And one of the foundational principles of our method is Syndication Academy. It’s a must, it’s me, that’s why we put it into the SEO shield, you have to have it, you have to present a proper entity to Google that can be trusted, and that can become authoritative over time. That’s what this is all about. Don’t expect to rank for gold.

Or DUI, DUI attorney Toronto, three posts and one syndication network Not gonna happen. Don’t expect to rank, like plumber in dc, dc plumber. That took a lot of work. It was it’s what we call now the SEO power shield, and then embed runs precedences if you remember Rob was doing presently, like daily. Yeah, hammering it with link building. But it became the entity for the keyword DC plumber, the keyword and DC plumber, the company is inextricable right now. Right, the relationship that was created is so great. So this is one of the things that you can do with Syndication Academy is build that entity. It’s coming. Se is wonderful. She’s great at communicating. It’s just different. And we hope that people can really benefit from having her available like every day. She’ll be in there and she can spend an hour in there or however long it takes to answer questions then there will be monthly or I don’t know how often. It’ll be up. It’ll be updated. We will figure it out guys, but it’s coming. I’m really excited about this. Get on the Syndication Academy train.

Adam, anything you’d like to add to now? I couldn’t help myself. That’s it, man. Yeah, I’ve been having some weird internet issues are doing construction around our place. And just like three minutes before, posted a video on Facebook inviting people to come into Hump Day Hangouts and then tried to do anything else is dead. So happy to be here. I think you guys covered it. I’m pumped about Syndication Academy. There’s a lot, a lot of good stuff in there that people are gonna want to go over, and then with the continuous updates, it’s just gonna be badass. So that’s all I got for today.

Cool, but without further ado, and nobody else has objections. Let’s move on to the questions. All right, let me grab a screen. Oops, wrong button.

You guys are seeing it now. Correct. Looks good.

I don’t know why it stopped with your damn. I don’t know which ones are which anymore.

Can You Offset Average Reviews And Get Into The 3-Pack By Targeting Optimized Listings With Press Release, Backlinks, Drive Stacks From MGYB?

I think it’s a setting but let me take a look because I had to go in and you can do something but Oh, so it was you that changed some shit around. I didn’t do shit. No, Gordon. Gordon is is the last one. The last one. Hey, guys, I need your help with two podcasts. Yeah. All right. So hey, guys, I need your help with two quick questions. Number one, I’m presuming that having lots of four and five-star reviews still has a significant effect on getting a GMB listing into the three-pack. But if the business has just average quantity and quality reviews compared to their competitors, can you offset that deficiency and still get a new three-pack by targeting the optimized listing with press releases backlinks ROI is Google Drive stack, etc from MGYB. Yeah, I mean, I think reviews are a small part of ranking in the three-pack.

But I don’t know how. Like how much of a part of it is I don’t think it’s a huge part of it might Marko might have more insight on that than I do. Where I find reviews mostly beneficial, is not necessary. I mean, it’s great for social proof. There’s no question right? It helps to improve the click-through rate if they got good. A good number of reviews and obviously a high rating in those reviews. It helps to entice the click right it helps to cause visiter a Google user to want to click through to that, which is a great SEO signal in itself, right? That engagement signal, but as far as the reviews themselves having an effect on the SEO, it’s I don’t know how much of an effect the reviews actually have on the GMB. But where I find the most benefit is by going in and replying to those reviews and working keywords in and location names into the review. reply, if that makes sense. Because it’s a way to inject additional relevancy, either geographic or topical relevancy into the reviews themselves that typically, if you know, if you read a lot of reviews, a lot of times the keywords aren’t mentioned or the locations aren’t mentioned. And so you can work those in it’s just another opportunity to squeeze keywords and location terms into the GMB. So that’s how I find it. But I don’t know about how much maybe Marco Can you answer? Do you have any idea how much reviews affect GMB ranking?

Not rankings, but they do become link building targets? Right? Yeah.

And, and so that’s a great place to start, that’s a great way to use them is as link building target. That’s how I use them. They’re great for press release targets also for press releases, which is also link building.

And so you can think of them that way. Now, the quality of the reviews only matters, like when you’re seeing a lot of forum five stars when people are looking. I talked about this the other day I believe in in a webinar, you know, my daughter really pays attention to that. And she really looks at the reviews when she’s trying to buy something like an Amazon. Like how many good reviews does it have? How many bad reviews have Why are they getting bad reviews? Or why are they getting such good reviews? Or are they just generic reviews that these people are getting?

And so that’s when it matters, and then that CTR is like it’s not a cause and effect. It could be correlational. In other words, if you have a lot of quality reviews, then as you said people are likely to click on it. But as far as ranking, like, I’ve seen people with no reviews rank over people with 300 something reviews. Yeah, no problem.

Yeah, yeah, I see that too. And that’s why I mentioned I don’t know how much the reviews. Now, again, by being able to use those reviews as an opportunity for link building. I didn’t mention that. But yeah, that’s true. And that’s a lot of times, by the way, like Press Advantage will write press releases and actually quote, a review that they pulled from the GMB anyways for that company. So that’s a great opportunity to link to the share URL for that review. But also, as I said, there’s work you know, replying in replying to reviews gives you that opportunity to add additional keywords and location, relevancy. So I think that that helps as well. That’s a habit that we do for my clients.

Does Daily Posting In GMB Help In Ranking The Listing Higher?

So the second question was, I’m presuming that daily GMB posts are allowed. Yes, and I recently read that posting daily on GMB will significantly help the listing to rank higher and that optimizing the posts for your targeted search terms will also significantly help with ranking or either or both of these those true and if so, how much of an impact will either have. Gordon, I would suggest that you take low to join the Local GMB Pro course that we put out because it’s all specifically about GMB and how to get I mean, just absolutely crush a GMB location.

You know, doing nothing but the stuff inside of GMB. I mean, as you can forget about even if it has a self-hosted website and everything but what I’m saying is local GMB Pro is all about how to optimize and get results from the GMB and the assets that Google provides as part of the Google My Business profile. So I would encourage you to check that out if because it sounds like you’ve got some GMB work on your hands. So, Marco, what do you want to say about the post?

I’m like, Can I say outside of local GMB Pro people have paid really good money for that course. Right? And how much are we willing to give away for free?

Yeah, I mean, you have to look at what your competitors are doing to see what it is that you have to do to compete in the space.

Check to see if that like what frequency of posting you should have. There’s so much information that you can gather from a GMB and from insights. It’s ridiculous.

Yeah, I mean, I can’t really say much more with it without just giving away too much. How we do the post not it’s not just a matter of posting but how we post how each one is done, how we approach the entity. The press releases everything. Everything goes hand in hand.

Yeah.

Should You Create A GMB For A Business Aiming To Get Monthly Membership Signups Even If It’s Not A Local Service Type?

Okay, well, thank you for that. Dan says, Hey gents, so I bought an SEO shield for a business that is looking to generate monthly membership signups. It isn’t a local business. Really, though. I am wondering if I should order a postcard and set up a GMB even though it really isn’t a local service type of business, my SEO shield is already in a queue without an address or phone number. Any advice is appreciated. Um, I mean, there’s a lot of benefits to having a GMB associated with a brand period. Even if it’s not a typical local business, I’m gonna pass this one over to Marco because he, he, he uses GM B’s for, you know, even national or global type projects. So market What do you say? What can you suggest to him? But it’s the entity right looks good. I’m sorry, Dan. We recently did charity webinars I suggest that you go and make a donation, send an email to the email that’s provided up I’ll write it later.

And really focus on what it is that we’re talking about because I talked about how to use a GMB a little bit. Not only to solidify the entity but in the entire process and why you should do this and why even if you don’t have a local company, you should have a GMB why you should have a listing why it’s important for Google to have a list and why is it important in your schema for your organization when you’re presenting everything to Google and why you’d be out doing everybody else?

There we go. And that’s so just to clarify Dan if you what I would suggest if you plan on getting a GMB is to contact MGYB support and find out you know how far they’ve gone with your order. Because if it hasn’t been really started yet or anything, I got an again, just a suggestion depending on where they are with the progress of your stack your drive stack, you may be able to ask them to pause it and wait until you get the GMB that way. It’s worked into the GMB. Now, if it’s already been started or completed or whatever, then that may, you know, unfortunately, that it may be too late. But it would be worth at least a support request to find out if it’s possible if you know where it is in it, you know and how far along it is. And if it can be paused until you get to GMB. If that’s what you plan on doing that would be a suggestion.

I would tell him Yes. I mean, we would totally pause it, we would give them 30 days actually, right 30 days to submit the information. If you haven’t submitted it in 30 days, then then you will get refunded. And you have to start again. But just so you know we can hold it. It’s not as if that no, we can’t just write to resale just right to resist. He’s fantastic. And support man. Yeah, supported MGYB.co.

Should You Buy An MGYB Link Package To Hit The RYS Stack After Purchasing A Depth Keyword Research?

Okay, next would be I also purchased in-depth keyword research, and I’m assuming that the next thing to buy would be a link package to hit dry stack with any suggestions on what else I could be doing. Fortunately, I have a monthly budget to spend on MGYB Yeah, that’s great, Dan. And that’s what we’ve, I can’t tell you how many times when we talk about, you know, the SEO shield, the power shield, you know, and everything that we talked about entity based SEO that you should have a budget from your client’s retainer every single month that’s dedicated towards link building and embeds and that kind of stuff, press releases, whatever. So it’s good that you have that because, you know, that’s, that’s the way to get results is to use that. So you just work that right into your proposal. Initially, whenever you’re signing a client, which it sounds like you did, so that’s great.

You know, I would go through either the SEOshield.com if you haven’t already gone through that, it’s free, it’s like a four-day training, Rob put that together, that will tell you like the best practices and how to get the most use out of it. And that kind of stuff. The other one would be semanticmastery.com/process which’s behind an opt-in now.

So you still have to exchange your email for it. But I did a training on that specifically, again, it’s high level, but I specifically talk about how to, you know how I cycle through link building and embeds and things like that and, you know, choose different target URLs different us, you know, groups of URLs to hit at different times and that kind of stuff. And I talked about that and kind of a high level through the process training, the entity based SEO process training, which again, you can find that at semantic mastery.com slash process. I believe that redirects to an opt-in page now but you can get access to it just by opting in. And I would recommend you go through that because it’ll give you some kind of link building schedule, like link building and embed, like off-page SEO schedule. It’s and it’s just a mock schedule, you can modify it to you know, your specific needs or to the project’s needs, but it’ll just give you some ideas on how to cycle through and constantly be planning applying pressure to your entity assets. And that’s the way that we suggest doing it any any comments guys. Yeah, I suggest go to the seoshield.com, I posted it on the page, it tells you why we’re not going to tell you how. But it tells you why.

And everything that you build off-page away from your money site becomes like a target for your link building. And for your press releases or for everything you do so that it powers up into your money site. So it’s just a fantastic way. But don’t just take that one link building run, it depends on the competition, it depends on the keyword that you’re doing. It depends on the niche, it may take a steady diet of this every month until you’re getting the results that you want. And then you want to let the natural traffic and the natural link building take over. If anything starts to slip, you just start over again. With more press releases more link building more embed runs, and more link building. I mean, it’s exactly the way that we do it.

Yeah.

What Software Can You Recommend To Automate LinkedIn Lead Generation?

Next question. This is a question for me for sure. So he says, Hey, guys, wondering if you know of any good LinkedIn automation lead generation software systems to help get more clients for agencies and clients? That’s a great question. In fact, I have just started, I just signed up last week and am in the process of working on, you know, developing my own LinkedIn strategy. Because I just launched my new agency less than three weeks ago. And I’m going to attempt to give a real attempt this time on LinkedIn, two to four prospecting.

Over the years, I’ve not done a whole lot of LinkedIn stuff. Number one, I just never had a desire to do it. It’s just like Facebook, I’m not a big fan.

But in the past, I’ve made some half-assed attempts to do prospecting on LinkedIn, and I never stuck with it long enough to get any results to fine-tune my pitch my messaging, you know, all that kind of stuff. So this time, I’m going to, I’m going to give it a full-hearted effort and stick with it long enough to try to get some results or prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it just isn’t going to work in the industry that I’m in, which is tree care contractors, although I just from some very, very basic stuff that I’ve done over the past week. I’ve seen some promise already. So I’m going to stick with it. That said, I would suggest a couple of things, I came across a really, really, really good resource. It’s called the LinkedIn Bible.

Ba mF CEO, I think is the name of the Yeah, right there. Ba mF CEO. And it’s called the LinkedIn Bible. There’s a collection of five books, but he’s got a, you know, free plus shipping funnel, essentially, I’m sure you’re aware of that.

There’s anyways, just go check it out. It’s called the LinkedIn Bible, it’s a series of books that you can get, I think the first one for free, but then you got to pay for the others. It’s, it’s really good. There’s a shit ton of information in there about how to optimize your profile.

How to start growing your network for your specific industry, you know, chosen industry or how to do that for clients, that kind of stuff. So there’s just a lot of real I mean, guys, it’s massive. The book itself is, I don’t know, 400 pages or something. It’s ridiculous. There’s I mean, but a lot of that screenshots and things like that anyway, it’s really good. I just started going through that just a few days ago, or, yeah, it was over the weekend, I think that I started, it’s all a blur. I’m working 14 hours a day right now, but it’s really good. As far as that, you know, that’s just going to give you some strategies. Now he recommends some tools and stuff in there, the tool that I decided to go with is called octopus crm.io. That’s this one. And I want with this one, just because it’s got all the features that I need, I’m using high level is my agency, marketing automation platform. And so you know, I didn’t really need like another full-on CRM and everything else. But octopus CRM actually has a set of one of the better monthly pricing options. A lot of the other ones are 100 bucks a month, this one’s $49 a month. And just a quick tip, if you sign up for the free trial, you will get an email and then a couple of days with a 5% off coupon that’s 5% off the monthly. So if you go with the monthly at 4999. And you get that 5% off coupon, it’s I mean, it’s only a couple bucks off, but just letting you know where you can go annual one, it’s like 25 bucks per month, but you have to pay for the whole year. So anyway, I would try that. There are a few other ones out there too, that I’ve looked at. But this is the one that I decided to go with. I haven’t really started any serious prospecting on LinkedIn yet because I’m still kind of in the learning the platform phase as long as well as optimizing, optimizing my profile, and developing my messaging sequence which I’m already testing that using email and SMS and cold voice drops through high levels. So once I have that kind of down in a bit of that message, I’m going to apply that to LinkedIn.

I obviously might have to tweak it a bit for the LinkedIn platform. But I think that’s what I’m going to be doing. So I will have more information as far as experience with LinkedIn and this CRM and or automation app in particular, but it’s going to be a few weeks. This is not you know, this, LinkedIn is another prospecting Avenue. For me, it’s not my primary source, if that makes sense. So anyway, anybody else has any suggestions for that? They give you a free pro trial, every once in a while. Yeah. And it worked out really well for me. So well, in fact, that I did pay a couple of extra months.

I mean, what I wanted to see is how good it was for prospecting, right. And I did it in the Virginia area got a bunch of people from Virginia, DC.

So I’d be there’s just a lot of SEO leads and related, like marketing, there’s a lot of things in marketing that you can do. And then like, I don’t know how much to give away, I’ll give it away, what I’ll do is I’ll just change the city that I’m in, I’ll change the phone number because then that’s the leads that you’ll get leads from there. So if you’d like if you’re around New York, and you can meet with people or Chicago, LA, whatever, I mean, it’s just a really good venue to get in front of people, you will have to like outbid others, I never send in.

I don’t want to get too technical. I never said send in the bids. I say to people, let’s get on a call. Let’s talk and they will see what it is that you want that you need. Because I can’t tell you exactly. I can’t charge you like $15,000 and not know what it is that you need. And so you get them on the phone. And they get to know you they get to know who you are they’ve already done their research on what it is that you do. And the closing rate is phenomenal. When you get in front of these people. You were talking about LinkedIn Pro Finder, though, right? Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I actually bought a course from

Josh Harris about that called LinkedIn Pro Finder profits over a year ago now. But the niches in there, I mean, unless you’re just looking like, you know, as an SEO agency, or excuse me, a marketing agency, you can get, you know, you can go you can find people that have submitted proposal requests for SEO or marketing services. Specifically, I’m in you know, looking for trees, tree contractor clients, and there are no Pro Finderoptions for that. So, so I never ended up doing anything with it. But it looks like you could get quite a, you know, there’s not a whole lot of people competing on this, at least there wasn’t a year ago when I joined that program. It didn’t really fit my model. So I really never did anything with it. But you ought to check into that. As far as just doing flat-out outreach. And I think I said when I was talking about this earlier, $49 a month, it’s only $39 a month, which is and that’s on the monthly. That’s why part of the reason I joined this one, as opposed to some of the other ones was that it was so much less expensive. And with the unlimited account, it gives you Zapier, you know, connect, it will allow you to connect to Zapier, which will push the data from this app to a high level, which is really where I want it because the high level is what I’m using for my CRM and pipeline and all that kind of stuff. So that’s specifically why I went with the unlimited was so that I could connect it to a high level via Zapier. But yeah, pro finder, as far as I know, there’s from what I hear there was quite a bit of work that can be had from LinkedIn, like to get clients from and you can even sell if you get good on with LinkedIn pro finder, you can actually provide that as a service for, you know, businesses that provide that are looking for people that are asking for looking for clients, essentially, you can manage pro finder stuff for clients is what I’m saying. And that’s kind of pro finder profits course was from Josh Harris was all about, you know, doing that managing that for others. Again, it just didn’t fit any of my chosen industries. So I didn’t do it. But you might want to look into that as well. How it works is you get a notification anytime that there’s a lead available in your area. And you just go in and you write an email to that person, get that person to contact you be really good at getting in front of people and having them you know, get them on that on that phone. And then if you get on the phone, you can close them. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, it’s a great question. By the way, I’m just like I said, just starting to get into LinkedIn now.

I think it’s promising. So I’m gonna give it a real effort. I’ll share what I know when I know.

Any Advice On How To Optimize An Online Vehicle Dealership Web Platform In Facebook Marketplace & Other Sites?

Okay, so this was a question posted by Marco but it was from another group or something from Nicole Campbell and Facebook. I’m creating a web platform that will allow dealers to sell their vehicles online. However, regarding the marketing, I would like for their cars to be marketed through the Facebook marketplace and a ton of other platforms. I’m not sure how to go about doing this. Do I automate my platform or do I automate each featured vehicle that is uploaded on the platform, automate each vehicle that has a multi-tier syndication or a single-tier?

Yeah, that’s kind of a tough question, because I’m not sure I fully understand what she’s asking to do. Marco, do you want to take this one? Since you were aware of it? Well, first, you need a website.

And it’s not a cheap website that Nicole is needing, because this website is going to need to do a few things, for example, the vehicles that she’s that she wants to sell. Let me go back and look at this question again because that’s what it is so so she wants to show the vehicles online, but she also wants them in the Facebook marketplace. So you want to wait to automate going into the Facebook marketplace. I don’t know if there’s any way outside of the Facebook API to go into the Facebook marketplace. I don’t even don’t think that IFTTT, Zapier, but you’d have to look. So here’s the thing, though. And this is why I got into this. Our support both MGYB and Semantic Mastery are not there to give you SEO advice, which this or marketing for that matter or anything having to do with how to build your website and how to hook all this up. What they’re they’re there to do is to create a done-for-you syndication network. But it can’t be customized in this way. We have a set number of profiles that we do this with the Facebook marketplace is not one of them. So you’re talking about something that’s outside of what we do outside the specs or the spectrum of what it is that we do. So she wants to know, do I automate your platform? Yeah, you would automate your website to hook into the Facebook marketplace. If that’s even possible. Again, API, there has to be some kind of way that you can hook into the marketplace so that you can display your vehicles into the marketplace and then also syndicate out into your syndication network.

All right. Now, is this a multi-tier syndication? No, it’s a single tier, because we’re still talking about building the entity and pushing whatever it is that you’re doing your product service, or whatever it is, out into your entity, you’re not even at the multi-tier syndication level. At that point, it might require a multi-tier syndication network, depending on the automobiles are they use? Are they new? What kind of are wheels? Is it local? Is it global? What are you doing? And I can tell you that if you don’t already have the website, and you’re gonna you’re looking to develop, it’s not done on pennies. This is an expensive website that you’re talking about is one type of thing. I mean, you can look to adjust the template to do what you need it to do. I wanted to answer this For this reason, because there’s no way that our support can be expected to give you an answer for any of these questions. Since they simply don’t know, I don’t even know I’m just giving you what I would look to do with it, I would create my own custom theme, my own custom template, my own structure like we did with MGYB. To do the things that I wanted to do hiring a developer to do that is going to cost you if you’ve already done it. Now your job is to go and look to see how you can hook into the Facebook marketplace. Because it’s not one of the places that we go into. Yeah. And then from there, once you get once you have your SEO shield in place, look and how to incorporate whatever it is that you’re doing into that. That would be my answer for her.

Yeah, I mean, you could always go to something like Upwork and look for, you know, Facebook developers, for example, or Facebook app developers, like I don’t know, I don’t do shit on Facebook. So it’s, but I’m sure you can find somebody on Upwork that to let you know whether that’s even possible, you could probably even do some research on your own and figure out, I don’t know, I sell real estate that I flip, you know, land vacant land on Facebook marketplace, but we post those manually. We don’t do a lot of you know, a shit ton of volume. So there’s really no reason for us to automate that. But I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve seen in any of our automation apps, the ability to automate a Facebook marketplace post to profiles and post to groups and that kind of pages. Yes, but I’ve never I don’t think I’ve ever seen that option anywhere. And all the automation apps that I’ve used, not saying it can’t be done. It may be possible. I just never seen that. So I don’t think it’s common. So again, I would recommend that you just do some research first to see if you can automate Facebook posts, Facebook marketplace posts, excuse me. First and if you can’t determine whether that’s possible or not, then you know, again, go to like Upwork or something and post a job describing what it is you’re trying to accomplish? And you’ll start getting some replies back from people that, you know, depending on how you post your job and Facebook up work, excuse me, I usually do by invitation only. So I literally go look for people that say something in their profile that would, you know, lead me to believe that they’re able to help. And then I send them the invitation to review my job, the job posting, specifically, and that way I don’t get like 8000 replies that I have to sift and sort through, I’m only getting replies from people that I have selected. But that might be a good opportunity for you to find out. Just have some conversations with some people that understand Facebook development stuff, and they’d be able to steer you in the right direction. And then you might even find somebody to be able to develop what you need, right there on the upward platform. Any comments?

Can You Use The SEO Power Shield To A Website That Already Had A Google Drive & IFTTT Setup By Another Vendor?

No, that’s perfect. Okay. driven to rank. Alright, he says, I just purchased the power shield. Can I use it on a website that already had a Google Drive and IFTTT set up from another vendor? Or should I use it only on a site that doesn’t have those things set up? No, you know, you can use it for the same site.

It’s probably done a hell of a lot better too.

Since we did it not probably I’m sure it is. But um, yeah, no, as far as I’ll let Marco take this one. But yeah, you can apply it to the same site. What do you say, Marco?

Yeah.

Does that it?

I mean, they ask these questions, and you can never be really sure, right. Yeah, that’s true. It’s, uh,

I’m not sure what it is that we’re doing. Or can I use it on the website that already had a Google jet? Yes. Because we will use that Google Drive and we will get the IFTTT login. So what you’re missing is the G site. And if I’m reading this correctly, the ad ID but don’t use it on anything else. Unless I miss reading this.

While he’s saying that he had a website that already had a drive stack that was built by some other vendor as well as an IFTTT setup. Yeah, so he wants to apply the new SEO power shield that he bought from us and all of its components to the same website. And I’ve done that in the past guys, not I haven’t bought from other vendors. Because Because I’ve been building them myself or trained a team out of building them since 2011. So I’ve never bought a syndication network or a drive stack from another vendor. That said, I have had some, you know, networks that were older that weren’t set up correctly, or, you know, things have changed or whatever. And so, and for example, I’ve got a Tree Service.

One of my Tree Service locations that I built this drive stack for way back in probably 2015. When I learned how to do that, from Marco, before we had even launched our ys Academy. And I had built one in fact, it was the training that I did, I remember specifically it was for called pepper Tree Service. And it was because I had built that for the training that I did for ArcGIS Academy, because Gary, Dr. Gary did the training originally, but then people said they wanted me to do the training. So I went in and built a drive stack for call pepper Tree Service. And long story short, that was never that was built to those standards at that time. Well, things have changed a lot. You know, as far as like, how we build them. Now the way they look, the interlinking has gotten a lot better, everything else. And so about a year ago, I had, I had MGYB build another drive stack specifically for that brand that that that particular brand got brought in underneath another brand. But I had a new drive stack built for that I didn’t get rid of the old drive stack, it’s still out there, it’s still in fact, for you know, certain keyword searches, you can still see on page one some of those files and folders and such. But I just had a new one built to kind of replace that one but I just didn’t deindex the other one or set it to private or anything because there was really no perhaps except for the name being changed because I brought that other underneath another brand, the all the other NAEP data was the exact same and call pepper Tree Service is actually also a keyword instead of just a brand right that makes sense. So really didn’t am disambiguate or ambiguity ate my brand when I changed the brand name because all the other NAP data stayed the same. So my answer is I would just go ahead and apply the power shield to the project even if you had the other stuff. You can decide whether or not the other stuff was toxic and you want to eliminate it or set it to nonpublic or whatever. That’s up to you. You know we can’t tell you that without looking at anyways but I can tell you if it was built by somebody else you probably wouldn’t do right.

So yeah, we hit was responsible for what somebody else did. My main concern starting here would be, dude, don’t create ambiguity. If you create ambiguity, it’s going to kill whatever it is that you’re doing. And it’s really hard to disambiguate. Once you’ve done so.

Have You Tried Using 301 Redirect A Domain With Single Backlink From Authoritative Site To A Money Site?

So BB’s up with a list of questions, many of which are hypothetical as always, No, I’m kidding. BB, what’s up? He says, Hey, guys, have you ever tried a 301? redirect a domain with a single backlink from an authoritative site to the money site? What were the results? If not, then what should be there? Well, yes, I’ve done that. In fact, I found a really good it was domain that had was expired domain, but it had one backlink from Wikipedia. That was it. It was one backlink. But it was from Wikipedia, as a real backlink from Wikipedia. And it happened. It happened to be for a landmark or something, some historical landmark that had a website at one time, but apparently, they let the domain expire. And it was in a particular it was in the Charlottesville, Virginia area. And I had a limo service company at the time, that was a client of mine, that was a limo service in Charlottesville. And so I found that expired domain with the one backlink that was on a page for a historical landmark in the city of Charlottesville. And so it was it just seemed like a great backlink. So I did what I purchased. But if I remember, I can’t remember if I just did a 301 redirect, or if I set up I think I set up an HTML page with the Wayback informing the original page content from the Wayback Machine archive.org. Right. And I think I set that up on an HTML, Amazon s3 hosted, you know, bucket hosted HTML page with so a recreation of what the Wayback Machine archive.org had as the content on there. But I stripped all the links out and everything else to where the only error was one backlink from that HTML page to my money site. And I saw like a seven-position jump in a matter of a week, which was really crazy. It was one keyword that I was targeting, in particular with that test. And I saw a significant jump.

So as far as I don’t know if I’ve done any just 301 redirects, but it will pass the PageRank, you know, through the redirect to your destination, if it is, you know, a little bit as lost through a 301 redirect, but not much. So yes, it will pass. You want to comment on that one, Marco. Yeah, watching Be careful, like how long the domain has been expired? And how much has been spammed? Because it could be that that that da will disappear real quick. Yeah. And not only that, the PageRank. So it depends on how much you’re going to spend on that domain, what you’re using it for. But if it has those really good link metrics, then yes, I wrote, I built one up to like 70 domain authority once. And then once I got that far, Google for some reason came in and just smack the shit out of me. And it got D indexed. Well, of course, it was just total spam, because domain authority is a third-party metric. And like the only thing that you should be caring about, like, is it relevant to whatever it is that you’re doing? And does it have good links, so that those links are relevant to whatever it is that you’re doing? So if you can find a website that’s actually relevant, and the links are relevant to whatever you’re doing, it doesn’t have to have direct relevance. But some relevance according to whatever it is that Google considers relevant. Not Moz. Not majestic. Not a truss, nothing but Google. And then yes, yes, it will have fantastic results, Wikipedia, any Wikipedia links that are especially related, will have fantastic results, that 301 will have an effect. And then what you can do is boost that expired domain, because it’s 301. So you’re actually adding a layer of protection. Be careful, though, because a penalty can pass through that 301 to wherever it’s directed. So never directed to your money site. Of course. That’s why I mentioned the HTML page on an s3 bucket. Yep. Yeah. And that was, that was my preferred method. I don’t like to 301 I like to create those buffer pages. And there’s like, in my opinion, there’s no better place to do it than an S3 HTML page. So that’s, that’s I did a lot of that where I would buy expired domains and readjust build a single HTML page with the content that you can scrape directly from archive.org. And it’s just one page. It’s just the root domain, whatever was on the root domain, you can recreate that and then strip out any navigation menu links and everything else to where there’s one backlink on that page pointed when it can be an anchor text link, or however, you know, you have to determine how you want to handle that. But that one link now, especially if it’s anchor text, and it’s embedded within content that adds relevancy. It can be incredibly powerful and in that HTML page becomes another target that you can just hammer with additional backlinks as well for, you know, to power that up even further. So there’s a good question.

Why Does Google Rank A Site With Higher Quality Backlinks Than A Long Form Content?

The next one is why? And this question, I’ve read it like six times now trying to decipher it. So not 100% Sure, I can fully understand the question, but I’m going to attempt it. I think what he’s asking is why will Google rank content that has maybe less content, but higher quality, higher quality backlinks than long-form content? That might be considered like, you know, you know, a really in-depth article about this topic, but fewer backlinks, why will Google out? And he says, isn’t Google’s purpose to give the best results? Yes, and no. I mean, yes, Google intends to give the best results. But one of the algorithms also determines through backlinks, backlinks, a big still a huge part of the algorithm on how things are, end up the ranking, right, and how they perform in search, I should say, backlinks are still a huge part of that this is definitely a good question for Marco. But you know, just having, you know, just having good content, or even the best content about a particular topic does not mean that you’re going to rank for it. Because if you don’t, again, if you don’t know how to structure the content properly, if you don’t know how to do internal linking properly, if you don’t do any external stuff, except for Jeffrey Smith, who is incredible at Jeff’s building PageRank through internal link structure and how he stacks content, properly through semantic, you know, through what he knows through how good he is, Jeffrey Smith, SEO boot camps, the only one that I’ve ever seen, that can outrank you know, sites with very little to no external backlinks at all because of how he structures and he builds all his PageRank through internal linking. So again, if you know how to do all that shit, then having really good quality content, you can rank well for it, but just having the best content on a particular subject or topic. If you don’t know, like, if none of the other metrics are there signals are there, then it’s not you know, chances are, it’ll never get found. So I don’t know, Marco, how do you want to expand on that?

You mentioned the metric word PageRank, which is the doorway into what Google is building, which is a ranking score. This is a good way to understand that no matter how much content you write if you don’t build back backlinks, you’re fucked until Google figures out what it is that you’re trying to do.

Perfect example, because you can write a whole bunch of content that nobody sees is what I tell people like they want a million-dollar website that nobody is ever going to see. So there’d be a whole bunch of money. Nobody sees the website, and you have some garbage from 2000. Right, that type of website that, you know, it’s crazy, but it’s converting, like nuts. And you wonder, Well, why? Why? Because all you’re concentrating on is a pretty website that nobody will see, instead of focusing on converting the people that are coming to the website, activity, relevance, trust, and authority, which builds PageRank. It builds ranking short, he’s hitting it with backlinks which create more PageRank more ranking scores. That’s what we focus on the entity, the activity relevance, trust, and authority building PageRank building ranking score.

How Come Google Ranks Pages With Blocked To Membership Content?

Sweet, thank you. How come Google ranks pages with blocked membership content? Um, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, if it’s you know, if it’s a particular word, like a brand name, or you know, a training course name or something like that, and there’s not a lot of competition for it, then it can rank even if it’s a block membership page unless it’s set to no index. And I’ve even seen Google ignore that no index directive before. So I don’t know, I can’t answer that. Can you Marco, you’re not gonna have it? What do you mean by block to membership? That doesn’t mean that Google can’t crawl the page and can’t index the page and can’t rank it as long as the content is relevant. Or if you built a whole bunch of length we just talked about it backlinks to it. Then it has activity relevance, trust, and authority because people are coming to the website.

I think something like this right.

So like a blank membership registration page or something, you know what I mean? I think that’s what he’s asking about but he’s getting activity. Yeah.

Okay, so Joey says Where do I sign up for Syndication Academy jelly well syndication.academy just go to syndication dot Academy that will take you to the sales page if you want to join prior to the relaunch but if you just want to wait till the relaunch it looks like Adam already got you.

Looks like we already have an early access landing page. Look at that. I hadn’t thought of everything yet. No, I did in the background during Hump Day Hangouts. Ah, the truth comes out.

I thought you were you had some foresight. I mean, yeah, that’s what I meant to say I had a couple of things there. Awesome. Well, look at that. See asking you shall receive. There you go. Muscle slug. Nice. Not sure what a muscle slug is, but

How To Properly Set The CloudFare Settings To Point To the Website?

okay, I recently purchased the video mail prospecting system that Bradley had done, which is awesome, by the way. Yeah, wait. Soon, soon, I’m going to be adding an additional module to that guy. And then we’ll probably relaunch it. And not, you know, we don’t do big launches anyways. But we’ll probably reintroduce it to you guys, our audience again, once I do, because I’ve got I’m doing I just launched a new agency less than three weeks ago, and I’m doing serious prospecting. More so than I’ve ever done, like industrial strength. That’s awesome. And it’s working well. And I’ve got a really nice little system that’s working well for starting a conversation, using video emails and all kinds of anyways, I’ll cover that I’m going to do an update to that training. And then we’re going to go into reintroducing it to you guys when it’s ready. So anyway, if you’ve already got it, you’ll get the update when it when I add it. Okay.

Back to the question. I have a technical question. In reference to this. Bradley had mentioned during your training to set up a website for the personalized name domain to help with email delivery. Yes, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to set the Cloudflare settings up to point to the website to work right. Normally, you set the name servers on the domain, to point to the hosting to work. I hope this makes sense on what I’m asking any suggestions on this? It’s probably a simple thing that I’m messing with that with this. Thanks, James. Yeah, James, it’s really simple. So you have if you are if you’re buying a domain, and you’re going to build a website, you’re and you’re going through Cloudflare, you just need to figure out what the IP addresses for your server, your host, right, and then you set the record in Cloudflare. So you set an A record, put the @ sign in CloudFlare as you know, subdomain or whatever, that just means it’s going to read it, it’s the root essentially. And then you put the IP address of your web server in you know, value field, and you hit it, you know, you add, you add that record, then you can also add a C name record for www dot and then put the same value your domain name in the value field, that’s a C name record. And that will so that the website will resolve on both the root domain and the www version of it. If that makes sense. Cloudflare has helped files for that if, if those are confusing, you can always go to YouTube, and say how to set up a domain on Cloudflare. And, you know, I’m sure there’s a shit ton of YouTube videos out there that will show you how to do that. It’s very simple. Once you learn how to do it, it’s super, super simple. And I use Cloudflare for just about everything. The only thing here’s something else. And I mentioned this, and I’ll give this away because I thought it was brilliant. I took a great email prospecting course from this is called cold email mastery. And it’s on gumroad.com. I don’t even know the trait, the guy’s name, who did the training, it was fabulous, really, really good. cold email prospecting course, I just took it like two weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago. So 125 bucks. It’s worth it, guys. But he showed me in that training, how to go buy the domain through Google domains through a G Suite account or Google workspace account. And then if you buy that domain, like that, you’re going to be cold email prospecting with buying the domain through Google workspaces. And through Google domains logged into a Google account. And guess you don’t have to be logged into a Google workspace account. You could probably do it from your primary Google account if it’s just a regular Google account. But go to Google domains is when I’m saying purchase the domain that you’re going to be using for cold email. If you’ve already done it, don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. I’m just saying going forward or get another extension of.org or.co extension that you can redirect to your money site. And again, I’ll cover some of this in the updating training for vpls or the video Legion system. But if you buy the domain through Google domains, it’s like three bucks more than it is at name cheap. But it will automatically set up your you there’s a checkbox during the checkout process for purchasing a domain through Google domains that will allow that will automatically set Google workspaces up for that domain and it will set up the SPF records the DK i M Records and all these things that you need to ensure the highest deliverability for your emails. So it’s great it was a great little hack for me it was worth 125 bucks alone for the cost of that course was just to learn that because it sets everything up and it’s it’s right out of the gate. It’s an initial validation signal to Google that you know you’re a valid business and not just a spammer. One other thing that I want to cover just very briefly and again this is because I’m doing so much of this stuff right now guys, but there’s this great service and I’ll cover this in the update when I do that for the video lead gen system. Lem list calm. This is a cold emailing platform. I’m not using it for that I’m using it for one Barrett because I’m using high level for my prospecting platform. And I’m using high level it’s fabulous Semantic Mastery comm slash high level, you can get a 14-day free trial. That is my it’s great. I’m using that for my automation platform and all the stuff that I’m doing. But why I brought up Lem list was because if you want to build a domain reputation of a new domain for cold emailing, they have this service in here. And if you go to their blog, they’ve got a great article about it. In fact, I’m just going to pull up the article because that would be better.

Warm up, email, and I’m going to put them list.com get right there how to warm up your email account. And that’s on blog dot Lem list calm so just go to Lem go to Google and search for warm-up email endless calm and it’s the very first organic listing right there, boom, read this article. It’s fabulous. When I came across this I was like, Man, that’s uh, it’s brilliant. They have this. And you can join Lem list for I think it’s 30 bucks a month, just to use the lead warm feature. And that’s what I do. So once I have, you know, my domain, set up all the records in place and everything, then I add that Google workspace account, to Lem list through the to the LEM warm feature. And what it does is it starts to send and receive and reply to emails from that brand new domain email address to other Lem Lem list users and it’s all done. It’s all automated it gets it’s done in the background. But what it does is it starts to build the domain reputation so that when you are ready to start cold, like I would give it 30 days, at the very minimum at least 21 days for the LEM warm system to warm the email up and build a domain reputation before you start cold prospecting emailing with it. But I want to tell you like I said, I just set this up for the domain that I just started prospecting with about three weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago really. And I only let that it run on that for two weeks. And I just tested I did a MX tools, you know, email reputation tests you for where you can send an email in and it will analyze the email and tell you what like the spam score is. And I got a 9.4 out of 10 yesterday when I literally just tested it yesterday because about once a week I like to go in and check to see if my domain reputation is dropping and I got a 9.4 out of 10. And I’m sending cold emails with a video email, just like I talked about a video lead gen system I’m using send spark.com or send spark whatever it’s an app Sumo deal that creates the video, email gifts, and all that. And that’s what I’m using and I inject put that right into Gmail, send that out for cold emailing and I’m still getting a 9.4 out of a 10 you know, domain reputation score. So I would highly recommend that you check out Lem lists for their lead warm feature. And then also check out, you know, purchasing domains through Google domains that you’re going to be doing for and set Google workspace upon it is what I’m saying. So hopefully that makes sense. As far as CloudFlare go back and just go to YouTube. Cloudflare has got help files but you can also go to YouTube and search and I’m sure you’ll find a tutorial on how to do what you need to do.

Do Different Stacks Interlink When Mirroring The Site Into The Drive Stack?

Looks like Jason, Jason Oh my god. Game says hello there when mirroring so we’re almost out of time guys. three more minutes. Hello there. When mirroring the site into the drive stack do the different stacks interlink. So for example, do dogs from the widgets folder point to the green widgets folder docs?

As far as I know, well, no, no, I and Marco would be better to answer this one. But if you’re siloing, your drive stack using the ArcGIS expansions. Like we teach the No.

And again, I don’t build them anymore. So I’m not sure if they I don’t think they interlink because the silos inside the drive stack or the internal links are the links from the files within the drive stack within the silo in the drive stack should be only pointing to the target URLs on your money site. Right? The same silos?

Not interlinking between them, if that makes sense.

Yeah, and I can’t mark it would be better to answer that one. I’m sorry. I just can’t give you a proper answer on that one. Because I’d have to go in and actually analyze one of my drive stacks. I haven’t built one of those in so many years. To be honest with you, I’m not sure how, through the expansion service, how they interlink those, I think they interlink all the files and folders within the same silo. They interlink those two to each other, right, that makes sense, but no cross linking to other silos. And I’d have to confess I’d have to go look at it to confirm it, or Marco could confirm it, but he’s not here. So.

All right, one more Jason says

Just kidding I’m really here for this week’s SEO with BB also just getting these talking about BB too many questions BB just giving you a little crap and seeing if you can crack Bradley up. Yeah thanks, Jason

all right last one well this is good cold email mastery There you go, we need to get an affiliate link for that for real because I keep touting how good that course is. It really is a good course.

Does All Of The MGYB Services Work For Non-English Sites?

Last question, guys Conrad says Hey guys, are some or all of the MGYB services for non-English sites as well what would be different or good to take into account when ordering the project and other languages it’s non-English you can’t we don’t we only provide our done for you services in English.

Hernan, if you’re still available, maybe you can, I don’t do anything outside of the US. But from what I understand you can apply the SEO shield that built-in English and still apply it to a non-English target. And it will still benefit it. But I don’t do that. So I don’t know if Hernan still with us or not? Apparently not. From what again, from what I understand it doesn’t you can have all English stuff on the SEO shield pointing to a non-English site and still benefit from it. But I can’t really answer that because I’ve never done anything outside SEO wise outside of the US. Post this question in the Facebook group and I’m sure that Rob or Marco could jump in and give you the correct answer.

Okay.

All right. Well, thanks, guys. Thanks, Adam. For hanging out, guys.

Source: Semantic Mastery Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 329 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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