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thequiver · 2 years

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1, 2, 3, 4, 6GA, 11, 14GA, 20GA, 21, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 41, 42GA, 48, 50. Please and thank you.

1. Who's your favorite character and why? So I don't.... have one. I have a lot of characters that I like hyperfixate on? But I don't necessarily think I have a favorite. I definitely do have favorites but not one in particular. So like Ollie, Roy, Mia, Connor, Dinah, Emi, Jade, David, Pietro, Wanda, Terry, Kurt, etc.

2. Who's your favorite supporting character and why?

I don't.... think I actually tend to classify characters as "supporting characters" to me they're all just.... characters, but uh... Shado.

3. Who's your favorite comics hero/sidekick duo?

GREEN ARROW AND SPEEDY

4. answered already!

6. Who's a character you love seeing interacting with Green Arrow?

for Ollie I LOVE seeing him interact with Shado- and for Connor I really like seeing him interact with his civilian family and Master Jansen!

11. already answered!

14. What's your favorite thing about character Green Arrow?

for Ollie I love all of his contradictions, they make such a fun character, and for Connor I just really adore the depth to his character, how strong he is and his constant desire to be better and do better in really meaningful ways

20. If you were given a comic run for character Green Arrow, what would you write about?

Definitely a book with both Connor and Ollie teaming up as Green Arrow and sort of them working to find a balance in that dynamic for sure, definitely push and pull in their methods of being Green Arrow, sort of showcasing how they learn from each other

21. Share a favorite piece of comics lore.

GA writers have been investigated by the CIA :)

24. What's your favorite crossover event?

I'm really fond of the Battle of Muir Island, which is apparently a lot more niche than I thought it was

26. If you got sucked into a comic, which one would you pick?

uh..... this would end HORRIBLY FOR ME, but Once and Future

29. What are some of your favorite comics blogs?

definitely @batphobique @lomakes @cissie-queen-jones @zibah-ho and @lesbianspeedy plus more friends but is late and I am bad at remembering urls

30. What's been a good change to comics status quo?

definitely hit or miss but greater understandings of mental health and the inclusion of more diverse characters - I am NOT saying these are always done well, but just the fact that they're existing is something that gives me more hope for the Big 2 especially

31. Shine a light on a character you think deserves more love.

JAY GUTHRIE AND RUTH ALDINE

32. Who are two characters you'd like to see interact more?

DAVID HALLER AND ERIK MAGNUS LEHNSHERR

33. What's your favorite tv show adaptation?

X-Men: Evolution babey

34. What's your favorite movie adaptation?

It has SO MANY FAULTS but the vibes of X-Men First Class were immaculate (also X-2)

35. What's your favorite video game adaptation?

much to the chagrin of my boyfriend and my students, I do not play video games nor am I super into watching other people play video games

37. Any characters you used to dislike but now you like? What changed your mind?

I used to really not like Pyro, but I'd only seen him in the movies and in X-Men: Evo, but I just came to really enjoy him in the comics, all it took was actually reading lol

38. What's your favorite comic book trope?

"Any last words?" being said by an adversary and then their opponent not dying- it gets me every time

41. What's a comic that keeps on giving (you enjoy rereading)?

Green Arrow: Quiver, but issue specific Legion of X #6

42. What comic had the best characterization of Green Arrow?

For Ollie it's O'Neil or Grell, and for Connor it's Dixon

48. What's your favorite elseworld/AU story?

I've never really been into elseworlds like I like making my own AUs and such, but idk... I'm a canon compliance bitch they're just not my thing

50. Share anything you'd like to about a character of your choice - a favorite fic, comic panel, an original work you made, anything!

okay so I bought this super awesome sticker of David holding his father's skull with a Hamlet reference on it and I've had to explain the context to at least 10 of my coworkers and it never gets old

#that was so much

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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Unabridged: Proteus

The X-Men, those beautiful mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. We’ve been untangling that history for a while, but sometimes, you really want a more in-depth look. Interested? Then read the (un)Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 125 - 128) - by Chris Claremont and John Byrne

Fun* fact: this particular issue is the oldest comic I physically own.

* for a given value of fun

Something sinister lurks on Muir Isle…

This arc is very much set up like a horror movie. It starts out as a regular X-Men narrative, where Claremont is weaving along several plot threads. We check in with the X-Men in Westchester, we check in with Magneto who has retreated to Asteroid M and we even check in with Xavier in space, who finally learns more about the true scope of the Phoenix and its nature. Finally, we’ve got Jean stationed at Muir Isle, where Moira is investigating the sheer scope of her powers. (She has realized how strong Jean truly is; akin to a god. Her theory is that Jean’s recent power dampening is the result of her human mind trying to cope with her massive power level.) It’s about as everyday as it gets for the X-Men, but, well…

I always thought Jean molecularly restructured her own outfit into the Phoenix-costume whenever she needed to change, but here, she just… wills it away? Also, why did you need an outfit change for this, anyway? Does the costume simply appear whenever she exerts too much of her powers, like an angry forehead vein? So many questions. (X-Men 126)

Other residents at Muir are Polaris, Havok and the Multiple Man, all of them blissfully unaware that something skulks about in the shadows: the remains of an unfortunate captain, whose body has been taken over by something… other.

But someone else is skulking around in the shadows, too. Jean isn’t aware of it, but a familiar stranger is manipulating her from the sidelines.

I’ve been gaslighting a cosmic force, ask me how! (X-Men 126)

1979 marks the first appearance of the Hellfire Club, though we only meet one member for now: Jason Wyngarde. (Maybe all of this could have been avoided if he’d had a Barbie doll to dress up in black lace as a child, but alas.) ‘Jason’ is a pseudonym and though most people these days know that he’s a familiar villain from the X-Men’s past, the reveal of his true identity will follow later.

Meanwhile, Beast finally gets off his ass to check on the Xavier mansion, even though the X-Men must have been tripping intruder alarms for months now. Still, we do get this sweet moment out of it:

Of course she’s going to be surprised at the sheer amount of plot contrivances that were thrown up to keep all y’all apart for a full year. (X-Men 126)

Beast knows that Jean went to Muir, so Scott immediately goes for the phone. Lorna picks up, but during the call she starts screaming, leaning heavily into the horror genre. She fends off the withering remains of the captain, so instead, ‘Mutant X’ jumps into a duplicate of Jamie Madrox and promptly flees to the mainland on a boat.

Guuurl, that body is snatched. (X-Men 126)

The X-Men (sans Beast) hit Muir Isle, where Moira debriefs them. Moira reveals who Mutant X is: his name is Kevin MacTaggart, her son, who has the terrifying power to warp reality. Because his power is so vast, he burns through bodies at an alarming rate. He can only be contained - or killed - by inorganic metal. In an effort to contain him (and, presumably, help him at some point), Moira locked him in a metal cell. He was kept there, alone, for god knows how long, until Magneto accidentally freed him. They know he escaped the island and, because of his parasitic need for fresh host bodies, Moira posits that he’ll be heading for a big city.

Kevin - who dubs himself Proteus - racks up an impressive body count in the country side, killing 7 people in total. (6 people and 1 dupe? Eh.) He’s a terrific villain, because he’s powerful, has a well-defined weakness and, even though it’s not impossible to emphasize with him -- isolation tends to drive people mad -- the way he discards his victims is truly chilling.

The X-Men chase after him, Wolverine picking up the scent. When Proteus tries to claim him, Logan’s adamantium skeleton repels him. In response, he unspools reality.

I’ve had this trip. I think they call this strain Dragon’s Dynamite. (X-Men 126)

Storm intervenes, but Proteus leaves Nightcrawler and especially Wolverine rattled. Logan’s heightened senses root him in reality more than most, and when Proteus uses his powers, everything is just screaming wrong at him. But nobody is safe: little Kevin MacTaggart turns gravity against Ororo, taking her out as well.

He tries to claim Storm, but Moira repels him, sniping at him from afar. Proteus fears (metal) bullets, knowing they can kill him. When Cyclops realizes Moira’s shooting to kill, he intervenes - X-Men don’t kill, after all. Moira knocks him out with her gun, but Kevin escapes in the confusion. Moira finally realizes where her son is headed, while the X-Men regroup.

In Edinburgh, Moira pays Joe MacTaggart a visit - her husband, Kevin’s father.

The MacTaggarts are definitely in the running for the Xavier/Marko-award for Fucked Up Family Dynamics. (X-Men 127)

There’s a calculating coldness to Moira’s character that I’ve never responded well to, but I like how Claremont fills in the blanks here. It’s part unhappiness, part a deep frustration with her inability to help her own son. I wonder how Kevin was a child, before his mutant gene activated: was he a sweet boy, or one with a cruel streak? Did she fear what he might become?

There’s a few gaps in Claremont’s narrative, but Hickman has drawn on this very well, I think: the Moira X in HoXPoX is equally calculating, equally cold. But how can she not be? How often has she raised Kevin? How often has she had to kill him? How many times has she watched these people, these X-Men, die?

Anyway, Moira’s warning is as effective as anger management therapy for Sabretooth, because Kevin comes by Joe’s office a little while later and snuffs out his dad. Phoenix hears Joe screaming telepathically across the moors, allowing the X-Men to pinpoint him. Claremont also makes sure to show that Jean’s power is steadily growing:

Polaris be like: “No, no, I’m carrying my own emotionally stunted Summers boy, thank you.” (X-Men 127)

Proteus takes Moira hostage as the X-Men confront him. They fight.

Ordinarily, I don’t pay a lot of attention to the fight scenes, because recapping those usually boils down to “Cyclops conks Magneto in the helmet” or “Wolverine snikts Pyro in the gas tank”, but this one is truly great. John Byrne delivers some excellent work, showcasing the scope of Proteus’ powers through his art, his panelling. Don’t just take my word for it:

I love how trippy all of this is. Pivoting gravity, changing an optic beam into flowers… Sure, Proteus might be a callous and cruel SoB, but he’s also one imaginative motherfucker. (X-Men 127)

One by one, Proteus manages to distract or take out the X-Men, either by endangering passers-by, encasing them in amber (Storm) or burying them alive (Banshee). One of my favorite details is how afraid they all are: especially Wolverine and Nightcrawler hesitate before jumping into the fray. For them, this villain is truly beyond their scope.

In the end, it’s Phoenix who manages to drive him back, outside of the center of Edinburg and up an old castle, where there are fewer civilians to threaten. There, on the ramparts, it’s Colossus who makes the final stand: he destroys Proteus’ physical body and realizes that right now, there’s only one thing they can do to stop him. All it will cost is Piotr’s innocence.

Showcasing an ancient Japanese truth: Psychic Pokémon are weak to Steel attacks. (X-Men 128)

Proteus scatters to the winds and the X-Men emerge victorious, though Moira has lost both her son and her husband after this ordeal. Moreover, I think this is the first villain that the X-Men explicitly kill, simply because they have no other options left. This marks the first time that their ideal of mutant rehabilitation fails. What’s worse is that Kevin MacTaggart was essentially nothing more than a supremely screwed up boy who got access to way too much power way too quickly.

I wonder if it would have turned out differently had Xavier been there. (I also wonder if it’s a coincidence that this takes place right before the Dark Phoenix saga.)

I think this might be Claremont’s best arc yet, heightened by John Byrne’s excellent art. Chris deftly mixes horror, action and his usual soap opera elements, serving one cohesive narrative that (for once) doesn’t leave much hanging. Proteus is an excellent villain whose powers work visually (pay attention, MCU) and whose entire being touches on one of the same aspects as Krakoa: can and should every mutant fit into any sort of normal society?

If you have someone who’s interested in vintage X-Men and you want to recommend something that doesn’t require a confusing explanation of all the necessary backstory (and perhaps a crude sketch of the Summers and/or Lensherr family tree), I would recommend this arc.

And the rest, as they say, is Hellfire. 1980 is gonna be a doozy.

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missroserose · 4 years

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return of the return of the wednesday reading meme?

So it turns out that trying to read when I’m on a writing bender is...actually fairly hard? It’s almost like working on a story between six and fourteen hours a day doesn’t leave me much time for...well, much of anything. But that fic is done, and holiday stuff is pretty much finished, so here we go again! We’ll see how long I last this time.

What I’ve just finished reading

Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan. I’ve been thinking a lot about story structure lately, in part because it’s something I’ve been aiming to have more of in my work, so this was a fascinating read in part because it didn’t follow a traditional structure at all. Or, really, you could almost argue that it’s the reverse of a traditional structure—where in a Hero’s Journey-style story you have the inciting incident that sends the main character out into the world to be forever changed, here you have a victimized teenage girl responding to further trauma by literally withdrawing into her safe, comfortable fantasy world and staying there for decades while she raises her two daughters. I appreciated that the story largely treated this choice with empathy; while she’s upbraided by one character later on for her selfishness in not allowing her daughters to experience the real world until they’re grown, most of the others are thoroughly understanding—and the price she pays ends up being a quiet and personal one rather than the Epic Potentially World-Ending Catastrophe that most Western storytelling would demand. There’s a lot to chew over in this story, about the effects of trauma, and culture, and how to make existing as a disempowered person bearable.

If I had one complaint about it it’d probably be that the story treats the “real” world’s brutally patriarchal culture as an inevitability, something that can’t be fought directly, but only undermined covertly, through magic and other hidden means. I guess I have just enough of my mother’s crusader tendencies to want to say “forget that, we can do better”...but power dynamics are forever a tricky thing to alter, and from the perspective of the main characters, there’s really not that much they can do; it’s something of a triumph even to learn to exist within it.

(Thanks again to @introvertia for sending me this, it’s given me lots to think about!)

What I’m currently reading

Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. I’m almost through the audiobook, and hoo boy have I been enjoying it. The author and the narrator both are doing a bang-up job in helping my brain keep the large ensemble cast straight—every character has a distinct personality and voice, and the ways they bounce off each other are eminently believable. Gideon, with her irreverent attitude and occasional brilliance, and Harrowhawk, with her continual brilliance and equivalent insufferability, continue to be one of my favorite fictional pairings; even once they start to trust each other somewhat, their chemistry is just phenomenal. The worldbuliding I’m a little fuzzier on, but the characters are so propulsive that I’ve been more than willing to just go with it. And given that they’re basically acolytes of a mysterious and claustrophobic religious order that requires absolute faith from its adherents, to a degree it works that the origins are mysterious, even if I occasionally find myself wondering about practicalities like “okay, so, who exactly maintains the shuttles? And the atmosphere processors? And grows the food? And who’re they fighting in this mysterious war that’s only occasionally mentioned...?“ I’ll be interested to see if she expands on that in the further books.

What I plan to read next

To be honest, I have no idea. I may well just pick up something from one of the piles of books around my house—God knows I have enough of them, haha.

Fanfiction Spotlight

This week I want to point out Solus, Soulless, Solace by Blake (@newleafover on tumblr). I’ve often thought that the soulless version of Sam we meet in Season 6 of Supernatural is one of those opportunities practically tailor-made for fanfic—the direction they took him in the show worked fine, but there’s just so much potential for exploration there, especially with Sam’s internality. What does the world look like, to a human being without a soul? How does his inability to feel emotion change how he relates to his loved ones, and especially to the one person his life revolves around? And without the ability to love, what is it that keeps him so tied to Dean?

Blake uses the opportunity to present an unrelentingly crystalline portrait of trauma-induced functional depression, where habit and careful consideration carries you through most of the motions of your life but you’re acutely aware that your usual breadth and depth of emotional experience is just—gone. Further, they write it in second person, unusual for a non-reader-insert fic but powerful in that it strips away that layer of insulation. And damn if it isn’t 100% effective. I happened to come across it after a week that had involved more than a little emotional heavy lifting; reading it was like going outside during a sunny eighteen-degree day when all my muscles were sore. It felt therapeutic, if only in the sense of “oh, right, this is why I’m doing all this painful internal work, so I don’t end up here again.”

#wednesday reading #gideon the ninth #tamsyn muir #tender morsels #margo lanagan #supernatural #solus soulless solace #newleafover #soulless!sam #fic rec

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bigdreamsandwildthings · 5 years

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Review: Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

Rating: ★★★★.5/5

“‘Life is a tragedy,’ said Dulcinea, ‘Left behind by those who pass away, not able to change anything at all. It’s the total lack of control...Once somebody dies, their spirit’s free forever, even if we snatch at it or try to stopper it or use the energy it creates. Oh, I know sometimes they come back...or we can call them, in the manner of the Fifth...but even that exception to the rule shows their mastery of us. They only come when we beg. Once someone dies, we can’t grasp at them anymore, thank God! - except for one person, and he’s very far from here, I think. Gideon, don’t be sorry for the dead. I think death must be an absolute triumph.’” 4.5 stars. This was a TRIP and I was confused about 65% of the time I spent reading. That said, I fucking loved it way more than I thought I would because I just let myself get wrapped up in the absolute insanity of the story and its world. Gideon lives on the Ninth, a planet of dark necromancy and a Locked Door, and she despises Harrowhark, its Reverend Daughter. When a search for a new Lyctor is called, Harrow needs a cavalier to accompany her off-world to compete for the title, and when her current cavalier dies, she forces Gideon to come along with her. The following mysteries they encounter are full of dark turns, dangerous twists, and speedbumps that could upend Gideon's entire world. It is extremely hard to write any kind of summary for this one, because I think that going in with absolutely zero expectations other than "badass insanity" is what made this as enjoyable as it was for me. The plot makes absolutely no sense at first - in fact, the entire world of Gideon the Ninth is such a puzzle to work out at the beginning of the novel that I almost gave up. It takes a ton of brainwork to be able to stick with it through the massive amounts of jargon and the jarring way the author throws you into the world without any real explanation. Which is ultimately why I've left half a star off. The initial lack of world-building was so hard to get through. There were so many words that have no meaning to me, and it made it so that I had to really push through that first section. But after I did, my god, was I into this. Gideon and Harrow are such an unlikely pair, and their story is so woven together and interesting that I couldn't put the book down. Gideon is such a badass (she really is like a sarcastic amazing Daria in space) and Harrow is so mysterious and smart and intense. They're like two sticks of dynamite that could explode at any moment and that dynamic was so fun to read. And the world that Tamsyn has created is just so goddamn creative. The necromancy system is fascinating, the science behind everything just so out there and intense. It feels smart, while at the same time being magical and just wild enough to keep a reader wondering what the hell is going to happen next. Once you're at Canaan House and all the mysteries begin to build up, everything is just so eerie and creepy and wonderful. Some things are so gory and grotesque, but then, the heart of the story is the relationships that Gideon forms, and the balance is so fun. I guess my advice with this one is to just roll with it. You may not know what's going on half the time, but shit is it an enjoyable trip regardless.

#booklr #book photography #book review #gideon the ninth #tamsyn muir #the locked tomb #fantasy #science fiction #bookworm #bibliophile #my photos #my reviews #mine

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theadmiringbog · 5 years

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*wakes up and looks at phone* ah let’s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device

–@MISSOKISTIC IN A TWEET ON NOVEMBER 10, 2016

A more recent project that acts in a similar spirit is Scott Polach’s Applause Encouraged, which happened at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego in 2015. On a cliff overlooking the sea, forty-five minutes before the sunset, a greeter checked guests in to an area of foldout seats formally cordoned off with red rope. They were ushered to their seats and reminded not to take photos. They watched the sunset, and when it finished, they applauded. Refreshments were served afterward.

—

Bird-watching is the opposite of looking something up online.

They write: If you can have your time and work and live and be a person, then the question you’re faced with every day isn’t, Do I really have to go to work today? but, How do I contribute to this thing called life? What can I do today to benefit my family, my company, myself?

To me, “company” doesn’t belong in that sentence. Even if you love your job! Unless there’s something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly potentially productive the second you open your eyes in the morning—and in my opinion, no one should accept this, not now, not ever.

Audre Lorde meant it in the 1980s, when she said that “[c]aring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

As Gabrielle Moss, author of Glop: Nontoxic, Expensive Ideas That Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious (a book parodying goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-priced wellness empire), put it: self-care “is poised to be wrenched away from activists and turned into an excuse to buy an expensive bath oil.”

Thinking about sensitivity reminds me of a monthlong artist residency I once attended with two other artists in an extremely remote location in the Sierra Nevada. There wasn’t much to do at night, so one of the artists and I would sometimes sit on the roof and watch the sunset. She was Catholic and from the Midwest; I’m sort of the quintessential California atheist. I have really fond memories of the languid, meandering conversations we had up there about science and religion. And what strikes me is that neither of us ever convinced the other—that wasn’t the point—but we listened to each other, and we did each come away different, with a more nuanced understanding of the other person’s position.

The life force is concerned with cyclicality, care, and regeneration; the death force sounds to me a lot like “disrupt.” Obviously, some amount of both is necessary, but one is routinely valorized, not to mention masculinized, while the other goes unrecognized because it has no part in “progress.”

Certain people would like to use technology to live longer, or forever. Ironically, this desire perfectly illustrates the death drive at play in the “Manifesto of Maintenance Art” (“separation, individuality, Avant-Garde par excellence; to follow one’s own path—do your own thing; dynamic change”)30. To such people I humbly propose a far more parsimonious way to live forever: to exit the trajectory of productive time, so that a single moment might open almost to infinity. As John Muir once said, “Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment.”

Poswolsky writes of their initial discovery: “I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply: just spend more time with your friends.”

... he said, with an epiphany he had while accompanying a fellow clergyman on a trip to Louisville:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

My most-liked Facebook post of all time was an anti-Trump screed. In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger.

Obviously these feelings are warranted, but their expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke.

Our aimless and desperate expressions on these platforms don’t do much for us, but they are hugely lucrative for advertisers and social media companies, since what drives the machine is not the content of information but the rate of engagement. Meanwhile, media companies continue churning out deliberately incendiary takes, and we’re so quickly outraged by their headlines that we can’t even consider the option of not reading and sharing them.

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world—contemptus mundi—but the channels through which you encounter it day to day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one.

Standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the “wrong way”: a way that undermines the authority of the hegemonic game and creates possibilities outside of it.

A crowded sidewalk is a good example: everyone is expected to continue moving forward. Tom Green poked at this convention when he performed “the Dead Guy,” on his Canadian public access TV show in the 1990s. Slowing his walk to a halt, he carefully lowered himself to the ground and lay facedown and stick-straight for an uncomfortable period of time. After quite a crowd had amassed, he got up, looked around, and nonchalantly walked away.

So to a question like “Will you or will you not participate as asked?” Diogenes would have answered something else entirely: “I will participate, but not as asked,” or, “I will stay, but I will be your gadfly.” This answer (or non-answer) is something I think of as producing what I’ll call a “third space”—an almost magical exit to another frame of reference. For someone who cannot otherwise live with the terms of her society, the third space can provide an important if unexpected harbor.

Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Bartleby, the clerk famous for repeating the phrase, “I would prefer not to,” uses a linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss. Not only does he not comply; he refuses the terms of the question itself.

Facebook abstention, like telling someone you grew up in a house with no TV, can all too easily appear to be taste or class related.

We need to be able to think across different time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter) cycles, to pause for consideration when clickbait would have us click, to risk unpopularity by searching for context when our Facebook feed is an outpouring of unchecked outrage and scapegoating, to closely study the ways that media and advertising play upon our emotions, to understand the algorithmic versions of ourselves that such forces have learned to manipulate, and to know when we are being guilted, threatened, and gaslighted into reactions that come not from will and reflection but from fear and anxiety.

“In short, when the inattention stimulus falls outside the area to which attention is paid, it is much less likely to capture attention and be seen,” the researchers write. That’s intuitive enough, but it gets more complicated. If the briefly flashing stimulus was outside the area of visual attention, but was something distinct like a smiley face or the person’s name, the subject would notice it after all.

As an artist interested in using art to influence and widen attention, I couldn’t help extrapolating the implications from visual attention to attention at large.

In a post about ad blockers on the University of Oxford’s “Practical Ethics” blog, the technology ethicist James Williams (of Time Well Spent) lays out the stakes: We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.

In an effort to make the user aware of persuasive design, Nudget used overlays to call out and describe several of the persuasive design elements in the Facebook interface as the user encountered them. But the thesis is also useful simply as a catalog of the many forms of persuasive design—the kinds that behavioral scientists have been studying in advertising since the mid-twentieth century.

Vivrekar lists the strategies identified by researchers Marwell and Schmitt in 1967: “reward, punishment, positive expertise, negative expertise, liking/ingratiation, gifting/pre-giving, debt, aversive stimulation, moral appeal, positive self-feeling, negative self-feeling, positive altercasting, negative altercasting, positive esteem of others, and negative esteem of others.”

Vivrekar herself has study participants identify instances of persuasive design on the LinkedIn site and compiles a staggering list of 171 persuasive design techniques.

“knowing your enemy” when it comes to the attention economy. For example, one could draw parallels between the Nudget system, which teaches users to see the ways in which they are being persuaded, and the Prejudice Lab, which shows participants how bias guides their behavior.

Or that the woman in front of you in line who just screamed at you is maybe not usually like this; maybe she’s going through a rough time. Whether this is actually true isn’t the point. Just considering the possibility makes room for the lived realities of other people, whose depths are the same as your own. This is a marked departure from the self-centered “default setting,”

Last week, after a meeting, I took the F streetcar from Civic Center to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It’s a notoriously slow, crowded, and halting route, especially in the middle of the day. This pace, added to my window seat, gave me a chance to look at the many faces of the people on Market Street with the same alienation as the slow scroll of Hockney’s Yorkshire Landscapes. Once I accepted the fact that each face I looked at (and I tried to look at each of them) was associated with an entire life—of birth, of childhood, of dreams and disappointments, of a universe of anxieties, hopes, grudges, and regrets totally distinct from mine—this slow scene became almost impossibly absorbing. As Hockney said: “There’s a lot to look at.” Even though I’ve lived in a city most of my adult life, in that moment I was floored by the density of life experience folded into a single city street.

When the language of advertising and personal branding enjoins you to “be yourself,” what it really means is “be more yourself,” where “yourself” is a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated, like units of capital.

In fact, I don’t know what a personal brand is other than a reliable, unchanging pattern of snap judgments: “I like this” and “I don’t like this,” with little room for ambiguity or contradiction.

The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.

(“bland enough to offend no one”)

The professional social media star, a person reverse-engineered from a formula of what is most palatable to everyone all the time.

Everybody says that there is no censorship on the internet, or at least only in part. But that is not true. Online censorship is applied through the excess of banal content that distracts people from serious or collective issues.

Our interactions become data collected by a company, and engagement goals are driven by advertising.

Mastodon... They allow more granular control of one’s intended audience; when you post to Mastodon, you can have the content’s visibility restricted to a single person, your followers, or your instance—or it can be public.

... forming any idea requires a combination of privacy and sharing. But this restraint is difficult when it comes to commercial social media, whose persuasive design collapses context within our very thought processes themselves by assuming we should share our thoughts right now—indeed, that we have an obligation to form our thoughts in public!

A counterexample would be the sparse UX of Patchwork, a social networking platform that runs on Scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt is a sort of global mesh network that can go without servers, ISPs, or even Internet connection (if you have a USB stick handy). It can do that because it relies on individual users’ computers as the servers, similar to local mesh networks, and because your “account” on a Scuttlebutt-powered social media platform is simply an encrypted block of data that you keep on your computer.

In #NeverAgain, David Hogg writes that “[a]nger will get you started but it won’t keep you going.”

Before long, the conference would be over, and I would have missed most of it. A lot of things would have happened there that are important and useful. For my part, I wouldn’t have much to show for my “time well spent”—no pithy lines to tweet, no new connections, no new followers. I might only tell one or two other people about my observations and the things I learned. Otherwise, I’d simply store them away, like seeds that might grow some other day if I’m lucky.

Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a dropout. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying it attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I will ultimately answer when I die—I would know that I spent that day on Earth.

“I would prefer not to.”

#How to Do Nothing #books

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garynsmith · 8 years

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Funnel Drying Up? Here’s How To Land 20+ Real Estate Leads This Week

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You’ve covered a lot of ground this month. So far in 2017, your real estate Facebook page has been totally configured and you learned how to set up ads to better reach your audience. Now, it’s time to put your new skills into action. Today I’m going to show you exactly how to make a single Facebook ad that will get you 20+ real estate leads this week.

That’s right. With this single ad you can generate more than 20 leads in the next seven days. This is a proven strategy, so you can trust that it will work for you. Agents like Karin Carr and Brett Muir have used it in their areas and have gotten immediate results!

Whether you’ve been successfully reaching leads on Facebook for years or are ready to dive into your first ad campaign, this is a great place to start! Let’s begin!

Today we’re going to get you 20+ real estate leads by targeting a niche audience. And that audience is going to be buyers looking to purchase foreclosed properties. Now, if this demographic doesn’t fit your client-base, you can always use this formula for another type of target market. Really, this strategy is fail-proof for any specific audience, as long as you know who you’re advertising to.

We’ll go through each of these steps in detail:

Client Profile

Your MLS Market

Creating Your Squeeze Page

Setting Up Your Facebook Ad

That’s it! You’re just four steps away from capturing quality real estate leads this week. Let’s break down each one of these sections.

Find Your Avatar

The first thing I’d like you to do is spend some time identifying your ideal client for this ad campaign. What does this person look like? Do they work full-time? Have kids? Are they single or married? Homeowners? Renters? How much money do they make? What does this person value? What are their goals?

Use this free worksheet from Digital Marketer to help you out and to get a clearer idea of who you’re advertising to. Your answers may look different than agents in other areas because, of course, every community is unique. That said, there will most likely be some commonalities among buyers interested in purchasing bank-owned properties. It’s those details we’ll compile to create our Facebook ad audience for real estate leads.

Give Value

Now that you have a better idea of who your audience is, it’s time to round up those properties. Decide on what areas you want to cover and head over to iHomeFinder or your MLS of choice to start creating your list.

You can go big and provide the locations of every single foreclosure listing in your state, or you can narrow the radius a bit and start with the properties in your area. I’d suggest sticking to your immediate area for now and the surrounding counties unless you do business throughout the entire state.

Say Squeeze

It’s time to put together your landing page so you can convert those real estate leads.

Check out the video below for a more in-depth look at getting going with Squeeze and then continue on to create your foreclosures Squeeze page.

youtube

The first thing you need to do is go into the backend of your LeadSite.

Once in your Dashboard, you can track your incoming leads.

Then navigate to the Apps menus and select Squeeze.

Go ahead and choose your landing page template. You’ve got A LOT of options.

For today’s page, I am going to use the first one. Feel free to select the same layout or try a new design.

Time to edit!

Let’s start by changing the background image.

This should really take you no time at all. It’s literally point-and-click editing. Just make sure you include a Subtitle, Headline, Byline (your name) and a quick paragraph about the content you’re offering.

You can also edit the text and color of the Submit button. I am going to use a red button because I really want to catch the viewer’s attention. Remember, your real estate leads are coming over from Facebook so chances are they already know what they’re getting. The sooner they can submit their details and gain access to this free list, the better!

And here’s what our new Squeeze Page looks like.

On the left side of the screen you’ll see two options – one for a Download and one for a Redirect button. This is where you will link the market you created in iHomeFinder.

Just setup the listings from your MLS in a sub-sage using the IDX criteria display and leads who opt-in will be forwarded there to get a full list of the foreclosures in the areas you selected.

And you’re done with your landing page!

There’s just one more step to go.

Share The Love To Get Real Estate Leads

Head on over to Facebook and get ready to drive those leads home with an ad! If you haven’t created an ad before, be sure to read this post that will take you through the entire setup.

Once you’ve gotten going, let’s jump into creating the best audience for your campaign.

Location, Location, Location

The first thing you’ll notice is that you’ve got four different choices for who to target in your area.

Everyone in this location

People who live in this location

Recently in this location

Traveling in this location

For now, go ahead and selection the first option, Everyone in this location. Then you can define your area. Select your town or city and choose a radius. The default range is 25 miles, which works for this ad.

Age & Gender

After you finalize your location details, you’ll move to the age range, gender and language(s) of your audience. You don’t have to do much here. I narrowed the age range a bit to target people ages 30-60. If you’re unsure what margin to select here, put 25 for the youngest and leave 65+ as it is.

I also selected English as the language. If you’re in Canada or many parts of the US where Spanish is spoken regularly, you can add French or Spanish to the list. Especially if you are well-known as being a bilingual agent. Otherwise, just select English and move on.

Budget & Schedule

You don’t have to sweat this part too much. For this ad, start with a total budget of just $35.00. Allot $5.00 a day and run the ad for one week only. After all, if it doesn’t work the way you’d like, why waste your valuable marketing dollars?

Digging Deeper

Navigate to the Detailed Targeting section and select these specifications.

As the neighborhood expert, you know your area better than anyone so feel free to adjust the behaviors or demographics to best suit your audience. If you’re in a low to medium-income area, then a financial range of $50-$75K probably looks pretty good. That said, location depending, you can stretch this to $99K pretty easily. I’d suggest keeping it under $100,00 for now.

Your Reach

On the right hand side of your screen you’ll see a panel for Audience Definition. This will help you gauge your reach for this real estate Facebook ad based on the info we just entered. It will probably look something like this.

390-1,000 people may seem like a small reach compared to other ads you’ve run, but that’s okay. We’re intentionally narrowing this search to reach leads that are mostly likely to follow through and convert.

Creating The Ad

Next up, you’ll move onto the visual aspects of your ad and writing the actual display text that your leads will see. For this campaign, select Single Image for the format and then upload an image to accompany your ad. You’ll want a photo that is visually appealing and relevant. A picture of a home or ideal neighborhood will both work well. Take a look back at the image you chose for your landing page. See if you can find a similar one, or use the same, for your Facebook ad. It’s important that your ad and Squeeze page present the same information.

Finishing Up

Almost there! Upload your image, connect your ad to your real estate agent Facebook page and copy and paste the URL of your Squeeze Page in the Website URL box under the Destination section.

Make Your Mark

Fill out the text boxes to finish your ad. You’ll be able to see exactly how everything will look once the ad goes live.

Grab the attention of your audience with the Headline. Let them know that you’ve got FREE information that is relevant to them. You’ll then expand on this in the Text section.

We’re going to leave the Call To Action as “Learn More” and then click the arrow to expand the Advanced Options. Here, you’ll see News Feed Link Description. You don’t have to fill this out, but the more details you provide upfront the better. You want your landing page to captivate your audience and seal the deal, but it’s best if they already know exactly what they’re getting.

The Final Product

Congratulations! You’re now ready to capture quality real estate leads on Facebook! The finished version of your ad should look similar to this.

What are you waiting for? Go put this into action! And we want to hear back from you after you test this strategy for one week for just $35.00/$5.00 a day. Leave us a link to your Facebook page below or keep us posted in our Beat Zillow group on Facebook.

Want more ad ideas? Check out these five articles all about Facebook advertising!

The Facebook Audience Network Now Serves Ads to 1 Billion People Each Month 83% of it is native, with video growing rapidly

How’s that for a headline? Adweek recently published this piece to demonstrate just how massive Facebook’s reach is – both paid and organic. This further shows that your audience is out there! You just have to find them.

Facebook enhances Dynamic Ads with interest-based targeting

Business Insider is keeping up with the value of Facebook’s increasingly specific targeting capabilities. Read up on the social media giant’s Dynamic Ads service.

William Shatner Is Selling Montreal Tourism in New Facebook Ad Campaign

Did this title grab your attention? Mine too. It has little to do with advertising hacks or even real estate, but there’s a lot of valuable information here. What this headline alone tells us is that major areas are using Facebook to up their curb appeal. And they’re doing it through a combination of ads and a powerful endorsement. These are two of the best lead gen sources for you as well. Take note.

How Google and Facebook Have Taken Over the Digital Ad Industry

No surprise here! Fortune delivers cold hard facts and dollar signs to support Facebook and Google’s rise to digital advertising glory. You can’t argue with these numbers.

Trump asks people to go to his inauguration with Facebook ads

Enough said.