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beatrice-otter · 5 years

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Longfic Recs

So, over in fictional_fans, melannen is doing a collaborative set of longfic recs for while we're all staying inside and physically isolated from one another. Here's my first set of contributions. Almost all of these are over 50k, and many of the ones who say they're shorter are just the first stories in their series. But there are a few shorter ones that I couldn't not rec.

DC:

Nature and Nurture (109065 words) by lurkinglurkerwholurks Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Batman & Red Hood, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Bruce Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon & Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon & Dick Grayson Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Red Hood (DCU), Nightwing, Oracle (DCU), Alfred Pennyworth, Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain, Selina Kyle, Harvey Dent Additional Tags: Distressing screams, Jason Todd is Red Hood, In which Red Hood panics mildly, Age Regression/De-Aging, But not cutesy de-aging, There are hugs and kisses though, Rated for Profanity, It was Jason of course, Mention of loss of parents, Angst, Angst and Feels, Mention of canon drug use, Mild Blood, Surprise the profanity is also Bruce, Angst and Hurt/Comfort Summary: It was a no good, very bad night all around, and it kept getting worse. In which the writer explores some classic tropes, indulges in some BatFam feels, and explores the effects of nature and nurture on the psyche of one Bruce Thomas Wayne. I Wanna Kiss You Like They Do In The Movies (4745 words) by Cy_kun Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Underage Relationships: Damian Wayne/Colin Wilkes Characters: Colin Wilkes, Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Fluff, Humor, tiny boyfriends, with tiny crushes, Bruce really doesn't understand his son's smol future husband, they're both ten, so obviously no sex, I mention Christmas once so this will probably count as my Christmas story Series: Part 1 of Son of Batman Summary: "Mr Batman, can I marry Damian?" Or, the one where Colin can't stop thinking about kissing Damian, and for some reason thinks Bruce can handle that. Countless Roads (231868 words) by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Characters: Leonard Snart, Mick Rory, Leonard Snart's Mother, Lisa Snart, Lewis Snart, Barry Allen, Wally West, Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Iris West, Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells, Nora Allen, Zoom, Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells, Ronnie Raymond, Martin Stein, Earth-2 Ronnie Raymond, Earth-2 Caitlin Snow, Earth-3 Jay Garrick, Sara Lance, Ray Palmer, Rip Hunter, Kendra Saunders, Carter Hall, Time Masters (DC's Legends of Tomorrow), Time Wraiths (The Flash), George "Digger" Harkness Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, DEADFIC, Very Long Fic, Canonical Child Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, not a slow burn Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

Sometimes I wish I could fly, Like a bird up in the sky (8815 words) by fresne Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kal-el/Lois Lane Characters: Kal-el, Lois Lane Additional Tags: Character of Color, Biracial Character, Chromatic!Superman, Chromatic Character, Dark Agenda, Racebending Revenge Challenge, Podfic Available Summary: Written for the Racebending Challenge. For the challenge to depict a white character as a chromatic character, Kryptonians are black and Kal-El landed in Kansas in the Action Comic timeline.

This one's a WIP, but it is such an interesting idea, skillfully written, that I couldn't resist reccing it.

Robins and Other Flightless Birds (84920 words) by Ionaperidot Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent Characters: Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain, Damian Wayne, Kate Kane, Talia al Ghul, Athanasia al Ghul Additional Tags: Dad Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson is a Talon, catatonic jason, tim drake was joker junior, bruce wayne's messiah complex, in which bruce runs around the multiverse collecting orphans, Kon and Selina and Oliver Queen are around, and various assorted Justice League members Series: Part 1 of Flightless Birds Summary: It begins with another Bruce, looking around his cave and asking, “So where are the kids?”

Bruce has never thought about having a family before. But once the idea occurs to him, it's hard to think about anything else.

Latchkey (54546 words) by goldkirk Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Alfred Pennyworth, more to be added as the story progresses, Ace the Bat-Hound Additional Tags: Tim Drake-centric, Kid Tim Drake, Listen I play fast and loose with canon, Bruce is charmed by Tim’s genius and stupid brain, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Child Neglect, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Warnings will be posted as necessary with each chapter, Batfamily (DCU), none character deaths with left found family, in this house we love and appreciate therapy lessons and trauma recovery, and also proper care and keeping of children, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Sibling Bonding, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Stalker Tim Drake, You think DICK is a mama hen? get ready for not-dead Jason Todd!!!!!, Jewish Bruce Wayne, Jewish Tim Drake, lots and lots of comfort Summary: Or, How Tim Drake Found A Family, Became A Photojournalist, Learned To Love Coffee, and Grew Up, not necessarily in that order.

Tim Drake is thirteen, runs the famous BatWatch blog that has spiraled hilariously out of control, has absentee parents that suit his purposes just fine, is training himself to run the streets at night, and is doing absolutely peachy, thank you. Alfred and Jason disagree, and get Dick and Bruce involved in figuring out their weird nextdoor neighbor kid’s life. Everything goes uphill from there.

If You Don't Grow (105707 words) by GeneratorCat Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, Clark Kent, Kon-El | Conner Kent, Bart Allen Additional Tags: good big brother Dick, Healing, Slow Burn, Tim and Jason are kids at the start of this but worry not- nothing happens for a while, tags to be added as the story develops, Past Abuse, Smoking, Dick is trying his best, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Someone gets punched, but they deserve it, Tim starts off a little brat, but then gets some sweet sweet character development, though don't be mistaken he's still a mischievous boy, Embarrassment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homeschooling, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dick has anger issues, talking! about feelings!, has been described as: Lots of broken birds being rehabilitated by each other, and i must agree, Batman!Dick, lots of hugs, awkward sex talks, Demisexual Tim Drake, Knitting, Found Family, Cuddles, we getting soft y'all, Pining, Bruce is trying, Perceived Homophobia, Abandonment Issues, even more awkward sex talks, graysexual Jason Todd, embarrassing dad Dick Grayson, god they're so in love, god jason is an idiot, Accidental Boner, someone gets punched again, Fix-it fic, First Kiss, Masturbation, Jason Todd's sweet sixteen Summary: “I need to take care of myself. I can take care of myself.” “You shouldn’t have to, you’re just a kid.” God, does Dick know that. He knows what it feels like to be doing things you shouldn’t have to do at such a young age. About feeling like you have to take care of yourself, be strong and useful.

He knows now it’s bullshit.

(Officer Dick Grayson meets Jason on the street.) ((Alternatively titled: In which Dick pulls a Bruce))

one day this will all be yours (32586 words) by suzukiblu Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kon-El | Conner Kent & Lex Luthor, Clark Kent & Kon-El | Conner Kent, Superboy & Team, Kon-El | Conner Kent/M'gann M'orzz Characters: Kon-El | Conner Kent, Lex Luthor, Clark Kent, M'gann M'orzz, Kaldur'ahm (DCU), Dick Grayson, Artemis Crock, Wally West, Mercy Graves Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Timeline, Family Drama, Family Feels, Found Family, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Protectiveness, Amnesia, Temporary Amnesia, Father-Son Relationship, Two Fathers, Parent-Child Relationship, Team as Family, Team Bonding, Kidnapping, Flashbacks Summary: “You know, I used to think if I had different parents my life would be different,” Artemis says neutrally as she lines up a shot, and Superboy looks away from the punching bag, a little surprised to hear her speak.

Marvel:

god loves everybody, don't remind me (70381 words) by napricot Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Erik Killmonger & T'Challa Characters: Erik Killmonger, T'Challa (Marvel), T'Chaka (Marvel), Ramonda (Marvel), Shuri (Marvel), Okoye (Marvel), Nakia (Black Panther), N'Jobu (Marvel), Erik Killmonger's Mother, Bast, Linda (Black Panther movies), W'Kabi (Marvel), Ulysses Klaue, Everett Ross, Zuri (Marvel) Additional Tags: Time Loop, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Wakanda (Marvel), Djalia | Ancestral Plane (Marvel), Erik Killmonger Lives, Family Summary: N’Jadaka didn’t believe in the gods of his people. But belief was not a prerequisite of the gods’ attention, and the blood of the Panther tribe ran in N’Jadaka’s veins. Bast took hold of his soul in her mighty jaws and lifted it free of his body. She gave him a warning shake, just as she would a misbehaving kitten, and set him back. With one careful claw, she tweaked his path through time into a twisting loop. Wayward and abandoned though he was, N’Jadaka was still of her tribe. He could set things right, if given the chance.

Erik gets a do-over. Erik gets a lot of do-overs. Or: Erik Killmonger's own personal version of Groundhog Day, only with a lot more murder, dying, trips to the ancestral plane, awkward family conversations, and divine intervention.

If They Haven't Learned Your Name (237623 words) by silentwalrus Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Nick Fury, Peggy Carter, Phil Coulson, Thor Additional Tags: Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, standard Winter Soldier trauma umbrella, POV Alternating, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Weirdness, Llamas, Bucky Barnes Has A Complicated Relationship With UFOs, Thirty Korean Grandmothers, Steve And Sam Vs. Canoe, Natasha Is Taking It Personally, Consent Issues, One (1) Orgasm, Podfic Available, Russian Translation Available, do not copy to another site Summary: Steve gets out of the hospital in two days, but just barely. “I’m fine,” he tells Sam, Nurse Eunjung and the phalanx of doctors assigned to make sure Captain America didn’t bleed out and die and get bad PR all over their nice clean hospital. “I have an advanced healing factor. It’s fine. See? I’m standing.”

“That is not standing,” Sam tells him.

“You’re bending the IV stand,” Nurse Eunjung adds pointedly. “Let go and sit down, they don’t grow on trees.”

aka Steve and Bucky's Global Honeymoon Revenge World Tour.

You Would Be In Clover (126894 words) by ChibiSquirt Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, Sharon Carter (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gay Bucky Barnes, Female Steve Rogers, Marriage Proposal, Marriage of Convenience, Religion, Miscarriage, Smoking, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Closeted Character, Open Marriage, Crossdressing, Howard Stark/Steve Rogers (minor ship), Bucky Barnes/Others (offscreen), Polyamory, Vaginal Fingering, Penis In Vagina Sex, Oral Sex, Mutual Masturbation, Rimming, Consensual Sex, First Time, First Kiss, Period-Typical Racism, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Genderswap, Genderbending Summary: Sarah “Gwen” Rogers was nineteen when she married Bucky Barnes, and she knew at the time just how stupid it was: it wasn’t exactly a brilliant move to marry a man who could never love her, even—or especially—when she knew that she was in love with him.

Neither of them could have predicted the war that came, and if they had, then they sure as hell couldn’t have predicted what would happen when Gwen volunteered for Project: Rebirth.

fight like girls for our place at the table (52110 words) by napricot Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sharon Carter Characters:Sharon Carter (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Peggy Carter, Antoine Triplett, James "Bucky" Barnes Additional Tags: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, POV Sharon Carter (Marvel), Slow Burn, Surveillance, Double Dating, Bucky Barnes' Attempts at Being a Wingman, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time Summary: “Am I on Cap watch because of who my aunt is?” Sharon asks Fury point-blank the second she sits in his office.

“That’s part of the reason, yeah,” Fury says. Sharon narrows her eyes at him, and opens her mouth to object. “But not all of the reason. This isn’t a demotion.”

“It sure feels like a demotion. You’re taking me out of the field and out of intel analysis to babysit Captain America.”

How Sharon Carter gets her groove back, fucks up some Nazis, and gets the girl, with unasked for assists from a super soldier couple.

Châtelaine et senêschale (21859 words) by Feather Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Pepper Potts & Original Female Character Characters: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, Original Female Character Additional Tags: Pepper Potts and her team of badass ladies, ladies in the Tower, hypercompetent women, people with absurdly high IQ, Pepper wants to save the world, Pepper runs a super-efficient company, acute traumatic stress disorder, Post-Battle of New York, Post-Iron Man 3, Pepper is kind of not okay, quietly retconning implausible/insulting canon moments, Tony's terrible people skills Series: Part 1 of Settle in and find your home Summary: A quintet of essential moments including the Stark Industries Chief Legal Officer.

This is the first in a series of stories about side characters in Your Blue Eyed Boys, a massive Stucky series dealing seriously with Bucky's trauma. YBEB is awesome, but Settle in and find your home is even better.

Where the Need is Greatest (19717 words) by Niitza Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers Characters: Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Tony Stark, Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Steve Rogers vs. the American Military, paramedic steve rogers, Médicins Sans Frontières | Doctors Without Borders, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Hydra, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV Alternating, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Somewhat dark humor, Nick Fury Doesn't Get Paid Enough For This Shit, Humanitarian Intervention, Implied/Referenced Violence, Timeline What Timeline, Podfic Available, do not copy to another site Summary: In which Steve Rogers takes one look at the history of American military interventions since the end of World War II and nopes straight out of it, follows in his Ma's footsteps to become a paramedic, joins Doctors Without Borders, gets sent on an unsanctioned humanitarian mission to Syria, and somehow still ends up being a determining factor in Hydra's downfall - all of this without throwing a single punch. Somehow, he's okay with it.

This one's short, but oh, so good

Scents and Sensibility: The Working Assassin's Guide to Supersoldier Seduction(93216 words) by skellerbvvt, silentwalrus, galwednesday Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Melinda May, Maria Hill, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers Additional Tags: Clownfish ABO, Everyone Has A Peen And A Vageen, Gender Spectrum Society, Scents & Smells, Courtship, Alternate Universe, One Thousand And One Blankets, Pod People But Not Like That, Precious Idiot Virgin Winter Soldier, Institutionalized Softism, Curtain Fic, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Bathing/Washing, Melon Tending, Transformative Works Welcome, do not copy to another site Summary: Captain America wakes up from the ice in 2013. The Winter Soldier wakes up in 2009, or rather defects from HYDRA, for a value of defect that’s closer to decimate. He ends up working for SHIELD. In April 2014, he’s assigned to Captain America’s mission as a sniper.

Steve’s just trying to get some kind of life together. Bucky is too, or at least he was until tall, blond and Captain shows up and starts just - being there, all the time. It’s terrible. It’s the worst. He has to do something about it.

the other side of infinity (84282 words) by tielan Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Nick Fury & Maria Hill, Maria Hill & Sam Wilson & Bucky Barnes & Wanda Maximoff, Maria Hill & Jane Foster, Peter Quill & Groot & Mantis & Drax, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Nick Fury & T'Challa, Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Maria Hill & Sam Wilson Characters: Maria Hill, Nick Fury, T'Challa, Sam Wilson (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Jane Foster (Marvel), Loki (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Hela (Marvel), Groot (Marvel), Mantis (Marvel), Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Carol Danvers, Hulk (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel), Ayo (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff, Vision (Marvel), Chewie | Goose (Marvel) Additional Tags: Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), action-adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Infinity Gems, Infinity Gauntlet, Sacrifice, Fan theories, Avengers: Infinity War Fix-It, Eventual Happy Ending, infinity war fix-it, this really is my endgame, Trope: Against All Odds, Infinity (Marvel), Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Infinity Stone Soul World (Marvel), Soul Gem (Marvel) Summary: On the other side of the moment, those turned to dust may no longer be 'alive', but they're damn well not helpless. This is the story of how they saved themselves.

when i die i’ll sacrifice (more than enough for the afterlife) (41322 words) by notcaycepollard Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, Maria Hill, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Post-Endgame, Various Background Relationships - Freeform, Red Room (Marvel), discussion of Red Room reproductive violence, Pining, spot the Marvel cameos, Family, animal cruelty mention, animal death mention Series: Part 1 of a flame in two cupped hands Summary: The fall is longer than Natasha expects. It’s tears cold on her face, teeth bitten all the way through her lip and the taste of copper in her mouth; she’s falling and falling and then, bracing for impact—she wakes up.

Downton Abbey:

Halo Effect (81331 words) by Alex51324 Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Original Male Character(s), Thomas Barrow & Anna Bates Characters: Thomas Barrow, Anna Bates, John Bates Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, season one AU, Edwardian Gays, Historical Accuracy, Great War, Period-Typical Homophobia Series: Part 1 of Halo Effect Summary: The Halo Effect is the tendency for a positive impression in one area to produce a more generous or optimistic interpretation of ambiguous information in other areas. When Thomas rescues Lady Mary from the nefarious attentions of Turkish houseguest Kemal Pamuk, his employers and coworkers begin to see him differently...and Things Get Better.

A Season One AU diverging from canon in Episode 3, The One Where The Turkish Gentleman Dies in Mary's Bed.

Star Wars:

Hindsight is Not Perfect (61864 words) by DAsObiQuiet Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Shmi Skywalker, Watto (Star Wars), Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala, Yoda, Siri Tachi, Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Finis Valorum, Panaka (Star Wars), Mace Windu Additional Tags: Time Travel, Fix-It of Sorts, Time Travel Fix-It, Redemption, Well he tries Series: Part 1 of Force of Many Sights Summary: Paved with good intentions or not, the road back from Hell is a difficult, slippery slope for those who choose to walk it as Anakin has. Now he has to face the consequences of his choices, avoid suspicion of everyone from the Jedi Council to Palpatine and try to prevent the future from turning out as badly Before all while somehow finding a way to balance the Force... again!

Shape-Changer (2330 words) by Fialleril Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader, Palpatine, Shmi Skywalker, Kitster Banai, a Tatooine wise woman Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Double Agent Vader, Storytelling, Tatooine Slave Culture, Small Acts of Resistance, Tricksters, Worldbuilding, Original Mythology Series: Part 1 of Double Agent Vader Summary: His Master liked to say that Vader was born in fire on Mustafar. But Ekkreth was born in the desert.

New Lands for the Living (50241 words) by SassySnowperson Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Poe Dameron/Luke Skywalker Characters: Poe Dameron, Luke Skywalker, Owen Lars, Beru Whitesun, Winter Celchu, Leia Organa, Bodhi Rook Additional Tags: Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, POV Poe Dameron, Marriage of Convenience, Slow Burn, (with a fast marriage), Pining for Spouse, Action/Adventure, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Additional Warnings In Author's Note Summary: The war is over, and nobody won. With the galaxy on the verge of destruction, Poe Dameron hatches a desperate plan—go back in time. But Poe's plan quickly goes awry, and he finds himself on the run from local authorities. The only plan to keep him safe is…extreme, to say the least.

"Can't get you citizenship documents," the man muttered, his voice clearer now that it wasn't muffled by the scarf. Poe took a deep breath and forced himself to think. He looked back at his would-be rescuer.

Who was shoving the scarf back from the top his head, revealing a face that Poe knew. That lots of people knew. Kriff, that everyone knew, trillions upon trillions of sapients in the galaxy would recognize that face.

Luke Skywalker—as fresh-faced and young as the day he became the successful destroyer of the Death Star—was standing in front of him.

Fuck.

"Need a land grant to get a moisture farmer licence, can't even get you a travel visa without citizenship documents…Hm," the legend said, sighing. "Yeah. I think we're going to have to get married."

Things You Missed in History Class (3713 words) by Grey_Bard Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Finn (Star Wars), Rey (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It Summary: Having traveled back in time, Rey and Finn have decided to set right what once went wrong. Too bad they have no idea what actually once went wrong.

This one is short but it is SO GOOD, HOLY COW

Imperial Radch

Fragments (30130 words) by pipistrelle Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Awn Elming & Justice of Toren One Esk, Awn Elming/Justice of Toren One Esk Characters: Awn Elming, Justice of Toren (Imperial Radch), Justice of Toren One Esk Four Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Lives but not quite, Fix-It, imagine if the dumbest and most lovestruck segment of One Esk ran away with Awn and had a picnic, that's where this fic lives, Awn survives, lots of talking, and swearing, a little bit of plot but not much, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Pining, Worldbuilding, Fake Marriage, kind of, Queerplatonic Relationships Summary: “We're fleeing Radch space. Of course we’re fleeing Radch space, I refused an order and you...” She paused. Then, very clearly and feelingly, she said, “Fuck.” Sometimes the path of justice and beneficence is clear. Sometimes you have to make your own.

Check, Please!

From the Ground Up (167381 words) by Rianne Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson/Original Male Character(s) Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Original Male Character(s), Original Characters, Jeff "Swoops" Troy, Las Vegas Aces (Ensemble), Original Male Character(s) of Color, Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Anxiety, Angst, Fluff, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Until it's resolved that is, Hockey, (Obviously), Eventual Smut, Slurs Series: Part 1 of Kent Parson deserves nice things Summary: Kent has a pretty good life. It’s been a couple years since the Aces last won a cup, but he’s still at the height of his career. He has an apartment with a stunning view over Vegas, a best friend who’s always dragging him to basketball games, a cat to cuddle with, and more money than he could ever spend.

Everything is fine.

So it won’t be a problem at all if he strikes up a friendship with that guy he meets at the All-Star party.

Tomas enjoyed the years he spent in Minnesota, but he’s ready for a new life in a different city. It means he’ll be even further from his friends and family in Quebec, and he’s not sure he’s going to adapt well to the desert. But he’ll have his new job to distract him, and he’s never minded the challenge of developing a new circle of friends and acquaintances.

He doesn’t expect Kent Parson to be part of that.

Like Real People Do (153388 words) by xiaq Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson/omc, Kent Parson/OMC, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Swoops (Check Please!), Eric Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, OMC Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - College/University, figure skating, Sharing a Bed, Friends to Lovers, Coming Out, Hockey, NCAA hockey, Disabled Character, service dog, Happy Ending, Fluff, Banter, I just want Kent Parson to be happy ok, Living Together, Domestic Fluff, NHL, Closeted Character, Angst with a Happy Ending, but only like 2 chapters of REAL angst, TBI, Injury, Injury Recovery, parsepositive, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, idiots to lovers Summary: Parson gestures with his spoon toward Hawke. “So am I allowed to ask about the service dog or is that not PC?”

“My medical history is more of a 3rd date conversation," Eli says.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because. No one sticks around afterward and I like to live in glorious denial for a short period beforehand.”

It comes out more self-deprecating than he intended.

Parson looks…thoughtful. “Well, does this count as one or two?

“Pardon?”

“This. Ice cream. I mean, technically it’s a second location, but still the same night. So is this one date or two?”

“One,” Eli says firmly. “If it’s happening within the same three-hour period.”

“You’re the expert,” Parson says, which, he’s really, really, not, but ok.

“So still two dates to go then?” Parson continues.

“I—what?”

“We’ve got a roadie coming up but then we’re home for almost two weeks. When does your semester start?”

“You want to do this again?” Eli asks.

Parson stops idly twirling his spoon.

“You don’t?”

He does, Eli realizes. He really does. Because apparently he actually likes Kent fucking Parson.

Original Work

Superstition (16000 words) by Superstition_hockey Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: OC/OC Additional Tags: Hockey Gods, Bromance to Romance, Codependent Bros for Life, Accidental Marriage, Homophobia in sports, Homophobic Language, Sexist Language, Hockey typical violence, Unsafe Sex, Oral Sex, Frottage Series: Part 1 of Superstition Summary: He thinks about the times he’s heard his dad, his aunts and uncles, cousins, sports casters on the news joking about the hockey gods, wonders if they’re real. Maybe they are. Maybe if he works hard enough, gives them enough sweat and blood and time…

Mulan

primped and polished till you glow with pride (11363 words) by VagabondDawn Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fa Mulan/Li Shang Characters: Fa Mulan (Disney), Li Shang, Fa Zhou Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage Series: Part 1 of primped and polished Summary: Fa Zhou gets offered an advisory position in the Imperial City instead of riding to war and Fa Mulan finds her second attempt at Matchmaking goes better than the first.

Chronicles of Narnia

No Ordinary Letter (5680 words) by Transposable_Element Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Aravis, Kidrash Tarkaan, Peridan (Narnia), Shar (Narnia OMC), Shasta | Cor Additional Tags: Calormen, Family, Cultural Differences Series: Part 1 of Love and Honor Summary: Aravis begins the process of reconciling with her father.

Silmarillion/Lord of the Rings

And What Happened After (73740 words) by thearrogantemu Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Bilbo Baggins & Frodo Baggins, Bilbo Baggins & Manwë Súlimo, Frodo Baggins & Fëanor, Samwise Gamgee & Maglor, Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Gandalf, Elrond, Mandos | Námo, Manwë, Fëanor, Sam Gamgee, Sons of Fëanor, Maglor, Nerdanel, Celebrimbor Additional Tags: Valinor, Fourth Age, after the end, Gandalf and his strategic hobbit deployment, Third Theme, There and Back Again Again, Very Long Conversations, Backpacking in the Blessed Realm, Long-Overdue Punches, Westron as a Second Language, Sassing cosmic superbeings, Life-Changing Road Trip with Feanor, Kierkegaardian Existentialism, Reconciliation, Halls of Mandos, Potato Diplomacy, Everyone Telling Stories, Arda Remade Series: Part 5 of The Splintered Light Summary: “My dear Mr. Baggins, you cannot possibly imagine I have brought you across the boundaries of the sundered world, bending every law of gods and men, over land and over sea and through the fathomless heights, for your health? Well, I did, of course I did, and I’d do it again. But it was not for your own good only that I brought you here. I have been on this world a very long time, Mr. Baggins, and if there is one thing that I have learned about the Wise and the Great, it’s that they benefit from the company of hobbits, and it’s the wisest and greatest who have most need of them.”

Star Trek

A Better World (17671 words) by weakinteraction Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Benjamin Maxwell/Alynna Nechayev Characters: Alynna Nechayev, Benjamin Maxwell, Edward Jellico, Ro Laren, Odo (Star Trek) Additional Tags: guest appearances from various other 24th-century Trek characters, Time Travel Fix-It Summary: Alynna Nechayev does not give up easily, in any timeline.

Laid Bare (37013 words) by sixbeforelunch Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: William Riker & Deanna Troi, Taurik/Original Female Character(s) Characters: Deanna Troi, William Riker, Beverly Crusher, Taurik (Star Trek), Original *Characters Additional Tags: Psychology, Mental Health Issues, Eating Disorders, Domestic Violence, Anxiety Attacks, Aliens, First Contact, child endangerment, Pregnancy, Telepathy, Vulcan Culture Summary: Deanna Troi unravels a psychological mystery.

Lewis (TV)

A Place I May Go Both In and Out Of (49458 words) by kvikindi Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James Hathaway & Robert Lewis, James Hathaway & Nell Hathaway, Robert Lewis & Nell Hathaway, Laura Hobson/Robert Lewis Characters: James Hathaway, Robert Lewis, Laura Hobson, Nell Hathaway, Lizzie Maddox, Lyn Lewis, Lyn Lewis's Son, Hathaway's Band Additional Tags: Catholicism, Found Families, discussion of suicide, Allusions to abuse, Giftedness, Gun Violence, Physical Trauma, Recovery, Urban Foxes, Post-Canon, Dysfunctional Family, Happy Ending, Christmas Summary: Lewis thought it was amazing, in retrospect, that no one had ever shot Hathaway before.

Big Hero 6/The Martian

Big Hero Martian (42621 words) by althor42 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Hiro Hamada, Baymax (Marvel), Cass Hamada, Mark Watney, Annie Montrose, Gogo Tomago, Wasabi-No Ginger, Fred | Fredzilla, Melissa Lewis (The Martian), Alex Vogel, Chris Beck, Beth Johanssen, Rick Martinez (The Martian), Teddy Sanders Additional Tags: hiro goes on a rescue mission, so it's on mars, small details, just build a ship, nbd Summary: There would have been no rescue for Mark, if NASA had not noticed he was still alive. Unless of course, a certain Big Hero noticed instead.

Temeraire/Pride and Prejudice

A Monstrous Regiment (94904 words) by AMarguerite Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Colonel Fitzwilliam (Pride and Prejudice), Arthur Wellesley 1st Duke of Wellington, Jane Roland, Jane Fairfax, Frederick Wentworth, Fitzwilliam Darcy, George Wickham, Georgiana Darcy, Charlotte Lucas, William Price, Excidium, Gherni, Arkady (Temeraire), Perscitia, Captain Harville (Persuasion) Additional Tags: badass Elizabeth Bennet, Napoleonic Wars, Dragon Riders, Regency, Battle, War, Feminist Themes, Colonel Fitzwilliam has some period-appropriate Opinions that get overturned, so be forewarned, he's a good dude though, he learns, Age of Sail, alternate title: Charlotte's Great Escape Series: Part 1 of A Monstrous Regiment Summary: General Wellington selects Colonel Fitzwilliam for a very singular honor during the Spanish Campaign: working with dragons-- and, in particular, with Captain Elizabeth Bennet, of His Majesty's Dragon, the Longwing Wollstonecraft.

Temeraire/ Pride and Prejudice crossover entirely to have Elizabeth Bennet as a dragon captain during the Peninsular War, with Charlotte Lucas as her uber-capable first lieutenant.

Pride and Prejudice

An Ever-Fixed Mark (190537 words) by AMarguerite Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Jane Bennet/Charles Bingley Characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam (Pride and Prejudice), Georgiana Darcy, Catherine de Bourgh, Anne de Bourgh, Charlotte Lucas, William Collins (Pride and Prejudice), Maria Lucas, Jane Bennet, Charles Bingley, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, Lydia Bennet, Kitty Bennet, George Wickham, Duke of Wellington, Mary Crawford, Mary Bennet, Caroline Bingley, William Elliot (Persuasion), Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility), Marianne Dashwood, Eliza (Sense and Sensibility), Henry Tilney, Catherine Morland, Frederick Wentworth, Anne Elliot, Elizabeth Elliot, Arthur Wellesley Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Comedy, Deconstruction, Napoleonic Wars, Regency, Regency Romance, Pining, badass Elizabeth Bennet, Miscarriage, 19th Century Medicine, Battle Of Waterloo, battlefield descriptions, Mention of Surgery, medicine sure was fun before germ theory, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Elizabeth Bennet/ Mud, is the true OTP, Feminist Themes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Grief/Mourning, Slow Burn, Reaaaally slow burn, Burn so slow it takes like six chapters to defrost first, Biphobia Series: Part 1 of An Ever-Fixed Mark Summary: One would think that having the name of one's soulmate appear on one's wrist on one's sixteenth birthday would make matrimony much less complicated. It mostly does not. And not at all for Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourne.

(A deconstruction of the "soulmate identifying mark" trope, using "Pride and Prejudice." Trigger warnings in the tags.)

Teen Wolf

Wolf Moon (93757 words) by pocketmumbles Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Derek Hale/Scott McCall Characters: Scott McCall, Derek Hale Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Minor Character Death, Fix-It Series: Part 1 of Wolf Moon 'verse Summary: On the night of 2013’s Wolf Moon, eighteen-year-old Scott McCall travels back in time to change Derek’s past and, hopefully, their future.

The morning after 2003’s Wolf Moon, fifteen-year-old Derek Hale wakes up after meeting a teen wolf named Scott. And then the story really begins.

(Or, the time travel story that isn’t about the time travel at all, but rather a complete rewriting of canon spanning fifteen years and every character along the way. Canon divergent/AU after Season 3B.)

Harry Potter

Swung by Serafim (352345 words) by flamethrower Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Dobby, Kreacher (Harry Potter), Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Charlie Weasley, Bill Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Percy Weasley, Viktor Krum, Luna Lovegood, Rubeus Hagrid, Pomona Sprout, Lily Evans Potter, James Potter, OFC, OMC Additional Tags: I am not listing the entire cast of the HP universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Chamber of Secrets, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, there is a tag for it yay!, also not listing relationships, Too confusing, Discussion of Past Child Abuse, The World Is Not Black And White, GFY, Don't copy to another site, seriously if those two actually were together at the end of this fic it would be in the tags okay?, and I don't tag the other relationships because they're spoilers, but before I get yelled at AGAIN, this isn't Snarry fic okay?, it has potential to become that if you squint, but I am not tagging for a romantic relationship that isn't there! Series: Part 1 of Swung by Serafim Summary: In 1993, Gilderoy Lockhart points a stolen wand at Harry Potter and Ron Weasley with the intent to Obliviate them.

The wand doesn't backfire. Gilderoy's "discovery" of the Chamber of Secrets is a short-term success.

Other consequences are not short-term at all.

Blood Magic (334522 words) by GatewayGirl Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley Additional Tags: Severitus, Dark Arts, Secrets Series: Part 1 of Blood Summary: Blood magic was supposed to keep Harry safe, but his relatives are expendable. Blood magic was supposed to keep Harry looking like his adoptive father, but it's wearing off. Blood is a bond, but so is the memory of hate -- or love.

pick it up, pick it all up and start again (69328 words) by Annerb Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley Characters: Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Bill Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Percy Weasley, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s), Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Charlie Weasley, George Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Hannah Abbott Additional Tags: mostly canon ships, Sequel, Angst, Recovery, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Drama, Slytherin Ginny Weasley, Post-War, Canon Era, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD Series: Part 1 of Armistice Series Summary: The thing about war is that it never ends. Not really. The battlefields just change locations. Harry and Ginny after the war. (Sequel to The Changeling)

Valdemar

Enemy, It's Cold Outside (5121 words) by MueraRashaye Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Male Herald, Original Male Sunpriest Additional Tags: Friendship across borders, Canon Compliant, War with Ancar, Tasteless jokes about Fires, Some timeline shifting Series: Part 1 of Friends Across Borders Summary: Inns in Hardorn border towns are neutral grounds, so long as the Sunsguard don't see the Herald and the Valdemarans don't see the priests. Usually this works fine, but one evening found Valdemarans with a Herald and Sunsguard with a priest at the same inn. Two groups of guards signal their outliers, and their outliers reluctantly retreat to the stables for a frigid night.

Turns out, it's too cold to kill ancient enemies. Much easier to swap drinks and tales under a night-long truce, figuring nothing will change in the morning.

And it doesn't. Not yet. But, it just might.

The Goblin Emperor

A Complete Education (57380 words) by bomberqueen17 Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Csethiro Ceredin/Maia Drazhar Characters: Csethiro Ceredin, Maia Drazhar, Cala Athmaza, Kiru Athmaza, Deret Beshelar, Telimezh (The Goblin Emperor) Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Sexual Education, Household Politics, The Emperor's Dav, Past Abuse, Misunderstandings, the fantasy of a world where everybody has good intentions Series: Part 1 of Continuing Education Summary: Preparing for the Emperor's wedding, everyone has some things they need to learn about.

#fanfiction #fanfic #fic rec

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chicandchaud-blog · 6 years

Photo

N°61 • ‘Tea with Dreem’

After having had been on what could have been considered a super long hiatus, I’m glad to bring back to my blog what I definitely wish I could do more of – INTERVIEWS, or better known as ‘Tea Time’ to you guys. If you have no idea what ‘tea with...” is, you could definitely check out my past interviews with; Mai Bilavio, and Nova Faerye for some insight on what exactly entails in the interviews that I do on my blog. Typically I keep things peachy and sweet with creators, but that wasn’t quite the case with Dreem who allowed me to ask any questions that I dared, along with those that you guys wanted me to ask her. Considered the Queen of Second Life, Dreem sits and chats with me about a multitude of things, ranging from; drama, creating, and more DRAMA! Thank you so much for taking your time to read, and enjoy. *special thank you to Dreem Doll for trusting my pen, and having tea time with me.

alas, the interview:

J: First of all, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to stop by, I’m so glad to have you here considering your busy schedule. – How are you doing today?

D: I am fine, feeling blessed and highly favored. Thank you for asking.

J: That’s great! Well, as you know, I do mainly post fashion tips, and advice on my blog so I’d like to know who you’re wearing today so the readers can get Dreem’s look today *smiles*.

D: Well im wearing a shirt by Rowne, who I adore, I paired it with my pants which are the thermal leggings, by me. I accessorized with shades by Brotherhood, and fannypack by Majesty – which is my daughter’s store.

J: I love it, you look bomb! Well, since you’re here and I just snatched you up – what does a typical day in the life of Dreem look like?

D: Well, First and foremost I am a very family oriented person so my day usually consist of my family. I would have an entire day planned down to the T and would get online and end up totally not doing anything besides hanging with my family all day *laughs*. Besides that, I like to get some work done, alot of the time aswell so sitting on my platform is one of my biggest pass times. Everything else really just comes last after those things, so boys,drama,haters, etc.

J: Yea, every now and then I check your Instagram, and you’re always posting cool moments with your family or whatever have you – whether it’s drama related, store related, or boy-drama-related your Instagram seems to be kind of your outlet for everyone to see, with that, as a public figure or so, I’d like to ask you – being you, and being such a public figure, what are some of the challenges that you often times face?

D: One of the biggest challenges I face everyday is being a public figure, and role model to my family and supporters. Alot of times I am learning now that I have to step back and think.. "Well if I do this a certain way, how is everyone else going to perceive this" Alot of people look up to me for guidance and direction so it’s very hard to make sure I don’t disappoint or lead them down the wrong path. Having my life put under a spotlight for the whole internet to see was very scary, I would have randoms coming up to me like omg you’re such and such that did this and that and have my whole timeline and history down pack and at first that scared the life out of me *sighs*, but it also let me know I have the power and the platform to do and be better and set better examples everyday *smiles*.

J: I’d imagine that being such a huge influence could be quite nerve-wracking at times but it does have someee benefits *laughs*, and since you told me that you had people coming up to you, and mentioning things that have happened in the past, did you ever think to yourself that you’d be where you are now, in terms of your position on the grid having had transcended from IMVU to SecondLife.

D: Maybe not to this extent, but even from IMVU I have always been a household name and a public figure. SecondLife is a wayyy bigger and greater platform so, obviously it naturally amplified. I never expected it to be to this level though, kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time. Either way i am very grateful for it God makes no mistakes *smiles*.

J: Yeah, from what I’ve been told by readers, and your family that came from IMVU to SecondLife with you is that you were basically in the forefront of everything, and gave IMVU life in a sense. Do you ever miss IMVU, assuming that you still have family members that still play, or just fans that might miss you?

D: Definitely, IMVU made my whole internet persona. "Diiva”, which was my IMVU character, is now naturally embedded in my DNA. IMVU prepared me strategically for so much and just my outlook on the world in general. IMVU will always be my nest that i flew out of.

J: That’s good to hear, I’m pretty sure everyone feels like that for either IMVU or SecondLife, it definitely does teach you lessons along the way. Not to mention, you had a LARGE impact on IMVU and I’m sure there’s no denying that. However, you had a family on there as you do on here, – do you believe that your impact has transcended from IMVU onto SecondLife? If so, what solidifies that?

D: Yes, my leadership is something that goes everywhere and anywhere with me. Naturally I attract flocks and attention because thats just my personality. My realness, my loyalty, and my talents is what has kept me afloat for so many years and will continue to keep me afloat. Staying true to yourelf and pure hearted will put you through some tests but in the end it will always pay off.

J: You mentioned your talent, your loyalty, and realness help you stay successful, what do you believe contributes to the longevity of your family name?

D: Love, Loyalty, and Realness *smirks*.

J: Well, if that’s the case – I’m sure after having read some of your accolades readers would love to be a Killin, which is your family – what exactly does it take to be took in as a Killin?

D: I like to seek out my own family members, because usually when someone comes to you to be apart of a family they are seeking something or coming for the "clout" or the wrong reasons. However, when I seek out someone I feel like I’m getting the people who are busy in their own league, bosses, and leaders. My family is filled with marketing geniuses, so be a boss, and ofcourse be sexy! *laughs*.

J: Well, now they’re aware of what needs to be checked off on their checklist before they even think of applying for adoption *laughs*. Since we’ve talked about that, I’d like to drift away from family oriented questions for a bit, and ask you; If you could bring something back to the grid that you used to do that isn’t as popular, what would it be?

D: Slapping bitches, jk *laughs*, but I loved everyone hanging out together in world – like big groups of people actually role playing and having fun! Now a days everyone is busy securing our bags, and we can only do that once in a while but I do miss that!

J: That was always fun, it’s like everyone is in their own circles now – which definitely isn’t a problem, but gathering every now and then would be super cute. Since you mentioned securing a bag – you’ve secured quite a few given that you’ve done basically everything there is to be done in the field of creating. You’ve had an event, or two – along with store/s, and even solidified yourself as the queen. Would you considering yourself a jack of all trades, and could we expect anything in the future?

D: I am definitely the Proclaimed Queen. Wheter good, or bad you’ve heard of me, my name ring bells – I’m honestly one of the biggest names to ever hit the grid, and i have impacted in so many different ways. I proved I am a one bitch army, and can handle ANYTHING thrown my way. I proved I can have a huge successful store, winning over 10 awards for my store alone. My events all did amazing, and had really big name designers, and am also very pretty so thats always a win. You could expect alot more like ALOT.

J: Well, I would like to delve more into the topic of what we could expect in the future – but I won’t do that because I do loveeee surprises, and you surprised us with your recent release of newness from Sabotage just a few days ago. I have to ask, is Sabotage back, and is New Regime gone – is it a sub-brand or...?

D: Sabotage issss back, and I’m releasing a lot of newness very soon..*smiles* New Regime is a sub brand as of now, the difference with NR is that it takes a classier safe route, Sabotage is more of a wild ‘do-what-i-want’ type of style, which could be considered more risky. As far as what’s next with New Regime. – it’s not gone, New Regime is still going, New Regime is actually set to debut its mainstore on the new Vive Nine Sim coming very soon.

J: Niceee, I can’t wait to see all of the newness that you have in store with both New Regime, and Sabotage – since you brung up the different styles, I’d like to ask you what exactly influenced you to create in the style that you do considering that it’s quite original to your aesthetic, and brand.

D: Lack of originality on SecondLife is literally an epidemic, like a serious issue..*sighs* I haveee to think outside of the box, and bring fresh new ideas. I've always strived to be different – even with the orange.. No one was doing it, orange was always my least favorite color but i said why not take something like orange and make it a powerful, bold, and different statement.

J: You mentioned you being the first to use the color orange as if there’s someone else using it – what exactly do you think of those that try to imitate your aesthetic?

D: I am very flattered, now if your stealing my work thats a difference, but imitation is the biggest form of flattery. I also see alot of big store brands trying to do what i do and i love it, it lets me know that I am doing something right *laughs*.

J: Are you convinced that there is a lack of creativity amongst creators that bite off of smaller creators?

D: HELL YES! I wont even get deep into this, I am sure you guys can open your eyes and see the amount of non-creative creatures we have roaming around here. Its sickening.

J: I’m gonna brighten things up a bit before I go back into the topic of your brand – it’s style, and aesthetic, me and the readers would love to know what exactly put you on the map in the world of creating – in other words, which of your items sold the most?

D: My denim thongs was definitely my first hit, they’ve been out for over 3 years and are still selling like hotcakes. I think it has to do with them being a very risky and revealing piece lol, but yes the denim thongs put me on the map for sure.

J: I lovee those thongs, and a little birdy told me they’re soon to make a comeback when you open the doors to the new Sabotage flagship. Now, let’s talk about your circle – You’ve worked alongside many people and that obviously takes good communication skills, who would you consider to be your circle, whether they’re creators or not.

D: As far as who's designers that I am close to and would consider my real friends, and circle would be, Mishi from Blueberry we have a bond outside of secondlife which alot of people think is such a strange mixture, cause she is like the nicest sweetest person ever and everyone looks at me as the bad guy but, we mix so well. Even though we are very different we are very both real and I am glad God placed us in each other lives. I have learned so much from her that has formed me into a better person today. Vo from SEUL is my good good sis, Sanya from Vive Nine is also my sister who i love dearly, always looked up to her so it’s nice to be like yes i work with Sanya or aside her, and she's dope. Torei from Betrayal is my child, so I dont know if he counts but his store is something to look out for and we’re very close. Other then that i have cool friends that i know and respect, Such as Beusy, Ambush, Reveal, Foxy, DOUX, Represent, MOON, Kraftworks, MaiB, Wonton, and a few more. I can go on for days, and ofcourse ALL of my kids stores! 28LA, Nastygirls, WolvesByNature, Betrayal, Majesty, REIGN, PinkAcid, Bluprint, Björn, Fatal, Love, Etc.

J: You clearly have a handful of people, if not more, and that obviously comes with the public figure status – so does enemies, do you feel that people you were once friends with try to tarnish your name, and legacy?

D: Yes chile.....yes, but I just like to look at their lives now, and then look at mines and remember why God is so great *giggles*.

J: *laughs*, Well, another thing is that people often times associate your name with drama, why do you think that is?

D: I came here very open hearted, open minded, and very gullible to the SecondLife scene. On the urban side, people can be very ignorant. I never woke up and decided to come at or start with anyone, any altercation I ever been placed or involved in I have always been on the defensive defending myself, fortunately enough for me, I have a very loud bark and a very painful bite. I am war ready always have and always will be thats just in my nature, I wish that people can just get to know me beforehand instead of passing judgement on me. I love to LOVE and anyone who knows me will tell you that i am wayyy too nice but what the public use to see was always me lashing out in defensive, the only thing I am guilty of is not being able to walk away when drama is brought to my door, I always answered the door, why not? I don't bother anyone, I sit with my family, and work on my clothing there should be no reason anyone wants to pick with me call me g*ys, f*gs, and all sorts of disgusting things, and then cry when I strike them back. I give you what you give me times three.

J: That’s a good way to describe things, obviously something will happen to you if you mess with or do something to someone, that’s just how things work sometimes – sometimes however, problems can be solved with a simple apology or talk. Do you regret any of the things that you’ve done on the grid.. or that the grid has seen?

D: Yes, I regret caring about what everyone thinks of me, I also regret not making my ass clap in those sex tapes *blows kiss at the camera*.

J: *screams* Well, I wasn’t expecting that.. – when there is drama, there is also pet peeves.. what would you say is your BIGGEST pet peeve?

D: Trolls, people who sit online all day when their only agenda is to talk about other people to take away from the fact that they’re not happy, it’s so sad.. like people will literally sit down all day and discuss someone who never everrrr thinks about them, its mind boggling. Like, get a job and a hobby. Putting someone down will NOT rid your problems, when you get off the computer.

J: Trolls can always be a little annoying, just take them with a grain of salt – however in your position it could be a little bit different given that you have a title to uphold, let’s end this interview on a good note, if you could improve the grid in any way, how would you?

D: More black successful businesses. More urban designers in these big events. To give everyone a chance, so many people come to the urban side steal ideas, take it into these big events, and release them. Meanwhile, the original designer doesnt get any invitation to any of those events.. It needs to change and I will change that. To the creators who are just starting, never stop trying even when it seems like theres no future for your store or business. Keep it going, you will get recognition from the right crowd, and what you think may be the right crowd may not always be the right ones. Dont be discourage by events or sales. keep striving and be original because it will get you a long way.

J: Thank you soooooo much for having tea time with me Dreem, and I’m so glad you could give us insight on the different topics we discussed within this interview. I can’t wait to see you again! Any final statements?

D: Thank you for having me, it was my pleasure – anddddd just wait til’ you see what’s coming from Sabotage, and New Regime *smiles*.

Please be sure to keep up with Dreem Doll’s future releases on her social media, and shop at the links below!

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / FLICKR / MARKETPLACE

#dreemdoll #dreem #sabotage #newregime #new regime #dreem doll #SecondLife #second life #Second Life Fashion #Second Life Blog #secondlifefashion #chicandchaud #chic&chaud #interview #SL #SL Fashion #slfashion

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time-of-objects · 3 years

Text

Film in the digital Era

I took these images during the 90s and early 2000s when I was working as an assistant editor in the independent feature industry in Melbourne and Sydney. It was working in this capacity that left its unique mark on my approach to film making. It was exciting to work with film materials and the large editing apparatus within the big machine of feature film production itself. The image at the 16mm Steenbeck was taken on while working as an second assistant on the film Mallboy (Giarrusso, 2000). My job was to sync up rushes, film the rushes on a video camera off the Steenbeck monitor for distribution to the director and producer, put away trims back into their camera rolls, as well as lay up sound effects to enhance the soundtrack. Mallboy was a low budget film so the production decided to take the rare step (at that time) to cut on film. Digital edit suites were expensive and the hiring of Steenbeck and edit rooms were cheaper which meant the edit schedule could last for longer. We would have more time with the material and longer time to try things out. I am forever grateful that the production took those steps because I learnt valuable lessons about editing with physical materials. An assistant editors role now is much less interesting than during the time of editing on film. Syncing audio to picture digitally is now automatic, files are copied at the stroke of a mouse click which means the assistant might not even watch the raw rushes. The editor needed more assistance with filing and syncing and laying up music and sound effects which meant more time with them so we witnessed their craft and learnt what they do by being present at all the stages of the edit. A digital timeline may be navigated swiftly, you go to the head of a sequence in a stroke. At the end of a reel it must be physically rewound on a winding bench or on the Steenbeck. Rewinding on the Steenbeck gives you the opportunity to watch the film back and notice patterns in the edit from another point of view. This is useful information to the editor that time and the physical matter of a film reel imposed on them. Now because the digital edit suite is so quick at performing many seemingly mundane functions, this opportunity must be purposely sort out or is lost.

Another effect of cutting on film might be learning how to cut in your head. Because film handling can be laborious one becomes adept at watching rushes and cutting them in your head before you make the effort to find the shot, mark it up, take the spicer and trim away the excess. I want to know what other things can be learned by constructing a film on the Steenbeck that I may have not paid attention to before. So one of the tasks I have set myself in this research is to cut something on the Steenbeck again. So far I have used it as a way to make DIY digital copies of my film negs and I have also used it as a way to reconstruct a film shot on film but edited digitally. To cut on the Steenbeck I will need to make film prints or what we used to call a work print. Something you feel free to cut up before cutting the original film negative. This will have a financial cost and I am aware I don’t need to apply all the industrial methods of the feature film process to my personal process but I want to think through what might be useful. I have also read about using the Steenbeck machine as a DIY contact printer (in the Artist Film Workshop magazine Film Is) too which would make the Steenbeck an even more valuable tool to have use of. There is a great many possibilities and avenues to explore. I will be documenting them here on this blog.

Revisiting these images of my time as an assistant editor I can see I was already charmed by the materials during the rise of digital processes. The image of the 35mm print in the glow of the light bench treaded into the gang sync. My winding bench, a work station with books, music and photos arranged around it like any work desk. The pizza boxes full of the rushes. A pile of effort and time wound up sleeping and waiting to be put to use. The Super 8 projector and the beaten up 16mm camera on top of the Steenbeck monitor, objects becoming totems, symbols of an artisan approach. I took these photos from a stance of affection for the materials. It is puzzling that an industrial art form can take on the cloak of an artisan appeal. And this artisan appeal it seems to me to rest on not only that the surface of film that may be scratched or photochemically explored but importantly that the physical nature of working with film means you hold it, carry it from apparatus to apparatus, push and tug the film strips through different machines in different work spaces which requires action and energy of your body to a greater extent than working with the keyboard and the mouse plugged into a machine that is also receiving your emails, streaming content and social media. Again it could be considered only as a matter of degrees but the active movement of the body and machine is film art practice.

#16mm film #35mm film #Steenbeck

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huntergator65 · 3 years

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Pixelmator Photo

The Pixelmator Pro image editing engine is seriously sophisticated and incredibly powerful. It’s designed exclusively to take advantage of the full power of Mac computers, using advanced Mac graphics technologies like Metal and Core Image. Pixelmator Photo for iPad is here!In this live session I'll show you everything you need to know to get the very best out of this amazing iPad app.

The timeline for many a photographer — at least, this was the case for me — can be outlined somewhat as per the graph below:

Here, photography gear and kit starts out as the ultimate source of inspiration. This inspiration declines steadily over time, but rears its ugly head on occasion.

The inspiration derived from other photographers takes essentially an inverse effect as gear and kit do. When gear and kit delusions subside, the drive to emulate your favorite photographers rises.

And finally, your own skill set not only grows over time, it also becomes the main source of your own inspiration over time.

I’ve developed a bit of a list for the second step — photographers like Kate Holstein, Sam Nute, Finn Beales, Dan Tom, and more are stunningly skilled and worthy of emulation. Their compositions are great — often, near perfect — and their colors are their own.

I think the prevailing advice to improve your abilities as a photographer is to focus on composition. Work with prime lenses, learn to position your body and camera in the right spot, and ensure all the pieces of the puzzle fit into your photograph beautifully.

Color is just the icing on top of the composition cake, and everyone likes different brands of icing, right?

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Pixelmator Photo’s latest update brought the power of Pixelmator Pro’s ML Match Colors from the Mac to the iPad, promising the ability to match the color palettes between sets of photos. ML Match Colors is wonderfully implemented, quickly performed, and easy to use. It promises to use all the powers of the iPad.

But does it promise the power of stealing your favorite photographers’ color palettes? Will it make your photos look as good as your favorite photographers’ photos?

Of course not!

As is always the case in photography, there are a multitude of variables at play. ML Match Colors handles one specific variable: color.

Using ML Match Colors to Match Your Own Photos

This is the method that I expect the Pixelmator team both wants and expects customers to implement when using ML Match Colors. At first blush, ML Match Colors seems best designed for applying a relatively close color palette to all of your photos in a set.

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The original photo on the left and my personal edits on the right. Clearly, these two photos are very, very different.

To test the power of ML Match Colors, I used a single photo of my own from a few years ago. Evidently, I’ve heavily edited this photo, so I exported a copy of the original photo and a copy of the edited photo from Lightroom to my camera roll.

From there, I opened the original raw photo in Pixelmator Photo, dragged an instance of Photos into Split View, and dragged my edited into Pixelmator Photo to match the color palettes.

In general, if an app can or can’t deliver on a promise, it’s usually due to improper expectations. And since I originally came into this thinking ML Match Colors would also match saturation, hue, intensity, and exposure all at once, well, I was originally disappointed. Here’s the result:

But upon further inspection, Pixelmator Photo actually performed great work in matching the colors in these two photos. In retrospect, it’s obvious: the colors are properly matched. However, to get to my original end result, I had to jump into the color tools in Pixelmator Photo to dial back intensity, hue, and saturation of individual colors. After maybe a minute or two of experimentation, I came to this end result:

Not bad, actually! Not bad at all.

As I mentioned above, ML Match Colors is explicitly designed to match colors — matching any other elements of exposure, saturation, hue, and more either has to be done manually or through other forms of Pixelmator Photo’s machine learning features.

Using ML Match Colors to Match Someone Else’s Photos

This whole section likely gets dicey, so I want to ensure I give credit where credit is due, and I want to ensure that the end result of “stealing” someone’s color does not actually happen. I fully believe, after you’ve read through this section, you’ll agree that a photographer’s stylistic brand and color choices are not in jeopardy thanks to ML Match Colors.

So, Finn Beales is one of the professional photographers I mentioned above who I have a ton of professional respect for. Beales has one of my favorite photography blogs on the planet, shoots some of the best travel and brand photography in the world right now, and has provided a wealth of photographic knowledge in his photography course at Strohl Works. Tableau jira connector. If you want to get a behind-the-scenes look at how Beales works and how he achieves some of his results, that course was some of the best money I’ve spent in the last two years.

Finn Beales’s tremendous travel photography — known as “72 Hrs In…” — is showcased on his personal site. There are a wealth of photos to digest in that section of his blog. One of my favorites is his commissioned work for Travel Alberta, a province and location here in Canada I had the opportunity to travel to myself.

So, with that backstory out of the way, you can likely understand where I’m going with this. Here’s Finn Beales’ photo of a man at Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada:

Photo by Finn Beales, used solely for color reference and nothing more.

And here’s my photo of that exact same location, albeit with slightly different composition:

It’s very hard to say whether Beales and I shot the photo at the same time of day or in the same kind of weather, among other variables. We were at Lake Louise in the earliest part of the morning, so the orange glows on the mountaintop peaks are about as close as I could get to the oranges in Beales’ photo.

And here’s the result after dragging and dropping Beales’ photo into Pixelmator Photo:

Did my photo change at all? You’d be hard-pressed to tell. I believe many of the colors indeed match those in Beales’ photo, but again, hue, saturation, luminosity, brightness, and other variables play a major role in keeping Beales’ stylistic color choices his own.

This is good news, in nearly every facet of the story. The learning lessons I’m taking away from this:

Composition remains the most important element of photography. If you don’t have good composition, the amount of beautiful color you add or take away from a photograph won’t magically transform it into a mystical work of art.

Understanding “color” involves much, much more than simply dragging and dropping one photo onto the other. To achieve a certain look, a full understanding of the color wheel, color and light curves, and color tools is still required.

For all the work professionals have put in to create their own style, brand, and “look”, they can be rest assured that other photographers like myself won’t be able to replicate that same look with a simple feature in an iPad app.

Other Updates in Pixelmator Photo 1.2

Despite the title ML Match Colors feature debuting in Pixelmator Photo 1.2, the 1.2 app update housed plenty of powerful features for photographers looking to utilize the iPad more and more in their workflows.

Notice the trackpad cursor right in the middle of the photo on the left and the re-shaped cursor in the top right in the right photo. Cursor support is very nicely baked into the latest Pixelmator Photo update.

Trackpad Support: iPadOS 13.4’s new trackpad and cursor support has taken the platform by rage. Any app designed with many custom elements has struggled to organically adopt cursor support out of the gate, so updates have been needed to have all apps feel at home in iPadOS 13.4. Pixelmator Photo 1.2 brings full-blown trackpad support to the app, allowing you to whiz around with a mouse or trackpad much like you would on a Mac.

Split View: We chose Adobe Lightroom CC as the best photo editing app for the iPad because of its ecosystem, and we chose Darkroom as the runner-up because of Darkroom’s adoption of iOS technologies. With Pixelmator Photo 1.2, you can throw another app into the runner-up column. Pixelmator Photo may now have the best iPadOS technology support of any photo editing app available. The app now supports Split View, which is very powerful in how ML Match Colors is used. The app adeptly uses the iOS photo library rather than maintaining its own photo library housed within the app. And all the machine learning features built into the app make it one of, if not the, most powerful iOS photo editor available for the iPad.

Adjustment Intensity and Recent Adjustments: Pixelmator Photo 1.2 now allows you to fine-tune the intensity of color adjustments and presets. As described above, these tools are fundamental to achieving a desired look after ML Match Colors has done its job.

You’re also able to quickly reference and copy the adjustments from your most recently edited photos in Pixelmator Photo 1.2. Legal audio transcription. This, combined with ML Match Colors, make for a quick and easy workflow to edit a batch of photos with the same colors and settings.

Wrap Up

ML Match Colors debuted as a powerful machine learning feature in Pixelmator Pro for the Mac. The feature alone almost had me download Pixelmator Pro. However, I held off, knowing my workflow was going to increasingly move to the iPad. I admit, I didn’t expect ML Match Colors to come to the iPad so quickly.

I’m glad I waited. Because I’m positive I would have been initially disappointed with the ML Match Colors feature on the Mac.

Now that I’ve had a chance to try the feature, I’m more likely to purchase Pixelmator Pro for the Mac, simply because of the feature.

Pixelmator Photo App

So much of the iPhone and iPad’s being is wrapped up in simplicity. The devices themselves are fairly simply to use and can somehow house multiple generations of people into their user bases. This air of simplicity, applied to photography, almost makes it feel like you should be able to take a boring photo of the tree in your backyard and turn it into a masterpiece worthy of the Louvre.

The machine learning features in Pixelmator Photo are a taste of this simplicity, but don’t let your imagination run wild. Machine learning features in Pixelmator Photo take advantage of the deepest iOS technologies, eliminate a plethora of difficult and complicated tasks, and make editing photos easier than ever. They aren’t a perfect, one-tap-done editing tool.

ML Match Colors may be the very best machine learning tool available inside Pixelmator Photo. Drag and drop your favorite photos — or perhaps you can create and use your own color templates — to match the colors, then tweak everything else inside Pixelmator Photo’s vast array of editing tools. If you really want to make it easy, enable all the ML toggles in the tool array, hit export, and you’re done.

We named Pixelmator Photo as the photo editing app with the most potential in our big review. This 1.2 update really, really builds out some of that potential. And if this is just the start, Pixelmator Photo may move its way up the ladder of the best photo editing iPad apps.

Must-Have, Most-Used Photography Apps

Pixelmator Photo Mask

We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. Our team here at The Sweet Setup put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for taking and editing photos on iPhone and iPad.

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johnmuffus · 5 years

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6 Figure Affiliate Marketing Review

6 Figure Affiliate Marketing Review (Ryan Scribner Course)

You can’t follow Ryan Scribner on his YouTube channel and not have heard about his affiliate marketing course. Today, we’ll review this program and tell you what you need to know about what you’re getting after signing up for it.

You can go to the end of the article if you just want to know my final verdict, as usual, but I’ll go through all the modules and its content.

The course is on the higher end, with a single payment offer of $1196. You can pay in 3 instalments every month, but it’s $232 more. Still, give other courses that give you a full 50% increase, it’s not TOO bad.

Ryan sells this course as the ethical method for stealing his business, and that means you could expect to make the classic 6 figures with affiliate marketing. Of course, he does place the disclaimer outlining that’s not overnight.

Who’s the author? Ryan Scribner

Ryan covers some ground: affiliate marketer, investor, online entrepreneur, and YouTube content creator. Moreover, he’s a serial course creator, and he’s been behind various online training platforms through time.

He’s taught a wide range of topics, from stocks to how to create courses. The affiliate marketing course is the latest instalment as far as I know, though.

He’s a very active YouTuber as well, and you can usually find a new video if you check his channel now and then. His schedule tends to be 2 or 3 videos every week, varying in topics. He’s also one of the largest personalities I’ve reviewed here, with over 400,000 subscribers.

He used to target people wanting to learn investment basics and general personal finance skills. That’s why his older content is more about strategies and tips specifically for that audience.

However, he then ventured into different areas, and that’s why he now covers social media and affiliate marketing, passive income approaches, and everything related. If you’ve thought about making money online in any way, Ryan probably has a video on it.

He also has quite the following on Instagram. He has a personal and a business account, with 53,000 and 334,000 followers respectively. He uses them plus his YouTube for promoting his affiliate products and his courses.

Reviewing No Bullshit Road to Remote Work

As usual, the course is hosted on Teachables, which we can always take as a pro. It’s user-friendly and lets you go through all the modules at your leisure. Just note that you can’t download the videos.

The course has 9 modules and a couple of bonuses, with 61 total videos on several topics. The lessons also feature Apple Crider and Jake Woodard, experts according to Ryan and with background in their own fields.

You can find an outline of all the modules below and the content they offer after you pay for it.

Module 1

The first module starts out with a disclaimer that you’re not promised 6 figures in passive income with the methods in this course. Sure, it’s nice he’s transparent, but it kind of takes away some of my confidence.

You then have your standard introduction, detailing how to join the private Facebook group, an introduction to Ryan and Jake’s background.

Before we go into the next module, note he’s an inspirational speaker, author, and coach…

Module 2

… So of course he has a mindset module!

I mean, spending $1,000 should be enough proof of your determination and growth mindset. Mindset videos are fun for me, but that’s not everyone’s opinion, and even I have to admit that an entire module dedicated to it is too much. You can find the same type of content online.

Anyways, you’ll learn Jake’s story, understanding your weaknesses, dealing with negative energy, building confidence, etc. You get the point.

There’s a nice video here about developing habits, but it’s still what you find on YouTube. You can go back to this module now and then if you feel bored, however.

Module 3

This is the first module actually teaching you about the business. This module has 9 videos, but the first 4 are completely wasted explaining more about the concept and Ryan himself, so feel free to skip those.

They cover what’s affiliate marketing and how the model works as well as how Ryan became successful and proof of his earnings.

The next videos go into what you need to start out and debunking some myths. The last lessons are about finding niches and how to find your products. It closes with a 5-minute video on how Ryan approaches the process.

Module 4

The 4th module is about Amazon Associates and why Ryan considers it the best choice for beginners. It covers the best strategies Ryan uses and how you can apply for it. It then goes into technical fundamentals like how to use it, how to get your links, how your ID works, etc.

Now, Amazon Associates is a great platform, and I use it myself as well, but they really aren’t the largest rates you can find online. In fact, they’re among the lowest: between 2 and 4% for each sale.

However, it’s still a great platform, and it’s easy to get conversions on it, so it’s quite good for beginners. I’m just telling you to do your research and not stick with something you can improve.

Module 5

Apple Crider handles this module about using Instagram for affiliate marketing. He’s the host of Young Smart Money Business, a podcast about, well, business; he’s also a public speaker.

I was a bit hesitant towards him covering the Instagram marketing portion of this course, for he only had about 15,000 followers when I took the course (I imagine he had less when contacted).

As such, you can’t expect a lot of depth, but it’s still a good intro on the fundamentals. You learn how to market on the platform, how to grow your account, and how to earn some money even before buying a loyal following.

Module 6

This is like the previous module but with YouTube. It opens up with a video about how much money you can really make with YouTube and similar expectations, with likely timelines before it starts occurring.

You also learn about growing your subscribers base and how to get likes for your videos.

Module 7

This is the second module for Apple Crider, and it’s about using a podcast to promote your affiliate products. Finally, I can trust a module from him since his podcast is actually quite successful (and pretty good).

You learn about why you should start a podcast, how you can grow it and get more listeners and downloads, and finally how to start introducing your offers to make money from that audience.

Module 8

This module is mostly an assortment of different methods you can use. The first video is about using an email list to run an email marketing approach for your offers and new launches, which is a pretty good strategy if you have a loyal fan base.

There’s another video detailing how to offer your products by using Quora, and of course, the last video is about how you can use a blog website for promoting your products.

I’ll say here that I’m disappointed that blogging got such a small exposition, especially with how it’s one of the pillars of content marketing, and content marketing is one of the pillars of affiliate marketing (more like the backbone).

Module 9

The last module is just a bunch of lessons on random topics with no clear main line. I guess “additional resources” is a fitting title, but it feels like he already had a bunch of video recorded that he realized didn’t fit any module, so he decided to throw them all here.

Anyways, there are some recommended services: one for editing visual media (video and photo) and Fiverr as a way to hire freelancers to outsource your work. The last one works as a spiritual sequel to a video about how you’re limiting your income by handling all the work yourself.

You have a video on how to set up your expectations realistically, kind of like the one on the YouTube module, and another one about how to create quality content, which was pretty good.

You also have a case study from his partners who created the course, but that’s the only case study in the program.

You have some additional information about handling your audience, mainly how to avoid (and what is) audience burnout and how to build affinity with your audience. There’s another kind of related video on both low and high intention traffic.

There’s also some insight about affiliate marketing intricacies like the legal side, how to use sub IDs, and how to keep track of your results and data. The last video is also a Q&A on legal topics: taxes and LLC.

Bonuses

The first bonus is just a continuation of the 9th section, and it works to provide additional content on the business model and what platforms you can use.

It starts with a fairly filler-like video about why you should start a passive income stream in recent times. I say “filler” because it doesn’t provide much content, but it’s actually a very interesting video explaining the gig economy and recent changes to the economic landscape.

There’s another video on how to keep track of possible new trends so that you can jump early before they become saturated.

Amazon and YouTube are also covered as businesses. It’s another interesting video about how the platform works, and besides being an entertaining lesson, it’s also an overview you can use to leverage your success.

The rest of the first bonus’ content covers organic traffic (which is not as relevant in recent times, unfortunately), scaling your business, and another Q&A.

After that, the second bonus is just a list of Ryan’s favorite affiliate programs. There are 79 different programs for you to sign up and find products or services you can promote spanning several niches.

While it’s something you can find without too much work on Google, it’s still a nice addition to the bonuses section.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

This course is a very expensive introduction towards the affiliate marketing business model. It has some good tips about finding products, which platforms you can use, and the tactics you can exploit; however, it lacks to provide anything that really sets it apart and justifies the asking price.

There are several topics which weren’t included. For over $1,000, you’d expect more content like paid traffic or SEO at least, especially with the current relevance of Facebook and Instagram paid ads (not to mention Google).

That’s one of the main issues of this course: it focuses too heavily on organic traffic, and 2019 marked a significant departure from that approach and a huge rise in how important it is to run good ads campaigns.

Sure, you can find resources for free or in a cheaper course, but that’s something you should definitely get for $1,000. Also, remember those are extra expenses, which aren’t really mentioned anywhere.

Even if you go solely with the methods here, you still have to pay if you want to start a blog or use different platforms to make things easier.

Yes, Ryan is a successful affiliate marketer, but keep in mind that having over 400,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 344,000 Instagram followers does make things a lot easier, and that’s a leverage not everyone has. That’s why it’s so easy for him to use organic traffic for his marketing.

He’s also been working on it for years. Starting out a YouTube channel or podcast was very different 4 years ago than it is now, so note that he’s relying on a loyal following to market his products.

I can’t recommend this course because it assumes you already have the same advantages as the authors. And while you can definitely grow to be like that, you can’t do so with the strategies provided here.

You can just get Savage Affiliates for $197 and learn everything to actually start from scratch.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my 6 Figure Affiliate Marketing Review and I wish you the best of luck.

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dorothydelgadillo · 5 years

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11+ Lessons Every Marketer Can Learn from Verblio's Rebrand

So you’re thinking of rebranding your company, or you’re naturally lumped into the process as a marketer.

(Yes, these decisions can come from the top and can come in the form of a pile-on. I totally feel you!) Don’t fret.

I’m here to share some insights as someone very fresh off the process, and whose learnings both haven’t been fully repressed as bad memories nor fully eclipsed by rose-colored, nostalgic glasses for those parts that went particularly well.

Coming off the rebranding process at Verblio just five short months ago (at the time of this writing), it’s high time to sit down and reflect and see what we really learned. Honestly, few actually take the time to do this, so if you’re in the same boat, set aside reflection time, a la Mulan:

Whether you have a designer in-house (we didn’t before this last year!) or you’re coordinating freelanced or outsourced talent, going through product development changes or updating help pages screenshots, it’s easy to underestimate the scope of a rebranding effort.

For all those going through a full company rebrand, or something at a smaller scale, here’s what we learned that any marketer can take and apply.

1. Rebrands don’t mean your old brand was no good.

A quick intro: we’re Verblio, long-time IMPACT friend, more recent IMPACT partner, and fellow championer of HubSpot. We write all different types of content for businesses and the agencies that serve them.

Up until October 2018, we were known as BlogMutt—again, long-time HubSpot integration and partner in outsourcing content.

I’m Kali Greff, the head of content for Verblio, one of the members of our two-people-strong marketing department, and one of the defenders of the BlogMutt name to the bitter end. :)

I mean, I dare you to disagree that our BlogMutt mascot, Buddy, is the cutest:

...which brings me to my first point.

Rebrands, in and of themselves, don’t mean your old brand was no good.

In our case, the name BlogMutt grew our company to $2M in revenue over the course of seven years, steadily building over time, all while completely without investment, bootstrapped.

Aside from this, the BlogMutt brand played a significant role in how we did business and fostered a community of thousands of loyal, hardworking, flexible writers, and countless adoring clients/fans to match.

And now, just because I know it’s coming...

So, why did we rebrand?

Largely, we made the decision to rebrand because we had outgrown the name.

Every day, our community of writers collaborates with clients on much more than blog content, which was reason enough to leave BlogMutt in our rearview mirror.

However, we were careful to carry the BlogMutt hardworking, approachable legacy to Verblio throughout the branding process. While leaving the clunky series of consonants behind.

Takeaway #1: Don’t leave the best of your brand behind—reimagine it, evolve it—to fit your future vision.

We even Verblio-ified Buddy the Mutt to make the newest Verblio character “Party Mutt,” who personifies this evolution so gracefully:

2. Stay agile and expect chaos, no matter how well you plan.

I’m sure anyone recalling their rebranding process can attest to battle scars. For us, the first cuts were the deepest. Our original website designers dropped out after several months of working with them, forcing us to really go back to the drawing board to even get our new website built. Even though we had full-fledged spreadsheets organizing multiple teams at the time, those spreadsheets were rendered useless in the absence of clear delineation of tasks (and people to do them, in our case!).

This first obstacle was especially critical for two reasons—to call us all back together to a) rally behind the cause and b) pick ourselves back up to stay true to our “North Star” objectives.

The result? We had our first all-hands-on-deck call to the whole team (one of many)—beyond just the marketing team—to execute well. And, out of this period of doubt and utter confusion, emerged the bright idea to hire our freelance design resource, the brilliant Mandi O’Brien, full-time (after we convinced her to move from NYC to Colorado, of course).

This first cut was deep, yes, and was not the first of its kind. The main constant, we came to find, was c h a o s. But over the course of experiencing these obstacles and moments of utter madness, we healed, banded together, and developed resilience as a team—the new team of Verblio.

Staying agile and expecting chaos was our secret to staying sane.

Takeaway #2: Bend, don’t break, and expect bumps in the road…no matter what.

3. Alignment around messaging is key—but don’t get crazy.

On the tails of the point above, rallying behind the new brand is necessary (and great!). One of the ways to do this as a team is through opportunities to “try on” the brand as individual contributors and feel how it really “walks and talks.” To facilitate this, we engaged in a couple important workshops to compare our “versions” of Verblio to open conversations and narrow in on a voice that felt authentic to all of us.

What’s less important, though, is exhausting messaging before the rubber even hits the road.

Across the varying functions of team members, each department is going to naturally bring different lenses to the messaging table. In broad strokes, sales will overstate and seek to simplify, marketing brings the branding in strong to keep readers interested, and operations seeks to clarify and get the messaging spot-on to prevent customer confusion.

And, as a company, we’re a bunch of wordsmiths at Verblio, to further exacerbate these pain points. We had our share of excessive iterating around messaging.

But wordsmithing for wordsmithing’s sake will take exactly as long as you let it take. Meaning: it can go on FOREVER.

Takeaway #3: Draw a line in the sand. The iterating on messaging as a team can, and must, follow.

We finally agreed that we wouldn’t be able to unanimously align around our motto/tagline after weeks of toiling on it.

The tagline only solidified when we were ordering business cards for the team in a flash moment of brilliance, courtesy of our stellar website copywriter, Annika Nagy. It’s hilarious how these things happen!

Exquisite tagline brilliance, served up by Annika Nagy.

An interesting component unique to our situation outside the internal team was getting buy-in and over-communicating with our community of writers on need-to-knows and whys of the new brand. They have just as much stake in the company doing well as in-house employees—so they were a key aspect of the rollout plan and it was paramount to consider our messaging from their lens as well.

As one of the last defenders of BlogMutt as a brand, I made a point to include our loyal writer base actively in the rebranding prior to the big “switch flip” to Verblio by sending “limited edition” BlogMutt T-shirts to these evangelist writers, as well as customer segments.

This was wildly successful. Taking good care of your evangelists through what sometimes feels like over-communicating is always appreciated. Don’t skimp on that.

(An aside: family buy-in rolls deep. We didn’t expect the degree of the hard conversations with family members about the rebrand—my boss and VP of Marketing Paul Zalewski talked all about the trials of getting buy-in from his opinionated 4-year-old daughter Kenzie in our official rebrand blog post. It’s definitely worth a read…promise.)

3a. Devise a plan of what you want weigh-in on, who the decision makers are, and how to keep the whole team included without falling prey to “too many cooks in the kitchen.”

This is a slight extension on the last point—yes, it’s important to communicate, and over-communicate whenever possible, especially during a rebrand. Winning all aspects of a team’s buy-in comes in many phases, and often not all at once.

It might feel counterintuitive in the context of project timelines to make allowances for seemingly peripheral tasks like this. But, it’s far from peripheral to take the time and care to hear as many voices as possible surrounding a rebrand. Including those voices in the process in some small way can convert your evangelists of Brand #1 to Brand #2. These evangelists you transition to the new brand serve as a critical foundation to your audience starting out. And man, as a marketer, those are pretty compelling low acquisition costs for a new brand, right?!

There is a yin to this yang, however. There is a fine line between over-communication, cycles of feedback, and getting yourself in a nasty case of too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen. It is an ongoing struggle of getting voices heard beyond the core decision-makers during this period of transition and great change — while also needing to move forward and make decisions to keep the projects progressing. It is hard. There’s no getting around that.

My best advice…

Takeaway #3a: Keep conversation lines open. We had a #rebranding Slack channel to continue brainstorming as a team, apart from the one-off, scattered meetings to voice concerns, discuss in-person, and determine to-dos for each team member.

4. You don’t have to be a Virgo to appreciate a good spreadsheet.

As mentioned previously, our kickass spreadsheet to align across departments and freelancers was so powerful, and in the face of personnel, organizational chaos, it really was the grounding force. (And yes, I’m a Virgo…why do you ask?)

In fact, we’d love to share our spreadsheet with you (email me—[email protected]—I’d be happy to send it your way)! It was the one thing we really weren’t able to find through the powers of content marketing to manage our rebrand…so we just created our own.

Aside from that, this one source-of-truth spreadsheet was essential to organize and rally our team around the hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of cross-departmental tasks that needed to be completed. Beyond the main timeline, it also was a lifesaver AFTER the rebrand launch date to return back to quick-follow tasks. (And yes, stuff was missed! But at least we were able to know we missed it, amirite?) It became the catch-all.

Takeaway #4: Ask me for our project spreadsheet. It immediately makes everything feel better.

5. Moving to a new domain is painful for SEO, no way around it.

As excited as we were about our rebrand, we were equally worried about doing a website migration, for a couple of reasons:

Our company is lucky enough to count inbound as one of our most important customer acquisition channels.

In terms of migrations, this was a big one. In this wonderful guide to site migrations from the Moz blog, there are five major types of integrations listed. We were doing them all. All at once.

(source)

So, we had good reason to be worried.

But we also decided we wanted to be as prepared as possible. We met with our SEO agency. Paul, our in-house SEO expert, read guides, met with our technical team weekly, created checklists and did more worrying. We had a team of interns comb through our thousands of old blog posts to get them into ship-shape. We created a massive list of 301 redirects.

I think in the end we were about as prepared as we could be. And, even with all of this, there was a drop in our organic traffic of 20% to 25%.

It was scary. It lasted about six weeks.

We also missed things. Despite that massive list of redirects, we missed a bunch. We changed some naming conventions and missed those changes on the redirect side of things, which caused hundreds of long-tail pages to 404. Paul and Wade, our CTO and co-founder, developed a daily cadence of fixing them.

Here’s what our dip and recovery looked like for new organic users to the site (rebrand was launched early October 2018):

Takeaway #5: Find a great guide, read it twice, use it to make a checklist, and solicit expert help. Even with all that, prepare for the dip.

6. Consider ongoing function AND design in website development.

A primary objective for our new website of the rebrand was to have a website we could easily manipulate—both text and design-wise. Previously, we could make text changes just fine, and everything was mobile-responsive, etc. But from a design perspective, it was unwieldy. We had to go back and forth with a designer to implement any layout changes (even small ones!) in our specialized template environment.

No longer! And thank goodness. As agile marketers, we needed the capability to iterate, build, test, and make changes according to these experiments on our site. As marketers, you simply cannot settle for less!

That said, it’s also hella easy to fall in love with the whimsical promises of a design agency wanting to make the flashiest new website. Yes, we all want nice websites, but clunky, beautiful websites that just don’t work well are never the goal.

Keeping this objective front-of-mind from the beginning was a critical point we escalated time and time again in design conversations to really determine the best route for us.

Since we were building our new website on WordPress, we landed on Beaver Builder as the framework for the design of our site, mostly recommended by our new designer, Mandi. (And we landed on this despite my boss, Paul, thinking that all visual composers for WordPress were bad).

Takeaway #6: Be mindful of nice-to-haves vs. must-haves (and call them by those names!) in the rebranding process and how those affect your tech stack. Rebranding is a point to revisit and streamline if at all possible.

(I cover this a bit more in point #11, too.)

7. There’s no time like the present to make a formal content style guide.

This point speaks for itself. Despite being a content creation company, we hadn’t yet formalized a content style guide like a branding style guide. It’s embarrassing and shameful to admit.

However, we took notes from one of our favorite IMPACTers, the mighty content juggernaut Liz Murphy, who recommended establishing a content style guide right away. She was kind enough to share this post in its drafting stages to get us started on the right foot.

It proved ESSENTIAL (yes, all caps) to us iterating beyond our in-the-trenches website copywriter to bring more in-house contributors in on the brand voice. The baton pass to the remaining contributors with this style guide in hand proved seamless!

Takeaway #7: Don’t wait as long as we did to make a formal content style guide. Rebrands are a perfect time to do it.

8. You will never find a brand/website/logo/copywriting style that makes everyone happy.

In fact, if you do, it might be a sign something is wrong, or worse—you’re not being bold enough. This harkens us back to an old Seth Godin post. Being forgettable is too big to risk in a rebranding process, given how expensive it is in emotional, time, resources, and actual money spends.

Among the most polarizing components of our rebrand included the pink in the logo (our CEO Steve Pockross pulled a veto of it in the early days!), different names in the conceptual phase, variants of our logo (the term “bloated hippo” was featured!), our early Facebook retargeting ads asking prospects if they were “Verb-curious,” and our voice overall.

Internal and external haters should be expected.

The point that these haters can rally around, though, is that at the end of the day, it’s all about how you need to be making your audience happy…

Everything, yes EVERYTHING, comes back to what works and resonates for your audience as marketers. This is a drum that the marketing department can, and should, beat like no one else. Without any compelled audience, any message, product, service, company becomes moot. So, beat it, marketers!

Takeaway #8: Internal and external haters should be expected. If your goal is to make all parties happy, rebranding is not going to solve your base problem.

9. Figure out a way to “soft launch” various components and do iterative rollouts.

When we started talking about rebranding, I daydreamed about hitting one big, metaphorical button that said “Rebrand!” that did every single thing in one brilliant, fantastical moment. And there was indeed one day we appointed for more or less this purpose (for us it was a Sunday—we had a party at Verblio HQ). On that day, our CTO did change a few lines of code that implemented all of our redirects and became the official “moment” of the rebrand. And it was magical!

But, in reality, all of the things that went into the rebrand were done over a much longer period of time.

We made changes to our product that would be announced as part of the rebrand weeks before as a “soft launch” that allowed us to test them with a small group of customers. We launched our new domain name about a month before the rebrand with a “splash page” to start to warm the domain up and ensure our new site would rank #1 on Google for “Verblio” on Day 1 of rebrand.

And, crucially, our CTO Wade suggested that we actually set our full website live a few days before the big day. Even though we’d tested it in staging, we ended up catching dozens of things that were wrong with the site because of this early launch, and put in hours of work on the Friday and Saturday before Launch Day to make sure it was ready for prime-time. (And technically Google got a preview of the site due to a Yoast sitemap submission we weren’t expecting.)

All of this “pre-rebrand” launching totally saved our bacon and made Launch Day go off nearly without a hitch.

Takeaway #9: Whenever possible, find ways to test or “soft launch” features, websites, domains, and creative assets before your big day.

10. Show your quirkiness and prove there are real humans behind your brand.

It didn’t take a genius to notice in 2019’s round of Super Bowl ads that the general population is terrified of robots. And, to some degree, yes, we all are afraid of them. Yet, we as consumers interact with them consistently, in the form of “nicer robots,” like chatbots on web pages, email automation, and Alexa and Siri. As marketers, we know they have a critical role and continue to embrace the possibility for innovation within the marketing space.

However, all this change begs for bringing humans forward whenever possible, especially in all forms digital. That’s why companies like Vidyard and Soapbox have made such gains in the overall market—we as humans love interacting with humans. It’s in our DNA.

So, naturally, in a digital setting, and especially for us as a company backed by 3,000 talented, industry-expert freelance writers, it was a no-brainer to highlight our happy writers with much more focus for the Verblio rebrand. The BlogMutt iteration of this was definitely of its time—highlighting a crowd of writers vs. each of the individuals who would serve our clients.

That, and we wanted to highlight the quirky humans we employ in-house, too! We have book club meetings, we write weird blog posts, we riff and make bad puns (though I wholeheartedly maintain that NO pun is a bad pun!) on Slack daily, and we wanted to be more personality-forward with the new brand.

And we sure had fun with it.

From our announcement splash page:

From our announcement blog post:

Also from our announcement blog post, our future Verblio music album cover, probably:

From our ‘Meet Verblio’ page, where we share our favorite words:

Takeaway #10: Have fun, both internally and externally. Like, REAL fun. The creativity that is part and parcel of uprooting your entire brand’s concept lends itself to super memorable and just plain fun results. Welcome it!

11. Remember what you’re rebranding for.

This ties back into point #1, but keep the strengths of your old brand, and where you seek to fill the gaps with the new brand, near and dear to your heart.

As nerdy and basic as it sounds, make a list of guiding objectives for your rebrand and laminate it or otherwise make it easy to refer back to. You’re going to need to keep returning to it again and again, and over time it transforms into a “love language” of sorts for your in-house team. It will be a crucial communication point to keep everyone aligned around the same things you all deeply care about.

As you embark on the rebranding process, it’s an equally slippery slope to either over-complicate the process or significantly under-complicate it.

Looking back from where I’m sitting, I’m pretty sure rebrands typically fall into two buckets:

Companies that internally fight tooth-and-nail throughout the process to “elevate” to an uncommunicated, vague, impossible level of perfection for the new brand, or

Companies that are so eager to get from point A to point B that the rebrand turns into a simple new coat of paint or swap of a template vs. a true reimagining of what the website, and brand, should feel like.

Don’t be either of these guys. Both undermine what a rebrand should do and accomplish.

Keep that nerdy, basic list handy and keep returning to it. Guide other team members to return to it. Just like I’m doing now.

It can serve as the breadcrumbs to your Hansel and Gretel to take you back home, home to your new, awesome brand.

Takeaway #11: Sounds nerdy, but make a list of objectives for a rebrand. Keep returning to them, starting meetings with them, and continually remind the team members what it’s all for.

Conclusion/Over to You

As promised, here’s our list of takeaways (and bonus! It was more than 11!) to carry with you into your own rebrand.

Takeaway #1: Don’t leave the best of your brand behind—reimagine it, evolve it—to fit your future vision. Takeaway #2: Bend, don’t break, and expect bumps in the road...no matter what. Takeaway #3: Draw a line in the sand. The iterating on messaging as a team can, and must, follow. Takeaway #3a: Keep conversation lines open. We had a #rebranding Slack channel to continue brainstorming as a team, apart from the one-off, scattered meeting to voice concerns, discuss in-person, and determine to-dos for each team member. Takeaway #4: Ask me for our project spreadsheet. It immediately makes everything feel better and tackle-able. Takeaway #5: For SEO, find a great guide, read it twice, use it to make a checklist, and solicit expert help. Even with all that, prepare for the dip. Takeaway #6: Be mindful of nice-to-haves vs. must-haves (and call them by those names!) in the rebranding process and how those affect your tech stack. Rebranding is a point to revisit and streamline if at all possible. Takeaway #7: Don’t wait as long as we did to make a formal content style guide. Rebrands are a perfect time to do it. Takeaway #8: Internal and external haters should be expected. If your goal is to make all parties happy, rebranding is not going to solve your base problem. Takeaway #9: Whenever possible, find ways to test or “soft launch” features, websites, domains, and creative assets before your big day. Takeaway #10: Have fun, both internally and externally. Like, REAL fun. The creativity that is part and parcel of uprooting your entire brand’s concept lends itself to super memorable and just plain fun results. Welcome it! Takeaway #11: Sounds nerdy, but make a list of objectives for a rebrand. Keep returning to them, starting meetings with them, and continually remind the team members what it’s all for.

Now, it’s your turn. What’s your rebrand process looking like? What of this list was or wasn’t helpful to you? What do you wish I covered more of? I love feedback—the good, the bad, the ugly. I also love nerding out on rebranding and content at large.

Let’s keep talking and get in touch with me in the IMPACT Elite group on Facebook—feel free to @ or message me directly! I’d love to hear from you—I’m so fresh off this process and am happy to lend an ear or help brainstorm on any of this stuff.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/11-ish-lessons-every-marketer-can-learn-from-verblios-rebrand

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careergrowthblog · 6 years

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Saffron Walden County High School: An exemplary school. The Learning Rainforest made real.

Last week I spent a day visiting Saffron Walden County High School in the North-West corner of Essex. This was the result of a conversation with Head and CEO, Caroline Derbyshire who suggested that I should consider writing a ‘Learning Rainforest in Action’ follow-up book. Having read the original book, Caroline felt that SWCHS embodied many of the ideas in it – so I went along to see for myself.

It wasn’t the first time I had been to SWCHS – I’ve had the pleasure of visiting several times in the last 10 years, including the visit that resulted in writing one of my all-time most-read blogs ‘Making Feedback Count: “Close the Gap” which features the feedback system the school was developing at the time. A key element of that visit was a superb CPD session with a carousel of departmental workshops coordinated by Polly Lankester who is now Associate Headteacher.

On my latest visit I had the privilege of observing 21 different lessons on a day-long tour supported by various members of the leadership team. It was wonderful. I can safely say that SWCHS is one of the best schools I’ve ever seen, in any sector.

It would be tempting to attribute this to the advantages the school enjoys: it’s an extremely nice part of the country to live in; teachers want to live in the area, they stay and invest in the community; it’s near Cambridge so there’s a pool of fresh talent from the PGCE courses there; the school has had a benefactor who funded building an exceptional concert hall facility, Saffron Hall, run as a professional arts venue on site. The school’s size and locality enables it to recruit a very large Sixth Form of 600 students (impressively, the school has only recently started taking about moving from GCSE 4s to 5s as the entry requirements: strive for 5 is the mantra! ; It’s a very comprehensive Sixth From compared to many schools and their ALPS 2 suggests they’re doing a great job!).

But these advantages don’t come close to explaining the quality of the experience students are getting there. Dare I say, the reasons align with the elements of my Learning Rainforest analogy:

Establishing the conditions: I’d say that the school provides optimum working conditions for staff. It feels like a wonderful place to work. The physical environment is fabulous but there’s a palpable spirit of professional trust, extensive investment in CPD and the best in-school coffee shop you’ll ever see! Certainly in a state school. Stability in staffing is very high – but this has been crafted, worked at – it doesn’t just happen. Recruiting and retaining great teachers isn’t taken for granted and a lot of effort goes into supporting the teaching school and other alliances. They also offer a superb curriculum with a clever blend of breadth and depth, using Year 9 as a bridging year leading into a wide range of options.

Building Knowledge: The quality of teaching is brilliant. It’s rare to see such sustained quality over a day visiting lessons; each teacher brimming with subject expertise; each presenting a sense of drive and purpose, matching very high expectations of students with expert lesson structures engaging all students in a rigorous, inspiring learning process.

The school’s emphasis on research-engagement has yielded superb practice linked to retrieval practice, modelling and feedback. At a lunchtime meeting with curriculum leaders, I was struck by the thoughtful evaluation of their practice and the way they’re seeking to continually develop their curriculum and pedagogy to embrace the learning from research, reading and their own enquiry work.

Exploring the possibilities: The school provides exceptional extra-curricular opportunities through trips and visits, visiting artists and so on – but the possibilities are largely evidenced in lessons. I saw some of the best drama lessons I’ve ever seen, probably the best KS3 technology work I’ve ever seen and multiple examples of A level teaching where students were firmly in the driving seat. The sixth form is big because its quality attracts students to join – there’s a virtuous spiral of success fuelling success.

All of this emerges from a deliberate blend of systems and culture. There’s a rigour to everything with intelligent systems – including the assessment regime I described in an earlier post: The Ideal Assessment Tracking Regime? The school has high expectations of staff, for sure. But the culture allows the systems to deliver. It’s the kind of school you want to be in to teach, to lead, to express yourself. Of course, it’s not perfect. They have some achievement issues to address; some further gaps to close. Not everything lines up perfectly at once and, despite their successes, they’re fully aware of where further improvements lie. That’s the sign of a great school: always ambitious for further success.

To bring all this alive, here are some nuggets from the lessons I observed:

English Y7: Students were engaging with a range of new words such as indolently, impertinently .. used in sentences. The task was to infer their meaning from the context. There was a superb follow-up Q&A where the teacher explored their answers and consolidated the correct meanings.

Physics Y12: A classic demo lesson and whole-class experiment: measuring bullet velocity with an air-rifle and air track, applying conservation of momentum. I used to do this one myself over 30 years ago – I love how stable the physics curriculum is!

Computing. Y9: In a bookwork lesson, away from computers, students were working on code for a PIN number verification routine, explaining and checking each other’s solutions. The peer supported problem-solving going on around the class was impressive.

Drama Y9: An exceptional lesson featuring a devised piece rehearsal: three groups formed circles rotating to bring each student to the front in turn, with everyone else mimicking the central speaker – a range of accents, characters, personal stories. This was followed by a machine/rap ‘families’ choral piece and other elements with students working towards an imminent performance. I was so impressed by the discipline, expectations, trust, rigour… and the time given to repetition and practice. Notably, the drama teacher was about to head off to a 2-day residential theatre trip with her A level students to see three shows in London.

Maths Y9: Applying area in problem solving using algebra. A well-pitched balance of stretch and practice; modelled and checked in the detail. Great maths teaching.

History GCSE: Planning for source question on suffragettes: There was a big focus on securing the relevant knowledge and on retrieval practice: knowing the facts. A3 sheets of annotated pie charts were used cleverly as a device to identity the relative effects of different factors. I also loved the macro timeline reinforcement….students had impressive recall across the Power and People theme: 1170 to present; Magna Carta to Brixton Riots.

Art Y11: Students were making superb clay heads or teapots… extended pieces using a range of new 3D skills, working towards their mock exam. Supporting portfolios were excellent and the ambition, high expectations, support for creative exploration and the intensity in the process/work rate were hugely impressive. The ‘close the gap’ feedback system was still going strong.

Graphics Y11: Interestingly, a recent switch to the Art and Design spec moving from old-style DT design portfolios to art portfolios was making it more much more creative. Students were exploring shapes with a link to natural forms to inform a design brief for an outdoor structure. I remarked on the quality of an exemplar project displayed on the wall. It belonged to the student next to me who was beaming.. it was stunning.

PE: Y7 basketball : An expert blend of group practice, whole class instruction with student modelling, then more practice –with all students involved! One student’s enthusiastic demo of a dribble technique was lovely – in answer to the question ‘why do we need to use that method?’, he showed how it could go wrong if you didn’t use it. Metacognition in PE – brilliant.

Drama Y7…This lesson showed how a curriculum platform is built enabling the Y9 lesson seen earlier to be so good. Here, one group was in the centre with everyone acting as audience offering critique. Again the lesson was characterised by challenge, structure, expectation with tons of feedback; a blend of disciplined creative thinking.

Psychology Y13 : An essay planning lesson; highly synoptic, with the teacher guiding discussion, bringing together different points, modelling how to make links. The was excellent probing questioning (my favourite thing in teaching) linking knowledge to essay technique i.e. linking specific studies to the particular question. It was notable how students had the option to use laptops for notes in a high-trust grown-up manner.

History Y13: Russia: A small group activity to prepare a set of annotated images of Soviet art to share as a revision tool – the question being the extent to which the images represented reality. There was impressive harnessing of student agency, discussing ideas, making notes, sharing.. collaborating with links to the bigger question about the success of establishing a socialist society 1917-41. Again, I was impressed with what students knew and how the task supported them in probing deeper.

Percussion Workshop: Part of the day included observing the visiting So Percussion ensemble who were there to run a workshop with a group of 20+ Year 9s for three days. In the workshop students were involved in a rule-based composition activity taking turns for a practical hands-on marimba lesson, the plan being for them to contribute to a public concert on the Friday.

Geology Y13: So great to see Geology A level going strong! Here the class were going somewhat off-piste, using desks to model a geological event– making a fissure and linking this to the pressure/forces and the flow of magma. Great stuff!

English Y13: A fascinating discussion of gender, with students forming a schema around polarities, organising ideas on standard gender characteristics as students volunteered them. This fed into a process contrasting and applying these identities to central characters in The Duchess of Malfi: a superb blend of teacher instruction and group discussion.

Business Y13: The topic was critical path analysis. Students were using the idea of making tea to explore how far you can go to specify step by step processes. As elsewhere, the teacher-student rapport was wonderful.

English Y11: Lord of the Flies. Revisiting the text for the first time after studying it in Year 10, students were looking at how to deploy quotations, reviewing prior knowledge and undertaking a keyword check: eg microcosm, allegory… – a great example of allowing all students to think, explore their own recall and understanding and then check.

Textiles Y8: A double lesson forming part of a week on/week off rotation with food tech and wider rotation with resistant materials. For a relatively short dose of textiles, the expectations and outcomes were fabulous. Very well structured booklets drive the curriculum with ‘close the gap’ improvements shown. In the lesson all students were at sewing machines making batik cushions and the mini-portfolios made for homework were superb. I don’t think I’ve ever seen KS3 DT homework this good.

Spanish Y10. This lesson exemplified so many aspects of what I regard as great MFL teaching. The activities got everyone speaking; the key structures were being repeated, reinforced, practised. All class instructions were given in Spanish, with lots of teacher talk in Spanish. The focus was on revision of the language to develop opinion and included the retrieval practice game: Quiz, Quiz, Trade… cleverly allowing all students to be involved simultaneously in practising and checking each other’s understanding. Magnífico!

French Y10: Another great MFL lesson featuring a tic-tac-toe game to rehearse pronunciation. Again instructions were predominantly in French for a task that supported the rehearsal of vocabulary; the teacher intervened to reinforce key pronunciation. Attention to detail! Students had an impressive knowledge organiser booklet with all the key phrases organised lesson by lesson; they explained how they learn phrases by a combination of practice and testing themselves.

Y9 Physics: Great teacher demo of Newton’s laws involving with trolleys for people to stand on moving in opposite direction; good emphasis on making sure students distinguish weight vs mass. This was followed-up with remote control car on a surface moving in opposite directions. Here we had a term one NQT doing a great job balancing developing skills of behaviour management with developing the teaching of the subject. And it says a lot about SWCHS that they have such confidence in their NQTs and the support they get to allow visitors in to see their lessons.

Y8 Geography: Students were looking at GDP/capita vs life expectancy. The graph plotting is challenging providing an important reminder of the attainment range in the school; students operate within a palpable ‘teach to the top’ ethos that permeates the school. In classic Rosenshine style, there was lots of supervised guided practice as the teacher circulated.

I hope the details shared here go someway to illustrate the Learning Rainforest: superb conditions, deep knowledge, exciting possibilities. Culture and systems. Rigour. Teaching to the top. Teaching for memory and recall. And Joy, Awe and Wonder in plentiful supply. SWCHS is a truly wonderful school that many could learn from. I hope they’re prepared for the visit requests! Thanks to Caroline, Polly, Cathy, Matt, Angela and Graham for your hospitality. I know how proud you and your colleagues are of the school and everything you’ve achieved. And thanks especially to all the SWCHS teachers who welcomed me into your classrooms so openly. Excellence like this doesn’t happen by magic. You’ve all created something very special.

Rainforest Image: Taken from SWCHS corridor art display.

Saffron Walden County High School: An exemplary school. The Learning Rainforest made real. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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psychotherapyconsultants · 6 years

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How to Keep From Repeating Mistakes

“Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent.” – Billy Graham

How many times have you made a mistake and instantly remember you’ve made it before? Most people have this experience and recognize it when it becomes a pattern. If they fail to see the similarities between the current mistake and a past or previous one, however, they’re likely destined to repeat it multiple times. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can profit from mistakes — particularly ones that recur frequently — if you pay heed to how to keep from repeating mistakes.

What Science Says

Recent research published in the journal Memory on mistakes and learning from them reveals that if the mistake occurs while learning, it is possible to improve memory for the correct information. The key to improved learning is that the error or mistake must be close to the correct information, a so-called “near miss,” researchers said, saying further that errors that were “out in left field” don’t tend to learn the correct information as easily. Further research is planned with the hope of improving education for young adults as well as late-life learners.

Another study by University of California researchers that was published in Nature Communications found that even failure (making a mistake) can be perceived as rewarding, if the person making the mistake is given the opportunity to learn from it and assess options. They call this “punishment avoidance learning.” Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers found that when subjects received enough information to be able to contextualize choices, their brains turned toward reinforcement mechanism, rather than avoidance. One of the study’s authors said that this is similar to what may happen when someone feels regret for doing something wrong and then may change his or her future behavior to incorporate the learning they received from their mistake.

For people with memory problems, such as dementia, and those with non-congenital brain damage, research by a neuropsychologist from Radboud University found that “errorless learning” or preventing mistakes is a better approach than “trial-and-error learning.” Since those who’ve experienced brain damage from strokes or accidents have difficulty implementing actions requiring steps and planning, breaking the target outcome into steps and providing detailed descriptions, examples and visual instructions, interspersed with significant pauses between each step, resulted in clear improvement. This is particularly successful in helping memory-impaired individuals relearn everyday tasks.

Another study by researchers at the University of Iowa found that older adults are less likely to realize they’ve made an error than younger people. Furthermore, older adults are more likely to be adamant they’ve not made an error, even when they have. Researchers found, however, that older adults performed tasks just as well as younger adults, albeit more slowly. Such research may help in developing ways for aging adults to learn how to recognize mistakes they’ve made and incorporate that learning into behavior.

In the work environment, research published in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science recommended that managers make a diligent and conscious effort to let employees know the value of learning from mistakes. When an organization stresses continual learning as an important part of improving and changing existing practices, employees are more likely to be motivated by this learning approach and see mistakes as an opportunity, rather than failure.

Another study by Gabrielle Steurer and colleagues studied the climate of mathematics classrooms for “mistakes-friendly” and “mistakes-unfriendly” environments and found that students who perceived the classroom as mistakes friendly when they committed errors were more willing to increase the effort they put into their work.

Practical Tips to Avoid Repeating Mistakes

While science continues to plumb the reasons behind learning from mistakes, the rest of us are left with trying to successfully navigate our way through a history of personal mistakes and missteps and figure out effective ways to prevent or avoid them in the future. Here, then, are some practical tips that may prove helpful.

Do an objective analysis. While the sting of a recent mistake may make objectivity difficult, it’s nevertheless important to separate emotion from fact. To see what happened and determine the cause of the mistake, write down everything you did on a step-by-step basis. This allows you to see what, when and where the mistake likely occurred. At the very least, it shows a timeline that provides insight that may be instrumental in not making the same mistake again.

Ask others’ about their recollection or perception of the mistake. Why would you want to risk embarrassment or criticism by asking a friend, family member, colleague or loved one what they recall or thought about a mistake you made? For one thing, their perception is likely a bit different than yours about the event. They may be able to remember specific comments or body language where you exhibited stress, were uncertain or felt you needed to proceed despite lack of resources, support or other decision-making factors. Gather what you learn and set it aside to study later. There’s likely valuable information here you can use in avoiding/preventing a similar mistake again.

Reframe the mistake in a positive outcome. Instead of feeling bad about the mistake, or being afraid as a result of making it, reframe it so that it becomes an opportunity, turning the mistake into a positive outcome. For example, if your marketing plan was a disaster, what results showed promise that you can capitalize on? Glimmers of consumer acceptance for certain product, service or offerings may be gleaned from comments, suggestions, interviews with focus groups, surveys and the like. Perhaps the target market could be better pinpointed, or the communications approach more narrowly focused, or the campaign timeline extended. Marketers who ignore lessons from mistakes will not profit from them, but those who do see the positive amidst the negative are more likely to realize eventual success.

Keep a diary or journal. Notetaking isn’t just for students. Everyone can make use of a journaling technique to keep tabs on daily activities – including successes and mistakes. Note the specifics of mistakes and see what steps you took in arriving at that outcome. By examining the progression of your actions, you’ll be better able to see where you went off track or where you can make alterations, so the mistake doesn’t happen again. This is an example how you can see how to make mistakes work for you.

Celebrate wins. Acknowledge when your learning from mistakes results in success the next time, or in a related or even unrelated task, endeavor or activity. It’s important to boost your self-confidence in knowing how to make appropriate decisions, to choose wisely and recognize the difference between similar options. Give yourself credit for advancing your problem-solving abilities that resulted from such self-learning. See the mistakes as risks that lead to success.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-to-keep-from-repeating-mistakes/

#World of Psychology

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kawaiitidalwavekitten · 7 years

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How to create a UX writing portfolio – Dropbox Design – Medium

Andrea Drugay

Writer and editor in San Francisco. UX Writer @Dropbox. Lover of all things healthy and wise. Blogger, runner, yogi, author of books available @Amazon!

What stands out when we’re hiring at Dropbox

If you’ve been doing UX writing for a few years and are ready to showcase your work, there are a few ways you can build a portfolio that stands out. A portfolio is a great way to share projects with prospective employers, as well as make an impression with your UX skills.

Not all companies give the same title to UX writers. Some other titles include Content Strategist, UI Writer, Content Designer, and Product Writer. The point of this blog post isn’t to tell you what UX writing is. If you’re unsure, these recent articles can point you in the right direction.

What we love to see at Dropbox

When we review portfolios, we want to see your best work, presented in a way that shows us you know how to write for the web. But some portfolios are hard to navigate or lack context, which blocks our ability to best understand your writing.

The most helpful UX writing portfolios we see showcase a variety of samples across different types of UI copy. This includes:

Settings

Notifications

Errors

Landing pages

User onboarding

Tooltips

Forms

Menus

Product-generated emails

When we’re checking out a portfolio, these are a few things we look for:

Are your samples easy to navigate?

Is it obvious which parts you actually wrote?

Does your writing sound human?

Is your writing clear and succinct?

How do you treat errors, empty states, and other sensitive topics?

Does your writing show the user what to do and how to do it?

To help you create a killer UX writing portfolio, we’ve gathered some tips and guidance from our UX Writing team’s combined experience hiring writers.

Have your samples online

You don’t have to hand-code a website, but your portfolio needs to be on the web. If you want to show us you can work in UX and write UI copy, your website is a great way to demonstrate that.

It’s fine if you copy and paste your screenshots into a PDF — but they can sometimes be hard to navigate. Also, being prompted to download any kind of file gives us pause. It’s often a lot easier to click through pages and zoom into images on a website, which means we might be able to spend more time reading your samples.

Free websites + no coding required

You can get a basic website on a free hosting site like WordPress or Squarespace. These sites use templates that are easy to navigate and display screenshots of your work.

Another plus to having a web portfolio (instead of a PDF) is the ability to track your visitors. WordPress and Squarespace have simple analytics built in. You can see the number of visitors to your site, the pages they looked at, and how long they stayed. You can even use these analytics to improve your user flow and put your UX skills to use right away!

Example of analytics in WordPress

Showcase your words

It’s tough to know exactly what to include in your UX writing portfolio. Finding the balance between too many projects and too few requires a thoughtful approach and depends on the amount of material you have. Once you’ve decided what projects to include, there are a few ways to show your words in context.

Use screenshots, not live links or text files

This is probably the most important piece of advice in this whole post.

UX writing embodies the ability to use the right words in the right interface context (web, mobile, voice UI). Sometimes we get links to live websites without any other information. We don’t know if you wrote the headlines, the error messages, the blog posts, or if you just changed a few words from what somebody else wrote.

When you copy and paste your writing into a text file or plain text, we see your words (good) without context (not good). For a blog writing position, that might be OK. But for a UX writing position, we need to see your words in a user interface context.

Screenshots help us understand navigation, flow, and clarity of action. When we have context to get inside the user’s head, we can learn how your words contribute to the user’s overall experience.

(Obviously fake) example of a landing page screenshot

Highlight the parts you wrote

Using arrows or other highlighting tools, point out the exact copy you wrote. If you screenshot a page but don’t give us any context, we’ll assume you wrote every word on the page. If we interview you, we might ask how you came up with that fantastic headline and subhead. If it turns out you wrote the settings, not the headers, we’d rather know upfront. The point of a portfolio is to showcase your work — so make it clear which words are yours.

Arrow highlighting the writer’s copy

Even better: include before-and-after screenshots, so we can see where you started and where you landed.

Example of screenshots showing before-and-after pages

Go beyond the basics: case studies and themes

Screenshots let us see how your copy works with the overall flow of the project. But if you want to take your portfolio above and beyond, you can offer a glimpse into your process and work style. To show your teamwork and your ability to work cross-functionally, there are two great ways to do this: case studies and grouping by theme.

Create case studies

With a case study, you showcase your storytelling abilities along with your best UX writing samples.

Example of a case study

A basic case study answers these questions:

The project:

What was the problem and what was the goal?

Who were the main stakeholders?

What was your role?

What constraints were you working with?

What was your timeline?

2. Your UX process:

How did you make decisions based on user research?

How did you collaborate with other teams, designers, and PMs to learn as much as possible about user needs?

3. Your creative process:

How did you iterate on copy?

Why did you choose the words you did?

What were other explorations that didn’t succeed?

How did you make final decisions on copy?

4. The final product and results:

You don’t need to share confidential information, but we need to know how you measured success. Did you use analytics, testimonials, reviews?

How long did it take?

What were the main lessons learned?

Don’t feel like you need to create long-winded copy for a case study. Make it easy to read and scan, using subheads and bullet points.

Group projects by theme

You can show a bunch of projects within a theme, with a summary for each project.

Example of grouping projects by theme

For example, show ten landing pages for various clients or a series of onboarding emails with information about the project, scope, and process. Bullet points work fine here! We just need to know the basics, so we understand how the words you wrote appeared where they did and why.

Here’s an example of information you can include, either with each project or as a group:

Project: Landing page redesign

Scope: Create new headline, subhead, and 1-paragraph descriptive blurb

My role: Lead writer

Stakeholders: Project manager, lead designer

Goal: Redesign started in Q3; ship redesign by EOQ1

Challenges: How can we get more users to sign up for the newsletter when they sign up for our product?

Basic process: User research > Plan > Design/Copy > Prototype > Test

Results: 45% increase in newsletter sign-ups over the following quarter

Protect sensitive work

If the work you’ve done is publicly available, you should be able to share it publicly, too. If your work hasn’t launched, that’s “sensitive material.”

Example of a password-protected page on a WordPress site

If you want to include projects that haven’t shipped, you can create password-protected pages. This feature is free with WordPress, Squarespace, and other sites. You can share the password with a hiring manager in a confidential setting.

If your work is under an NDA and you’re not sure if you can include it even on a password-protected page, the best person to ask is your company’s lawyer. Some employers let employees show their work in a confidential setting. Some might require hiring managers to also sign an NDA. Others might not allow it at all.

Check the details

Finally, your portfolio offers the opportunity to advertise your attention to detail. Typos are a huge red flag when you apply to any writing position, but especially one where you’ll be revising and editing other people’s work. Double-check, triple-check, and use spell check. Also be sure to proofread your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Before you share your portfolio with the world, use this checklist:

Proofread it.

Make sure all your links work and go to the right places.

Make sure your contact information is correct and current.

Get rid of any unnecessary social media links.

Ship it!

After you pull together your portfolio and proofread it, consider having a friend test it out. Then make sure your resume is polished, and get out there and sell your best self to the world.

Every company’s hiring process is unique. During your job hunt, you might be asked to submit your portfolio with your initial application, before a phone screen, or before an in-person interview. You might be asked to walk through each page during an in-person portfolio review or over the phone.

Whatever the process, know that if you follow the tips we’ve laid out here, you’ll drastically increase your chances to get that much-awaited call. Thanks for reading, and best wishes on your UX writing job search!

Huge thanks to Justin Tran for creating the perfect illustration for this blog post. I’m always awed by our illustrators’ talents!

Want more from the Dropbox Design team? Follow our publication, Twitter, and Dribbble. Want to make magic together? We’re hiring!

http://ift.tt/2sKQ3xf

#UX News #Writing #Copy #design news #uxwriter

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careergrowthblog · 6 years

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Saffron Walden County High School: An exemplary school. The Learning Rainforest made real.

But these advantages don’t come close to explaining the quality of the experience students are getting there. Dare I say, the reasons align with the elements of my Learning Rainforest analogy:

To bring all this alive, here are some nuggets from the lessons I observed:

Maths Y9: Applying area in problem solving using algebra. A well-pitched balance of stretch and practice; modelled and checked in the detail. Great maths teaching.

Rainforest Image: Taken from SWCHS corridor art display.

Saffron Walden County High School: An exemplary school. The Learning Rainforest made real. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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careergrowthblog · 6 years

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What is a knowledge-rich curriculum? Principle and Practice.

I have found recent discussions and debates about the concept of a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ – or knowledge-led; knowledge-based – fascinating. Some of this has been explored brilliantly in various blogs. Here is a selection:

Summer Turner https://ragazzainglese.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/pub-quiz-or-published-what-are-the-aims-of-a-knowledge-rich-curriculum/

Jon Brunskill I’m bringing knowledge back. | Pedfed which is worth reading along with his school’s website info on curriculum. Reach Academy Feltham |Approach to Curriculum Design

Ben Newmark. Planning a knowledge curriculum.

Rosalind Walker. My #rEDBrum talk: The Nature of School Science Knowledge

Mark Enser: Knowledge in the classroom | Teaching it Real

Rebecca Foster and Claire Hill: On our #rEDDurrington presentation: Practical approaches to bringing research-informed practice to the classroom, the department and whole school | The Learning Profession

There are also numerous blogs from Michael Fordham (Knowledge and curriculum – Clio et cetera), Clare Sealy (Memory not memories – teaching for long term learning – primarytimerydotcom) or Christine Counsell: the dignity of the thing

Along with plenty of others, I initially struggled to get my ahead around this idea. As a science teacher I’ve always felt my curriculum was packed with knowledge and, without question, I’ve seen numerous cohorts sit lots of GCSE exams year after year, each requiring significant knowledge. However, having engaged in the debate, read Martin Robinson’s Trivium 21c and Dan Willingham’s work, I’m increasingly convinced that a knowledge-rich/focused/led/based curriculum is an important concept that we ought to embrace.

Based on my work with lots of schools in varying circumstances over the last few years, I would say that not only is this approach often different to the default practice, it offers a secure route to the rising standards that we’re continually seeking.

What is a knowledge-rich curriculum in principle?

Based on various ideas pulled from the blogs and books cited above, I would suggest there are four components:

Knowledge provides a driving, underpinning philosophy: The grammar of each subject is given high status; the specifics of what we want students to learn matter and the traditions of subject disciplines are respected. Skills and understanding are seen as forms of knowledge and it is understood that there are no real generic skills that can be taught outside of specific knowledge domains. Acquiring powerful knowledge is seen as an end itself; there is a belief that we are all empowered through knowing things and that this cannot be left to chance. There is also a sense that the creative, ’rounded and grounded’ citizens we all want to develop – with a host of strong character traits – will emerge through being immersed in a knowledge-rich curriculum.

The knowledge content is specified in detail: Units of work are supported by statements that detail the knowledge to be learned – something that can be written down. We do not merely want to ‘do the Romans’; we want children to gain some specified knowledge of the Romans as well as a broad overview. We want children to know specific things about plants and about The Amazon Rainforest, WWII, Romeo and Juliet and Climate Change. We want children to have more than a general sense of things through vaguely remembered knowledge encounters; in addition to a range of experiences from which important tacit knowledge is gained, we want them to amass a specific body of declarative and procedural knowledge that is planned. This runs through every phase of school: units of work are not defined by headings but by details: eg beyond ‘environmental impact of fossil fuels’, the specific impacts are detailed; beyond ‘changes to transport in Victorian Britain’, specific changes are listed.

Knowledge is taught to be remembered, not merely encountered: A good knowledge-rich curriculum embraces learning from cognitive science about memory, forgetting and the power of retrieval practice. Our curriculum is not simply a set of encounters from which children form ad hoc memories; it is designed to be remembered in detail; to be stored in our students’ long-term memories so that they can later build on it forming ever wider and deeper schema. This requires approaches to curriculum planning and delivery that build in spaced retrieval practice, formative low-stakes testing and plenty of repeated practice for automaticity and fluency.

Knowledge is sequenced and mapped deliberately and coherently: Beyond the knowledge specified for each unit, a knowledge-rich curriculum is planned vertically and horizontally giving thought to the optimum knowledge sequence for building secure schema – a kinetic model for materials; a timeline for historical events; a sense of the canon in literature; a sense of place; a framework for understanding cultural diversity and human development and evolution. Attention is also given to known misconceptions and there is an understanding of the instructional tools needed to move students from novice to expert in various subject domains.

What is a knowledge-rich curriculum in practice?

The best way to attack this is through some examples:

Exhibit A: The Romans

If you imagine some Year 8s looking back to their time in Year 4, when they ‘did the Romans’, what would we want them to remember? They might remember their trip to the ruins or the museum, the video of the gladiators and something about togas and what the soldiers looked like. They might have a general sense that Romans had an empire and that they were around a long time ago. In a knowledge-rich curriculum they would remember all of this but would also be expected to know the terms empire, emperor, centurion, amphitheatre, aqueduct. They would know who Julius Caesar was; they would know a set of dates, placing the Romans in time in relation to Jesus and 1066 and be able to identify the location of key Roman sites in the UK and Europe.

All of the teaching could be supported by giving students a knowledge organiser with all the key facts on it from which various quizzes and tests are derived to support their retrieval practice. This would be part of a long-term plan that ensured students returned to Roman history beyond Year 4; there would be an expectation that their knowledge would be built on, not left behind.

Exhibit B: Parliament Hill Science

At this Camden school, the science department has developed a superb set of resources to support students with learning. This is linked to their FACE It approach described in this post: FACE It. A formula for learning. The idea is that students need to master the recall of basic science facts and concepts on the road to deep understanding and the ability to apply knowledge to problem solving. They are provided with excellent study guides; more detailed than a knowledge organiser but stripped down from what might be in a text-book. Here’s a sample from the GCSE unit on genetics and selection.

Significantly, students are shown the quizzes that will be used to test them on their knowledge. They are embedded in the books. They are seen in advance so that students can learn the form in which knowledge is sometimes expressed. It guides their learning. Students are asked to learn the material after being taught it and then take the quizzes without any study aids. The aim is that all students get all the questions right. That’s the point. Their theory is that, if students can’t get the simple factual recall questions right, they have no chance of then getting the ‘application to new contexts’ questions right.

This embedded quizzing teachers lower attaining students to build confidence, gaining important study skills and has paid dividends. It also helps a team of teachers to focus their energies and to plan collaboratively. It’s a Godsend for any new or non-specialist teachers too.

Exhibit C: Trial by Ordeal

If you were teaching the GCSE History theme study on Crime and Punishment, you might show this BBC Bitesize video: https://www.bbc.com/education/clips/zrtk2hv. It’s a great colourful story full of information, examples, facts, concepts, gory details. You could watch it and have a wonderful engaging discussion during a lesson. But…. some days and weeks later, what would students remember? If you hoped students would recall as much as possible simply through absorbing information or by making their own notes, you’re going to get a wide range of responses – and for certain, the weakest students will have the worst notes and, in all likelihood, the lowest level of recall. It’s not enough.

In a knowledge-rich approach, we don’t leave this to chance. We spell it all out. Alongside watching the video and having the discussion, we make the note-making absolutely explicit. These are the key facts; this what everyone must know; this is what you must all remember. Not only this, but at least all of this:

You might choose to train students to produce their own structured notes in a quizzable format or you might just give them the notes and focus on the retrieval practice and application. But what you won’t do is all students to scrabble around dredging memories for half-remembered titbits of facts in the hope that they have a coherent picture of the idea of trial by ordeal. You control it; you are precise about it.

Exhibit D: Sequenced knowledge of Motors.

This is my favourite bit of teaching physics – one of them at least. If I teach this through a knowledge-rich approach I want to make sure that the knowledge builds securely. Firstly, say in Year 8, through demos and practicals, I want students to build their tacit knowledge of the key phenomena: magnetism, magnetic fields, attraction and repulsion, the idea of ‘strength’ of a magnet; forces; current in circuits – each with direction and magnitude; the idea that phenomena interact. All of this can be highly qualitative – simply focusing on changes of direction and the simple awe and wonder thing that motors work at all in our universe. I will also secure recall and understanding of some key terminology.

Later, as part of a spiral curriculum, avoiding cognitive overload and building on prior knowledge, I need students to understand and use F = BIL and Fleming’s left hand rule. I need them to know the terms, that magnetic flux density more or less means ‘strength’, has a symbol B and units Teslas. I need them to learn the equation by heart and practise using it and manipulating it. All of that needs focus – so that they think about the equation away from the buzzy distraction of a sparking, whizzing motor. I build the sequence carefully, deliberately with a focus on practice and recall and schema-building.

Is this new? Well, yes I think it is to many teachers and in many schools – especially once the cogscience combines with the idea of subject grammar. It’s way beyond some reductive idea of rote learning and regurgitating facts for no purpose. It’s about ensuring students always have a secure knowledge platform allowing them to reach the next level. But it’s not too important (is it?) whether we did this before… some of us will; some won’t and that will depend on context, subject, phase… The point is that we do it now. It’s actually rather exciting….

What is a knowledge-rich curriculum? Principle and Practice. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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