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xwing-baby · 4 years ago

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Impulse: Informant (Javier Peña x Reader)

Summary: Top of your class, the DEA have sent you to Colombia to be the poster child for their new ‘placement program’. You’re thrown in at the deep end into the drug war. With Agent Peña as your mentor, what could possibly go wrong?

Warnings: Nothing much! Flirting, mentions of voyeurism(?), drinking, hangovers.

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: Bit more background this week, not that exciting but some fun moments with Javi and Steve. Alternative title: Meeting your killer and flirting with the boss ENJOY

<-- Previous Chapter // MasterList // Next Chapter -->

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Two months passed quickly and you were settled in well. You were comfortable in your job; you, Javi and Steve made a great team and you were learning a lot from the both of them. You tried to avoid interacting with Carrillo directly where possible, he was still as icy about you as your first meeting. You met Steve’s wife, Connie, and became fast friends with her. She had become one of your closest friends, and a welcome break from the machismo that radiated from your two teammates.

You had even managed to make a few friends outside of work. You met María Parreño at the cafe you visited nearly everyday for lunch. What started out as a little wave, now was lunch together nearly everyday, and the occasional shopping trip at the weekend. María was a sweet girl, funny and very sly when she wanted to be.

You were careful, giving a fake name and lying about your job. You could never be too careful in Colombia. Plus, with how rich her family were you wouldn’t be surprised if you crossed paths with one of them during your investigation into Escobar’s dealings. So, Maria knew you as Isabela Serrano, you worked in the American embassy on the phones. You had lived in the USA for ten years, hence the accent, and moved back to Medellin after your abuela died. María didn’t take much convincing.

You enjoyed her company. It was a lot nicer to have a conversation about books you’d both been reading over nice food, than trying to eat over photos of blood crime scenes. Plus, the coffee here didn’t taste like soap.

“Isabela, can I tell you something,” María turned to you, set her cutlery down and looked over at you seriously.. Puzzled, you put down your drink and smiled.

“Of course, you can tell me anything,”

“Diego got a new job,”

Diego was María’s boyfriend. Her father’s mechanic. A total cliché, her father had forbidden them to date but she did it anyway just to piss him off. You didn’t know much about Diego, you’d only met him once or twice in passing when he came to pick his girlfriend up from a shopping trip.

“You’re saying that like it's something scandalous,” You laughed nervously, “What? Has he become a stripper?”

“He’s working for Escobar,” She whispered.

“What?” You nearly choked your coffee in shock. You set it down on the table carefully and leant in a little to listen to her, not believing what she said. It was not an impossible thing, lots of people worked for him in lots of different capacities. You hadn’t expected it so close to home.

“I know! That’s what I said!” She said, “He came home the other night saying he got this new job doing something for Pablo! I said Pablo who, I know lots of Pablo’s. The man just looked at me like I was an idiot! Pablo fucking Escobar!”

“What does he do?” You asked, you had to know how dangerous this could be for you. Or how helpful this could be, you thought. Being close to someone close to Escobar could be invaluable.

“Escobar?” Maria asked.

“No! What does Diego do for him?”

“I don’t know,” She shrugged, “He said something to do with cars,” You relaxed a little at that. Escobar’s mechanic was not a very useful lead.

You glanced down at your watch and sighed. Your hour was up. Just as you had got to something useful!

“Shoot I’m sorry María I’ve got to head back to work,” You drank down the last of your coffee quickly and stood up. “But you’ll keep me updated with this Escobar business right? It’s just all so exciting!” You put down your share of the bill on the table and threw on your jacket.

“Of course!” María smiled, “One of Diego’s friends is having a party! You should come!”

“I’ll be there,” You nodded, “Same time Saturday?”

“See you then!”

Before you left the café you bought two coffees to go for Murphy and Pena as a way of apology for being late back. You had promised to be out less than an hour as Pena had important things he needed to go over with you and Murphy. By the time you got back, he had already started explaining the new information to Murphy in a conference room.

“Then we have-,” Javi was speaking as you walked in carrying coffee for the two men. You instantly recognised the face in the photograph and interrupted him.

“Diego Castillo,” You said. The two men turned to you, confused. Unfazed you passed them the cups and sat down next to Murphy on the end of the table.

“How’d you know that?” Steve asked.

“I know him. Or rather his girlfriend,”

“What?” Steve nearly choked on his drink at your confession.

“I didn’t think I had to tell y’all everything I do in my spare time,” You laughed.

“Hanging out with Narcos would have good to tell us,”

“He’s not a Narco, he fixes Escobar’s cars! He’s not anyone important. It’s chill,” You waved him off. He was being ridiculous, ”Besides I’m friends with his girlfriend who has no idea what’s going on. I’ve met him maybe twice” You explained, “María’s a sweetheart, we talk about romance novels and go shopping!”

“Castillo doesn’t fix the cars. He runs the whole road operation,” Javier said. Your jaw dropped.

“Well shit,”

“Anything else you wanna share?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know but Monday I might,” You sipped on your coffee before continuing, “I got invited to a party, I was going anyway but-.”

“No, no you can’t go now we know who he is,” He exclaimed.

“This could be invaluable!”

“You’re not allowed to have an informant,”

“It’s not an informant if I am the one with the info!” You argued.

“Javi? Gunna chime in at any point?” Steve turned to his partner, desperate for some help as you had already spiralled far enough on this idea. You turned to Javi with a determined look.

“They don't know my name, they don’t know where I work,” You explained rapidly, “I know what I am doing, just trust me, please?”

“Fine,” Javier broke easily. The idea made sense.

“What the fuck! Javi she-,”

“She’s right. Neither of us is going to ever get that close and she’s new here, people don’t know her and you said you gave them a fake name?” Pena explained, you nodded, “Technically she won’t be breaking any rules if she’s the one feeding us information directly,”

“If anyone finds out-“

“No one will find out, it stays between us, in this room,” Javier said gravely, “I trust you Y/n,”

You smiled and nodded, a sense of pride washing over you. Steve muttered and grumbled under his breath but he didn’t outwardly complain so the decision was made. You were going to feed information you found out through Maria to the DEA, going undercover. Nobody had ever mentioned no undercover work, the idea of sending a rookie into that kind of situation was insane, but you wouldn’t be technically breaking any rules.

The party was a bust. There was nothing of interest apart from the attendee’s themselves. Everybody was civil, there was no talk of business- as explicitly called for by the hosts, and apart from one fight between two guys over a soccer match there really was nothing to report. You spent the evening with Maria and her friends, drinking and dancing. Having a good time.

They were decent enough people if you ignored the way they all got their wealth. A little hard to relate too at times- you didn’t have a private jet or a house with a huge pool but Maria’s friends were surprisingly friendly and once the jokes about being a gringa were out the way they seemed to like you.

There was no information but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a well worth evening. You had their trust now. That would be invaluable moving forward.

It was payday. Everyone you worked with was going out for the evening to let loose. You were with a large group of people from the office. Some you recognised, some you didn’t but either way you were having a great time chatting to people. The alcohol was cheap, the music was great and the company was perfect. Nobody here complained that their dad wouldn’t let them import Italian handbags anymore or that their pool wasn’t big enough. You felt much more at home here, amongst peers and friends.

After a few hours of chatting to people, you retreated to a table with Javier and Steve. Eventually even Steve left, leaving just you and Javi alone. You were drunk, no other word for it. Your eyes were heavy, a grin plastered on your face and you swayed in your seat to the music listening to Javi talk.

You rested your hand on your head and watched Javier for a moment. He looked very handsome, as he did nearly every day. He wore a blue jean jacket, his shirt was unbuttoned at the top showing off his tan skin. You watched as he smoked a cigarette, watching girls at the bar. A pang of jealousy hit your chest, you wondered if you weren’t sitting here as his rookie if you would catch his attention. Before you could think, you asked the question aloud.

“If I was just a random girl in the bar, would you hit on me?” You asked, sipping your drink.

“I’m not answering that!” Javier laughed, “I know you,”

“I’m hot! Why wouldn’t you?” You exclaimed, “Hot girls not your type?”

“You’re not my type,” Javier corrected you. You gasped dramatically.

“I’m taking offence to that! Your type is anything that breathes,”

“You think so little of me,” He shook his head solemnly.

“Baby I’ve known you for months now. You don’t have a type!”

“Baby?” Javi smirked at you.

“Shut up I’m drunk,” You dismissed him.

“Well what if I ask the same question to you?”

“Would I hit on me? Absolutely!” You exclaimed.

“No! Would you hit on me?”

“Nah,” You shook your head and screwed up your nose.

“Liar!”

“Am not!”

“Come on don’t pretend like you wouldn’t,” He said, “You’d be all over me,” The energy shifted as he looked at you. Immediate eye contact, his dark eyes looked you over quickly drawing you into him. He leant forward slightly as he readjusted himself on the chair and brushed his bottom lip with his thumb drawing your attention to them. Your breath hitched, lips parted and your eyes flickered to his lips. Was he going to kiss you? Suddenly he broke the eye contact and laughed, settling back in his chair. “See! You would,”

Dazed you shook your head and cleared your throat. Javi smiled smugly.“No, No! That's not fair! You being smoother than fucking peanut butter doesn’t mean I would hit on you if I saw you! You’re old and grumpy looking, I like my men young and energetic,”

“So I heard,” He said as he tipped his drink into his mouth.

“Hey! That’s gross,” You exclaimed when you finally realised what he meant.

“Goes both ways, Baby, if you can hear me I can hear you,”

“So you listen to me fuck?” You countered. Javi choked on his drink.

“N-no I-,” Javi stuttered ands tumbled over his words, blushing slightly

“You do! Dirty bastard!” You exclaimed. “Do you get off to it?” You asked, quieter now leaning in closer to him. Javi didn’t reply, taking a gulp of beer and breaking your eye contact. You laughed again, “Javier Peña speechless! Wow! Pretty sure I can retire now and I’d be happy,”

“I’m getting another drink,” He grumbled, getting up from the table.

“Tequila please, Baby!” You called after him.

—

You woke up with the worst hangover you had ever felt. Before you really opened your eyes you darted to the bathroom to throw up. You groaned into the toilet bowl, annoyed at yourself more than anything that you had gotten so drunk. You didn’t remember coming home, didn’t remember leaving the bar. The last thing you remembered was sitting with Javi drinking tequila like it was water. The memory made you gag again, how did he ever get you to drink tequila?

You padded into your tiny kitchen to get a glass of water, and start your usual fix all hangover cure. Salted chips and Coca Cola. The sugar and salt combination would do wonders and had saved you multiple times after a heavy night before training back home. You found a bag of chips in the cupboard but no cola. In fact, your fridge was practically empty, bar an old jar of salsa that you were pretty sure had been sitting there since before you arrived in Colombia. The idea of having to go out to the shop made you want to cry. You rested your head on the fridge door and groaned as another pulse shot through your skull. Then you had an idea, the Murphy’s would probably have some!

You could tolerate seeing other humans at least for a few minutes. So you pulled a pair of shorts on and a vaguely clean t-shirt, took your keys and went across the hall to your favourite couple. The hallway was bright as sunlight streamed through the open window, you winced and shielded your eyes. You knocked twice on the door, the established knock for friends, and took deep breaths as you tried to not give into the need to throw up again. After a moment, Connie opened the door, a wide grin on her face when she saw your fragile state.

“Good night?” She teased you. You frowned and pouted at her.

“Remind me never to go out with Javi alone ever again, I can’t remember leaving that bar,” You groaned. “Do you have any pain killers? And some cola,”

“Cola?”

“Yeah. Cola and salted chips, the best hangover cure. Got the chips but no cola and the idea of going outside today makes me want to off myself,”

“Come on in I’ll see what I’ve got. The boys are in there,” She let you into the apartment and disappeared into the kitchen. Javi and Steve sat on the couch watching TV in the living room, the noise made you wince.

“Afternoon Rookie,” Steve greeted you smugly. You grimaced and leant on the arm of the couch next to him.

“What's the score?” You asked, watching the soccer match on screen for a few moments.

“3-3,” Steve answered.

“I’ve got Pepsi, that's okay?” Connie called from the kitchen.

“Yeah! Anything’s fine,” You called back.

“Can’t you go buy yourself cola instead of stealing mine?” Steve complained.

“Your wife said I could have it Murphy, suck it up,” You shove his shoulder weakly, “Besides, I’m pretty sure if I step into direct sunlight I’ll burn to ash. I’m taking your cola and retreating to my bed,”

“What did you two even get up to after I left?”

“Ask him, I cannot remember,” you laughed.

Javi looked up briefly, took a drag of his cigarette and shrugged. He looked as rough as you felt. Neither of you had come out particularly well.

“Here you go sweetheart,” Connie returned to the living room with a bottle of Pepsi in her hand and a small box of painkillers.

“You’re a star Connie what would I do without you,” You stood up from the couch and took the items from your friend. “Later boys,”

“See ya Monday Rookie!” Steve called after you.

Next Chapter -->

oop Rookie and Javi flirting?!? Could never. Also coming next week this ish is getting a whole lot angstier again. I can never keep things nice for long haha

Tagging: @beskar-tano @buckysbeloved @beskarbabs @all-hallows-evie @harrys-stan @themidnightsun-12 @wille-zarr @danniburgh @itsaisopodkillmepls @urbankaite2 @whataloadofmalarkey @ahsofka @yeetus-my-feetus @sara-alonso @lesbianlena @xiao-lusi @all-good-things-have-an-ending @eternallyvenus @ajeff855 @mayangel19 @1950schick

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dainarps · 6 years ago

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This Time They’re Magic

Riley would always remember the day he met Hiro, because it was probably the day he should’ve died. A strong current swept him up from the warm, southern waters, and right into the nets of northern fishermen. He’d always been careful not to get caught by the land dwellers, but his brightly colored tail with its pinks and yellows stood out in the gray waters of the north. His people had always talked poorly of the land dwellers. They would chop your tail off, drink your blood and sell your scales for profit. Riley didn’t even understand what was so valuable about his blood or his scales. Pearls were much prettier.

He’d been lucky that the sailors, two squat looking beings, were more excited to brag than kill him, and brought him to shore to show him off. That…was where Hiro came in. He took the first opportunity to free him from his chains, scold him for being careless…and then bring him back to the water.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for Hiro, Riley had no interest in returning home. He ended up emerging from the water not a day later and, once he’d dried enough for his land legs to form, he wobbled naked through town, asking for the young man with tan skin and funny eyes.

Word got around quickly, and before the police could get to him and lock him up, Hiro was scurrying him away, out of the public eye. Nearly two years later, Riley was happily living in Hiro’s home and learning more and more about what it was like to live on land — like how you couldn’t call people like Hiro “people with funny eyes” just because you’ve never seen eyes like theirs before. In fact, there was a lot on land that Riley had never seen before, and each day was a surprise for him.

There were, of course, all kinds of creatures under the water’s surface, but land creatures were so different! There were fat ones, skinny ones, short ones, tall ones, pale ones like him and ones even darker than Hiro. There were hairy ones, ones with pointy ears, ones with funny noses — in his first six months on land, Hiro had to constantly remind him not to stare. It took eight months before he was even allowed to go outside on his own, and there were days when Riley was sure Hiro regretted that decision.

Today was going to be one of those days. Riley knew it. It was raining, so he knew he shouldn’t leave the house, but…he really wanted some fish tacos from the shop down near the boardwalk. Hiro had some fish in the fridge, but Riley still wasn’t allowed to use the stove. He complained about that often, asking Hiro why he was responsible enough to sleep with him but not responsible enough to use the stove. All it took to shut him up was a kiss on the forehead and a reminder of when Hiro had to magically restore the kitchen after Riley had nearly burned the whole place down.

So, if he couldn’t cook, was hungry, and Hiro was out…that meant he would have to fend for himself. He donned his puddle-jumpers, some waterproof pants meant for people who went clamming, a rain jacket, rubber gloves, and an umbrella.

Needless to say…he looked like a fool when he stepped outside. Hiro always told him he looked cute dressed like this, but Riley always felt…weird about it. He was meant to be in the water! And in these clothes, he was making it all run off his shoulders and onto the ground. Staying dry was necessary, though. More than once he’d fallen into a puddle and come home late after hiding out, scaring Hiro half to death. Either that, or he’d actually get into a tough spot and have to simply hope Hiro would find out and come for him like he did on the day they first met.

He still wasn’t here, though, even after wet hands shoved at his shoulders, demanding he give up his money. Riley didn’t have much in the way of earnings. He and Hiro were working together to find something he could do for a job, but for now he was given access to the coin jar in their kitchen.

“I told you, I don’t have any!” Riley retorted, knowing full well he couldn’t shove them back. He didn’t look strong — mers weren’t built to look strong. They were built to look seductive. Living on land hadn’t done much to build his muscles, either. Swimming was a constant effort, but air? Air offered no friction at all.

“Search his pockets!”

Riley’s eyes widened and he grabbed his umbrella, whipped it shut, and slammed it hard into one of the heads of the men attempting to mug him. He should’ve just let them take his money — but damn it, he really wanted those tacos.

One of the men slammed a wet fist at his face, and when it connected…a number of things happened. Riley’s legs burst from the confines of his pants, and he fell to the ground while his attackers cursed and gaped, then started whooping about their luck. Riley didn’t even try to fight back — he tried to get away. He slid across the muddy alleyway, pulling himself along with the strength of his arms alone. “Stop it! Stop it, it’s getting away! That’s a million dollar payday right there!” He felt arms on his tail, and the three men pulling back on him. If one of them had a weapon, it would be all over. He grabbed his umbrella again and raised it up, whacking it hard against the heads of the men grappling him. “Let go! Let me go!” Even if he got out of this, Hiro would be waiting for him for hours until he was able to dry off enough to walk home — and damn it, his pants were ripped to hell. He didn’t like being the damsel in distress, and more than ever, he wished he’d stayed home.

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shellheadtmarc · 6 years ago

Note

Connections: Macready??

you just don’t know what can of worms you’ve opened, bc the fallout nonsense is like a mushroom: y’all get to see the cute little toadstool that pops up above ground, meanwhile it’s this huge, ever-growing bullshit under the surface we (mercifully) keep in discord until it sometimes spills over.

so this is gonna get long, strap in.

okay. let’s talk about tony’s relationship with robert joseph maccready: former mayor of little lamplight, ex-gunner, father, and tony’s emotional anchor in the commonwealth...and...everywhere else, at this point, as far as fallout 4 goes.

first things first, let’s clear up any lingering confusion here: mac and tony are an item. a thing. a couple. they do gross couple things and are sappy and disgusting and i literally hate them. in fact, in tony’s fo4 companion verse overall, if there’s no shippy intention and mac was never romanced/picked up by a sosu or otherwise, tony directly defaults to his relationship there. which is to say you usually get a tony that’s fairly settled and comfortable in that relationship and is usually out doing his own thing while mac’s doing his own thing, too. at the end of the day, it’s home - wherever they’re calling home, typically fort hagen or sunshine tidings, i’m thinking - to mac that he’s going.

anyway, instead of doing a ~how they met~ retelling, lemme hit the major highlights in their relationship that haven’t necessarily been discussed at length so that they make sense.

+ when tony handed over caps (mac said two fifty, tony said two hundred, mac said deal) it wasn’t to hire a mercenary. he didn’t think he needed one, didn’t want one, and thought mac would slow him down. instead, it was for information about the gunners because he’d gotten jumped by them down the hill from fiddler’s green trailer estates (the overpass with the big windmill) a couple of days previously. that was it. that was all. he’d inquired about the gunners in bunker hill and one of the caravan hands had pointed him to goodneighbor, telling him there was an ex-gunner merc working out of the third rail he could talk to. he could have walked out of the third rail that night (the third rail, those not in the know, is a bar in an old subway station in goodneighbor) and not thought twice about it. unfortunately (or fortunately) for tony, mac saw him win back his caps in a game of pool and decided to pretty much consider himself hired whether tony wanted it or not.

+ joke was on mac, however, tony has a thing about otherwise taking caps from people he considers needing them more. he does a lot of work for free. wasteland billionaire tony is not. more days than not he’s barely got two caps to rub together - he prefers to barter.

+ that was and remains a big bone of contention between them. it gets better, eventually tony turns the haggling of caps over to maccready and lets him do as he sees fit for the most part, but tony is focused on everything but money (i know, funny right) while mac is super honed in because he’s got a kid to look after - you don’t stop needing caps just because they’re not sick anymore. part of this is because zetta gives birth to quinn (to be discussed in another one of these asks) and that throws tony fully into parent territory, and part is because while he doesn’t necessarily need a lot of caps to get by and it takes him a while to realize that just because he can scrape by with next to nothing, kids in the picture change that a whole hell of a lot. the other is because there are just things you can’t make in the wasteland and need to pay for. medical services are high on that scale - i don’t think tony expects stephen to patch him up for free, and croup manor and the fort hagen blood clinic need caps coming through to keep running.

+ there’s a rewrite of maccready’s quest, because tony moves too slowly for the affinity nonsense in that he’s got his own job to do in the commonwealth which isn’t about pinging affinity goalposts. and because mac has a sick kid he’s gotta find a cure for now that can’t depend on tony being that slow. mac decides to take on the waystation of gunners on his own. tony wigs. zetta tracks mac down. tony shows up and it’s just...it’s a mess. i’m pretty sure he probably tried to fire mac right then and there even if he never really hired him in the first place.

+ we see how well that worked.

+ part of the above is because tony had already caught feelings and tried to grind them into the dirt with a boot heel. we also see how well that worked. he hadn’t intended to stay in the commonwealth for any reason.

+ tony blurts out them feels at the worst time imaginable and - for someone with no shame - immediately wishes a hole would open up under him and swallow him whole. unfortunately, he has to deal with that because there were no sinkholes opening that day. things go weird and awkward for a while. assuming - always assume (cough mala the smooch thread cough) - things go plan, things will get straightened out there in the dugout inn (another bar, this one in diamond city (fenway stadium)) when they finally both get their shit together.

+ another point of note/point of contention is the fact that stephen and mac...don’t...really get along. stephen’s weird, they butt heads a lot, it all stresses tony the fuck out.

+ to all of the above, tony was actually really leery about mac in the beginning. and almost all of it has to do with the fact that tony knows what someone seeing an easy payday in him looks like. the fact that mac, for whatever reasons of his own, sticks around when that doesn’t happen is what brings him around.

+ tony and maccready have a lot in common, as far as shared trauma goes. they’ve both lost people they loved in horrible ways: maccready’s wife lucy was killed by feral ghouls, his kid is sick with the new plague (a prewar disease that was also called the blue flu because of the blue boils someone would get with it - and is incredibly fatal) and may not make it. they both have an ingrained fear of losing someone else they love. the difference is, overall, mac has his shit together so much better than tony does. he’s the mature one, if we’re being honest, he’s the one that knows how to handle the day to day domestic in the way that tony actually never really has, even now. so while they share that, the fact is they’re different enough in the right ways to balance each other out pretty well. mac is also leader material, but on a smaller scale. the eventual plan is to get tony to semi-retire (never fully, he’ll never be able to not) and let mac oversee a settlement so tony can tinker.

+ third bone of contention - which isn’t really, it’s just a good example of prewar vs. wastelander mindset - is childrearing. tony believes in letting kids be kids as long as they can be, especially with how shitty the wasteland can be - but the degree to which he feels that way about it isn’t feasible for the moment. so it’s not really argument material more...you know you’re raising children of the corn, right?

+ mac absolutely calls tony a mungo, and tony has no idea what mungo means. he really, honestly thinks mac’s pulling his fucking leg and that it doesn’t mean anything at all.

+ the rock thing: tony mistakes a rock in the water for a mirelurk one time and maccready never lets it go. but: mac keeps handing tony rocks thinking he’s funny. tony has a box full of said rocks. he thinks nobody knows about it. everyone knows about the rocks. maccready has been known to send genuinely pretty rocks by way of apology when they fight and tony’s grumbling to himself in his lab (in the confines of fort hagen proper).

+ they don’t really agree about synths. tony is very, very pro-synths are sentient beings and not property. mac isn’t a fan. it’s one of those subjects tony actively avoids - and after fallout 4′s main quest endgame has very little bearing on their actual daily lives, though he does do some tourist work for the railroad and doesn’t exactly hide it from mac.

+ duncan (mac’s kid) finally does get brought to the commonwealth, for the record.

+ in the beginning tony is very much still...fly by the seat of his pants on a lot of things? he doesn’t think twice about spending longer in the glowing sea than he’s given an estimate for (and with no way to reach him most of the time because of the radiation) or taking off to vegas on a whim (and taking a month to get back because he returns on a caravan full of people important to someone else in this little group to make sure they get there safely), but as time goes on and he settles in, he tends to do this less and less without warning. he’ll probably never stop completely doing it - tony follows his nose and his gut and thinks it’s way better to ask for forgiveness than permission - but they get to be a rarer occurrence.

+ tony has never given mac a solid nickname. you know, like pepper or rhodey or happy. it attaches meaning to it, and for a long while he’s trying so damn hard to not get attached, and now...well, now it’s just a matter of how creative can he get with puns of mac’s name. he’s also never once in his life called maccready anything but by maccready or a pun thereof. no rj, no nothing.

+ they’re both rough and tumble - in the sense that playfighting ends with a higher than average amount of boo-boos. they are, honest to god, children. how many times has one or the other ended up with mud down their shirt who knows. not me. has tony had to have his jaw reset when a tickle fight goes wrong? you betcha. has one or the other punched the opposite in their sleep? oh yeah.

+ overall they’re very domestic? like they have a life and it’s not always fun and exciting adventure entering prewar ruins and fighting super mutants or deathclaws or whatever. a lot of it is day to day bullshit and being adults and chasing after the kids and fixing this generator or that water pump or herding binky the brahmin back into her pen because she got out again and their neighbor from three plots down won’t double check his gate and - point being, the angst level is actually fairly low, there’s not as much upheaval as you might think, though they do have their fights and arguments about actual life things - less so about iron man, amazingly - and most of that’s down to the fact that they, literally, come from such different worlds, between tony being prewar and mac being a dyed in the wool waster. like...it’s not a perfect coffee shop au relationship where everything is sparkles and rainbows, they function in a way real people do in that sometimes they don’t agree. and sometimes they argue. and they’ll make up and move on. it’s not dramatic, but honestly i love them so much, i love that about them, how they function like a real couple.

ask about muse connections : accepting @ofspaceandmyth

#ofspaceandmyth #⚛ (protocol: answered) / i stole the keys from the sky #⚛ (protocol: ooc asks) / hey big spender spend a little time with me #⚛ (compiler: tony x maccready) / cause they say a man is just a sum of his parts well i'm body i'm blood i'm a terrible heart #long post #long post for ts #// i told y'all #// i told y'all this got long #// you were warned #// anyway i love them a lot?#// and it's hard to believe this started out as a fucking joke #// to test a fucking romance overhaul mod #// but here we are #// and it's 100% mala's fault

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welcometothepenumbra · 6 years ago

Text

ORIGINAL: JUNO STEEL AND THE CASE OF THE MURDEROUS MASK (PART TWO)

SOUND: DOOR OPENS, BELL RINGS, RAIN.

MUSIC: STARTS.

CONCIERGE: Ah, good evening, Traveler! Welcome to the Penumbra. May I take your coat?

You’ve picked an excellent place to spend the night, dear Traveler. The Penumbra is the grandest hotel this side of nowhere. Countless rooms and countless halls. Just look ahead of you. See the doors go on and on… even we aren’t sure how many there are, or what lies behind them.

Will you be staying long? Many of our guests do. You’re in good company, Traveler. The Penumbra draws guests from everywhere and everywhen, and all of them have stories to tell. Stories that will excite you, delight you, and maybe even terrify you.

Don’t believe me? Well, see for yourself.

SOUND: KEYS JINGLING.

This guest has been a fixture in The Penumbra for as long as anyone can recall. He’s a detective by the name of Steel, and he’s been called in on a murder millions of years in the making.

SOUND: THREE KNOCKS. BLASTER SHOT.

What luck! It sounds like he’s in. Come, Traveler. Come with me into room J-12.

SOUND: DOOR CREAKING OPEN.

Juno Steel and the Case of the Murderous Mask.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

JUNO (NARRATOR): The smell of french fries and Pad Thai stuck to the air like a hangover. It was the kind of smell so thick you can taste it. Hell of a meal, they serve over at the Empire’s Dragon: cut lips and busted ribs, all before they even bring out the appetizer.

My name’s Juno Steel, and this was the nicest meal I’d had in weeks.

GLASS: Juno! Oh, you delicate little flower, that punch didn’t knock you out, did it?

JUNO (NARRATOR): The only real difference between then and any other meal was that guy. Rex Glass, agent with the Dark Matters Initiative. We were chained back-to-back in an unfinished basement after getting the hors d’oeuvres beaten out of us, so things were lookin’ up. Usually you have to pay top dollar for that kind of treatment.

JUNO: Mind keeping it down back there, Glass? I’ve got a hell of a headache.

GLASS: You’re intolerable.

JUNO: Glad you noticed.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

VOICE 7: Ah, Detective Steel! And his… guest! It’s a pleasure to see you again, detective.

JUNO: Wish I could say the same, but we’ve never met.

VOICE 7: Please, gentlemen… have a seat. (LAUGHS)

JUNO (NARRATOR): Fang was a big man with little eyes and a little brain. He was maybe three hundred pounds soaking wet, and he was always soaking wet. Sweatiest man I’ve ever seen.

VOICE 7: My name is Zhu Fang, and I am the regional manager for this branch of the Triad. May I get you two anything? Water, green tea, milkshake?

GLASS: I, for one, would love some water; if you could see your way to releasing—

VOICE 7 [ZHU FANG]: Nothing? What a shame. We’ve been watching you for a long time now, Juno Steel. You have a tab with the Triad.

JUNO: I took Cecil off the Triad’s hands six years ago, Fang. It’s a long time to hold a grudge.

FANG: Your debt accrues interest every day. Each day Cecil Kanagawa remains living is a day viewers across the galaxy tune in to his shows, his feeds, his streams. And if they’re watching those, Mr. Steel, they aren’t watching ours. The Triad cannot allow that.

GLASS: This is just a thought, but… have you tried improving your own programming? It seems just slightly less drastic than espionage, kidnapping, and murder.

FANG: Improve?! (LAUGHING) Hardly! Cecil’s programs are exquisite. I especially liked his feature the other night on recent improvements in ritual execution. The demonstrations were breathtaking!

No, no, I’m afraid we’ll never beat that. And that leaves only one option: we’ll just have to beat… him. (LAUGHING) But even Cecil is pocket change compared to our specific topic for the evening. Tell me, Juno, do you read the tabloids?

JUNO: Not really.

FANG: Well, I am surprised.

For every hundred entries in any rumors column, one always tells the truth; and there is no business more lucrative than the business of truth, is there? You must know that, as a detective.

JUNO: I don’t know, Fang. I deal in truth every day and I’ve barely got enough to feed my bookie.

FANG: (LAUGHING UNCONTROLLABLY)

GLASS: I think he might have liked that one, Juno.

FANG: No, no, no. The money isn’t in speaking the truth. It’s in owning it. Sitting on it, like a dragon on his gold. You’d do well to remember that.

I heard an interesting rumor just the other day, Mr. Steel. One worth very much indeed.

JUNO: If it’s true.

FANG: Of course.

SOUND: SWITCHBLADE OPENING.

GLASS: Juno!

FANG: You were at the Kanagawas’ this morning. I want to hear about Croesus.

JUNO: Never heard of the guy.

REX: Juno, you idiot!

FANG: You’re a funny man, Juno Steel. But the time for jokes has passed.

JUNO: I agree. So why don’t you put down that toy and bring in a real knife?

SOUND: BLADE SWISH. GRUNT.

FANG: What do you know?

JUNO: (PAINED) I know you don’t know the first damn thing about Croesus, or else you would’ve aimed somewhere a little more vital than my thigh.

FANG: I was being generous. There are plenty of places even less vital than that, and much, much more painful.

GLASS: No! No! Don’t you dare! We’ll tell you anything you want to know!

FANG: Well, it seems we’ve gotten somewhere after all! So… Agent Glass, was it? Will you be more cooperative?

GLASS: Immediately so. Croesus Kanagawa—

JUNO: Shut up!

GLASS: —has recently obtained the Death Mask of Grimpotheuthis, an incredible archaeological find, and he’s installed an entire wing of his mansion just for storing it in.

JUNO: You…!

You shouldn’t’ve told them, Glass. The Kanagawas aren’t gonna like it.

FANG: Grim’s Mask? (LAUGHS) Gentlemen, I’ve no interest in any masks. Whether Croesus collects ancient treasures or model spaceships makes no difference to me.

I’ll be more direct. The Kanagawas’ contracts go up at the end of the month; for weeks the entertainment world has been awash with theories and speculation as to what their next slate of programs will be.

I’ve heard – from a very reputable source – that their already-extensive line will be expanding significantly.

JUNO: Interesting theory. What’s the source on this rumor?

FANG: A house that large generates a lot of trash, Mr. Steel. And I’m not just talking about the Kanagawas.

GLASS: (LAUGHING) Ehem. Well, now. I really liked that one.

JUNO: Someone found it digging through the dumpster. Not exactly rock-solid.

FANG: That may be true, Mr. Steel – but thankfully, I’ve managed to locate two experts to deliver to us firsthand testimony of Croesus’s plan. They – that’s you – will give me the details I desire.

JUNO: And then?

FANG: Then you die.

JUNO: That’s a bad deal.

GLASS: Yes, I would expect a businessman to have a better grasp on the basic tenets of selling.

FANG: I’ll remind you I have an edge in these negotiations.

GLASS: I believe he means his knife, Juno.

JUNO: Sounds about right.

GLASS: He’s being creative with his language, you see.

JUNO: Yep.

GLASS: How very clever.

FANG: What did Kanagawa send you for? What’s he planning?

GLASS: They say the truth will set you free, Juno.

JUNO: Kanagawa isn’t planning anything.

SOUND: PUNCH.

So much for that.

FANG: I’ll kill you both.

JUNO: You do, and there goes your payday. Any middle-manager who’d throw out his profits won’t stay a middle manager long. How do you think Shenlong would feel about that?

FANG: (LAUGHS) You’re behind the times, Mr. Steel. The Triad of a year ago might have left you alive. But tonight, you will die.

So what will it be, gentlemen? A quick death… or a slow one?

JUNO: (SIGHING) Alright, Fang. You win.

FANG: Of course I do. Now—

JUNO: We don’t know what the shows are. But we can get you the person who does.

FANG: You don't mean…

GLASS: Juno, do you think this is wise?

JUNO: Get us a secure line, Fang. We’ll get you a meeting with Croesus.

FANG: The man himself…! I’ll get you that line. But you’d better not try anything cute, or you’ll die on the spot.

GLASS: Nothing cute? We couldn’t possibly promise that—

JUNO: Nothing tricky. Got it.

FANG: Good. Well, gentlemen. Think about what you’ll say. It had better be a very convincing phone call – or you will have a long, long time to wish you had rehearsed.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

GLASS: Well, I have to say, Juno, that the political situation on Mars seems… unnecessarily complicated.

JUNO: Try living in it.

GLASS: Do you have any idea of how to get out of here?

JUNO: Just don’t move.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Listen, when you get tied up as often as I do, you eventually learn to prepare. My prep was cheaper than most: didn’t cost any more than a spool of thread, a needle, and a ten-cred plasma-blade box cutter. I untied the threads in my sleeve and pulled the cutter out.

GLASS: Stay still? That seems entirely contrary—

JUNO: Stay still.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I twisted it in my fingers slowly. A single twitch and that thing’d be down by our feet, and then we’d be six feet under that.

I turned the blade toward the chain, held my breath, and clicked the switch. The first chain snapped.

SOUND: LOW ELECTRIC HUM. CHAINS CLINKING.

Our hands loosened just a bit.

GLASS: Careful where you put that, Juno.

JUNO: Careful as I can be.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I didn’t mention that I couldn’t look at the cutter, the chains, or either of our hands. Maybe I should’ve. He might’ve been more ready.

GLASS: (GASPS) Ah!

SOUND: METALLIC CLATTER.

JUNO (NARRATOR): He pulled away his hand… and my plasma cutter along with it.

JUNO: Damn.

GLASS: You don’t… happen to have another one of those, do you?

JUNO: Of course I do. Just get a cab back to my place and I’ll show you a drawer full of them.

GLASS: Well? Do you have anything else?

JUNO: Can’t… quite… reach…

GLASS: Stop pulling! You’re an unbearable bunkmate, Juno. First the burning, then you hog all the chain!

JUNO: Got any better ideas?

GLASS: Somewhere in here, I’m sure. Check my back pockets. They’re too far from my hands for me to reach, but… you’re back there. Just be careful; who knows what you’ll find?

JUNO (NARRATOR): Glass wasn’t kidding. He kept more per pound in those pockets than most kangaroos. Pens, keys, cards, tablets, something that felt like a compass, a toothbrush, a phone. I found it between half a sandwich and the other half of the sandwich: a heavy-duty plasma cutter. Not exactly the kind they hand out to civilians.

JUNO: Would’ve been nice to know about this before.

GLASS: You said you had it under control.

SOUND: ELECTRIC HUM, SIZZLING.

Were you an only child, Juno? You don’t play well with others.

JUNO: Remember how I said my mother never killed me?

GLASS: Yes.

JUNO: …My brother wasn’t so lucky.

GLASS: I…

I’m… so sorry, Juno.

SOUND: CHAIN FALLS.

JUNO: Fang’s gonna be back any second. Chances are he’s bringing some goons with him. Any ideas?

GLASS: Millions. Cut the other hand free, and I’ll—

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

Nevermind.

FANG: Well, well. So this is how the Kanagawas do business.

JUNO: Any ideas now?

GLASS: Would you like to live?

JUNO: Don’t go out of your way.

FANG: Shun! Wei! Show them what happens when you cross the Triad!

GLASS: I hope you’re good with a knife, Juno.

JUNO: Don’t worry. I’ve had plenty of practice; with… my other hand.

SOUND: BLADE UNSHEATHING.

SHUN & WEI: (GROWLING)

JUNO (NARRATOR): They came at us, roaring like Sasquatch and Sasquatch’s football coach. With my good hand still chained to Glass’s and a hole in my leg deep enough to hold my keys, I wasn’t exactly in fighting form. So I dropped the knife and kicked one of the gorillas off his feet—

SOUND: GRUNT.

JUNO (NARRATOR): —and before the guy hit the ground Rex had carved him a clean set of gills.

SOUND: THUD, CHOKING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I don’t like to look at blood, so I didn’t. Unfortunately, neither did the other ape – and that left the two of us looking at each other.

SHUN OR WEI (DOESN’T REALLY MATTER): For Zhulong!

JUNO (NARRATOR): The Neanderthal threw a mean left hook, which caught me in the chin and didn’t let go. I fell over, and Glass fell, too.

GLASS: Juno, you— oof!

JUNO (NARRATOR): But there was no time: Ursa Major’s left was spent, but his right was aiming for Glass’s head. He’d accessorized that one: a line of nasty-looking steel spikes jutted from his knuckles.

I pushed Glass out of the way and raised my arm. I always was a good catch.

SOUND: THUD. PAINED YELL.

The claws dug into my forearm deep enough that the bastard couldn’t yank ‘em out. Worked just as well for me. If he couldn’t pull ‘em, he couldn’t hit back.

I reared back with my free hand and punched him, and punched him again. After about half a dozen auditions as my speed bag, the big guy finally passed out on the floor – and his claw passed out of my arm.

JUNO: You son of a—!

GLASS: Juno! He’s getting away!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Fang was halfway out the door already, and he was dialing the phone.

JUNO: He left his gun on the desk. Put it in my good hand.

Now don’t move a muscle.

JUNO (NARRATOR): In ten seconds he’d be on the line with Triad HQ; in twenty we’d be up to our asses in gangsters.

I gave him five.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT, THUMP.

FANG: You…

GLASS: How… unpleasant. It appears he’s still alive.

FANG: (PANTING) You… you’ve made… a grave mistake, Juno… Steel! The Triad… doesn’t forget!

JUNO: I make a lot of grave mistakes, Fang. It’s the only way to get anywhere.

Enjoy your meeting with Croesus.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

GLASS: Well. All in all, that was one of the least successful dinner meetings I’ve ever had. Three bodies, one injured detective, a big boo-boo on my hand, and no clues at all.

JUNO: I wouldn’t say none. Take a look at the ID on the number he was calling.

GLASS: He was calling Triad Headquarters, so it should be…

Zhulong? But wasn’t the Triad boss named—

JUNO: Shenlong. They don’t line up. There’s been a change in management in the Triad.

GLASS: I don’t understand how that affects our case, Juno.

JUNO: The Triad wouldn’t write the wrong name. And even if Shenlong bit it after they killed Croesus, it takes time to pick a new boss.

GLASS: Then… whoever wrote that name didn’t know about the change in management.

JUNO: Whoever killed Croesus wasn’t Triad. Just looking for a convenient stooge.

Come on. We’re headed back to Kanagawa’s.

JUNO (NARRATOR): We would’ve gone straight back to Kanagawa’s if Glass hadn’t gotten in a twist over nothing. So we wasted a few hours in the local emergency room.

GLASS: Juno, I’m no doctor, but I think you might actually have more blood outside your body than inside it at the moment.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Rex was a good babysitter. It wasn’t so bad being petted for a change. Most of the human contact I get wears titanium knuckles and comes in a few hundred miles an hour. I was almost sorry when the doctor came in.

The guy bandaged my leg, put a cast on my arm, and told me I’d be bedridden for the next four days. Glass and I waited four minutes and then snuck out the back door.

GLASS: So, back to the Kanagawas’, then?

JUNO: Only place left to go.

SOUND: PAGE TURNING.

GLASS: So… you think you know who killed Croesus?

JUNO: Never said that.

But… I think I know enough to get into some trouble.

GLASS: That does seem to be your method, doesn’t it.

What’s that?

JUNO: Tabloid. I was reading it in the waiting room.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Had to hand it to Fang: he wasn’t wrong about the rumors page. Rumors about Kanagawa’s contracts, a colony of surviving Martians, a treasure thief in Hyperion City, a woman who gave birth to android twins, back-door deals and front-door lies. Figuring out what was true and what wasn’t was worth a hell of a lot of money, if you knew who to tell.

JUNO: Hey, Glass. You work this sector, right?

GLASS: Mostly. Why?

JUNO: Lot of interesting stuff in here. Lot of money to be made.

Thought you might want to look into it together.

GLASS: Why, Juno! Is that an invitation?

JUNO: Don’t read too much into it.

GLASS: I hate to break your heart, detective, but we Dark Matters agents don’t stay in any one place too long – as soon as we’ve settled this matter with Grim’s Mask I’ll be riding the cosmic breeze to the next planet.

JUNO: I’m sorry to hear that.

GLASS: As am I. But that’s the future, Juno: here we are in a beautiful present, and I’m more than willing to look into whatever you’d like. Now, where would you like to talk about these rumors? Your place or mine?

JUNO: Just land the damn car, already.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS, FUNHOUSE MUSIC STARTS. FOOTSTEPS.

CECIL: Juno! You’re… oh, my. What happened to you?

JUNO: Dog bit me.

CECIL: That’s a hell of a cast for—

JUNO: It was a big dog.

GLASS: With all due respect, Cecil, I think Juno would either like to get right to business or right to a liquor cabinet.

JUNO: Both of which, I’m guessing, we could find in your dad’s office.

CECIL: (LAUGH-COUGHING) Father’s office? Well, Juno, there are just so many things in there that it wouldn’t be wise to show to the public…

JUNO: Public? I though we were brothers, Cecil. I thought that’s why you wanted me here in the first place.

CECIL: Ah, ha ha, well… I wouldn’t know what I could… (NERVOUS CHUCKLING) I’ll admit it: you caught me on my words, Junebug. Of course we trust you. But, see, it– it’s kind of crazy around here, and—

JUNO: People seem pretty calm, actually.

GLASS: That man’s been picking his nose for the last five minutes.

CECIL: (FORCED LAUGHING) Well! We’re not all busy, of course. But I am. Very, very busy. So…

VOICE 8: Now, Cecil! Is that any way to treat family?

JUNO (NARRATOR): And in she came through the door: Min Kanagawa, the shadow behind the Kanagawa family. The other three had TV shows, video streams, perfume lines. Cecil had all three. But the public almost never saw Min – even though there wasn’t a decision the family made that she did not touch.

VOICE 8 [MIN]: Juno, darling! It’s been so long!

JUNO: Min.

CECIL: Mi– M-mother! But– but you told me th—

MIN: Oh, hush, Cecil. I heard the way you talked to Mr. Steel. I could hear it from down the hall!

CECIL: But– but I—!

MIN: No buts! It’s inexcusable! And… and what’s more inexcusable is your tardiness. Your talk show is set to air in ten minutes, and where are you?

CECIL: But I– but—!

MIN: Berating the guests! Now out, you, out! Mr. Steel and his friend had a perfectly simple request, and you’ve turned it into an inquisition!

CECIL: Min!

MIN: Out!

CECIL: So sorry, friends. I’ll be on my way.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS. DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

MIN: (SIGHS) Children! I’m so sorry for Cecil’s behavior, Juno. We’ve been turned upside-down since last evening. It’s Croesus’s office you want, isn’t it?

JUNO: If you don’t mind.

MIN: Not at all. Follow me, gentlemen.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

GLASS: (QUIETLY) Well, that was easy.

JUNO: (QUIETLY) Don’t count on it.

MIN: I’m sure Cecil told you what the situation has been like on our end – just horrible. At the pace we live, we haven’t even had a moment to mourn poor Croesus yet – there are some moments when I call him to ask a question, only to remember… (SNIFFS) horrible, horrible.

GLASS: We’re so very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Kanagawa.

MIN: I assume Cecil told you not to say a word about this.

JUNO: Had us sign about a dozen forms to that effect, too.

MIN: Good. Oh, I know it seems heartless. This is business, I think to myself. Where has the soul gone from business? But we’ve shareholders to consider, viewers to appease. This just isn’t the end to Croesus Kanagawa that will satisfy them. We’ll have to keep it quiet until such an end is written.

VOICE 9: Um, excuse me, Mrs. Kanagawa? The writing team put together these posts for the boss’s feed, but they need signatures.

MIN: Of course they do. I’ll be just a moment, gentlemen.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

GLASS: She seems nice.

JUNO: Seems that way.

GLASS: Pretty, too.

JUNO: Mm-hm.

GLASS: I don’t like the way you’re looking at that woman, Juno.

JUNO: Woman like Min Kanagawa, taking your eye off her is a good way to end up dead.

GLASS: Do you think she killed him?

JUNO: No. She’s Croesus’s second wife, and there’s good money on the fact that she opened that position herself.

GLASS: You don’t mean…

JUNO: That job was so clean it took five experts just to prove that a woman was dead. Killing Kanagawa with the mask… too messy. Not her style.

MIN: Oh, boys! What are you two whispering about back there?

JUNO: Ancient history.

MIN: How delightful. So sorry to interrupt you with business matters, but…

SOUND: PEN SCRIBBLING.

…there. The world keeps turning, even when the master is away.

JUNO: That was a hell of a signature, Min. Didn’t see your name anywhere in it.

MIN: I’m sure you two can keep that little legal indiscretion to yourselves, can’t you? So many papers flow by… Croesus just didn’t have time to look at them all. You know how it is.

JUNO: I’ll take your word for it.

MIN: Good. Now, Croesus’s office is just around the corner.

SOUND: DISTANT YELL.

GLASS: What in the hell was that?

MIN: I don’t know. You don’t think… anyone is hurt, do you?

SOUND: ANOTHER YELL.

JUNO: It’s coming from the office!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): We ran down the hall together, and the screaming just got louder.

I already knew who it was, and I knew Min did, too. There wasn’t a single person in Hyperion City who didn’t recognize that roar – it had played on the Kanagawa stream between the hours of 8 and 9 every Thursday since she was fifteen years old.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

JUNO: Cassandra!

CASSANDRA: Juno! (PANTING) You took it, didn’t you? You always do this!

JUNO: Don’t remember. Help me out. What did I take?

CASSANDRA: Yesterday! Give it back, Juno, or I swear I’m gonna ki—

JUNO: You don’t mean the mask, do you?

CASSANDRA: The mask? I don’t care about the mask!

GLASS: Nobody seems to.

CASSANDRA: I knew it! I knew I couldn’t trust you!

GLASS: I’m Special Agent Rex Glass, with the Dark Matters Initiative.

CASSANDRA: Get out!

JUNO: Settle down. Agent Glass is here to help me figure this whole thing out.

GLASS: I’ve been sent to investigate this curse, and any claims toward its existence I am charged to examine. Ms. Kanagawa, my only interest is the mask. Truly.

MIN: Talk to them, Cassandra. It will be alright.

CASSANDRA: You’re going to tell me that? Seriously?

You wanna know what I’m looking for, Juno? My papers. I’m sick of waiting for you, and I’m getting out of here.

GLASS: As is your right as a Martian citizen, Ms. Kanagawa. Once the matter of your father’s death is settled, you’ll be free to go.

CASSANDRA: (LAUGHS) I’m leaving now.

GLASS: Let the detective and me clear you, then, and you may go. Isn’t that right, detective?

JUNO: Yeah, Cass. Just answer a few questions. If it all lines up, you can go.

CASSANDRA: You’ll show me where to go? She can’t stop me, right?

JUNO: She doesn’t have the right.

MIN: Hmm.

GLASS: This shouldn’t take five minutes of your time, Ms. Kanagawa.

CASSANDRA: You’re on the clock.

GLASS: After you, Juno.

JUNO: (SIGHS) Alright. What’re you looking for?

CASSANDRA: I already told you. My papers.

JUNO: I don’t think so. Earlier today, Cassie, you told me Croesus was going to let you go. That he wasn’t gonna renew your contract. That right?

CASSANDRA: …Sure.

GLASS: We heard a rumor to a slightly different effect. Is it at all possible that you were mistaken?

CASSANDRA: I heard him just fine.

GLASS: Well, another perspective, then. Is it possible that he… deceived you?

Don’t tell me your father never lied to anyone, Cassandra. Nobody ever made it in show business telling only little white lies.

CASSANDRA: Just a few questions, huh? Some questions, when you already know the answers. That contract was a secret, and you took it just to mess with my head, didn’t you!

GLASS: Your father told a lot of lies, I gather. A man like that is bound to meet a violent end eventually.

CASSANDRA: Better late than never.

JUNO: What’d he do? What was so bad that he had to die?

GLASS: Just what was it about that contract that made you kill Croesus Kanagawa?

CASSANDRA: It was right here! Another ten seasons for all of us, twice as many shows… on camera every second of the day, Juno!

JUNO: I thought you said he was going to let your contract lapse?

CASSANDRA: That’s what he promised! That’s what was supposed to happen. And then he– then he stole that stupid mask, and the ratings went up. Everyone’s did, and then… I was so worried… there was so much money. He was gonna sign me away again. I just– I couldn’t just let him get away with it!

GLASS: Is this a confession?

CASSANDRA: I saw that contract in here about a week ago, when I was looking for him. I brought it into my room to read the thing over, but… I had to put it down for a while. I couldn’t believe it. He promised me, he promised me so many times, and then, when I was finally going to tell him off, the contract was gone. I couldn’t find the damn thing anywhere.

JUNO: It was…

Hang on.

CASSANDRA: So. He lied to me. And when he found out I knew about it, he snuck into my room and took his contract back. So two nights ago, I finally decided… decided that I’d talk to him about it. One-on-one. Without anybody watching.

GLASS: Without witnesses, you mean.

JUNO: Just a second, Glass—

CASSANDRA: I didn’t have anything planned! I was just gonna talk to him.

I found him in that room – the one with the mask. He was pissed off the second he saw me, screaming about… I asked him about the contract. He told me he didn’t know what I was talking about, and he just kept screaming about his stupid mask and that stupid glass case he’d spent all that money on. He wouldn’t admit it! He lied to me about my freedom, and he lied to me about the contract, and I couldn’t take it anymore! I just got so mad, I…

I pushed him. I didn’t think I pushed him hard enough to break the glass, but… it was enough, I guess. He fell into the case. The mask covered his face, and then… it ripped him apart.

JUNO (NARRATOR): She wouldn’t look at me when she said it. For a minute I thought it was because she was ashamed. Should’ve known better. I followed her eyes to the door, and there stood Min – a cameraman pointing his all-seeing eye over her shoulder. Delivering lines to the camera, her tears sent out in high definition over every stream across Mars.

I wasn’t mad at her. You can’t blame a puppet for moving when the strings get pulled.

CASSANDRA: Juno… what did I do?

JUNO: It’s showbiz, Cass. It’s in your blood.

MIN: Gentlemen, I think it’s time to take my daughter away now.

SOUND: HEAVY FOOTSTEPS. DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

GLASS: Well. I suppose… come to think of it, that doesn’t answer any of my questions about Grim’s Curse at all.

JUNO: No curse here, Glass. Just business.

GLASS: A curse of its own stripe entirely. …Juno?

JUNO: Y’know, there are just two things bugging me about this case, and the curse ain’t one of ‘em. First one’s about that contract. Not like an important doc like that to just go missing. Is it, Min?

MIN: Surely a sign of a fractured mind. Our psychiatric evaluators will get right on it.

JUNO: Your shrinks. Huh. That must be where she’s headed, then.

GLASS: I’m not sure I follow—

JUNO: Hoosegow. Local lock-up owned and operated by Croesus— sorry, by Min Kanagawa.

Y’know what’s funny about Hoosegow, Glass? Cameras everywhere. They cover every inch of the damn place. It’s for security, they say. But… hey, who owns that footage, Min?

MIN: Cecil, technically. It’s for his shows.

JUNO: Cecil owns the footage. So if someone owns Cecil…

It is funny about the contract. Funny how a paper with Croesus’s signature on it just goes missing. And it must be hard for you, Min, but if you take the long view of it, you’re doin’ alright, aren’t you? Croesus’s show was on the decline anyway—

GLASS: Juno!

JUNO: —Cassandra was going to leave; once people forgot about the mask, you were gonna have two duds on your hands again. But now… now you’ve got a special on the starlet who killed her father, you’ve got a show about her rotting away in jail, and you still have her brother to milk for all he’s got.

Sound about right, Min? Theoretically, I mean.

MIN: Theoretically, of course. If only you had the paper to prove it.

JUNO: It’s a real shame I don’t. I don’t mean much, Min, but I do mean that.

Come on, Rex.

MIN: Oh, Juno! Speaking as one who cares about you, dear, you might want to stay clear of dark alleys for a while. The Kanagawa family doesn’t take well to brothers who harm their own.

JUNO: Never put much stock in family, Min. Thanks for reminding me why.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

GLASS: Well. All’s well that ends well, eh, Juno?

Admittedly we’ll need to broaden our definition of ‘well,’ but…

SOUND: LIQUID POURING.

Juno, you aren’t going to be silent all evening, are you? Your overbearing misanthropy is part of your charm, but this is a bit much.

JUNO: Not in the mood to celebrate, Glass.

GLASS: Oh, come now, Juno, I’ve only one evening left on Mars. You aren’t going to spend it sobbing into your drink, are you?

JUNO: Never been much of a sobber. I’m more of a “catch your reflection at the bottom of a glass and feel sick” kind of guy.

GLASS: Juno…

You’ve done nothing wrong, you know. She did still kill her father.

JUNO: That’s true.

GLASS: It’s over. We all survived, if you don’t count my poor hand. My wound still throbs when it rains, you brute.

Only… I was wondering. In Kanagawa’s office, you said there were two things bothering you, but you only mentioned one. What was the other?

SOUND: LIQUID POURING.

JUNO: Refill?

GLASS: (LAUGHING) So that’s how it is, is it?

You know… you’re very handsome when you’re like this.

JUNO: Getting drunker by the second?

GLASS: Morally outraged.

Look at him… standing up against the big, mean world… It’s so… futile, and foolish, and…

Sexy.

JUNO: You…

You don’t have to go, Rex.

GLASS: (GIGGLING) See? This is exactly what I mean.

JUNO: Listen. You don’t have to do this. You know that, right?

GLASS: Oh, but of course I do. I’m needed by something larger than we are. I’ve given my life to it.

But life can wait one night, Juno. Come here.

SOUND: KISSING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Lips like silk. Strong hands, pulling on my coat. It was the kind of kiss that feels like it’s going to last the rest of your life… until it’s over, and then you know you got as much as you deserved.

I wanted to get to know this man. And that’s why I had to say it – even if it was the last thing I wanted to say.

JUNO: Rex…

GLASS: Juno.

JUNO: Has anyone ever told you…

SOUND: HANDCUFFS CLICKING.

…that you’re under arrest?

GLASS: Oh, Juno! Usually not until the second date, but—

JUNO: I mean it, Glass. Or… whoever the hell you are.

GLASS: I… I take it from your tone that this is not another layer to the roleplay. (SIGHING) Fine, I’ll play along. Under arrest for what?

JUNO: The attempted theft of the Mask of Grimpotheuthis.

GLASS: I haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about.

JUNO: And for stealing the keys to my safe right out of my pocket.

SOUND: KEYS JINGLING.

GLASS: Ha ha… yes, well, that does sound more familiar.

JUNO: You want to know what the second thing was? It was the mask’s case. A perfectly circular cut – the kind of cut that compass in your pocket might be able to make.

GLASS: Very perceptive! I knew I’d regret letting you root around in there. But I couldn’t resist.

JUNO: I had it figured out before then. You called the case “smashed.” It wasn’t smashed – it was broken into cleanly. A burglary, not a struggle. Why the hell would Croesus Kanagawa’s killer take the mask out so quietly, and then leave it behind like that?

You must have been interrupted. You cut that circle in the glass, but didn’t have time to pull it out – and then Croesus came along.

GLASS: I had to make good my escape, and quickly – you have no idea about the security in that mansion, Juno. There ought to be a law!

JUNO: Who are you really?

GLASS: Oh, what’s in a name, Juno? We’re all but shapes, moving through this void of ours; it so great, and we so small.

JUNO: I need to know.

GLASS: You may want to know, love, but you don’t need to. A signifier to these senses you feel – it might make things simpler. But life is hardly simple, Juno, and neither am I.

I don’t tell anyone my name. It would take someone very special for me to tell it now.

JUNO: I knew it was you. But I thought you’d…

So is Wire in on it too, then? You two working together?

GLASS: Who? Oh, you mean Dark Matters? No, no, Juno. They told you the truth. The truth as they knew it, at any rate. I do answer to the name Rex Glass – for the moment.

JUNO: You got into Dark Matters on your own?

GLASS: (LAUGHING) Not alone. It pays to have powerful friends, Juno, when one makes powerful enemies. You’ve demonstrated as much with the Kanagawas.

Allow me to shift the focus of our conversation, will you?

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

JUNO: You’ve got about two minutes before the cops get here. You can say whatever you want until then.

GLASS: Hyperion City isn’t the safest place for you at the moment, is it? In one day you’ve made enemies with two of the largest crime families in town – hardly wise. It sounds to me like you need to… disappear.

And I happen to be an expert in disappearance.

JUNO: Taking off takes a lot of things I don’t have. Money. Self-respect.

GLASS: Oh, but you do have those things, Juno! You can leave Hyperion City behind; I’ll leave my powerful friends behind. We’ll sell the mask and live a life of thrills and decadence across the galaxy, always running, never looking back. We could have quite a time together, Juno. Who knows what kind of trouble we could cause?

SOUND: KNOCKING. DOOR OPENS.

JUNO: Officers.

VOICE 10: This our guy?

GLASS: I could be, officer. Just give me a chance.

JUNO: Be careful with him. He’s slippery.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

GLASS: It could be quite an adventure, Juno.

JUNO: I’m sure it will be. I wish I could come along.

I’ll be down at the station in a minute.

GLASS: You’re so cute like this, Juno. Until we meet again.

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES.

JUNO (NARRATOR): He was gone. His smell still lingered in the air – that cologne I never could place. A scent from some other planet, like nothing I’d ever smelled before. It’d take weeks to get that stink out.

I needed to clear my head a minute before I drove over. I poured myself another drink…

SOUND: LIQUID POURING.

…and that’s when I saw it. A little slip of paper, sticking up between the cushions. He must’ve written it behind his back. I’d believe he could do anything.

GLASS (NARRATOR): Juno,

If you wish for one last glimpse of me, watch the public access feed for Route 742. Somewhere around Mercury Drive, I suspect… but no farther than Vulcanis Way. Get a good look, detective: it may be your last.

I do hope it isn’t, though. I meant every word I said, Juno. It will be quite an adventure. I’ll be waiting for you to join me.

Signed, Your Better Half, Peter Nureyev

JUNO: Damn!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

JUNO: Rita!

RITA (FROM COMMS): (YAWNING, GROGGY) M-Mista Steel…? Whatta you doin’, callin’ me—

JUNO: Rita, I need you to get me a call with Sasha Wire. Now.

RITA (FROM COMMS): Who…?

JUNO: Agent W. The Dark Matters woman who called this morning.

RITA (FROM COMMS): She said it was con-fi-dent—

JUNO: Just call her, damn it!

RITA (FROM COMMS): Alright! Testy, testy…

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I couldn’t wait. I had to know.

SOUND: STATIC BLIP. TV CHANNELS CHANGING.

JUNO: Come on, come on, god damn it, Nureyev, where are you?

SOUND: DISTANT SIREN.

JUNO: Damn it!

MUSIC: STARTS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was exactly where he said it would be. Route 742. Mercury Drive. The cop car was parked on the sidewalk. Sitting on the ground beside it, in nothing but their skin and their skivvies, were the two cops who’d picked him up earlier. They were hog-tied, their mouths gagged. And Nureyev was nowhere in sight.

I checked my pocket. The key to my safe was gone.

JUNO: No!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

WIRE (FROM COMMS): Juno! This line is confidential! If you needed me so badly, you should have had Agent Glass call!

Where is he?

JUNO: Wish I knew, Sasha. Come on down sometime and I’ll tell you the whole story.

WIRE (FROM COMMS): You’ll tell me the story now, Juno. Juno!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

JUNO (NARRATOR): That’s how things go, in Hyperion City. One day, she’s your daughter; next day, she’s your killer. One minute, he’s your partner; next minute… he’s gone.

I drank until I couldn’t think anymore and then I passed out on the couch. Sasha might have called a few times, but I didn’t answer. Couldn’t trust her. I couldn’t trust anyone just then.

But when you get hurt by the big mean world, you lick your wounds, and you start over. The world gets a little bigger, a little meaner. Maybe you do, too.

And in the meantime, sleep; sleep, and the smell of Peter Nureyev in the air. It would take weeks for that smell to fade. I’ve missed it ever since.

MUSIC: ENDS.

***

SOUND: RAIN & MUSIC.

CONCIERGE: The tale you’ve just heard, Part Two of Juno Steel and the Case of the Murderous Mask, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Noah Simes as Peter Nureyev, Dan Squizzero as Zhu Fang, Sophie Kaner as Agent Sasha Wire, Cecil Kanagawa, and Cassandra Kanagawa, Kate Jones as Rita and Min Kanagawa, and Kevin Vibert and Ryan Meyer as the ensemble.

On staff at The Penumbra: Ryan Meyer is our recording engineer. Kevin Vibert is our lead writer and sound effects designer. Sophie Kaner is our director, lead editor, and sound designer. Juno’s theme was written by Ryan Vibert.

The Penumbra was created by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert.

I’m so sorry you’ve been called away, dear Traveler. We eagerly await your return.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

#juno steel

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dakkasdankrpmemes · 7 years ago

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Payday 2 - Pager Response Starters

Send one to my muse to see how they respond:

“Er...er...everything's fine over here."

"Yeah, I wouldn't place a lot of confidence in what you just heard. Over and out."

"Oh, er, I might have accidentally fallen down."

"Sorry, we just had a small weapons malfunction over here. Er, over. Sir."

"I'd double check your end. I have little faith in our...technical...support."

"It's good down here. But I think the thermostat's a bit...high."

"Everything is A-Okay. Just ticking boxes, doing damage as usual."

"I...yeah...maybe I should pay more attention to the wall and my face, uh, I'm fine now."

"Hmm? Yeah, just trying to amuse myself down here ... it's not working."

"All good here, nothing the least bit strange."

"No problems, why would there be problems? Everything's fine."

"Hey buddy, everything is in order over here."

"Uhh ... I thought I saw a ghost, but I'm getting tired, don't listen to me."

"Umm ... I think I got the radio wet when I was washing my hands."

''Heh, it's hard to say... Uhm.. Uuh.. I'm- I'm not sure.. Uh.. Everything is in order over here though, over.''

''Uh... All good, sometimes I just see things. No- Not to alarm you!''

“Oh, they're having a parade outside. Ain't that funny?“

“Oh, control, my bad, that was a false alert. I accidentally pressed the button while practicing some karate, ha!”

“You're responding to an alert? Must be a mistake, there's nothing going on here.”

“I see... so red is for 'alert' and black is for 'all clear'! Ha, now I finally know!”

"I had the weirdest dream last night, I dreamt that my head was replaced by an actual hamburger and people started calling me hamburger head"

"Don't you just love watchin' panicked people runnin' for their lives? No? Heh, I'm just jokin' mate! Listen up, you think I'm off my rocker?"

"Sorry, control, I must have pressed wrong button."

"Oh, what? No, no...I mean, yes... no, everything is fine here, okay?"

"You know, I've been thinking about writing a novel about a woman who kills dragons to eat em, it'll be called, "Moira the Dragon Eater", what do ya think? Sound good?"

"Completed gamma 6 recon. All clear, nothing to report. Very clear about that."

"All fine here control, zero things to worry about ... in fact, we need less guards."

"And that is correct procedure for radio. Class dismissed. Sorry control, stand down."

"Sorry, just adjusting my uniform, accidentally hit the alert button, no problems here though."

"We're fine control, I uhhhmm just wanted to hear your voice..."

"We're hungry here, but fine. Send sandwiches."

"Did you ever find out what the fox said?"

"I just wanted to ask if I can get a transfer to somewhere exciting. No? Oh well..."

"Say, uhh...I was just wondering. Where'd you buy that cologne?"

"All good over here. How's it looking for you guys?"

"So this VR gaming thing. What's your thoughts on it? The future or what?"

"Sorry, control. Just remembering the time I killed a man with my bare hands."

"Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof, woof, woof. Hehehe... Remember that song?"

"I thought I heard something too ... it wasn't you?"

"I thought I saw a robber, but it was a jogger ... they rhyme, so I was confused."

"I thought I saw a burglar, but it was just a burger. The spelling confused me."

"Stand down, control. Thought we had a 10-6 on our 11-12, but it was just a 4-1 on mine. 602."

#roleplay resources #roleplay starter #roleplay ask meme #rp ask box meme #rp ask meme #rp resources #ask meme

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slamsams-blog · 5 years ago

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For Your Eyes Only - #24WeeksofBond

This week we travel back in time to 1981 with “For Your Eyes Only” - also could be known as “When Bond Came Back to Earth”. Roger Moore’s films had been getting a little cartoony and comical, and then they put Bond in space with “Moonraker”, essentially jumping the shark. They had taken Bond as far as they could take him, and now they needed to bring the series back down to earth and give it a fresh coat of paint. “For Your Eyes Only” is a story of two governments vying for the same prize while also being a tale of revenge. This movie has its moments, and plenty of layers - but in my view, just misses the mark on excitement.

Roger Moore is back in the saddle of Bond, only because they couldn’t find a replacement. Moore was having his reservations about playing the role due to his age, and after his original contract expired after “The Spy Who Loved Me”, Moore signed a film by film deal, where there were essentially no strings attached. If they felt that they needed Moore, and if Moore wanted another payday, then we got Moore Bond. (see what I did there?). You definitely start seeing Moore’s age more noticeably starting with this movie - but he’s still not “A View To A Kill” old yet so we are still in the clear.

What I do like is how they used his age here. After meeting a young olympic skater in training, she starts smitten with Bond right away, and Moore plays the uncomfortable and awkwardness perfectly. Moore was an excellent eye actor. His ability to clue you in on Bond’s inner thoughts by acting with his eyes is something I’ve always appreciated with Roger’s movies. As they say in comedy, less is Moore...(ok, I’ll stop). But one of my favorite moments in this film is when the skater Bibi (Lynn-Holly Johnson) is in Moore’s bed inviting him for some good times, Bond says in such a Roger Moore way - “Yes well, you get your clothes on...and I’ll buy you an ice cream.” That line makes me chuckle literally every time.

Let’s talk about this pre-title sequence shall we? In one of the more memorable scenes in this rather un-memorable movie is the opening. Lots to unpack here. We open up with Bond at Teresa Bond’s grave, his one and only true love. This is again, one of the rare through lines throughout this franchise. We know how Bond’s parents died when he was a kid, we know SPECTRE, and we know Bond’s wife was killed. So here we are with Bond Moore-ning his late wife...(that was the last one). He is told that MI6 is coming to get him via helicopter. Bond gets in only for the helicopter to be hijacked by a familiar bald head. Blofeld makes a random appearance here after not being seen or heard from since “Diamonds are Forever”. I always found this odd. But anyway, Blofeld takes over the helicopter by remote control to have some fun at Bond’s expense. But Bond manages to get to the driver’s seat after hanging on to the side of the chopper as Blofeld is trying to knock him off. It’s a wonderfully intense scene.

Bond gets to the driver seat, and this is where Blofeld always manages to muck it up. This is why Blofeld never took care of Bond, because he lets him GET TO THE DAMN DRIVER’S SEAT! Bond takes control and scoops up Blofeld (who is in a wheel chair with a neck brace for some unknown reason) and dumps him down a huge chimney. Now story has it, they were not legally able to use Blofeld and SPECTRE anymore because Kevin Mclory (the Thunderball producer who you can read about in my Thunderball blog) owned the rights to them because of his legal victory in obtaining the rights of the Thunderball story. How annoying is that? So they never say his name, and this scene was meant to be a statement to Mr. Mclory that they didn’t need those characters anymore and that they were literally dumping them.

I thought maybe this time around, I would discover a connection between that scene and the rest of the film...but no. That opening is humorous and action packed, but it’s all for nought because it has nothing to do with anything. The real story begins with a naval fleet that has an “ATAC” being attacked by an unknown source. This ATAC is an important control unit that is able to fire ballistic missiles where ever you want. If fallen into the wrong hands, it could be a disaster. Of course Russia is involved, and they are trying to get it along with England.

But another layer to the story is that a man in Greece, who was contacted by MI6 to get it, is gunned down with his wife in front of their daughter who ends up being Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet). They really had an opportunity here with Melina. She had a dark, and dangerous look and strapped her with a crossbow after she witnessed her parents die. These were the ingredients for a DC Comics type superhero. I think they wanted to make her full Green Arrow, but were maybe afraid to go too far away from the damsel in distress type that Bond girls had a reputation for. She has these moments where she attacks from the shadows, but still cries for James when she’s in trouble. The balance is just off, and it makes the character weaker than she should be. Not Carole’s fault, just poor writing.

Bond goes to Greece where he meets Kristatos (Julian Glover) who tells him the man who payed off the guy who killed Melina’s father was is working for a man named Columbo (Topol). So Bond starts to dig more, but keeps getting hunted down by men trying to stop him from the truth. Almost everyone Bond comes into contact with in this film ends up dead. Something is going on and Bond is forced to have eyes in the back of his head. We get some fun scenes along the way here with a car chase where Bond is driving a ragged Beetle, and a fun ski chase with awesome “Shaft�� style music.

Bond kills Locgue (the man who payed the parent assasin) and is now on the hunt for Columbo. This movie is like a video game where there are all these different levels, and every level has a boss. Bond is now ready for the “big boss”; the Bowser or Gannon, if you will.

But Columbo finds him and convinces Bond that Kristatos is the real Bowser. Topol is great in this movie, he was primarily known for his broadway career, but he is able to bring all that charm to the screen and does a wonderful job of making you love him. Bond and Columbo are now working together and they go to infiltrate Kristato’s lair. This scene also gives me the willy’s. Bond has to be an epic mountain climber, but gets caught and kicked off. We see Bond free falling like Tom Petty until his rope catches him. That’s the stuff of nightmares there.

Anyway, they storm the castle, kill Kristatos, and destroy the ATAC so nobody has it. Leaving no country to worry about them using it against any other country. Yay. Feels like a pretty hollow accomplishment at the end. But at least we get a funny parody of Margaret Thatcher speaking to a parrot who she thinks is Bond. Not sure how accurate the parody was back then, but I’m sure it got roars of laughter?

To me, while we have a decent amount of action like the yacht scene where Kristatos is pulling Bond and Melina through the shark filled waters - the film falls short of any color what so ever. This movie is littered with forgettable characters and villains that don’t leave you as the viewer feeling invested. And while the plot may be deep and layered, the execution of it is just sleepy and un inspired. This sort of begins the twilight of the Moore Bond films, and little did the producers know that they would get two more films out of him.

Well that’s it for me this week. What did you all think? Let me hear you!

Reviews from Friends:

Jake Benrud

The Blofeld scene is comical. He could have killed Bond so much easier than that. His downfall is he lets him get out of his sight and assume it all goes according to plan. I guess that's the story with any Bond Villain. Similar to Dr. Evil's, "I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?" This one I don't understand why the Olympic skater was infatuated with Bond. He's so old in this one. Also, that's possibly the worst car anti-theft system ever.

24 Weeks of Bond will return next Monday with -

The Man With the Golden Gun

#James Bond #Roger Moore #for your eyes only #Topol #24WeeksofBond

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wildstormoralhistory · 7 years ago

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Director’s Cut Material #5- Playtime with J. Scott Campbell

J. Scott Campbell is known the world over for his stylistic take on comics' most famous characters but before his time as a cover artist, he breathed life into the hit books, Gen 13 and Danger Girl. Both titles were fortunate to expand out from comics into licensing opportunities that Campbell was a part of.

J. Scott Campbell (Artist): With Gen 13, I didn’t have as much to do with it as much as Jim would say, “We’re going to do an action figure of Fairchild.” “Oh, we are?” “Could you do some turnarounds for it?” and “We’re going to do some 12" fingers for KB Toys, and I’m like, “No way! Really?” They would just kind of happen in a weird way. I was already trying to get the book done and I was already missing a bunch of-- I told you that was around the time when I was going to take my eye off the ball and losing that motivation towards the end of Gen 13 and, strangely enough, that was when a lot of the products were starting to happen. There was also a video game in development for a long time that never came out. I remember doing load screens for something. Very quickly into Danger Girl, I would say within the first issue or two, Jim Lee approached me and said, “Todd McFarlane wants you to call him,” and I just felt like, “He does?” and at that point I never met Todd; I knew he was always around, but you wouldn’t see him, he was not in California. He was based out of Arizona. But we all knew he had a toy company and a lot of us had already been buying some of his action figures. So, sure enough, I had a conference call with him. He had a very energetic way of talking. He never picked up the phone; it was always on speaker phone. You got the sense that he was doing 20 other things, but he pitched me the idea that he was doing these different comic book properties. He was going to do a Sin City Marv, he was going to do a Dawn for Michael Linsner and he said he was interested in a few other comic book properties, and mine was one of them, and I did want to do some toys with him. And I was like, “Oh my god, yes.” I would have done it for nothing. It actually turned out to be a pretty nice financial windfall actually. I literally said whatever he wanted to pay me; I was cool with. The only thing I said was, at that point some of those Gen 13 toys that came out, I wasn’t super thrilled with how they looked, so I was like, “I really want to be involved in these toys,” and he said, “That’s cool, you can have a direct contact with the designers.” There was actually two brothers who worked in the design area of it and we would have conference calls once a week, and at that time we had email, but for some reason, there was a lot of packages being sent back and forth with printouts, and I remember drawing over the printouts to say like, “No, no, the nose has to be a little bit more like this,” and I was very hands-on with those action figures and, to this day, they’re probably some of my favorite things I’ve ever done. Those action figures, when they came out it was a like a dream come true. I’ve actually been fortunate enough to have done a lot of 3D stuff; I’ve done statues for Spider-man, I’ve done other statues of things that I’ve worked on, but those were probably my absolute favorite things I ever did, as far as 3D representations of what I drew. They just really, really came out well. And a funny story to that too is: Joe Madureira was approached as well, and Todd wanted to do Battle Chasers toys, and I remember talking to Joe, and Joe was really like, “I don’t know, I’m really more into these Japanese toys. I’d really much rather have them made from this Japanese company etc.” Joe Mad always had these very specific thoughts about what he liked, what he didn’t like; he was always a little bit off the mainstream; he always wanted something very specific. Just like his influences were always very eclectic and, sometimes, things none of us knew. In the end, he just dilly-dallied, and Todd moved on, and the toys were never made. Somewhat recently Joe told me, “Man, I really should have done these toys.” He really, actually, has regrets about it to this day. I think, ultimately, he feels that that slipped through his fingers, because I think he would’ve loved to have had the toys, and I know he loved how mine came out, so it’s a shame that he missed out on that. I remember too that really legitimized the whole thing very quickly too. Right off the bat after the first issue we were flown out to Florida by a company, a video game developer named n-Space. They were an up-and-comer; they had contracts with THQ, which was, of course, a much bigger name in video games and we very quickly signed on the dotted line to have a video game produced. That was one of the very first things we did. Right after the first issue so many things were happening- we got a video game going, we were approached by Hollywood to get a movie produced. A guy by the name of J.C. Spink who continues to be a pretty big deal in producing movies, and another guy named Warren Zide approached us to, basically, pitch Danger Girl as a movie. And we got pretty far along in that process too; we ended up, in fact, selling it to New Line Cinema at the time, and it was for a pretty big amount. It was over six figures the amount that we optioned Danger Girl for. We were looking pretty good there for a while until, all of a sudden, out of the blue, they brought back Charlie’s Angels, and it was that Drew Barrymore re-launch of Charlie’s Angels. I knew that there was a noticeable comparison visually to Charlie’s Angels, although I always thought the tone of Danger Girl was nothing like Charlie’s Angels. But that movie came out, did really well, and that pretty much, sunk us, because, I think, it was Mike De Luca was head of New Line at the time, and the way it was told to me, he walked out of the premier of Charlie’s Angels and just said, “Danger Girl is dead.” And it was just literally like that. And again, we had a pretty nice payday, but that was, pretty much, what killed Danger Girl from moving forward. And since then we’ve had it optioned and re-optioned a few times, once for a TV show and another time for a movie again, but it never really-- That was when it was most on fire, because it was the new thing; the comic book and the preview, we always pictured it to look like it was a movie in comic book form, and that really worked; people really responded that way. Right off the bat we were just having tons of success with Danger Girl. The toys, the video game. The video game, ultimately, ended up coming out in a weird bubble. It started off very strong; we really were pushing for all these things; by the end, I think, the money was put in weird areas and I feel it didn’t show up on the screen of the video game. I actually did little run test of things that actually ended up in the Danger Girl sketchbook where you flip the corners and you see Abby running and stuff. That was actually meant for the video game, to show how Abby should run, and there was a part where you see Sidney whipping, and that was me, animating flip form, so I could show them how she should whip in the game. Those were little bits. There’s actually quite a bit in the Danger Girl Sketchbook, concept-wise, that was designed for the game that never ended up in the game. That actually made up quite a bit of the Danger Girl Sketchbook. In the end, PlayStation 2 was announced, and our game was almost nearing completion for PlayStation 1, so already we looked passé before the game even came out, because “Oh my gosh, it’s a game for PlayStation 1? Gross! Why isn’t it for PlayStation 2?” and that kind of thing. That was a shame, because I like to think of Danger Girl as this thing that should look cutting edge in every way, and instead it looked like it was old before it even came out, because, again, everybody wanted PlayStation 2 games; those were the exciting things. The other thing, I remember, Tomb Raider came out around that time, and we had an Indiana Jones element to the game as well, so, by comparison, Tomb Raider was just the hot commodity at that time, so if you weren’t going to be as good as that, you know you’re already looking second best. Years later, I have people come up to me and tell me they generally like the game, and a lot of people did have pretty fun memories of it. I drew load screens for all the chapters, and we made these funny titles for each of the chapters, Andy wrote dialogue for the game- a lot of that stuff ended up in the Danger Girl Sketchbook.

#J Scott Campbell

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spicynbachili1 · 6 years ago

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The terror and triumph in Rainbow Six Siege

It’s a good game

[Soulbow’s ongoing inside joke is that he likes Rainbow Six Siege and some of the community sandbag his favorite game. So this is me officially breaking the sandbag, if at least for just a day. Because here, he describes a typical game so well. ~ Marcel]

Just like that, I watched my teammates’ lives end before my eyes. I observed from outside, on a rappel line, as they stacked up on the objective doorway. “Don’t stack up, you’re easy pickings” I grumbled out through my mic. They didn’t listen, they never do.

Gunfire erupts from inside the room. A parade of bullets echo throughout my headset as I watch the heads of one, two, three of my teammates snap back as they slumped to the ground. Suddenly this had become 2v5, all in a split second. My other teammate, bless his heart; thought he could catch them reloading as he cover swapped to the other side of the doorway. Peeking in I watched as his head vaporized like the numbers in my bank account after payday.

“Fuck.”

In any other competitive game this would of been a death sentence, one where you to simply rush in and admit defeat at the hands of superior gamers. This isn’t one of those games. This is Siege.

I steadied myself, swapped to the other side of the window and peered in. From my angle I could see the east wall, unenforced and with a murder hole in it. My teammates were gunned down from the south door, so I knew that it was possible I could see the other team. Sure enough, a quick flicker of movement passed by the hole. I steadied my 100-round LMG and tracked to where I thought they might be. Letting off one red hot round through the thin ply-wall separating us, somehow it connected with his dome. Four to go.

I knew his teammates had heard the round, and they knew where I was. Leveling my gun through the window, I aimed at the door that currently had four slumped, probably still warm, bodies laying in front of it. Right on time; the enemy began to pour out. I started to unload. A barrage of lead cutting through them as they fell, one after another, in the face of my onslaught. One, two, three; they stopped coming. Hot white smoke was still coming off the tip of my gun as I rappelled in. I saw a flick of movement out of the right side of my eye as I swung in. “There you are, asshole.”

Scrambling to the wall I throw myself up against it, turning around and laying flat on my back as I trained the barrel of my rifle at the corner that the enemy was sure to come around. I didn’t wait, I still had 60 rounds. The sharp, loud pops echoing in my headset as I finally relented. I waited, a count going in my head. One… Two… Three… Four. There he is. Little bastard thought I was reloading and that he could catch me. Surprise motherfucker. Like John-fucking-Rambo himself I gritted my teeth, looked into the whites of his eyes and proceeded to blow them straight out the back of his head. “Round won” crossed my screen.

This is Siege.

What the fuck is up everyone? As some of you may know, I’m Soulbow. I’m here to talk about a game that holds a very dear place in my heart. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. People say they haven’t played it ’cause the “last good Rainbow Six game they played was Vegas 2.” Hey, fuck trombone. That was the last one.

But I digress, I’m not here to talk negatively. There’s enough of that in this game that I’m not even going to begin to touch on. I’m here to talk about one thing and one thing only. This is the main reason Siege is set apart from its peers and the one mechanic that REALLY makes it feel different than any other game.

That would be the one-shot headshot.

With the exception of one Operator, (one of which I’m not even going to touch on in this blog because I consider it an absolute asinine amount of bullshit that he’s even in the game at all), there is one universal rule that all Operators fall under. If you get shot in the head, even one hot piece of booyah, by any gun, you die. Instantly. No down-but-not-out, no double chances, you’re done, son. This allows Siege to be a game of insane amounts of skill and stress, but also one where a lucky round is just around the next corner.

In this regard, this is why Siege is so special to me. Siege is a horror game for the beginning of every round. You’re desperately listening in on your headset for any set of footsteps, a wall being broken, even a drone whirring. It’s tense, to say the least. Every single round gets my blood flowing as you stay hunkered down, all your well-thought-out plans in the preparation phase instilling (maybe) just a small bit of confidence that you could possibly survive. This all goes right out the window the second you hear gunfire, or a wall gets blasted open right beside you. Every logical thought exits your mind and is replaced by a primal survival instinct of “this fucker needs to get got before he gets me.” It’s unbelievably exhilarating, and a feeling I’ve never once even come close to experiencing in any other game.

Funny thing is, it also feels this way when you’re attacking. Every corner, every footstep, is a new challenge. You usually never know (unless you’re actually really good.) what the enemy has in store for you, as you round a corner, iron sights trained to detect even the slightest amount of movement. Gunfights are over in a split second, so you have to be on the top of your game Every. Single. Fucking. Second.

I’m not going to write an absurdly long blog about this game, I could go on for pages and pages. Just know this, Siege may be slow at first. It may require you getting shot in the face by some shit waffle who knows the maps better than you ever will, peeking through a murder-hole past three walls. However, every single round is unique. You never know exactly what angle the enemy team is planning, and the tension, unknowingness, and sheer adrenaline when you finally get to the shooty-shooty bang-bang helps keep Siege fresh and exciting for every damn second you decide to devote your life to it.

Thanks for reading, now, who’s ready to Siege my rectum?

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from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/the-terror-and-triumph-in-rainbow-six-siege/

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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The Diamond Casino Heist is GTA Online’s most exhilarating score and an exercise in self-parody • Eurogamer.net

In one of the opening missions of GTA Online’s latest update, heist aficionado and lovable oaf Lester talks about how he was a good kid before he played Street Crimes Gang Wars, the in-universe version of Grand Theft Auto. As the bassline hums in the background, he starts to ramble about the gun-toting opportunists trying to lift your cargo, a set of arcade cabinets necessary to kickstart a run-down arcade business, a front for the game’s latest (and greatest) heist. “They must be gamers,” he says.

A walking parody of all things but especially itself, minutes later GTA Online treats me to a radio advert for Shark Cards, the game’s infamous microtransaction system that has made it the most profitable entertainment product of all time. Shutting my car door after a successful delivery, I get my usual daily text from Agent 14 about purchasing a million-dollar Mobile Operations Center to help with the efficiency of my Gunrunning business, one of many plates that need spinning if I’m to stay afloat in this demanding second life. I don’t even want the unnecessary vehicle but my brain, falling prey to the marketing machine, wonders whether completing this latest big score will afford me the currency necessary to get him to stop nagging me.

A packed-out patch for a six-year-old live service, The Diamond Casino Heist is designed to turn heads, all the way down to the balance tweaks that players have been begging for. The greatest issue addressed concerns the most hated (and loved) vehicle introduced in Online’s history, the Oppressor Mk 2.

Here I am posing with my very own Oppressor, which I definitely don’t use to blow up mortals when I’m navel-gazing.

For the uninitiated, the Oppressor is GTA Online’s forbidden fruit, a piece of powerful technology introduced to this virtual society without proper consideration, one that Rockstar can’t take back now that players have adopted it. A gateway to sin and loss of naivety, this flying motorbike can cross the map in minutes and has homing rockets bolted to the front, making it a virtual nihilist’s wet dream. It’s a four million dollar chrome-wrapped beacon of wealth and power that makes most of Online’s most difficult missions laughable.

Rockstar has stuck a five-minute timer on summoning this griefing machine, as well as supposedly reducing phone notifications (I haven’t really noticed) and limiting the ‘Kill Yourself’ command, making it harder to leave this late-capitalist dystopia on your own terms. This is for your own good though – it’s to address a common phenomenon where griefers would kill you and then shoot themselves to balance out their K/D and avoid punishment from Rockstar’s all-seeing eye of Sauron. At this point, it’s impossible for Rockstar to cut out the bad behavior at its root, but a few slaps on the wrist might refocus players into less trivial pursuits.

Speaking of which, now that the Arcade is set up I’m able to start preparing the heist, an innovative, multiple-phase ordeal that is nearly 20 missions long if you fulfill every optional detail. Crews will have to first scope the casino to see what information they can glean on a time limit. You can take photos of entry and exit points, security details and suspicious items, sending them to Lester who will respond with new methods of approach and optional side missions to make the final heist more creative.

This isn’t just the illusion of choice either – the number of security shipments you damage in one mission will directly affect the number of guards in the casino underbelly. Similarly, if you scope out the secret sewer exit you’ll be able to dart away from the cops through a series of subsurface tubes, Italian Job style.

You can choose, spray and upgrade which cars to use in the getaway, with low-brow vehicles equalling a smaller cut from your take.

As you may be able to tell, this latest heist is designed to be completely adaptable. One of the most infuriating aspects of previous heist missions is that if you fail a single objective you’ll have to start again, even if in reality it wouldn’t result in the end of the road. With The Diamond Casino Heist, you can switch tact on the fly and dip into three separate styles of approach if somebody drops the ball – disguised, sneaky or aggressive. This means all is not lost on a single missed headshot or dodgy pathing, you can just brandish a machine-gun and go guns blazing. It feels more reactive, the gameplay reflecting the tense, dynamic approach to heisting seen in Overkill’s Payday 2.

This adaptive style doesn’t transfer to the setup missions, however. What I liked was the space Rockstar allows for you to experiment and come up with your own canon, where I’d have my friends try and cut enemies off at certain map landmarks – one example involved heading to the airfield to steal a dodo to crash into an unruly helicopter that was leaving the mission area. Yet despite probing your imagination, almost all of the prep missions devolve into ‘Lose the Cops’, a crescendo that Rockstar loves to lean on.

There’s an economic angle to the bloat here in that Online enables those with more means to have far superior efficiency. If you’re lucky enough to own an Oppressor, some missions are a joke, asking you to simply race around the map, lock on to a set of targets and tap a button to win, whilst the mere mortals on terra firma have to suffer. The free arcade property you receive for having a Twitch Prime subscription is a welcome gift, especially given that it’s essential for starting the heist proceedings – but it’s also only available as a rebate, which means if you don’t have the million and change upfront you’re going to have to grind or buy a shark card. It’s also in Paleto Bay, a good six and a half miles from the casino…

It’s the litany of long drives to and from the property to the casino that takes the absolute Michael De Santa – even if they inevitably lead to moments of unpredictable candor. There are precious few games where a crew can cruise in a rental sedan and wail their way through the frisson bridge of “I Want It That Way” by The Backstreet Boys. Not even the rotting corpse in the trunk can dampen that kind of team spirit.

Danny Brown’s manic, likable character links with steroid-peddling Brucie from GTA 4 to chaotic effect

We were on assignment to burn a rental car in exchange for disguised casino access from Yung Ancestor, a successful walking satire of a new-wave Soundcloud rapper played by living rap legend Danny Brown. Brown (as himself) also hosts iFruit Radio, a new radio station lampooning Apple Music’s Beats 1. This follows Frank Ocean’s very own Blonded Radio which launched in-game in 2017 – itself a designated radio show on Apple Music. Ain’t it funny how it happens?

Brown waxes about the healing power of Psilocybin with UK grime hero Skepta as a rogue’s gallery of modern musical talent call in to introduce their tracks. Kenny Beats, AJ Tracey, hell even Slowthai makes the cut, the fired-up Northampton rapper who brandished a decapitated bust of Boris Johnson’s head on-stage at this year’s Mercury Prize. By carefully tapping chart-storming artists like DaBaby, Shoreline Mafia and Headie One, the curation team has managed to cram an absurd amount of pop culture catharsis into a two-hour show – the cherry on top of this iFruit salad being a set of exclusive tracks from Denzel Curry and Bauuer that are only available in-game.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about how by completing a quest in GTA Online you could conduct some cross-game archaeology and excavate a revolver in Red Dead Online’s Moonshining update. Further study has revealed that there is even more bleed between the Old West and the new – you can purchase a fortune-telling game for the arcade property that bears Madam Nazar’s likeness and name, the mysterious herald of the Collector role in Red Dead Online.

A lot of her predictions are tongue-in-cheek allusions to community in-jokes, duplication glitches and unsolved Red Dead Redemption 2 mysteries (namely “Where’s Gavin” and the mysterious time-traveler Francis Sinclair) but it turns out there’s actually some feasible bait for the Chiliad Mystery masterminds hiding behind the riddles. If you keep filling it with coins, you’ll eventually hear Nazar make mention of three sets of numbers, which when combined give you a number to call her through time and space in GTA Online, where she responds in even more cryptic terms.

Once you pull on the Emoji masks and embark upon your custom caper, The Diamond Casino Heist quickly proves itself to be the most exciting experience available in GTA Online. Whether you’re using stolen trash to infest the casino with cockroaches or tranquilizing guards with drones, you’ll make it to the vault with your heart in your throat. I’ve always thought that half the magic of a good Rockstar mission is the pulsing score, and this is no different, elevating the tension to almost feverish nausea, where all you care about is getting your cut.

Once in the vault you’ll have to scramble to shove cash in your duffel before the room fills with nerve gas. Paying for a better skeleton crew increases this timer.

Once I finally overcame the heist I felt a mix of relief and pride. I spent my hard-earned money like a true mark – on retail therapy. I’m the proud owner of one of Rockstar’s ripoff A Bathing Ape hoodies and a fancy new livery for my death bike. Come to think of it, Agent 14’s Mobile Operations Center never even crossed my mind. Maybe I’m the problem.

GTA Online is a game that demands more of its players than most, with layers of loading screens, nagging notifications and Daedalian business management systems refusing to let your attention wander. This noise can act as a smokescreen for new players, obscuring the satisfying content available to those who are yet to fight through the game’s service jank. But if you’re on the fence and you have some friends on-call, I honestly urge you to jump back in. Whether you’re a veteran who took an extended vacation from Los Santos or a rookie with a set of Twitch Prime rewards it’s still the most dynamic and limitless multiplayer open-world on the market.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/the-diamond-casino-heist-is-gta-onlines-most-exhilarating-score-and-an-exercise-in-self-parody-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-diamond-casino-heist-is-gta-onlines-most-exhilarating-score-and-an-exercise-in-self-parody-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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magazineshow-laura · 6 years ago

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Compensation Advert

First Time Directing? You Could be Owed Compensation!

When discussing our segments, I knew that I wanted to write a skit/sketch. I’ve always loved comedy, when done right, it can be extraordinary. The idea of making people forget their worries, having them laugh and smile even for a moment is what drew me to comedy in the first place. With shows Saturday Night Live being my escape through tough times, and still to this day, it was them who inspired me to want to create something like they did for me.

So, to get inspired I decided to watch a few of my favourite sketches:

Beginning with my favourite long-running sketch Gilly a mischievous school girl, getting up to no good. I really like this sketch because it’s something everyone can relate to, a key thing in comedy. Whether in primary school or high school, there was always that one kid who couldn’t behave if their life depended on it. Of course Gilly is meant to be an exaggerated version of those children, but honestly I remember kids who behaved much worse than her.

youtube

The next one I decided to watch was the 3am Phone Call I really love this one for it’s unique editing, I adore how it’s all done via photos and voiceover, something so simple yet so unique and it works so effectively with the tone of the sketch with it being a political advert in Hillary Clintons favour. Plus, the choice of doing it in black and white works perfectly to dramatize the piece. I also really like the fact that Amy Poehler’s rendition of Hillary Clinton, has a face mask and her hair in rollers, a side to the real Hillary you never see and is hard to imagine existing because she is always so stern.

youtube

The second to last sketch I watched was Oprah: 50th Birthday Presents I love how SNL take normal things everyone knows about and exaggerates them to the max. This Oprah sketch works so well, as you can imagine these middle aged woman in the studio audience, being bored to death with their lives and nuclear family's, so Oprah is their only source of joy, hence why they go insane when they’re the ones getting treated and somewhat looked after. The cherry on the top of this cake is definitely the ending, where it’s made out that these women are the ones causing the natural disasters just from their screams of excitement and terror.

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The final sketch I watched is my most favourite sketch EVER. It’s the Black Eyed Peas Ad skit. This sketch is just brilliant, I wasn’t old enough to know whether or not the Black Eyed Peas were considered cheesy when the skit aired in 2005 but I'm going to take a wild guess and say yes, otherwise this skit has little relevance. My favourite thing about the entire sketch is how they’ve changed the lyrics to the songs and because I’ve watched it so much I now sing SNL’s lyrics instead of the Black Eyed Peas. This is the sketch that inspired me to make my own advert sketch, only thing I had to do now was find something just as funny and relatable to make an advert about.

youtube

The idea of making a spoof compensation advert, found me rather than I finding it. My Mum and I were driving home from a day out in Southport, and within that 40 minute journey, we had heard around 3-5 payday/compensation adverts. So, unbeknownst that this would become my skit, I started joking around with my Mum about the insane things you’ll be able to claim for soon, for example:

Are you stuck in traffic? You could be owed compensation!

Have you been given homework you don’t want to do? Well, you could be owed compensation!

and finally

Have you been born? Well, you could be entitled to compensation!

It was through this genuine comedic moment with my mum that it all clicked into place. I had been given my advert skit on a silver platter.

Moving swiftly onto the next step, I needed to write my script. I decided that three adverts would be enough to keep our fifteen minute show running smoothly. I could have used the gags I came up with in the car with my mum but they didn’t seem relevant or funny enough to translate onto the screen. So, because of this I began brainstorming again. I came up with a few ideas but eventually settled on,

- Have you suffered a first world problem?

- Are you stuck in an endless lip sync?

- Are you not rich yet?

I felt that there was a natural progression of insanity between each specific ad, the first world problem being something everyone can relate to. The lip sync being a nod to our introduction, and the Are you not rich yet? really pointing out the stupidity of it all.

Of course I couldn’t just rely on the one compensation gag to make my script effectively funny, I needed other tid-bits that were a bit harder to spot, but when you figure it out you feel very satisfied.

The first hidden gag is the companies name Connor Pennstate when said fast enough it just sounds like Compensate, simple yet effective. The second gag, is in the terms and conditions, You must be over the age of minus nine months old to apply, once again reinstating the silliness of it all. The third gag, is that of the Connie Pennstate Embezzlement scandal, when said fast enough it just sounds like it’s their company that is involved, not his sisters company. The final gag is my favourite, the Are you not rich yet? follows two men who are going to kidnap Liz’s corgis when they’re on their nightly walk down the mall, and then sell them back to her at ransom. On the cover it just sounds like they’re kidnapping some random persons dogs to hold them at ransom, when really:

- Liz is Queen Elizabeth

- The corgis are the Queens dogs

- The mall is the long road that leads to Buckingham Palace

So, in reality they’re kidnapping the Queens dogs.

Once I had wrote my script it was then time to get it filmed.

#pre production #advert skit #snl

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element-effect-blog · 6 years ago

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"Publishing Amazon Ebooks Featuring Phil Singleton" (Inbound Success Ep. 44)

What's a quick, easy, inexpensive, and relatively painless way to establish thought leadership while also generating business?

Phil Singleton

On this week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, SEO expert and author Phil Singleton shares the strategy he uses with his marketing clients. In this detailed interview, he takes us through the process of developing a keyword strategy, writing blogs, creating an ebook, publishing it on Amazon Kindle (and even as a hard copy for order!), and then leveraging that as a vehicle for getting guest interviews on podcasts.

Sounds complicated, but Phil shows how simple and easy it can be.

Listen to the podcast to hear the exact process that Phil uses and get step-by-step instructions for doing it yourself.

Phil Singleton (guest): Hey, Kathleen. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited.

Kathleen: Yeah, thanks for joining me. Phil, tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, your background, and what you do.

(Here's Phil and I recording the podcast)

Phil: So, I guess I'm a web designer and SEO consultant. That's really kind of the core tactics we deliver, but it's funny, because I didn't come into the business with graphic designer code or anything like that. I actually studied in school to be in business and finance, and I thought I was going to work on Wall Street back in the day.

But yeah, I rolled out of school, ended up having to work for an insurance company, because I wasn't able to get that investment job that I wanted to get out, and it just ended up being kind of a miserable place to be.

Working in a cubicle, at an insurance company, it just really got to be very slow, and I quickly determined that this wasn't kind of the thing I wanted to do, but I didn't know what I wanted to do at that time, I just knew I didn't want to be in insurance.

So, I was looking around at all these guys that had been there for 20 or 30 years, like "This is not my destiny." In my early 20s, I figured I'm going to do something really drastic to kind of change the trajectory of my career path, maybe my destiny, and I just kind of packed up my bags one day and I moved to Asia.

Kathleen: Oh wow, where in Asia?

Phil: Where I spent 10 years, all together, and actually, I met my wife. I'm actually going back there to visit, end of this month. But it was great. It was a great experience. It really did change a bunch of things.

Long story short, towards the middle-end of my stint there, a software company ended up falling into my lap, more or less, and that's when I was really introduced to digital and Google, and really, the power of search engine optimization.

And things were happening back then. It was a consumer software company that sold DVD backup software almost all around the world. This was the early 2000s and I didn't know anything about software or marketing at the time. Again, I was just in the right place at the right time. Somebody needed me to run a company. There's a story behind that, but I'm not going to get into that, because we don't have the time for it.

But I took that opportunity -- took the bull by the horns -- and I learned very quickly that the revenues that were coming for us, a lot of it was being driven by affiliate marketing or cheap AdWords clicks. Back then, we would throw our hands up in the air if you had to pay 25 cents a click on AdWords. Now, it's like you can pay $25, $100 a click for some things. But I quickly learned that Google had a stranglehold on the purchase process for a lot of products back then.

This was more than 15 years ago. It opened my eyes, and long story short I saw the power of SEO and digital, and that really, the ROI trail, for me, led back to websites.

We ended up selling that company in Taiwan. It was a nice payday, but it wasn't like a buying-an-island-to-retire-forever type of thing. So, my wife and I moved back to the States to start a family, and I took what I learned in some of that software company experience that I had and I ended up doing this really strange thing where I had a barter agreement with this small company where I built a website on my own, not knowing anything about it.

This is 2005. I built the ugliest little one-page Microsoft front page website for this guy on barter, basically making a promise I couldn't keep, and long story short, within 60 days or so, I was applying some of the basic SEO things I learned DIY at that software company gig, and lo and behold, he started ranking. His phone started ringing. I'll never forget. He called me up one day and was like, "Phil, I don't know what you've done. You changed my business and you changed my life." For me, that was like-

Kathleen: Right. What is this black magic that you do?

Phil: Bang. Well, for me, I was 35 years old at the time, and it was like, "I finally know what I want to be when I grow up." It was the most professionally rewarding thing that ever happened to me. But secondly, I was like, "I can make some money off of this, right?"

So, that one barter thing back in 2005, from a guy that got a D in computer science in college -- I almost flunked out of it -- doesn't know coding, doesn't know graphic design, but I have since then been able to grow up a thriving digital agency, and I'm making a pretty good living off of selling websites, more from the computer now.

So, that's kind of how I started, kind of how I got here today.

Kathleen: You know, it's funny. Hearing you talk about this reminds me of the earlier stages of my career, because I started out in management consulting. I feel like the hallmark of a true management consultant is when somebody says, "Can you help me with X?" and no matter whether you can or not, you always say "Yes," and then you go and figure out how to do it, right?

So, that's very much a management consulting mindset. You hustle, and you make yourself and expert in that thing. Then you're basically getting paid to become an expert. Then once you've done that, you've got a platform to sell that service to lots of other people.

Phil: It's interesting that you say that, because I mean, yeah, that makes perfect sense, but when I got out of college, I was a high anxiety, scared little kid that could barely talk to people. Somehow, for me, going out to Asia and being able to adapt and make a career in another culture -- and maybe it was just a matter of getting older -- all of a sudden gave me a lot of confidence that I never had.

I think that towards the end of that piece, it enabled me to say, "Hey, you know what? I can throw whatever you have at me." I figured with this one guy, you know what? If I fall on my face and I can't do it, I'll go out of pocket and find somebody else to do it, but I'm going to try and make this happen.

But really, that one little thing where I pushed the envelope and made a promise I couldn't keep has made me ... It basically made my whole career, and I think you kind of have to do that sometimes, and that's kind of how I look at everything now.

Kathleen: You know, it's really funny that you say that, because you and I might have a lot more in common than we thought. I was pretty shy, and I'm still a big introvert, which I fake really well not being one. But I was really shy also, in college, and I actually went and lived in Spain -- in Barcelona -- for a year after college, and while I was there, I got a Eurail pass, and by myself, I traveled around Europe. You randomly make friends wherever you go, and it was a really interesting exercise in just putting yourself out there and getting over your own shyness.

Phil: Yeah. It changes you, sure.

Kathleen: Maybe that's the secret.

Phil: When I left back then, it was like, my parents freaked out, and from that day I left, they were always trying to get me back. But I looked back and I was like, it wouldn't have changed anything.

Kathleen: Oh, definitely. It was one of the greatest experiences for me as well.

Kathleen: Well, cool. Maybe everybody needs to go on ... I think the Australians call it a "walkabout."

Phil: I did one for me, I don't know.

From SEO to Content Marketing

Phil: Well, it's funny we talk about being an introvert, because I'm definitely, by definition, and introvert. It's not necessarily that I can't talk to people and I can't be animated. It's just how you're wired. I talk to people and go out, and I get really tired and have to go take a nap type of thing, but I hide it really well. But it just draws energy, you know what I'm talking about? If you're a true introvert, it's just those type of situations.

So SEO was great in the early days, because you could literally not have to talk to people, and move the needle for companies and never have to talk to them a lot, or go out and do a bunch of things.

Lo and behold, Google, for the first 15 years of its existence, was basic to actually get results on it. You could do a lot of back office things and not have to deal with people. So for the longest time, I had a website here, locally, that ranked forever. I never did a blog, I didn't have my address on that, I didn't have a face on it. It just ranked, and people would call me, and then we'd have little interaction. They'd sign up, and then they'd send checks every month and they'd see their rankings, and that's all that happened.

So, it was a great ride for several years, but then Google came back about five or six years ago and started to change the game. For the first 15 years of Google's existence, I mean, SEO was this one pie. Half of it was on-page things where you did things, whatever you could to manipulate the system to rank, ranking, you could get more pages, and just kind of tweak things under the hood.

The other half of that pie was off-page things, and when we talk about off-page, it was mostly link-building, volume-based link-building. Get as many third party links as you couldto point back to your website.

For a long, long time, there was some cat and mouse things. There were little changes where you had to find a new loophole. That drove SEO for a long time, and and introvert like myself could have a great business and not have to deal with people.

Then, about five or six years ago, they totally changed everything. They talked about content being king for a long time, but they never meant it, because we could do back office things and move the needle, but then, all of a sudden, when these punitive algorithms came out, they really started to put the bullseye on content.

I was like, me, that never invested a lot of anything else onto my site in terms of content ... now, I'm out there blog-posting, doing podcasts, writing books.

My face is everywhere, I'm developing my own personal brand. I'm making sure that my website becomes a marketing hub and it's a referral source for my content.

So, we got this whole inbound channel, and that's largely due to how Google, I think, changed their algorithm. Link-building and working on on-page SEO is still part of the pie, but it's just two slices now, right. It's the other thing.

So, that's kind of how I went from developing the agency into a traditional SEO, and it's really morphed into ... I think what we're all doing is more of an inbound approach, and you're starting to look at things more holistically because, for me, from my standpoint, that's how Google is starting to grade things.

They're going out and able to determine all sorts of signals right now. They look at your blog posts, they look at your authority, they look at your social media participation, how it links back to the website.

They're looking at your reputation and your reviews and these kind of things. All those things, when you wrap them up together in terms of SEO signals, just look like a digital marketing type of thing, and you got SEO to tie it all together.

So, I went from kind of that SEO thing and have kind of morphed into ... I think all of us, myself in particular, you have to ... The website's kind of the key to everything, so you have to have some ... Either have to be a web designer or have that capability, but it's all the other stuff right now.

We started off with the SEO angle and still, to this day, I think SEO is great if you have an SEO mindset, because of the way Google looks at things more holistically right now.

So, if you have that angle, I think that really helps. So we've morphed in from just looking in those SEO Google results to doing more digital stuff, because that's what moves the needle now and that's kind of how our agency has evolved as well.

Part of that, part of me being here today, writing a book, is all that stuff, right? It's getting out there, it's showing your authority, it's writing books, it's educating, and it's getting your message out. It's working on personal branding and working on things that demonstrate your expertise and authority. All things that you're familiar with, Kathleen, but it's funny how these things start off as kind of tactics, and they've diverged into this one thing right now, and we're all kind of meeting in the middle, where we are today, and that's kind of how I got here.

How Google's Rankbrain Has Changed SEO

Kathleen: It's really interesting. I was giving a talk to a group yesterday, kind of about this, what you just laid out, which is how Google has evolved and what that has meant for how we need to get found online. To me, one of the most interesting aspects in the last two years, which I think feeds right into what you talked about, is this shift from algorithm-based search results -- algorithms are mathematical equations, basically, it's sort of binary - you either meet the criteria or you don't -- to search results based on artificial intelligence, and Google's shift over to relying on RankBrain, which is its artificial intelligence engine, and how now, search engines are trying to approximate how we, as people, think, and looking at context so much more. I mean, it's just ... It's no longer a binary "did you check that box or not?" - it's very much qualitative evaluation of content.

Kathleen: It's fascinating. It's very hard to game that.

Phil: Yeah, the algorithms -- you mentioned RankBrain. I mean, I think they came out last year, and that was something they experimented with about two or three years ago, and now, when Google says, "Okay, there's over 200 ranking factors," they came out ... This was last year, let's see if I can point you to where it came from, but I'm pretty sure that they consider RankBrain one of the top three ranking factors of that pool of 200 or 300. So, they haven't totally unleashed it to RankBrain, but it's definitely one of the most important linking factors.

And you're right, it's hard to game, because it's going out there and pretending it's a human and trying to figure out predictive things based on search behavior and trying to reach out. It's no longer just matching a search query to content on a page, right? It's trying to understand the user, get more context, make better guesses, and really, deliver better results so that people use it more so that they can serve up more information and basically sell more ads through AdWords.

Turning Blogs Into Ebooks

Kathleen: Yeah, I mean, this is one of the reasons I was interested to talk to you today. Given those trends, what it really means to me is that you can cut a lot of the noise out and just ...

As long as you believe that you will win by creating the best content on any given topic -- if you hold that to be true -- then you do need to truly invest in content creation. I don't just mean money, I mean time, effort, research, et cetera. You need to invest in making your content really, really good. But once you create that content, then you have an opportunity to take it and use it in a variety of different ways.

The thing that appealed to me about what you and I are going to talk about is that you have some very interesting approaches to how you use that content and how you build upon what somebody else might look at as "Oh, I've written this amazing blog. Done!" I think you've developed a process which is really great for not letting it just end there, and turning that into the gift that keeps on giving. So, maybe you could just talk a little bit about that.

Phil: Sure. This is one of my favorite things.

My first kind of job in Asia was working with a venture capital company, and I saw them basically being opportunists, and that's kind of what SEO started off as. I was trying to figure out hacks -- not necessarily cheats, but shortcuts in order to get yourself results so you can get the clicks and the phone numbers.

I guess at heart, I wouldn't necessarily call myself ... maybe a "hack" is a more politically correct word, but it's trying to find ways that you can do things one time and get 10 times the value out of it. I think that's the heart of all marketers, but especially SEO folks, because we're trying to get as many wins as we can for as little effort as possible.

When I started to get more invested into content marketing, it's about that -- it's trying to figure out the things that we're doing, how to make sure that we just don't do them once, or we do them once in terms of our process so we can get multiple wins out of it.

So, the one thing that I do for myself and for our clients right now is to really understand who your ideal client is and how they search.

Having that master list of keyword research is more important than ever, but I think sometimes people think of keyword research as being one of these either deprecated types of things for SEO, or even marketing.

I mean, Google is ... It's part of the purchase process right now for everybody, and it's all based on people saying or typing a keyword string into a box and getting results. So, we can't ever say that the words are not that important, because that's where everybody starts.

There's all sorts of great tools out there to get that initial list, and I think that's really, really important, because if you don't have the terms that people are searching for, it's really hard to know where the finish line is. I talk to people all the time that want to rank for certain things. They don't have any of the target keywords on their website.

Having that master list, to me, is really important in working with the client. Working to their sale, always trying to refine it and add to it and understand how people are searching is really important. Then you take that as the base to do the content that we've built on top of it.

A really important strategy for us is blogging. Again, that sounds a little bit old school, but I still think it's the cornerstone of inbound for us, and it's the most natural way to build out your website and work on long tail keywords or other types of things that people might be searching for.

A little tidbit right here is if you Google Search "quality evaluator guidelines," there's an e-book that Google gives away for free that they use to train an army of about 10 to 15 quality evaluators they have that literally just -- all day long -- type in search results and check the search results quality to test the algorithm and the AI and stuff.

Kathleen: Huh. That's interesting.

Phil: It's really cool, because if you download this thing, it's telling people what to look for. It's telling the quality evaluators what to look for in a quality website. So, it's almost like the blueprint to the algorithm, to me.

A lot of it has to do with things like showing expertise, authority and trust. In fact, they use that acronym throughout the little e-book that they have many, many times over. They're trying to beat it in the head.

But one of the things they specifically go over is to look for things like blogging and having authoritative content. It's right there. It's Google telling us. They don't put out a 160-page manual like this to train an army of people to grade their algorithm unless they have poured over every word of it.

So, when they say authority it gets back to that blogging piece. I think blogging's really, really important because again, it helps to show that you are an expert and have expertise in your niche. It helps you grow your pages out organically. It helps us rank for longer tail keywords, which is really important.

One of the things that's happened over time is that you want to be able to develop your own authority and personal branding; that's kind of where we're all going, and a great way to do that is to become an author.

A lot of times people are trying to figure out ways to recycle and repurpose content, but again, if you take stuff that's already out there and just try and stitch it together, it doesn't really work as well as something that's engineered strategically from the beginning.

One of the things that we do is, again, we're always working off that initial kind of target keyword base, and then working on a content calendar, which, again, a lot of folks do right now. It's part of best practice.

But we specifically try to create a table of contents so that there's 10 or 15 posts, and each post could be a stand alone blog post that goes out in a series, maybe one to a week, but at the end of that, we stitch it together into an e-book that can be used as a call to action on the website, which again, is not really exciting. But I think the more exciting piece of this is we really try and go and take that e-book and spin it up into a Kindle and make our clients authors.

Doesn't sound that groundbreaking here, but it's a really cool, shiny thing for a client that actually does elevate their authority and their branding. They publish this book, it gets up on Amazon, which has a ton of benefits. One is that it's its own search engine. Two, as an author, you now get an author page up on there. You can plug in your blog feed onto the author page, which then pulls your latest blog post off and you get a great series of links from that.

It's not a silver bullet, but it's another way to actually get scores from pretty important links, because of course, Google's going to index Amazon by the second. Your blog post will end up probably being indexed faster and you'll get some really valuable backlinks.

For the client, they're getting something now that's super shiny. You just made them an author. We do this all the time and you can just see it's different than if you just deliver them an e-book. When you make them an author and then publish them on Amazon, it kind of elevates it a little bit more.

Then we take that e-book for a lot of them that are more advanced, and then try and develop a guesting campaign off of it, because now they're an author. You develop a one sheet, and you start pitching them to podcasts.

All of a sudden, this is working into that personal branding piece, where they're getting to speak as an expert. They're then showcasing the book that they wrote. If you do this without the keyword research and the strategy in the beginning, then it's harder to take it down that path where you're getting all those extra benefits.

But if you think about it ahead of time, all of a sudden, you're doing all these things, and now we're working on things I think that really help.

We've actually taken it a step further, and this worked out really good for a client, where we made a book. This is an actual print book, so you do e-books, but this is a print book from CreateSpace. We got 12 lawyers together here locally to write a book, How to Hire Lawyers. They each wrote a 3,000-word chapter, and we had compiled it together and made all these guys offers, then made kind of a launchable thing.

The cool thing that worked on this one was, taking it a step further where it almost became the 12 guys that didn't really know each other, so they all of a sudden became their own little mini referral engine. So we did this. We made a mock-up -- all the things we talked about, all those benefits -- and made a separate website for it. Then we actually had an event. We brought them together and introduced them all. Now, all of a sudden they're referring business to each other.

Of all the benefits that they've gotten of it, they came and said the biggest thing is the business that they're getting from this kind of a combined book project. So there're all sorts of things. You can even take it further in terms of recruiting a little referral hub where they get all those other benefits as well.

So those are some of the things we're doing. Again if you do this in a one dimensional way then you can't get all the maximum benefit, but if you think about it strategically in the beginning, it doesn't take that much more work to get all things out of it. If you just line everything up in the beginning, you get so much more ROI out of it.

Kathleen: So I have a million questions I want to ask about this.

Let's go back to the beginning. This all starts with blogs and you talk about the importance of blogging for SEO. I would love to learn a little bit from you about what you consider makes a good blog post because I think that has evolved.

I used to own a digital marketing agency for 11 years and when we first got started, I had clients that could write 400 and 500 word blog posts and literally just simply by checking the box, would start to rank for things but the world has evolved quite a bit since then and now I think the companies that are blogging and doing really well with it, have taken it to another level. So I'm curious, let's start first with when you work with clients, what do you tell them about blogging and what makes a good blog?

Phil: So there's two ways we look at it right now. One is for whatever reason, longer form blog posts of 2,000 to 2,500 words plus, seem to be the ones that rank better, especially for competitive terms. Having those longer, authoritative posts really helps but it's not really practical or feasible for folks to be doing that. They may do it maybe once a quarter or a couple a year to invest in that.

The flip side of this is for our small business clients, having that 500 or 600 word blog post that goes out every week is super important because we get to target a keyword, and it goes on the website.

We use a plug in called Snap Auto Post, and when we click publish it goes out to like ten different social media platforms. So having that engine on doesn't work if you only have a blog post a quarter and you're not able to feed your social media.

In a lot of cases, for the smaller business, we're not doing a bunch of stuff. But having that weekly social media content going out and make people come back to it creates that cycle that's really important and you can only do it with the smaller blog post.

And again, unless you're really invested in the topic, you're not going to spend the 30 minutes or whatever it takes to read a 3,000 word blog post where you can get to the point.

I think both of those are really important. In terms of what makes a really good blog post, for me, number one is just very simply making sure that you're doing two things. Understanding that you should have at least one keyword that you are targeting for every blog post that you write, but not just for every keyword. The ideal thing for writing blog posts now is to never do it for SEO but also never do it without SEO in mind.

Phil: And that's the biggest mistake I think a lot of folks make because they figure "I'm just going to make this a trending topic and I want to get it out there." But just by changing a little bit of words in the title, in the URL, peppering it in a couple times in the subtitles, you make your post vastly larger on ranking potential for that type of thing.

So we tell people, "Hey, let's make sure that we make it keyword rich and that's part of the content calendar, but also make sure that you're writing about things that are trending." So use BuzzSumo and others out there that will tell you, "Hey, this is the type of content around this topic that's trending." But also here's the keyword that we want to go after that's got some commercial value to it, let's make sure that we work that in.

And then you just get a disciplined approach to every blog post. Really down to the basics. Being smart about the title. Again, it's got to be for the customers. But there's all sorts of ideal clients, and all sorts of ways you can naturally work a keyword in that will serve both purposes, and that's a big part of SEO in digital right now, is managing that balance.

Don't throw Google out the door, but there's always ways you can tweak the title a little bit to get more SEO value out of it, where it doesn't look spammy.

But then also just some basic things about just laying blog posts out like making sure that you're using subtitles. Google allows bullets and numbered lists, and they like to have images in there. You'll see a lot of times, when you type up things, "How to" or "Why." You're seeing a lot more information come up in position zero with the knowledge boxes. This has to do with how well your blog post is structured.

There's other things that matter, like getting links to it, how much it's getting shared in social media. But they love that extra structure in the post, in terms of a ranking factor.

So having an image in there, making bulleted and numbered lists, making sure that you're using subtitles in there... again, these things don't take a whole lot of extra time. But you'd be surprised how many blog posts we see that just stuck paragraphs and like a bold subtitle instead of one that's actually using a header tag. Stuff like that makes a lot of difference.

And also something that's really important for SEO these days, we've been talking about the last 12 to 24 months, is dwell time on a webpage. We don't have a 3,000 word blog post, but this is where I think podcasting really is beautiful as well.

Having some type of rich media on there which makes people stay on there longer -- like a Youtube video that makes sense on there -- and if someone ends up clicking on it, and staying on your page an extra 30 or 40 seconds, that's a huge engagement signal for Google, to see that dwell time increase.

In the old days, the SEO guys, we used to think about bounce rate. Now bounce rate really doesn't make a lot of sense. Instead, we're looking to see how long people stay on pages.

Anything you can do to keep someone on a page seems to directly correlate with higher rank of a page, so embedding audio is awesome and video, if you watch a video that's a lot of invested time. Somebody that clicks on that is staying 90 seconds or 2 or 3 or 5 minutes. That is a long time. But you can click an audio file on a blog post and you can sometimes end up staying a lot longer because you can go be doing other things. That dwell time increases. You don't have to take a lot of people spending that extra time to really increase the dwell time on the page.

So these are the types of things you can do on each blog post, if you are disciplined each time you publish. Again, you can vastly increase the ranking potential, just because you took those extra few minute steps to work these in.

Using Schema to Improve SEO

Phil: I'll give you a last one. This one is to also think about schema. I have my own plug-in for this but there's all those plug-ins in there. There's this extra layer of code that you can add to your blog post or web pages in general, that essentially enables you to tag the data and tell Google what it is, and give it more context so it doesn't have to guess.

A perfect example like this is you might put a review quote on your web page. Well, Google's not going to take that review quote, and say "That's a review quote," and guess that it is, and show that in the search results, unless you tag it as a review and use the tagging system that it has, to tell it what it is.

The more confidence that it has in that piece of content on your web page, the more chance you have of that result showing up directly in the search results, which increases your click-through rates, which again can help pull you up and get you more traffic and also help you actually pull your way up the search engine.

So, schema's one of those things where, it's a little out there, it's definitely an under-the-hood, kind of a geeky type of a deal. But there are plug-ins and things out there that are kind of field-based. The one I made is modeled after Yoast, where you go in there and just fill out forms.

Kathleen: And what's it called, the one that you made?

When you hear of schema, there's two things that people talk about. It's schema which is the markup language, and structured data which is the framework. So those are both of the words in there.

Google's like this alien from another planet. They see an animal. Schema helps you show where the anatomy of each page is, basically, and say, this is this, this is that. And it fits within that structure. The spider just comes right in and sees it, and it's more organized and it just increases the ranking potential.

The more you do this, the more chance you actually have to get in those knowledge boxes. On the side, the rich snippets, your event times start to show up, your star rating starts to show up in search results with the tag.

You get a better chance for those knowledge boxes at the top on position zero, so schema is not the silver bullet, but it increases your chances. And again it's not a whole lot of extra time to work that into your routine. There's a couple of boxes to fill out at the bottom of every page and, boom, you've increased all your chances quite a bit.

Kathleen: Very cool. Schema is something that I think is so interesting. I started researching it several years ago and it is one of those things that you could easily get overwhelmed by. So having plug-ins, especially if your site is on WordPress, check out WP... say it again?

Kathleen: SEO Structured Data Schema.

Phil: Just go to Wordpress.org, and type in... there's a bunch of schema plug-ins, and I think ours is, it's been downloaded I think 130,000 times so it's one of the top two schema plug-ins up there for that purpose.

Kathleen: I like that you SEO-optimized the title of your SEO optimization plug-in. That's very meta.

Creating Your Ebook Outline

Kathleen: So one thing is creating great blogs. From what you've said, the important thing is to take a step back and before you just run and start blogging, to think about the long game. And so when you work with clients, you sit down, and before the blogs begin you've mapped out a whole outline for what will eventually become an e-book, and the blogs become part of that. Talk to me a little bit about that outlining process. What does that look like?

Phil: Most of the time we're usually starting out with some type of a how-to guide so that it positions the client as an authority in their space. We did one just yesterday -- an outdoor living guide for a hardscaping contractor. Or this is "How to hire a lawyer." So you're saying, "You're looking for one, I'm going to tell you how to do it," so, that stance is just like you're teaching or instructing somebody how to do it.

But it also gives us a great format, especially for a new client to be able to start doing these blog posts, where it lends itself to the whole process.

Here's what the process is, here's what it is, here's the materials, here's kind of the steps in the process here are the red flags. Here are the questions to ask.

Each one of those initial e-books we do for a lot of the clients almost follows that same guideline. They make great blog posts. In most cases if they haven't hired a professional digital marketer, they don't even have that kind of content on their web site.

It follows that pattern, where you've got these extensive how-to guides. Again, at the end we usually try to position it so there's charts and things in there that is positioning you against your competitors weakness. Framing them...

When you're saying how-to and how-to guides, it's great to be able to have that list of "should-ask questions," or even a chart. Because now you're making the other people, if they read the book, measure up against your client, right?

So that's the one that we typically will go after, is trying to create these how-to guides. Anything that helps people in the process. I think they have to be sexy enough to where somebody will download it. Pricing guides, anything that's got something in there that looks really, really valuable, that somebody would give up an email for would kind of be the next ones. And then try to frame around it.

But also sometimes when you're doing your keyword research or looking up, if you use a tool like, I can't think of the first one, but one's Answer The Public, right?

Kathleen: Yeah, I love that tool. It's so great.

Phil: Right? So that's a great way to come up with what things are people searching for in terms of how-to or guides. A lot of those questions, you can write whole books around.

So we'll look to that quite a bit, and we'll also look at the keyword research. My favorite one of all time is going to be Google AdWords Keyword Planner, because it's a free one, it's in AdWords, it gives you organic search results in their paid thing, because their whole thing is to make money off of AdWords. It's like 90% of their revenue.

Google gives you the answers in the keyword planner, which is awesome. So if you pull in enough data from your keywords, sometimes the way things pool together lend themselves to books.

The way they group, like the keyword searches, takes some of the guesswork out of it. It ends up looking like a group or a bucket of words or topics to go after. We just kind of use that to lead us into it, because we're always trying to create content for stuff people are actually searching for.

There is this piece of it, where if you're a thought leader, you're trying to put stuff out there that doesn't exist yet. But I still think -- my philosophy is -- you can still marry that thought leadership stuff that you would say to a captive audience into the things that people are actually searching for, and serve both of them.

You never want to just put out the great new ideas first without baking in the stuff in that people are actually searching. That's kind of how we do it.

Publishing Ebooks on Amazon Kindle

Kathleen: Now, let's shift gears for a second, because the piece of this process that I personally find the most fascinating I selfishly want to spend some time on.

You're doing the blogs, you create the outline, you write the blogs with the clients. You stitch it together into an e-book that might be gated behind a landing page on their website, which a lot of us do.

I work with a digital marketing agency, we do that too. But what you've done which I think is very interesting, is then turn it into a Kindle book. That's what I'd really like to spend some time on.

How complicated is that process? How expensive is it? How long does it take? What do you need to do to transform what might be a typical web page e-book into something that works well as a Kindle e-book?

Phil: Most of the e-books that we do are basically just going to be PDF's, so people use it in InDesign, or a lot of the ones that we're doing right now are just in the latest version of Word, which is nice because we don't need to update our clients, and save them as a PDF and they look great in thew website.

Then taking that next step into Kindle is really not all that hard. I guess some people could do it in-house. I didn't know where to go, so I just went out to places like Upwork. I think even right now, I'm not doing all of it myself, but there's places like Upwork, and Fiverr where you can have somebody take a Word document or an initial document, and format it into Kindle, for maybe like 50 bucks.

Kathleen: So there is a specific format that Kindle requests?

Phil: Yeah, and I think it's .mobi. There's a couple different ones, but most of the ones we get are .mobi -- whatever that stands for. I should know, but I don't.

So we write the e-book, we send it off to someone else to format for 50 or 100 bucks. It comes back to us. We've got the flat cover that we use. It's a two-stage process from there.

First one, is you go to Amazon Author Central, which is a subdomain. Just google it -- Amazon Author Central. It takes you to a subdomain, it's an Amazon service. Then you just log in with your Amazon account.

You're able to start building your profile, which is really pretty basic, in there. Put all your info. You can have a video in there -- and you want to do this for sure -- you want to take your website blog feed, and for WordPress it ends up being just your domain forward-slash "feed."

You take that, you just plug it in, and you're able to pull your latest blog posts onto it. But that's Amazon Author Central you use to set it up, and that's the first step.

The next step is to go on to Amazon KDP, I think it's Kindle Direct Publishing, where it's another subdomain. And there's just a step-by-step, WYSIWYG process of about, I think, 20 different things where you will go in and fill in the title, fill in the subtitle, drop in your page title, and your book description. It'll ask you on the page.

They'll self-assign you one of the ISBN numbers, so you don't have to do that. You upload your cover, you upload your book file, and there's a couple of things I think they ask you in terms of content ratings, stuff like that. Press publish, within 24 hours they'll approve it, and you've got it up in there.

Then you go back to your Amazon author page -- once it's published up on Amazon, through your author page, which is that other account, so there's two accounts -- and then find your book, once it's published and you can connect your author profile to the book, and boom, your book shows up and now it's cross-linked. Now you're a published author on Amazon. Boom.

And it's that easy for folks.

Some of this stuff, a lot of the hard work's already there. You're already doing the e-books. It's just a matter of converting it into Kindle and then uploading it.

The last one we just did, the lady, she owns her own landscaping business. She's ahead of the game in terms of really buying into this kind of stuff, which is great. But she did it almost on her own. We coached her through a phone call for 20 minutes, and she self-published it right up there. It's one of those things. They're so happy, they're an author now. They're telling folks about it.

Amazon's Print On Demand Book Process

Phil: The next stage for us then if it's long enough, is to take that Kindle, and leverage Amazon's Create Space, their own print-on-demand service, to print the books out. It's not a whole lot of extra effort. But you have to take that original file, have somebody format it into a print format version. Instead of using that flat version that you can for a Kindle cover, you need to come up with a book, front and back and the spine. There's a step-by-step process for it. But there's folks on Upwork or Fiverr that'll help you build a Create Space formatted cover. There's a little WYSIWYG process that takes you through even telling you how many pages does it have and helps calculate the spine width. It's really not that hard.

That's the other thing that people really want, and she wants. "Oh that's cool, an e-book. But can you get me one of these printed things so that I can hand it out?" Because that really feels like-

Kathleen: Like it's official.

Phil: Exactly. I got that. And sometimes what the coolest thing about all of this is, if you coordinate the effort like I've done with my own books, and some of my client books and you get everybody on board to beg, borrow, and steal, and coordinate the marketing effort, when the book launches, you can propel it to a bestseller status for a period of time.

On this one here, I'm showing you, you've got an Amazon bestselling sticker. So not only did I make all 12 authors in this case authors, I made them bestselling authors. I'm now permanently, our agency is now permanently part of the career bucket list milestones that they've made, and we made everybody really happy about that.

That's just out of coordination. Because the way Amazon's bestselling algorithm works is it's just based on how many people are buying stuff in a period of time. And it changes week to week. So if you do it strategically, not only can you make your clients authors, and yourself authors, you can actually make yourself a bestselling author, and all you need for it is to show a screenshot up in the top 10 of their bestsellers list, or hot new releases, and now you're a bestseller, which is a great way again to propel that and make you an authority, your branding, all that kind of stuff.

Because now I go out, and they're the only authors really in town that can go out and hand this to their clients and say, "We wrote this book. We're Amazon bestsellers."

That type of thing really differentiates you.

This is something that everybody can do. But I think for a lot of folks it seems so far out there. But it's not. It's so attainable, it's almost ridiculous, you know what I mean?

It's just a matter of knowing that it's there and knowing it exists and making that part of your routine.

But again, to me, it all comes back to just a little strategy in the beginning. Because it does become overwhelming if you try to think "I'm going to do all of that." If you're doing the blogging thing from the beginning, the book is being written in your normal course of stuff.

All of a sudden you've got the blog posts, and it just kind of starts to take care of itself. Whereas if you start to say, "I need to write a book all at once," it just seems like something that's never going to happen, because it's too big of a project to handle.

How Much Does It Cost to Self Publish on Amazon?

Kathleen: So a couple of really kind of tactical questions for you. First of all, is there any cost associated with going through this process with creating the Kindle book? Does Amazon charge a fee to get it listed?

Kathleen: No fee. Wow. So, you've got your eBook on your website, and you could, for zero money, make it an eBook on Amazon.

Then the next question is, you talked about algorithms on Amazon and how things get into the best selling list, and you mentioned a certain number of people buying the book. So, when you're working with clients, and they're loading these Kindle editions on Amazon, is it set up so that there's a price to get the book?

Kathleen: And how do you figure out pricing for that?

Phil: Well, some people put 'em up for free. I don't think they have the chances to rank like other ones, but there's two ways to think about this. One is, in this case, we've got the How to Hire Lawyers book, which we set the price higher on the book, because a big part of what they want to do is give it away, and when it has value like that, the giveaway is higher.

Kathleen: You mean the hard copy book is higher because it's hard copy?

Phil: The hard copy, but even the Kindle is set up the same way. You end up setting two profiles up, and then they kind of marry 'em together, if you offer a hard-cover and a Kindle.

The other train of thought is like this landscaping one we did yesterday. That is priced at $1.99 for the Kindle. So there is some value to it. If you want to buy it, it's really low, so it's almost a no brainer if somebody wants to buy it type of thing. At the end of the day, you're not going to make any money off of selling the book.

Phil: So, whatever fits your goal. For sure, if you had a $1.99 book, 99 cents, but if it's like $3.99 or $1.99 at least it's something and then if you had a good emailing list and say "Hey, do this, there's a coupon inside to buy it for $1.99" and she's got some like that at the end of hers.

It's like it's a 300 or 500 dollar off type deal where if you can, if you've got an email, some way to blast people and get those, even a small, relatively small number; a few dozens, or scores, even a hundred or two in sales, it can help propel you up that best seller list pretty quickly.

Kathleen: And then, so you-

Phil: But yeah, to answer your question, you set the price. You want to think about your end goal. You want it to be high so it's got giveaway value or low so you can sell a lot, maybe, you know what I mean?

Kathleen: Yeah. So you also talked about turning the book into a hard copy and being able to do that through Amazon.

Let's say I've done my ebook, it's on Kindle and I want to do what your client is doing and have hard copies to give away. Talk to me about the cost structure involved there. Obviously Amazon must charge something, is there a minimum number of hard copies you have to order, how does that pricing work?

Phil: Totally. It's so beautiful. First of all no, there is no cost at all. It is totally free which will blow you away. And the cool thing about CreateSpace is it's print on demand. So, even the book, we self-published SEO for Growth, which actually did sell a lot of copies, and we actually made some money off of it, but we did it through CreateSpace.

So, when I want to order copies of SEO for Growth it ends up three dollars per copy, whether I order one book or 300 like I did last week, because we're gonna do a seminar off of it. And it's just that, so it's-

Kathleen: So you said, how much is it per copy?

Kathleen: Three dollars per copy. Wow.

Phil: This one ends up being like $1.50 or $2.00 a copy.

Kathleen: And that's the How to Hire Lawyers-

Phil: And that's your only expense.

Kathleen: Because its thinner?

Phil: It's crazy, it's awesome.

Kathleen: How come everybody's not doing this?

I joined Duct Tape Marketing with John Jantsch. The first summit I went to, a guy that's now a good friend of mine handed me his book and I was like "Gosh, one day I hope to have my own book."

I mean at first I just wanted one to be able to hand out. It was the coolest thing ever. But I was like "You know what? Someday I'll be able to do this."

Well, he heard me talk on SEO, and he liked what I had to say, so he invited me on my first book project, which is was a best seller. Six months later I was a best selling author. And that really has changed my whole life. It's opened so many doors and stuff.

Phil: You just don't know how easy it is, because it seems so hard.

Kathleen: Well now everybody's going to know how easy it is, because we're going to tell them.

Phil: I've been telling this for a while and nobody really ... they still think it's hard to do, no matter what, but it-

I can see you frothing there. It's like-

He's a really smart guy and in the interview he talked about how he does these crowdsourced blog posts. And he does it because it saves him time, but, because he's highlighting the contributions of all these other people in the blog, it naturally lends itself to other people sharing the posts. And he grew his organic traffic by something like 600% in six months doing this.

He's like, "Not only is it easy, but you'll spend less time creating blogs if you do this than if you do it the normal way." And he goes, "And the crazy thing is," I'll never forget him saying this, "I tell everybody that I do it and I haven't seen a single person yet go and copy me."

Kathleen: So, you can lead a horse to water, right?

Phil: Trying to get a client to write their own blog post is hard enough. Then you're talking about trying to write a book and it's like ugh. But if you're there to do it and help them along, then obviously it works.

From Book Publishing to Podcast Guest Interviews

Phil: You know once I started doing this podcast guesting thing and seeing how much value that's brought to me and now I see not every client's going to want to be on podcasts. But the ones that really want to dominate and be the 800 pound gorillas, they get it and they want to do it and that's just kind of the next thing.

But it all comes from the book, because it's so much easier to get on shows if you've got something to demonstrate that you're an authority.

Phil: Something to basically pitch or a reason why you're doing a campaign. And a lot of podcast hosts don't know they get the one sheet, was it an ebook?

They look at the topic, they look at whether their audience will like it, they see you wrote a book on it, and for a lot of folks on some shows, that's enough to get people on their show as a demonstrated expert in that space. And then once they get some stuff it really does help elevate their authority, so again, it starts with a book, comes with a blog post, comes with the keyword research.

Kathleen: So that's the last link in the chain really?

The book gets published, whether it's a hard copy or eBook version, and then the last link in the chain is really you guys helping the, now Amazon author, get on as a guest on other people's podcasts to be interviewed. And not only does that then put them in front of the audiences who subscribe to those podcasts but it gives them backlinks and things like that from show notes and so that brings it all full circle.

Phil: What really blew my mind, which I discovered with the first podcast guest interview that I did, is that a lot of times people will show transcription notes on the page, but a lot of them don't. So the first one I was on last year, WP Chick who's a WordPress podcast, I said, "If you're not going to transcribe this, can I do it? Transcribe it and put it on my website as a guest post and give you a link back?"

Well now if you google 'SEO benefits of podcasting', the notes from her show rank number one globally on my website. I mean, this is gonna seem like it's another SEO thing and even on the podcast guesting piece, it's not just about the people listening to it, there's all sorts of little things you can do there to get 10X out of it.

Kathleen: Well I do post the transcript.

Phil: Good for you because that's what-

Kathleen: I mean, it's a no brainer. There are so many services out there and I just send the audio file out and it comes back to me two hours later, fully transcribed for-

Phil: And they're 3,000 to 5,000 words, so there's your long form post.

Phil: I mean, so for me, that's my long form. I structure it out, I put sub titles on, I put quotes, we'll put images on it, and looks like a blog post and they rank.

Kathleen: Yeah, I mean the transcription for this will be tremendously long, because it's an hour long conversation.

Kathleen: No, no, no. It's great. We had a lot to talk about right?

Measuring ROI

Kathleen: So, before we finish up, I have one question to kind of close the loop on this discussion, which is, tell me about, are there any kind of quantifiable results that you can reference in terms of the impact that doing this has on your client's businesses?

Phil: I think for sure it feeds into the, in particularly in the SEO, having them get into the rankings. This contributes to that, so I can't really always say that this is the book thing that happened to it. But, I can say that it does help clients, including myself, get on shows and the shows do have a lot of quantifiable results. There's some cases, like myself, and I've probably been on probably 60 or 70 in the last year, podcast guest interviews are my third biggest source of clients right now and I had no idea that it would help them.

And I started my own podcast, and people like what I have to say. You're listening, somebody's gonna ... somebody on your podcast is gonna connect with what I say and they're gonna subscribe to my podcast, because they like podcasts right?

So all of a sudden you pick up these subscribers and backlinks-

Kathleen: And so the name of your podcast, so they know what to look for?

Phil: And there's a little story behind that, right, where I actually named it that for a reason, because we tried to do a little bit of our outbound last year and failed miserably. But now when we got people calling up locally, at the C level, and saying "Can I have you on the Local Business Leaders podcast?" -- the response rates are a lot better than "Can we build you a new website?"

Phil: The quantifiable result for us and for me is getting actual clients off of it, getting the backlinks, seeing the traffic that comes off of it from the show and that kind of stuff.

And when we're doing this it's kind of hard to say, can you pull a piece out of it because we're doing the whole strategy and strategically when you're doing the keyword research and the blogging and the eBooks and getting up on Amazon, collectively we can just see that it's generating more leads and better, organic visibility.

And that's really, I think, the end result.

The best part about all this is, it doesn't take that much more work or effort. And the guesting thing is so powerful and it's like the client's doing your homework for you.

Phil: You get them booked, and now all of a sudden they're getting on shows, they're getting their backlinks for you, they're talking, they're spreading the message, they're doing the content and word is getting out. It's almost like they're doing some of the work for you and it's just huge, massive benefits on it.

There's that piece of it. I don't know how you quantify that piece of it, but the fact that you're helping elevate a business owner's personal brand and story in a way they can see -- it just really changes the game in terms of the relationship.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's tremendous. And from what you're saying, it's really about the doors that open and where they could lead you to, that the real value lies.

Wrapping Up...

Kathleen: So interesting. I feel like I could go on and on ask you questions forever, but I'm sure you have other things you need to do. Before we close out, there are two questions I ask every guest and I'm curious to hear your answers to these.

The first is, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?

Phil: One of the things I really love -- and we've tried it and seen a lot of success with it in the last couple years also -- is the fact that Google is giving up a lot of search results, especially locally or at the niche level, to aggregators who put lists of "top ten best" something. It dominates local. I mean, locally if you search for anything you're going to see, depending on where you are, you're going to see Yelp or HomeAdvisor or Angie's List or Yellow Pages or maybe BBB. You're going to see half the results in some cases are coming up as top ten lists.

This top ten strategy, is very, very powerful in terms of ranking. A lot of them are pay-to-play in some shape or form. I guess they're seeing it somehow as being unbiased because they're showing multiple links to competitor websites that you would never see on the individual, the end seller's website. So, for that or for whatever reason, they rank really well and it's great because they work.

Not only do they rank well, but they've got that list where they've done some of the homework for you, so they end up generating a lot of leads for people.

So we started to develop our own top ten company and it's been amazing. I mean it really is, we've done one at the national level that ranks for a lot of really competitive things and helps generate leads for us.

At the local level it's just absolutely crushing it because it ranks number one for lots of different things. Best plumbers, best home builders, the best real estate agents. They all come to it, one, because they want to be on the lists and they ask you, "Can I be on a list?" and it's this third party thing that you have.

But also it generates leads for them where people are saying, if you get a call to action or you got a coupon or something, all of a sudden you're generating and it makes the clients really sticky now. Not only are you doing their SEO and their digital, you made them top ten and they get an award on something that actually outranks everybody else, that's something.

It's something that we're copying and it works, because it works a lot better when you can do it locally or you know, because we can put a lot more content and things there than just aggregating the things, but, the guys that are doing it out there, and you see this happening a lot, are doing it because it really, really works.

And so, pick any one of those that you see. Do a best home service, pick a home service in your city, in your metro area and type best or just type in whatever it is and I guarantee you you're gonna see 50% of the results being one of those top ten lists. Pick one of those and I like what they're doing, because it's working.

Kathleen: Yeah, you see that with marketing agencies too. We were just talking about that internally.

So, the second question is, obviously, the whole theme of our conversation has been around how much and how quickly digital marketing is changing and so I'm really curious how you stay educated and stay abreast of best practices.

Phil: I'm still always zeroed in on SEO, but for different reasons than I was before.

In the old days it was more about, "I just want to rank." But now, I don't look at SEO and Google just in terms of the results. I look as them being almost an important KPI for marketing in general. And I say that because they're trying to understand, they're using all these things like ranking and artificial intelligence to suck up as much information as they can about your organization, you as a person, and use that to rank.

So it's a much broader scope right now that following Google to some extent helps all of your marketing. I like to follow this one blog called SE Round Table. It's called Search Engine Round Table, so I think it's seroundtable.com. What those guys do is they follow the chatter from SEO guys that are in these forums, and he kinda aggregates in one place. Because Google doesn't tell you anything.

Phil: I mean they'll put general statements out there, smoke and mirrors and some of it, but the guys on the street, like myself, that really follow it and have scores of customers, I know from day to day if something happened on the thing and then I run to this one website where they collect the chatter and you see people, the guy that aggregates it, his name is Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Round Table, aggregates all this kinda stuff. And you can kinda see and bounce stuff.

And then once people start dissecting it then they'll tell you, you get some ideas of what things might have changed. Is it a backlink thing? Are they starting to count reviews more here? People seeing, focusing on social media signals and getting more different ones. So you kind of get a sense of what might be working from the people that are doing it on the street...

Phil: ...in an aggregated place versus trying to listen to a spokesman -- somebody that you can't really, you can't really take their word.

Kathleen: That's a good one. I haven't heard that one before, so I'm gonna have to check that out.

Phil: It sounds really geeky, but it's ... to me it's more about markets. If you look at SEO and Google as more than marketing now, you can get more insight out of it.

Phil: Yeah, to what looks like just a geeky, little SEO site.

Kathleen: Yeah. That's great. So, I'm sure like me, people who are listening have a million questions they want to ask you. What is the best way for somebody who has listened today to get in touch with you?

Phil: I've got our main website that's kind of the little website that could, the , although since I've been doing more personal branding it's funny, I can't market myself as Kansas City, so I'm actually coming up with a different brand that's a little less City, Kansas City focused. But kcwebdesigner.com is kinda the little website that could, where I still post and where my podcast is and stuff.

Seoforgrowth.com is the book and everything that we do is in that book basically. There's a 1,000 word book called Art of SEO that really gets under the hood. I tried to take a lot of what we learned, boiled it down, and put some of our specific tactics in.

We get a lot of people that call us up with very little budget, and the book is "Here's everything that we do -- it's execute it yourself or hire us, we might be able to do it for better and faster, but you have to pay for it," but everything that we do is in that book.

So check out seogrowth.com and it's not one of these things that people go put it out there. I actually tried to put ten years of experience and how to shortcut people.

And then if you're into that podcast thing, podcast guesting, I mean we could talk about a whole show on that, but that's, that's the fastest way to great backlinks and personal authority.

Anybody can do it on their own. I think they should, because you can write the book, you can do ... everything you can, you can do on your own. Including self pitching yourself to shows and working yourself up the chain.

There's tons of podcasts now, and they're not going anywhere. Lots of them are looking for guests, and other ones, established like yours, probably get pitched all the time, but there's a lot of people that are starting them out that need guests.

Well, if you're just getting started and you have a good story to tell, you can start doing these on your own just by your own outreach and it's amazing how much great SEO you can do for yourself and your own personal branding if you go do some of your own stuff. But if you want somebody to do it for you, as we do it, there's other great ones out there. I've got a little bit more of focus on the SEO piece of it, because I think nobody else really understands the full SEO benefit. Most podcast booking things are pitched for a couple reasons but not necessarily for the SEO and I think even for the reputation management thing that we focus on, but-

Phil: ... that's the other place.

Kathleen: Awesome, well I will put links to all three of those websites in the show notes, so definitely if you're listening, check that out and you'll be able to learn more about all of these different ventures that Phil's involved in.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you're listening and you like what you heard, I would really appreciate a review on iTunes Stitcher or the platform of your choice.

And if you know somebody doing kick-ass, inbound marketing work please tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them.

Phil: Thanks Kathleen, you've been really gracious, thanks for having me on your show.

Kathleen: Great to have you.

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