#dare i say it's become very samey

[ficsonpost-its]

killing myself a little bit more every time i see the words "slick" or "mewl" in smut

[thr-333]

Drastic Measures- Part 11

@daminette-december2019-2020

~Snow globe~

Gabriel: Nathalie why haven't you canceled my card?! Nathalie: oh were you going to use that to pay my pay rise for moving to a different continent or to pay my last 6 years of overtime? Gabriel: Nathalie- Nathalie: You’re welcome to do it yourself sir. Gabriel:....... I can’t do anything without you can I? Nathalie: No you cant and make sure to remember that next pay day.

Ao3

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“So why are we here?” Damian asks getting dragged around the mall by the two.

“Because if we’re decorating the pet stores we need inspiration,” Marinette holds him by his elbow in case he tries to escape again, “And Adrien's having fun,”

“Why don’t we just hire someone for that?”

“I haven't found a good babysitter yet,” Marinette smiles as she knows Damian glares at her, “The style of the store is the most important thing, it’s what people interact with the most and a representation of our company,”

“Tt,” Marinette smiles knowing she won. 

They follow Adrien into an incredibly overpriced knick-knacks store, exactly what they’re looking for. She jots down notes in her book looking at the glasswork on the figurines or the beautifully painted porcelain.

“I think every store should have the same color coordination for each section,” Marinette suggests writing down a potential palette based on the plates she was looking at, “So people always know where to find something no matter the store,”

“How many people do you think are going to multiple stores?” Damian scoffs.

“We will be, besides its a decorative thing, a bit of paint on the wall or shelf, hm maybe each section should have a range of shades to keep it from being too samey,”

“I take it you’re in charge of this part now?”

“Guess so,” Marinette hums looking over the shelves for more inspiration, Adrien looking over a large glass sculpture that she may have to talk him out of buying, “So did you talk to Adrien?”

“Oh no,” Damian catches her attention, “He talked I was expected to listen,”

“So you make any decisions?” She spots a little china doll on a high shelf.

“I’m not going to run away if that’s what you’re asking,” Damian reaches over her grabbing the doll before she knocks over shelves trying to jump up and reach it.

“But If you were-”

“I’m not,” Damian hands the doll over.

“But if you were,” He gives her a withered glare, “Where would you go?”

“… Somewhere I can paint I suppose,” He says after some consideration.

“That's a start!” Marinette exclaims, almost dropping the doll.

“I can paint anywhere,” Damian catches it before she can.

“Ah,” They go back to pursuing the shelves, Damian taking it upon himself to hold the delicate decorations for some reason.

“... Where would you go?” He asks eventually, Marinette tries to keep the smile to herself as to not scare him off.

“I used to think I’d like to go somewhere with lots of snow,”

“Is that so?” Damian hums consideringly.

“Yeah but then I came here and realized the cold sucks,” Marinette's jaw actually drops as Damian laughs, not a snort or a scoff and actual chuckle! “Hollll- did you just laugh?! Did I just get you to laugh!? Are there cameras around?! Do you think they’ll let me keep the footage?!”

“Calm down,” Damian places a hand on her head to stop her bouncing,  “Besides I think your friend is about to make a ludicrous purchase,”

“Adrien!” Marinette snaps as he tries to pay for a glass sculpture twice his size, “Can it fit on the back of a motorcycle?!”

“.... no,” Adrien hangs his head like a toddler being told off.

“Then put it down!” Marinette chides dragging him away from the sculpture and out of the store. She already had to fit three on them on hers. Damian is lagging behind, Marinette resigns herself to having to drag them both through the mall like children when he finally catches up.

“Here take this,” She startles a snow globe in a clear box being pressed into her hands, “Now you can look at the snow without getting cold,”

“That's so nice,” She bites down on the follow-up question of where the hell is Damian and what did you do with him.

“No, it’s bribery,” Ah there he is, “Don’t tell anyone I laughed,”

“So you admit you laughed,” Marinette smirks, letting Adrien go look at different stores.

“Besides,” Damian sharply changes the topic, “If you want to see the snow so badly just stay inside a cabin or something,”

“Well maybe you can come with me,” Marinette hums looking at the snowflakes fall over a winter forest, two little people by a campfire, “I bet it would be beautiful to paint,”

“Maybe so,” Damian agrees before giving her a side look, “Also you’re a horrible influence,”

“Who me? It’s not like I gave you the idea to run away,” He had come to her with that all on his own.

“No you didn’t,” Damian easily agrees, walking along with Marinette.

“Well if you’re still in the rebellion mood why don’t you join the pink hair squad?”

“I am not dying my hair pink,” Damian rolls his eyes.

“Just a little bit?” Marinette steps in front of him walking backward.

“No,” Damian brushes past her, Marinette lets him go ahead.

“Adrien I just had the best idea,” Marinette turns to her side where Adrien is not. Marinette looks behind her spotting Adrien in the crowd- getting picked up and carried away by a stranger! “ADRIEN!”

Damian hears her shout bolting forward. Grabbing a baton he apparently had the whole time. 

“Damian, watch out! They might have feelings!” Damian actually stops in his tracks, turning back to glare at her.

“...”

“...”

“Hey guys,” Adrien speaks up, “I’m kind of being kidnapped,”

“Right!” Marinette wipes the grin off her face, punching the kidnapper right on the jaw. He drops Adrien who lands on his feet, “Do I need a child leash for you young man?”

“Please don’t my Father had one of those for me,” Adrien brushes himself off as the kidnapped stumbles to the ground.

“Weren’t you never allowed out of the house?” Marinette asks as Damian steps forward to pull the kidnapper's arms behind their back.

“Exactly,”

“Not that this isn't riveting,” Damian says in the most bored tone, turning to the kidnapped, “Who hired you?”

“Garbeil Agreste sent me to fetch his son,”

“Yeah, here we call that kidnapping,” Adrien snarks back, “Great can’t the guy just leave me alone? What's his problem it’s like-”

“Nope!” Damian drops the kidnapper walking away, “Not today! Not again!”

“... well that's just rude,” Adrien huffs as someone calls the police.

“Don’t worry,” Marinette smiles, “As I was trying to tell you I have a plan,”

 ---

 “MARINETTE!”

“Hm wonder what that could be about,” Marinette flips the page, continuing to read peacefully while seated for breakfast with the rest of the Waynes.

“Dupain-Cheng I know you are responsible for this,” Damian leans over her, still in a towel and dripping wet, oh and with pink hair that bits kinda important.

“You did this to him?” Jason laughs, not so subtly taking pictures with glee.

“Relax it’s temporary dye,” Marinette grabs Damain’s shoulder before he can jump over the table and dismember Jason.

“How temporary?” Damian demands, Marinette just turns to a new page with no drips of water on it.

“Just wash it a few more times and it will come right out,” Damian huffs again stalking out of the room, all eyes on her.

“... I can’t believe you survived that,” Tim says with awe, “Actually even Damians not stupid enough to risk that,”

She’ll ask what he means later.

 ---

 “Temporary Dupain-cheng?” Damian glares at her, still very much pink and still very much angry.

“Alright maybe not,” Marinette tries to suppress a giggle, “It looks good tho,”

“Dupain-cheng you will fix this and you will fix this now,” She’s not lying he does look good and she does blush.

“Well, we could go to the hairdresser-”

“No,” Damian snaps, crossing his arms like it's final.

“Do you trust me to dye your hair myself?”

“Absolutely not,” at least not after this.

“Then you’re stuck like that,” Marinette shrugs, Damian groans sinking into the seat behind him.

“This is all your fault Dupain-cheng,”

“Ha, how long are you going to call me that?” Damian leans forward fixing her with a venomous glare.

“Forever,”

 ---

 “Hey Robin- are you wearing a swimming cap under your hood?” Ladybug cuts herself off trying to take off his hood.

“It’s a lightweight head protector,” Robin grabs her wrist, but Ladybug is stronger.

“Yeah no,” Ladybug pushes his hood off, “It’s a swimming cap, what is killer croc up to something?”

“You’re hilarious,” Robin scoffs looking away as if there isn’t a real smile tugging at his mouth.

“Well I can’t let Chat take all the glory,” Ladybug shrugs coming to sit next to him in what has become their usual spot, “So what's the deal? Gasp did you lose a dare?”

“Did you just say gasp?” Robin asks incredulously, “And no it’s not a dare it’s a rather unfortunate prank,”

“Oh please please tell me they did the same to Batman, Please,” Ladybug his holding both his shoulders, Robin completely turned towards her as she looks at him desperately.

“........ yes,”

 ---

 “Marinette,”

“Yes Bruc-” Marinette chokes then tries to choke down her laugh.

“I feel you may have gotten carried away, I would like to remind you-” 

“So sorry to interrupt,” Marinette interrupts, “But that wasn't me,”

“Are you sure?” Bruce is studying her.

“Yeah I only messed with Damian's  bathroom,” Marinette turns completely towards him, “Were you using Damian's bathroom?”

“No,”

“Then it wasn't me,” Marinette shrugs turning away.

“Then who did it?”

“A true mystery,”

 ---

 “So you’re sure you want me to do this,” Marinette asks again, the dye in one hand Damian sitting in front of her.

“Dupain-Cheng I swear-”

“Ah, if I help you, you have to stop calling me that,” She tells him, pulling the black dye away for extra effect.

“I only call you that because of what you did,” Damian glares at her reflection in the mirror, “If you want to get back in my good graces then do this,”

“Alright, you’re sure you don’t want to keep a little pink?”

“Marinette,”

“Alright, alright,” Marinette ruffles his hair while she can get away with it, “I did like your pink hair,”

“It got in the way of...” He trails off.

“Way of what?”

“Nothing,” Marinette drops it, the topic not the dye.

“Well Damian,” She spreads the dye through his hair, “Welcome to your first step of rebellion,”

Little did either realize how true that was.

--------

no tag list :P

[lemontwst]

Consider this: Vil, Jamil, Ruggie and Sebek getting third prostrate milked to an inch of its life (they’re screaming and moaning, tearful eyes and a splotchy face with their tounge sticking out and their limbs twitching madly. Bonus points if the cum is collected into a cup and the boys drink it)

after careful deliberation, the council has decided that you, anon, are the person with the biggest brain on this planet. we pray your days are lustful and your boys dumb subby sluts. also i hope you don’t mind that i improvised a bit with the cum eating stuff, i didn’t want to make these too samey!

content warnings: degradation, cum eating, mindbreak, b/dsm, (light) asphyxiation.

𝓥𝓲𝓵 𝓢𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓮𝓷𝓱𝓮𝓲𝓽

There is something almost primordial about your desire to break Vil into tiny, useless pieces. Maybe it’s the fact that perfection is his entire raison d'être, the only thought that bounces around in that little empty head of his 24/7.

The feeling of sadistic satisfaction that courses through your veins when you take the queen down is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. After hours of torrid overstimulation you seem to have achieved your goal, because right now, your Vil looks like a common whore. His hair is falling out of his pins, a messy curtain of gold framing his sweaty top-model features. Mascara runs down his face, his eyeshadow is completely ruined, and yet he still manages to look so unbelievably hot, chest pressed against the floor and ass up and at your mercy.

“You sound like such a slut when you moan, Vil.” He lets out a long, wanton whine when you pull back the dildo you’ve been using to torment his asshole. The repeated stretching feels so delicious, his hole is hot and dripping with his own cum, a gift left behind by your cruel fingers a few minutes before. Back arched in a submissive arch, Vil’s tongue sticks out and traces his moist lips as he imagines licking your fingers clean, the filthy image makes his dripping cock throb and ache for your touch, but that’s not how you want to play today.

No, you want to make him come over and over again with his ass and his ass alone. You want to milk him dry, to hear him cry and beg for a release you’re not sure you’re in the mood to grant him.

“Just...like...that......” Vil meowls, his fingers helplessly grasping at the cold floor, looking for something, anything to latch onto. When he doesn’t find it, he hastily moves his hands to his ass, grabs the firm flesh so tight it curves between his fingers and spreads his butt cheeks, still managing to look as graceful as a swan despite the fact that he’s inviting you to plow him harder, “More...more...! Make a mess of my insides!” His hips shake like crazy every time you thrust the dildo deep inside his ass, his precum keeps flowing out of his dick like a broken dam, pooling under him in a disgusting display. It’s reaching places that my fingers can’t! This is the first time I’ve been touched there, the first time that my prostate got pounded like this!~

...Yeah, you’re done with this. Vil lets out a disappointed cry as you take out the dildo in a swift, rough movement. His wide eyes find yours and you’ve never seen him look so upset, “Wha-- why? I was so clo--ugyah!!” He squeals when you spank his ass hard. Unperturbed, you do it again and the sound resonates through the empty room alongside Vil’s piggy noises. The lewd body in front of you shakes and then goes painfully still. C-coming! Vil twitches, tears running down his face as he feels his cum dripping out of his twitching cock in thick, shameful globs.

Then, like a puppet whose strings have been cut off, he slumps to the floor, panting and shaking with a stunned expression on his face. He yelps when you spank him again, his mind racing as he tries to come up with the right thing to say.

“Sho...rry.......I’m shorry......!” He whines, sounding nothing like the stubborn, untouchable queen you know. “Please...forgive me...master....” Vil sighs, giving you a long, adoring look from beneath his long, fluttering lashes.

“I’m not sure you deserve it.” You speak plainly, holding back a smirk as Vil freezes up. Your boyfriend looks at you like you just slapped him and well, technically you did, but he was enjoying it. Now he just looks...terrified, miserable like you’ve never seen him.

“Still, while you were squirming and crying like it’s mating season, I got you a little present. If you’ll accept it, I’ll forgive you for being so brazen.” Without looking away from his confused face, you slide the small chalice that had been hiding under his dick this entire time in front of him. It’s a beautiful piece you got from the headmaster for Christmas, a golden cup with the rim decorated with rubies. Like the Holy Grail, except this is a cup of sin filled to the brim with Vil’s cum.

“......Eh.....eh........eeh....?” He mutters dumbly, trembling from the overstimulation that still wrecks him from head to toe, “Tha-that’s my...mine...?” His empty eyes focus on the chalice, “Are you going to...make me drink that...?”

“Do you want it?” You raise an amused eyebrow.

Of course not! That’s disgusting! It looks like condensed milk, that you would dare show him such a perverted thing is.......it’s.......his...... like thick cream...the proof of your love for him, and his love for you... hot and sticky, going down his throat-- Vil pants like he just ran a marathon, his dignity beaten, bruised and forgotten, and eagerly nods his head, his empty eyes never leaving the chalice.

"I asked you a question, you dumb bitch."

Immediately snapping back to attention at the sound of your cold voice, Vil looks up at you and smiles sultrily through the drool and the tears, wiggling his ass as if to tempt you, "Yes, please master ♡ aaah~" he opens his pink mouth and sticks out his tongue, looking more like a dog than a man.

You bring the chalice to his lips and smile when Vil doesn’t even flinch. The smell is so pungent, but he doesn't seem to notice as he gulps down mouthful after mouthful of sperm.

The realization that he’s doing something so fucked up with you makes his cock throb once again. How many times can a man come in one day? Vil shakes and struggles to keep himself propped up on his elbows, his head shuts down and he swallows another mouthful of cum. A dry orgasm. Sweat runs down his shoulders and back and he gleefully looks up at you. His fingers twitch, tears spill from his eyes, the thought of being fucked by you until he dies burns every one of his synapses and he sighs, disappointed that nothing came out. Ah...I cant drink like this.

𝓢𝓮𝓫𝓮𝓴 𝓩𝓲𝓰𝓿𝓸𝓵𝓽

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. You watch with mild interest as Sebek’s big frame convulses in his bondage, droplets of sweat running down his face and chest in wet little trails that make you want to lick him all over. ...Or fan him a bit with one of his notebooks, seeing as he looks like he might be on the verge of a heatstroke.

Your shibari technique has become quite refined, if you do say so yourself! Sebek can do nothing but jerk and squirm against the red rope that wraps around his body like a work of art, stuck on his knees in front of you with his hands tied firmly behind his back and his engorged dick bobbing up and down every time he convulses. The rope has worked some beautiful scarlet lines all over his pale skin. You can already tell he’ll make sure his clothes will cover them up properly, but the both of you will know that the harsh rope burns are there, and Sebek will go hard every time the friction against his shirt makes the pain flare up. It will be just another one of your dirty little secrets.

“Ah--! (y/n)-sama…hm!!” You mercifully lower the vibration of the toy stuck in his ass, giving him a few seconds to collect his thoughts (which are very few and far between). Then, just as he opens his mouth to beg for mercy, you flick the remote to the highest setting all in one go. Sebek screams and convulses once again, his face a sloppy mess as he’s brought violently to his climax, “I can’t...move….ah…now I’m...ah!”

But the satisfaction doesn’t come and Sebek is in shambles, tears falling down his cheeks in big, pathetic drops. The cock ring at the base of his member strains against the flow of blood trapped desperately in his shaft, his dick standing taller and harder than you’ve ever seen it. But you don’t remove the cock ring. You just stare at him with a sadistic twinkle in your eyes.

“Aaaah (y/n)-sama…!! this is too much...kuh--?!” Sebek jolts, eyes wide as he grits his teeth. Again?! His stupid moans fill the room, a concert of long and shaky ‘aaaahs’ and ‘ooohs’ as he sticks out his tongue and drools all over himself, “Ah! I’m going to cum!” He’s nothing short of delirious as an unsatisfying climax hits him again. his entire body tenses up only for a wave of desperation to come crashing into him as his cum remains cruelly trapped inside his dick. Won’t come out won’t come out won’t come out! He sobs, giving you a pleading look from under his wet lashes, “(y/n)-sama...there is sho much of you i-inside m-my head!” He’s not making sense anymore. Sebek vaguely recognizes this, but it doesn’t matter. The only thing he wants right now is to cum his brains out here on his knees in front of you.

“Aww, you’re so cute.” You lower the intensity of the vibrator and reach out to gently pat his head. Sebek immediately nuzzles into your hand, like a big, affectionate dog. “Don’t worry, love, I’ll make you come right away.” You wipe a tear away with your thumb and almost burst out laughing at the look of immense relief that immediately crosses his face. 

“Aah...! Thank you very much! Thank you very--” Sebek’s voice dies in his throat as he watches you get up and walk away, exiting the room without looking back. For a brief, heartbreaking moment he thinks you're going to leave him there. Panic settles in his stomach the more you linger, so far away from him, too far away from him… 

But then you come back, casually tossing the jacket of his school uniform in front of him and Sebek exhales a loud sigh of relief. He doesn’t get it.

“I’m turning it up again, Sebek.” You wave the vibrator’s remote in front of his face and he gulps nervously, but still gives you an eager nod of his head. Despite the warning, he’s not prepared for how terribly you tease him in the moments that follow. His voice comes out louder and louder as you turn the vibration up and down, up and down. The uneven rhythm makes Sebek see stars, his shoulders lock up painfully, his mind spirals down a filthy, lusty hole as he calls out your name like he’s praying. He’s so close. And when he does cum, he lets out the loudest scream yet, jerking forward so violently you worry for a second he might lose his balance and hit his forehead against the ground.

He doesn’t. His torso jerks forward and his head hangs heavy, his disheveled hair dripping with sweat and obscuring his eyes as he recoils from his earth shattering orgasm. Sebek blinks in and out of consciousness, barely registering the feeling of his cum leaking out of his dick in long spurts. Still coming out… he licks his salty lips, amazed by how much cum you can pull out of him.

That’s when he sees it, at the corner of his hazy vision. His semen splattered all over his uniform. All over his Diasomnia. Sebek takes long, heavy breaths, feeling something in his mind dissolve. Something important, like a part of him.

“Sebek, you’re so dirty.” You smile sweetly at him, like an angel he thinks, even as you bring the dirty jacket up to his face, right under his nose. “Clean it up.”

He slowly tilts his head up, his body is so tired it feels like he’s drowning in quicksand, then he sticks his tongue out and methodically wipes the semen off the fabric, looking up at you from time to time to see if he’s pleasing you. The tip of his tongue tastes like something bitter mixed with fabric freshener. His hot breaths puff up as soon as they come out of his mouth and he can feel himself getting hard again. As his thoughts turn to lascivious little scenarios of you making him climax over and over again, he obediently licks his cum off of something that was important to him once. Oh well. It’s not you, so he can’t really bring himself to care.

𝓡𝓾𝓰𝓰𝓲𝓮 𝓑𝓾𝓬𝓬𝓱𝓲

Ruggie couldn’t stand your fingers inside him at first. He would get so nervous, trying to deflect every time you brought up wanting to play with his ass, like it was this sort of disgraceful thing he didn’t even want to think about. It’s not like he was afraid of letting you have his way with him (he sure enjoyed it when you rode him into unconsciousness), it’s just that… he was already so scrawny, he didn’t want you thinking he was some sort of pathetic, needy loser, no matter how much he loved to let you take control.

...But that feels like such a long time ago. He was a total moron.

Ruggie lets out a quiet moan and bites his index finger, his heart beating like a war drum against his ribcage as your slick fingers stretch his asshole. Fuck, this is the best, he raises his back in a pretty arch, licking his lips as you scissor him gently. You pump two fingers in and out of him, stretching him nice and slow and Ruggie responds to your playful ministrations by thrusting his hips into your hand, his mouth falling open and his tail trembling slightly under him. He makes the most beautiful face, cloud-colored eyes glossy and unfocused, his tiny fangs barely visible behind his parted lips, then you suddenly push against his prostate and he throws his head back, drool dripping down the corner of his lips.

The squelching sounds of your lubed fingers sliding in and out of his asshole almost make him cum on the spot. “(y/n)...” He pants and squirms in front of you, his hips going numb as your fingers pick up the pace. “Use my ass every day~” He thrusts back into your fingers without shame, his cock bouncing with every shake of his vulgar hips, “Stretch my asshole every day and make me remember that it’s yours...” Ruggie spreads his legs wider, making an obscene M shape as he leaks precum all over himself.

“You’re such a good boy…” You coo down at him, deceivingly tender as your fingers pick up the pace and mercilessly tease his prostate. Your boyfriend grits his teeth and twitches wildly at the sudden, relentless stimulation, back arching off the bed as the ache in his dick becomes unbearable. You don’t even need to touch it before he explodes, climaxing purely from having you play with his slutty asshole.

The sheets are a mess, soaked in his sweat. Ruggie falls back into the bed and stares up at the ceiling, the erotic smile you gave him as you watched him cum swimming in front of his eyes like a filthy movie on loop. You tap his cheek and he immediately gives you his full attention. You’re the best, he gives you a dopey smirk as he takes your fingers into his mouth, happily sucking on your fingertips as his eyes slowly go down the length of your body, So sexy.

“My lovely baby… you’re hungry, aren’t you?” You give his dick a few pumps and he shivers, muttering something about being ‘still sensitive’, then you bring your dirty hand up to his lips.

Ruggie blinks owlishly at you, looking at your fingers with a tired yet curious expression. His eyes go from your fingers to your face then back down again. You-- you want me to…? His head still feels like mush because of you, his thoughts are all jumbled and sluggish. He lacks the energy to make any coherent decisions at the moment, so he does the only thing he can do. He dazedly opens his mouth and gasps when you shove your fingers inside. The bitter taste hits him immediately and he recoils, but your hand mercilessly follows. 

Drool drips down your fingers as he whines, his dick getting hard again as you start fucking his mouth with cum coated fingers. Whimpering in the back of his throat, Ruggie surrenders to his libido and swirls his tongue around your fingers, spreading his cum all over the walls of his hot mouth.

You move to pull your fingers away and he chases, sucking on your skin like a baby and giving your fingers little love bites. “Ah!...No…” He cries when you finally pull away, a thick string of saliva and semen connecting his lips and your fingers, “(y/n)....oh fuck, there’s no way I ain’t gonna get hooked on this…” His tail swishes excitedly against the bed as he watches you scoop up more of his cum. 

This time he opens wide before you even have time to raise your hand, his eager face dripping with all sorts of fluids. So hungry...

𝓙𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓵 𝓥𝓲𝓹𝓮𝓻

It says a lot.about the kind of conqueror you are, when you've managed to tease Jamil into obedience. 

He looked so uncomfortable in this position at first, the embarrassed scowl on his face as he glared at you from over his shoulder only making the curve of his back and his vulnerable ass look that much more adorable.

Wrists bound tightly under the wooden seesaw, Jamil is forced to lean his chest on the plank for support as his naked lower half is left standing, legs spread and ass in the air, completely vulnerable. You knew your boyfriend was athletic, but you're still impressed he's managed to stand in that position for so long without his legs giving out. Especially considering how badly his legs are shaking.

All of him is shaking, really. His shoulders, his hips, his leaking cock, there is not a centimetre on his body that's not trembling like a leaf. The three vibrators you stuffed in his ass have finally destroyed his composure after hours of sexual torture. What...is...this...! The repeated orgasms are wrecking his body and with the way he's crying and moaning like a wanton bitch you think his brain might be fried too. Ho-how…? I've become...a weird person...

The vibrators all work at a different speeds to keep your precious Jamil on his toes. You've kept them from falling out of his ass by blocking his hole with tape. It looks like a cute little button, and you sometimes push on it and make Jamil cry out in pure bliss. The pressure against his prostate is too much. Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch! Jamil sticks his tongue out and goes cross eyed, desperately pushing back with his ass as he greedily tries to scrape for more stimulation. His poor, abused dick throbs cutely, but nothing comes out. Still, Jamil feels so amazing he thinks he might pass out. He pants and rests his head on the plank, sweat and drool darkening the wood under him, So good…

He barely registers it when you move in front of him, hypnotized by the quiet buzzing of the vibrators stuck in his ass.

“Are you having fun, Jamil?” You tap his forehead and he slowly moves his clouded eyes to look up at you. “I have a present for you, you know! It’s your reward for accepting all my love like a good boy.”

You suddenly place something in front of him and Jamil stops thinking entirely. What...is that…? He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand anything anymore, every cell in his body is screaming at him to look away but he just can’t, like he’s swallowed poison and is now completely paralyzed. He raises his head and the smell of sex hits him right in the face.

The sight of his favorite snapback filled with cum lights his body up again, Jamil shivers and lets out a string of soft, quiet gasps as he comes all over himself, I’ve been filling this up...all this time… “Aah...haha…” his eyelids slide halfway shut. The dark blush that paints the bridge of his nose and the sweat that drips off his chin make him look so indecent you almost feel like taking a picture.

Slowly, like he's pretending to be conflicted, Jamil lowers his head and sticks his tongue out, gasping when he laps up the first little mouthful of cum. “Ah…” It tastes horrible, how do you always swallow when he comes into your mouth...? Jamil takes another lick, and another, “Ah...ah…” it’s so sticky and unpleasant when it goes down his throat. The vibrators in his ass feel oddly comforting now, tears start running down his face and his mind goes blank. It’s delicious. 

“Ha…...haa....agh--!” He splutters when your hand slams his face down into the hat, eyes going wide as his chin splashes ungraciously into the pool of cum. He coughs and struggles but you keep him pinned down, forcing him to gulp in large mouthfuls of semen. His eyes roll to the back of his head as he struggles to breathe. His cum is everywhere-- in his nostrils, on his cheeks, it sticks to the roof of his mouth and down the walls of his throat, Jamil keeps on choking and spluttering, and just as he feels his consciousness drift away, you forceful pull his head up by his braids. 

He coughs violently, barely registering the pain in his scalp, his blood pumping with adrenaline. He looks more unfocused than ever, eyes like dark glass and strings of warm cum covering his pretty face, the white of his semen striking against his tan skin.  

You give him a fond look and lightly shake that head of his you just fucked stupid, "Was it really good, baby?"

Jamil chuckles softly, he sluggishly moves to lean closer to you, but his bound wrists stop him from going far. God, he really wants to touch you. "Really good, master…"

[letterboxd]

Life in Film: Ben Wheatley.

As Netflix goes gothic with a new Rebecca adaptation, director Ben Wheatley tells Jack Moulton about his favorite Hitchcock film, the teenagers who will save cinema, and a memorable experience with The Thing.

“The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it.” —Ben Wheatley

Winter’s coming, still no vaccine, the four walls of home are getting pretty samey… and what Netflix has decided we need right now is a lavish, gaslight-y psychological thriller about a clifftop manor filled with the personality of its dead mistress—and a revival of one of the best menaces in screen history. Bring on the ‘Mrs Danvers’ Hallowe’en costumes, because Rebecca is back.

In Ben Wheatley’s new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling 1938 novel, scripted by Jane Goldman, Lily James plays an orphaned lady’s maid—a complete nobody, with no known first name—who catches the eye of the dashing, cashed-up Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer).

Very quickly, the young second Mrs de Winter is flung into the intimidating role of lady of Manderley, and into the shadow of de Winter’s late first wife, Rebecca. The whirlwind romance is over; the obsession has begun, and it’s hotly fuelled by Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas, perfectly cast).

Each adaptation of du Maurier’s story has its own quirks, and early Letterboxd reactions suggest viewers will experience varying levels of satisfaction with Wheatley’s, depending on how familiar they are with both the novel and earlier screen versions—most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 Best Picture winner, starring Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson.

Why would you follow Hitchcock? It’s been 80 years; Netflix is likely banking on an audience of Rebecca virgins (the same kind of studio calculation that worked for Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born). Plus, the new Rebecca is a Working Title affair; it has glamor, camp, Armie Hammer in a three-piece suit, the sunny South of France, sports cars, horses, the wild Cornish coast, Lily James in full dramatic heat, and—controversial!—a fresh twist on the denouement.

A big-budget thriller made for a streamer is Wheatley coming full circle, in a way: he made his name early on with viral internet capers and a blog (“Mr and Mrs Wheatley”) of shorts co-created with his wife and longtime collaborator, Amy Jump. Between then and now, they have gained fans for their well-received low-to-no budget thrillers, including High-Rise, Kill List and Free Fire (which also starred Hammer).

Over Zoom, Wheatley spoke to Letterboxd about the process of scaling up, the challenge of casting already-iconic characters, and being a year-round horror lover. [The Rebecca plot discussion may be spoilery to some. Wheatley is specifically talking about the du Maurier version, not his film.]

Armie Hammer and Ben Wheatley on the set of ‘Rebecca’.

Can you tell us how you overcame any concerns in adapting a famous novel that already has a very famous adaptation? How did you want to make a 1930s story relevant to modern audiences? Ben Wheatley: When you go back to the novel and look at how it works, you see it’s a very modern book. [Author Daphne du Maurier is] doing stuff that people are still picking up the pieces of now. It’s almost like the Rosetta Stone of thrillers—it tells you everything on how to put a thriller together. The genre jumping and Russian-doll nature of the structure is so delicious. When you look at the characters in the book, they’re still popping up in other stuff—there’s Mrs Danvers in all sorts of movies.

It remains fresh because of its boldness. Du Maurier is writing in a way that’s almost like a dare. She’s going, “right, okay, you like romantic fiction do you? I’ll write you romantic fiction; here’s Maxim de Winter, he’s a widower, he’s a good-looking guy, and owns a big house. Here’s a rags-to-riches, Cinderella-style girl. They’re going to fall in love. Then I’m going to ruin romantic fiction for you forever by making him into a murdering swine and implicating you in the murder because you’re so excited about a couple getting away with it!”

That’s the happy ending—Maxim doesn’t go to prison. How does that work? He’s pretty evil by the end. It’s so subtly done that you only see the trap of it after you finish reading the book. That’s clearly represented in Jane Goldman’s adaptation that couldn’t be done in 1940 because of the Hays Code. That whole element of the book is missing [in Hitchcock’s Rebecca]. But I do really like this style of storytelling in the 1930s and ’40s that is not winky, sarcastic, and cynical. It’s going, “here’s Entertainment with a big ‘E’. We’re going to take you on holiday, then we’re gonna scare you, then we’re gonna take you around these beautiful houses that you would never get a chance to go around, and we’re gonna show you these big emotions.”

After High-Rise, you ended up circling back to more contained types of films, whereas Rebecca is your lushest and largest production. How was scaling up for you? Free Fire does feel like a more contained film, but in many ways it was just as complicated and had the same budget as High-Rise, since it’s just in one space. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is literally a contained film, that’s right. What [the bigger budget] gave me was the chance to have a conversation where I say I want a hotel that’s full of people and no-one says you can’t have any people in it. You don’t have to shoot in a corner, so that scale is suddenly allowed.

Elisabeth Moss and Tom Hiddlestone in Wheatley’s ‘High-Rise’ (2015).

The other movies I did are seen as no-budget or, I don’t even know the word for how little money they are, and even though High-Rise and Free Fire were eight million dollars each, they’re still seen as ultra-low budget. This is the first film that I’ve done that’s just a standard Hollywood-style movie budget and it makes a massive difference. It gives you extra time to work. All the schemes you might have had to work out in order to cheat and get around faster, but now it’s fine, let’s only shoot two pages today. We can go out on the road and close down all of the south of France—don’t worry about all the holidaymakers screaming at you and getting cross! That side of it is great.

You had the challenge to cast iconic actors for iconic roles. What were you looking for in the casting? What points of reference did you give the actors? I don’t think we really talked about it, but [Armie Hammer] definitely didn’t watch the Hitchcock version. I can understand why he wouldn’t. There was no way he was going to accidentally mimic [Laurence] Olivier’s performance without seeing it and he just didn’t want to have the pressure of that. I think that’s quite right. It’s an 80-year-old film, it’s a beloved classic, and we’d be mad if we were trying to remake it. We’re not.

The thing about the shadow that the film cast is that it’s hard enough making stuff without thinking about other filmmakers. I’ve had this in the past where journalists ask me “what were your influences on the day?” and I wish I could say “it was a really complicated set of movies that the whole thing was based around”, but it’s not like that. When you watch documentaries about filmmakers screening loads of movies for their actors before they make something—it’s lovely, but it’s not something I’ve ever done.

The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it—“we’ll use this shot from 1952, that will really make this scene sing!”—then you’re in a world of pain. Basically, it’s my interpretation of the adaptation. The book is its own place, and for something like High-Rise, [screenwriter Amy Jump] has the nightmare of sitting down with 112 pages of blank paper and taking a novel and smashing it into a script. That’s the hard bit.

Armie Hammer and Lily James in ‘Rebecca’.

Current industry news is not so great—cinemas are facing bankruptcy, film festivals in the USA are mostly virtual, Disney is focusing on Disney+ only. How do you feel about a future where streaming dominates the market and the theatrical experience becomes, as we fear, an exclusive niche? Independent cinema was born out of very few movies. If you look at the history of Eraserhead—that film on its own almost created all of cult cinema programming. One movie can do that. It can create an audience that is replicated and becomes a whole industry. And that can happen again, but it needs those films to do that. They will come as things ebb and flow. The streamers will control the whole market and then one day someone will go “I don’t want to watch this stuff, I want to watch something else” and they’ll go make it.

It’s like The Matrix, it’s a repeating cycle. There’ll always be ‘the One’. There’s Barbara Loden in 1970 making Wanda, basically inventing American independent cinema. So I don’t worry massively about it. I know it’s awkward and awful for people to go bankrupt and the cinemas to close down, but in time they’ll re-open because people will wanna see stuff. The figures for cinemagoers were massive before Covid. Are you saying that people with money are not going to exploit that? Life will find a way. Remember that the cinema industry from the beginning is one that’s in a tailspin. Every year is a disaster and they’re going bust. But they survived the Spanish Flu, which is basically the same thing.

Two months ago, you quickly made a horror movie. We’re going to get a lot of these from filmmakers who just need to create something this year. What can you identify now about this inevitable next wave of micro-budget, micro-schedule pandemic-era cinema? I’ve always made micro-budget films so that side of it is not so crazy. There will be a lot of Zoom and people-locked-in-houses films but they won’t be so interesting. They’re more to-keep-you-sane kind of filmmaking which is absolutely fine. Where you should look for [the ‘pandemic-era’ films] is from the kids and young adults through 14 to 25 who’ve been the most affected by it. They will be the ones making the true movies about the pandemic which will be in like five years’ time.

People going through GCSEs and A-Levels [final high-school exams in England] will have had their social contracts thoroughly smashed by the government after society tells them that this is the most important thing you’re ever gonna do in your life. Then the next day the government tells them “actually, you’ve all passed”, then the next day they go “no, you’ve all failed”, and then “oh no, you’ve all passed”. It’s totally bizarre. Anyone who’s in university at the moment [is] thinking about how they’ve worked really hard to get to that position and now they’ve had it taken away from them. That type of schism in that group will make for a unique set of storytelling impetus. Much more interesting than from my perspective of being a middle-age bloke and having to stay in my house for a bit, which was alright. Their experience is extreme and that will change cinema.

Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs Danvers in ‘Rebecca’.

It’s time to probe into your taste in film. Firstly, three questions about Alfred Hitchcock: his best film, most underrated film, and most overrated film? It’s tricky, there’s a lot to choose from. I think Psycho is his best film because, much like Wanda, it was the invention of indie cinema. He took a TV crew to go and do a personal project and then completely redefined horror, and he did it in the same year as Peeping Tom.

There’s stuff I really like in Torn Curtain. Certainly the murder scene where they’re trying to stick the guy in the oven. It’s a gut-wrenching sequence. Overrated, I don’t know. It’s just a bit mean, isn’t it? Overrated by who? They’re all massively rated, aren’t they?

Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? The slightly uncool version of my answer is the first fifteen minutes of Dr. No before I got sent to bed. We used to watch movies on the telly when I was a kid, so movies would start at 7pm and I had to go to bed at 7:30pm. You would get to see the first half-hour and that would be it. The opening was really intriguing. I never actually saw a lot of these movies until I was much older.

The more grown-up answer is a film like Taxi Driver. It was the first time where I felt like I’d been transported in a way where there was an authorship to a film that I didn’t understand. It had done something to me that television and straightforward movies hadn’t done and made me feel very strange. It was something to do with the very, very intense mixture of sound, music and image and I started to understand that that was cinema.

What horror movie do you watch every Hallowe’en? I watch The Thing every year but I don’t tend to celebrate Hallowe’en, to be honest. I’m of an age where it wasn’t a big deal and was never particularly celebrated. I find it a bit like “what’s all this Hallowe’en about?”—horror films for me are for all year-round.

What’s a brilliant mindfuck movie that perhaps even cinephiles haven’t seen? What grade of cinephile are we talking? All of the work by Jan Švankmajer, maybe. Hard to Be a God is pretty mindfucky if you want a bit of that, but cinephiles should know about it. It’s pretty intense. Marketa Lazarová too.

‘Marketa Lazarová’ (1967) directed by František Vláčil.

What is the greatest screen romance that you totally fell head over heels for? I guess it’s Casablanca for me. That would be it.

Which coming-of-age film did you connect to the most as a teenager? [Pauses for effect] Scum.

Who is an exciting newcomer director we should keep our eyes on? God, I don’t know. I would say Jim Hosking but he’s older than me and he’s not a newcomer because he’s done two movies. So, that’s rubbish. He doesn’t count.

[Editor’s note: Hosking contributed to ABCs of Death 2 with the segment “G is for Grandad” while Wheatley contributed to The ABCs of Death with the segment “U is for Unearthed” and also executive produced the follow-up film.]

What was your best cinema experience? [Spoiler warning for The Thing.]

Oh, one that speaks in my mind is seeing The Thing at an all-nighter in the Scala at King’s Cross, and I was sitting right next to this drunk guy who was talking along to the screen. It was a packed cinema with about 300 people, and someone at the front told him “will you just shut up?” The guy says “I won’t shut up. You tell me to shut up again and I’ll spoil the whole film!” The whole audience goes “no, no, no!” and he went “it’s the black guy and the guy with the beard—everyone else dies!” That made me laugh so much.

Do you have a favorite film you’ve watched so far this year? Yeah, Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Related content

Classic Gothic Literature to Film—Jennifer Boddaert’s list

Ava’s Dark Romance list

Ben Wheatley’s Life in Film list

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘Rebecca’ is in select US theaters on October 17, and streaming on Netflix everywhere on October 21.

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 8 Review

Consistent yet lackluster, this is a good episode that doesn’t really stand out.

The title sequence for Nappa's Best Day Ever should've started after Cadaverrific! which I think is a wonderful bit of black humor. But the following scene just felt like another "ha ha bulma is a loose woman" joke. This scene might've been funnier with better voice acting. I wouldn't say the scene did nothing for me, but it did very little.

Also “Mr Kent” - Is that a Superman reference or am I taking crazy pills?

[Title Sequence]

With Yamcha gone, the mantle of series buttmonkey falls to Krillin. He has his big damn hero moment, when he Limit Breaks the stuffing out of three Saibamen, but it's frankly disregarded in favor of Piccolo using a god damned mouth-laser to annihilate the last one.

With no more Saibamen left to toy with, it falls upon the two Saiyans to get their hands dirty. Or rather, for Nappa to get his hands dirty while Vegeta sits back and watches. Nappa is no less full of whipshot non-sequiturs in this episode than he was in the previous. After some banter about teaching the Z Fighters a lesson, he gives new meaning to the word "punchline" and amputates Tien's arm.

Compared to a lot of other voice actors, Ganxingba (Tien) actually does a decent scream here. Most of the other screams so far have either been laid on too thick, or done way too close so it peaks their potato microphones, or it’s just super disingenuous. But right here, Tien’s scream is actually really convincing and doesn’t make me feel like someone is stabbing knives into my ears.

The quiet breeze after Vegeta makes a corny pun (Looks like he's been... disarmed!) sells the joke. Nappa’s follow-up seems more like an in-character necessity for him than it seems like a part of the joke.

Ever apparent that fighting Nappa would be completely beyond their capabilities, Chiaotzu decides to blow himself up and take Nappa with him.

"You can just wish me back with the Dragon Balls!" "We already wished you back with the Dragon Balls! We can't do it twice!" "...Wait, wha--?"

KABOOM. Okay, that got a chuckle out of me. This is also the first time the respawn limit of the Dragon Balls has been mentioned. Simply put, everybody gets one.

Krillin's comment on Chiaotzu's death is really bland and lazily written, but prompts a little more character insight to Tien.

"I loved him." "As a memorial to Yamcha... Gay."

I didn't like it when Yamcha first said it, but being referenced in this macabre fashion does something for me. I won't claim it's clever or witty but I personally find it funny.

Nappa then reveals that Chiaotzu's sacrifice had absolutely no effect on him, which naturally enrages Tien. He goes on to get the stuffing knocked out of him, and Gohan ponders if they should help him instead of just standing around.

Piccolo explains that Tien is in a battle to honor his friend’s death, and he wouldn’t dare besmirch the man’s pride by interrupting his heroic last stand. 

This immediately cuts to Tien screaming for help.

I can't tell if the smirk when Piccolo says "Like a hero" is a visual edit or actually existed in the source material, but it's use here is amazing. The look on his face makes him seem like a sadist who's enjoying this, and that's honestly not too far off from how Piccolo has been depicted so far. He's the Demon King who wants to take over the world and couldn't care less about these humans.

After being reprimanded by Gohan, Piccolo and Krillin finally get the lead out and agree to team up against Nappa. They get some surprise slaps on him, and Piccolo yells for Gohan to shoot him with everything he's got before he has time to DODGE.

This triggers a Pavlovian response and Gohan immediately runs for cover, which means Piccolo and Krillin are just going to have to fight Nappa the old fashioned way: By using the Kagebunshin no Jutsu.

"I can't... believe it."

The Naruto skit is creative and risable in its own right but not exactly gut-busting. What's a whole lot funnier is the notion that Nappa's incredible mental discipline is derived entirely from him playing "Patty Cake, Patty Cake" in his head.

Each of Krillin's shadow clones gets their own notch on the owned counter, bringing the score up to 7.

Nappa then commends their effort and tells them, hey at least you didn't kill yourself using a single useless attack, like Chiaotzu did. Tien then proceeds to do that exact same thing: He fires a Kikoho at Nappa and then dies.

It's given a bit more cause for worry in the original show, where Vegeta states that it very well could have killed Nappa if he didn't guard against it at the last second, but in this series he's given no such credit. Nappa just laughs and says "Pointless."

Just before he goes in for the kill on Krillin, he's stopped mid-air by a stunning realization. He can fly. Vegeta is too flabbergasted to argue this and simply agrees.

After pitching a fit about wanting Goku to watch him murder the Z Fighters, Vegeta obliges Nappa and agrees to wait three hours for Goku to arrive.

I half-expected, half-wanted them to make a fake girlfriend reference with Goku here.

Vegeta - "So this friend of yours, that you SAY is coming, is somehow stronger than all of you combined, yet didn't show up here to fight us, and you're only just now telling us this after two of your friends have died?"

Krillin - "You wouldn't know him, he goes to a different school."

Thirty seconds into their three hour wait time, Nappa starts up the "Is he here yet?" bit. Vegeta shoos him off and tells him to go have fun and occupy himself in any way he sees fit.

This begins a well-timed, well-edited musical number of Nappa systematically dismantling the naval and air forces of what I assume is the World Government.

And this whole time while Nappa is enjoying himself to the sounds of musical splendor, crashing metal, and explosions, Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan are just standing still in a morosely quiet semi-circle. For the entire three hours I'm guessing. Vegeta's scouter alarm goes off, which means time is up and they're all going to die. Nappa suddenly returns without his shirt and elbows Piccolo in the head so hard it changes the color of the sky from blue to pink.

Not the most clean or graceful cutaway scene, but it sells itself regardless. The stinger is a stronger finish than it had any right to be, as a callback and apparent closure to the most esoteric joke in this series. RIP Whales.

Conclusion

This was a plateau of an episode. Whereas the last episode had constant peaks and kept your interest, this one was steady and consistent throughout in a less remarkable way. Most of the factors that go into making or breaking an episode seemed to have hit a comfortable resting point. That or I've just finally become numb to the questionable microphone quality.

I feel like this episode almost lands in the twilight zone of "It's bad, so let me reach to say something positive about it" and "It's good, so let me reach to say something negative about it." that just coalesces into me not having much of anything to say about it. I’m uncertain whether or not this constitutes a failure on my part as a critic, or if this episode really is just that comparatively monotonous.

The word mediocre is often used to mean bad or poor, which I don't feel fits this episode, but it certainly isn't a stand out. I really couldn't find much worthy of discussion here beyond face value.

The few jokes that struck me personally stop me from calling this episode boring, but I found myself repeatedly checking the time to see how much I still had left to watch. It had jokes that were definitely funny, but nothing here really kept my attention. Other lackluster episodes, even if they were not worth a rewatch, kept my interest because I'd latch onto things that were obvious and apparent as being poorly done. This one offered very little variance between the lowest it went and the peak its comedy or production.

If anything, this episode is saved from a lower score by its tail end. Nappa's patty cake joke and the eponymous "best day ever" scene really make up the majority of this episodes hard-hitting humor for me.

But it is important to note that this is still a good episode. It’s not a laugh riot episode and it’s probably not in anyone’s Top 5, but it’s a very comfortable middle ground between the worst this season has to offer and the very peaks.

As an important side note, I feel like we're just now encroaching upon what might be Nappa fatigue. I maintain my position that Nappa has yet to have a “do nothing” joke - all of his humor has been in a hit in some capacity - but it feels almost par for the course at this point. Nappa is definitely not overdone in this episode and he in fact caries it, but I feel like another episode of this style would tread tightly upon the expiration date of how much zaniness you can come to expect before it starts to feel samey. Nappa is in danger here of simply becoming too saturated within the show’s focus and would lose his simplistic, unique appeal that's the driving force behind his characterization. Which is well-timed because we all know what happens next episode...

While I don’t think this episode stands out as a whole, it definitely has some strongly quotable moments. Yeah, yeah, most of what Nappa said. But a series of hilariously derailing one-liners does not make for something remarkable on the whole, which to me just feels expected, stagnant and safe. The peaks are not enough to pull this episode further up, but I must say I’m still not fully confident in my assessment. This was definitely a weird episode to judge.

Score: 67

Passing Thoughts

“What the hell could someone like you possibly major in?” “Child psychology.” “Wow, that sounds really interesting.” “WITH A MINOR IN PAIN!”

"Nappa here is worth 5 Raditz, and I am worth 15 Raditz!" - Vegeta Accurate to the canon power levels!

Oolong saying "Get back to the fight!" sounds absolutely nothing like Oolong. In fact, Episode 1 Oolong sounds more like Oolong than this short cameo did.

"Dick move, guys."

"Good effort, but I'm the patty cake champion."

[theironrepository]

Dave Chappelle: The Fourth World War

So, it's official - Dave Chappelle's been cancelled. How funny it is that these days to be cancelled often means that somebody has returned to our screens after a long hiatus.

Doubtless you've already seen any number of articles wailing and gnashing their teeth over Chappelle's new Netflix special, Sticks & Stones. Vice (who, if you'll credit it, actually published interesting stuff once upon a time) literally exhorted people not to watch it. And, predictably as a sunset, all this fury from the bluechecked reviewer elite encouraged people to watch it in their droves.

This quickly turned into yet another example of the apparent disconnect between the fourth estate and real people. A screengrab from Rotten Tomatoes puts the story in simple terms - professional reviewers in aggregate put it at a sickly 30-something-percent. Meanwhile, the great viewing public's score briefly touched an unblemished 100 percent, and, at the time of writing, is still on fully 99.

But simplified stories can be deceptive, and this one is. The Tomatoes’ aggregated total is drawn from a mere sixteen reviews - comparatively slender in an age where anyone can spew their guts up onto the internet. I'm Rotten Tomatoes-approved, for instance, and I can promise you this doesn't immediately translate into Vice handing you large cheques to bitch about your drug problems or your torrid love life. Further, to rate something 'rotten' can be anywhere up to a rating of 49%, and even within the paid-up critics this was by no means the universal consensus, simply the majority.

So what gives? How did the opinions of sixteen people, barely enough to fill a bus, become another story about how you can't say anything these days? There was something similar at work with the latest retread of the Shaft franchise, where the unreconstructed masculinity of Shaft, as played by Samuel L. 'And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee' Jackson, is contrasted with the millennial softboy image of his estranged son. That work, too, has an alarming discrepancy between the critics' scores and the audience scores (again, 30-something to 90-something).

Much like Sticks & Stones, reviewers from a good number of established outfits (including, to my disgust, Rolling Stone, where Dr. Hunter S. Thompson spent his salad years) launched a broadside against Shaft's blatant lack of political correctness. Obviously I have some terrible news for them about the history of the Shaft franchise, and the blaxploitation genre as a whole. The point is, though, as with Sticks & Stones, this predictable response just encouraged more people to watch it. Why, it's almost as if they were doing it deliberately!

And they were. It's obvious they were. By the time I actually saw Sticks & Stones, I'd seen a good portion of those angry headlines - but I'd also seen how Netflix had tagged the special, and before even calling it 'comedy', they'd called it 'politically incorrect'. In other words, that's the exact brand it's chasing, and the journalistic class fell for it. Not all of them, but more than enough to whip up a narrative that those awful, censorious PC thugs are having a go at good old Chappelle.

This has been tried the other way round with less success. Most notably, there was the all-female Ghostbusters remake in 2016, whose audiences felt they were literally sticking it to the man - that is to say, the various sexists and traditionalists whose knees jerked at the very idea. Columbia Pictures wound up losing $125 million on that project, getting their fingers burnt so badly they declared it damnatio memoriae and now plan to reboot the series right back to its original continuity.

Ironically, the gender-flipped Ghostbusters’ approach was at bottom a reactionary thing - trying to make the best of the anti-PC opposition it received. Chappelle's new show, meanwhile, was clearly playing on this angle from the start. Even the name's a giveaway: 'sticks and stones', as in 'will break my bones but words will never hurt me'. That's the thesis that's thoroughly rejected by your archetypal ‘social justice warrior’, those of the mythical callout-culture mob, who, despite their alleged ubiquity, have done precisely nothing to hurt Chappelle's bottom line, and in fact probably helped the viewing figures.

The usual name for an entity like this that can only feign a threat is a paper tiger, so it was curiously on-the-nose to see Bill Burr come out with a Netflix special of his own literally called 'Paper Tiger' not two weeks later. Burr, too, attacks the right-on faction - if anything, more loudly and aggressively than Chappelle ever did. So the same audiences that lapped up 'Sticks & Stones' eagerly sucked this down too, awarding it fully 97%. But the critics loved it too, and as I write this their Rotten Tomatoes rating for 'Paper Tiger' sits prettily on 86%.

Were I being flippant, I'd put the difference there down to flat racism. But the two specials and their two frontmen are, despite everything, far too similar for that. Both are well-established figures on the comedy circuit, who've had TV shows of their own, and who are now good family men, who presumably forbid their own children to watch their material.

So why'd the critics prefer Burr's output? Dare I say it, he failed to rile the PC vanguard simply because Chappelle had beaten him to it. It's unlikely those journos figured out Chappelle had tricked them. Far more probable that they considered villainising another comedy special quite so soon would be getting dangerously samey. It’s called ‘news’, after all. And, indeed, the contrarian audiences who so delight in defying the nanny-press probably weren't in the mood either - they probably still watched Burr's one, just not out of spite.

Alternatively, it's because the critics didn't expect anything different from Burr. He's been on record and on stage many times before about his dislike of PC culture. It's not that Chappelle has previously been particularly PC himself, but - and here the flat racism raises its ugly head again - there is perhaps a feeling of wounded betrayal in seeing such sentiments coming from a gentleman of colour. Identity politics have always cut both ways, and there is a natural assumption that anyone in that sprawling, seething mass of people labelled 'minorities' must defer to a certain way of thinking.

The real irony of it all, though, is this: while 'Sticks and Stones' and 'Paper Tiger' weren't made by and for the PC party line, they aren't so very outrageous either. Speaking as a fan of Doug Stanhope and Pete and Dud's notorious Derek & Clive records, these contenders are by comparison family-friendly. Which is perhaps no surprise. Tweaking the noses of groups who are universally held to be over-sensitive and thin-skinned? Hell, that's easy mode...no wonder both Chappelle and Burr seem so cheerful.

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 2: My Fedora Weighs A Ton

Smash that hate-reblog button, because today I’m calling out another penily* challenged isekai copypasta. But first...

Dororo

What: Baby gets most vital organs stolen by demons due to his father’s dickishness, is now all grown up and back for revenge. He also picks up a spunky petty thief so this doesn’t get too depressing.

✅ Shounen manga in the 60s sure was some shit huh. Thankfully this is a Tezuka original, so it’s surprisingly lighthearted for how ultragrim the setup is. That doesn’t mean it actually is lighthearted on an absolute scale, of course, just matter of fact instead of unbearably miserable. I like it.

✅✅ This looks dope, yo. It starts with the character designs, which are nicely updated but still noticeably Tezuka-ish. Then there’s the animation, which is deluxe and super deluxe during fights. And the backgrounds are real pretty too.

✅✅ Bonus points for a fantastic OP as well. I would already crown this as the OP of the season (sorry, Boogiepop), but we’ve still got another Mappa show to come and it’s Kakegurui, which has a track record in that regard. Dare I hope we get something even better?

♎ Ah, yes, Mappa. Great openings and great first episodes is what they do. I dearly hope they don’t donk it again, or, failing that, only donk it in the very last minute like Zombieland Saga.

✅ This is absolutely not my thing subject-wise, but the evidence suggests that it’s just too good to pass up. Hot damn.

Pastel Memories

What: Akiba has become normal and a bunch of girls are just sort of wandering around in it looking for manga.

❌❌ Okay seriously, what is with this new trend of making the first episode of your anime boring, seemingly on purpose? The preview promises some action (note: more on that later), but this first episode is largely content-free and tedious as hell.

❌❌ I suppose they’re banking on their large amount of kawaii characters, but a character-focused show needs, you know, character. These girls are extremely bland and samey and the one memorable one is the one that says nya a lot. Gimmicks are not the pinnacle of effort, yes, but simply not doing anything is hardly more effort.

❌❌ It also looks like ass, which is why I’m not enthusiastic about this show attempting action in the future. It’s somehow consistently off-model, with all the characters having sightline problems that makes everyone have a constant vacant stare. It’s barely worth mentioning with problems like that, but the animation’s not much either. The whole thing exudes a distinct bootleg ambiance.

♎ The plot they’re hinting at at the very end (all these girls are dimension-hoppers going through different worlds) admittedly has potential to be at least mildly entertaining. But potential is nothing without execution, which this show anti-excels at.

Mob Psycho 100 S2

What: Quit frontin, you know what MP100 is.

✅ At this point I’m basically only in it for the glorious visuals, so S2 better not be a step down. It’s not, so that’s good.

✅ I was not at all impressed by Mob Psycho’s writing overall, but the aspect I liked the most was Mob’s awkward daily life. This episode mostly focused on that, so no complaints here either. Komedy with Reigen and what amounts to a grunge rock cover of Bleach will surely follow, but this is about episode 1. 

❌ One of S1's strongest points was the amazing opening. The new one is a much inferior clone of that one, both musically and visually.

♎ I won’t complain at length about MP100′s content again, but yeah, I don’t have high hopes. I’ll watch it no matter what because it’s still worth it, and the most I hope for is that the glue between the kabooms isn’t too annoying on average. This is starting out on the right foot if nothing else.

Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan

What: A sort of experimental adaptation of an 4koma about an easygoing woman. The trick is that every episode will be done by entirely different staff and studios.

❌❌ You know, I don’t mind weird, not conventionally beautiful arthouse shorts. However, packing your 3 minute short with 20 minutes of staff interviews explaining why it’s good may be a bit too modern art even for me. Especially when done in a Japanese daytime TV style.

❌ Even on its own terms, the short itself is on the bad side of whatever. #relatable to some, maybe, but not to me. And well, it’s not a looker, not even unconventionally so.

❌ The idea here is intriguing, but it spectacularly doesn’t work out in the first episode. I suppose if this produces something amazing down the line (which, admittedly, it might), I’ll hear about it.

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari / The Rising of the Shield Hero

What: 💩

💩💩 Features a complete catalogue of isekai tropes, including pointing them out because the writer is extremely intelligent. If I have called it shit before, it’s probably in here somewhere.

💩💩 Is a whiny nerd’s manifesto on the topic of how he doesn’t get respected even though he’s so nice and how women are gold-digging whores that accuse him of rape. Basically, this is the /r/incels to Goblin Slayer’s /r/the_donald.

💩💩 Fucking double length because just saying “isekai” is not enough, you have to really make sure everyone knows what that means.

💩💩 Oh yeah, Shield Hero seems to pick up a slave catgirl at the end, as you do. I hope she also gives him a swirly and steals his lunch money, but considering he can magically order her to stay in the kitchen, I don’t think that’s likely.

♎ Looks alright, if thoroughly uninspired. Kinema Citrus can do better, but thankfully don’t.

Ueno-san wa Bukiyou / How clumsy you are, Miss Ueno.

What: Ueno-san is a genius inventor, crush-haver and terminal-stage boke. Oh dear.

❌❌ Loud and obnoxious comedy short. But still not short enough (12m).

❌❌ The two jokes in this episode are 1. Ueno wants to make her crush/straight man drink her piss and 2. Ueno wants to make her crush/straight man look up her skirt while not wearing panties.

❌❌ In other words, it’s a more stylistically generic Asobi Asobase that also pulls its punches with magical piss-purifying/pussy-hiding technology.

❌❌ No.

Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita! / Wataten!: An Angel Flew Down to Me

What: Useless neet girl pervs on her little sister’s best friend. “Cute or pedo? Why not both!”, says Doga Kobo, establishing a pattern in the process.

♎ Shockingly, that pattern is not a tremendously annoying character for once. Our lead here is annoying, just not outrageously so. So it’s no Uzamaid, and one might even consider this watchable and cute if you don’t think about it too hard, or preferably at all.

♎ It also looks plush and agreeable, as usual. 

❌❌ What is exactly like Uzamaid is the loliyuri though, and no amount of Doga Kobo gloss will make that go away. Why not, like, pick one of the thousands of cutesy 4koma without that? It’s just creepy. Less creepy than Uzamaid, yes, but that might as well have been the most pastel colored horror TV show ever so that’s not an accomplishment. 

❌ Even if it weren’t extremely questionable content-wise, what’s left would still just be a good-looking but utterly unexceptional moe show. Sort of like Sansha Sanyou or in fact the majority of Doga Kobo productions at this point. What a waste of talent.

* Yes, that’s a word. I looked it up.

[kendrixtermina]

So I’ve seen the first episode with Picard

This is the first thing since before the Reboot that actually FELT like Star Trek

Confession time: I hatedhatedhated Discovery. 

So we all know that there has been an epidemic of soulless remakes in the last decade, that much is indisputable. At some point they figured out that they could sell/ disguise those as something relevant (or at least deflect criticism) by casting women. I’m all for representation don’t get me wrong id even say that it has value all on its own even in a bad film - But it does not replace writing. You still have to write. 

That’s also why I hate the word ”diversity” like I hated all phony euphemisms since I could think. Say representation if that’s what you mean, you could have a cast accurately representing the earth’s demographics and still have them be boring samey and predictable as characters. It can certainly LEAD to interestingness if this leads to the discussion of experiences that dont get enough attention or different POVs,  and bias toward giving acclaim to “tried and true” things (or a racism-tinged conception thereof) can LEAD to boring sameyness but they’re not the same things. 

First I was super exited about it including because of the diverse casting because that is a) needed in our times b) realistic for the far future and c) very much in the spirit of Star Trek. They didn’t always succeed, much looks dated now, but they tried. Also it was a super interesting time period of the setting to explore. But rather than building on it and expanding they ignored everything pretty much. Even that they were going to try a different POV other than the captain excited me - they did something like that with DS9 and it was great. 

First it’s this 12 year old writing their first fanfiction thing where the new MC is the fan favorite’s secret little sister like I could have written a better Mary Sue as a teenager, and they undermine the casting by tying her to the popularity of a white man character and not giving her like her own story and background. Remember Benjamin Sisko? He was from new Orleans, his father and son featured prominently etc there was a recognizeable cultural background just like Picard is French and Kirk was ‘merrican. Why not go afrofuturist?   Same thing with the androgynous name - they do it and then they immediately undermine it by having the people in the setting react to it like its weird. 

But what I really cannot forgive them is that they turned something that was always so deeply about humanism into a generic war flic. That the MC is a misunderstood visionary because she advocated for violence. The Klingons are basically Orks. Why not have a new baddie and call them something else? 

They completely forgot that it was supposed to be an utopian vision, a different, future society. A big central plot point, the emotional crux, is that everyone snubs Michael because she’s a convict, and pacifism is universally accepted. Starfleet sees itself primarily as explorers and diplomats though it socially fills the role of a military.  This is supposed to be a future world where the justice system is reparative, criminals get to see shrinks and reintegrated and people are less prejudiced and socially evolved - it can’t all be perfect because there would be no plot, but it still represents the idea that we CAN be better, and the characters try to choose that, or wrestle with the idea of that, when confronted with their own flaws and those of their society. Has the world come to a place where we can we no longer even imagine that? 

I often felt this would be better served by making ripoffs (predictability, which is what they want, plus room for creativity) instead of remakes (bound to piss off the original fans, cheap grab for free publicity) - A Sci Fi war movie about someone who is snubbed for being a convict absolutely could be good and valid on its own and touch on relevant themes, especially given the social problems in the USA where ex-cons can’t get jobs and racism leads to wrongful convictions. But the execution is plain bad!

So, By contrast, Picard

The old star treks had plenty of bad wonky episodes that everyone now rolls their eyes at but the thing is they always at least TRIED to be high-concept, classic-literature like. That took itself seriously when talking about politics, science, ideals and the human condition, and tried to be thought provoking

Something that’s been lost in modern anti/purity culture that acts like there is One Obvious Right Opinion and everything else gets loaded labels, is that something doesn’t need to be perfect to make the audience think about a concept or topic. I don’t expect it to be perfect but I do expect them to TRY. 

It’s only the first episode, I wouldn’t say that I’m blown away by genius, but it’s trying. 

Humanitarian actions are a theme again as well as integrity and utopia. He resigned in Protest.  etc because he felt society shifting away from that utopia

The relevant politcs is there - Refugee crisis, the sense that we’re in a dark place in history where ppl have become cautious stopped daring and trying

but the speculative is also there with the androids

Referencing Sci Fi classics. I see a lot of asimov there, a bit of blade runner. high-Concept sci fi has always assumed a well-read audience since Mary Shelley invented the genre

Picard is really written like Picard. I guess it helps to have the original actor. His dialogues were beautiful and everything that star trek is about. The orchid one is so pretty

It’s also original-like just in simple flavor things without over the top intertextuality/references, like the inclusion of paintings, mysterious beauty, the french countryside, the observation-riddled poker game , the theme of coming back from retirement, recalling the chess game at the opening of TOS etc. 

There was a war involving genetic augmentation and then it was banned forever in a WWII like traumatic reaction so this IS “in character” for that society for all that its always been characterized as neophillic

I already ship Soji with that Romulan. or im just glad to have some romulan MCs really regardless of ship. 

[poipoi1912]

Barba-centric thoughts on Ep 18x15

(Yes, Barba thoughts, in honor of the rare Barba-centric episode. Though I will also talk about Sonny, of course.)

Overall Thoughts

A solid episode. There was still something missing (the case was too straight-forward), but the idea that the perp was coming after the squad was somewhat original, and it raised the stakes. There was a lot of suspense, though it was probably less due to the writing and more due to the fact we were all worried about Barba, lol.

Sonny and Continuity

Dr. Carisi made a small appearance, when they found the body. He was all “head trauma, no pool of blood, she was moved”. That’s my Sonny!

I also thought it was sweet how Sonny seemed incredulous that someone would be blackmailing Barba, and he was also protective of Liv, all sweet and almost naively asking, “omg how does he know you and Barba are friends?” That’s the Sonny I know, worried about his friends and colleagues.

Sonny’s ‘Friend’

I've always thought that, out of the entire squad (the entire squad, Amaro and Dodds included), Sonny would be the one with the busiest love life. i.e. Sonny is the only one getting sniz on the reg. With the possible exception of Fin, of course, who is a player. The others are too caught up in their drama. Sonny is totally the guy who would meet someone, and be all cute and charming, and take them to a Broadway show, and buy cute underwear for them, or with them, and cook them dinner, and talk to them about one of his dozens of hobbies, etc etc.

I’m glad to have conformation he’s putting himself out there, basically. Now, this being SVU, Sonny’s ‘friend’ may never be mentioned again. For the moment, it seems the relationship is probably new but not too new and also hot’n’heavy lol, you go gurl!. Probably an actual ‘friend’ in the process of becoming something more? Aw. I do wish he had given us any kind of hint. And I loved how both Fin and Amanda (his bros) were teasing him, making him squirm. It reminded me of New Guy Sonny, from S16.

Bottom line, I’m happy Sonny is getting some, and he’s not letting the job affect his personal life. That’s a first for SVU :D

But enough about everything else. It’s Barba time:

Barba’s Financials

How much money does Barba have? And where is it coming from? We know he doesn’t come from money, as his grandmother lived in a modest building, and his mother seems to be middle class. So, not only does he have enough to buy expensive outfits, he also has enough to make regular (and I assume hefty) payments to that girl? For years? And I imagine he also has to pay rent? And, like, eat? How much do they pay at the DA’s office?

Barba’s Secret

It wasn't as dramatic as I was hoping, but it was a lot better than I was expecting. It fit Barba’s old personality. The guy who would do anything to put a bad man behind bars. I must say, Barba’s personal life remains a total mystery, and I don’t like that, but since the secret was career-threatening, it made sense for it to be work-related. With that in mind, I thought this particular reveal was a very good choice. The fact he didn’t regret it was the cherry on top. That’s the Barba I know.

By the way, imagine if Barba’s secret were to actually play out in an episode. Now. This season. If we saw a strung out witness, and Barba’s moral dilemma, and his decision to give her money, and then her testimony and her death by overdose. Imagine Raul having to act all that out. The doubt, the glee at the outcome of the trial, and then the grief and the guilt.

Imagine him having to meet her little 10-year-old, maybe, and still giving her money to get the drugs, because it was the right thing to do, even though it was wrong. Imagine him getting a call, near the end of the episode, and being informed of her death (and then, DICK WOLF). 

If the writers had such an interesting idea for Barba, why not use it in an individual, current episode? Especially since this season has been so samey and repetitive, and this type of episode would have stood out so much. And Barba said he’d do it again, so it’s not like he’s “changed” since then (I mean of course he has, but you know). Such a wasted opportunity. That would have made for a fantastic hour of television.

Barba and Liv

So many wonderful moments between them. Their bond was showcased in a great way. There were some missteps, like Barba making a fuss about not telling Liv, and then telling her in the very next scene (like, just tell her, Rafi, you know she won’t let it go), but that was classic S18, adding drama where no drama should exist,

That last scene was so good, though. It was a rare moment between two of the most experienced, and possibly most jaded characters on the show, who've been doing this soul-crushing job for way too long, and for a split second they entertain the notion of another life. They acknowledge the toll this job has taken on them (Liv’s “I know” was poignant, both because it validated Barba’s feelings and because it showed us a little crack in her own armor).

But they both have some fight left in them. I was moved when I heard Barba saying he really loves this job. It was a rare emotional moment for him. His confession was amazing as well, of course, and Raul’s performance was incredible, but I’m always drawn to the more lowkey moments, so that “I love this job, oh I really do,” just as Barba was about to possibly lose that job, and the defiant way in which he said it, that moment really spoke to me.

We don’t often get to hear Barba’s feelings about his job, or about his life, so I thought that was both necessary and lovely. And beautifully conveyed by Raul.

Barba’s Future

I wish the show had played up the consequences for Barba a little more. He has “a meeting with the DA”? What else is new? I wish the writers had utilized one of the episodes Raul wasn’t in, to maybe suggest he had gotten temporarily suspended. And then he could return, one episode later, and Liv and the squad could welcome him back. Then again, the scheduling changes probably would have made that impossible.

I have to say, Barba continues to be isolated from the rest of the team. I appreciate all the moments he shares with Liv, but I’d like to see him more integrated with the main cast. Different characters bring out different qualities in him, and I miss that.

Also, Barba’s aspirations are dead, right? His career is toast? In the longterm? This type of dirt, if this guy could find it, anyone could. Barba probably ain’t getting elected as the Manhattan DA anytime soon :(

(yes, this is me pretending that a) continuity exists on SVU and b) SVU would actually tackle a storyline about Barba’s career)

Stray Thoughts

Raul is divine.

Remember that dramatic promo, the one everyone was trying to dissect? It was all about Fin’s rope guy. Well played, SVU. Well played.

The Amanda parallels with the victim’s sister were weird. Too weird to be coincidental. And she was pretty judgy again, as she usually is when it comes to addiction, but it was nothing too bad. Dare I hope the writers were just being subtle? Or did they forget they gave that girl Amanda’s exact backstory?

They brought back that hot detective, only to make him look like an asshole? Nice. But, not gonna lie, I missed that tension between SVU cops and Homicide/the FBI/etc. So I didn’t mind it in the end. And his last scene was classic SVU.

Finally, Liv going in on a perp during an interrogation! I loved it.

The first time she met with Barba, Liv checked her phone and looked surprised, and I thought someone was blackmailing her! Maybe spying on her and Barba, right then and there! Missed opportunity.

Mega-terrabytes or whatever :D

No mention of Fin making Sergeant. So the reshoots were just regular reshoots/additional scenes. No plot or continuity reasons. At this point, we can’t be sure Fin’s promotion will actually be addressed. Maybe a random patrol cop will randomly say ‘Sergeant Tutuola’ in a random scene in, like, episode 20 :/

[jessicakehoe]

8 Looks to Inspire Your Next Thrifting Haul

As a result of the increasingly digital world that we live in, where so much of what we see and experience blurs into one same-samey picture, we as humans are exploring new ways to bring a sense of individuality back into our lives. As a result, thrifting (once only referred to in Macklemore lyrics) has emerged victorious. And with good reason. You can find some incredible sustainably-sourced pieces that won’t harm your wallet, or the environment. Think of it as a creative and cost-effective way to define your own personal style.

FASHION teamed up with Value Village to shoot eight ‘gram-worthy looks to show you just how easy it is to bring this season’s trends into your closet without contributing to the landfill problem. We shot at three different locations in Ontario where teams are also working to preserve the environment: Camp Kawartha, Ecology Park and Trent University.

Sarah Jay, the stylist who conceptualized the shoot, explained the inspiration behind it saying, “Both fashion and architecture have substantial environmental impacts, so moving away from virgin materials is essential in mitigating these impacts. I wanted to showcase clothing reuse in the context of reclaimed wood, upcycled bottle walls and natural alternatives to conventional concrete, which together illustrate a world where style and sustainability are one. Impacts aside, it remains true that every thrifted item is unique which encourages us to develop authentic style; to step out in something truly original. Genuinely stylish pieces have no shelf life, and Value Village is full of timeless gems, waiting to be reimagined, reinterpreted and re-worn.”

Discover the editorial below:

SAFARI SEASON

Safari jackets and trench coats have become spring classics. Buy them once, have them forever.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at The Camp Kawartha Environment Centre in Peterborough, Ont., with thanks to the Endeavour Centre.

Thrift tip: Dare to wear items in different ways. Buckles, buttons and belts can be twisted and tied to reveal new shapes.

MINIMAL MOOD

Clean lines and monochromatic pairings are anything but boring when the accessories add to the impact.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at The Camp Kawartha Environment Centre in Peterborough, Ont., with thanks to the Endeavour Centre.

Thrift tip: Pick a colour and search the racks for tones that match.

SHAPE SHIFTER

Statement pieces don’t need embellishment if they have architectural impact.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at The Camp Kawartha Environment Centre in Peterborough, Ont., with thanks to the Endeavour Centre.

Thrift tip: Seek out pieces with similar structure or silhouettes and let the shapes speak for themselves.

MATRIX MODE

Who said spring wasn’t leather weather? Not us.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at Ecology Park in Peterborough, Ont.

Thrift tip: Leather gets better with age so you’ll be loving these items for a very long time.

JUST RELAX

Nothing says spring like breezy layers and relaxed tailoring.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont.

Thrift tip: Browse the lingerie section for a wear-with-everything silk camisole to help balance the proportions of the look.

SUIT UP

Give traditional tailoring an update by going oversized in a rich jewel tone.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont.

Thrift tip: Search both the men’s and women’s sections when you thrift, and look outside your size range. Sizing isn’t universal and you might score regardless of what the tag says. Cinch large looks with a belt or let them be big – it’s a style slam dunk either way.

WHITE HOT

Go head to toe in complementary white hues for spring sophistication.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont.

Thrift tip: Look for bags that can be worn multiple ways to suit your outfit – like this purse, which we snapped over a belt for a DIY fanny pack.

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Transition from the office to OOO with layered separates that are both practical and polished.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Photographed at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont.

Thrift tip: Sheer pieces are perfect for layering and add drama to everything.

Photography by CARLYLE ROUTH. Concept and styling by SARAH JAY. Creative direction by GEORGE ANTONOPOULOS. Hair and makeup by SABRINA RINALDI FOR P1M.CA/BEAUTYCOUNTER. Fashion assistant MEG MCCLEAN. Photography assistant MICHAEL KAZIMIERCZUK. 

The post 8 Looks to Inspire Your Next Thrifting Haul appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

8 Looks to Inspire Your Next Thrifting Haul published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[fashiontrendin-blog]

17 Stylish Magazines That Should Be Weighing Down Your Coffee Table

http://fashion-trendin.com/17-stylish-magazines-that-should-be-weighing-down-your-coffee-table/

17 Stylish Magazines That Should Be Weighing Down Your Coffee Table

The traditional men’s magazine is on the ropes, with long-lived titles throwing in the towel seemingly every other week. It’s not a surprise. Men’s magazines have been closing for best part of a decade, the old formula of half-naked women, banter and ‘think pieces’ on wild insobriety in some corner of Eastern Europe just isn’t relevant any more.

Which, one might assume, means it’s difficult to remain a well-read man these days. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. A proliferation of niche magazines on everything from football to the art of coffee are currently flourishing, and waiting for you to pick them up. Some you may have heard of. Perhaps your better half has been reading them for years. Some will be new to you. All of them are beautifully designed and have something interesting to say. So get reading.

Popeye

As Isle Of Dogs, Wes Anderson’s recent love note to Japan proved, the land of the rising sun is the coolest country in the world. Look, we don’t make the rules. That’s just a fact. It follows, then, that Japanese street style magazine Popeye should be the one and only stop for hypebeasts out there. As well as covetable garments, you’ll find features titled ‘When I was 20 Years Old’ and ‘City Boys’ Habitats’ – insightful, engrossing and stylish without veering into pretentiousness.

Subscribe here

Little White Lies

The long-running film magazine has all the usual reviews, previews and interviews. But what really sets it apart are features delving into the lore and mythos of filmmaking. Everything from ‘Diary of a first-time filmmaker’ to an exploration of the rise and fall of the one-sheet get a look in. Best of all, the paper quality and original illustrations display a real love for magazines. It’ll look great on your coffee table, too.

Subscribe here

Positive News

Because, in 2018, we could all use some. A magazine that celebrates the best new advances in everything from economics to environment, offering a fresh perspective and palate-cleanser from the traditional media’s all-you-can-eat diet of gloom and anxiety. Plus, absolutely zero fake news.

Subscribe here

Good Sport

Arguably, all sports are good. (Except maybe badminton). But, news coverage can get a bit, well, samey. Thank goodness then, for Good Sport. Covering almost anything you can get competitively worked up about (including road running, surfing, climbing, hockey…) it offers an outside-the-box take on many beautiful games. The interviews are insightful. The features well-thought out, and the photo stories fantastic. Plus, it’s packed with sporting pub ammo, too. Fair play.

Subscribe here

Avaunt

The much-loved adventure mag made its comeback this year after a painfully long absence. Glossy, heavy and full of colourful cultural stories, daring escapades and insights into all corners of the world, this is the magazine to make you wish you’d done more with your day. Still, there’s always tomorrow, right? In the meantime, you can always live vicariously through it’s phenomenal photoshoots and profiles. And, at £10 per issue it is, to borrow an old Stella Artois slogan, reassuringly expensive.

Subscribe here

Creative Review

Another magazine with a colourful approach to catching the eye, Creative Review is every bit as artistic as the name suggests. Inside you’ll find a little bit of everything from photography to boutique television to podcasts. In one sentence: refreshingly fresh takes to help you broaden your cultural horizons. You just might get inspired, too.

Subscribe here

Icon

Browsing a glossy magazineon the subject of interior design might seem like the antithesis of a good time, but if that is the case, you clearly haven’t read Icon. Concerned with architecture and how we utilise the space around us, the magazine is much more than just a sofa catalogue. From brutalist buildings to efficient design and political graffiti, there’s something here to spark any man’s interest.

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Vogue Hommes

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Brownbook Magazine

This new bi-monthly is a magazine the world could do with browsing because it shines a light on a region that’s always in the news but is poorly understood nonetheless. With a focus on exploring the Middle East’s ‘Urban identity and culture’, Brownbook opens doors to a plethora of colourful cultures most of us know little about. From Tangiers to Tehran, it promises to bring you the most inspiring stories from the region. Each issue is a masterclass in minimalist design, too. And the covers are so good you’ll want to frame them.

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New Philosopher

If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? How about if that tree is turned into paper, then that’s used to make the New Philosopher? Or how about if we leave that strained analogy there and just tell you why you should be reading this magazine? To put it briefly, wellness – looking after head and heart – is becoming more and more popular. And as a result we’re more ‘woke’ when it comes to entertaining the big ideas. This magazine will help nurture your inquisitive nature.

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Standart

This quarterly magazine celebrating coffee culture couldn’t be more current. This is a book for aficionados and aspiring experts alike. The design is clean and neat, the features irreverent and informative, and best of all, it’ll look great Instagrammed beside a cortardo. It’ll give you something to chat about with your barista, too.

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Rakes Progress

The restorative powers of the great outdoors have long been touted. It was only a matter of time, then, until a high-end mag appeared celebrating all things green-fingered. So in the latest issue there’s a photographic exploration of ‘borders’ (both of the ‘flower’ and ‘national’ varieties) plus everything you need to know to turn that garden/allotment/window ledge into your very own green space.

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Eight By Eight

Eight by Eight is a football magazine out of New York. Which means it takes a different approach to the beautiful game than your usual European newspapers and Twitter pundits might. It’s also (we’re sorry to say) a lot cooler than UK alternatives (there is no equivalent). Focusing on top-quality journalism and excellent design, it’s proof that football magazines aren’t just read by 12-year-olds on the back of the school bus.

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Like many good things, this food mag is produced in Brooklyn. As such, you’ll get real hipster points for displaying it casually tossed on your coffee table. Recipes, photo features, trends, and more feature, while a zine-like, underground feel makes it infinitely more appealing than Waitrose magazine.

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Ernest Journal

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Conquista

A high-end cycling magazine focusing on more than your commute, Conquista is the revolutionary niche publication you’ve been waiting for. It’s also another mag where the covers could happily adorn your wall. Inside you’ll fine even more fantastic illustrations, in-depth photo features and high-quality journalism. Just the thing for the stylish cyclist.

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[davidrsmithlove]

Content Marketing World 2017: Top Takeaways From Industry Leaders

Joe Pulizzi

My biggest takeaway is from our annual content marketing research.  Those companies that say their successful at content marketing are truly focused on building audiences.  That’s so key to success. Sure, there are lots of areas that delivering content can help a company, but by building a loyal and trusted audience, we can create and deliver new revenue streams like we’ve never imagined.

  Gini Dietrich

Content Marketing World is in my top three conferences of the entire year. I love that the content is hand-selected and that you can have serendipitous meetings in the hallways. It’s the perfect mix of content and networking. This year’s conference, like previous years, has been a highlight of my year. The biggest takeaway I have actually didn’t happen in a session—though I have plenty of notes for things I need to do from the sessions. No, the biggest takeaway came from a conversation during dinner. I learned that, no matter how hard you try or how much money your content marketing brings to an organization, there just are some executives who are so stubborn, you can’t affect change. While that may seem frustrating, it was freeing to me. It made me realize it’s not us, it’s them. So, if you continue to bang your head against the wall and can’t get anything done, it’s not you. It’s them. 

    Bernie Borges

At CMW 2017, I was pleased to see more sessions on B2B marketing and sales alignment and on artificial intelligence. While marketing and sale alignment is a decades-old challenge, there’s never been a better time to cross this chasm through a content-driven approach, aided by powerful marketing technologies. 

Marketers are just beginning to understand the power of AI. A lot of questions remain, including AI’s impact on marketing professional’s careers. Smart marketers are diving in and experimenting with AI-driven market to streamline aspects of their content marketing programs and learning about AI’s true potential. 

The future is exciting with lines blurring between marketing and sales. Organizations who can deliver on the four elements of alignment, mindset, skillset and toolset will outperform their competitors. 

    Michael Brenner

Content Marketing World 2017 focused on themes that have been common in recent years: build an audience then you can monetize it. We have to be more diverse, more creative, more visual. We heard from a bunch of brands who talked about how awesome they are. We heard about storytelling and personas and strategy and dashboards, oh and AI – that’s a big trend to pay attention to.

What was most interesting to me is that here in 2017 the main focus of discussion in content marketing is still content marketing. In my own session, I talked about how the real opportunity with content marketing is to deliver a better customer experience. That in turn can deliver more value to the business overall. And the best way to do that is by activating employees. 

The bottom line is we have to start making content marketing about something bigger than content marketing, something bigger than marketing, something bigger than our business. I’m hoping we see more of this in 2018.

    Matt Heinz

Unfortunately, my takeaway isn’t the most positive.  As enthusiasm for and adoption of content marketing expands across industries and organizations, we still aren’t tracking whether it’s really working – not just based on clicks and engagement but based on sales & revenue influence.  Getting to a level of precision on this isn’t easy, but I still don’t hear enough people asking the question.

Our own research recently showed that the vast majority of marketers aren’t measuring the revenue impact or influence of their content.  We have to bridge that gap better moving forward.

  Aaron Dun

It was clear from this year’s CMW that content marketing has reached a tipping point — today’s buyers won’t tolerate veiled sales pitches in the form of content. The old reliable practices like the lead-gated white paper, just aren’t working the way they used to. This type of content has become a commodity that is undifferentiated, with no intrinsic value.  

The good news is that there are so many smart marketers trying exciting new things to push themselves outside of their comfort zones, to get beyond the lead gate and create engaging, valuable content experiences that really resonate with buyers. I am struck by the growing sophistication of the CMW audience and content marketing as a whole. It’s definitely an exciting time to be in this industry!

    Ahava Leibtag

My top takeaway was that there’s a lot of options out there right now in terms of technology and companies that can help you with your marketing stack. What was also interesting is that content marketing seems to be becoming a part of a company’s overall marketing efforts and not their main focus, which I think is a good way to keep traditional marketing, brand journalism and advertising in the mix.

    Robert Rose 

I’m even more excited by the people I meet at Content Marketing World.  I have two big takeaways. The first is how excited I am to see more strategies focusing on building an audience. This wasn’t just something that I felt at the event – but was proven out in our research. Now 90% of those that are most successful are focused on building an audience as the core part of their content marketing strategy. I’m certainly focused on that – and have launched a new framework at http://www.audiencevaluation.com for those who are interested in learning more.  My second biggest takeaway is how many return people, from new companies that I meet.  In other words, these are people who are progressing through a content marketing career and are moving into new and exciting new opportunities at new companies.  I love seeing how people are taking the knowledge of content and building their career on it.  It’s exciting.

    Doug Kessler

Aside from my undiminished awe for the entire Content Marketing World team, my top takeaway from CMWorld 2017 is “Build Your Own Audience”.

Joe Pulizzi made this the main point of his event introduction — as he and Robert Rose do in their new book, ‘Killing Marketing’ (I’m half way through it – it’s excellent).

Joe and Robert take it further, saying that marketing departments should be in the media business, turning marketing from a cost center to a profit center.

I’m going to take a while to let that percolate through to my lizard brain but it’s definitely a provocative idea with plenty of examples to support it.

The core premise rings true: protect your company from the at best inefficient (and at worst fraudulent) digital and social media advertising cartel. Build direct relationships with your audience and you earn the right to sell them stuff.

    Margaret Magnarelli

I was really inspired by GE CMO Linda Boff’s keynote. Sometimes we can get caught in “X is what our company sells so X is the topic of our content��� kind of thinking. But her examples really showed how she’s pushed her teams to think more broadly than their products. And the fact that they’re being so daring at a giant legacy company like GE, which could just be sitting on its laurels or acting in silos, was really exciting to me. For example, she spoke about the superpowered meat smoker they had their engineers design for campus events; the “moon boots” they had an engineer and a sneaker head produce; the fact that they gave top photographers access to their turbines and big machines for Instagram.  I love that kind of creativity, and it just reminded me to get out of my own boxes.  Jay Acunzo’s presentation following it was a perfect segue for content creators, in that we need to not be samey samey with what everyone else is doing just because we’ve been told it works.

    Julia McCoy

At CMWorld 2017, I really enjoyed Jay Baer’s talk, How to Get Promoted by Creating Less Content, Not More. Jay made the point that the most persuasive content today is created by real people, not brands. The more content customers and fans you create, the less you have to create. He ended the talk by saying that “Content success is harder than ever, and it’s not going to get easier, especially when we’re fighting against robots.” The robots WILL be here in just a few months. He said: “Add the secret sauce of humanity for us to… have jobs. Have a laser focus on relevance, trustworthiness, memorability…not volume.” This was a very impactful conversation and has moved my personal content creation needle to re-map and re-focus on creating content that will truly make a difference in my industry and for my audience. I’m inspired and will be starting a new video series and focusing on creating the most real, impactful content I can in my blog and podcast, as well as in the writing we do for our clients at Express Writers.

    Andy Crestodina

Jay Acunzo made a powerful point. We should be focused on our audience, not our industry. Yes, we can follow best practices. Yes, we can do competitive analysis. Yes, we can do what the world says we should do. 

But there’s another way. We can do something unique, unexpected and original.

My approach to content marketing is mostly about optimizing. I’m trying to get better results by improving what I’ve got. Incremental improvements. And it works. But Jay reminded me to add chaos to the system. Stop looking at the data. Ignore the past. There may be a radical departure that would make a bigger impact in the lives of my audience. I don’t know what it is, but I’m looking and I’m ready to discover it. Thank you, Jay.

    John Paul Aguiar

My takeaway from everything I have read and watched from CM World 2017 is bring the personal and bring the quality.

Content that works best going forward is more personal content, content with a story, content that brings people in and talks about more than just your services or products.

Also, quality content has always been king, but it seems to be even more important today. Which makes sense right, with so much content being put out, if you want to stand out and grab people attention you have to bring something different.

You have to be VERY helpful and approachable and informative.

If you can package that content into small, visually attractive packages that is even smarter.

    Allen Gannett

Content marketing is maturing to become, simply, “marketing.” As what we do becomes less of a niche, and more of a standard, there is both risk and opportunity for marketers. People who grew their careers as content marketers will have the opportunity to rise into corporate leadership. In those roles, they will be able to use audience-driven strategies to build great businesses. On the other side, those who don’t rise may see consolidation as content marketing stops being split out as a separate function/budget/program.

Either way, times are a changin’!

    Andrea Fryrear

This was my third consecutive year at Content Marketing World, and I’m starting to feel like the takeaway is similar from year to year. But that’s not a bad thing — quite the opposite. 

See, content marketers as a group are clever, creative professionals, but we have to operate in the cruel, constrained world of Business. We have brilliant ideas, but the day-to-day grind of getting stuff done wears them down into average ideas. If content marketers are batteries, we just run out of charge as time goes on. 

So every year we make a pilgrimage to Cleveland and get plugged in. 

This year nobody recharged quite like Jay Acunzo, whose opening day keynote put mediocrity on notice that it’s no longer acceptable (I’m not sure how you burn mediocrity in effigy, but if you could then I would have been first in line with a torch). Then you go from that rousing address to hear people like Ann Handley and Andrew Davis showing you — really showing you, because they do it themselves — how to put excellence into practice in writing and video, respectively. It’s just so energizing. 

For me CMWorld is like a giant battery, and content professionals go there replenish ourselves. We get reminded that content matters, our creativity matters, and fighting the good fight on behalf of our audiences matters. We leave Cleveland ready to go back to Business and do our best work.   

And if I keep getting that same takeaway every single year, just try and keep me away. 

    Robert Murray

My biggest takeaway is that even though we’re inundated with content, there are still uninhabited spaces to explore. There will always be a place for great, original content. The problem is that it is so easy to copy other brands that have done well rather than create something ourselves. It’s hard to ask ourselves the questions that lead to truly original content, but if we don’t, we are all trying to occupy the same crowded piece of real estate, and no one can reach an audience that way.

    Peter Loibl

What a week in Cleveland! And while I feel this was our strongest speaker lineup of all time, the topic that seemed to resonate more than others centered around marketers’ usage of video in their content mix, and more importantly marketers’ strategic approach to utilizing and maximizing this channel. Those using video as true storytelling instruments to engage with their audience (and potential customers) are ahead of the curve; those using video as an opportunity for ad clicks and pre-roll (frustrating) ad spots need to take what they learned from CMW back to their respective offices and change the way we collective use and enjoy online video moving forward. Create experiences, not CPL ad reach!

    Zontee Hou

I was struck by the consistent through-line at Content Marketing World that data without storytelling is meaningless. We have more data than ever, not only to reach more relevant audiences but to share with our industries. However, without context and strong story arcs, we underutilize the power of that information. 

Speakers including Adam Singer of Google, Margaret Magnarelli of Monster, and Ann Handley of MarketingProfs shared fantastic examples of how to find and tell more compelling stories. And it was sessions like theirs that inspire me for the future, when marketers hone the craft of working with data for communications. 

    David MacLaren

My main take away from #CMWorld 2017 was inspired by Joe Pulizzi’s statement: “Content marketing is marketing that serves the audience”.  It’s such a simple statement, yet it reflects two themes that really stood out for me this year: the obsession with customer needs and the ability for AI to deliver relevant content when it’s truly needed.

Crafting content focusing on customer needs shows a true understanding of the challenges and questions asked at different stages of the customer journey.  It means that the company’s content is carefully crafted to deliver value in exchange for the customer’s time and attention. When content is created with this approach in mind, it becomes a highly valuable asset to an organization, similar to the core products or services that the company offers. This mindset, along with the introduction of AI and the right combination of interconnected technologies is what’s making content truly strategic.

    Mark Masters

I am based in England and being across the Atlantic, I can still see the same same challenges and opportunities this side when it comes to defining a voice, standing for something and growing an audience.

We have all been looking to target the masses for generations. We live in a world of advice overload and look to find the shortest routes possible for success and sell to anybody and everybody.

Going forward it was clear that an overarching message to be recognised as providing value to others, will always beat stealing attention from someone else.

It is time to look at the audiences that we grow as an asset and not people to relentlessly broadcast to. The only thing that stands in front of many companies is to press the reset button and a change of attitude. The winners and proof is becoming ever more present, no matter what country you call home.

Carla Johnson

Tim Washer’s talk on using improv techniques in content marketing was fabulous. He shows the beauty of being able to take the essence of another idea and relate it to the work we do as marketers. From focusing on how to support your partner to finding order in chaos and following the fear, Tim showed how we can go beyond changing how people talk and actually change how they think.

    Brody Dorland

I had the pleasure of being on a panel that focused on the topic of how agencies should approach adding content marketing services to their service offerings. My fellow speakers included Paul Roetzer of PR 20/20 and Rebecca Geier of TREW Marketing, both agency owners. Then there was me, a former agency owner turned content marketing software provider. It was very interesting hearing Paul and Rebecca talk about today’s challenges that agencies face with trying to sell, develop, staff for and execute ongoing content marketing programs for clients. 

Of all those challenges, the one that we really didn’t have a solid answer for was the staffing component. In most cases, high-performing content marketing initiatives are derived out of deep subject matter expertise that packs in value, and are executed by passionate creators with domain knowledge in that specific industry. This equation is hard to come by on the agency side unless the agency has niched out in certain verticals/industries. So if high-performing content marketing initiatives are the goal, there are three options: 

Agencies go niche and focus on comfortable domains

Agencies find and manage long-term relationships with freelancers that have domain knowledge

Companies (clients) bring the creative in-house.

I’ve seen both sides of this challenge and, from my perspective, I see the trend leaning towards companies making the commitment and taking full ownership of their content marketing programs. But this doesn’t mean that agencies won’t be part of the mix. There’s still value in strategic offerings, execution of multi-media assets, distribution/promotion services and performance reporting services. 

Bottom line, creating great content consistently is hard. There’s no silver bullet or easy button for any of us. We must accept that, keep trying, and do the best we can.

    Pamela Muldoon 

I absolutely loved Jay Acunzo’a keynote “How Brilliant Marketers Find and Follow What Makes Their Stories Different in a World Full of Average Content”. He broke down how our intuition is a critical part of content ideation, and though explaining why to do something based on intuition is challenging, having a set of great questions to get us to better ideas is key. Six great questions to ask to take your content from intention to possibilities:

What is your aspirational anchor?

Why are you the person/team to do it?

What is your first-principle insight?

Who are your true belivers?

What are your constraints?

How can you expand?

This is a great baseline to get your content from average to amazing. 

    Pam Didner

“Stories are right under your nose.” @lindoboff @GE. The writing is on the wall, but the ink is not immediately available. You need to look for clues. 

  Rebecca Lieb

Stratgey, strategy, strategy! THEN you can think about tactics.

  Stoney deGeyter

Artificial intelligence is coming to marketing and in a big way. Exactly what or when it will all happen is anyone’s guess. Predictions vary wildly, even by those on the cutting edge of bringing it to us. 

We already see new tools popping up that utilize some (very crude) forms of AI. Like most tools, these are not likely to remove the human component completely, but it will cause some significant disruptions to the world we now know. 

    Jonathan Kranz

The age of “innovation” is rapidly coming to a close. Real progress will be made by marketers who apply a discriminatory intelligence to their strategy, prioritizing content tactics that are not only deeply relevant to their audiences, but can be practically repeated and expanded by their organizations.

    Douglas Burdette

My very favorite takeaway was from keynoter Jay Acunzo: 

“When we pay more attention to the customer than the industry, the customer pays more attention to us.” 

It’s an empathizer’s market out there – the more your customer senses that you understand them, the more successful you’ll be. Sadly, most companies are more focused on themselves and their competition than their customers. And that will never change.

    Christoph Trappe

So many changes! So many issues that today’s content marketer faces in a world that becomes more and more complex. Yes, you need a strategy. Yes, you need to align your content to it and always go for results. But also, don’t overcomplicate things. Be unique. Stand out. Be useful. The best stories win.

  Tim Hayden

As always, Content Marketing World proved to be a powerful resource for guidance on storytelling and overall content strategy. From curation to conversion and influencer identification to building addressable audiences, 2017 proved to be the year where speakers and attendees seemed to finally focus on sales being their primary objective, not just the performance of media.

Still, it would be nice to see more of the showcase vendors discussing integration and collaboration with each other, and I believe there is much more to look forward to in 2018 with artificial intelligence, augmented reality and audio/smart speakers each playing a larger role in the content marketing mix.

    Patricia Travaline

Marketers need to start thinking about our audiences differently. We’ve known for a while now that we don’t need to depend on third party media companies to reach audiences. Our owned media is increasingly competing directly with traditional media providers, and that’s why we’re seeing the start of a convergence between product- or service-driven brands and media companies. But the change that we’ve only just begun to see is in how we value that audience. The traditional point of view for marketers is that the value of an audience is at the point of sale, but with content marketing, the audience is so much more: They amplify our message, they deliver meaningful data to us, they help us refine our targeting. All these things have value. For content marketers to sell our value internally, we need to sell the value of the audiences we’re building.

    Stephanie Stahl

Marketers need to start thinking about our audiences differently. We’ve known for a while now that we don’t need to depend on third party media companies to reach audiences. Our owned media is increasingly competing directly with traditional media providers, and that’s why we’re seeing the start of a convergence between product- or service-driven brands and media companies. But the change that we’ve only just begun to see is in how we value that audience. The traditional point of view for marketers is that the value of an audience is at the point of sale, but with content marketing, the audience is so much more: They amplify our message, they deliver meaningful data to us, they help us refine our targeting. All these things have value. For content marketers to sell our value internally, we need to sell the value of the audiences we’re building.

    Anna Hrach

My top takeaway from Content Marketing World 2017 isn’t a new concept, but it was heard loud and clear across several sessions: create the content your audiences want. This was heard in Jay Acunzo’s advice to pay more attention to the customer than the industry, Jay Baer’s approach to making more audience-relevant content with his 5x5x5 framework, Ahava Leibtag’s advice on how to create instant connections with customers through content, and so many, many more. It was refreshing to hear multiple speakers and experts talk about what matters most: our audiences.

  David Reimherr

My top take-away from CM World 2017 was the extra attention paid towards high quality content and building your audience.  It isn’t the first time we have heard this, but there was an additional emphasis paid towards this point.  And I think the reason for this is that the digital space is getting more crowded than ever and you must do your best to stand out and you can only do this by being extremely helpful.  Also, the quality of content being enhanced by video and interactive elements was also touched on quite a bit and these additions can greatly help you stand out from the crowd. 

Another big pointer that I took away was the attention needed on up-front planning.  Many of us are guilty of wanting to jump in and go, but a huge majority of your time needs to be dedicated to up-front strategy and planning before you ever create your first post or video.  With upper-level management calling for more concrete ROI on all of our marketing efforts, it is paramount to have all of your strategy, tactics and goals outlined very clearly from the outset. 

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[thepersona5-blog]

Persona 5 is an odd game. In a way, it’s possibly the best Persona title to date, but at the same time, it’s not perfect either. For example, the idea of reintroducing the conversation element from the Shin Megami Tensei universe back into this game was a brilliant idea, but at the same time, it felt very dumbed down from recent Shin Megami games. Now I’m not saying that the consequences of not getting an ally should as severe as those game, as it’s possible to get a game over, but the conversations in this game pretty much fall into, “play into their ego” and that’s it. Some will occasionally start off slightly different than that, but it always feels very samey, which is hardly the case with Shin Megami Tensei. 

The combat of the game is little different in that it somehow feels like there’s less of an impact from attacks, as in, when you hit an opponent, it doesn’t feel like you actually hit them. However, in order to counter that feeling a little bit, the boss fights give you other options that cause an ally to be out of battle for a bit, but what they do can assist you and get some more interaction between characters, adding depth to an already amazing grew of characters. That said, and with those few issues aside, the game is brilliant. The style is amazing, and each dungeon makes so much sense for the characters who have them that it’s impossible to explain how hand in hand they are. 

Persona 5 is much more than just aesthetics though, as the characters, even the side ones, are some of the best that Persona has ever offered. Whether it’s those who originally opposed you and became your allies, to ones who start off as your friends who become irreplaceable parts of what is probably the best adventure Japan has given us this side of the decade. All of these characters, no matter how minor, or major their roles were, are memorable in their own right. 

This music of the game is without a doubt up there as well. The ones focused the most on characters who have the biggest roles to play in the game are some of the best songs in recent gaming history, but the rest of the soundtrack is no slouch either. The biggest part of music though, is playing the right music at the right time, and Persona 5, nails that incredibly well. It doesn’t matter if it’s a serious moment, a goofy one, or something in between, the right song always plays at the right time and that makes the game, that much better.

There’s not a lot really, that I can say about Persona 5 that is bad, just a little related to combat, but everything else that’s there makes these small drawbacks well worth dealing with if you like great characters and an amazing story, that I dare not hardly even mention for fear of spoiling it. If there’s any RPG with what many considered to be an outdated combat system that’s worth your time, Persona 5 is it. My final score for the game, is a 4.7/5. Now let’s just hope those dancing games and Persona Q2 are as good as their previous entrires. 

[kirbysag]

Car Trouble (19-2-17)

Fuck.

Well.

…

Fuck.

I stroked the wheel, trying to coax a bit more out of the old girl.

Come on…

Come on…

It sputtered some, moved a foot or so. Then the headlights went out.

And so did the dashboard. And the gauges. And the interior lights. And the phone charger. And the GPS that had decided to call quit-skies about 2 hours back.

So, of course, I did what any sane person would do in my shoes. When you’re trapped in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere with no phone signal, no GPS signal, no car battery, no water and no food, there’s only a few things you have left at that point.

I turned the keys again. I prayed, this time. I actually, honest-to-god prayed. She’d be through the fuckin’ roof if she found out that I had conceded that maybe, just maybe, there was some big, all powerful ass-hat out there to get me, and I was asking for his forgiveness.

Or whatever.

The car didn’t start again, turning the key did nothing. It was pretty cloudy on the drive up here, so outside was pitch black. Inside the car, however, it was a delightful shade of “absolutely, 100%, All-Natural Pitch Black”. Out of the frying pan and into the hard place, or whatever.

I picked up my phone. 18% power. Might be enough.

I turned on its’ flashlight and did a quick scan of the back-seat, hoping that Past-Brian had been smart and remembered to pack his flashlight. Of course he didn’t. Thanks, Past-Brian.

I opened the car door to go outside. Maybe I had something in the trunk that would help. God knows that staying in there in the dark wouldn’t do anything. I moved around to the trunk, and opened it.

Fishing gear, mostly. There were tackle boxes, poles, tarps, camping chairs, marshmallows, the tent, s’mores sticks, toiletries, phone chargers, notepads, pencils…

And not one fucking flashlight.

Thanks again, Past-Brian.

I put my hand on the trunk to close it when I stopped.

It wasn’t even that anything happened. It’s like when you’re reading a book and a work suddenly doesn’t make sense, when it becomes foreign to you. Like seeing “mattress” too many times.

It’s like when you walk into a room from another and you freeze, and you know you’re forgetting something. You know, you just know it. You can realize that something isn’t there that should be there, but it isn’t and you can’t remember what it is.

All of my hairs stood up. Goosebumps. Strong enough that I felt like I was literally sliding out of my skin. Then, I found it. I found the thing that was supposed to be there, but wasn’t.

It was silence.

Silence.

…

…

No crickets. No wind through the tree branches. No birds or owls or mice or whatever small, woodland creatures they have in Whatever’sville, Montana. Nothing. It was so quiet I could hear my stomach working through my dinner.

I didn’t want to break the silence, obviously. It felt unnatural, if anything that far away from civilization could feel unnatural. Almost not daring to breathe, I turned off my phone’s flashlight and started to turn my head.

After the light was out, I heard something. There was something back down the road I had been driving on. It was someone, sounded like a man’s voice.

It was very distinct. Aging, late 70’s, like the grandpa type who was lovely about most things but still slightly racist. Probably smoked and done any number of illegal drugs in his college days, but was now here mostly just to impart wisdom on the youngsters.

He sounded like that, but he wasn’t saying anything. It was like somebody had told him how human speech was supposed to sound, and he just went off that. While I couldn’t hear any words, I could tell he was alone and afraid. He wanted me to turn the light on so he could see where he was going, probably had a hurt hip and was exhausted from walking so far. Poor thing.

A part of me had a suspicion of what was going on. This was wrong, unnatural, dangerous. But, he was just a poor old dude, probably on his way to see the family, like me. How would I feel if I just let some little girl’s grandpa die out on the Montana wilderness?

That shook me a bit. Why was there a grandpa all the way out here with no car? Why wasn’t he speaking English?

I forced my neck to move. I had frozen, half looking at the ground, with one hand on the trunk of the car. Moving my neck was like pushing against the tide. My muscles felt stiff and awkward, like trying to bend glass back into shape.

As I forced my head to look backwards towards Grandpa and the road I came on, I saw it. I guess.

The night was black. Pitch black, again. I couldn’t make out anything other than vague, mono-chrome definitions of things that might be there. My shoulder was less than an outline. The road wasn’t visible other than a vague idea of what direction I was driving in and the slightly pitcher-black of the pitch-black of the night, marking where the forest started.

But I still saw him.

Or, it.

I don’t know how far down the road it was, but there was something. It was like watching someone on LSD try to put on a puppet show. Sections of darkness so black they could just be holes instead of shadows danced in odd ways. They loosely formed a central mass, with slightly discernible arms and legs, but it was like someone was spinning an object casting a shadow, and you were supposed to guess what it was supposed to be.

Expect it was there. Down the road from me. ‘Standing’, I guess, if it can do that. Its’ ‘speech’ increased in volume. It needed me, begged me to just turn on the light again, to help him out. Won’t you help poor grandpa?

That woke me up. Quieter than the night around us, I moved towards the front of the car.

My foot kicked a pebble.

The sound of Grandpa drew closer. Not like it was walking. It was simply suddenly closer. It sounded like it was coming from about 10 feet away from the trunk. I decided not to look back.

It took me an eternity to get to the front door. I was exhausted physically from having to slowly force myself to move as quietly as possible, one muscle at a time. Mentally from blocking out Grandpa. Or, at least, doing my best.

I reached the door, realizing that moving the handle would cause noise. I debated waiting out all night, or however long this fucking nightmare would take to end. But, chances are I wouldn’t be able to do it. I had been driving for almost 9 hours straight through bland, samey highways. I was already about to collapse under this stress, and I would eventually fuck up before sunrise.

I decided I would move quickly. Maybe if I got in the far fast enough, I would be safe from Grandpa. Maybe he didn’t know how handles worked.

I wasn’t that ready to test my luck, so I decided on something else.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I bent towards the ground. Really praying, this time, that my knees wouldn’t crack, or my breath wouldn’t get louder, or any other hundred-thousand things that could go wrong wouldn’t go wrong.

I made it to the ground. I reached around for a pebble, and found one of a good size. Working my way back up, muscle by muscle, one of my fucking knees did crack.

Grandpa was closer again. He was right outside the open trunk.

He travelled 10 feet in less time than it took me to blink.

Fuck.

Well.

…

Fuck.

Who knows. Maybe after this, I’d get to see her. That might not be too bad, after all. The kids still need me, but at least there’s a small silver lining to this.

Steeling my nerves, and with the vision of her in my head and in my soul, I flicked the pebble behind me, into the forest.

I heard it clatter against something a small way away. Grandpa went over to it, his sounds now coming from behind me rather than beside me.

This was my chance. I opened the car door.

Fuck.

Fuck.

It was locked.

Fuck.

Oh my god, my keys.

Where were my keys.

Where were the fucking keys?

I couldn’t feel inside my pockets.

I couldn’t feel my fingers; I’d been standing in one position for so long. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight. They must’ve dropped somewhere. On the ground somewhere.

I didn’t hear Grandpa anymore.

Moving the light across the door of the car, my eye caught something shiny right next to the steering wheel.

Plugged in, right where they should be.

Fuck.

He asked how I was doing, He was worried.

I left the light on.

I turned around to face Grandpa.

Hi Grandpa.

Hi.

Hi.

Hey.

Thank you, Grandpa.

Thank you so much, Grandpa.

Yes, Grandpa.

Yes.

I love you very much, Grandpa.

I love you very much.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you, Grandpa.

Goodnight.

[davidrsmithlove]

Content Marketing World 2017: Top Takeaways From Industry Leaders

Joe Pulizzi

My biggest takeaway is from our annual content marketing research.  Those companies that say their successful at content marketing are truly focused on building audiences.  That’s so key to success. Sure, there are lots of areas that delivering content can help a company, but by building a loyal and trusted audience, we can create and deliver new revenue streams like we’ve never imagined.

  Gini Dietrich

Content Marketing World is in my top three conferences of the entire year. I love that the content is hand-selected and that you can have serendipitous meetings in the hallways. It’s the perfect mix of content and networking. This year’s conference, like previous years, has been a highlight of my year. The biggest takeaway I have actually didn’t happen in a session—though I have plenty of notes for things I need to do from the sessions. No, the biggest takeaway came from a conversation during dinner. I learned that, no matter how hard you try or how much money your content marketing brings to an organization, there just are some executives who are so stubborn, you can’t affect change. While that may seem frustrating, it was freeing to me. It made me realize it’s not us, it’s them. So, if you continue to bang your head against the wall and can’t get anything done, it’s not you. It’s them. 

    Bernie Borges

At CMW 2017, I was pleased to see more sessions on B2B marketing and sales alignment and on artificial intelligence. While marketing and sale alignment is a decades-old challenge, there’s never been a better time to cross this chasm through a content-driven approach, aided by powerful marketing technologies. 

Marketers are just beginning to understand the power of AI. A lot of questions remain, including AI’s impact on marketing professional’s careers. Smart marketers are diving in and experimenting with AI-driven market to streamline aspects of their content marketing programs and learning about AI’s true potential. 

The future is exciting with lines blurring between marketing and sales. Organizations who can deliver on the four elements of alignment, mindset, skillset and toolset will outperform their competitors. 

    Michael Brenner

Content Marketing World 2017 focused on themes that have been common in recent years: build an audience then you can monetize it. We have to be more diverse, more creative, more visual. We heard from a bunch of brands who talked about how awesome they are. We heard about storytelling and personas and strategy and dashboards, oh and AI – that’s a big trend to pay attention to.

What was most interesting to me is that here in 2017 the main focus of discussion in content marketing is still content marketing. In my own session, I talked about how the real opportunity with content marketing is to deliver a better customer experience. That in turn can deliver more value to the business overall. And the best way to do that is by activating employees. 

The bottom line is we have to start making content marketing about something bigger than content marketing, something bigger than marketing, something bigger than our business. I’m hoping we see more of this in 2018.

    Matt Heinz

Unfortunately, my takeaway isn’t the most positive.  As enthusiasm for and adoption of content marketing expands across industries and organizations, we still aren’t tracking whether it’s really working – not just based on clicks and engagement but based on sales & revenue influence.  Getting to a level of precision on this isn’t easy, but I still don’t hear enough people asking the question.

Our own research recently showed that the vast majority of marketers aren’t measuring the revenue impact or influence of their content.  We have to bridge that gap better moving forward.

  Aaron Dun

It was clear from this year’s CMW that content marketing has reached a tipping point — today’s buyers won’t tolerate veiled sales pitches in the form of content. The old reliable practices like the lead-gated white paper, just aren’t working the way they used to. This type of content has become a commodity that is undifferentiated, with no intrinsic value.  

The good news is that there are so many smart marketers trying exciting new things to push themselves outside of their comfort zones, to get beyond the lead gate and create engaging, valuable content experiences that really resonate with buyers. I am struck by the growing sophistication of the CMW audience and content marketing as a whole. It’s definitely an exciting time to be in this industry!

    Ahava Leibtag

My top takeaway was that there’s a lot of options out there right now in terms of technology and companies that can help you with your marketing stack. What was also interesting is that content marketing seems to be becoming a part of a company’s overall marketing efforts and not their main focus, which I think is a good way to keep traditional marketing, brand journalism and advertising in the mix.

    Robert Rose 

I’m even more excited by the people I meet at Content Marketing World.  I have two big takeaways. The first is how excited I am to see more strategies focusing on building an audience. This wasn’t just something that I felt at the event – but was proven out in our research. Now 90% of those that are most successful are focused on building an audience as the core part of their content marketing strategy. I’m certainly focused on that – and have launched a new framework at http://www.audiencevaluation.com for those who are interested in learning more.  My second biggest takeaway is how many return people, from new companies that I meet.  In other words, these are people who are progressing through a content marketing career and are moving into new and exciting new opportunities at new companies.  I love seeing how people are taking the knowledge of content and building their career on it.  It’s exciting.

    Doug Kessler

Aside from my undiminished awe for the entire Content Marketing World team, my top takeaway from CMWorld 2017 is “Build Your Own Audience”.

Joe Pulizzi made this the main point of his event introduction — as he and Robert Rose do in their new book, ‘Killing Marketing’ (I’m half way through it – it’s excellent).

Joe and Robert take it further, saying that marketing departments should be in the media business, turning marketing from a cost center to a profit center.

I’m going to take a while to let that percolate through to my lizard brain but it’s definitely a provocative idea with plenty of examples to support it.

The core premise rings true: protect your company from the at best inefficient (and at worst fraudulent) digital and social media advertising cartel. Build direct relationships with your audience and you earn the right to sell them stuff.

    Margaret Magnarelli

I was really inspired by GE CMO Linda Boff’s keynote. Sometimes we can get caught in “X is what our company sells so X is the topic of our content” kind of thinking. But her examples really showed how she’s pushed her teams to think more broadly than their products. And the fact that they’re being so daring at a giant legacy company like GE, which could just be sitting on its laurels or acting in silos, was really exciting to me. For example, she spoke about the superpowered meat smoker they had their engineers design for campus events; the “moon boots” they had an engineer and a sneaker head produce; the fact that they gave top photographers access to their turbines and big machines for Instagram.  I love that kind of creativity, and it just reminded me to get out of my own boxes.  Jay Acunzo’s presentation following it was a perfect segue for content creators, in that we need to not be samey samey with what everyone else is doing just because we’ve been told it works.

    Julia McCoy

At CMWorld 2017, I really enjoyed Jay Baer’s talk, How to Get Promoted by Creating Less Content, Not More. Jay made the point that the most persuasive content today is created by real people, not brands. The more content customers and fans you create, the less you have to create. He ended the talk by saying that “Content success is harder than ever, and it’s not going to get easier, especially when we’re fighting against robots.” The robots WILL be here in just a few months. He said: “Add the secret sauce of humanity for us to… have jobs. Have a laser focus on relevance, trustworthiness, memorability…not volume.” This was a very impactful conversation and has moved my personal content creation needle to re-map and re-focus on creating content that will truly make a difference in my industry and for my audience. I’m inspired and will be starting a new video series and focusing on creating the most real, impactful content I can in my blog and podcast, as well as in the writing we do for our clients at Express Writers.

    Andy Crestodina

Jay Acunzo made a powerful point. We should be focused on our audience, not our industry. Yes, we can follow best practices. Yes, we can do competitive analysis. Yes, we can do what the world says we should do. 

But there’s another way. We can do something unique, unexpected and original.

My approach to content marketing is mostly about optimizing. I’m trying to get better results by improving what I’ve got. Incremental improvements. And it works. But Jay reminded me to add chaos to the system. Stop looking at the data. Ignore the past. There may be a radical departure that would make a bigger impact in the lives of my audience. I don’t know what it is, but I’m looking and I’m ready to discover it. Thank you, Jay.

    John Paul Aguiar

My takeaway from everything I have read and watched from CM World 2017 is bring the personal and bring the quality.

Content that works best going forward is more personal content, content with a story, content that brings people in and talks about more than just your services or products.

Also, quality content has always been king, but it seems to be even more important today. Which makes sense right, with so much content being put out, if you want to stand out and grab people attention you have to bring something different.

You have to be VERY helpful and approachable and informative.

If you can package that content into small, visually attractive packages that is even smarter.

    Allen Gannett

Content marketing is maturing to become, simply, “marketing.” As what we do becomes less of a niche, and more of a standard, there is both risk and opportunity for marketers. People who grew their careers as content marketers will have the opportunity to rise into corporate leadership. In those roles, they will be able to use audience-driven strategies to build great businesses. On the other side, those who don’t rise may see consolidation as content marketing stops being split out as a separate function/budget/program.

Either way, times are a changin’!

    Andrea Fryrear

This was my third consecutive year at Content Marketing World, and I’m starting to feel like the takeaway is similar from year to year. But that’s not a bad thing — quite the opposite. 

See, content marketers as a group are clever, creative professionals, but we have to operate in the cruel, constrained world of Business. We have brilliant ideas, but the day-to-day grind of getting stuff done wears them down into average ideas. If content marketers are batteries, we just run out of charge as time goes on. 

So every year we make a pilgrimage to Cleveland and get plugged in. 

This year nobody recharged quite like Jay Acunzo, whose opening day keynote put mediocrity on notice that it’s no longer acceptable (I’m not sure how you burn mediocrity in effigy, but if you could then I would have been first in line with a torch). Then you go from that rousing address to hear people like Ann Handley and Andrew Davis showing you — really showing you, because they do it themselves — how to put excellence into practice in writing and video, respectively. It’s just so energizing. 

For me CMWorld is like a giant battery, and content professionals go there replenish ourselves. We get reminded that content matters, our creativity matters, and fighting the good fight on behalf of our audiences matters. We leave Cleveland ready to go back to Business and do our best work.   

And if I keep getting that same takeaway every single year, just try and keep me away. 

    Robert Murray

My biggest takeaway is that even though we’re inundated with content, there are still uninhabited spaces to explore. There will always be a place for great, original content. The problem is that it is so easy to copy other brands that have done well rather than create something ourselves. It’s hard to ask ourselves the questions that lead to truly original content, but if we don’t, we are all trying to occupy the same crowded piece of real estate, and no one can reach an audience that way.

    Peter Loibl

What a week in Cleveland! And while I feel this was our strongest speaker lineup of all time, the topic that seemed to resonate more than others centered around marketers’ usage of video in their content mix, and more importantly marketers’ strategic approach to utilizing and maximizing this channel. Those using video as true storytelling instruments to engage with their audience (and potential customers) are ahead of the curve; those using video as an opportunity for ad clicks and pre-roll (frustrating) ad spots need to take what they learned from CMW back to their respective offices and change the way we collective use and enjoy online video moving forward. Create experiences, not CPL ad reach!

    Zontee Hou

I was struck by the consistent through-line at Content Marketing World that data without storytelling is meaningless. We have more data than ever, not only to reach more relevant audiences but to share with our industries. However, without context and strong story arcs, we underutilize the power of that information. 

Speakers including Adam Singer of Google, Margaret Magnarelli of Monster, and Ann Handley of MarketingProfs shared fantastic examples of how to find and tell more compelling stories. And it was sessions like theirs that inspire me for the future, when marketers hone the craft of working with data for communications. 

    David MacLaren

My main take away from #CMWorld 2017 was inspired by Joe Pulizzi’s statement: “Content marketing is marketing that serves the audience”.  It’s such a simple statement, yet it reflects two themes that really stood out for me this year: the obsession with customer needs and the ability for AI to deliver relevant content when it’s truly needed.

Crafting content focusing on customer needs shows a true understanding of the challenges and questions asked at different stages of the customer journey.  It means that the company’s content is carefully crafted to deliver value in exchange for the customer’s time and attention. When content is created with this approach in mind, it becomes a highly valuable asset to an organization, similar to the core products or services that the company offers. This mindset, along with the introduction of AI and the right combination of interconnected technologies is what’s making content truly strategic.

    Mark Masters

I am based in England and being across the Atlantic, I can still see the same same challenges and opportunities this side when it comes to defining a voice, standing for something and growing an audience.

We have all been looking to target the masses for generations. We live in a world of advice overload and look to find the shortest routes possible for success and sell to anybody and everybody.

Going forward it was clear that an overarching message to be recognised as providing value to others, will always beat stealing attention from someone else.

It is time to look at the audiences that we grow as an asset and not people to relentlessly broadcast to. The only thing that stands in front of many companies is to press the reset button and a change of attitude. The winners and proof is becoming ever more present, no matter what country you call home.

Carla Johnson

Tim Washer’s talk on using improv techniques in content marketing was fabulous. He shows the beauty of being able to take the essence of another idea and relate it to the work we do as marketers. From focusing on how to support your partner to finding order in chaos and following the fear, Tim showed how we can go beyond changing how people talk and actually change how they think.

    Brody Dorland

I had the pleasure of being on a panel that focused on the topic of how agencies should approach adding content marketing services to their service offerings. My fellow speakers included Paul Roetzer of PR 20/20 and Rebecca Geier of TREW Marketing, both agency owners. Then there was me, a former agency owner turned content marketing software provider. It was very interesting hearing Paul and Rebecca talk about today’s challenges that agencies face with trying to sell, develop, staff for and execute ongoing content marketing programs for clients. 

Of all those challenges, the one that we really didn’t have a solid answer for was the staffing component. In most cases, high-performing content marketing initiatives are derived out of deep subject matter expertise that packs in value, and are executed by passionate creators with domain knowledge in that specific industry. This equation is hard to come by on the agency side unless the agency has niched out in certain verticals/industries. So if high-performing content marketing initiatives are the goal, there are three options: 

Agencies go niche and focus on comfortable domains

Agencies find and manage long-term relationships with freelancers that have domain knowledge

Companies (clients) bring the creative in-house.

I’ve seen both sides of this challenge and, from my perspective, I see the trend leaning towards companies making the commitment and taking full ownership of their content marketing programs. But this doesn’t mean that agencies won’t be part of the mix. There’s still value in strategic offerings, execution of multi-media assets, distribution/promotion services and performance reporting services. 

Bottom line, creating great content consistently is hard. There’s no silver bullet or easy button for any of us. We must accept that, keep trying, and do the best we can.

    Pamela Muldoon 

I absolutely loved Jay Acunzo’a keynote “How Brilliant Marketers Find and Follow What Makes Their Stories Different in a World Full of Average Content”. He broke down how our intuition is a critical part of content ideation, and though explaining why to do something based on intuition is challenging, having a set of great questions to get us to better ideas is key. Six great questions to ask to take your content from intention to possibilities:

What is your aspirational anchor?

Why are you the person/team to do it?

What is your first-principle insight?

Who are your true belivers?

What are your constraints?

How can you expand?

This is a great baseline to get your content from average to amazing. 

    Pam Didner

“Stories are right under your nose.” @lindoboff @GE. The writing is on the wall, but the ink is not immediately available. You need to look for clues. 

  Rebecca Lieb

Stratgey, strategy, strategy! THEN you can think about tactics.

  Stoney deGeyter

Artificial intelligence is coming to marketing and in a big way. Exactly what or when it will all happen is anyone’s guess. Predictions vary wildly, even by those on the cutting edge of bringing it to us. 

We already see new tools popping up that utilize some (very crude) forms of AI. Like most tools, these are not likely to remove the human component completely, but it will cause some significant disruptions to the world we now know. 

    Jonathan Kranz

The age of “innovation” is rapidly coming to a close. Real progress will be made by marketers who apply a discriminatory intelligence to their strategy, prioritizing content tactics that are not only deeply relevant to their audiences, but can be practically repeated and expanded by their organizations.

    Douglas Burdette

My very favorite takeaway was from keynoter Jay Acunzo: 

“When we pay more attention to the customer than the industry, the customer pays more attention to us.” 

It’s an empathizer’s market out there – the more your customer senses that you understand them, the more successful you’ll be. Sadly, most companies are more focused on themselves and their competition than their customers. And that will never change.

    Christoph Trappe

So many changes! So many issues that today’s content marketer faces in a world that becomes more and more complex. Yes, you need a strategy. Yes, you need to align your content to it and always go for results. But also, don’t overcomplicate things. Be unique. Stand out. Be useful. The best stories win.

  Tim Hayden

As always, Content Marketing World proved to be a powerful resource for guidance on storytelling and overall content strategy. From curation to conversion and influencer identification to building addressable audiences, 2017 proved to be the year where speakers and attendees seemed to finally focus on sales being their primary objective, not just the performance of media.

Still, it would be nice to see more of the showcase vendors discussing integration and collaboration with each other, and I believe there is much more to look forward to in 2018 with artificial intelligence, augmented reality and audio/smart speakers each playing a larger role in the content marketing mix.

    Patricia Travaline

Marketers need to start thinking about our audiences differently. We’ve known for a while now that we don’t need to depend on third party media companies to reach audiences. Our owned media is increasingly competing directly with traditional media providers, and that’s why we’re seeing the start of a convergence between product- or service-driven brands and media companies. But the change that we’ve only just begun to see is in how we value that audience. The traditional point of view for marketers is that the value of an audience is at the point of sale, but with content marketing, the audience is so much more: They amplify our message, they deliver meaningful data to us, they help us refine our targeting. All these things have value. For content marketers to sell our value internally, we need to sell the value of the audiences we’re building.

    Stephanie Stahl

Marketers need to start thinking about our audiences differently. We’ve known for a while now that we don’t need to depend on third party media companies to reach audiences. Our owned media is increasingly competing directly with traditional media providers, and that’s why we’re seeing the start of a convergence between product- or service-driven brands and media companies. But the change that we’ve only just begun to see is in how we value that audience. The traditional point of view for marketers is that the value of an audience is at the point of sale, but with content marketing, the audience is so much more: They amplify our message, they deliver meaningful data to us, they help us refine our targeting. All these things have value. For content marketers to sell our value internally, we need to sell the value of the audiences we’re building.

    Anna Hrach

My top takeaway from Content Marketing World 2017 isn’t a new concept, but it was heard loud and clear across several sessions: create the content your audiences want. This was heard in Jay Acunzo’s advice to pay more attention to the customer than the industry, Jay Baer’s approach to making more audience-relevant content with his 5x5x5 framework, Ahava Leibtag’s advice on how to create instant connections with customers through content, and so many, many more. It was refreshing to hear multiple speakers and experts talk about what matters most: our audiences.

  David Reimherr

My top take-away from CM World 2017 was the extra attention paid towards high quality content and building your audience.  It isn’t the first time we have heard this, but there was an additional emphasis paid towards this point.  And I think the reason for this is that the digital space is getting more crowded than ever and you must do your best to stand out and you can only do this by being extremely helpful.  Also, the quality of content being enhanced by video and interactive elements was also touched on quite a bit and these additions can greatly help you stand out from the crowd. 

Another big pointer that I took away was the attention needed on up-front planning.  Many of us are guilty of wanting to jump in and go, but a huge majority of your time needs to be dedicated to up-front strategy and planning before you ever create your first post or video.  With upper-level management calling for more concrete ROI on all of our marketing efforts, it is paramount to have all of your strategy, tactics and goals outlined very clearly from the outset. 

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