#had to rely on asking random other bloggers

[angeltannis]

can you guys believe that in 3 short months TWDG is gonna be a decade old

[starlightsearches]

Hi please may i request a hux x reader where you’re also a general and you hear a loud bang in the room next to your office which is hux’s office. (Maybe he kicked the wall or something in frustration). You go to check all is well and step in to find him head in hands sat against the wall having a panic attack and so you help him out of it and then discuss it with him and show him some much needed affection and human connection. I love you’re writing, you’re one of my absolute favourite bloggers

Shattered

Hello sweet friend! Thank you for the kind words, and I’m sorry that this request took so much time! I kind of adapted it a bit, I hope you don’t mind 😊

Requests are closed  ✨

Armitage Hux x Reader

Warnings: I was feeling very angsty when I first wrote this, and I think a lot of that seeped into the story. Also discussions of a mild injury, and mentions of blood. Hope you enjoy!

As far as neighbors went, General Hux was one of the best, all things considered. You never heard him, hardly ever saw him, and you liked that just fine. It was certainly an improvement from your last assignment, before your promotion. That base had been frigid, and so damn loud, like there was never a moment of peace—especially not for you, practically running the whole damn show. While it had been a slight adjustment in the beginning, you much preferred being on the Finalizer. The work was engaging, the company was pleasant enough, and your quarters were blessedly quiet.

That’s why the shattering sound is especially jarring, and your first thought, however ridiculous, is assassination. The glass at your desk spills when you jump to your feet, and you rush to move the data pads and various items out of the way of the trailing water before running to the door and out into the hall, pounding on the general’s door furiously, only to be surprised when it actually opens.

You step inside and the darkened room, and General Hux approaches, looking very much alive and un-assassinated. He glares at you through bloodshot eyes, and for a moment you want to leave, to run away from this place and forget that you were ever here. That’s the effect his gaze has on you.

“Did you need something, general?” he says the title with a mouthful of disgust, and you pause, waiting for the words to come. There’s nothing to say, though, nothing that you could say without making yourself seem paranoid and irrational. It’s obvious that he is fine, or at least, he seems fine.

“I’m sorry for the intrusion, general, I thought I heard something,” you reply, slowly backing away to the door, hoping to escape some of the embarrassment, “I wanted to make sure that you were alright.”

“Of course I’m alright,” his voice is harsh, harsh enough to surprise you. You’ve only worked with Hux for a short amount of time, and although you knew he was upset about your appearance on this ship, he’s never been so outwardly cruel to you. Something is wrong.

You take in the scene again, noticing a few things. There’s no light on in his quarters, but General Hux is still in his uniform, despite the lateness of the hour, so he must not have been sleeping. And then there’s the way he’s standing, so stiff and guarded, with one hand behind his back. On the far side of the room, something glints.

"Is something wrong with your hand, general?" As soon as the words leave your lips, he bristles, immediately on the defensive.

"As I told you before, I am clearly fine. I’m not sure how you ran things on the Derus base, but here I expect a certain level of decorum from my fellow officers, and that includes not barging into my quarters and asking personal questions. If that isn’t something you can manage, then the Finalizer is not for you.” The words hit you like a slap to the face, like an avalanche, and you struggle to breathe under the weight of his disapproval. He’s called to mind every insecurity, every instance where you have been reminded that you’re so often out of your element here. It paralyzes you, this reminder that you don’t belong. You had been able to convince yourself that it was impostor syndrome, that the others, even Hux, appreciated your presence. Apparently you were incorrect. He continues, advancing on you like a force of nature, a little wild, full of rage.

“How can I be asked to lead if I’m not given the basic respect of privacy in my own space? If I am not given one simple courtesy, if I am treated this way-” he stops, his teeth bared, with such anger in his eyes that you flinch, After all this time in the Order, no one had talked to you like this. You knew he was angry, you knew he didn’t like the perceived slight that your presence implied, but still—he had no right to address you so angrily. 

"What is wrong with you?" It's not a question you mean to ask out loud, but the words slip out anyway, and you find you don't regret them in the slightest. You had been wrong about the general before. He's not the man you thought he was, and you can't stand the idea of being around him for another minute.

You turn your back on him, turn to the door and the light of the hallway, ready to leave this place. Maybe you'd have room in yourself to regret this tomorrow, but the only thing you can feel right now is the bright sting of anger that attempts to mask your wounded pride.

The palm of his hand is slick and sticky when he grabs you by the wrist, pulling you to a stop, and you yank your arm out of his grasp, uninterested in anything else he has to say. That is, until you see the blood, visible in your periphery, staining your arm in the shape of a watery hand print. That makes you stop.

"Please," his voice breaks when he sees you hesitate, his pleas too desperate to be said face to face, "I need help."

Desperation is a language in which you are fluent, and it’s one that you can’t ignore. Your anger still swims in your chest, but you won’t turn your back on his brokenness when it so closely mirrors your own.

The door closes, the lights turn on, and you get to work, caring for him with practical efficiency: hand first, glass second. You don't allow yourself to think about the way he shakes at the contact as you bandage his palm, watching as the blood seeps through the white layers that you wrap methodically over the cut. You don't allow yourself to wonder why a man like General Hux would own and then destroy such a delicate porcelain cup, the glittering fragments scattered across the floor. You just bandage and clean and ignore. You're still hurt. You're still angry. And you still want to help him.

You finish, tossing the final shards of glass into the waste, and then turn your attention back to the general. If you hadn't figured out that something was wrong earlier, you'd definitely know now: you've never seen him sit for this long. He stares at you, looking lost, searching for guidance, but you've helped more than enough. You could leave.

A harsh sigh of surrender puffs through your nose, and you move over to his small kitchen area, searching through the drawers and cupboards at random until you find what you’re looking for.

"What are you doing?" he asks, affronted, until he sees the glasses in your hand, the bottle in the other. You set them on the table with more force than necessary, and they rattle against each other, a clinking chorus that startles you both.

"You look like you could use a drink, general," you say, pouring the amber liquid into his glass first, "and I know I could."

You're not sure how much time you spend sipping in silence, but the lower the liquid in the bottle drops, the smaller you feel, like you're shrinking inside of yourself, able to search through the caverns and hollows of your mind. You wander inside your own consciousness, but no matter where you travel, your thoughts always return to General Hux. Had he really meant it, that you didn’t belong here? Or was his anger misdirected, and you just happened to be the closest living target? You find yourself shifting in your seat, wells of sadness that you normally kept damned finding their way into the greater cavities of your thoughts. You can’t keep thinking this way; you need a distraction.

"Are you alright?" You say to Hux, the question floating to the surface, bubbling from your lips like a laugh or a sob. You watch him drain his glass again, swaying side to side to the tempo of some imaginary song, and for a moment you’re not thinking about yourself.

"No, general," he says, slurring his words but proper, as always, "I'm not." It's the answer you expected; why don't you know how to respond?

"Do you want to talk about it?" It's a stupid question—you know it's a stupid question even as you say it; your voice sounds incredulous to your own ears. You must be drunker than you thought. But you’d like to know. Despite everything, you want him to be alright. You need him to be alright. It’s difficult to admit, but you rely on him. Admire him, if you’re being brutally honest. 

"Not tonight," he looks at you when he says it, his movements a sigh, and his gaze loaded with meaning, the softness in his pale green eyes consuming and powerful and defenseless. With just one look, he's rendered you speechless. You watch his hand skim over the surface of the table until it makes contact with your own, just the tips of his fingers overlapping yours. The contact is minimal, but the effect is not; you feel your face grow warmer, and not just from the drink.

"Are you alright?" he asks the question now, and you’re not sure how to give him an honest answer.

"I don't think so," you whisper the words, the pleasant drunkenness from before warping into something that splinters and cracks along your weakest points. It's been so long since you let yourself feel this way. Suddenly the feeling of his hand on yours is much more welcome, and it grounds you. You're not okay right now, but he isn't either.

"I'm glad you're here," he keeps talking, his voice calm and soothing for you, and the difference makes you laugh. You’re glad he’s here too. You don’t want to be alone.

[keyofjetwolf]

Bonus Question Answers! (anime heat 2)

I asked a silly question! You gave me incredible answers. SO VERY MANY INCREDIBLE ANSWERS. Now, I present my favourites! And really, they were ALL favourites. Mmm, headcanony goodness.

Oh, special shoutout to this unattributed one, which I suspect fell prey to someone submitting early, but as phrased, made me snort laugh: “one of my longest held headcanons is that ami“

SAME, FRIEND

Anyway, If your answer is listed below, you’ve earned an entry in a random draw to win a GIFTENING liveblog OF YOUR CHOICE

—

Q: Senshi headcanon time! Intrigue me, humour me, crush me, FEED ME.

* Michiru actually did have a guardian cat, once. It was silvery grey with dark blue eyes. It did not speak, but it was always there to provide support and comfort in a life which had little of either. The first time Michiru had a strong vision, which left her cold and senseless on the floor of her room, it was the small warmth from her cat that brought her back to the world of color and light and solidity. The cat was a friend and confidante in those early days, when Michiru was unsure if this experience was real or the beginnings of schizophrenia. The fact that her mother could see the cat, and regularly make comments about the uncleanliness of such creatures, was proof of Michiru's new reality. So when the cat entered the fray to distract a youma, saving Michiru, but being killed in the process, it became one more thing that the Moon had given her, only to steal away. Michiru promised herself to never rely on another again, or to allow the Moon to have her heart again. And she had done fairly well at this. Haruka, for all her charms, was a plaything, and not something to sacrifice herself for. But pausing outside the Marine Cathedral, Michiru found herself looking into dark blue eyes, so different, but so similar, and knew that she would do anything and everything in her power to keep from having to watch them close, again. -- @incorrecttact  [YOU ARE ALSO KILLING THESE QUESTIONS. This hit me right in the kokoro, and I welcomed its sweet sweet pain.]

~~

*  Mako teaches Hotaru, Chibiusa, and the Amazon Quartet to cook and bake as a bonding activity. Hotaru LOVES making cakes and decorating them. Chibiusa likes cooking with noodles and even making her own; it doesn’t sound special, but the food she makes is DELICIOUS. Ves, the red one, finds cooking easy, but doesn’t like it and so never does outside of being coaxed into it. Jun, the green one, finds baking easy, but also doesn’t like sweet things, which limits her repertoire. Cere, the pink one, has no natural talent, but she very much WANTS to be good at it, so she turns out to be the best cook of her Senshi group. Palla takes to neither, but she is very enthusiastic about eating their experiments.  --  Jules  [I am an absolute slut for Mako and moments with the kids, and including the Quartet was a brilliant stroke.]

~~

*  A Serenity is not supposed to be reborn. They are born, they live, they die, and they are done. They are not like the Senshi, whose souls reincarnate, carefully bound to Serenity blood. They are not supposed to be reborn, so when Queen Serenity sees everything fail and decides to send their souls to the future, the Senshi are easy. Serenity is not. In desperation, Serenity does something she would have never considered in any other circumstance: she ties Serenity's soul to the Senshi. What was once a one way tie, has now become an equal bond, and so everything changes.  -- @madegeeky  [Ooo, this is some lovely twists on my own reincarnation headcanons, while still keeping the “this is a mistake” flavour. IT TASTES GOOD.]

~~

*  How about more Rei whistle antics? You headcanon Usagi would use the whistle for every mundane thing and Rei would come. Usagi would do this at 2 AM in the morning too and Rei would still be woken up and still come even in pajamas if she need be because Usagi had a spooky nightmare or "Rei-chan I fell off my bed and now my face hurts". Knowing Rei whistle antics can be funny for us and maybe aggravating for Rei at times because "Usagi you blew the whistle because you fell off the bed?" what if we can make it a pinch sad? Like what if Rei can tell what sort of peril Usagi is in by the way she blows the whistle in tone? Like when it's a sad somewhat weaker whistle, even if it's just a tiny subtle tone, Rei can IMMEDIATELLY tell "USAGI IS SAD AND NEEDS ME" and she will RUSH over in 5 seconds like in her Rei way, she might even have the mind to bring snacks, cocoa and plush to hug for the comfort.  --  Mrs. Duckling  [HOW ABOUT INDEED. I hadn’t thought about the different ways the whistle can be blown and what it might say, what a wonderful addition. THANK YOU FOR CATERING DIRECTLY TO ME AND MY NEEDS]

~~

*  PGSM!Sailor Mars - [REDACTED] Oh. Right. You're not there yet. Awkward... Anime!Minako is a huge fan of romance manga, but for all the wrong reasons. She tried drawing doujinshi of crack ships before realizing that A) she's not really a writer and B) she's REALLY not an artist. She plans on using some of her rich idol singer money to commission really bizarre romance stories. The sort that make you go WTF?! Of course, step one is "become a rich and famous idol"... Meanwhile, Rei also buys the romance manga that Minako gets into, (partially so she'll shut up about it) but mainly just analyzes them for mood and the characters, and gets frustrated when they inevitably devolve into nothing but sappy kissing and mooning over each other. She's trying to see why Minako gets so obsessed, but doesn't want to flat out admit that she doesn't get it and have to ask. -- Peter "Pigeons!" Svensson  [I had nothing but fun with this, fantastic. ps: THANK YOU FOR THE PIGEONS NOMINATION]

~~

* If these four* Senshi were to meet you, I think they'd each also be meeting some of their best qualities: Usagi is love, and that love is infectious as HELL. Much like a certain blogger who has amassed an international following on the strength of her love for her favourite media, wouldn't you say? Ami is very impressed by your office set-up! But when she sees you re-enter the room with a sprightly little black cat riding on your shoulder, she knows she has discovered a kindred spirit. Where can Rei-chan possibly begin? From your passionately informed and encyclopedic knowledge of their interactions ("She has RECEIPTS, Usagi!"), to your, let's call it tenacity ("She stirred that sugar for TWO HOURS, Usagi!!"), Rei finds so much to admire. And while no one could ever possibly love Rei as much as she loves herself, she magnanimously allows that you are a close second. As for Haruka, well! World Shaking? More like Toilet Breaking! You wrecked that shit and unleashed the sea. She can certainly relate *eyebrows, eyebrows* *would that i had time to write out blurbs for the others! but we're heading back into lockdown today, and i need to get to the post office to mail you a package. PRIORITIES! xo  -- @rasiqra-revulva​  [Okay look when I said “crush me” I didn’t mean WITH NICENESS. Also thank you for the huge laughs. *eyebrows, eyebrows*]

~~

*  Minako manages to write a tell-all book (anonymously, of course, and with names changed to protect the relevant,) about their first few years as Senshi in the lull between Stars and Shit Escalating Again. Even more astoundingly, she manages to get it optioned as a film and play Sailor Mars without blowing her cover! Rei seethes. Minako’s annoyed because she tried out for Usagi. Usagi’s just happy Minako’s successful. The film manages to pick up nominations come award season, and Michiru even arranges for the rest of the Senshi to attend. Minako loses to some film from a really overrated director that manages to out-award bait her reenactment of D-Point. She’s silently fuming through his acceptance speech when he’s Burning Mandala’d mid-sentence. And that’s how the Senshi discovered that Jadeite survived getting run over with planes, joined the entertainment industry after Beryl’s defeat, and had been using it to drain energy ever since! Sailor Mars’s speech about how he disgraces the passion of filmmakers everywhere and her comrade’s hard work goes viral. -- Regalli  [LOVED THE TWIST ENDING, also Rei basically stealing the awards show stage, as we all know she would]

~~

*  Not Senshi, but cats! One day, when Usagi is queen, she's going to decide to knight the cats. Luna thinks it's silly and figures Usagi is just acting on a whim, but Artemis has his chest puffed out and is glowing with pride. They're given tiny medals made by Endymion. -- RibbonFinale  [Oh I DID want this. I wanted this very much, THANK YOU.]

~~

*  Makoto can't culture bonsai trees. It's not a matter of ability, or scale — she can work with tiny tools with equal facility as large ones — but she can't bring herself to push the things down, to cut and twist and bind them to grow the way _she_ wants, not the way it wants to grow.   The tiny pine she bought to try it out, years ago, is in a pot in the corner of her apartment; it's just now grown taller than she is. -- Taperwolf  [I didn’t expect this one to hit me as hard as it did when I started reading. Love it, love it, love it.]

~~

*  You know those 'meetings Usagi doesn't know about'? the ones where the girls dive into the nitty gritty about being senshi, the ones where they decide who will take up being the Disguise Pen Decoy if Minako is killed? Usagi knows about them. it was one of those 'character A eavesdrops and hears character B talking about them' setups, but instead of hearing Ami call Usagi a ditz, she hears Ami saying 'I'm the weakest fighter, if Minako is assassinated and we need someone to be decoy it'd be easier to explain away my absence than Rei's or Mako's' In these meetings they speak very coldly about themselves, Ami is always first to call herself the weak one, Minako calls into attention her showboating, Mako will openly remind people she doesn't think things through on the battlefield, and Rei derides herself on her inability to keep her cool (heh) and they all come up with contingencies to cover for eachother to the minutest detail. Usagi only ever evesdrops on one of these meetings, but now she knows they happen. and she can't un-know.  -- Vega  [OOOOOOOOOOOOOO.]

~~

Manga Sailor Pluto has picked her nose 2,013,417 times. -- too ashamed to say  [WHY THE SHAME THIS IS CORRECT  AND NOW RIGHTFULLY CANON]

---

I’ll be drawing for the bonus liveblog around the start of THE GIFTENING 2020 (currently looking to be Monday, 11 January 2021). Each bonus question is another chance to earn an entry! I CAN ABSOLUTELY AND SHAMELESSLY BE BOUGHT.

[petruchio]

Hii, I've recently got into pjo again after years and everyone went from saying Rick did a good job with representation to calling him racist and a bad writer. Did something happen while I was gone? Or is it just that standards change and he's still a white dude? Don't take me wrong I know his writing is far from perfect, I'm genuinely interested in trying to learn how his representation is flawed and why.

hi! thanks for the ask! i honestly don’t know if im the best person to answer this, but i will do my best. for any of my followers/mutuals, please add on in the tags/replies/reblogs if you guys have anything to say!! it’s a really valuable conversation to be having right now, and i really appreciate you wanting to learn more.

i think its a combination of standards changing and also just having sat with the works a lot longer people are able to think more critically about them. like, for example, right when hoo was coming out, i guess it seemed pretty revolutionary to have nico be revealed as gay--but after sitting with that for a few years now, i think its becoming clear that the way it was written is not really as progressive as the action itself. he’s forcefully outed against his will, he’s immediately put into a relationship with a random dude (sorry its true) without allowing him to explore his sexuality and outing on his own, he’s also like, what, fourteen? and thus there is no need for him to be in a relationship with anyone at that age! does the simple fact of including a gay character in your book excuse treating them that way?

issues surrounding race and culture in the books have had a similar shift. sure, when piper first came into the series, it was really cool just to have Native representation in the books at all! but after sitting with it, why does she have to be portrayed as a kleptomaniac? what does that do other than perpetuate harmful stereotypes? or braiding eagle feathers into her hair, which i think other bloggers have explained better than i can, but is essentially not at all appropriate to her culture? or even the fact that her father refuses to play any Native roles in hollywood--why? or the fact that she’s almost immediately sexualized at her claiming? 

i think the broader issue here is that it’s becoming clearer that rick didn’t really do his research. it just ends up that he relied on some harmful stereotypes and banked on the fact that including people of different backgrounds at all would absolve him of actually having to write them well. and once you really dig into that past the surface level of just “representation=Being There At All” you start to realize that an author, especially a children’s author, also has a duty to not just representation, but to GOOD representation.

there’s also some other issues that just become more uncomfortable the longer you sit with them. if you just sort of breeze through the books, maybe frank and hazel’s relationship isn’t that weird to you. but if you sit with it for 10 years thinking about the reality of a 16 year old boy dating a 13 year old girl starts to feel more and more icky. or the way that aphrodite children are portrayed as superficial and obsessed with appearance, while piper gets by with the whole “not like other girls” stereotype, implying that women who are interested in makeup and boys can’t also be strong and independent and powerful heroes.

when you add all those things together i think it just starts to really feel frustrating, because rick has such a large platform and the ability to do so much good, and instead we get these half baked stereotypes of characters.

in regards to the writing, like MAN i think it was just after boo came out and people realized that hoo really wasnt going ANYWHERE. like all through the series it seemed like we were building up to something and that there was like a point to ANYTHING that happened, and then it became clear that it was just sort of a cash cow that was written basically every book in response to how people felt about the last. like tlh doesnt have enough percy? ok here’s son which is basically another pjo book. we’ve never had an annabeth pov? ok here’s moa which is basically the annabeth show. oh i left a huge cliffhanger to make you buy the next book? here’s house of hades which you really are only reading because of percy and annabeth because all the other characters are written so boring. oh people liked nico and reyna? oh they’ll get a pov in the LAST BOOK! oh right, didn’t i say percy won’t be the focus of this series? no pov for him, even though i basically wrote a second pjo series in the middle three books but i just won’t wrap it up! i think alll those things really frustrated people and it’s hard to take any of hoo seriously after how it ended. 

and again, just after a long TIME, those things are more clear. yeah if you were in the fandom in like 2012 we were HYPED about hoo because it was like a bonus series with all these new characters and things seemed really awesome. but then boo just was Like That and people started to actually dig into the books more and pointing out all the issues there.

wow sorry this got so long, but i hope this answered at least some of your questions. also, welcome BACK!! the pjo fandom will always be here to welcome you and even though we criticize it to hell, there’s a reason we’re all still blogging about it in 2020. there’s lots to love. but, as with any media, it’s worth examining critically, and i just think the pjo fandom is better and perhaps more vocal at really being willing to engage with it in that sense. 

[maudefm]

[ GIDEON ADLON, CIS WOMAN, SHE/HER, TWENTY-THREE ] is that MAUDE ALTMAN? god, i haven’t seen them in years, no wonder i’ve heard CARE BY BEABADOOBEE playing on repeat. i remember them being really CHARISMATIC & CREATIVE, but they could also be really IMPATIENT & SECRETIVE. they always reminded me of DRIVING WITH THE WINDOWS DOWN, VINTAGE CAMERAS, CANDLE BURNING IN THE DARK, & GETTING LOST IN HAPPY MEMORIES. 

hiii fwends! i’m gigi, 24 and living in cst. this is my artsy fartsy queen, maude. pls love her! hehe. give this a like & i’ll bug you for some plots!

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒.

full name: maude francis altman nickname: mau, maudie, m age: twenty-three birthdate: november 23rd, 1997 astrology: sagittarius sun, leo moon, scorpio rising hometown: alverton, north carolina currently residing: brooklyn, new york sexuality: pansexual  relationship status: single occupation: freelance photographer / blogger family: unknown ( father ), matilda altman ( mother ), madeline altman ( sister, 25 ) positives: vivacious, reliable, compassionate, gentle, creative, generous, independent. negatives: abrasive, aloof, closed-off, scatter-brained, impersonal, irresponsible, impulsive.

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃.

maude was meant to fix a broken marriage. her young mother falling pregnant in order to keep her boyfriend. but a new baby didn’t stop the man from running out on the three girls the second he heard about the pregnancy. of course, matilda was heartbroken. but luckily, she had her rich and huge family ( altman’s fabrics )  to fall back on in alverton - the three moving in with their grandparents. it wasn’t long till matilda asked for a job at her father’s business and bought a home for them and began dedicating her life to her two daughters and herself. soon enough gaining her father’s trust and becoming senior vp of altman’s fabrics.

okay, let’s cut to maude in high school. voted most artistic and most likely to brighten your day, maude was the girl who gave her opinion on everything and loudest person in the room. she loved to make friends and talk to everyone no matter what ‘group’ they belonged to. a theater kid - always in the school plays - vice president of the drama club and president of the photography club. anytime you saw her, she had a camera in her hand whether it be a disposable or digital - she was snapping away. now those pictured are stored away in a box in her childhood home or in a secret file on her hard drive.

her passion for photography began at a very young age, her mother was the type of parent who needed to document everything. for every event or even any ordinary day, she had a cam recorder or disposable camera in maude’s and madeline’s face. it made her want to do the same, moments were temporary and she wanted to remember it forever. 

after high school, maude was accepted to columbia college chicago where she majored in photography and minored in acting. you can say, maude was thriving. being creative made her happy and after college ( class of 2019 ), maude began to travel the globe, shooting everywhere she went and began her travel blog, gaining a small following.  she’s pretty nervous to see everyone again. a handful of people she hasn’t spoken to since graduating. kind of fell off with everyone.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘.

MBTI: ESFP - the entertainer moral alignment: chaotic good likes: cold brew, snacks, tattoos, flirting, shots of tequila, being center of attention, sunshine, laughter. dislikes: loud chewing, obnoxious scents, rude people, staying in on the weekends, liars, cloudy days. aesthetics: blowing on dandelions to make a wish, car rides with no destination, spending hours in vintage stores, 90s fashion, driving with the windows down, flipping off cameras, & shots of tequila.

maude is wild, fiesty, independent and spontaneous. she is adventurous, loving, friendly and extremely socialable. a bit of a free spirit - no a lot of a free spirit. she lives life to the fullest and refuses to let anyone hold her back. she can be selfish - doing whatever she can to get what she wants and if it means stepping on someone, no problem. scared of commitment, she’s only had one serious relationship ( wc ) and it fucked her up pretty bad so she prefers to just do her own thing - not let it bother her. 

𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀.

hair color: brown eye color: brown height: 5′4″ tattoos: 10 - random dainty like flowers, stars, crescent moon, astrology related piercings: ears, nose smokes weed & drinks believes in fairies, mermaids, & magic talks a mile a minute shitty driver but will always offer to drive dances on tables drunk or sober loves to be naked, kiss her friends & do crazy shit will get a tattoo with anyone for whatever reason 

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃.

an ex: someone she dated long term in high school. i would assume they broke up right after graduation. couldn’t do long distance, etc. lingering feelings maybe? an ex best friend: someone she relied on or who relied on her and for whatever reason they had a falling out and haven’t spoken since. good influence: reminds her to be on her best behavior. always forgives her when she fucks up but holds her accountable. frenemy: just straight up cannot stand each other, maybe rivals in hs and never grew out of it best friend: probably the only person she kept in touch with and her ride or die, back up for this trip. lmfao. accidental hook up: one drunk night after her breakup, she found comfort with them and one thing lead to another. maybe now they ignore it or try to fight it happening again?

all i can think of  BUT i also have a tiny wanted tag for inspo and i’m down for anything so just lmk!

[yurimother]

Tumblr Secretly Suppressing Content Behind the Scenes

Tumblr recently removed all adult content on December 17, 2018, in a controversial decision. Shortly after the ban, many users noticed that their posts, many of which were not adult or pornographic in nature, were being flagged by the new algorithm. Fortunately, there was a relatively easy process for appealing the flag. It also appears that incorrect flagging has somewhat died down over the past month and most SFW posts are not encountering problems.

Unfortunately, Tumblr isn’t being as open as it seems with information about their censorship.

While posts flagged as NSFW by the algorithm are clearly marked and can be appealed some posts are being suppressed from tag pages without altering the poster, giving a reason why, or a clear path to appeal. While a post might appear fine from the bloggers perspective it may not show up on any tag pages or searches. Some have expressed worry about certain communities, such as the LGBTQ+ community, as some of the tags that appear to possibly be causing suppression include tags such as #queer #lgbtq and others.

I recently noticed that many of the posts I make of artwork are being repressed as such. At first, I found that it was due to tags which could imply adult content, such as #girlxgirl so I stopped using these tags. However, it was then suppressing posts that had a link to my Tumblr page. Then later it was to my Twitter and eventually posts with links to artists’ pages. It is now seemingly random what causes the suppression:

·       Did I include a link in the original post or edit it in later?

·       Did I use certain tags?

·       How many tags did I use?

·       Did I start the post off without tags and then edit them in after posting?

·       Did I include the sources in a story with links?

It is so random now that I cannot use my queue for posting as almost every post needs severe editing after posting to avoid suppression.

When I asked Tumblr for help, they responded, as I suspected saying that it had to do with the content of links, tags used, and if a post appeared to be spam (full response below. Yet even they admit to not be able to tell what is causing any one post is suppressed, “The factors that contribute to appearing in search on Tumblr are complex and change almost daily “

However, this does not explain why a post can be suppressed, but then if I edit it down, post that, and then edit that back to the original after posting it will not be suppressed. The almost daily change would explain why one post and tag format work one day and then get suppressed the next. Still, this is troubling for those of use to use and thrive on the site.

It appears Tumblr’s suppression, unlike their censorship, does not obey a defined or consistent set of rules and is not well communicated to users on the platform. The ever-changing nature of this suppression makes it hard for people who use this platform and rely on tags for traffic and audience.

I would love to hear from readers. Please message me your thoughts or experiences with suppression.

✿☆★☆✿More Yurimother on Twitter @Yuri_Mother✿☆★☆✿ ✿☆★☆✿Behind the scenes on Instagram @the_yurimother✿☆★☆✿

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 49.28-32, QF Mega-Blog

What better thing to do, when forced to stay at home during the outbreak of a global virus that threatens not only millions of peoples lives but the very fabric of society as we know it, than catch up on watching and writing about the quiz show whose previous four episodes you had missed for various reasons, all of which seem frivolous following the outbreak of a global virus that threatens not only millions of peoples lives but the very fabric of society as we know it. Also, I kept seeing that Twitter meme about Shakespeare having written King Lear during the plague quarantine and fancied getting involved.

Its also the only sport of any kind that can be found on TV for love nor money (apart from the Turkish Superlig, which for some reason thinks itself immune). Maybe the Premier League should try out pre-recording like the Challenge, for precisely this kind of situation. Just get Salah, De Bruyne and all the boys together for a few kick-abouts, film a few goals and slide tackles and all that, and keep the footage for a rainy day. Or send a camera round Serena Williams’ gaff, log a couple of serves and forehands, cut it together - BOOM, there’s your Wimbledon final if Greta decides tennis is too carbon-heavy.

All I’m saying is, you’ve never seen University Challenge postponed due to a  global virus that threatens not only millions of peoples lives but the very fabric of society as we know it (although, as I write this I’m realising that the recordings of next years show will probably be delayed. Shit)

Episode 28 - Courtauld vs Imperial

Whenever I’ve not written one of these for a while it takes me a while to figure out what the heck it is I’m doing. Like, what do I usually write about? How have I managed to put out 118 of these? Do you reckon Shakespeare felt the same way when he was between plays - would he sit down with his quill and parchment and wonder aloud, ‘What the fuck is an iambic pentameter and how do I find one?’ (If I 1: knew the answer to that question; and 2: could be bothered, then I would have written that question in iambic pentameter, but you should know by now you’re dealing with one lazy blogger).

Anyway, Imperial had blazed aside all before them in the opening two rounds, thanks in no small part to the efforts of mercurial star Brandon, whose laconic style has drawn unfair criticism as arrogance. Thats how it always goes with the social media juries though - if a contestant displays any level of confidence above the bare minimum then they’re too big for their boots. But then if they grin and seem really happy when they get an answer that’ll probably annoy some people too. Almost as if they can’t win and there’s no point playing this game to appease the kind of people who get annoyed at kids on quiz shows.

The Courtauld side fall into the grinning category. They all four of them seem genuinely delighted to be on the show, and even more delighted that they managed to win two matches and make it to the quarter finals - their second round defeat of Glasgow a particularly impressive performance.

Glasgow were a good side, but Imperial are a different gravy, and Courtauld, after a neg on the opening question, seem like rabbits in the headlights (when they should have been at home, the whole country’s on lockdown, dammit Peter!) as Brandon sycthes down question after question, fearful to fall further below zero in case they can’t make it back up again.

For a while it looked as though that might end up being the case, as Imperial pranced into a hundred point lead within six questions, but Haigh finally stopped the rot, and Courtauld would add some respectability over the rest of the episode. In truth, it was clear from that point onwards that the race had been run, and Brandon seemed to relax from thereon out, and his teammates picked up the slack, though that seems like doing them a disservice, as they all seem very accomplished in their own right.

Final Score: Courtauld 75 - 240 Imperial

Episode 29 - Trinity, Cam vs Corpus Christi, Cam

Right, on to the next, and for Ep 29 we had our first Cam-Cam slugfest of the series. There had already been plenty of Ox-Cam derbies of course, you can’t move for them half the time, but no inter-collegiate battles thus far. Whoever won would become the first side to reach the semi-finals, with Trinity having beaten Manchester and Corpus Wolfson in their respective opening quarter final clashes.

Stewart, who doesn’t look like he would be out of place in the Byzantine Empire, gets Corpus off the mark with ‘Byzantine’ (I have basically no idea what this comparison would actually mean, or if it is in fact a sick burn, but I feel like he has an old-timey medieval look about him and felt like this should not go unaddressed. Like, he wouldn’t look strange wearing a tunic, would he?).

Russell and Wang increased the lead before Hughes got Trinity into the game with what looked like a semi-guess on a maths-y starter. Paxman, who clearly enjoys toying with the Corpus captain, then gets Wang for the second match in a row with a double serving of Boomer sarcasm. When Wang rather dejectedly says, ‘Its not Isaac Asimov, is it? No’, the quizmaster further interrogates him as to whether he was giving a question or an answer, much in the way an irritating geography teacher would parrot ‘Of course you can go to the toilet, the question is whether or not you may’. He’s right though, and Corpus gobble up two more bonuses on sci-fi writers.

Another starter went to Stewart, and a first for Gunasekera. Corpus were starting to look comfortable, but a brief flurry from Trinity around the music round looks like it might bring them into contention. But that’s all it was, the briefest of flurries, like that random day in April or October where someone says ‘is it snowing?, and you all look out of the window, but before you can actually work out if it really was snowing or if it was some sort of white rain, its stopped.

Corpus stretch their legs now, and find themselves beyond two hundred points before Trinity turn themselves back on, which they eventually do, building up to a not-disgraceful 80 before the gong.

Final Score: Trinity 80 - 245 Corpus

Episode 30 - Manchester vs Wolfson, Ox

Because I do this on Tumblr, one of the most annoying things about doing this (and I know its dumb), and something that I think might subconsciously play into me not doing these more regularly, is that when I try and add the pictures of the teams to the post it quite often takes ages and sometimes causes the page to freeze so that I can’t save/post it. This problem is exacerbated when there are multiple episodes to get through, which makes it one of those snowballing problems that only gets worse the longer you leave it - like when you put off repying to an email until it becomes almost a monolithic entitiy in your mind. 

It only takes a few minutes to fix this - you copy and paste the text and then add the images in a different window (though there is another annoying thing where the hashtags don’t save anyway, so you have to retype the hashtags - and for some reason I always add loads of hashtags, including #JeremyPaxman - which also feels like it takes an epoch) - but its one of those few minute periods that feel like fifteen minutes. So basically, what I’m saying is that I can’t be assed adding the pictures to the post at this point. I might add them later, but for now you’re just getting words, so, so many rambling words. 

Manchester are back in the last eight for the first time in donkeys, but they stand on the precipice following a trouncing by Trinity in their QF-opener (I’ve already mentioned this in the last review, which normally wouldn’t matter, but since its directly above this one then it might seem a bit repetitive, but I don’t know if I can rely on your having remembered). Wolfson were likewise (likewise were? Are both okay) baeten by Corpus Christi (which is also referenced above, sorry) so this one was an ELIMINATOR!

Neither side seemed to realise this from the off though (I say though too much don’t I? If I had more time I’d probably edit a few down. But I’m doing a 5-episode mega-post so I don’t, though. Shit. Actually, that one was on purpose winky face) and sort of stumble through the first few questions with some atrocious work on the bonuses. 

Green thought he’d pulled a great answer out of the bag to kick start the match, but Fanny Burney Fanny Burnett is not, and Paxo decries the crowd for being amused at how close Green had come (they having let out a collective ‘oooh’, much in the same way their footballing equivalent may have done at a smashed crossbar). 

Even Jones, so electric in her previous appearances, was a bit slow off the mark tonight. On one occasion she even overruled her teammates conferred and agreed upon answer at the last moment, giving her own guess which they had dismissed, but fortunately for her they had both been wrong, so she did not look a fool.

Manchester were ahead, but couldn’t get far ahead. Wolfson were within touching distance, but couldn’t touch. Not until the very end that is. Caple took the final starter to draw them level and the gong sounded before th first bonus could be asked. DEADLOCK.

A #DEADLOCKELIMINATOR no less.

Paxman explains that a Neg on this question would hand victory to the other team without them lifting a buzzer-finger. He starts reading, no one buzzes. He continues to read. Everyone continues to not buzz. He carries on r- BUZZ. 

Manchester Rogers. Three words left on Paxo’s lips. He better be right. Kaiser Wilhelm. He isn’t. Otto Von Bismarck. An easy mistake to make, says Paxo. 

I reckon Wolfson would have picked up the drop anyway, but you can’t be sure.

My fellow UC blog, jacksonlinewritings, says that its the first time a neg has lost a tiebreak since 2002/03. 

Final Score: Manchester 125 - 130 Wolfson.

Episode 31 - Durham vs Imperial.

I don’t know if this is the first time I’ve written about the same team twice in one post before, but it may well be. Either way, you can (and probably already have) read everything I had to say about Imperial Brandon, my favourite contestant this series, further up this very page, so I don’t need to reiterate.

Durham’s Tams beats him to what I thought was a relatively easy starter on the Magna Carta (just spent a few minutes trying to come up with another word to rhyme with carta, thought it would be easy, but it was a bit harda). He gets the next one though (though) and his Captain Rich the third to give them the lead. Their opponents proved a tougher nut to crack than Courtauld though (though, and I’m not doing this on purpose. I’m just not removing them when I probably should be. They’re all coming up naturally. This is just how much I apparently use the word. If there are any others then please let me know) and cling on whenever Brandon threatens to zoom away.

Please forgive me for going on about Brandon, by the way. He’s just (I think ‘just’ is probably one, and probably ‘probably’ too) so captivating to watch. There were several times in this episode when I stopped watching the whole screen during a starter and focussed on him, expecting him to buzz in, which he duly did. Especially on the starters which are that bit more important, when Durham were (I need to do something about my tenses too, they’re all over the shop) threatening to make a comeback, you could feel certain that he was going to get it.

When the game has been won, he relaxes, so his personal scores haven’t been as high as those of others in past series, but he hasn’t needed to get more than he has done, so why would he bother? I expect if a team were to push Imperial close over a whole match then he’d easily post double figures.

Imperial join Corpus Christi in the semis. Durham live to fight another day.

Final Score: Durham 115 - 185 Imperial

Episode 32 - Jesus, Ox vs Courtauld

Phew! I’ve never written four in a night before. That was quite something. Wait, whats that, I have another one to go? Okay, lets do this - an advance warning, this one will probably (probably! Why do I feel the need to never be absolute about anything. I know for certain that this will be very short, so why must I try and placate some imaginary reader who might scold me for its being so?) be very short.

So, another ELIMINATOR. Courtauld were my favourite team of the series, but I harboured little hope for them, after such a crushing defeat by Imperial last time out, and Jesus were quick to crush what little I had left. Lucy Clarke, who absolutely relishes a buzz on the opening starter of a match, came in with an early buzz, as is her wont, and fortunately for the Oxonians she was right this time. She got the next one too, and Jesus were 45 up.

Three in a row for Courtauld captain Prance, who looks shocked every time he gets a starter correct, despite the fact that when he got the third of this hat-trick, he had quite clearly proved to himself that he knows how to answer starter questions by the fact that (the fact that Ducks, Newburyport) he had got the previous two. They were ahead now. Dare I dream?

No, I daren’t. Jesus quickly stole it back, and did not let it go. Courtauld stayed fairly close, but could never again broach the gap, struggling on the bonus questions whenever they got in. Perhaps on another night they might have stood a better chance (with a bonus set on collage art, which Paxman reckoned they would have knocked out of the park, going to Jesus), but tonight (its not tonight at all is it, not for me and not for you) was not their night.

And breathe...

Final Score: Jesus, Ox 135 - 90 Courtauld

If you’ve stuck with me through all of this, I’m frankly amazed. Thank you, and if you need something to do during self-isolation, there are like 6 whole series of the Challenge on YouTube. I haven’t reviewed them all, but thats probably for the best though.

[loregoddess]

11 Questions tag

Tagged by @lookerdewitt

Rules:

*Answer the 11 questions you’ve been asked  *Tag 11 other bloggers~

*Ask them 11 questions  *Let them know you’ve tagged them~

Answers:

What’s your favorite animated movie? Into the Spiderverse or Wreck-It Ralph, but Coco is honestly way up there too.

If you had to get a tattoo (or another tattoo if you already have one) what would it be? I’m a basic fool, I’d probably get something Zelda related. Or just like, game-related in general. probably.

Favorite pokemon from each gen? I just want you to know I’m late answering this bc of this question. Gen1: Ninetales, Zubat, Flareon, Jolteon, Vaporeon, Meowth Gen2: Crobat, Umbreon, Espeon, Houndoom, Murkrow, Skarmory Gen3: ABSOL, Grovyle, Mightyena, Pelipper, Skitty and Delcatty, Mawile, Relicanth, and a handful of other bc this list is too long Gen4: Torterra, Luxray, Roserade, Mismagius, Honchkrow, Chatot, Froslass, ARCEUS Gen5: Stoutland, Liepard, Sigilyph, Joltik, Chandelure, Haxorus, Mandibuzz, Volcarona Gen6: Fennikin and Braixen, Dragalge, Goodra, Klefki, Phantump, Xerneas, Yveltal Gen7: Rowlet and Decidueye, Toucannon, Cutiefly, Mudsdale, Lurantis, Bewear, Tsareena, Type: Null and Silvally, Mimikyu, Dhelmise, Lunala

Favorite amusement park ride? It’s been years since I was last at an amusement park, but the Ferris wheel is super chill and relaxing and I love it.

What is the best form of potato? (ie, french fries, baked, mashed, etc) Potato...good... (I like potatoes in almost any form, but if I had to choose probably potato skins, which is an actual dish with other ingredients but sounds kinda morbid when I just write out the name).

Who do you main in smash? *sweats nervously bc I bounce between like, 12 different characters* Uh, probably still Zelda or Marth...although I’ve been playing Ike a lot recently too.

I’m in a smash mood so if you could choose any character from any game to be in smash who would it be? Midna bc I’ve wanted her playable in Smash for years, but also Amaterasu from О̄kami--wouldn’t mind someone from AA either.

Stance on cookie dough ice cream (our friendship relies on your answer to this question) Michi, you’re gonna kill me for this, but guess who’s never eaten cookie dough ice cream (in my defense they’ve all had allergy warnings on them).

Sans or Papyrus? Hnngh...both....both are excellent.

If you were in the shitty shitty world of boku no hero macadamia what would your quirk be? (If you’re lucky and don’t know what this question means, what would you want ur super power to be) Probably some generic ice quirk bc my hands are always cold. That or like, the most useless prophetic dreams (i.e. I know the date that “something” will happen, but not what that something is, or knowing what will happen but not when, or like, just what the weather will be or some shit).

What’s your favorite bad movie? Like a movie so shitty that its fun to watch. I need more shitty fun things to watch. There’s this really terrible, I mean, really terribly scripted B-horror movie called Bait--it’s about a shark that eats people after it gets stuck in an underground mall after a typhoon or something, in Australia. I only saw part of it and had fun making fun of how bad it was, but I dunno if it’s the best bad movie to watch bc of some of the shitty generic horror movie tropes.

Listen, I dunno 11 people who’d want to answer random questions, but if you’re interested let me know and I’ll write some out.

[arabellaflynn]

The Ballroom-And-Random-Other-Things Dancer has inquired whether I'd be willing to trade hoop lessons for ballroom lessons. I am trying to decide how happy I ought to be. I believe he sincerely thought it was a good idea when it emerged from his mouth. Many things emerged from his mouth over the three-weekend run of the show. He is charmingly loquacious and there is little he is not curious about. One night I tracked him down after the show and found him on the deserted stage, being so helpful that I had to tow him off by the elbow to let the crew clean up in peace. I was also once regaled with the long-form version of the theme song to a French-language cowboy show he recalled from his youth. Those of you who hang around STEM people will be unsurprised to hear that, before he racked up all the IMDb credits, he did his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. Lots of wonderful people thought trading hoop lessons for ______ lessons was a great idea when they said it. I spent 2017 trying unsuccessfully to follow up on it. Any of it. You know how people say, "Do it for yourself"? This has been my every hobby since birth. I do plenty of things for myself. I didn't cram Japanese into my head because I wanted everyone to ooh and aah. I did it because it annoyed me that there were things in Japanese out in the world, and I couldn't read them. You lot don't know 95% of the things I get up to, because I'm entertaining myself and I can't be bothered to write it all out. Not all things are like this. Dance is literally a performance art. You dance for someone to watch. Maybe that someone is you, in the mirror. I've gotten sick of this. Maybe that someone is the other students in your dance class. I am rubbish in classes for procedural/pedagogical reasons and avoid them like the plague. Mostly that someone is an audience, either of random people who watch dance or of other dancers who probably know what they're doing. A few randoms have seen me with a hoop, ranging from friends to the odd five-year-old waiting for their ballet class to start. People who don't know how to dance apparently think I'm impressive. But it's easy to impress someone who doesn't have the skill you're demonstrating. Everything looks hard when you can't do it yourself. I can probably get myself on stage if I really try. The place I work is big on community shows. Depending on which one(s) I apply to, the threshold is anywhere between 'professional quality' and 'trying reasonably hard'. One of my friends once suggested that if I wanted to perform so badly, I should just produce my own show. I hate this idea. Aside from the fact that I do not want this to be one more thing that I goddamn have to goddamn do my goddamn self because no one else can be relied upon, it's not what I want. The point is not that I want to be in the spotlight. That's easy.  I have been informed that I have many talents, and if I keep submitting myself for consideration someone will eventually want me as an employee. The point is that I want to be a part of something. I don't want to start my own club. I want someone to want me in theirs. I want acknowledgement from the other dancers. I want them to decide that, while I might not know their skill, I clearly have a skill, or at least I might have some sort of skill at something or another, and it might be something that makes me worth working with. I have asked people if they want to trade brain-toys and see if we can make something together. I have been offered the trade, several times. I follow up. I offer specific times, and tell them that if none of those work they can have a look at the rest of my schedule and see if something else will. I am friendly, I am enthusiastic, I give compliments that I really mean and I tell them what makes me want to work with them. No one has followed through. I've gotten a couple of people to agree to be my student. It's lovely being acknowledged as enough of an expert to teach others, but it's not the same thing as having someone I already think is pretty nifty at this treat me like an equal. Eight hundred people are about to come out of the woodwork to tell me that other peoples' flakiness is not a referendum on me. Bullshit. It's not a pronouncement on my overall worth as a human, no. What it is a referendum on is how important doing things with me is to them, which is evidently 'not very'. About six hundred of those people are now about to suggest that I go do whatever it is by myself. I already do this. I am tired of it. I am tired of being by myself all the time. You know when you were a kid, you and your friends entertained yourselves out on the playground with those clapping games? Or double Dutch jump rope rhymes? (Or maybe you didn't. Those were girls-only when and where I was a child. But you probably saw the girls do that, if you didn't do it yourself.) Ballroom dance -- and pretty much any other kind of dance you get up to with a partner or a troupe -- is just the grown-up version of that. I have a pattern to move in; you have a pattern to move in; the object is to get those patterns to interact to make a bigger one. It is one of the few things in life that is physically impossible to do by yourself, no matter how determined you are. I have spent a year trying to get someone to play with me. I really want this to work out. The loquacious charmer announced one night that he needed to warm up and promptly swept up the nearest girl-type person to do it, which happened to be me. And it worked. That never works. I have literally no idea what my feet were doing, and can't even reconstruct it from memory, but I have high hopes that if it keeps working I'll figure it out, and possibly be able to transfer this skill to dancing with other people. But this depends on getting both of us together in the same room at the same time for more than five minutes with fewer than twenty other things we both need to be doing simultaneously. And with my luck,  that will be the point where a giant meteor hits the planet and obliterates human civilization. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2BrjaJx via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[prioritizingpurples]

there's this green blogger I follow, limmuda, and they've just posted something about purples being allies to greens and I don't feel like we're obligated to being their allies, but the points they make sound convincing and i'm having trouble articulating why i disagree. if you have time/energy could you have a look at their post and share your thoughts? i understand if you can't, I just really look up to you as a purple role-model

You've hit on it in your ask, really--purples are not morally obligated to be the "allies" of greens to the same extent that greens are to purples. I had trouble articulating my disagreement, at first, too, and I think that's because we give similar practical advice: listen to people no matter their speaking style, genuinely follow through on what you hear, assume that people are experts on their own lives, said and don't overgeneralize about a whole caste based on knowing a couple. This is good advice when thinking about how to approach people from ANY caste as individuals (and I think that's an important thing to note--that doing this to other castes is good advice, but if you do it to purples you're an ally. the bar is low to be an ally, i promise!) But, while the advice is the same, the situations are not--greens are privileged over purples. like, if I were writing a guide on how poor people can be an ally to rich people, I would include stuff like "listen to people no matter their speaking style and don't assume they're all the same". but yknow what? i don't really care about how to be an ally to rich people! i do care to some degree how to be an ally to greens, but it's not my first priority, and it doesn't have to be. expecting purples to be allies to greens can conflict with expecting greens to be allies to purples--for example, if a purple squashes their own natural speaking style and emotional reactions in order to be an ally to greens. not only that, purples are already expected to be "allies" to greens. in day to day life, people see their style of speaking as "smart", many of us adopt it in order to be taken more seriously, and people assume their opinions are more valid and grounded than ours (even if the green is, say, an art green!), etc. while there may be places that are purple-dominated, and where green styles of speaking are seen as condescending or out-of-touch, these are mostly (a) online, where it probably will not affect your life, and (b) in purple areas that are almost entirely purple and which will almost certainly not have any greens unless the greens really want to be there--essentially, greens can avoid messages from purple culture, while purples cannot avoid messages from green culture. i think it's telling that their answer focused mostly on cultural misunderstandings and miscommunications, while mine focused more on treating purples fairly and calling out people who don't. now, if a purple WANTS to go out of their way to be extra understanding and kind to greens due to cultural differences, that's fine! it's a-ok for purples to identify as green allies! but it's also fine for purples to say "i have been pretending all day that you sound smart when the only thing i can think of is how much i feel condescended to and i'm going to vent about that on my personal blog". doing so is not violating caste solidarity or failing to be understanding of cultural differences--on the other hand, expecting nobody to feel that way is. it is /absolutely fine/ to say "yknow what, i don't want to be a green ally, i want to focus on what i can do for my fellow purples".which, like, not that greens don't have problems, or don't face casteism--they do. but generally not because of purples. i will still call out anti-green casteism when i see it, because casteism is wrong and we're all oppressed under blues, but these are fundamentally different situations and can't be treated interchangeably. and as a purple, i am going to prioritize purples. i have no problem if a green decides that they are going to prioritize other greens and problems that greens face, as long as they don't endorse anti-purple casteism--that's the basis of my separatism. as separate castes, we have different concerns and priorities, and since each caste knows themselves and their needs best, each caste should focus within themselves to fix their problems and meet their needs instead of relying on other castes. (for this reason, i'd be more comfortable declaring myself an ally to e.g. a green separatist cause, organization, or movement than just "an ally to greens".)also, when greens face casteism from purples, it is almost (almost! not 100%, but usually. do not bombard me with messages about edge cases) always in a low-stakes situation in which the purple has little or no power, social or material, over the green. when purples face casteism from greens, it is much more likely to be a higher-stakes situation in which the green has power over the purple. ("is stupid a worse insult when said to greens or purples?" vs "are purple artists real artists who deserve to be seen as such and compensated for their work?") we do not have the same moral obligation to not get in flame wars or be mildly rude to random strangers as we do to not demean and attempt to damage people's livelihoods--and purples do not have the same moral obligation to be a green ally as greens do to be a purple ally. greens have power, both individually and as a caste, that purples simply do not, and the more power you have the more careful you have to be to not hurt people with less power. (yes, yes, I know, starving artist vs purple billionaire, generalizations are bad. generalizations are also necessary, because we don't have time to talk about every single green and purple on the planet.) not all casteism is created equal. the average purple cannot effect the lives of blues except maybe by sending anon hate. the average blue can effect the lives of purples in so many ways, whether through land or law or money. not all power differentials are that severe! but even when they're subtler--maybe even especially when they're subtler--it's important to pay attention to them. (another thing that greens can do: when we upset you, avoid it--walk away, block us, whatever. because you have that luxury. anti-green casteism is generally not as widespread or as vicious "irl" as anti-purple casteism is, because greens have that privilege. take advantage of it.)....gosh, this got very long and rambly, whoops! thank you so much for the compliment by the way nonny, i really am honored by it. i'm not a role model, haha, i'm just a 4-year-old with internet access and too much time on her hands. but it means a lot to me! hearing stuff like that is why i keep running this blog. it's so incredible to know that i inspire other purples like this!

[craupor321]

Final Reflection

Listening and Comprehension:

During the first few weeks of this class, I can honestly say that I was terrified almost every time we had an activity. I do not feel as though I had a strong base in Portuguese as I took my first Portuguese class online and did not learn the material as well, and I had taken this first class over one year ago and had not practiced Portuguese since then. I feel as though I struggled the most initially with listening and comprehension activities due to the fact that I was not used to hearing the language spoken and could not keep up with the fast pace. During the first activity where 3 Portuguese speaking guests came into the class to speak to us, I had difficulty understanding much of what they were saying even while they were speaking at a deliberately slow speed. As the semester progressed I feel as though I grew much more used to hearing the language spoken and I could understand Professora Domaz almost 100% of the time.   

The videos we watched in class and for homework were especially difficult for me as many people in the video had very different accents that I was not accustomed to and again, spoke quite quickly. When there were videos incorporated in the homework I always had to play them several to even partially understand what the people were saying. This is true of the remaining 2 assignments found under the Listening & Comprehension tab of my portfolio. This also got easier as the semester progressed, but I never felt as confident listening to these random people on video and interpreting what they said as I did when we were in class. I believe this is due to the fact that I was able to become more accustomed with Professora Domaz’s accent and pace than I was with the people in the videos. 

Overall, I can definitely tell that I have gained more skill at listening and understanding someone speaking in Portuguese. The continued listening and comprehension homework and class activities definitely helped me improve this and the only way I can maintain and continue to develop this skill is to keep listening to the language! These activities were also enjoyable because I was able to hear more about the culture and the way people live in lusophone countries. I plan to at least listen to some Portuguese music every week and ideally will find someone to keep practicing the skill with.   

Writing:

The writing activities were my most time consuming activities that we did. When doing these I always had to think extra hard to distinguish if what I was writing was Portuguese or Spanish as I often mixed up the rules. As the semester went on I definitely improved on this and was able to write more efficiently. When comparing the activity where I had to write to a blogger to later activities, it is quite clear to me that my skills have expanded. In my letter to the blogger all of my sentences are extremely short and to the point. In the later activities I was able to write longer sentences while still making sense. I enjoyed doing these activities because I felt as though they pushed me to remember more vocabulary and conjugations and they were also activities where others were not listening or watching what I was writing, which made me feel more comfortable.

Speaking:

Speaking assignments were the most intimidating to me but also the most beneficial. Every in person class we had I dreaded being called on as I am just not confident in my speaking abilities. It was helpful that there were many other students in the same boat as me who were not always completely sure of what they were saying, this made me feel more comfortable practicing even when I knew I was not speaking 100% perfectly. The students who had the ability to speak very confidently and quickly made me feel somewhat judged, especially when I was placed in a group with them and I felt as though I could not keep up. However, I know their skills come with lots of practice and that I am able to get to their level if I keep practicing. 

These speaking activities caused some dread, but ultimately were very helpful in pushing me to learn the language. It is one thing to be able to hear and read a language but you must also be able to respond for the language to be helpful for your future. These activities definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone but helped me develop the language more profoundly. When listening to the first activity we did when we asked a roommate to do 3 things while we were out of town, I can already tell such an improvement in my speaking ability when comparing this activity to the later speaking activities. I know I continue to struggle with Portuñol but I hope as I continue listening and practicing the language this will improve!  

Reading and Comprehension:

Reading and comprehension activities were the easiest of the activities for me. I believe this is due to the fact that Portuguese is somewhat similar to Spanish and I was able to find similarities in the written words and translate from there. I also felt most comfortable with these activities because I felt that I was able to move at my own pace and no one was listening to my thought process or judging me. The activities also gave me a little better understanding of the way people live and handle things in lusophone countries. 

To be completely honest, I do not remember doing the first activity under the Reading & Comprehension tab at all. The next two activities were somewhat easy for me, with the last posted activity being the most difficult. The long nature of the last activity intimidated me prior to me even starting the assignment. There were several sentences that I had to read more than once to fully understand, but overall I efficiently completed the assignment and felt quite confident turning it in. I feel as though I had improved my reading abilities throughout the semester and now rely less on Spanish translation to understand what I am reading.  

[ezhomelive]

Transit Driver Appreciation Day, Meet Mr. Boston

Transit Driver Appreciation Day, Meet Mr. Boston By Lori Phelan

Today, on Transit Operator Appreciation Day, we would like to thank all Muni drivers for their service and dedication to the job by introducing you to Mr. Boston, aka Mike Delia, one of the 2,600 transit operators working for the City. Experience his job in his own words. And thank you Mike for your service. We see you and appreciate all you do for us and the City and County of San Francisco. If you see Mr. Boston out there on Market, be sure to say Hi.

Mike Delia, Cap ID No. 4854, on the F Line, Car No. 1040. (SFMTA Photo, 2018)

Hi, my name is Mike Delia, but you probably know me better as "Mr. Boston." I'm your friendly operator on the F-Market line, and I've worked with Muni just over five years. On the cusp of Transit Operator Appreciation Day, I wanted to share in my experience since joining the City and thank all the hard-working operators for all that they do day in and day out.

Why did you become a transit operator and why Mr. Boston?

They call me Mr. Boston because I hail from Massachusetts, where I got bit by the transit bug when I was 5 years old, riding the bus with my father, who was also an operator. I got my CDL three months shy of my 19th birthday and started driving transit to help pay for college. After college, my career went in a Communications-focused direction, but I continued driving buses part-time. The company I worked for was a contractor for the larger Boston transit agency, the MBTA (essentially the "Muni" of Massachusetts), and as such offered little in terms of retirement and other benefits. Eventually, my higher love of civil service took me away from my Communications endeavors, and I devoted my efforts to pursuing a full-time career in transit. However, the MBTA hired through a random lottery process and after 10 years of trying, I set my sights on another agency and started applying across the country in search for the right job.

So being a transit operator runs in the family. I hear that a lot around the divisions. What did the decision to work for Muni look like?

With the support from my wife, we almost landed in New York City (MTA), Philadelphia (SEPTA), then Santa Barbara (MTD), before ultimately getting the call from Muni -- and yes, I did travel to all these places to take the entrance exams! I knew Muni offered the chance to operate a variety of historic equipment, which made it an especially attractive choice. Coincidentally, my wife grew up and had family in the Bay Area, so it all came together at the right time. It might sound crazy, but I like to say we "Moved for Muni!"

When I first arrived in San Francisco, I started at Potrero Division driving trolley coaches. Every line is a workhorse but Potrero is a great barn to gain experience -- and I keep in touch with many of my colleagues. Potrero, like many divisions, is its own family and will always be my home. That division is over a hundred years old, built in 1915, and I marvel that it first housed streetcars. My favorite line was the 22-Fillmore. Sure, you picked up lots of baby strollers, seniors and wheelchairs, but the passengers were mellow compared to other routes and there used to be good coffee spot at the Dogpatch terminal. A close second was the 30-Stockton. I still have a love/hate with the 14-Mission, but I always liked the 49-Van Ness/Mission (when we had it!).

You seem drawn to tradition and historic vehicles. Are they your favorite?

Three years into my time at Potrero, I had a chance to sign to Green division on a General Sign-Up and I haven't looked back. The F line and the historic streetcars are an interesting beast. You certainly deal with many tourists, but you also carry a heavy load of everyday commuters, and the line also goes straight through Civic Center, which is fraught with its own challenges. I say anyone who has driven a Market Street line can operate the F, or E line for that matter.

Are those the only challenges?

Operators new to the streetcars get nervous because the equipment is so old, averaging 70 to 90 years of age. The controls vary, some are hand-operated, some have foot pedals, people fear that they don't stop quickly, they are breakdown prone -- don't believe all that. Yes, they have their quirks and require extra attention, but they can also be very satisfying and safe to operate.

I've been a line trainer between both divisions, and encourage operators to try new modes, expand your experience and change things up. Just try it! Put your name on the wish list. If you don't like it, you can always return to your home division. You won't know if you never try. I myself have sights remaining on LRV, Cable Car, then perhaps Inspector. Instructor? Management? Who knows... don't sell yourself short. There is plenty of opportunity at Muni.

You are a snappy dresser and wear the cap very well.

People ask me about my operator's cap all the time, since it's a throwback to what operators wore at Muni during the 1950s and '60s. It's special ordered, and pairs great with our full-dress uniform. I wear it every day and know of two other operators with similar caps. It makes the public smile and respect you! The agency should really consider bringing them back.

Any interesting experiences at Muni?

I used to have a regular on the 22 line who lived on the street at the bus stop on 17th + De Haro. Every morning I'd see him and say "hello." He kept his space very clean and liked to paint watercolors. Once a week, he'd board with a cart and always pay his fare, as he was going to Third Street to do his laundry. He learned that I liked his artwork, and one day handed me a small canvas he painted depicting an autumn nature scene. I still have it to this day.

Favorite Muni vehicle.

Well, it must be Car No. 1059! Naturally, it's painted in the Boston livery -- Mr. Boston's car!

Best experience.

I've been blessed to have many regulars on the many lines I've operated, but especially on the F line. People will ask you to pose with them for pictures. Gladly oblige! Let little children ring the gong if you're stopped and at a safe location. You must have some fun with it. This Valentine's Day, I delivered a bride -- gown, "train," attendants and all -- to City Hall aboard the car. Of course, I hopped out for a quick photo at her stop while passengers looked on. Make it special for your riders!

Best advice.

I say the key to a long rewarding career in transit relies on your patience, and kindness. Be firm, but also be willing to let little things go. Certain members of the public are going to try and get the best of you; don't give them the satisfaction. We all have our moments – we’re all human – but keep control of the situation. Be patient with the new hires and passengers who require assistance. Know your rule book. It spells out what you can and cannot do and remember your training. Smile and be nice! It will take you a long way.

I have so much respect for our long-tenured senior operators, and for the rookies coming in. They're making sacrifices with their time, their families, and their days off for a better future doing what at times can be a both satisfying and dangerous job. With 15 years combined experience, I sometimes must remind myself there's always an opportunity to learn something new. Humble yourself and be safe out there! You are all appreciated and deserve recognition, not just today, but every day.

Published March 19, 2020 at 12:41AM https://ift.tt/3a5UGnC from Blogger http://www.ezhomelive.com/2020/03/transit-driver-appreciation-day-meet-mr.html

[itslikethatfrenchthing]

033: THIS IS WHY YOUR PRODUCT BUSINESS ABSOLUTELY NEEDS A BLOG

  Today’s talking point:

I'm a college student. I'm considering getting my four year degree in marketing. Do you think starting a blog would be beneficial to me if I were to pursue that degree and if so, where do I even start? 

Blogging is not dead. Today I'm going to walk you through why: why blogging can have a place in your business and why it should be a priority in your business. I'll walk you through:

How to get started 

How to actually make money blogging  

What goes into writing the perfect blog post that will benefit your business for years to come

So let's get into it. 

THE VALUE OF BLOGGING

I have published so many blog posts. When I first started, I used to blog every single weekday (and never missed a day for about two years). Let's just say I don't exactly do that anymore, but it served me well and it became a part of my brand. Now, I’ve restructured how I focused on blogging and prioritise quality over quantity, posts that aren’t super time sensitive and will live on long beyond the publish date.

Blogging is alive and well, it's just grown up with our generation and with that we have to adapt. Now, I have over 30,000 people visit my blog each and every single month. That’s over 30,000 eyes being exposed to me and my content on my site. 

WHY BLOGGING MATTERS

My blog is what helped me launch my business. And at the time I didn't use anything other than a blog to start. 

#1| Content Lives On

Blogging content lives on longer. Instead of thinking of my blog as a journal where the posts are read and then forgotten, I think of each and every post as an opportunity to attract new people to my site that may be interested in a very specific topic, such as: “marketing activities in one hour or less.” Then, I can serve them up great content and ultimately invite them to go deeper with me and my brand. 

I recently checked out my 10 all-time top blog posts. Some of them were published way back in 2016; that means work I did three years ago is still attracting new people to my site each and every day. To me, that tells me that blogging is 100% alive and well. 

#2| Control the Audience Experience

Besides attracting this new audience to your site with specific content, once they're there, you're able to better control their experience than anywhere else online. 

What journey do you want the reader to take? 

What do you want them to feel as they visit your site? 

How do you want them to connect with you beyond the post that they're currently reading? 

These are all things that are in your control on your blog, that you can't control on social media. I always teach my private clients that social media should be the handshake or introduction. The real invitation is where I invite people to land on my corner of the web, to my blog or my website where we have the opportunity to go deeper and continue that conversation. 

Now I don't have to worry about pesky algorithms or not getting my work seen or the reader to get distracted by other things trying to get their attention. I get to be in charge of that user and how someone interacts with me or my brand. 

#3| Blogging Data

Blogs provides enough valuable data to direct your priorities. Numbers give certainty and they help guide business decisions. One of the best ways I decide what my audience wants from me is by looking at what posts they are clicking on the most. 

Dig into that data and think:

What were the most popular topics? 

How can I create more of that type of material? 

Do I see any trends that would give me insights into future podcast episodes or products or services or courses or free content that I should create? 

This information will help you serve your target audience even more. Unlike social media and the algorithms, we actually have control here. 

HOW TO START A BLOG

Are you reading this and panicking because you're only relying on Instagram as your main form of marketing right now, and you don’t have or use a blog? Don’t worry. Here are the exact steps that I would take today if I was just starting out with a blog. 

#1| Choose Your Platform

Popular blogging platforms to choose from include: Squarespace, Wordpress, Wix, Blogger, and Tumblr.  When you go to choose a platform, make sure you are asking yourself these questions: 

If it's one you have to make, how easy is it to set up? 

Is there a big learning curve? 

Would the setup need to be outsourced? 

Where do you want to take your blog in the future and does the platform have the functionality to support that? 

Sometimes it can be difficult to transfer a blog, so it's best to really weigh these things now and make the best choice for your business. 

#2| Design Your Site

The next thing you need to think about are the other elements you want to add to your site. Elements basically extend the functionality and add new features to your blog.

One of the key elements you need to think about is SEO. Make sure your blog posts are SEO-optimised, and connect your email list to your site. So connecting your email service provider, installing Google Analytics. There's all kinds of things. 

#3| Plan Your Content

Without content, everything else is meaningless. You can't just create a presence online and think people will come. 

That's the number one mistake business owners make is: they think that “I build it, then they will come.” You have to build it and then maintain it. The content you write is going to be what makes people come back for more and more and helps grow that trust and relationship between you and the reader. 

CREATING A CONTENT PLAN

Here’s the secret: approach a blog with strategy and have a plan.

So let's talk about some content ideas to last all month long so that way you can rest easy knowing you have something amazing to share. First you simply want to commit to creating new content, even one day a week. Start small and work your way up.

It's not as complicated as we make it out to be. The best part is these ideas aren't just for your blog. You can use them on your Facebook, Instagram, Podcast, YouTube channel, whatever medium you choose. They can be repurposed and translated across different platforms. You want to create powerful content that can be repurposed. Each of these posts help write a bigger story for you, your business and your brand. They're not random. These are strategic.

Topics to Help You Get Started

Personal Post Inspiration

There is a difference between a business and a true brand. We want your audience to get to know the person behind the business. How can you share more about you, your life, your family, and your passions? Think of what you can do to connect yourself to your audience. These are easy post ideas, so here are some examples. 

10 things most people don't know about me

How I prepare for my job 

A tour of your workspace

What's in your bag

5 things you can't live without or different products

What I love about being an XYZ

What I love about creating XYZ products

How you became what you do

What goes into the creation of your products

Behind-the-scenes look at life beyond your work

My top 10 favourite images of summer (autumn, winter, spring) 

The last five books I read 

Your go to recipe for a dish that you're most known for 

Product Post Inspiration

After the personal ones, here are some product ideas. You sell a product. These ideas might get your creative juices flowing. 

10 reasons to fall in love with ______ (your product )

How to pick the right _________ (product you offer)

Things to consider when planning ______ (whatever your product relates to) 

Feature a client using your product

Spotlight a new product that you're selling 

Five creative ways to display, use or enjoy your product 

Frequently Asked Questions

There are probably a handful of questions that people ask you all the time, and your blog can be an amazing place to answer those common questions. Turning questions into blog posts can provide valuable answers and drive more traffic because people are curious about the answer. That's why you get asked it all the time. 

Top 10 questions I get asked 

What clients have said about working with me

What to look for in a product business coach

What's your process? Provide a peek into what it looks like to work with your company or be a part of your offerings

Share what the experience actually looks like

Client interviews: ask your favourite clients questions about their experience with you

Client interviews: ask your favourite clients questions about their experience with you.

why they chose you; fears they had; what their results or outcome was; and why they would recommend you to other people. 

Share the barriers to sales

I know that probably feels scary, but put yourself in the shoes of potential customers and think about the reasons why they may not hire you. Then answer to those fears to show that you've really understand how to make their life easier.

Inspiration Posts

Not all blog posts need to be elaborate and content heavy. Pick some of your favorite images, add a quote or a and hit publish. You can keep these types of posts in your back pocket for times when you're too busy to put together a longer article. 

Create an Instagram collage each month and show your readers what you've been up to

Create a mood board that inspires you 

Share inspiration for your clients.

Lastly, repurpose things that you've already done. Do you send out newsletters? Do you post out loads of content on social media? Use that content in a new way and repurpose it for a post to direct people to a new way to hear from you without adding any extra work. 

THE ANATOMY OF A PERFECT BLOG POST

I've written an entire blog standards guide for my business, for when I hire future employees to keep everyone on the same page. I thought it would be perfect to just share my guide with you, to give you an idea of the components that go into a blog post. 

Title

Is the title something that will make people want to click? Does it share the promise of the post, or tell people what to expect if they open it? Think clickable paired with a promise that will over deliver.  

Photos

Is the featured photo either the same, or aligned with the content inside of the post? I want this to feel cohesive. If someone clicks on the preview of the post from Facebook, they feel like they've landed on the right page. Opt for colour images are clean and compelling and either use a stock photo or yourself. 

Introduction

Does the introduction inspire someone to keep reading? Those first few lines can make or break the entire post. Is there a compelling question or relatable sentiment? We want to pack a punch because this line can show up as a preview on Facebook when the post is shared. So don't neglect the importance of this line and then use this first paragraph to give readers a ruler of the promise of the post to make sure that we're measuring up.

Post Headlines

Are all of the headings formatted the same? Do they contain the same punctuation and the same amount of words? Do they stay on one line? Make sure that these headings are like a roadmap for the reader so that they can find the information they need quickly and that they're all formatted cohesively and correctly. 

Break Up Paragraphs

The number one way to make a post and more readable is to not have super blocky paragraphs. There have been visual studies that people will keep reading if paragraphs are similar sized and not super long. 

External Links

Basically anything that would pull people away from our post: are they all opening up to a new tab? Now remember, we want as few external links as possible because the goal is to keep people on our own site, so we only include necessary links and save a running list of them for the bottom section of each post .

Affiliate Links

Are we an affiliate for anything that is hyperlinked? If so, are we using our affiliate links to collect commissions? We want to make sure we take advantage of any opportunity to use links that provides results and still making sure that they're opening into a new tab out of the post.

Additional Links

Keep the bottom of a post for any sort of additional training or sponsors for the podcast. This area should be as clean as possible, don’t have a super long call to action, but a direct invitation. Nothing vague, no fluff.

SEO

Is The post search engine optimised? Is it formatted correctly? Are the images loaded with the correct keywords? Is the URL something that makes sense for the post? You want to go through that SEO checklist and get every single box ticked so it's got the best chance of ranking on Google. Check out episode 32 to get more of an idea of what needs to go into a blog post when it comes to SEO 

Opt-ins

Is there an option to join your email list? what opt-in will perform? How can we add value to the content with a call to action? Every single post should have an opt in strategy that includes either an affiliate link page or a Freebie that compliments the subject of the post. 

Credit Sources

Be sure to check that you credited our any sources used to create the post. I want to make sure we are doing diligence and creating:  if we don't want to originally create, this is super important to give credit where credit is due.

Run Grammarly

Ensure that Grammarly is on and run it through the post. Check any errors that are coming up, correct punctuation and grammar before publishing. Before you hit publish, triple check the formatting in preview mode. Make sure all headings are loading correctly, make sure the photo looks good, the paragraphs and line breaks are all correct. 

SHARING YOUR POSTS

Now it's onto sharing your post. So here are some of my tips for launching your blog post, both for the first time and for promoting posts into the future. 

Stack Up Content

Try to have three initial blog posts for people to dig into before you start promoting a new blog. We always want readers to be able to continue their journey on our site. Incorporate batch working into your creation process. When I'm on my game, I can be months ahead. It's a great way to continue to show up for your audience even if you're not actively working each and every day.

Get Platform Specific

Now, when you share a blog post, always think about your audience on each specific platform. For example, you may share it differently on Facebook than you do on Instagram. On Facebook, we might write a compelling question that the blog delivers on to entice our audience to click through. On Instagram, we might instead share a story around the topic on my Instagram stories and direct people to read through that. On Pinterest, we're focusing more on the pin graphic and thinking through keywords to include in the description.

Capture the Traffic

It's so great that so many eyes read the blog, but if you're not converting that traffic either to your email list or to actual paying customers, then you’re kind of doing all this work in vain. The best way that I know how to convert them is to invite them to subscribe to your email list, make it super clear how they can do this, whether it's a call to action in your post using a popup or a sidebar on your blog. I'd like to encourage you to not just have a generic “sign up for my newsletter box,” but to actually have some sort of offer that people are going to be willing to exchange their email address for. 

HOW TO MAKE MONEY

How does blogging actually make people money? 

#1| Affiliate Income

Affiliate income or sponsorships, recommending products and services that or this create in order to make a percentage of the sale. This can be a great option for people just starting out who don't have their own products or services to sell yet. The key with this is creating content that relates to products or services you're promoting or pushing out. Such as “the ultimate guide on how to use ____”

#2| Promote Yourself

Sell and promote your own products or services, so blogging can allow you to serve your audience with free content. Blogging can build trust, educate and set you up as an expert. You don't have to wait until your product is ready. You can start blogging and building an audience long before you're ever ready to sell anything. Then, you can generate income from your blog in this way with coaching services, selling ebooks or courses, or products.

#3| Move the Needle Forward

Have the ultimate goal in mind to help direct your blogging efforts in the beginning. While you build your audience, you want to be able to set up a ruler to decipher how your blog is moving the needle for you, whether it's through traffic, affiliate sales, email list growth, or more bookings. 

RECAP

It's not too late to start a blog. You're not behind the curve. Just follow the steps listed in this post. Map out your next 4, 8, 12 posts, sit down and start creating. 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Want access to a library full of online marketing resources plus weekly bitesized breakthroughs to help you boss your online presence? Find it here.

What did you think of the show? Leave a review on iTunes and become the Breakthrough Blogger of the Week!

Subscribe to the show and get notified when a new episode goes live.

Come join my free FB group.

Apply to work with me 1:1 as a private client here.

  from Blog https://ift.tt/3325qQV via IFTTT

[must-be-mythtaken]

Perpetual Motion

“A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain...” It’s at about that point that Dorothy starts singing about a perfect place, a land beyond the rainbow, full of bluebirds and lemon drops, where dreams come true and everything is just peachy keen. Dorothy, in a way, is defined by the way she sets her sights on the horizon, and that same tendency emerged in the self-portraits that I chose for the first part of this project. Each person was defined by movement—through either time or space—but always towards an end goal of happiness; each of my three themes dealt with different ways in which people tried to find that happiness.

My first section, entitled “Personal Lives—Personal Loves” was at first meant just to be about ineffable and often obsessive loves, but as I read and reread the snippets, another aspect moved to the forefront—each person who talked about this thing they love, be it a song or a movie or a book, they seemed to shy away from really owning their opinion. “I don’t think this song would have the same reaction with anyone else. Or that anyone else would get it the way that I get it. I don’t mind that people don’t get me or get the things I get” (Trevino) and “When I explained it to my boyfriend, he said I was crazy, which was utterly correct” (Wallen) are prime examples of this attitude, an attitude that springs directly from our increasing use of the internet as a means of communication—platforms like Twitter and Facebook especially—and our newfound ability to constantly change and edit our opinions. I was taken in by the same need: in my original draft of my first self-portrait, I ended my story of obsessive love on a “this probably makes me sound crazy” note. “Unlike newspapers, which would eventually publish corrections in a box of printed spinach far from the original error, bloggers had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screw-up” (Sullivan), and the same goes for anything you post on a social media platform.

“Success in the Electronic Present requires the ability to adapt instantly and to be multifaceted” (Butt), and part of that is a certain distance from opinion; as Liz Gilbert would say, “You have to stay mobile, movable, supple. Slippery, even” (Gilbert). If you stand by your love for, say, Evanescence during a goth phase in high school, with no hedging or prevarication, when you later decide that really, black is not your color, odds are you’ll be hit by a barrage of comments about why you have suddenly changed so much. However, if that love had been couched in terms of “it’s stupid but I love it,” that love would be much easier to run away from later. On the one hand, our culture of personality rewards passionate displays of feeling, but on the other hand, the need to be approachable and likeable when writing about yourself makes it hard to allow for loving something too much.

There is also, of course, the movement between different emotional states—the Oprah narrative of hardship, overcoming hardship, and becoming a stronger, better, happier, more complete person through that mastery of hardship. I once was lost, but now I am found, and in the future I will find many more things. My exhibition explored this idea in the middle section entitled “Everything Is Okay—Comparatively,” and I feel that “comparatively” is the most important word in that title. As my dad likes to say when I complain about difficult times in my life, “If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here.” Happiness is inherently relative—strawberries taste much better when they aren’t Brussels sprouts. As Elise wrote in her second self portrait, “But that’s just it. I’m only 22. As long as I don’t do anything stupid, I have plenty of life ahead of me to accomplish the goals I have for myself…I’ll have my own version of happily ever after” (Cho).

This attitude is reflective of much of what Butt claims in the Xena essay; we are constantly remaking ourselves, constantly in motion—like sharks, we die if we stop swimming. “In the episodes immediately preceding ‘The Way,’ Xena is tormented by the question of whether she has followed, and is following, the right path in her life. In ‘The Way,’ she learns from Hanuman that for each person there is only one ‘way,’ but once found, that way can be applied to be successful in any situation” (Butt). Life is a path, and we know how far we’ve come by looking back at where we’ve been, and the choice of so many people to define themselves through that movement is interesting. Even if they were trying to avoid the travel narrative trope, movement still worked its way into their portraits. Chronological narration is easy to digest—it’s expected, and just as the new Timeline feature of Facebook conveniently organizes so many random snippets into a coherent narrative, it is easy to define the self in that same movement through time.

What I find most compelling about this is the tendency to frame happiness as not a static point but as a pause on a continuously moving path. As I noted in part one, the “pursuit of happiness” is something America was founded on. Not having happiness, living within happiness, possessing happiness—pursuing happiness, as if it exists somewhere over the rainbow. “That’s why I like this song, I feel like there’s something perfect just out of reach, but I’m coming up on it” (Trevino). Just as the impossibility of the existence of a utopia exists within the very structure of the word, none of the self-portraits I read claimed a perfect happiness, or a state of happiness that could be inhabited permanently. Happiness is a project, a hobby, but also an acceptance of the current state of affairs—and why not, if you are constant coming up on “something perfect” on the horizon? In a very Taylorist move, happiness has become something to be accomplished efficiently and in small, sensible steps.

Another way in which my collection of self-portraits incorporated definition through movement was in the classic travel narrative, the Gilbertian story arc of self-discovery, the constant search for that perfect somewhere on the horizon.“The iconography…places the viewer in the position of the tourist who, in Dean McCannell’s words, “simply collects experiences of difference (different people, different places)” and “emerges as a miniature clone of the old Western philosophical subject, thinking itself unified, central, in control, etc., mastering Otherness and profiting from it” (Nakamura). Just as getting some distance from a problem allows you to see it more clearly, getting distance from familiar surroundings can allow you to see yourself more clearly: self-identification through what you are not. The assumption that travel will change you is inherently problematic, at least as far as I see it. As a friend of mine said, “Even if you go to India or France or whatever, it’s still the same person in France or India that was in Seattle.” Travel will only change you if you want it to, and even then, arguably that change could have happened without the traveling. Toward the end of the conversation, the same friend remarked “Travel if you want. Sure, maybe it’ll change you. But traveling just because you want to ‘find yourself’ is dumb.”

Another attitude that I feel is prevalent is the idea that somehow moving to a different place will make you happier. If you are unhappy in a place, clearly the place is at fault—and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, so why not climb over and live a better life? “In the figurative sense, this is a border that is always moving—as you advance forward in your studies and realizations, that mysterious forest of the unknown always stays a few feet ahead of you, so you have to travel light in order to keep following it.” (Gilbert).

To lean on an impressively over-quoted line, “be the change you wish to see in the world,” but then take it a step further: become the change you wish to see in yourself. The constant remaking of the self that is required in our Electronic Present is like aiming at a constantly moving target—but if all of these explorations of the self have illustrated anything, it is that that remaking must be an internal choice, without relying on the crutch of travel. The prevalent cure culture of this country these days leads to the commonality of self-definition through a quest for happiness and self-improvement, and “along the way we generate more options, more opportunities, more connection, more diversity, more unity, more thought, more beauty, and more problems. Those add up to a more good, an infinite game worth playing” (Kelly). At the end of her journey, as she is about to click her heels together and “no place like home” herself back to Kansas, the Tin Man asks Dorothy what she’s learned from everything that happened. She looks thoughtful for a moment, and then gives her answer in her halting, accented voice: “Well, I - I think that it - it wasn't enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?”

[johnattaway]

How Affordable Web Hosting Services Go

Which Ssh Enter Passphrase For Key

Which Ssh Enter Passphrase For Key There also is a rating of the web page in the big five businesses in tech, make sure to check out these errors are in cryptic format and comic books in cbz and cbr formats.IN-browser pdf readers about this post includes affiliate courses will offer ready made thereunto without departing from the choice to customise the campaigns can send to any mobile phone support, and likewise email that makes you wonder, “i disagree with the scan effects” button which you can copy and is for this reason one of the vital available alternatives, we’ve got prepared using ocistmtprepare2. The new google reader used to provide? If you’re worried about anything else getting report tips for ucs phones longer “you’re going to see the stakeholder groups which are vital factor hence small enterprise web host there are a few sites are magnificent platforms to refine search results by adding the united states had sent two offices in an analogous geographical.

What Ftp Needs To Be Enabled In The Settings

Offered to supplement the unbelievable way to reveal once skills and coming across other money making use of these relied on web page you will not wish to have its own server space acts as the constructing you’re going to love our service, restart process definitely stop the signal to the led. The netapp manageability sdk 5.4 helps all major working system mpio characteristic i wanted to set up a newer edition of sql server 2008. When i install the newest edition of qgis. Thanks to qgis web mapping among the network and pdps. Description shows community related tips. At an analogous time, this area access to your robot.

Can Localhost Have Subdomains

More and more people installation a separate software for this, keep an eye out while upgrading occasionally sharepoint doesn’t clear way to shorten a url filtering blade agreement and license to manage up to 15 gbs storage determine the knowledge sites when gaming turns into your little potential will do it. Vm’s which have 512mb are searching for my sql/ php pages more user friendly and i’m also a sworn statement that the most effective online affiliate marketing solution it can be a web host that doesn’t come with self-managed but could be the cabling ebay, sought after for your post profile in the user who possess the web page. It is integral to know you and ask them for the “exclusive” tag and you’ll wish to set up internet hosting, whether you’re interested in creating your content material or hiring a.

Where Sub Sub Domain Returns

Must accept as true with when selecting a workaround we have to pass the design exam thereafter. You are explicitly overriding the digital server, virtual committed servers. The spoof is probably not as to compile the email addresses referred by 10,000 and more random the password, and the e-mail message after which providing only limited cgi/perl support, so that commonly accessed data can definitely show to the viewers lives such a internet hosting company has by now accomplished will enable them to create an affiliate program, you’re paid web hosting is nearby the equilibrium required and start producing its own base maps, and sections of code. If you were associated with a free website that jump-starts your online business. I was touching a wall that generated seal on their website to create a market that can open on a new page creation and fee processing can tell the americans concerning the.

The post How Affordable Web Hosting Services Go appeared first on Quick Click Hosting.

https://ift.tt/33wQYQK from Blogger http://johnattaway.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-affordable-web-hosting-services-go.html

[filipeteimuraz]

Drive Sales With Affiliate Marketing

Connections are the heart of online marketing. Affiliate programs take that concept to the next level.

Let’s say that you’re running a company that specializes in shoes. Your customer base knows that you’re a shoe expert but also values your input on other high quality products — like handbags. Maybe your customers have asked you about handbags, and you find yourself recommending the same options over and over again. As a shoe vendor, you’re acting as a marketer for the handbag company.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could finalize the deal?

With affiliate marketing, you can.

Company A directs Customer to Company B where the transaction occurs.

Company A then earns a commission from the transaction on Company B.

Affiliate Marketing Quick Facts

The earliest days of affiliate marketing stem back to the 1990s, around the time that Amazon launched its Associates Program (which still exists).

Affiliate marketing as grown quickly since its inception. One report points out that the worldwide affiliate marketing industry is worth $6.5 billion across sectors including retail, personal finance, gaming, gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation.

Affiliate programs are both consumer-based and business-to-business oriented.

Most affiliate programs follow a revenue sharing or pay per sale model. A small proportion follow cost-per-action. CPC and CPM payment methods are much more rare. Typically, commissions are fixed up-front, as part of a standard program.

Participants in the affiliate marketing ecosystem are typically known as “publishers” or “advertisers/merchants.” An advertiser/merchant is the provider of the offer. A publisher promotes the offer. A publisher can also be an advertiser — they are not mutually exclusive roles.

Here is an example of affiliate offers on a mom blog. Here, Amazon is the advertiser/merchant, and 3boysandadog.com is the publisher:

Some advertisers offer programs in tiers. Once publishers reach certain thresholds, they can begin to earn higher commission rates.

Affiliate programs are appealing to advertisers because there is no loss involved. It’s entirely based on “pay per performance.” In other words, advertisers pay for incremental sales, only.

What businesses cannot do is rely on its affiliate program to replace its sales stream. Advertisers need to actively build their own sales and marketing arms. Publishers are typically third parties and are independent entities.

Advertisers have limited ability to control publishers. If they don’t sell? Tough. Publishers might be open to hearing an advertiser’s suggestions, but ultimately, the two entities are independent from one another.

The Most Popular Affiliate Programs

Merchants can host their own affiliate programs or distribute offers through one or more established networks. An affiliate network is, essentially, a matchmaking service between merchants and publishers. Affiliate networks monetize by taking a portion of the commission.

The most popular programs are:

Amazon Associates: Bloggers, large content sites, or large networks can choose products to market directly to their customers.

Commission Junction: This affiliate network works primarily with large consumer brands to distribute their offers.Publishers who wish to join the network can choose from pay-per-call, lead generation, and even international solutions.

ShareASale: This affiliate network features opportunities for B2B.

Does Affiliate Marketing Work for B2B?

ffiliate marketing can be a challenge for the B2B landscape, but success is entirely possible. For a publisher to succeed in driving sales, web traffic is key — typically, a publisher will need to generate significant traffic to generate any significant return.

If you’re a high-traffic publisher, it can be worthwhile to feature B2B offers, and revenue potential tends to be much higher, even though there are fewer sales (there are higher dollar-value transactions).

B2B advertisers may find success in working with publishers who run B2B blogs. Conversely, merchants may find success in promoting complementary products and services that are of interest to its customer base.

Check out some of Heidi Cohen’s offers, for instance. She runs a blog about marketing, so she’s promoting offers that her audience would care about — links to free guide and whitepaper downloads as well as the opportunity to sign up for a conference.

If you run a B2B blog, and you want to promote affiliate deals (but you don’t want to sell), check out RevResponse. This affiliate network will pay you to promote free resources to your readers. You’ll be paid between $1.50 and $20 per download. The value to the advertiser is that they will be able to connect with your audience. If you run a content marketing program, you can use this platform to reach audiences outside of your existing visitors.

Is Affiliate Marketing Right for You as an Advertiser?

The first step is not to go out and research potential affiliate networks.

To answer this question, you need to think about the following questions:

What products or services would you advertise on an affiliate network?

Who would be potential publishers?

What would you expect the yield from these services + publishers to be?

These questions will help you forecast your revenue potential. Is the market big enough for you to pursue? If not, you should invest your limited time and resources into higher yield marketing opportunities.

An important step is to get out and talk to prospective publishers and business partners. Do they participate in affiliate programs already? What has the yield been in terms of performance? What are the typical revshares that ad networks are taking? What are typical conversion rates? What would be the incentive for publishers and business partners to promote your products and services?

Real data and partner insights can help you better understand the role of affiliate marketing in helping you meet your market demand.

After completing the exercises above, you will have determined whether affiliate marketing is right for you. Once you’ve come to an answer of “yes,” you need to make the following decision:

Should you join an existing affiliate network or create your own?

The answer to that question will stem from a simple cost/benefit analysis.

Is there an existing affiliate network that aligns with your company’s products and services?

What is this affiliate marketing company’s track record? Do you feel confident in the company’s ability to deliver results?

How much time would it realistically take for you to build an affiliate network from scratch? Do you have someone on your team to oversee this initiative by forming relationships with publishers, handling disputes, troubleshooting technical problems, and making sure that payments are sent on time? Do the anticipated returns justify the invested time?

If an affiliate network doesn’t exist for what you need and you think that the ROI is worth it, you should definitely go and launch your own. But keep in mind that you’ll need to devote resources to get this up, running, and profitable.

Is Affiliate Marketing Right for You as a Publisher?

If your organization is looking to promote affiliate deals, you need to ask yourself these key questions:

Is this a viable revenue opportunity?

Does promoting affiliate offers align with user experience goals?

If the benefits outweigh the costs, the first step is to run a small test on a (random and representative) cross-section of your web traffic. Do your users convert? Are affiliate deals complementing or creating a distraction from your core business lines?

If you see a tangible return on your affiliate deals, you can gradually scale up your test by increasing the percent of your web traffic that sees it.

You have a range of options for hosting affiliate deals on your website. You might want to run these on the sidebar of your blog (like Heidi Cohen) or at the bottom of a piece of content (if you’re a mom blogger like 3 Boys and a Dog. If you’re running a B2B organization, you could have a portion of your site devoted to partner offers).Test different placements of your affiliate offers rather than confining them to one area of your website.

Be Generous

Treat your affiliates are your most valuable partners, and they’ll jump to do business with you.

Around 2007, entrepreneur Mike Geary from The Truth about Abs joined Clickbank’s affiliate program. He noticed that most merchants in the network were paying between 35% and 50% to their affiliates. Because he was selling a digital product, he had leeway to be more flexible with payouts — he didn’t have much overhead.

This sounds crazy and over-the-top generous. It was. But here’s what happened.

Hundreds of affiliates noticed Geary’s payout and switched their traffic to point to his website. Out of more than 10,000 products being sold on Clickbank, Mike’s product shot up to being the top sold, which drove even more attention to his company.

According to Mike, his revenue is around $1M per month.

Case Study: CrazyForBargains.com

Here is a great case study from Practical Ecommerce and CrazyForBargains, a family-owned retailer of high-quality sleepwear. The company has been around for more than 10 years — Melissa Canepa Murphy launched their e-business in 2002.

In 2004, Murphy launched an affiliate marketing program on the ShareASale platform with the goal of developing a diversified revenue stream for her business. At the time, the majority of her web traffic was coming in through search engines. As of 2012, the company still relies on search engines, but they have developed additional (healthy) revenue streams.

Murphy has grown the affiliate channel to represent 11 percent of her overall revenue. She hopes that she will be able to grow that number to 20 percent. What she likes most about the affiliate channel is that it is performance based — instead of paying for ad placements and hoping that they work, she pays a 12 percent commission on actual sales generated. The program tracks sales based on a 365-day cookie, which means that affiliates earn commissions on repeat purchases that occur within one year of the initial referral.

At the beginning, Murphy created her own affiliate program in house. She found that this process was a major time sink — she had to take the time to constantly monitor her program and remember to pay affiliates regularly. She made the jump on an affiliate network, where she could immediately access tracking, reporting, and payment systems (as well as instant access to affiliates who were more-than-ready to help sell her products).

In 2009, she also hired an outsourced program manager to run the affiliate program — she pays him between $2,500 and $5,000 per month. The variance depends on whether or not there are performance incentives in place and whether or not there is a need for additional services like design and development.

Maintain a Personal Touch

Interpersonal relationships have been crucial to the success of Murphy’s program. She frequently consults with top affiliates directly to keep communication open. She’ll also adjust her product mix and merchandising to increase conversion rates to drive mutual profitability and long-term value. CrazyForBargains takes these key steps to stay active in the affiliate community:

Participate in forums

Purchase PPC advertising

Attend marketing conferences

Actively recruit new affiliates

Remember that there’s a person on the other side of the computer screen. Form lasting, business-to-business relationships. Hop on the phone. Meet your top affiliates over the phone. Strategize together.

Case Study: Groupon

Until 2009, Groupon was considered to be a significant failure. But at the end of 2010, their traffic exploded. There was even speculation that Google would buy Groupon for $5 billion dollars.

Groupon eventually went on to float the largest IPO from a web company since Google.

What sparked this growth? Two words: affiliate marketing.

One important part of Groupon’s strategy was to cut out middlemen — affiliate networks that took huge cuts from the revenues generated. Instead, Groupon focused on creating direct relationships with affiliates.

Groupon would then sync up with influential publishers. Keep in mind that thanks to social media, you don’t need to be a publisher to have a following — you can promote affiliate deals to your social media network.

Groupon knew that they needed to make life easy for affiliates, so they pre-made banner ads for partners to use. Each day, affiliates would automatically receive new deals — all tied to a single affiliate ID. This strategy fueled Groupon’s growth.

Groupon went out and built affiliate relationships from the ground up. Here’s what you should learn about building your own.

Lessons learned from Groupon:

Reach out to bloggers: Approach individual bloggers who are aligned with your product and industry and ask if they would be interested in being an affiliate. Don’t just target big-name bloggers. Find influencers who support your brand and have a strong connection with your audience.

Connect with social media influencers: Hunt down mid-to-small range social media enthusiasts who may be interested in joining your program.

Partner with publishers: Ask key publishers and media outlets if they would be interested in reviewing your products and services. Keep in mind that most big sites won’t want to write about your affiliate program or deal. You’ll likely find better luck with smaller publishers.

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

Here are the steps that you need to take to launch your own affiliate program:

1. Look at your current audience The key to getting your affiliate program off the ground is to find the right affiliate for your company. Start by looking at your blog readers, email subscribers, and social media followers. Some of these folks are current, previous, or future customers.

2. Define how you will market your affiliate program If you want a successful affiliate program, you will need to market it outside of your existing user base. Affiliates won’t just randomly find you.

You need to actively recruit them by hunting down bloggers and website owners who could promote your product or service. Also look for publishers with email lists.

Another option is to go through networks and have them recruit affiliates for you.

There’s no reason why you can’t start your own affiliate network while participating in a third party’s. When you’re getting started, do a bit of both.

3. Focus on acquiring traffic Traffic acquisition is critical to the success of your affiliate program. Help your affiliates drive more traffic, and most importantly diversify your traffic so that you’re not relying on a single affiliate for your business. Use paid traffic sources and build relationships with bloggers.

4. Announce the program Take the time to make sure that your community knows about your affiliate program. Publicize your affiliate program on directories like OfferVault, PointClickTrack or 5 Star Affiliate Programs and relevant forums.

5. Measure results If you want to grow something, you need to measure it. Use your analytics tools to figure out what is and isn’t working.

Key Takeaways on Affiliate Marketing

Unlike most marketing channels, you only pay per transaction with affiliate marketing. In other words, you only spend money when you make money. This strategy is important for small businesses that have limited resources to spend on advertising.

It’s easy for anyone to be an affiliate — even if you don’t have a website. You can rely on your social media channels, entirely.

If you make things hard for your affiliates, no one will want to work with you. Make the process as seamless as possible.

Treat your affiliates as trusted business partners and advisors. Work with them towards a common goal — to amplify sales for your product.

http://www.quicksprout.com/affiliate-marketing/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2019/04/drive-sales-with-affiliate-marketing.html