#i watch too many videos on shipwrecks on youtube so i know a few of these already too

[starswallowingsea]

anyway i got a book on ghost ships on the great lakes from the library and i started it the other day and i completely missed that it was published in 1968 which puts it at such a weird time in great lakes shipping history. the most famous wreck wouldnt happen for another 7 years (the edmund fitzgerald sank in 1975 and was the last major wreck on the lakes) and was in the middle of a decade of huge losses for freighters on the lakes (the carl d bradley, the daniel j morrell, and the cedarville all sank within 10 years of each other with significant losses. only two and one survivors respectively from the first two ships). and one of the chapters is on the ss kamloops which would actually be found less than 10 years later in 1977 making it no longer a ghost ship. idk just fascinating. i'm excited to read more of it

[fayewoodss]

Dear Evan Hansen Mermaid AU Part 2

Merpeople do form societies and interact with each other. They don't hunt each other and unlike their aquatic ancestors, they don't all follow migration paths. Some merfamilies will migrate.

Now I'll give you all the cute and fun and interesting stuff...

Connor loves to explore any wreckage he can find. He's super fascinated by human life and loves finding shipwrecks, plane wrecks, and even leftover skeletons.

He frequents the wrecks of military vessels most often and collects dog tags from fallen soldiers. He refurbishes them as much as he can because he likes to see the names of the men and women lost.

He often spies on humans who are boating as well. Be it a wedding boat, fishermen, or just vacationers, he just loves watching them from afar. However, the moment they spot him (usually only his dorsal fin on his tail), he dives away.

He's accidentally becomes and ocean cryptid when a group of divers got a photo of him, albeit it fuzzy/blurry.

He's obviously not aware of human cryptid culture.

Redditors think his viral photo is photoshopped.

Zoe isn't as curious about humans. She is curious of the sky above and loves to watch birds as they fly around and feed on fish.

She goes stargazing a lot against her parents wishes. It's dangerous at night and her parents (and most merpeople) fear poachers.

Zoe collects starfish on her tailfins. Since they are living creatures, she always communicates with them and makes sure they are okay with it.

Connor will leave jewelry and funky human artifacts he finds in Zoe's room. She doesn't know Connor is the one that leaves her random items and just assumes it's Cynthia.

Cynthia is fascinated with human artifacts and frequents a lot of merpeople who are traders for human trinkets.

However, she is terrified of humans and doesn't dare go near them. When she was younger, she got tangled up I'm a fishing net that belonged to poachers.

Larry is also fascinated with human trinkets, but not as much as Cynthia. Being an Oceanic Whitetip, he loves the tale of the USS Indianapolis.

He and Connor used to search shipwrecks together, but they've since grown apart and haven't hunted or scavenged together in a long time.

I already said a bit of this in my last post, but being a Coconut Octopus, Evan uses physical objects to hide in and behind as a form of camouflage.

Though camouflage isn't really necessary for merpeople being that they are able to fend for themselves and create/use tools, weapons, utensils, etcetera.

Evan's camo is more of a reflex with his anxiety. If he's nervous, anxious, or embarrassed, he'll find the nearest Evan-sized object and fold himself up to fit. His tentacles can fold together tightly, he just has to account for his upper body not being as flexible.

Heidi is a Mimic Octopus as uses her camo as more of a fun party tricks. Mimic Octopus are able to disguise with many backgrounds, but are also able to contort and arrange their tentacles to resemble other species.

When Evan was little, they would travel to shallow banks along islands where the sun shone through the water really brightly. She'd contort her tentacles and do little shadow puppets of other species for him on the sand.

So, Jared is a pufferfish and not a porcupine fish. He has spines, but they're very small and thin. They usually only show up when he's inflated.

He HATES being inflated but it's happens a lot.

Basically any elevated emotion inflates him. He's angry? Puff! He's playful? Puff! He's excited? Puff! He's sad? Puff! He's [redacted]? PUFF!

He doesn't care too much about human culture, but he is aware of this cursed video. He was hanging around a boat with a bunch of spring breakers and slipped a phone for a few minutes, stumbling across Youtube. Connor thinks it's the funniest thing ever.

Oh, yeah, so merpeople don't have any sort of electronic technology, but some of the most curious ones will snatch devices from boats. They are aware they don't work underwater, so it's usually like a dramatic spy scene of mermaids hanging out by boats with phones and tablets and messing around as much as they can for five to ten minutes.

Alana is super social and during vacations from school she'll travel with merpeople and regular aquatic life and migrate around the world.

She's traveled literally everywhere and has been doing it since she was a child. Her whole family used to go, but now it's just her. Her parents trust her to be alone.

Alana has come across Sea World and other marine parks with Orcas and it makes her incredibly angry. There have been a few instances where animals in captivity have... Mysteriously escaped back into the wild...

She does have a super playful side and is very curious of humans despite often having a negative judgement/attitude towards them. When she just wants to have fun or relax, she goes bow riding along the wake of boats. She's clever enough to not be seen.

Yes, there is merpeople high school because why not.

Again, science doesn't exist and this au honestly doesn't have rules.

So just go ham and make mermaids, y'all!

Part 3, anyone?

[ask-sincerely-sea]

A rundown of the Mermaid AU

Here’s a bullet list of my Mermaid AU and most of the content I have imagined for it! These are taken from three different posts on my main blog, but for simplicity, I compiled them all here! It is long, but feel free to read and get a feel for this universe!

All the Murphys are sharks, but they’re all different types of sharks.

Science doesn’t exist in my world so don’t expect genetics and aquatic ancestry to be something that is strict. Most families tend to stay within the same family and/or genus.

Connor is a Shortfin Mako Shark.

Zoe is a Blue Shark (Fun fact: Blue Sharks are a species of Requiem Sharks).

Cynthia is a Whale Shark.

Larry is an Oceanic Whitetip Shark.

Evan and Heidi are both octopus.

Evan is a Coconut Octopus.

Heidi is a Mimic Octopus.

Alana is a Pacific White Sided Dolphin.

Jared is a White Spotted Pufferfish.

Although intelligent like humans, mermaids will exhibit behaviors akin to their aquatic ancestry.

Evan being a Coconut Octopus will hide within ocean debris as a form of camouflage. This is often triggered by spikes in anxiety, but he also uses it to avoid interaction.

Jared absolutely puffs up. It’s usually caused by elevated emotion. Sometimes he’ll puff up because he’s upset, other times he’ll accidentally cause himself to puff up just from laughing too hard.

The Murphy family is a family a predators. They all have an acute and accurate sense of smell. Larry, Connor, and Zoe are active hunters, and when they are in hunting mode it’s hard to break them out of it until they are satiated.

Merpeople do form societies and interact with each other. They don’t hunt each other and unlike their aquatic ancestors, they don’t all follow migration paths. Some merfamilies will migrate.

Now I’ll give you all the cute and fun and interesting stuff…

Connor loves to explore any wreckage he can find. He’s super fascinated by human life and loves finding shipwrecks, plane wrecks, and even leftover skeletons.

He frequents the wrecks of military vessels most often and collects dog tags from fallen soldiers. He refurbishes them as much as he can because he likes to see the names of the men and women lost.

He often spies on humans who are boating as well. Be it a wedding boat, fishermen, or just vacationers, he just loves watching them from afar. However, the moment they spot him (usually only his dorsal fin on his tail), he dives away

.Hes accidentally becomes and ocean cryptid when a group of divers got a photo of him, albeit it fuzzy/blurry.

He’s obviously not aware of human cryptid culture.

Redditors think his viral photo is photoshopped.

Zoe isn’t as curious about humans. She is curious of the sky above and loves to watch birds as they fly around and feed on fish.

She goes stargazing a lot against her parents wishes. It’s dangerous at night and her parents (and most merpeople) fear poachers.

Zoe collects starfish on her tailfins. Since they are living creatures, she always communicates with them and makes sure they are okay with it.

Connor will leave jewelry and funky human artifacts he finds in Zoe’s room. She doesn’t know Connor is the one that leaves her random items and just assumes it’s Cynthia.

Cynthia is fascinated with human artifacts and frequents a lot of merpeople who are traders for human trinkets.

However, she is terrified of humans and doesn’t dare go near them. When she was younger, she got tangled up I’m a fishing net that belonged to poachers.

Larry is also fascinated with human trinkets, but not as much as Cynthia. Being an Oceanic Whitetip, he loves the tale of the USS Indianapolis.

He and Connor used to search shipwrecks together, but they’ve since grown apart and haven’t hunted or scavenged together in a long time.

I already said a bit of this in my last post, but being a Coconut Octopus, Evan uses physical objects to hide in and behind as a form of camouflage.

Though camouflage isn’t really necessary for merpeople being that they are able to fend for themselves and create/use tools, weapons, utensils, etcetera.

Evan’s camo is more of a reflex with his anxiety. If he’s nervous, anxious, or embarrassed, he’ll find the nearest Evan-sized object and fold himself up to fit. His tentacles can fold together tightly, he just has to account for his upper body not being as flexible.

Heidi is a Mimic Octopus as uses her camo as more of a fun party tricks. Mimic Octopus are able to disguise with many backgrounds, but are also able to contort and arrange their tentacles to resemble other species.

When Evan was little, they would travel to shallow banks along islands where the sun shone through the water really brightly. She’d contort her tentacles and do little shadow puppets of other species for him on the sand.

So, Jared is a pufferfish and not a porcupine fish. He has spines, but they’re very small and thin. They usually only show up when he’s inflated.

He HATES being inflated but it’s happens a lot.

Basically any elevated emotion inflates him. He’s angry? Puff! He’s playful? Puff! He’s excited? Puff! He’s sad? Puff! He’s [redacted]? PUFF!

He doesn’t care too much about human culture, but he is aware of this cursed video. He was hanging around a boat with a bunch of spring breakers and slipped a phone for a few minutes, stumbling across Youtube. Connor thinks it’s the funniest thing ever.

Oh, yeah, so merpeople don’t have any sort of electronic technology, but some of the most curious ones will snatch devices from boats. They are aware they don’t work underwater, so it’s usually like a dramatic spy scene of mermaids hanging out by boats with phones and tablets and messing around as much as they can for five to ten minutes.

Alana is super social and during vacations from school she’ll travel with merpeople and regular aquatic life and migrate around the world.

She’s traveled literally everywhere and has been doing it since she was a child. Her whole family used to go, but now it’s just her. Her parents trust her to be alone.

Alana has come across Sea World and other marine parks with Orcas and it makes her incredibly angry. There have been a few instances where animals in captivity have… Mysteriously escaped back into the wild…

She does have a super playful side and is very curious of humans despite often having a negative judgement/attitude towards them. When she just wants to have fun or relax, she goes bow riding along the wake of boats. She’s clever enough to not be seen.

Yes, there is merpeople high school because why not.

Again, science doesn’t exist and this au honestly doesn’t have rules.So just go ham and make mermaids, y'all!

I’m still deciding on how I want to portray Miguel, but right now I’m thinking Red Lionfish or Pacific Seahorse.That boy is something very colorful and proud!

So previously I mentioned there being an education system for merpeople as they do form societies.

So all the teens (minus Miguel) go to school together.

Their school, as well as most of the buildings in their particular society, is made up of scrapped parts from shipwrecks and other human debris. There are also some buildings and landmarks carved out of the landscape, but they gotta keep it fresh, keep it interesting. They’re still discovering and learning technology, but in their own unique ways.

(Okay, you probably didn’t even care about that fact but as an enthusiast for a “rebuild from the remains” aesthetic, I have to sprinkle in my little funky twists.)

The particular “town” of merpeople they live in isn’t very large and is constantly changing size and population due to some mers moving in and out.

Evan broke his arm over summer break in a coastal accident.

Seeing that merpeople don’t fully abide by the living standards of their aquatic ancestors, they tend to mix, mingle, and migrate without too much structure. Obviously certain families with stay together and there are some pockets of merpeople who live by more strict cultural rules. But for the sake of au, Evan and the gang live in a more relaxed mer civilization.

So, over the summer Evan was working with a group of mers that focus on coastal wildlife. Evan in particular focused on coral health and how it was being affected by human activity.

But our boy is depressed and lonely, so one day he strays from his usual group of coworkers and ventured toward a cluster of fishing boats. The general rule is don’t go near humans, especially when on the job.

He noticed that some of the boats were anchored, so he grabbed one of them from the seabed, hoisted it up the surface, and launched it above water for his to come crashing down with force behind it.

His arm got pinned under the anchor, thus breaking it.

Now, the rest of the AU at the moment is more freeform and doesn’t follow the plot of the musical, but I did want to included how Evan broke his arm.

Connor is not dead in this particular version of the AU, but feel free to craft multiple storylines and arcs with different outcomes!

Connor does paint his nails!

As previously mentioned, he is very fascinated by human society and like to get a little too close.

So, one day he came across some spring breakers and watched as they went about their activities sunbathing and painting their nails. As soon as they looked away, he stole several bottles.

It’s rare for him to find nail polish, especially since he ruined his first bottle by opening it up under water and losing the contents. But whenever a party boat or a boat of spring breakers rolls by, especially with a bunch of girls, he always has to check.

He quickly learned that whenever he wants to do his nails he has to make a whole thing about hauling himself up to surface and propping on a rock or a beach for some time.

He’s collected his signature black as well as a metallic purple, glittery pink, and bright turquoise. He wears the black and purple the most. He loves the other two colors, but poor baby is insecure and wearing nail polish as a mer is already enough to cause stares.

Jared also thinks that human legs are hot.

When Jared is puffed up, other mers will bop him around like a volleyball. It’s an unfortunate thing for any and all puffers.

Evan’s dad is a Barracuda mer, which for a Barracuda and an Octopus to mate is incredibly rare. It’s a wonder that Evan didn’t come out a totally wack and new sea monster.

But like I said, science doesn’t really exist here! Anything goes! Be whatever mer you wanna be! Love whatever mer you wanna love!

[topicprinter]

Growth hacking requires more and more unique approaches to be successful. Methods published on viral blogs are getting saturated within months or even weeks. Blog stars like Neil Patel, Noah Kagan, and Brian Balfour have made growth hacking mainstream, driving hordes of marketing professionals to it and thus, increasing the difficulty of standing out. More competition causes known methods to get saturated quickly while increasing the overall complexity of it. This makes, for some, the growth hacking way too complicated. I have created a list of few, simple to follow, yet unsaturated methods for getting massive results with minimum effort. I have used this for my own project with great success.Turn your content into engaging videos.The video is becoming the primary medium on the world wide web. But often, the cost of entry is quite high. Hiring a professional to create a video that is better than a slideshow, ends up getting ridiculously expensive. Often, for smaller businesses, it is hard to justify paying hundreds of dollars for one-off promotion. Understandable, those with a limited budget are less likely to take the leap and make a bet that could limit their operations. Imagine spending $500 on a video, then another $300 on promoting it, and failing to receive expected results, when your monthly marketing budget is $900. That will be a massive blow to a small business, right? Worry not, we are in 2018, and you can get some high class AI to help you out with the video production. With Lumen5, Rocketium or Showbox you can pick the content of your blog (existing or a future one), switch few options, and within minutes you will have an engaging, crisp video with your content embed. Seriously, this will allow you to double the results of your content. You will open up yourself to the new platforms for promotion (like YouTube, DailyMotion, Facebook Video, and Snapchat). Bonus - you can use budget-friendly services to submit your video to multiple less known platforms to boost your engagement.Your site must be an app.You are just a few clicks away from turning your website into an app. And you do not need to be a developer to do that. With Ludei Cocoon you can create a mobile app quickly and for free. Just feed the tool with URL of your site, and a few minutes later you will have a fully functional app. Besides the usual Google Play and Apple Store, you should look for more niche way of getting some eyeballs on your new creation. There are hundreds of websites giving you the possibility to submit your app to their directory. Besides visitors and users, those sites usually give you a powerful backlink as well, meaning it is all in one package. While this is a method, that was quite popular a few years ago, here is a twist. Your app can be named the same, as the main keyword you want to rank for. This means you will get dozens of backlinks from pages titled as your keywords, thus helping your SEO efforts greatly!Activate your old leads.Growth hacking is a constant game of chase and catch. The more you grow, the higher will be your churn. The equation is as simple as that. Majority of website owners will treat all the inactive users as a lost cause, or at best, they will send them some mass emails until the unsubscribe button is clicked. Now, the frustration is real - you need to move ahead, yet you might be wondering why the users are not there anymore, why they are running elsewhere and what you could do to keep them. Sure - you cannot make everyone happy, but you can at least try to get some invaluable feedback. For this reason, you should reach out to them. There are many ways to do that, but nothing beats a manual, typed in emails. Well, unless you can get semi-automatic emails sent from a tool, that was created especially to help you reach out to the "cold" leads and act like it was manually made, right? With the solution providers like Woodpecker, Reply and SaleShandy, you can use your personal email (or name @ your company email) to work for you when you are not around. Those tools were designed to work on your behalf and to assist you while contacting (even cold) leads. But instead of using them for reaching out to new, potential users, you can empower their abilities to reach out to your churned database. Start with sending friendly "Hi, can you help us improve" etc. email. Then follow up using the state of art tools. Use personalization to achieve your goals - while you should avoid curse words (you never know who is watching the email); you can be more on a personal side. Saying something like "Hi Anna. Can you let us know if we screwed up in any way? We are sorry to see you go..." is not offensive, not too emotional and leaves no lousy taste on your brand. It asks for feedback in a humanly way. Sure, some might not like it, but it will be marginal. So, how this is a growth hack? Feeling taken care of, needed - make people friendlier. And friendlier people usually come back as customers (since you have heard their issues and addressed them) or at least hold off with bad reviews (so your strategy is not crippled by some nasty, five-page long negative review somewhere on the web).Physical mail will make you famous.In an all-digital world, physical connections are priceless. Did you know, that Wufoo, the form creation platform created massive hype and distanced itself from the competitors, by sending hand-drawn notes to its early users? Those users were so touched so they would post about it on social media, private chats and bring it to the real world, increasing the outreach. This made Wufoo an unforgettable company. People wanted to use it, work for it, invest in it. They ended up becoming a part of MailChimp while bringing sacks of gold back home. So, before you jump into writing postcards, you need to know, that deliverability on those is quite low for the effort you will put (and you do not want a generic print out sent!). To the rescue comes LumpyMail and 3DMailResults - services that will send your mail in an unstackable, unforgettable packaging. For example as an enormous thumb, hand, hat, yoyo, shipwreck survivor bottle, a treasure chest, Rubik's cube, or a balloon. Talk about unforgettable mail delivery! Best part - those mail pieces get viral pretty quickly. So you not only build a better relationship with your existing customer, but you will also get access to potentially untapped users through natural viral marketing.Use visitor triggered notifications."We are happy to see you on our FAQ page. Do you have some unanswered questions? Click >here< to contact us. We would love to chat!" - notification like that after the third click of the new website visitor on FAQ page can boost your conversion rates. What's the meaning of all the growth hacking, if you cannot convert potential leads properly? People increasingly get annoyed with the often obtrusive pop-ups for sales chats, like Intercome, Crisp and LiveChat. The solution to that? Add a user triggered notifications that will present a softly crafted sales pitch. I have used a Notifia for this as it was best for what I wanted, but there are other alternatives on the market as well. Additionally, you can add an exit splash page (you know, one of those that trigger when the user hovers his mouse out of the browser window). But a real one, that does not seem robotic. Instead of blatantly asking for visitor email, or offering a ridiculous discount, tell him a joke or get him emotionally while trying to get his email. Saying something along the lines of "You are leaving already? Can you save us from head-scratching and >tell us why". Get personal, get mildly funny, but completely non-aggressive. Most of us have this one friend, that is delightfully funny, no matter what. Use one of his non-situational phrases to get the attention of the potential leads. Use your offline experiences to build realistic web connections.