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elizas-writing · 5 years ago

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Of the latest “controversial” opinions to rock social media, renowned director Martin Scorsese voiced his dislike of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). To Scorsese, MCU films are more like an amusement park than cinema which is meant to “convey emotional, psychological experiences.” As you do, this sparked some outrage among fans and even a few filmmakers from MCU. Scorsese himself even wrote an op-ed for The New York Times to further explain himself when the backlash got out of control and specified he meant the whole comic book film genre.

On one hand, I understand not wanting to give in to an elitist ideal of what “cinema” is, and comic book films deserve to be on equal footing as any other genre. Not every film needs to be a grand masterpiece, and art is subjective and can come from anywhere, even in the MCU. Black Panther is an expertly crafted film of Afrofuturism and deserved all its awards nominations. Guardians of the Galaxy, despite being an inherently goofy franchise, delivers a strong, emotional, complex narrative of found family and overcoming trauma from a lifetime of abuse. MCU also gave a ton of publicity for more unknown actors and directors. And audiences steadily flocked to the rest of their work, and they look forward to what else they have to give besides superhero films; it’s one of the reasons why Taika Waititi is now a favorite director in my book. And give credit where it’s due, Marvel is the only successful cinematic universe so far to stay in the long run where others spectacularly failed. It’s not perfect, but all things considered on what could’ve gone wrong, it’s surprising to see the hard work pay off.

At the same time, despite being a longtime fan of MCU, I’m starting to feel fatigued with the superhero genre. And this began way before Scorsese said anything. With the release of Disney+, fans are expected to subscribe and watch these new shows which apparently will tie into future movies scheduled out until 2022. It’s also not much of a secret that Disney is morphing into a corporate monster and consuming all media it can grabs its hands on. And with more time to further reflect on some of these movies without the excess hype, I admit I was probably far too kind on my initial reviews. There are a lot of MCU films I can discuss in these regards, but as I drafted this up, I had far more to say on Spider-Man. So that will be my primary focus for this piece.

At the end of the day, Scorsese’s opinions are mainly on his personal film tastes— also, c’mon, the guy agreed to voice act in fucking Shark Tale of all things; no one’s twisting your arm to take his word as gospel—, and not everyone is gonna automatically like the superhero genre. I respect that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I agree it feels like the film market is oversaturated with them. And there is still a lot to be said on recent filmmaking trends and if MCU can keep a steady momentum in the long run. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. After a while, you’ll want to leave the amusement park, but when will that point be? Well, I’m here to break down my biggest frustrations with MCU through Scorsese’s lens and a reevaluation of Spider-Man, both the character and the movie franchise.

I. Too Many Damn Franchises

In his op-ed, Scorsese worried about “franchise films [which] are now your primary choice” in major theaters, leaving little room for everyone else. It isn’t much of a stretch that we don’t see a lot of original content which stands on its own between all the sequels and reboots which expect prior knowledge of its predecessors to understand what is going on. And of course, Disney is the largest perpetrator of this with all the properties they own and all the live action remakes/reimaginings of their original content which no one asked for (no, trust me, you didn’t ask for an origin story of Cruella de Vil; turn off the nostalgia goggles).

Yeah, there’s only like, one of these I want to see

Some of MCU’s individual franchises, particularly the earlier films, work well on their own without necessarily needing to watch every other film in the universe. Some are only connected with super minor details which can be picked up from context clues or dialogue referencing events of the previous films. Guardians of the Galaxy is the best example of this as their adventures are self-contained up until Avengers: Infinity War. But then you have Tom Holland’s Spider-Man which completely relies on fully understanding what’s happening in the universe as whole; what happens to him in Captain America: Civil War and the last two Avengers movies influences the plots of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far from Home. It’s impossible for this iteration of Spider-Man to stand on its own without MCU context. And they can only spend so much time to recap the previous movies because they assume you already watched them; the recaps are just bare bones refreshers. Each new MCU film is further tied into the entire franchise, so now you have to watch a decade’s worth of movies to understand the individual franchises.

MCU is also one of many franchises dominating movie theaters, averaging at about 2-3 releases per year. It may not sound like a lot, but it’s overwhelming when they’re sandwiched between other franchises from D.C. Comics to Harry Potter to Star Wars and whatever 80s or 90s properties Hollywood finds worthy of a reboot/sequel. Movies are still pretty expensive, and we can’t be expected to see every movie as they release. So we end up having to pick and choose what to immediately see in theaters. And if you’re seeing a franchise film, chances are you’ll also have to backtrack on whatever predecessors are available to get the context of a new movie. When other movies, especially non-franchise films, don’t perform as well upon opening weekend, their showings are reduced, and you’ll be lucky if they’re still there a month later. And this is part of why directors like Scorsese turn to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime to release their movies to not panic on box office numbers, “the primary delivery system” as he calls it.

While streaming services are convenient and far less expensive than movie tickets, viewers are still subject to content overload. With fluctuating availability of certain titles, you still have to pick and choose what you want to see first before it disappears for months or years. Do you want to watch this new Netflix original film that’s gonna be there forever, or do you want to watch re-runs of The Office before its contract expires? Sometimes if a service doesn’t see an immediate high viewership of certain original shows, they get cancelled and fade into obscurity. Now everyone and their mother wants to hop on the streaming bandwagon, and spread out their exclusive shows as thinly as possible, including Disney. The overall costs come close to cable or satellite television which goes against the whole point of streaming services.

Expanding the MCU to television isn’t a new concept. We still have Daredevil and Jessica Jones on Netflix, just to name a couple shows. Although they referenced the MCU films, their worlds were separated far enough that you could watch the shows without needing to see any movies. But then you also have something like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D which is more dependent on seeing the movies to understand the show’s plot. If you didn’t see the latest MCU movie that weekend before the next episode, you’ll probably miss out on the context and be barraged with spoilers. Although the events of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D weren’t referenced in the MCU films, the fans still have a lot of work to keep up with the show’s story.

Also, I know y’all are worried about brand integrity, but you already own Hulu…??

Not only were all the Netflix shows cancelled in favor of Disney+, but the shows on the new platform are said to affect future films, including all the new characters to be introduced. We still don’t know to what extent the shows and films will tie in together, but it already sounds demanding to keep up with. And let’s be real, who asked for WandaVision, a show with two of the most boring MCU characters? Or Hawkeye after Jeremy Renner decided to make a raging asshole of himself? Do I really need to watch these shows to understand the movies going forward?

Again, it’s still too early to determine how much the shows will coincide with the movies. And given the success of a show like The Mandalorian, I hope I’m wrong on the quality of future Disney+ projects. But I can’t help notice that MCU started favoring quantity over quality since they know they can make bank regardless of the project. It aaaaalllllll comes back to money which brings me to the next big issue of MCU.

II. Business Over Art

Business and art is always at odds with each other in filmmaking, especially if you’re going into Hollywood, and it’s never easy to compromise on the two. You need to find a balance between getting a finished movie out to theaters and not wasting the production’s time and money. According to Scorsese, this used to be “a productive tension that gave us some of the greatest films ever made.” However, in recent years, this balance tipped in business’s favor “with absolute indifference to the very question of art.” As a result, we don’t get the full “unifying vision of an individual artist.” We just have “worldwide audiovisual entertainment” and cinema. “They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And [he] fear[s] that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.”

Okay, this is still fun no matter how many times I see it

Sadly, we see this financial dominance with Disney grabbing on as many properties as possible and launching their own streaming service with exclusive shows and films. This became most heated with the Spider-Man character rights debacle with Sony. Back in August 2019, Sony disagreed on Disney’s proposed 50-50 split of MCU Spider-Man movie profits. If a deal wasn’t made, Disney would lose the rights to Spider-Man, and the MCU wouldn’t get a third film for the character. And it took a month for the companies to reach a deal to keep Spider-Man in the MCU with the third film scheduled for July 2021, but the details of the new deal weren’t publicly disclosed. Fans were divided as to which company was in the right, and it’s a little bit of Column A and B.

On one hand, it’s annoying when studio executives get in the way of the art and think they know what will guarantee box office and critical success. And it’s especially irritating in this case when character rights bounce around and determine who will make the next movies and what stories to tell. Spider-Man already has not one, but two previous franchises cancelled before their full potentials were realized. Yeah, Sony kinda shot themselves in the foot with the crap quality of Spider–Man 3 and The Amazing Spider–Man 2, but I can’t help wonder how these stories could’ve gone if they were allowed to continue.

Still the superior Spider-Man movie, by the by

On the other hand, Sony was right to refuse Disney’s initial offer. You think after the tremendous success they had with Into the Spiderverse that they would settle on only half of the profits? Disney has more than enough monopoly on Hollywood that they’re nowhere near in danger of bankruptcy like they used to be. We still need studios which will put their foot down to greedy demands and will better unleash creativity in ways which even Disney is still too chicken to pursue. I’m still so glad we waited on Sony to make Miles Morales the star of his own movie, because MCU has a bad track record of keeping up with diverse representation that only within the past 2 years of a 12-year-old franchise did we finally get movies not led by cisgender white men. And there was a lot more genuine love to do this story and these characters right to show anyone can be a hero.

Between the tug-of-war on character rights and franchise overload, these business decisions greatly affect the movies, and some of these stories may not live up to their full potential (not to mention the actors’ contracts which dictate how much screentime their characters get). As this is Disney we’re talking about, we also run into my final major issue with their control on MCU.

III. Cultural Authority on Stories

I knew saving my books from the UC: Santa Cruz Walt Disney class would come in handy some day!

In her essay “Fantasia: Cultural Constructions of Disney’s ‘Masterpiece'”, media historian Moya Luckett discusses the concerns of Disney holding “cultural authority” on the images of famous stories. As Disney is a formidable part of most everyone’s childhood, they are usually the go-to images when we think of Cinderella, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and dozens more. Disney is clearly doing something right if these films are enjoyed decades later. I still go to Disney when I first think of Robin Hood, and it’s just as great as when I watched it as a kid. Unfortunately, with Disney dominating family and children’s media, they don’t allow much room for other interpretations to shine.

For example, with Luckett’s focus on the 1940 film, Fantasia, music critics worried “that the power of Disney’s images would anchor the music,” so some audiences may immediately associate “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with Mickey Mouse or “Pastoral Symphony” with centaurettes instead making their own interpretations¹. And those critics were definitely right to worry, and the concerns expanded beyond classical music. To this day, folks still react with shock when they read the original books or darker iterations of fairytales which these movies are based on. In some extreme cases, Disney’s images contribute to racial stereotypes and distorted perceptions of histories and cultures, and the company still hasn’t figured out how to properly express that while they were products of their time, they weren’t okay then and they’re certainly not okay now.

But anyway, what the fuck does this all have to do with MCU? Sadly, Disney’s cultural authority leaked into MCU too.

With an indefinite future and the inevitable MCU reboots of characters and groups like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, it is probably going to be literal years before we see new versions of characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers, at least as far as live-action movies are concerned. We’ll always have the numerous cartoons and, of course, the original comics, but the live-action films are stuck until Disney reboots these franchises themselves, or they pass the rights along to another studio to do so. For some viewers, MCU may be the first go-to images of these heroes, and not every fan will be dedicated enough to seek out other adaptations on their own. And that’s not a good thing if a comic arc or character gets a shitty adaptation. One such example, which also ties into Spider-Man, is the Civil War storyline which was adapted to film with Captain America: Civil War in 2016.

The original comic, published from July 2006 to January 2007, was a mega Marvel crossover event in which after a superheroes and villains battle ended in over 600 civilian deaths, the U.S government quickly passed the Superhuman Registration Act. Any superpowered person— regardless how they obtained their abilities— was required to register with the government, publicly reveal their identities, and enlist with S.H.I.E.L.D. for training to serve as a hero. Many heroes split up into two factions: one led by Tony Stark, who helped pass the law, and Steve Rogers, who went rogue to create the Secret Avengers because he found the law violated civil liberties of freedom and privacy. Families and friendships were torn apart, and the fighting escalated so badly that it was no longer even about the law but about Tony and Steve’s massive egos on who was right, resulting in more damage than any villain could’ve done (I recommend watching Comicstorian’s overview of the story for more details since it there’s so much going on, and his video is nice and succinct).

MCU already put themselves in pickle trying to adapt one of the biggest comic stories ever as they couldn’t portray the same scale of conflict, emotional zeitgeist, or the multiple sideplots weaved in. Film is already an inherently limited medium of entertainment for time, so cuts are inevitable. And what do you do when you can’t bring in major players like the Fantastic Four or the X-men? Well, for Captain America: Civil War, the conflict was scaled down to the Sokovia Accords which gave control of Avengers activity to the United Nations since their more recent missions often did more damage than good. In theory, this isn’t necessarily a bad idea since it still ties into the themes of government control versus civil liberties and when heroes need to be accountable. And the two sides still align similarly to the original comic with Tony Stark in favor of the law after his screw-up with Ultron and Steve Rogers against it after S.H.E.I.L.D. turned out to be front for HYDRA just a couple years before.

Unfortunately, the conflict over the Sokovia Accords is too quickly sidelined over Bucky Barnes being framed for a terrorist attack and a severe misunderstanding of his brainwashing when he was the Winter Soldier. The characters’ motivations— most of which have nothing to do with the Accords at all— jump all over the place on why they side with Tony or Steve. The ultimate battle boils down to a bromance love triangle, and I don’t feel like the MCU Avengers are a cohesive enough unit to feel any emotional drama when they split apart. In the long run, the worst consequences that anyone faces for violating the Sokovia Accords are either going into hiding or being placed under house arrest. And the law really stops mattering to anyone once Thanos snaps half of the universe’s population out of existence, making most of the film inconsequential. And for all of MCU’s best efforts to cut and edit the story to fit to film language, it’s still underwhelming to not have the massive scale the comic had. I don’t know if Civil War could ever have a proper live-action film adaptation without splitting it into multiple parts, and let’s be honest, audiences only have so much attention spans before they want something new.

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One of the major sideplots of Civil War was, of course, Spider-Man’s involvement, which became a huge selling point in the film’s trailers. In the comic, Peter Parker was ambivalent towards the Superhuman Registration Act, because villains could use the heroes’ public identities to attack their friends and family. But he still had faith that Tony Stark had everything under control, and revealed his identity in a press event to publicly voice his support for the Act. However, after a fight against the Secret Avengers resulted in the gruesome death of Goliath, Peter questioned Tony’s motivations and switched over to Steve Rogers’s side in hopes to de-escalate the fighting so no more heroes would die. At this point, Tony and Peter were well-acquainted that the former supplied him with his own tech, particularly the Iron Spider suit, so the side-switching (including a one-on-one fight between the two) was a hell of a surprise for readers. And I was really looking forward to that dynamic to play out in MCU, especially with a younger version of Peter Parker.

“So, cool if I just dip out for like 3 months without explanation?”

But MCU decided to throw out that conflict in favor of Peter Parker giving unquestioning veneration to Tony Stark as his mentor when he honestly doesn’t deserve it– I covered some of this briefly in a previous post on Tony Stark’s character stagnation, so there is some repeat but also some update with Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home in mind. Anyway, let’s break down Tony’s wonderful career as a mentor: manipulating Peter to join a fight against Captain America without the full details when it was already a huge misunderstanding; putting him on radio silence when black market weapons dealers were ready to steal his tech and just said he had it under control (spoiler: he didn’t, and Peter had to save the day himself and was nearly crushed by a whole building in the process); and trusting him with a pair of hi-tech glasses without instructions on how to not accidentally set off drones against his classmates.

This scene from Homecoming will always annoy the piss out of me. You can’t change my mind.

There’s a lot of confused framing and intentions to unpack here. Tony clearly doesn’t have certain situations under control, constantly struggles to come to terms with the fact he can’t save everyone, and lets anxiety overwhelm his better judgement in his deluded ideas to protect people. Despite his paranoia of saving everyone, Tony somehow doesn’t seem the least bit concerned with all the dangerous situations Peter, a 16-year-old, throws himself into while he’s on vacation. And Tony is still framed in the right on how he handles his problems, including punishing Peter for questioning his poor communication skills. Yeah, bold flex from a guy who waited until the last second to help save a boat full of civilians. Yes, we have to go through “with great power comes great responsibility” in a Spider-Man story, but Tony was well-aware how eager Peter was to prove himself, especially when he’s much more inexperienced and at a much younger age where he seeks validation from adult role models. Aside from giving Peter some nice tech, Tony didn’t actually teach him anything about heroism, and he certainly didn’t care to get to know him personally when he’s out of the suit which severely undermines the mentor-student route they attempted with these two characters. Tony gave Peter a lot of power, but didn’t guide him how to responsibly use it.

Sweet moment; you gonna apologize for the part where you sat off to the side while he was almost crushed by a building?

I wanted to see that conflict between Peter and Tony like in the comics. It would’ve been fascinating to see the perspective of a teenager roped into the adult world of heroes. Perhaps he’d look back on his involvement in Civil War and wonder why the hell he was a part of that and what being a hero means to him. I didn’t want Peter to be punished for rightfully questioning Tony’s methods, and maybe, just once, Tony would get a come-to-Jesus moment and stop being a perpetual douchebag. The closest we get to those moments of actual love and mutual respect are the last two Avengers movies when Peter is snapped out of existence and Tony sacrifices himself to stop Thanos. The payoff is in the right mind, but MCU forgot the proper build-up to establish any genuine connection between Peter and Tony, let alone hold the latter accountable for his constant fuck-ups and neglectful mentoring. The lost potential in that bond and the Civil War arc only scratches at the surface in regards to why this adaptation of Spider-Man falls short.

Another gripe diehard MCU fans had on the character rights debacle was if Sony got back Spider-Man, how would they do the next movie without referencing Tony Stark? And this ties back again to the fact MCU Spider-Man cannot work as a standalone franchise. Peter Parker’s growth revolves too much on other MCU events and characters, especially Tony, and you don’t know who he is without those outside influences. Even the villains’ motivations are framed around Tony doing them wrong in some way. Yes, most viewers are familiar enough with Spider-Man that it’s redundant to show the origin story again; we know Uncle Ben is gonna die no matter what. But personal tragedy and family love were always Peter’s primary motivations to becoming a hero, and MCU barely references them. They can’t even get the dynamic between Peter and Aunt May right; their love is so lifeless and dull.

Iron Man Jr? Spider-Man? I don’t know anymore…

What makes Peter’s arc fascinating to watch isn’t him proving himself to Tony or some other surrogate father figure. It’s his relationship with what little family he has left, sacrificing his emotional needs to protect them, using his resourcefulness to build himself up as a hero, looking out for the underrepresented of New York City so they don’t have to go through what he did, and accepting that he can’t save everyone, even with all his best efforts. MCU shows snippets of that arc, but the development is still too focused on Tony to the point where Spider-Man feels more like an Iron Man Jr. It works well enough for the overall MCU, but not so much as an individual franchise when you compare the story and character relationships to the films made by Sam Raimi, Marc Webb or even Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Thank God that Spider-Man has so many adaptations for people to flock to, because if this was someone’s first and only introduction of the character in live-action film, they’d be hopelessly confused.

Sadly, that ends up being the case for so many MCU characters whose stories are also stuck with too much outside influences instead of being allowed to develop on their own. If I tried to cover every character potential wasted in MCU so far, we’d be here forever. As of late, MCU focuses on tying every event and character arc together and overloading on Easter eggs to build up to the next major plot conversion instead of creating stories with organic world-building which can stand on their own. This isn’t the case for every MCU movie, but it is the most common trend in their latest projects which will most likely continue to that next crossover event, whenever and whatever it is. The allusions to other films in the universe should be embellishments, not the entire story’s foundation.

Although I’m curious where they’ll take Peter Parker given the midcredits scene of Far From Home, I also wonder if they’ll tell his story with him front-and-center and without referencing Tony Stark every five minutes. But what’s done is done, and MCU’s Spider-Man relied too much on those allusions to the point where some fans forgot what made him a great hero to begin with. When you strip away his involvement with the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., his arc is feeble compared to other adaptations. Sure, Tobey Maguire got goofy at times, and Andrew Garfiled’s drama was maybe too heavy-handed, but their Peter Parkers are at least well-rounded characters who figure out what being a hero means to their personal growth. Tom Holland does well with what he’s given, and I love seeing his emotional vulnerability, but I don’t know who his Peter Parker is without Avengers shenanigans.

I want to continue enjoying MCU as much as anyone else, but it’s hard to not see Scorsese’s point that most of these movies are mindless like amusement parks. At some point, we gotta turn off the hype goggles and see what else these stories have to offer besides how they relate to larger events in the cinematic universe. It’s not bad to indulge in mindless fun every now and then, and we still get fantastic movies out of MCU, but audiences will get tired of the obligation to watch dozens of shows and movies to keep up with the story. And with Disney controlling almost all of entertainment, we need to re-evaluate if they’re interested in telling engaging stories or in shooting out franchise after franchise to maintain steady profits and if these are even good-enough adaptations of such beloved comic characters we want to automatically go to when we think of them. As I said before, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and you need to leave the amusement park eventually. Since we know so little of their next crossover events, I hope MCU finds the point where they can satisfyingly wrap up the story of this universe before we get exhausted by it all.

Luckett, M. “Fantasia: Cultural Constructions of Disney’s ‘Masterpiece.'” Disney Discourse, ed. E. Smoodin (New York City, NY: Routledge, 1994), 227.

Shout out to my darling friend, Kayla, who helped me through one of my rough drafts to help focus this piece!

As always, if you enjoyed this post and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi! Your support is much appreciated!

Martin Scorsese Isn't Totally Wrong: The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Overindulgence, and Re-evaluating Spider-Man's Arc #martinscorsese #mcu #marvel #spiderman Of the latest "controversial" opinions to rock social media, renowned director Martin Scorsese voiced his dislike of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

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rkjxy · 5 years ago

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──── k.arma september 2019 schedule ╳ weekly idol guest appearance ❞

she approaches everything with slight trepidation—feeling somewhat out of her element despite the fact that she’s completely looking forward to what they’re about to do. joy considers herself as the type of girl who knows where her strengths and weaknesses lie. today’s venture definitely falls on the weakness part of her spectrum and she knows better than to put her entire being forward.

unless she wants to embarrass herself completely by the end of the day, that is.

the setup was as daunting in person as it looks intriguing on television. the ever famous white walls of the basement location has been home to a few famous faces and soon enough, theirs would grace it as well. she tries not to feel too intimidated by the fact that appearances here had exposed its guest to a plethora of opportunities and simultaneously, bad press. like any other rookie, she wants to impress everyone who would turn on their television come that day when their episode would be released. yet at the same time, she fears that she would have too boring of a personality to unleash that kind of impression on anyone.

be kind, her subconscious speaks to her. after all, this is only their first variety show appearance and she can’t possibly expect everyone to fall in love with her at first glance. some things are hard earned and considering her lack of variety talents, she should expect that hardly any eyes would fall onto her as the show goes on.

when the camera starts rolling, she watches with amazement as the hosts kick off the show with such ease. they were all huddled to the side, forming one line as they wait for themselves to be introduced. when the camera pans to them, she’s all wide smiles and clapping hands as they walk quickly to position themselves in the center. she’s flushed, nervous, shy, and excited all the same.

“—hello, we are k.arma!”

there’s a lot of teasing with regards to the fact that they have never appeared in any other variety show before this. then they laughed, words were exchanged and before she knew it, the attention was on her. introduce yourself in a minute, the host says. she’s flustered but because she’s talkative, it didn’t take her a half-second to think about what she wants to say.

“hello! i’m k.arma’s dancing queen, kil. just like my name, i’m someone full of killing charms on stage and happy laughters off stage. um, i was born in athens, greece but six years ago i moved to seoul to pursue my idol dreams. my favourite food is seollongtang and the greek good baklava! i’m very happy to be here!”

it was a dysfunctional introduction at best but joy thinks it fits well enough. in one go, she was able to explain what she hopes to highlight with her stagename—the duality in the way that she shows herself off to the masses. she smiles widely afterwards and waves enthusiastically to the camera. exposing a sliver of her background isn’t something she’s particularly wary of and she hopes that it would make their fans feel closer to her. maybe telling something about herself now would open more doors for her to connect with them in the future. she can only hope that any incriminating information about her past were tightly tucked away in the corners of her deepest secrets and something that no one can ever pull apart.

afterwards, things pass by in a blur. more segments were introduced and in doing so, they had to attempt at singing ticket in a capella. watching them try multiple times and subsequently fail at it was amusing and she feels she’s laughed so much already she probably couldn’t laugh even more. yet when some of the members proceeds to showcase their tiger jk impressions, she had to clutch her stomach to prevent it from hurting from all the laughing she has done. there’s a sense of achievement when they emerge from another round of a capella singing with absolute success, officially determining no playboy as an easier a capella piece. then finally, her most awaited part arrives.

joy cannot deny that she’s watched multiple episodes of the show and longed for when she can finally take part in the famed random dance play. she’s filled with nothing but excitement as she and the girls huddle together in preparation for the game. the prizes were set but even more, she’s looking forward to experiencing what the fuss is all about. she’s steady where she stands, waiting for the first song to come through and when she hears it, it didn’t take her long to rush to where she should be. immediately, she’s dancing and pays little mind to what’s going on around her. it’s hard though, when the mc’s were being distracting and she can hear the flustered reactions and laughters of her members. despite her seriousness, she laughs too whenever a new song breaks out, glances every now and then to make sure that her position is correct. when the first mistake was announced, she playfully groans. “unnie!” she complains with a lighthearted smile, making sure that the older member knows she’s just kidding by giving their arm a tight squeeze or a sideways hug. when the hammer falls on the member’s head, she gasps loudly in equal parts surprise and worry, hands flying to her mouth to cover it. she feels bad for them, and in one instance when she sees that sohee’s eyes watered slightly from what she assumes is pain from the hard hit, joy immediately rushes forward and envelops the older and smaller girl in a tight hug.

unsurprisingly, they fail at the game. yet that didn’t stop her from feeling exceptionally lighthearted and evidently happy. she enjoyed it nonetheless and it didn’t matter that they wouldn’t receive their prizes. afterwards, they were ushered into chairs to discuss the profiles they wrote prior to the show. joy watches the entertainment unfold, laughing, cheering, smiling, and at times cringing, until they get to her part.

she was asked to speak in greek, given that it’s a talent she wrote that in her profile despite it being her first language. she can only happily oblige, choosing to say “our first variety show appearance is going well and i’m very happy!” in her mother tongue with the ease and fluency that no one probably expected from someone with such east asian features as her. she smiles brightly, translating her phrase into korean when the hosts asked for it. afterwards, they move forward and she’s asked about what she means when she says she can do a combination of hip hop and contemporary dancing. she explains, “it’s like when combining the sharp and quick movements of hip hop with the tenderness, flexibility, and more emotional approach of contemporary. it’s like moving more in-tune with the music.” it was a logical explanation but still, she was asked to show it. with a gleeful smile on her lips, she walks up to the middle and completely transforms as she performs te emo with a self-choreographed piece. it was as though she was heartbroken even when she’s not, as if she’s feeling an onslaught of heavy emotions even when at the moment, she’s perfectly elated. dancing like so always feels like an out-of-body experience but she enjoys it with such fervour passion. when she finishes, cutting it short by wrapping up as soon as the chorus fades into the background, she bows and laughs softly. they clap around her and she floats in easy happiness.

afterwards, everything speeds up. they all go through the remaining members’ profiles and then finally, the twice speed dancing. as soon as she hears their song sped up twice more than normal, she can’t help but break out into a loud laughter. after she’s gotten her amusement out, she moves quickly. eyes focused, she moves from one position to another. they’ve practiced for so many times already that the performing the choreography even with it being sped up feels like second nature already. by the time they’ve reached the second chorus, she’s ready to fall down. it’s exhausting being asked to move quickly and she breathes heavily through her nose and makes grunting sounds as they reach the conclusion of the task. with her hair a mess and her breathing laboured, the song ends. the success and their prize in the end makes it all worth it.

all in all, she thinks it was an amazing experience. their first variety show appearance emerged as a striking success and she cannot wait for all of their fans to see it. this would always have a special place in her heart and one that would certainly benchmark all of what’s more to come.

#solo #k.arma:sep19 #fiery ─ 카르마 *#era ─ ticket *#trcfeat;#wc; 1469

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agustdef · 5 years ago

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Here & Now - Chapter 11

Pairing: Yoongi x OC

Genre: Fluff; Chill romance

Word Count: 1,885

Warning: None.

Banner Marker: @dee-ehn

The moment the clicking sound started up again I slapped my hand against my table, gaining everyone's attention. My eyes narrowed on Lexi, the reason for my sudden annoyance.

"Click it again, Lexi. Do it," I challenged.

Lexi dropped the pen the moment the words left my mouth. Her eyes went wide as she stared back at me, the rest of her body frozen. When she finally glanced around the others were also glaring at her, all of us tired of her incessant noise making. She took a chunk of her curly do and used it to cover her face, probably out of embarrassment.

Why she was clicking a pen, no one knew. She wasn't even using it, all her edits were being done via her laptop.

"And I think that means it's time for a break," Alex said, breaking the silence.

Everyone finished what they were working on and then there was a series of cracking bones. It sounded horrid, but it felt so good.

My brain felt like mush as I took a moment away from the chapter I was writing, but I knew it wouldn't last for long. It had just been some time since I'd been able to sit in an environment where everyone was working and I felt like trash if I wasn't productive like them. That was the purpose of our monthly meet-ups. Be around people we like and get work done. Any work. Though most were writing and revising things.

"Can I just burn the whole draft and hope that from its ashes a better one will emerge?" Max asked.

Goodness, how I wished that writing worked like that.

"If you manage to figure out which kind of magic allows for that please share with the group," said Spencer, whose voice was muffled by his hands.

Alex, who'd disappeared after announcing break, returned with everyone's chosen beverage. When she sat down my hot chocolate I almost downed half the drink before I felt the burn. I needed the placebo effect it had on me and my energy levels.

"Or you could write it and stop switching to that secret tab for that convention you keep saying you're not going to," Alex said.

Max gasped, hand against their chest in a dramatic fashion. It got a laugh out of everyone. We knew they'd been doing that for weeks now, claiming that they couldn't spend any more money and it was a waste. Yet, if you ever glanced at their screen the webpage would be right there, the mouse hovering over the buy tickets button.

"At least I wasn't switching between my draft and six other tabs, like someone I know." Max's gaze fell on me.

I scoffed, waving them off. "I was working thank you very much. I had some writing stuff to do and then some work stuff came to mind. I am allowed to multi-task."

"You had two docs of writing open and one weird looking program open, which I assume was for music. So, what was the second doc for, Kennie? Do share?" Max leaned in closer as they spoke, trying to peek at my screen.

Using my hand I pushed their face away and then darkened my screen so they couldn't see. "Nothing for any of you to know about. When it's time you'll know. I don't need y'all hyping me up and then I end up getting hyper-focused on it. I'm enjoying the carefree nature of writing it without pressure."

"And you don't want Ara to find out," Lexi added.

"And I don't want Ara to find out. So silence all of you." Even though I spoke to the group my gaze fell on Alex.

Her brow raised as she stared me down. "Why? What did I do?"

"You ratted on me last time when she asked you, don't think I forgot."

Like a fish her mouth opened and closed, her face screwing up as she became flustered by my words. I could even see a hint of red peeking underneath her brown skin.

"I... What? Do you expect me to lie to our precious agent? I could never lie to Ara. She's too precious. I refuse this. This is slander," she managed to choke out.

My eyes narrowed on her, though she no longer met them. She was avoiding them and every time she did look into them she quickly looked away.

Leaning in close I made sure she was looking directly at my face. "You sold me out for food."

Again she didn't seem to know what to say, but then she just shrugged. Dropping all attempts to make herself seem pure.

Lexi, Max, and Spencer just watched us and laughed. And then we all just sat in silence for a while, no one interacting unless to show someone a thing on their phone or to ask a random question that just popped into their head.

It was nice.

"I start work again tomorrow," Spencer huffed.

In the corner of my eye, I saw Lexi suddenly sit up. "Didn't your vacation just start?"

He shook his head. "It's already been a week, they go by so quickly. I feel like I just started to relax."

"The one time I got to take a two-week vacation was glorious. I miss working at that company," Max said, joining in on the vacation sadness.

"What are vacations?" Alex asked.

"Seconded," I said.

Without having to look up I knew they were all staring me down.

Max smacked their lips. "Um, ma'am you take them frequently. What do you mean?"

I rolled my eyes and turned my head towards the group. "Ma'am, I haven't had one in months. A few off days do not count."

They were silent and then Max gasped, looking at me with wide eyes. "Wait. Was your birthday the last vacation you had?"

Nodding my head I sat back and released a deep sigh. I didn't mind my constant working, because I had a flexible schedule and off days, but when I sat and thought about it a vacation would have been awesome.

"You need to get it together," Spencer said, while the others hummed in agreement.

Before we could go any further though my phone rang and though the immediate urge was to silence it, the ringer belonged to Marcus. So, sighing I picked it up and answered.

"Hello?"

"Hey. Sorry, Ken, I know now is supposed to be your creative outlet time or whatever it is you called that thing," Marcus rushed out.

"It's fine. We're on a break. What's up?"

"I know we aren't meeting for another round of offer eliminations for a few days, but I wanted to let you know that I got another revised contract for Def Jam, though they haven't made many changes." He didn't sound too enthused about it.

"Okay, just email it to me and I look over it again. I feel like I know what they gave in on and what they're going to ignore."

He sighed. "You're probably thinking the right things."

A small laugh escaped me. I'd shed some of my stress over the decision and found amusement in the way some of the labels were handling my acquirement. Most had no problem giving into my major concerns, but some of them just refused to budge; which made things easier.

"Was that it?" I asked just as my laptop notified me he'd sent it.

"Yeah. Wait, no. Did you finish going over the BigHit contract? I know it was a shock, but I'd prefer we get back to them sooner rather than later. I know I said we have time, but not that much time. It would be best to get it to them quickly so they can give it back."

For a second I froze. I'd had the contract for well over a week and for the last few days had been avoiding it. I couldn't explain why, but I chalked it up to the fear of change and left it at that.

"I..." I paused, chewing on my lip. "I, um finished it two days ago."

"Really?" Marcus asked, sounding shocked.

"Yeah."

There was a brief moment of silence and then I could hear him release a deep exhale. The man knew how to read me. "What's wrong with it?"

I glanced around the coffee shop, avoiding the eyes of my friends who were engaged in their own conversations. Looking at one of them always made me want to spill my guts out and I needn't do that.

But life didn't work how we wanted and Alex raised her brow at me as she stared into my soul and I broke.

I pushed back a stray strand of hair from an attempt at a braided crown and sighed.

"Nothing. Nothing is wrong with it. Well, okay. There are things wrong with it, but they're small things. Most of it is great and some of it beyond what I would ask in respects to my pay and control over projects outside of the company. Like too good. Like someone has been relaying some of my issues with the other offers to their legal team, and I've only complained to you, Hals, Yoongi with Joon in the room and my mother. And I wouldn't put it past 3 of those people. Or they're magic," I rambled.

"Or, perhaps - going to pitch a wild idea here so be ready - they see your worth and would appreciate working with you," Marcus reasoned.

I knew I was being a tad outlandish with that second claim, but my mind sometimes worked in weird things. Especially things that felt too good to be true and the offer was peak too good to be true.

"Send me the revisions and I'll look them over. And if you want we can go over it together before I send it in. You know I want you to make the best choices for you and if talking it through is necessary we can. I don't want you overthinking and regretting choices later."

Marcus was annoying as hell, but a freaking angel. He knew me well enough to know that sometimes I needed to be coddled. But he also knew when I needed a kick in the ass and how to do it while keeping things professional. Honestly, his professional agent side differed greatly from his personal life chaoticness.

Taking a deep breath I nodded. "Uh, do you have time tomorrow? I should be less weird then and we can do the usual quick run-through before you send it off."

"Yeah. Just email me the attachment and give me time before 2:00 pm for us to meet."

"Okay. Thank you, Marcus. I'll get that right over to you."

"Later," he said and hung up.

Without wasting time I pulled it together, got the email ready, checked my calendar and told him an 11:00 am meeting would work before sending it off.

I went to put down my phone and rejoin the group talking, but then it vibrated. The lock screen showed it was a message from Yoongi in the group chat with Joon.

Why are there pictures of my hands in here? Is this normal? Do you two have this fetish too?

I laughed so hard I snorted.

#min yoongi #yoongi #suga #min suga #original character #oc #sugaxoc #yoongixoc #producer!oc #writer!oc #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #yoongi fanfic #suga fanfic #kpop fanfic #kpop fanfiction #fan fiction #fanfic

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onethyfox · 7 years ago

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Kinda important vent(?)

I’m just here to vent about my twitter and the SepticLight project, so I’m sorry ahead of time.

I would use twitter, but I keep getting in trouble for no reason. I can’t help but wonder why. Things I tweet is nothing bad, but I was “found” and got in trouble. Worse thing is, I can’t do the project after the 6th. I’m trying, really. I have to work on a compromise schedule with my mom, but she threatened to take the internet away from me.

She threatened to take the internet, Jack, the SepticLight project, all of that away from me. The things that make me happy. The things that make me happy are Jack and is this SepticLight project. She was so supportive for the first leg and she saw how happy this made me. By the 2nd leg, she started to think it was taking up, controlling my life, and it wasn’t that. If anything, it was helping me become a more organized person.

It helped with my anxiety and it helped me release stress. It helped me, but she doesn’t listen. She’s telling me to quit after the 6th, after Kansas City, and not do the 3rd leg, but I can’t. I can’t do that to people. I already know everything I need to do, and it would be hard to teach Delanie to do everything I do.

I get so upset when she tells me ‘no’ about this project. She doesn’t like Jack because he cusses. I told her there’s more to him than cuss words. He does charity, he makes people happy, he’s saved people. He does so much that she doesn’t realize.

When she said I could go to Jack’s show, I worked my butt off to pay off the VIP ticket that I bought. St. Louis, June 1st, 2018 was the best night of my life and unfortunately, I didn’t make it in time that morning to at least get a hug. It would’ve meant the world to me to get a hug. When I told my mom that I missed out on a hug, she scoffed and said “you need to get over him. he’s way too old your you. you’re a teenage girl and he doesn’t care about you.”

I always tell her about Jack’s pretty girlfriend, Signe, and how I don’t think of him romantically. I don’t like him like that at all. I only think of him as a role model, but she doesn’t think like that. She thinks he’s controlling my life. She thinks all these things that aren’t true.

She doesn’t want me to be happy. She wants me to be her puppet, her robot. She wants me to follow in her footsteps. She wants me to be the daughter she’s always dreamed of. Not the one who rebels and watch guys who cuss on cameras and yell at the screen. She assumes that YouTubers never have free time and they’re on the internet 24/7 which is not true at all.

She thinks I can’t do the project and do school (because the 3rd leg happens when I’m in school). So... To make things happen, I won’t be on the internet a lot this summer. I’ll be figuring out a little schedule and spending time with family. I’ll be on every weekend until school starts up. When school starts up, I’ll be on every other day. I don’t want my mom to think I can’t handle the project and school.

School comes first.

I want her to trust me for this last stretch of year. I’ll be 18 next year and I just want her to understand that I can do this. I want her to trust me with the internet, with my grades, and this project.

I want my 17th year to be okay and positive for my 18th move out. Yes, I’m getting away from my mom when I’m 18. I want to live on my own and make my own decisions. I don’t want to be trapped in the religion. I just want to be okay again.

So.. Thank you for hearing me out. This vent is kinda important for a bunch of people here, including my friends. I really hope you understand. Thank you for listening.

#therealjacksepticeye #jacksepticeye #septicfamily #septiclights #hdwghtourproject #dellstra #therealonethyfox #septicsquad

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dimples-of-discontent · 7 years ago

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JIB recording policy: my thoughts and feels

So this feels like a really awful moment to be an SPN fan. I’m crushed that “Wayward” didn’t get picked up and honestly that deserves its own post and other eloquent folks on here will no doubt be chiming in soon. Before that, though, I was already alternating between seething and feeling on the verge of tears about the “no recordings” policy for JIB. Because, honestly, I was relying on it as a hugely positive experience to lift me out of the daily struggle I’m in right now. Where the show can and will hurt me all the time (hopefully with a narrative purpose!) as I expect it to in the finale, Jibcon never does anything except make me laugh and smile (and post too many gifs). And without the prospect of seeing the panels, especially Misha and Jensen’s, I genuinely feel...bereft. It’s not that I feel like I lost what I was entitled to, but that I’ve been deprived of something positive and beautiful for no good reason.

If you think that’s silly or that I should get over it or whatever please do me a favor and stop reading. These are my personal thoughts and feelings about something personal to me and you don’t have to agree. But since I think many of you do I’m going to write about it. I’m also going to reflect on the positive impact that sharing panel videos has on the fandom and what we lose without them. (And I recognize that this policy has existed before and that we have gotten around it and that we do not yet know how strictly it will be enforced. But I have these feelings anyway so I wrote about them.)

ETA: I hear from some folks there that you can record but not livestream, like usual. I’m going to go ahead and leave this up though, whatever the outcome, because it makes other points that are prompted by the policy but not strictly about it.

In a previous post I used the phrase “hostile to the fandom” to describe the policy and I stand by that. If it were merely about money or legality why would they not do something like sell tickets to a livestream and/or digital downloads or recordings? (If you are in the industry and have insider information on this I’d be super interested in your perspective and happy to post it with or without attribution.) I know that they may not have the infrastructure to accomplish this. It takes a lot of servers to livestream to that many people. It takes a certain standard of recording equipment to make something professional. But this is the 9th year running. They know there is enough interest to justify sinking some capital into that infrastructure and I’m surprised they haven’t.

I am absolutely willing to pay for content. Paleyfest panels are livestreamed and available to buy afterwards (months after, but that’s ok). I have bought a copy of all the Paleyfest panels from my favorite shows. I am not objecting to paying for content at all. Give J2M a cut! Give the JIB staff a cut! Shut up and take my money! There needs to be a price point between “flying to Europe and paying hundreds or thousands of dollars” and “peering at illegal phone video on YouTube.” Legal recordings that generate profit seem like a great option.

You know who they would be good for in the fandom? Everyone.

People without the money to travel and attend cons.

People who might have the money but who have difficulty traveling or being in a group of people because of physical disabilities, social anxiety, mental health issues, illness, etc.

People who are caregivers and cannot easily find someone to take their duties or who cannot be away at all.

People who work multiple jobs with inflexible schedules.

I could go on at greater length but I think you all get the point. We talk about the SPN Family and have our fandom-driven efforts to better the lives of people involved and show them that “you are not alone” and “family don’t end in blood” and “always keep fighting.” And that is AWESOME. It’s special. It’s so unlike other fandoms I have been in. But the thing that keeps a lot of people going is seeing videos from cons and feeling like a part of that community by sharing those experiences. For some people, maybe just the show is enough. But there’s a substantial population that relies on the social aspect of fandom and on the (perceived) closeness or accessibility of its figureheads, J2M.

Taking away the means to do that and acting as though we have done something wrong in asking for it, in wanting it, seems antithetical to the community-building we rely on. (I could do another post about campaign fatigue, which hit me pretty badly back in the fall, but right now it’s not on my mind.) Why not record it and either monetize it or even (radical idea!) don’t and just release it? Forbidding recording and distributing panels creates elitism and alienates many of the people who rely most on that sense of connection.

This is where I get to the point about hostility. Because I can’t see this new policy (or new decision to strictly enforce the policy) as unconnected to Daniela’s Facebook rant. I can’t. I wrote about it at the time and agreed with other folks who said that, though offensively expressed, it was fundamentally anti-antis and anti-entitlement rather than anti- any particular ship. I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt and allow her to just be a frustrated human being who had a bad time at work and complained. But now I feel like it was a message about how we need to back off of Jibcon because we in some way don’t deserve it.

And, perhaps wrongly since no pairing was singled out in the Facebook post, I feel like it’s about Jensen and Misha. Because by raw YouTube views alone those are the panels people want to watch recordings of. They are chaotic and hilarious and sweet and a just A Hot Mess, so it makes sense that we want to see them together and beam at our computer screens. There’s a reason it’s always the closing panel, that it’s so expensive, that it sells out so quickly. And just like with Creation’s weird refusal to offer that as an option (except at Honcon) it seems like banning recordings has to do with some unarticulated prohibition on how fans view those two specifically. Like it’s untoward.

But...if that’s the case, if Jensen and Misha are so bothered by it, why haven’t they done something like sue for libel or send out cease and desist letters to the Cockles blogs? They...don’t care. They actively know what we think about them (they’re grossly in love! they’re secretly a couple!) and they play with it in their stage personae and, I assume, just gloss over it in their everyday lives because they’ve developed a strong and healthy sense of “who the fuck cares?”. I guess it could be something their publicists are clamping down on, being like NO MORE HELLA GAY GIFSETS AND KEEP YOUR DAMN CLOTHES ON, or whatever, but my impression is that the policy is coming from JIB staff.

There is no need to generate more antagonism anywhere in this fandom. There is too much of it already. Alienating the fans who aren’t able to attend JIB from the JIB organizers seems pointless. If it’s an attempt somehow to shut down the shipping wars, well, that’s ass backwards since I’m just waiting for someone to yell about how the whole policy is because of Destiel/Cockles people and their inappropriate questions and theories or whatever because obviously we are the reason Jensen flashed his underwear onstage last year. It’s going to alienate us from each other too, as I already now feel way more envious of people who will get the privileged experience of seeing the panels.

It seems like such a harmless thing, to let people post videos of panels they can’t see but desperately want to. Like it’s basically just a force for good in the fandom. I suspect that people will find a way to record and share anyway, as we have before in face of the same policy. But, because of where I am personally and how much I have been looking forward to JIB, I have been thinking about the difference it (and other cons but especially this one) make in people’s lives I wanted to say something. Perhaps I’m wrong about the motivations--I admit to making all kinds of assumptions--but I don’t think I’m wrong about what it indicates about how the staff are viewing the fans. And that hurts. Because it’s not about objectification and shipping at all for most of us, even if it’s fun to talk about. Many of us just want a delightful thing in an otherwise painful time.

#sads #fandom life #personal #jibcon 2018 #wank adjacent #spn family #can't we all just get along?#negativity for ts #j2m #cockles #mental health #depression #anxiety #my thoughts

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weekendwarriorblog · 6 years ago

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MoviePass’s Latest Scam is Ingenious but Infuriating

If you’re anything like me, you schedule your life around the movies you want to see and you see a mix of movies in arthouse and indie theaters as well as bigger franchise movies at the multiplexes.

Now I’ve been using MoviePass for well over two years. In March 2016, the Metrograph theater opened in my neighborhood, and I soon learned from a friend that the theater took MoviePass, which at the time was $45 a month for a single movie a day. Still no 3D/IMAX, but you could see movies multiple times and there were few other limitations except that you could only use it once a day. That was already a pretty good deal because if I saw 3 movies that month, it would be about the same. They then raised the price to $50 and I still found it to be a good deal because I was freelancing but still had more free time than free money. I mainly used it at the Metrograph over the next year or so, but once in a while would go to the multiplex and see a movie which I missed or wasn’t invited to see (like every Disney movie since Dec. 2016).

When MoviePass was bought and the price was lowered to $9.99 a month, I was thrilled because I was already using it and a fan of the service and that would save me $40 a month. A few months later, MoviePass offered an annual fee for the service for $89 which was even lower than the monthly fee. When the price was dropped last July, there were a lot of negative nellies saying that it would never work and there was no way for MoviePass to survive, and maybe they were right.

Anyway, earlier this year, they offered a service of 4 movies a month for $7.99 which if you live in New York is STILL a great deal compared to paying $15 to 18 for a movie (and that’s not including 3D upcharges). There were definitely some growing pains as MoviePass upgraded its APP and started making conditions, one of them being that you have to take a picture of the ticket to prove that you used it for the movie you checked in for, mainly to avoid scammers. It was a pain, especially at theaters like the Quad which have TERRIBLE celphone and WIFI service. And it also was buggy because when it started, it would randomly ask you for a picture before you could use MoviePass again and if you didn’t keep your ticket on you, you were fucked.

MoviePass kept instilling new rules… that you couldn’t see a movie more than twice and then they started adding surge pricing for the bigger movies. The thing is that because I bought a year’s service in advance, they couldn’t change the deal and start making long-time users pay surge charges. That alone already pissed a lot of MoviePass users to the point where they dumped it and switched to the AMC Service.

Okay, let’s fast-forward to last week Thursday when MoviePass’ service went down completely, something that has happened sporadically since last year. These issues were frustrating, but not as frustrating as the customer service which pretty much vanished and you were told to use the APP. I actually had to upgrade to a new smartphone because in Feb or March, the APP stopped working on my old Droid altogether.

Anyway, MoviePass went down and it was soon reported that they ran out of money to pay their vendors and had to borrow another $6 million to stay solvent. Once again, the negative nellies started ranting on about how they told them so and that it would never work. The stock quickly tanked and everyone assumed doom for the service, especially with AMC offering A-List to those who normally frequent the multiplexes and wanted to see the bigger movies that play at them. For $20 a month, that was still a good deal if you actually went to see 3 movies a week and saw IMAX/3D movies.

During the week after the money problems, it was very hard to get MoviePass to work at all… either you couldn’t check-in or the APP said there were no screenings available at ANY theater… except of course, MoviePass’ partners, which in NYC is exactly THREE theaters… The Roxy (repertory and 2nd run indies), the Landmark 57 which is WAY out of the way unless you live on the Upper West Side and the Chelsea Cinepolis which is closer downtown (23rd and 8th) and plays a mix of indies and major releases. You could see anything you wanted at those partners even with all the problems, which is HUGELY suspect in itself because it looked like MoviePass was trying to shut out the theaters who didn’t outright partner with them.

But that wasn’t the SCAM that I referred to in the title… THIS is the SCAM:

Last Friday, I decided to try MoviePass again, although it had been spotty in the past week. That morning, I woke up and said, “I want to see Equalizer 2 since I missed the press screening.” I went on the MoviePass APP to see if it was working and it showed a number of afternoon screenings around 3pm or 3:30 which sounded like I could make happen. I went on about my daily business and then around 1:30, I checked the APP again to make sure it was working before I got on the bus ($2.75 each way if you don’t have a weekly pass, which I don’t) and went up to Kips Bay to see the movie. I then saw that the earlier afternoon screenings had been deleted and unavailable on the APP and the earliest screening of Equalizer 2 was at 7pm or 7:30. Again, this is at 1:30 in the afternoon.

What was really annoying about them limiting my choice to the evening screenings was that it was Friday evening, Equalizer 2 had been out for about a month and it was playing in the smaller theater which had already sold a lot if not all of its tickets. I figured that the chance of the 7pm screening being sold out by the time I got there was definitely not in my favor.

See, that’s the thing with MoviePass… it has always been the case that you have to buy your ticket within 30 minutes of check-in AND you have to be within half a mile, and none of the theaters playing the movie were close enough that I could guarantee buying a ticket.

I decided to go with Good Manners at the IFC Center which was listed on MoviePass, so I went to that and go there fairly early to get a ticket which was good because that TOO was playing in a small theater that did indeed sell-out its seats.

That got me thinking that maybe MoviePass was deliberately scanning the people who regularly used the service, maybe once a day or three or four times a week. Many of those people (and there are a lot in New York) are single people, maybe unemployed (like myself) who prefer to see movies on weekday afternoons when the theaters aren’t as crowded.

On Saturday, I woke up early to see The General at Metrograph and MoviePass seemed to be working, no problem, but on Sunday, I wanted to see Wanda, a 1970 indie film that was restored, and I saw that it was playing at 12:45 in the bigger theater and not many tickets have been sold, so there shouldn’t be a problem.

I wake up on Sunday and check the MoviePass app and the 12:45 of Wanda isn’t listed. In fact, NO movies are listed anywhere (except the partner theaters) before 5pm, so basically they want to make sure that the people who might go see a movie Sunday afternoon to get out of the heat (or just to see a movie) won’t be able to do so and they have to wait until Sunday evening/night which isn’t ideal for those who work on Mondays or those who just want to do other things Sunday night. (They did have the 9:30 showing listed but that was in the smaller theater and could definitely sell out before anyone with MP is able to get tickets.)

ADDENDUM: It’s now 5:12PM and I’m getting the “There are no more screenings at this theater” message for EVERY theater on the APP other than the partner theaters. Either service is down again, MoviePass is trying to make sure I realize that I already used MoviePass (but what if I didn’t?) or they continue to try to screw over long-time and annual MoviePass users.

For a long time, MoviePass even had a choice to “check-in for a movie not shown here” for the times that a movie wasn’t listed on the APP especially for big theaters with a lot of different movies. That option is GONE, because they want to limit you to whatever movies they feel might sell out

So to spell it out…this is MoviePass’ scam: they’re making it harder and harder and harder… nearly impossible… for the regular MoviePass subscribers, those who have been with the service from the days it was $45-50 a month to use, those who paid for a year in advance and had the confident that MoviePass would deliver the service as promised for a whole year (which is definitely not the case).

And you know what? When they started making people take pictures of their tickets after using MoviePass, they threatened to cut off the service of anyone who didn’t take a picture of their ticket. By doing that, they’d save themselves a lot of money on a service that they clearly didn’t think through when they lowered the price to $9.99. I stood by that decision and thought it would be great to get people signed up, but I never thought that would stick.

Now it’s $14.99 but I don’t have to renew my service until November and we’ll have to see if I do so under the current conditions. If it was $14.99 a month and there were no limitations other than seeing one movie a day, no repeat viewings or 3D/IMAX, that would be fine and still a good deal. But MoviePass is also cutting off new releases like Mission: Impossible and Christopher Robin and even The Darkest Minds (which probably could have been helped by MoviePass).

So to recap: MoviePass is trying to fuck everyone over that hasn’t already dumped their service because they realize they overreached by lowering the price to $9.99 when there are many people who would gladly see a movie a day if given the option.

MoviePass, you should be ashamed of yourself, especially the recent decision to limit moviegoers’ choices in how they use MoviePass. In November, when I have to decide whether to spend $14.99 a month for a lesser service, I just hope AMC still is doing A-List because I’ll do that even though It won’t be able to see movies at any of the downtown arthouse/indie/repertory theaters (and they’re going to get fucked by losing all the MoviePass users).

#MoviePass Movies Scam

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awkwarddystopianwarlord · 4 years ago

Text

A Thursday

The day had already started out cursed when the night before I realized that I had to work two hours earlier than I thought. Thank the gods I had looked at my planner before going to bed but realized I would only get about six hours of sleep. We’ve all had that feeling though, haven't we? You think you know when to show up for work and thus plan your bedtime schedule accordingly and just before you call it a night, gracious serendipity allows you to double check the time you start your shift and that’s when you think, “oh bugger”. It’s a blessing to catch that before actually waking up late and showing up way past when you should but nevertheless, you go to bed with that fear and stressed feeling. And that’s exactly what I did.

And so the day actually begins. As I go about my morning routine, I have to mentally hype myself up whilst simultaneously finding inner peace and tranquility in preparation of the unknown chaos ahead.

Now, walking into the drug store is a crucial time to gather visual intelligence on what the rest of the day might look like. I scout out how many customers are currently wandering the aisles, how many are lined up at the front till. Is there a backup cashier currently serving the masses as well? I do all of this on my dreaded walk to the staff room. My eyes dart back and forth taking in the entire layout of the premises, my earbuds play some calming, subdued tunes to keep me at ease.

As I make my way to my locker, I arm myself as if for battle: Xacto knife in one pocket, fancy ink pen I claimed as my own in the other, wee notebook with all the codes and cheats I need to operate my till because I will be damned before I call a supervisor for help and face the loathing customer I’ve had to put on hold. I fill up my water bottle since it’s the only way to remove my mask to breathe after running around like a lunatic to help seven people at once. I keep my knee brace in my locker for I already slathered both knees with A535 rub and jammed insoles into my shoes. With my till and lottery counted, I am ready to head out to face my doom.

I realized that I had jinxed myself when I thought it was rather quiet. Satan decided to pay me a visit and ensure the entirety of the island decided to grace this singular drug store with their presence. Now, whilst seniors day is generally absurdly busy, especially when they’re receiving bonus points for the last Thursday of the month, today it was just insane. I was bound to my till for five hours straight. The flood of people was never ending. Adrenaline gradually kicked in as I continuously leapt over the bagging section of my till to help incapable consumers on the self checkout and back again to help impatient consumers at my counter. I found myself evolving into a god. I flew from my till to the self checkout, to random aisles to confirm that the customer doesn’t know how to read, to the till again so I could rapidly print up lottery tickets that were destined to lose.

All the while the crimson tide from my uterus is threatening to overthrow the plug I put in to keep it at bay and situate itself into my pad. This was an unappreciated portion of the day. It became a race against my own body. Would I make it until my lunch break that was planned at 2:30 or would the power of my reproductive system claim victory. It was the latter. Leaving the poor back up cashier on his own, I went to replug my leak and recollect myself in the time it took to do that. When I returned, the line had multiplied. There were two now as everyone had merged to be served by the remaining cashier. I was forced to do a speed round to clear away the new line without making the main line commit mutiny, enhancing my godlike abilities all the more. Caffeine fails to work on me, but how my mind grew to function in those moments, I’m assuming that sensation was similar to what those who have chugged four coffees are like. I was hyper, high on the chaos of having an unending hoard of customers. My knees were suffering, there was a terrible pain in my neck, my stomach was bloated to the extent that I could pass off being some five months pregnant and the line never ended.

Take note, the entire time I was losing brain cells at a concerningly fast rate, my customer service was as pleasant as ever. I managed to convince everyone I served that I was a cheerful young lass with an abundance of patience and sanity. If only they knew that I just told them to take their time so I could take my own time to bury another portion of my mental wellbeing that died inside.

To make matters even more peachy, my lunch break ended up being a half hour late. I was on total autopilot at that time. My brain was completely gone by 2:00. All I could think about was that I was not supposed to still be here. I was supposed to be eating chilli and not enduring an endless surge of middle aged yahoos that all thought they were so unique and funny when they rang the little bell at my till while I was scanning their seven jugs of milk because the sign said to ring for service. It was almost surreal by the time I was relieved to go disappear into the staff room and…

Find that the lock on my locker was completely jammed and would no longer unlock. My embarrassingly bland chilli and hoodie that I planned to hide in both kept hostage within the metal cube like prisoners. The gods were mocking me at this point. I was blessed enough to have a work friend, who I was going to eat with, buy me lunch in the food court we were now allowed to go back to. Alas when I had twenty minutes left of my sacred hour of escape, I had to find assistance to release my belongings from my deceased lock.

It took some tries, but a manager finally succeeded in cracking the lock open with a screwdriver and hammer. As wonderful as this was, the stress of having thought I was forever barred from my bike and house keys was not a welcome feeling on top of all the rest of my unwelcome feelings that had accumulated throughout the day. And I still had two hours to go.

As it was when I left, the behemoth amount of humans were still filling the store. There had in fact been a small lineup outside the building when I came back from the main part of the mall. My computer was desperately protesting by glitching every two seconds, forcing me to click the same three buttons over and over again in an attempt to unfreeze it. I just wanted to go home.

There was no calm until there was.

Right when the evening cashier came to trade places. The moment she arrived, the line was no more. There was peace and quiet. The store appeared abandoned, there was such a lack of customers. All the torment I had dwelled in dissipated as soon as I no longer had to dwell in it. The mockery was at it’s finest in that moment.

And so the day had ended for me. I walked like a weary soldier coming home from war to the staff room to count my till. My body and mind had aged six decades over the course of the day. I was the senior I had spent hours serving as I hobbled to collect my backpack from my now open and exposed locker and bid my fellow survivors of the day farewell. At least Fridays are the antithesis of this ridiculousness.

#cashier rants #retail #drugstore #seniorsday #cursed #writing #weeklyblog

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eeveedel · 7 years ago

Note

thank youuu!!! for the omega!Harry au I didn't have an specific idea in mind , but for smut maybe with a lot of rimming or pregnancy kink :D I know you must have loots of drabble request so hopefully this could happen

A month later, I show up with some fluff and some bad porn, but you follow this blog, I assume you like that stuff. Anyways, this contains adult content, abo, light dom/sub undertones, and mpreg. Also, it’s set in (kind of) canon because I couldn’t be bothered to come up with another au. There’s some discussion of industry stuff but not a whole lot. And it’s not edited. Mess. Anyways, enjoyyyy

Harry was never home before Louis was these days. Even when Louis begged him to stop working so much, he always made up an excuse that he needed just one more hour of vocal practice that of course turned in three hours, or that he had an idea for a song that he needed to stay behind and write super quickly, and then that turned into a full afternoon of demos.

But he was home now, even though it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was still up. But Louis could smell him as soon as he walked in the door. His scent was all over the kitchen and along the floor straight towards the sliding glass doors that led out to the pool. But the strongest, freshest smell was in a clean, straight line towards the steps. Louis didn’t even bother to leave his keys or shoes by the door, he just followed the smell of honey and lilac flowers up the stairs and then right into their room at the end of the hall.

The door was open, and Louis slipped through it easily. Harry was in bed, covered in three different blankets, and even though he was laying on his side, pressed right against the mattress, Louis could see he was wearing Louis’s sweatshirt, which didn’t even fit him on a normal day, let alone now. There was a large, empty glass on the beside table stained with the remnants of a smoothie, and there was a discarded nutrition bar wrapper next to it, along with one of Harry’s open notebooks, the pages held apart with a black pen.

Then Louis took another step into the room, pushing the door further open. The door creaked, and a moment later his foot made a soft tap against the hardwood. Harry lifted his head, his rumpled hair catching the afternoon sunlight that was filtering through the main curtains, and he turned towards Louis and blinked.

Louis could see then that Harry’s eyes were red and swollen with recent tears.

Harry swallowed, then opened his mouth, but Louis spoke first.

“I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay,” he said, “Because you’re not,”

“I’ll be fine,” Harry sighed, and lifted up a hand to wipe at his eyes, “I already got most of it out while you were gone,”

“That’s not what I want to hear,” Louis shook his head. He kicked off his shoes, then unzipped his hoodie as he walked further into the room. After he undid his jeans, Harry finally spoke again.

“Weren’t you hot today?” he asked, and Louis snorted.

“You’re checking that I’m okay right now?”

“It’s LA, and you wear three layers every time,” Harry sighed, “I can worry,”

“That’s sweet. You’re wearing a sweatshirt as you tell me this,” Louis said as he pulled his shirt off.

“Because it smells like you, you know why I wear it,”

“Yes, I know. I’m distracting you. I’m allowed to do that,” Louis said. He was just in his pants now, and once he got to the edge of the bed, he lifted up the covers – the sheet and the quilt and the extra comforter even though Harry was clearly aware this was LA of all places – and crawled underneath it all.

Even before Louis was full settled down, Harry naturally moved towards him and shifted his body to slot next to Louis’s. He tucked his head against Louis’s shoulder, then curled his body around Louis’s own, folding up his long limbs to make himself fit more easily. Harry still didn’t fit quite as neatly as he used to, years ago when they were roughly the same size, but he still felt the same in Louis’s arms, warm and gentle and pliant.

Louis wrapped an arm around his waist and settled his other hand between them, on the warm, tight skin of his belly, swollen after five and half months.

Harry inhaled deeply as he pressed to his shoulder, and Louis stroked over the warm skin of his back where the sweatshirt had ridden up as he listened to him breath. He felt his own body settle at the sweet, clean scent of Harry’s skin.

It would be easy enough just to lay down, to stroke Harry’s back and make everything bad go away. Louis could see a good post-lunch nap, and he still had a solid three hours before he had to pick Clifford up from doggy day care and dedicate a good chunk of his evening to entertaining a very hyperactive puppy.

But of course, Harry hiccupped weakly against his shoulder, and Louis had to tight his hold on Harry’s back and force himself to speak.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s stupid,” Harry immediately mumbled.

“I don’t care, just tell me. I like to hear about your day,”

Harry sniffled and then shook his head. Louis expected him to hedge and resist a little longer, but instead he mumbled out an answer. It was quiet, and muffled, but it was still an answer.

“It’s the tour,”

Louis reached up to scratch the back of Harry’s head, getting his longest curls get tangled between his fingers as he did so.

“Okay?” he asked, making it a question.

Tour shouldn’t be something that was wrong. Harry’s album release date had been locked in before all of this, before that one broken condom and the positive pregnancy test, so he couldn’t really move the album around to accommodated all their unexpected changes. But he had asked for the tour to be delayed until after their baby was born, and even then it would only be limited to Europe and maybe a couple North American shows, nothing too much while the baby was still small and Harry’s body was still recovering. He still had a couple performances booked at small venues and some TV appearances for the spring and early summer, but nothing else while he was still carrying.

Harry had been excited about the tour and the small promotional shows until this point. The schedule was manageable, the shows were intimate, he had some guests he was excited about, and half his favorite brands had already agreed to make custom outfits for him.

But now, Harry wouldn’t even give him a proper answer. He just sniffled, and Louis sighed and scratched at his scalp again.

“So what happened with tour?”

Again, Harry’s answer was muffled and quiet, but still there.

“Jeff wants to move it up,”

Louis’s hand tightened his hair, and he loosened his grip almost a moment later, when he felt Harry tense against him.

“Move it up when?” Louis asked.

“Well,” Harry hedged, “He’s not moving up all of it. Just the first European leg,”

“To when?” Louis repeated, and finally, Harry sighed, his voice getting a bit weak.

“August,” he replied, and without meaning to, Louis’s fingers went a bit too tight in his hair, making him whine until Louis let go.

“Sorry, sorry, I just…August? You’re fucking kidding me,” Louis sighed, “He really wants you to do a full concert when you’re a month away from your due date,”

“He said maybe we shouldn’t wait too long for the initial buzz to die down,” Harry said, “Like, we’ll still take a break afterwards but at least people will know what they’re paying for before they buy the rest of the tickets,”

“That’s what you’re doing the TV shows for,”

“That’s what I said, but Jeff – “

“Yeah, well, Jeff is an asshole,” Louis said, and sighed when Harry lifted his chin and gave him a firm look, “What? He is,”

“He’s my friend,” Harry said, and he groaned when Louis just kept staring at him.

“I know he has his moments. Listen,” Harry said, “I trust him, okay? But he’s a beta. Glenn’s a beta. They’re not having kids ever, probably. He doesn’t get this stuff,”

“Right,” Louis said flatly, and then sighed, “I’m sorry. You know I don’t like him anyways,”

“Yes, and I know you like being right,” Harry said, “Look, we’ve disagreed over bigger things and he’s usually backed down or at least compromised. It’ll be fine, fine, I’ll handle it later. It’s just…the fact he brought it up is making me question working with him and everything, you know? Like, what if he wants to keep adding more stuff like we used to have to do?”

“He won’t,” Louis said firmly. He grabbed Harry’s wrist, squeezing it firmly and trying to bring him back down to Earth, “Darling, he won’t. You can actually fire him. It says so in your contract. He’s not going to force you into anything,”

“I guess I know that,” Harry sniffled. His eyes had nearly dried now, but they were still a bit red, and when he inhaled his breath sounded thick and wet, “I’m sorry. Everything just feels like the end of the world right now,”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” Louis said immediately. He pressed a hand firmly to the back of Harry’s hand, stroking his tangled hair. He brought himself forward, skimming his lips over Harry’s forehead. He felt the other man exhale, his breath brushing over Louis’s throat. His body pressed into Louis even more, his knee edging its way between Louis’s calves, the curve of his belly pressing his hipbone.

“Don’t ever tell me you’re sorry,” Louis repeated, and this time he kissed Harry’s forehead more firmly, stroked the back of his head again, “Alright?”

Harry swallowed weakly but eventually he nodded, leaning forward to kiss the underside of Louis’s chin, the tip of his nose brushing against his throat.

“Alright,” he confirmed, and then pulled away from Louis a bit more. He reached up and rubbed his – for once – naked knuckles against his eye, and then settled his head back onto his own pillow.

“Alright,” Louis echoed again as he looked at him, “Anything else wrong?”

“I guess not,” Harry murmured, even though he had his lip tucked between his teeth. Louis raised an eyebrow and Harry just sighed and relented, closing his eyes as he spoke again, “I’ve gained weight,”

“As to be expected,”

“No, like, I looked it up. Dr. Maria says I’m in the normal range but like, I’m still ten pounds over the average,” Harry said. His hand flattened over his face as he kept talking, “And it’s all gone to my arse, and I have fittings, and it’s embarrassing,”

“Harry – “

“And it’s your fault, too,” he continued, his hand still covering his face, “You need to stop feeding me everything I want,”

“Oh, yes, I’m going to let you be hungry so your figure can survive,” Louis sighed. Harry was still hiding himself so Louis shifted closer, gently encircling Harry’s wrist with his own hand. He leaned forward, kissing the back of his mate’s hand, and then rubbed his nose into the same spot, “Harry,”

Harry didn’t react, so Louis sighed and spoke again.

“Harry,” Louis said, “Harry. I’m to keep saying your name until you actually pay attention to what I have to say,”

“Okay, fine,” Harry relented, and finally dropped his hand, blinking forward at Louis, “What do you want to say?”

“That you’re very pretty,” Louis said, leaning forward to press a firm kiss to his cheek, “And I love you very much,”

“We’re married,” Harry said, “You have to say that,”

“I can still mean it,” Louis sighed, “You’re going to be okay. You are okay right now. You know that?”

“Sure,” Harry huffed, and then rolled his eyes and corrected himself when Louis looked at him, “Yes, I know. I’m fine. I’m great. I’m tired and fat and my legs hurt and I might have to fire my manager but I’m great,”

Louis just shook his head and pressed his lips to Harry’s mouth. His easily moved his own lips in greeting, but Louis quickly pulled away, and moved down to kiss down Harry’s neck. Harry squirmed a little and sighed, closing his eyes as he settled a hand on top of Louis’s head.

“Louis,” he murmured, and Louis kissed his neck again, making him shift again, “Baby, stop it, s’tickles,”

“I know,” Louis said, “Why else would I be doing it?”

“You’re awful,” Harry groaned, and Louis laughed. He nipped at Harry’s neck, weakly and not enough to mark him, but Harry still laughed and tangled his fingers tightly into Louis’s hair.

“Stop it,” he laughed again, and Louis pulled away and looked up, meeting Harry’s wide gaze, his twitching, nearly-smiling mouth.

“Do you actually want me to?” he asked, and Harry smiled for real and scratched the back of his head.

“What do you think?” he murmured, and Louis nodded and leaned back in, kissing the curve of neck and shoulder this time.

“You know, maybe I can understand Jeff a little bit,” Louis murmured in between kisses, “You’re so bleedin’ gorgeous like this, I bet anyone would pay to see you right now,”

“Louis,” Harry whispered weakly, and Louis grinned as he pressed another kiss to the side of his neck.

“S’true,” he insisted.

It was. Harry looked gorgeous anyways. But he was just always happy now, usually, his eyes bright and his lips bitten and swollen pink, his skin clear and glowing and tan with summertime. If he had kept his hair long it probably would’ve curled up the way it used to, but now it was just always fluffy and soft and filled with short, futile curls.

Louis still had yet to figure out how he looked so beautiful these days. Maybe it was that fact that on his good days, Harry was just into this pregnancy stuff. He loved reading books to find out the best foods he should be making, what exercise he needed to be doing, what kind of lotion to rub on his hips and belly to keep his skin unmarked (he still had stretch marks on the underside of his belly and the inside of his thighs that no amount of cocoa butter would scrub away. Louis kiss each of them in turn whenever he got the chance). But maybe it was just Harry, and Harry was made to look beautiful no matter what.

“No, no, let me finish,” Louis said. He was kissing Harry’s shoulder now, and he kept one hand firmly on Harry’s waist, rubbing against the tight skin, “You’d look nice up on a stage, probably sitting on a stool, all pink and flushed and out of breath, almost nine months knocked up and still singing about me,”

“Louis,” Harry breathed out again, but it was much weaker now, nearly all breath.

Louis easily raised himself up and pressed his mouth to his, almost lazily, but Harry pushed into it with more insistence, making Louis laugh.

“Now, now,” he murmured, “Where’s my good boy, huh?”

Harry whined at that, and Louis lifted his free hand to stroke Harry’s cheek.

“You’re easy,” he said, “You know that, huh?”

“Stop it,” Harry said. His cheeks were flushed now. It was easy to get him like that these days, “Stop teasing,”

“Okay, okay,” Louis said, “Let’s get this off you,”

He tugged at the front of Harry’s – his, really – sweatshirt, and Harry sat up enough for Louis to pull it up over his torso and then his head after Harry got his arms out. Louis tossed it back onto the floor and reached out, rubbing his hands over the warm, flushed skin on Harry’s chest. Harry’s eyes fluttered close, and he relaxed his shoulders dropping and his head rolling a bit.

“Harry,” Louis said, and it was enough to make Harry open his eyes, “Are you alright, love?”

“Uh huh,” Harry nodded and smiled, straightening up, “I just had a shitty day. And I missed you,”

Louis had only left the house after three hours earlier, but he decided not to point that out. Instead he leaned forward and kissed Harry again on the lips. Once again, he felt Harry’s body relax against his.

“And I’m wet,” Harry breathed against Louis’s lips when he pulled away. It was enough to make his grip on Harry’s sides tighten.

Harry was always sweet with him, always open, relaxed. But he went to another place sometimes, especially when he was in a bad mood. A place where he was easy and pliant and needed things.

Particularly, he just needed Louis’s attention.

“Come on, love,” Louis said, rubbing his hands up and over Harry’s chest, “You have to tell me you’re alright to start,”

“I’m okay, I promise,” Harry sighed, “I’m not gonna be alright if you keep making me wait to do anything though,”

“Okay, okay,” Louis sighed, and then kissed him again, “Greedy,”

Harry huffed against his mouth but still smiled, and when Louis pulled away he dragged his hands carefully over Harry’s cheeks, just holding his face in his hands for a moment.

“Gonna make me feel nice, baby,” he said, “You want to be on your side or you want your pillow?”

“Side, please,” Harry said, his eyes still closed. Louis nodded, even thought Harry couldn’t see, and he leaned forward to kiss his forehead.

“Okay,” he said, “Come on, then, lay down,”

Harry nodded and Louis shifted away to give him room. Harry laid back down on the mattress, his movement already a bit slow, his hand cradling his belly as he moved. He was always touching himself there now.

Once Harry was settled, he turned onto his side, away from Louis. Louis crawled forward and pressed a kiss to Harry’s pudgy hip, right above the waistband of his briefs. He gripped his thigh in the other hand, stroking his thumb over the warm skin, the soft downy hair. Harry fidgeted a bit and Louis only squeezed his hip.

“Easy,” Louis murmured, “Easy,”

Harry stilled, and Louis nodded to himself and traced his hand down, over Harry’s hips and then back to the small of his back before finally going down to rub the curve of Harry’s arse. As Louis traced his hand back, closer to the center of his cheeks, he could feel the fabric of Harry’s briefs go soaking wet, the black material somehow darker in that place. Harry shifted again as Louis pressed his fingertips to the place where he knew his entrance was, and he whimpered a bit when Louis rubbed back and forth.

“I know, darling, I know,” Louis sighed, “You’re so sensitive now, aren’t you?”

“S’not just that,” Harry mumbled, so quiet Louis almost didn’t hear it.

“What do you mean, gorgeous?” he prompted, and Harry sighed.

“Played with myself after I got home,” he said, and then hissed when Louis tapped the cotton-covered entrance with two fingertips.

“You did?”

“Yes,” Harry huffed, “Because I was bored and pissed off and I’m horny all the fucking time, leave me alone,”

Louis laughed, and just shifted his fingers up to smooth over the waistband of Harry’s brief and tuck his fingertips under the elastic.

“I’m just teasing you, love, you know I like to hear that,” Louis said. He pulled the fabric of Harry’s briefs down slowly, getting a nose full of sweet, heady scent as he did. He pulled the briefs down to under Harry’s bum, and then dragged his hand forward, brushing over his covered cock and squeezing it a bit before he went to pull the briefs away from his cock.

“What’d you think about, huh?” Louis asked. He had gotten Harry’s briefs down to the middle of his thighs, and he just touched Harry’s cock lightly, dragging his knuckles over the bottom of his length. Harry whined and tried to twist nearly out of Louis’s reached, but Louis grabbed for his hip with his free hand and stroked his skin, making him relax again.

“I thought about you, what else would I think about?” Harry finally answered. Louis hummed and dragged his fingertips over Harry’s length again, before kissing his hip and pulling back entirely.

“So you were bored and needed something, and you buried your long, pretty fingers in your arse and thought of me?”

“Yes, Louis, God,” Harry whined again, “You never give me anything,”

“Oh, I never give you anything, huh?” Louis chuckled, “You’re being dramatic, love,”

“Yes, it’s been a long day, I’ve told you that, and you keep – ah, fuck,”

As Harry had spoken, Louis kept petting his hip, distracting him, while he ducked down and finally connected his tongue with Harry’s wet rim.

Because if Harry had been waiting for something, Louis had been counting down the seconds until he could get back home and finally drown in Harry’s scent, his body.

He tasted beautiful, was the thing. Sweet and heady but just gorgeous, perfectly in tune with the rest of him. It reminded Louis of the way his voice sounded and the way his lips curved when he smiled and the way sunlight caught in his hair. It was just perfectly him.

“Louis,” Harry whined weakly, and Louis smiled and pulled back and kissed the curve of one of Harry’s cheek.

“You keep whining about your arse getting bigger,” he said, “Like you don’t look even more gorgeous now,”

“Is that why you keep grabbing me back there?” Harry asked, even when his voice was strained.

Louis laughed and then lifted himself up and bit and reached up to Harry’s chest. When found purchase on one of Harry’s hard nipples and smirked a little when he felt the charm he had seen earlier.

He twisted, and Harry cried out.

“Ah, ah – Jesus fuck,” Harry yelped, and Louis laughed and kissed his shoulder.

“That wasn’t fair,” Harry said weakly.

“Yes, it was,”

“You have to warn me,”

“And you should’ve thought about getting your nipples pierced last year,” he said, “Why do you still leave them in, anyways? Don’t they hurt?”

“You know, sometimes I forget they’re there until you twist on them without warning me,” Harry snapped, “And then you refuse to eat me out,”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry,” Louis allowed, and he kissed Harry’s shoulder again as he shifted back down.

“To answer your question, yes, that is why I grab your arse a lot,” he said, “But you do that to me anyways, so it’s only fair,”

Harry laughed weakly, but his voice died when Louis’s lips reconnected with his rim. He lapped over Harry’s hole, driving the tip of his tongue inside and along the edge of his rim before he just let his lips suckle and kiss at the sensitive skin. Harry’s slick was heady and sweet on his tongue, and it kept flowing, his body eager and open and rewarding Louis in turn for what he was offering.

Louis kept a steady grip on Harry’s hips as he lapped at his hole, and he felt Harry’s body shaking under his touch, his boy whimpering and gasping and breathing out his name. Louis’s finger pet over his skin, trying to comfort him, but it only seemed to rile Harry up more, make him louder, make him push back more into Louis’s mouth.

“Louis,” he said, “Louis, please,

Louis wasn’t letting up, if anything he was just pushing in more firmly, giving him more and more, but Harry kept crying, kept begging, his body nearly shaking, and then he nearly screeched and his slick flooded Louis’s tongue even more.

Louis kissed and licked away the slick as much as he could, then finally lifted his head and rubbed over his mouth with the back of his head. He kissed Harry’s hip and then pulled away, petting over his stretch-marked skin again.

“Be a sweet boy, say thank you,” he coaxed.

“Thank you,” Harry gasped out as Louis drew himself up and let Harry press his mouth to his, “Thank you, alpha,”

“You’re very welcome, baby,” he said, “Love you so much,”

He pulled on Harry’s waist again, and the other man finally rolled over, onto his back, and blinked up at Louis with wide, watery eyes. Louis sighed and leaned down, pecking his lips once more.

“I’ll be right back,” he said firmly, “Right back,”

He got out of bed and nearly jogged to the bathroom to get a flannel, and then went right back to bed. He dragged the flannel over Harry’s cheeks and swollen, cum-stained belly, murmuring as he did so.

“My favorite boy, waited all day to come back and see you,” he said, “Yeah?”

Harry nodded, closing his eyes, and when he opened them again he blinked and reached out for Louis, brushing his hand weakly over the bulge in Louis’s briefs.

“M’fine, love,” Louis murmured before Harry could even say anything, “You can wait to take care of that,”

“Okay, good,” Harry said, letting his hand drop, “Because I’m fucking tired,”

Louis laughed, rubbing off the last of the spunk from Harry’s belly.

“After just that?”

“I’m pregnant,”

“I can see that,” Louis laughed. He finally pulled the flannel away, folding it up between his hands and then going to set it on the bedside table.

When it was put away, he settled himself in his new favorite place, with his hand on Harry’s chest and his hand cradling his belly, feeling the warmth of Harry’s skin and letting his husband kiss the top of his head.

“My favorite boy,” Louis repeated, “Having my baby, just like you keep screaming about onstage,”

Harry laughed weakly, and kissed Louis’s head again, his hand carding through his hair as he did so.

“Thank you,” he said, “For taking such good care of me,”

“Of course,” Louis nodded.

He couldn’t quite find the words to say that for the last seven years, all he could have possibly hoped for was to make Harry happy, to give him everything he might want, even if they hadn’t planned for it.

‘Of course’ would have to be enough.

He allowed himself to lay like that, warm and soft and at ease, before Harry nudged him, forcing him to get up.

“Babe,” Harry murmured, “I love you, but go get me a snack, I need energy if I’m going to yell at my manger in a minute,”

Louis nodded and kissed Harry’s sleep-warm shoulder.

“Only if I can listen when you do.”

#if I hear One (1) compliant about writing omega harry #I will burn this blog to the ground #drabbles #larry fanfiction #larry fanfic #Anonymous #ask

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rainsonata · 7 years ago

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Friend

Fandom/Shipping(s): Elsword; none Rating: K Word Count: 3,556

Summary: It started with Time’s black nails. Time became friends with Arc as he wondered when his dad would come home. MMLP Modern AU developed with @blazingsnark, where MM and LP are single dads to AT and PT.

Note: Rest of MMLP Modern AU can be found here.

The lights were off when Time turned the doorknob with one hand and entered the unlocked classroom. With the flip of a switch, light flooded the empty room and blinded him for a moment before he blinked to adjust his eyes. He threw his backpack on his desk near the back, where he could avoid the teacher’s judgmental sight and went to write the date and period on the whiteboard with a purple marker he always brought with him.

He couldn't pretend to be the student that said they loved school, it sounded too nerdy and uncool. It was hard to place his thoughts on what school was aside from what it was supposed to be: a place to go to everyday because it was his job and there was nowhere else for him, like it was Dad's job to go to work and come home if he remembered. Not too different from what he did every day.

Even though the optometrist warned not to, Time rubbed the patch covering his left eye. It was hard not to. They said it was temporary and that eye needed rest, but he felt ridiculous wearing it when it made him look like an anime character. He paused on that thought with amusement. Being an anime character sounded easier than going to middle school. They spent more time saving the world than studying or worrying about what other kids said about each other.

The clock’s big hand pointed to the number five when the door slammed open, hitting the wall adjacent to it with a thud. He jolted from where he stood, still at the board and gazing at the schedule written from last week. Standing at the door wasn't the teacher, but a student. They walked to where Time was and stared at his writing with disapproval.

“Morning,” Time greeted them.

“So you're the one writing on the board,” they mumbled, grimacing like there was something on his face. “Did you finish last weekend’s homework?”

“A little,” Time lied. Of course he finished it, and the reading too. “You're early today.” He gestured his hand over to the clock.

They grabbed his arm and raised it to reveal black nails painted on all five digits, “Hey, Halloween’s over.”

Time’s mind froze, wide eyed that this was happening. He threw his arm the opposite direction, ripping it away from them with shame and rage floating through his mind. So what if he thought black nails were cool after watching his cousin paint her nails before asking if he wanted to learn. He thought black nails would be better than the red nail polish his cousin wanted to apply on him.

“You're weird,” they commented while Time struggled to conjure something to say. He was never one to really talk back and he didn't want to deal with this person either.

Time shrunk away from their words and sank back his seat with dread. He should have spoken up when he had the chance, but something stopped him from even moving his lips. The student was already walking away and talking to someone else in the classroom, no point in trying. It would make him sound like he's trying too hard to sound tough.

“Are you okay?”

Time turned to see his neighbor look at him with concern, fluffy jacket ruffled as he slipped it off his back to reveal a boy with white hair. Huh...Arc was early today, an unusual gesture when he was almost always late to homeroom.

“It's nothing,” Time shook his head, although he glanced at his nails again. They were a little off and he could have done a better job with the coating, but he thought they were good for the first time.

“Did you paint your nails black?” Arc asked. Oh no, not him too… “Cool!”

Was this guy stupid? Time checked his face if he was joking, but saw the other smiling with that dumb fringe flopped over one side of his face. Arc usually talked to other people around them, why him today? He did well on tests, so it couldn't be to copy off him.

“Um...sure,” was all Time could muster, uncomfortable of being stared at. They sat next to each other in three periods, why was this awkward?

“Can you show me how to do that?” Arc asked, “Wanna hang out sometime?”

“For what?” That came out more blunt than intended. Time mumbled a sorry, but Arc wasn't fazed and laughed.

“I dunno,” he shrugged. “The mall? The arcade?”

There was an arcade close to his house, but he never went inside before. It was always dark when he peeked inside with neon lights flashing from the machines with teenagers shrieking. He wasn't sure if he wanted to go in.

“Don’t we have a test coming up?” Time asked.

“Gross,” Arc said with no sign of worry about said test.

What was he doing saying no to someone wanting to hang out with him? Test or not, he had more than enough time to study for it. Arc was annoying and talked a lot in class, but never intentionally bothered him or tried being snarky to him, although the occasional snide comments he made in class were worth a chuckle.

“Okay, but it’s Friday.” Arc waved his hand, “Who studies on Fridays?”

Heat traveled up Time’s ears as he stopped himself from blurting out embarrassing things that could only mess him up further. Okay, so maybe he had too much time, but did Arc have to make it sound stupid? Pushing aside his pride from telling Arc to fuck off, Time rubbed his face to see that it was still hot. He needed to stop overreacting to stuff like this before turning permanently red.

Time said. “What’s so special about this arcade that I can’t do the same at home?”

“One, it has the newest, coolest, games, like that shooting game that lets you fight as a robot. Two, awesome prizes. They’re going to put up that new console when it comes out and there’s even a hoverboard! Glide to class in style and never being late to class again.” Arc demonstrated himself balancing on his seat with a stupid grin. “And three, they have the best fries.”

“I think you need that hoverboard more than me,” Time snorted. “The Switch isn’t coming out for another year and what game are you even going to get with that?”

“What I’m trying to say here is, you’re missing out.”

Time asked, “You’re not going to make me do stupid dumb like karaoke, are you?”

“What? No!” Arc laughed, “But if you want…”

Time placed his hand in front of Arc to shut up, “Tell me about those games.”

Arc had a jacket too big for his size thrown over his shoulders and his shoes half way done when Time caught up later that day. When they stepped inside, bright lights flickered from giant screens coming from different directions and packed with people.

The ceiling was decorated like the night sky with dim lights, packed with arcade games that would make any teen burn away their week’s saving on the whim. Shooting games, claw machines, rhythm games, and many untranslated games imported from a foreign country flashed in blinding colors, but that made Time as ecstatic as Arc, who was beaming.

“You haven't been here, right?” Arc led him through the rows of machines. “I have enough for some games, so we can use my card. I almost have enough tickets for the big prize.”

Oh, he wanted him to help earn tickets. Time thought it made sense, seemed fair since this was Arc’s money they were using.

“I’ve spent months trying to win this and Psych’s been helping me too,” Arc said as he led him through the side of the arcade that led to a room filled with prizes hanging off shelves and set behind glass cases. Tags hung over all of them with big numbers to indicate the tickets required to trade for them.

There were necklaces, stickers, plastic figurines on the lower shelves, stuff Time assumed to be the ones requiring less tickets. On the higher shelves were stuffed animals of standard size, star shaped lamps, even game consoles. Standing in the back was a black rabbit plush with pink beaded eyes, the size of a small child and easily taking up half of his bed if he was to measure it.

“What are you looking at?” Arc asked when he caught Time staring at the plush.

Time averted his eyes, careful not to look at Arc either, “So what’s the prize?” He scanned the shelves for what he thought Arc would have his eyes fixed on. What could Arc want that costed so much?

“There’s a steel metal frame bike back there,” Arc pointed to the one sitting behind the counter, “It can do tricks and it’s supposed to be fast.”

“Neat,” Time leaned over to see the black handlebar sticking out. It had silver linings too and the cushion seat didn’t look uncomfortable, better than the ones used for kid bikes. It was no surprise that it was one of the more expensive prizes. “You really think we can win enough for it?”

“If we play enough, yeah.” Arc waved his card around and flashed a grin, “Don’t bother with the claw machines. The real money comes from the shooters.”

“You mean that new game they just released?”

Giant robots, feminine looking men, and girls in skimpy outfits holding laser guns several times their size seemed to be the aesthetic when Time saw the posters. It didn’t take long to find the machine. It was the newest one with polished screens and it had a line. A pink haired girl with an energetic voice greeted them when they swipe Arc’s card to begin. It took another few minutes for them to get past the character selection page - no customizing, but plenty of characters pick and choose.

“We get two guns?” Time almost dropped his when he discovered it was two guns held together by a magnetic force. He glanced over his shoulder to mirror Arc, who separated the two and pointed at the screen to select the ready button. It was a shooting game, couldn’t be too complicated.

There wasn’t much time for talk because the game threw them head first into a city empty of civilians and filled with robots. The cheery voice from the title screen was back and throwing them orders in a language neither could understand. All Time could do was use the icons and green arrows for guidance as he and Arc attempted to follow the game’s cue to fulfill its demands.

“Got it!” Arc cheered when he shot down a few robots and slammed the two guns together for a bigger shot, “Did you see that?”

Time looked over to see a cleared screen of enemies fading into the background before another wave showed up. He gasped in shock when he turned back to see his character was losing too much health and slapped his finger into the trigger to clear his own screen.

“Is that it?” Time frowned when there was a delay on both of their screens. How many kills did Arc have?

There was a loud sound coming from their screens when a bigger robot crashed in with a thud, only allowing giving Time a couple of seconds to move his character to narrowly avoid getting hit before shooting at it. He saw Arc follow suit, but he was less than lucky and had half of his health points lost. After they finished off the final boss, a smaller screen with red numbers popped out to display their scores, comparing their number of kills and health lost.

It was a tie.

Time wiped his brow, still in awe when he looked away from the screen. His eyes felt strange looking into darkness again after the rainbow flood his vision. He had to grasp the head of his seat when he got off to avoid falling over. They had to play that again.

“Look at how much we won,” Arc ripped out a line of tickets for show. “Seven tickets each, that’s fourteen.”

Time grabbed his tickets from Arc with a content expression, “How many tickets did you say you needed?”

As they jumped to the next machine, Time found himself lost in the midst of it all. There was no feeling of rush when they ran through the rhythm games or when Arc tried to pull something from the claw machine with no success. It wasn’t until he checked his phone did he realize how much time has passed.

“I should have been home an hour ago,” Time groaned, “Dad won’t be happy.”

“I can’t come over?” Arc sounded guilty. “We can study if you want, I have my stuff.”

“I guess you can,” Time said.

Well...if they were studying, maybe Dad would let it slip when it’s related to school. Time prayed that his dad wouldn’t mind having someone over when he didn’t warn him ahead of time. He texted him anyway when they left the arcade to be safe, but not before he stole a glance from the black rabbit at the prize shop. Maybe he could come back alone next time.

They were greeted by an empty house when they stepped into Time’s house with their backpacks on the floor. It was well furnished with a black sofa pushed against lavender painted walls and a chair to the side with a coffee table in the middle to match with the furniture. Books cluttered the bookshelves and the white carpet didn’t look past a day of its installment. The only signs of someone living in the house was a black cat using the scratch post in the corner when it heard its owner and started meowing. Ah...Paranoia was hungry.

After feeding the cat and fixing up a quick after school snack of cheese and crackers, they sat on the living room floor with their legs crossed and their backpacks on the opposite side of them. Textbooks and notes spread out with pens and papers scattered on the coffee table.

“Have you ever tried painting your nails other colors?” Arc asked as he flipped over to skim over the review questions at the end of the chapter, pressing his finger into temple in concentration.

“Black is a better color,” Time said without second thought, never mind that he knew Arc was trying to change topics to avoid studying his least favorite subject. He thought it was funny watching his friend make a face at the history book cover. “What answer did you get for the last question?”

“A person living under a king or dictator,” Arc checked his book to see if he was right and sighed. “Yeah, black is awesome, but what if you painted it blue or green? Or rainbow?” He asked with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

“No one is going to take me seriously,” Time complained. “How about I add sparkles to your nails and make it rainbow.”

“Ooh, scary.” The other laughed at his threat, “You don’t know how to do that.”

He painted his nails with one color before, but six? Time wasn’t sure if he had enough faith in his nail painting skills when he had only done it a few times, although painting Arc’s nails in bright neon colors wasn’t a bad idea.

“I can always watch videos to learn how,” Time grinned.

Arc turned to make a comeback, but his expression faltered when the door opened.

Walking into the living room was a man somewhere in his thirties, wearing a black turtleneck with a white labcoat in his arms. His face was as pale as Time’s when Esper saw the eleven year olds sitting on the floor.

“D-dad, you’re home early,” Time squeaked. There weren’t any texts from him mentioning coming home today, did something happen?

“Lab closed early today because the boss’s kid got sick,” Esper said. “Did I interrupt something?”

“No, we’re almost done.” Time shook his head, still getting over that his dad was home and it wasn’t a weekend. The next holiday wouldn’t be for another month or so and Esper wasn’t sick.

Esper nodded at Arc, “I’m Time’s father. And you are...”

“Arc, sorry for intruding,” Arc said with pink cheeks.

“You’re welcome to come here if Time invites you,” Esper said, but he looked like he would rather be somewhere else. He glanced at Arc’s features with an unreadable expression, eye moving over to scrutinize Time.

Time wished he yelled at Arc to stay a little bit longer because when he left, the house was silent again. He knew Esper was going to bombard him with questions because it has been years since he last invited someone his age to come over like this. The kitchen smelled of Esper’s amazing cooking, but it didn’t make up for the awkwardness between father and son.

“I bought you new nail polish,” Esper said when they were at the table. “It’s the brand you wanted.”

Time smiled in appreciation that Esper remembered, even if he only said it once or twice when he ran out of black nail polish.

“So, where is that from?” Esper saw a new addition hanging off his backpack. It was a keychain of a monster from one of those handheld games, a turtle with a plant sprouting from its back. “I don’t remember buying that.”

“Arc gave it to me,” Time said. In the end, there wasn’t enough tickets for the bike, but impulse fell over them and they agreed to get keychains from the prize shop. He had a turtle and Arc got the penguin. There was a third one, a monkey, but Arc took it and said he thought it was funny looking. As long as it went under one hundred tickets, no harm. “We went to the arcade and won them. We studied too, I’ll clean up-”

“We can clean up later,” Esper said, uncomfortable when Time gave him that wide eyed look at the word ‘we’. “Um... work gave me vacation next month and Christmas is coming up. We’ll have a few free weeks and plane tickets will be gone quick. Is there anywhere you want to go?”

Last year, they went to the tropical islands and he got to skip a few days of school early with Esper telling the teachers he was sick. The water was warm and clear unlike the cloudy river not too far from their house and the sand was as fine as silk. He liked the idea of going somewhere where work couldn’t call Esper away from him, but then he thought about Arc, who didn’t mention about going away for Christmas. If he went away, that meant being away from home and by the time they get back, he would have to worry about school again.

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Time stared at his feet, away from Esper’s surprised expression. “Can we spend Christmas at home this year? And drink hot chocolate like we did with M-, the other year?”

Esper’s hot chocolate wasn’t the premade ones that came in packets from the supermarket, but homemade from years of experimenting and the cookies that came along with it always had the right amount of sugar. He used to let Time decorate them with buttercream frosting from a recipe they found online that no longer existed. With ugly sweaters and blanket draped, it was almost easy to forget it was snowing outside.

The man turned off the stove and went to grab two plates for them, not answering immediately with a stiff expression on his face while calculating a proper response. When he came back with food, he placed them at the table, biting his cheek with his eyes blinking.

“You want to stay home?” Esper handed the utensils from the drawer to Time for him to set up the table. “If that’s what you want…”

The man was startled when Time pulled him into a tight hug, arms wrapped around his thin waist with his head against his chest. Esper gave him awkward pats on the head, but didn’t wriggle out of the embrace and let Time stay there.

Esper relaxed when they separated from the hug. Today’s dinner was different for many reasons. For Time, it was sitting at a table with Esper instead of coming home to leftovers with a text from him that he was going to be late again. For Esper, it was harder to tell, but Time thought it was because he was having a good day to be away from work. Even though the holidays were still a month away, he wished for November to pass by faster so he could get to spending time with Esper and hanging out with Arc.

After he helped washed the dishes and brought his stuff back to his room. Time said nothing when he joined Esper in the living room to clear his books and learning material, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he should have said something. Perhaps he was wrong in thinking spending time with him was all it took to make Esper happy.

Author Notes: I have no excuse in writing this except I want happy Time to be friends with Arc and Psych so he won’t be lonely ; w;. I haven’t introduced Psych yet, but I want to in another fic. Please let these children be happy. I decided to write from Time’s POV because I realized I’ve never done that before, so I wanted to change that and practice writing from someone else’s perspective. Thank you @dezimaton and @zeloree for beta reading and helping me out with the details!

#elsword #elgag #add (elsword)#arc tracer #time tracer #diabolic esper #modernmmlp #mywriting #my writing #elsword fanfiction

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thepatricktreestump · 8 years ago

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Saudade: Ch1

Dating Josh was honestly everything you could ever want it to be. Two years of the greatest moments of your entire life. You couldn’t even imagine being with anyone else. All your other boyfriends and girlfriends, small flings, stupid one night stands, it meant nothing. Josh was like your modern day Prince Charming. While he might not be the typical fancy haired, twinkling eyed, sharp dressed, perfectly postured gentleman, he was just as special. He had hair that changed color almost as frequently as the weather, mocha eyes that squinted and widened in just the right ways, a rather edgy and modern punk fashion sense, a cheesy humor, and a kind heart. You still remembered the moment you met as if it was just yesterday.

“What the fuck?” you cursed, tripping over your own feet and spilling the coffee cup in your hand to the floor, toppling onto the sidewalk, your palms skidding with the pavement.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” a voice cried behind you. Before you knew it, two hands were helping you to your feet, sputtering out apologies. “I didn’t look where I was going, oh my goodness, I am so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” you muttered, brushing yourself off before looking up, staring into the most beautiful eyes you had ever seen. You were face to face with a guy who looked about your age, blue semi-curly hair, nose ring, gages, a snapback, NASA t-shirt, ripped jeans, and sneakers. He stared at you for a moment before reaching down to grab his cellphone, which you assumed had fallen out of his hand when he had bumped into you, as well as his skateboard.

“Texting and skateboarding,” he explained, turning red with embarrassment and letting out a nervous laugh. “Probably not the best decision.”

“Yeah,” you nodded slowly.

“I’m super sorry about that coffee,” he cringed. “You okay? You took quite the fall.”

“I’m fine,” you reassured. “Don’t worry about me.” You glanced at the spilled coffee on the ground.

“You sure?” he inquired.

“I’m good, I don’t know about my coffee,” you chuckled.

“I’m really sorry about that,” he sighed. “Um, how about I make it up to you? There’s a coffee shop down the street. If you’re not in a rush to get anywhere, maybe we could get you another one? It’s on me.”

“Sounds great,” you gave a light smile. “I was just heading to my apartment anyways.”

“I’m super sorry,” he repeated.

“It’s fine, stop apologizing,” you rolled your eyes. “It was just an accident. I’m quite the klutz myself, so I can relate.”

“Got it,” he relaxed his shoulders. “I’m Josh by the way.”

“Y/n,” you introduced, shaking his hand. You both exchanged a grin before walking towards the coffee shop, spilling out your life stories piece by piece, not knowing what great future destiny had planned for the two of you.

A small accident on the sidewalk transformed into an exchange of numbers in a coffee shop, which transitioned into regularly grabbing breakfast together each week, eventually evolving into attending a couple of his shows, and after a bunch of teasing from Tyler and several of your own friends, an official first date.

“A carnival,” you smirked when he led you towards the Ferris Wheel. “Leave it to someone like Josh Dun to take me someplace strange for a first date.”

“Why? You don’t like cotton candy and popcorn?” he raised an eyebrow teasingly, squeezing your hand he had been holding as you traveled down the boardwalk.

“I don’t know, it’s just unusual,” you shrugged. “I was expecting the whole fancy restaurant dinner or adorable little park picnic or something like that.”

“That’s so cliché,” he rolled his eyes. “Come on, we already exchanged numbers in a café. Isn’t that textbook enough for you?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” you giggled. “I love unusual.” You kissed him on the cheek and watched as he blushed, glancing at you and giving a small smile before you stepped in line to ride the wheel.

Josh spent the entire evening with you, winning you small plush animals, buying you funnel cake, traveling with you through a mirror maze, taking pictures of you riding the carousel, painting your faces, and even getting some animal balloons from a clown. You both ended up straying away from the boardwalk and sitting down by the beach, taking off your shoes and going for a late night walk by the shoreline, holding hands and talking about your favorite things in the world.

“I really like sunsets,” you explained. “The streaks of color and how they settle in the sky, the way the sunlight filters through the clouds, the entire peacefulness of it, it’s beautiful.”

“I like cats,” Josh added. “They’re so fluffy and they make adorable purring sounds and I think they have super cool eyes. They’re neat.”

“Finding money in the pockets of your jeans,” you laughed. “Like when you’re doing laundry or putting on an old pair of pants and you reach into your pockets and find money you forgot was there. That’s a great feeling.”

“You know what else is a great feeling?” Josh asked. “Spending an evening with a lovely lady like you, being able to hold her hand and look into her eyes, walk with her alongside the ocean, and know that you truly love her.”

“Yeah?” you wondered, pausing your walking and looking at him for a moment.

“Definitely,” he nodded. There was a pause. “I love you, y/n.”

“Well that’s lucky for you,” you grinned. “Because I’m pretty sure I love you too, Josh. And that’s one of my favorite things in the entire world.”

“What?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Loving you,” you rolled your eyes. You stared at each other, as if searching for something, before he cupped your face with his hands, studying your face for a second before kissing you, placing his lips to yours and letting the rest of the world fade away.

Since then, your small bud of feelings for Josh blossomed into a passionate flower of love. You started to spend all your time together, going to almost all of his shows, watching entire television series together, falling asleep cuddling on the couch, accompanying him to interviews and award shows, and even dying his hair red and pink. You spent hours drinking iced coffee, singing Blink-182, shopping for beanies and snapbacks, watching Stranger Things episodes, going to the pet store just to play with the cats, making occasional trips to the tattoo parlor, and eating countless amounts of burritos. It was the smell of bubblegum and having sweet sex and wearing his sweatshirts and silly texts and late night city walks and open mouthed kisses and trying to learn to skateboard and penny fountain wishes. Loving Josh was everything you had hoped it to be and more.

“Good morning,” he greeted in a sing song voice, kissing your forehead that morning. “Wake up sleepy head.”

“Ugh,” you groaned, fluttering open your eyelids. “It’s way too early. It’s like seven in the morning.”

“You know it’s our two year anniversary,” he smiled. “Big day.”

“I know,” you chuckled, pressing your lips to his. “How could I forget?”

“I was thinking, I don’t know, maybe we could go to Disney World?” he raised an eyebrow.

“What?” you widened your eyes.

“I sort of already got tickets,” he grinned. “Our flight leaves at ten.”

“You’re crazy,” you rolled your eyes, pulling him in for a kiss. “Wait. Are you serious?”

“Definitely,” he nodded. “I scheduled everything. We can stay for three days, go on all the rides, pose with the characters, watch the fireworks, the whole experience. It’s going to be great.”

“I fucking love you,” you beamed. “I also can’t believe you.”

“Surprise,” he laughed.

“You’re the best,” you kissed him again.

“I just wanted to take my very own princess to the magical castle,” he shrugged. “Special occasion.”

It was days like these that reminded you just how much you loved Josh. The adorable plans and surprises, his childlike awe and innocence, his contagious laughter and smile, everything about him. He even bought you matching Mickey Mouse ears to wear and took you to see your favorite Disney princess. A couple weeks after, you were sitting on the couch when the topic came up.

“I think you’re hiding something,” you murmured as you were cuddling on the couch, just having finished a season of X Files. “You’ve been quiet lately.”

“I’m fine,” Josh dismissed, but you turned around to face him, looking him in the eyes.

“You’re not telling me something,” you insisted. “Josh.” There was a moment of silence.

“I didn’t want to tell you until it was official,” he sighed. “I still don’t really know for sure.”

“You’re leaving for tour,” you stated flatly. “Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “I mean, Tyler and Mark are still working out dates, but yeah.”

“When are you leaving?” you asked.

“Next month,” he explained. His voice went soft. “Or next week.”

“Next week?” your eyes went wide. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” he sighed. “We wanted to surprise the fans with a tour and we’ve been practicing and stuff and we’re releasing dates tomorrow but-”

“But you just didn’t think it was important to tell me,” you muttered, obviously agitated with him.

“Y/n, it’s not like I was keeping a secret or anything,” he argued. “I just didn’t know. Okay? Please don’t be angry at me. I just, well, I was afraid to tell you. I didn’t want you to be mad, but I guess you already are, so, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” you took a deep breath. “I overreacted. I’m just sad to see you go. I’m going to miss you.”

“You know I’d take you along if I could,” he mumbled, pressing a kiss to your lips. “If Ty would let me, I’d wrap you in my arms and carry you everywhere I go. Even on stage. I’d let you sit on my lap as I play the drums, be up there on stage with me, right next to my heart.”

“You’re silly,” you rolled your eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he gave a small smile. “You know what else I’m going to miss, though?”

“What?” you raised an eyebrow.

“This body,” he smirked, grazing his hand against your side. “The way your lips feel against mine, how sweet they taste, what miracles they perform when they’re all over my skin…”

“Yeah?” you flickered your eyes up to meet him.

“Yeah,” he nodded. Josh slipped a hand underneath your shirt and up your back slowly, sliding his fingers underneath your bra and beginning to unhook it. “I think we better do a little something special before I leave, right?”

“Definitely,” you whispered.

Everything with Josh was sweet. Being with Josh was a warm cup of café coffee or a sugary tuft of carnival cotton candy. Each touch of his hand was a brushstroke of a painter, every kiss a spoonful of honey, all of his movements as if the light breeze that blows on a sunny spring day. So of course, sex with Josh was always just as sweet. “Lift your arms for me, baby,” he mumbled, slowly inching the fabric of your shirt up your arms, then taking the time to kiss you on the lips again. He trailed his mouth down your jaw, your neck, and towards your breasts, swiftly unclasping your bra and delicately sliding it from your arms as well. Undressing each other was as if performing a graceful waltz, each move just a part of the dance, every thrust of the hips a simple sashay, each roll over a graceful twirl, all movements combined in a beautiful choreography, intertwined with the symphony of your heartbeats and breathing. It was slow and simple and so raw and pure, the most amazing feeling in the world simply compacted into one human being, and he was in your arms, against your body, within you, overwhelming you and taking over, and you savored every second of it.

“I want you,” you mumbled against his neck as you bunched up his shirt and slowly slid it upwards, over his head, tossing it to the side before traveling your lips down his chest. You tugged down his shorts and he lifted you up for a moment to kiss you again, his hands finding your hips and gently sliding his thumbs underneath the waistband of your leggings, hooking his fingers around your panties and inching them both down your thighs, his hand traveling towards your core and making you hum with delight. He brushed past your folds for a second to slide his fingers through your wetness before tugging down your leggings and panties to your ankles, helping you kick them off and then climbing on top of you, slowly grinding down on you through the fabric of his boxers. Both of you let out a slight moan and you reached for the fabric, tugging it down and letting his erection spring free, sliding them down his legs.

“Condom,” he reminded and you sighed, chewing on your lower lip as he reached towards the drawer of the nightstand and pulled one out, your eyes fixed on his movements and the pool of wetness between your legs growing as he ripped the foil open with his teeth and rolled it on over his length, repositioning himself above you and kissing you softly. “So. Fucking. Beautiful.”

“Please,” you murmured and he nodded, lining up with your entrance and slowly sinking in, making you inhale sharply, wrapping your arms around him as he went deeper inch by inch, finally filling you up to the hilt and letting out a soft moan.

Both of you began to rock back and forth, small slow thrusts making you close your eyes and tilt back your head, giving Josh access to your neck, his lips carefully placing kisses on your skin and down to your breasts, each movement so sweet and graceful. He held you in his arms as if you were fragile glass, a porcelain doll meant to be treated with upmost care, a precious jewel uncovered from the depths of the ocean. It made you feel warm and special and safe and so happy, the way his skin brushed against yours making your body relax against his, both of your movements combining into pure bliss. “Baby, I’m close,” he whispered.

“Me too,” you bit down on your lower lip and nodded, both of you starting to shake and quiver in each other’s arms, each thrust of your hips gaining momentum until you both reached your climax, moaning loudly and riding out the waves of orgasm, your bodies pressed so close together until finally it settled. You were wrapped in each other’s arms for a moment before he pulled out, untangling your sweaty exhausted limbs from each other and letting Josh slide off and tie the condom, tossing it into the trash as you reached for the blankets that had fallen off the bed, covering yourself in them. Josh smirked and wrapped you in his arms, sighing.

He stared at you for a moment before closing his eyes tight. “God I’m going to miss you,” he sighed. You kissed again, pressing your lips to his for a moment before pulling away. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

“Don’t say that,” you frowned. “I want you to have fun. I want you to play your heart out on stage every single night. I want you to smile. And if not for you, then for me. Promise?”

“Promise,” he agreed, kissing the top of your head. He sighed. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

“I am too,” you mumbled. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

#saudade #saudade ch1 #josh dun fanfiction #josh dun fanfic #josh dun imagines #josh dun x reader fanfiction #josh dun x reader fanfic #josh dun x reader imagines #josh dun fluff #josh dun smut #josh dun #josh dun x reader fluff #josh dun x reader smut #josh dun x reader

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angelagiles18 · 5 years ago

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 250

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 250 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Adam: Probably now. All right, well, assuming that we’re actually live because it says we’re live. Welcome to Hump Day hangouts today is the 21st of August 2019. And we have got the full crew here. We’ve got Hernan on video which you know rarely happens normally he’s robbing banks and so he has to work just guys do not show his video, but today we’ve been blessed. He’s not robbing banks. So thank you, Hernan, for being here with us.

Hernan: Dude, I always come here in Hump Day Hang out! You know why? I came on video today because they want to show this. What do you got there? This is a powerful coin. They’re rare. They’re extremely rare. Just a handful of people have it, specifically this one. And so as you can see, it says POFU. So it’s a POFU coin and we got one. I got one, a POFU Live 2018 and they’re rumors that they might be a new set of these POFU Live 2019. So I’m just going because of the coin you know it’s just a gift just to cut the check so so anyways yeah I’m really excited about that we have some good stuff coming up so if you want to hang out with the Semantic Mastery crew learn a shit ton of new stuff to grow your business make awesome connections and then have a good time and then maybe have a coin like this one but not this one like another one just come to POFU Live 2019 is going to be pretty cool.

Adam: I have to agree with Hernan. I couldn’t have said it better yeah you’ll get a coin and it will be there is I can confirm a coin this year and it will be unique so definitely show up like Hernan’s doing it if it’s just for the coin that’s cool but hopefully, you’re there for everything else. Um Let’s go down the line real quick. Bradley, you’re next on my screen How are you doing?

Bradley: I’m hoping that I don’t get knocked offline again fucking storm

Adam: so let me know it takes a day off you don’t have to make up whether the stuff you can just say it right?

Bradley: Yeah, I think I missed one Hump Day hang out or two to one was scheduled off and the other one I missed. You guys covered it for me in what? 250 episodes now? Yeah, about that. That’s crazy, man. So, no, I’m not lying. There’s really a storm out there.

Adam: Deal. Well, we got everyone here. Let’s keep moving on Chris Are you there? Yeah, of course. Hey, how you doing?

Chris: Doing good.

Adam: Cool. All right just gonna keep moving Marco you there?

Marco: I’m incognito.

Adam: Marco we got something coming up next week, right?

Marco: Yeah, but it doesn’t work.

Adam: Yeah. So we should have actually I might go and edit the webinar, which is what we’re hinting at or I was to be you know, you’ll learn how to find out what’s not working.

Hernan: Let’s grab the logo, let’s scratch it, you know, like scratch it like that. That doesn’t work like doesn’t work.

Bradley: As I said, even if it did work, Google could shut it down at any time that you know how many times we’ve heard that over the last four years.

Adam: Well, assuming it doesn’t work and people, but people still want to show up. What’s it? What are we going to be talking about Marco?

Marco: Oh, well, hello, ranking Google using Google.

It’s the whole basis for the whole principle. The whole theory when it first started was that it would be much easier.

And I don’t know four years later, will show Wednesday because we just had an awesome case study posted in the Semantic Mastery mastermind we finally went after something e-commerce right. So well, this is local, this is local. This is local, we took on. I mean, I showed what Lowes, Walmart, Amazon, you name it all. All the big boys. We took them on and getting results and you can’t get any better than I did. As they always say the proof is in the pudding. Right? Show me. Don’t tell me Well, I’m going to show you the dress that people can talk. But I’m going to show you and so that’s next Wednesday.

Adam: One hour before Hump Day Hangouts. So make sure you tune in early on next week on Wednesday, to hear Marco will talk shit and to see what’s not working. Definitely highly encourage you, everyone be there. Just like Marco said with the live case study ongoing. We’ll be talking about that a whole lot more. And if you’re not, or if you’re watching right now and you’re not on the Semantic Mastery email list, head over to the website or if you’re watching on the page, sign up, you’ll get an email invitation to the webinar we’re talking about as well as some other great stuff. So real quick, before we jump into the questions I wanted to say to if you’re watching for the first time, thanks for joining us, you can always come here. This will be where the newest latest greatest upcoming Hump Day hangouts will be. And that’s at semanticmastery.com/hdquestions. All right, and then the next step after that is to grab the battle plan. You can find it on the sidebar somewhere where you’re looking at it or if you’re watching the replay on YouTube, you can find the link down below. That’s the best place to get started. You can

Looking for repeatable results. And if you’re looking to take things up another notch or two you’re starting or you’re wanting to grow your digital marketing agency you want to join an experienced community you want to access faster access to real-world info, then the mastermind is probably the place for you to find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com and wherever you are in that area of those groups. MGYB.co is where you can get your done for you services. get hooked up with your syndication networks, you’re always driving stacks, press releases, link building embeds and a ton more coming. To be honest, if you haven’t been over there in a while. Go check it out at MGYB.co. Rob and team have been busy adding some services making some updates so go and check it out. And last but not least, if you’re watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe button. Stay up to date with these as well as other videos that we upload from time to time. And help us out share the channel share the videos you like and give us a holler leave some comments. Let us know what you like and what you’d like more up

Bradley: Don’t we have some new? Am I allowed to talk about the new packages coming out in MGYB?

Adam: Thank you kit. Well yeah we could say it’s potentially because if it doesn’t happen we don’t want people to be depending on him but we’re working on them will say and hopefully they come out so yeah I want to talk about that, Bradley.

Bradley: Well we’ve got some new packages coming out soon very soon with that will make it a lot easier for you guys to place orders because it’s kind of like bundle pet services depending on competition levels like different you know, we’ve kind of a Rob is put that into the link building packages and embed packages now which is great because it makes it easier instead of you guys trying to have to figure out what’s best or have to contact support to figure out which configurations are best depending on your competition levels and stuff that’s going to be suggested right within the sales or the order page excuse me, so it just be on the lookout for that we’ve got three new services new packaged services bundles essentially coming with in the next week or so.

Adam: Outstanding! Guys, that’s all we got right now. Anybody got anything you want to toss him before we hop into questions? All right, well, the last thing I will say to like Hernan was talking about with POFU Live, if you haven’t grabbed your tickets can be in Denver, October 11 to 13th. Just go to POFULive.com. Grab it there. And I encourage you to grab a VIP ticket. It’s a great way to get an extra day of the event we spend a day right before we start with everybody and we go out to an event, have some drinks out some food. And it’s nice to get to know everyone beforehand and then roll into the event you already know everyone, it’s a little bit easier. And just a lot of fun here at

Bradley: Plus one. When some of us drink we tend to get a little bit loose with information. So

Adam: I don’t know where my face and Bradley’s is for everyone else. But like yeah, that’s all right. I guess it’s just one at a time. So yeah, talk to Bradley get all the secrets you’ve ever wanted.

Bradley: All right. If we can jump into it. We got a lot of good questions already. So let’s do it. Grab the screen. Then you guys confirm that you see my screen? Yeah, we can see it. Okay. I don’t know if I can. Does it lock on me when I’m sharing the screen? Do you know? Does anybody know?

Hernan: It does actually Yeah, it does.

Bradley: Okay, good. Alright, cool. So let’s get into these.

What’s The Best Way To Do A Proper NAP Citations For A Service Area Business Having Multiple Zip Codes?

Let’s see, the first one looks like it’s going to be this one says what’s the best way to make a right NAP on citations for a service area business considering that this kind of business can have multiple zip codes since he or the business provides service for an entire city? Well, the citations you’re supposed to use whatever the physical location of the businesses, that’s the address, the name, address, phone number, that’s what a citation is, right? And a P stands for name, address, phone number. So you list in your citations, the actual physical location of the business regardless of the service area. Doesn’t matter what your service area, it doesn’t matter. If you just Service, eight zip codes, you’re going to put the zip code of where the business is physically located. And it’s absolutely critical that you have consistency across everywhere that your nav is published. Its data consistency. And it’s really, really important with citations. So I know what the Google GMB site if it’s a service area business or GMB profile page, whatever you typically want to hide or not show not display the actual physical location. So it basically just hides the street address, but it will still show the city and you know, where the business is located. But force most citation directories or even non business directories, but places where you’re going to publish the name, address and phone number a mention of the business which is still considered a citation, you’re going to want to make sure that you have as much of the data you know like a lot of business directories are going to require you to have the full street address anyways regardless of whether you hide it or not in GMB.

So what’s important is that you make sure that you’re consistent wherever it’s published. In some cases, we’ve talked about, you know, being able to not show the street address in other places that it’s published. For example, if you’re going to publish a press release, you could choose not to list the full street address and just do the business name, city state zip, instead of the street address, city state zip. But again, most business directories if you’re specifically talking about traditional citations, if you’re going to be publishing business directory listings, they’re going to most of them are going to require a full street address. Good question.

Marco: Just to reiterate, a citation is any mention of any of the three points right in the business which is the name, address, and phone number to any of those three, can be a citation. It has nothing to do with other zip codes or service or anything else other than the zip code where the business resides. Because that’s what the citation is referring to where the business is the name of the business and the phone number. That’s a citation.

Should You Use A VPN Or A Proxy To Prevent Footprint Issues When Using Multiple Google Accounts In One IP Address?

Sweet. Okay, um, here’s another good one says, hey guys, I have about five or six Google accounts that I access from the same computer. Some are more personal, but there are two that I would like to do more SEO on for business. Should I be thinking about a VPN or proxy to prevent any sort of footprint from one IP address? No. That’s one thing you can do. But we that’s not even really the most important thing anymore. The most important thing is for each one of those profiles, Google profiles, accounts essentially, to start accruing and building its own history. And one of the ways you can do that is use something like BrowSEO or Ghost browser.

I think we have actually linked either one of those https://www.semanticmastery.com/browseo or the other one is just Ghost Browser https://www.semanticmastery.com/ghostbrowser. I know, those are what we’ve called or I’ve called browser keeper apps. I don’t know if that’s the proper name, but it’s what I’ve always called them. And what that essentially does is allows whenever you log whenever you go into an account, it basically keeps the session logged in. Right? So it’s an app that keeps your session logged into that browser for that particular account or profile. And what happens then is you start to accrue a history. And what’s odd about using like a VPN or proxy, which is what we used to do years ago, was we would have to switch accounts like every time we would switch accounts, we would do a browser, clear cache and cookies essentially. And then we would maybe run see cleaner, for example, which would do a deep clean of cookies and clean like zombie cookies and things like that. But and then we would log in, but that’s really odd now, because how many people are logged into a Google account and then log out from a single device and then log in to a different account? It’s very rare. And so that actually throws up red flags. Your best bet is to use a browser app, I think goes browsers probably the most popular right now that I’m aware of. And just set up a profile for each one of your, you know, Google accounts, essentially. And then each one of those will maintain its browsing session for no matter what it is that you do unless you, you know, purposefully clean it. Does anybody want to comment on that?

How Do You Create Cost-Effective Images For GMB Postings?

Good. Okay. Moving on. Fitz is up next. He says Good day, gents. Thanks for offering this form to help us. My question is how do you guys create images for posting to GMBs? If you’re posting for two times per day? That’s a lot of images. How can that be done cost-effectively and efficiently? What would that cost approximately? Thanks. Um, well, it you know, I don’t know what it costs depend. It depends on how you know how you’re handling it. My VA is my blogging VA is we don’t have any accounts that we post four to five times two per day, four to five times per week. Yeah, sometimes seven some cases 10 times a week, which would be twice per day Monday through Friday, but my VA is typically using a combination of customer or business provided photos, right. So for most of my clients, I have a shared Google Photos album that they or staff members of their business deposit photos into, that my VA has access to. or we use so it’s a combination of customer provided photos or you know, you know, client-provided photos, stock photos, which we don’t particularly like to use, but sometimes we still use them anyways. And also grabbing images from YouTube. We’ve talked about that many times. So find YouTube videos that have you know, relevant scenes or images for whatever business it is that you’re promoting. And use make sure that your select high resolution of the video player and just pause the video take a screenshot of a YouTube video and like an image from the YouTube video. That tends to work well because you can get topically relevant images that are unique because they’re not, you know, those are going to be unique. Very, it’s very unlikely that any of those have ever been used anywhere else on the web. And it for geographically or you know, geo relevancy, you can take screenshot images of like, known, you know, landmarks and stuff around the business from maybe Google Street View or maps and stuff like that. Just got to be careful that you don’t have the Google watermarks in them. Because that could be you could get in trouble for Google for that. Anybody else wants to comment on that?

Marco: I showed in local GMB pro training how to get unlimited local images. Yep. And how to get rid of how to avoid the watermark that that’s all it’s all in the training.

Bradley: There you go. So as far as what does that cost approximately? You know, again, my VA is just do everything on a pay. Most I’ve got one VA that I pay hourly, but the other for blogging, but my other VA is they discharged on a pay per post basis. So it’s just you know, wrapped right into the service. It’s up to them to generate the images. In the case of stock images, I fund an account or my clients one and account depending on what the agreement is with my clients, like, you know, so some clients have funded account my VA has access to that other clients, I actually, it’s just wrapped into the monthly retainer, so I actually fund it, but it’s not very expensive, you know, depends on how what kind of arrangement you have with your VA. Right? It’s very cost-effective guys. Content marketing is one of my primary sources of revenue for my agency because I pay a VA a set amount and I mark it up usually at least 100% if not 150%. So you know, I’m making money off of basically just providing them with the tools and the knowledge of how to do it. And it’s great because it’s just money, its revenue on autopilot, so

Okay, if it says having a good day, send a quick donation to Marco’s charity having not so good a day client or Something driving you nuts. Get back at them and send a small donation. Okay, that’s cool fits. I think Marco would appreciate it.

Marco: Yeah, thanks a lot for I really appreciate it. We’re always needing money, though. Yeah.

Can You Turn Off An RYS Drive Stack From MGYB Store That Is Targeted To A Client’s Web Property?

Gordon’s up, he says, Hey guys, thank you very much again for the great help you provide on hump days. If you order an RYS Drive stack from the MGYB Store and have it targeted to a client’s web property? For example, the GMB listing, can you turn it off? And for a later date if the client stops paying you? And if so, is that something that average consultant can easily do? And if so, how much would MGYB be charged to do it? Yeah, it’s actually really simple to do. Because if you’re, you’re the ones going to be managing it for them anyway. And all you have to do is either go in and delete the drive stack entirely. Do you have access to the Google account, right? The driving because we you know, when you buy a drive stack from us, we’re going to create a new Google account, then build everything in there and then we’ll share it with you and you can take ownership of it or do whatever you want to do. But the Google account that we create, when we create the drive stack that that’s going to be the original owner of the drive stack anyway, so all you gotta do is log in there and just delete it as the owner, right? If you want or just turn it set it to private again to where nobody has access, only you are the owner has to access. However, we do know that.

Marco might be able to comment on this, if you turn something not to the public, but to anybody can view that has the link, you can still pass the juice through that even though it’s not publicly available on the web. But Marco if you turn it to private to where only people that have them or if you set it to private to where only specific permissions can be given to you know, very specific people. Does that stop passing juice or will it still pass juice?

Marco: I haven’t tested that. I can’t ask for that. But I just said it’s a private sense. You’re going to be doing a whole lot of work through that. And then you go in and you just turn it to whatever else you want another client, something personal, you just have to edit it right in that in that niche in that category, whatever it is that you’re targeting. So don’t just set it to private while you go in and you edit the content. What I would recommend is eliminate the Gsite altogether and then build a new one with the old dr site that’s been edited.

Bradley: There you go. And that’s something that we may be able to do in the future. I know Marco has been working on that, being able to go in and edit drive stacks and add stuff to them after they’ve been the initial ones been built. But that’s not available yet. You guys will know about it when it is. Alright.

Are Video Embeds On GMB Posts Useful When Ranking GMB Listings?

Next question. He says By the way, you mentioned previously that we can create a GMB post with a video embedded in it and then use that URL post to run an MGYB embed job but will that provide any significant ranking power to the GMB orr just the post itself? Thanks again. I’ve not done any of that Marco might maybe Marco you can comment on that I’ve not done an embed gig for an MGYB video post. or excuse me for excuse me a GMB video post. I have no idea if that would do anything or not. Marco, can you comment? Hello. You’re muted.

Marco: Yeah, sorry about that. So you do an embed run? Well, that provide Yeah, it’s an iframe. It’s an iframe of the post that has an inner page on the GMB. So of course, it’s going to pass power to everything.

Bradley: Okay, yeah, I mean, again, I haven’t tested any of that. That’s why I couldn’t comment on that. I know the embed gigs that we’ve got running in MGYB right now are working crazy good. In fact, that’s what the case study that Daddea have posted on our mastermind today was about specifically about a combination of our services but the embeds being a big component of that. And, and it’s working really well it’s working well for GMB map embeds. It works well for video embeds it’s just it’s you can do you know you can iframe pretty much anything so there’s a lot of things that we can use the embed service for right now that are super powerful. So

Hernan: yeah, I wanted to add something real quick so that we don’t forget I don’t forget before I forget, as you say that if you like what you’re hearing if you like all of these back and forth between Marco and Bradley and the people within the mastermind, you should really consider joining the mastermind. There’s a lot of high-level technical SEO people in their there are also a lot of business owners right now that are crushing it with all of this stuff that we cannot share publicly. So I would recommend that if you love what these guys are saying Come join us because you can have a lot more of that’s

Bradley: gold star for Hernan again. It’s a good Good, good plug for us, buddy. Thank you.

Does Ordering A Single Tier 1 Network In MGYB Requires Modification To An Existing Syndication Network You Own?

Alright, so the next one is I already have some syndication setup using IFTTT and my blogs, RSS feed to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. If I order a single-tier syndication network, will that require modification to my existing syndication? Or would Semantic Mastery just create a new network from scratch? Thanks. Yeah, typically, we’re going to just create a new one from scratch, which it’s okay. We’re not because remember, we’re not going to create a Facebook page for you. We don’t do that. For a Facebook profile, we just don’t do that. Twitter. Yeah, we can create we would create a Twitter account typically an A new Tumblr account, and it’s okay to have more than one Tumblr or Twitter. I don’t I’m not so much of a Twitter user. It’s part of the networks but I don’t know maybe somebody else can comment on if it’s okay to have multiple Twitter accounts for the same brand. But you can have more than one Tumblr blog or more than one WordPress blog in a syndication network for brand

The goal is not to create a whole bunch of them because that’s very spammy. But it’s okay to have, you know, an additional one or two, it’s not going to hurt us, you know, especially blog properties, it’s really not going to hurt you just don’t want to. What I recommend not doing is creating multiple syndication networks full-on networks, for one particular brand were the only content that’s ever published to them, is the content that’s republished, repost it syndicated from a blog, the money site blog, and that’s because that leaves a footprint, which is clearly used from an IP, you know, search manipulation. But as far as, you know, if you just have a couple of syndication points like Facebook, which we’re not going to touch anyways, Twitter and Tumblr. I don’t think that would be an issue. Can anybody comment on the Twitter part of it?

Hernan: I don’t think so. Either, unless you’re pushing really, really hard on getting those index, but it’s really hard to index a tweet, right? So I don’t think it will be it will be that big of a deal. We have experience sending people through t.co, which is Twitter, you know shortener through goo.gl. And all that sorts of shenanigans, which we had. And you know, it did move the needle. So I don’t think it would be any issues doing that. I wouldn’t, I would still keep it like natural as possible. Yeah. Well, usually you don’t have usually like any company out there. If you think about it, any company or business unless they’re opening Twitter accounts or Twitter profiles for different branches, they don’t have like a lot of Twitter profiles, they have like just one main Twitter profile, and then they seem to get out of that. So I would follow that route.

Bradley: Yeah. And also keep in mind, if it’s a Twitter account, if you’ve already got a Twitter account that you know, you actually really engage with the company and the brand does or whatever that actually engages with, you know, has followers and that kind of stuff and it’s being really used. Then if you have another one that’s created as part of the network, when you buy it from us, it’s not a big deal because it’ll basically be standing

Anyways, until it gets, you know, a lot of engagement. And if you’re not actively using it other than just posting tweets to it, it’s probably not going to affect anything. But that said, just contact support and say you’ve already got your own Twitter account. Again, Tumblr, I wouldn’t care about having a second Tumblr, but Twitter, if you want to just contact support and say, Look, I’ve already got my own Twitter account, please omit that from this network, we can certainly do that. It’s not I mean, then you don’t even get to worry about it. You just got one Twitter account you’re already connected to. So it wouldn’t be an issue. Right? It’s a good question. Oh, there’s also I have a lot of your services appear to benefit sites, excuse me.

What Semantic Mastery Services That Are Beneficial To Location Independent Affiliate Sites?

Also, a lot of your services appear to benefit sites focused on local SEO, what Semantic Mastery service would or would not benefit affiliate sites that are location independent things. Everything that we have will benefit any sort of site we you know, we’ve talked about a lot of our stuff in framed it as a local SEO type or local You know, it produces results for local because a lot audience does local lead gen or local client consulting. So, you know, that’s why you hear a lot of that. However, there sound SEO principles that will benefit pretty much any sort of project. And as Marco always says, which I know, Marco, I’d like for you to chime in on this. Your local is relative. So all of the stuff that we do are really entity validators. Right. So, for example, a syndication network that helps to solidify the brand, right? We something else, kind of a newer term that we’re kicking around as an entity loop, right? Because that’s part of what we do with our @ID pages and all these other things that we create these loops that helped us solidify the entity and it basically puts all these different assets out there on the web, that reinforce what the entity is to Google. And so syndication networks, drive stacks, @ID pages, all of those things are part of that. So Marco, what can you say about that?

Marco: Well, I’ve talked about. There’s quite a bit, right we’ve all talked about this local is absolutely relatives how you look at it. If you box yourself in and you only see relative as your neighborhood, then you’re never going to rank for your city because you stuck in your neighborhood. If you only see the city, then you’re not seeing the county and if you only see in the county, and so on, and so on and so on. What matters now is the entity, the overall entity, and how you’re relating the entity to the niche. If the niche is global, and you focus on local, then that’s where you’re going to get stuck because you have a global entity but you’re at a local level, and vice versa. So it’s it’s really how you focus on it and how you relate your entity to the niche that matters whether the niches local, whether the niches nationwide, just whatever. That’s how you need to look at it and again, next Wednesday during the RYS anniversary webinar. We are going to show an ecom store, where do we I can’t say the name of the ecommerce store. But it’s getting just fantastic results. And, you know, ecommerce is not local, or at least this one. It’s not targeting anything local. It’s really global and focused on the US, of course. But it just goes to show that if you do it the right way, and the way that it’s taught, right, because the training is there in a specific manner because that’s how it works. So as long as you follow the training, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to replicate results. It’s when you start veering from the training and like cutting corners, or not doing everything that we tell you to do, that the results just won’t flow. You cannot expect it to work. The way that it works for us. If you cutting corners, if you know everything that we tell you you should do.

Bradley: That’s a good point because last, not last week, because we didn’t have a mastermind webinar last week, but the week before that was part of, you know, we covered that I covered that a bit in-depth because you can’t do one part of everything that we teach kind of builds upon each other. They work for hand in hand, the sum of the parts are large, the whole is the sum of the whole is larger than this, the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. Does that make sense? I think I said that right. This time, it took me a minute to think through that. But the whole is looking bigger than the sum of its parts. In other words, if you put all of the components together, that we teach in the way that we teach it, then you will get a significant effect from it. But if you just do, one, one of them, or two of them were bits and pieces of them. It’s not like let’s say there were four components, right? If you only did one component, you’re not going to get 25% of the results. Right. It’s lesser than that. Like, in other words, if all four components are put together and done right, then you should get 100% results right well

Whatever the hundred percent is, I’m just saying, if you just do one of those four components, then it’s not going to give you 25% of the results. It’s less than that as my point, you have to do the things that we you know, the way that we get results is what we teach. I know there are other ways is more than what there’s a there’s more one way more than one way to skin a cat right? So there are other methods out there that will work as well I get all that but you know, we teach what works for us and it works really well and we haven’t Knock Knock on wood we haven’t had to deal with any penalty issues or anything in years. So and you can feel very blessed for that reason. But if you just doing parts of it, it’s you’re not going to get the full results. So as Marco said, you want to follow the if you’re going to be using our stuff, use it the way that we suggest using it including building all of the components out and putting them together with the correct way. Okay, don’t cut corners or you won’t get results and then you’ll say oh, well their stuff doesn’t work. Now every time we have to analyze somebody that claims that stuff doesn’t work. It’s because they cut corners essentially or they didn’t complete all of the stuff. So

Marco: we just had someone who ordered a drive stack without the G site say that it’s been over 21 days cleared the Google that why am I not seeing results? I thought someone said that I would be getting results.

We never said that if you read is the thing when we deliver the drive stack and the decision or anything that has to do with our is you get it done for you User’s Guide. I wrote it so I thought what the fuck is in it? I I tell people specifically, this is what you need to do sometimes. all that’s required as a drive stack, this is how I say it. And then at other times, you might be able to do more. That’s why we came up with the battle plan. The battle plan is very specific syndication network, drive stack and then into the drive stack you might need press releases you might need embeds, you might need you might need link builds. You might need to push videos, you might need another embed, run another link building right

On this ecommerce store, I went to 300,000 links before it got a nice push. So it’s sometimes it’s not just a one, but about link building push. That’ll do it guys, it depends on the competition. If you’re going up against Amazon, and you get 2500 links to your drive stack. Are you seriously telling me that you’re expecting results against Amazon? with that? It’s a joke. I mean, you have to look at your competition, get your competition, understand how much work it is that you need to do to take on your competition. And is it going to be worth the money going after that competition Are you better off going after something else? But if you’re in it to win it, then you have to go balls to the wall, you have to go out you have to just hit it and hit it and hit it again until you get the desired results but you cannot just get one thing. say okay, this is good enough nominate What was it? I’m going to rank for Toronto DUI attorneys I lawyer DUI attorney. No, no.

Bradley: We got to tell that story real quick. We had a member come and join our mastermind This is three or four years ago now. And he was in our mastermind for I don’t know, maybe two months, he built a syndication network that was only partially complete. And did like, three posts to his blog for targeting DUI attorney Toronto or on it was in Canada, either Toronto or Ontario or something like that DUI lawyer DUI attorney. And he basically said your stuff doesn’t work. Because I’m not ranking on page one for DUI attorney Toronto or whatever it was. And I said, Well, let me take a look at what you got. It was a partially completed syndication network with three blog posts. And that was it was like I was like, Yeah, you’re I’ve done work. So it was funny. He didn’t stay with us.

What Type Of Report Should You Present To The Client After Building A Syndication Network?

Anyways, long as Let’s move on. The next one is after building a syndication network for the client. I like this question. By the way, after building a syndication network for a client, what’s the best type of reporting you could do for them to make sure that they know it was worth it? Well, in the past years ago, up until really last year, I would have said, you know, rank reports are one of the ways that you could you could show a client that it’s working because as long as your remember, syndication network alone isn’t going to do much it does help to solidify the entity, there’s no doubt and I’ve proven that recently, even with the most recent business that I launched. But the trick with a syndication network and always has been is to post publish consistently and regularly to it. And especially if it’s connected to a money site. It’s the same thing for YouTube. Because what happens is it will theme the network over time. In other words, it starts to build up more authority and relevancy, topical, relevancy, and location, relevancy if it’s for local stuff.

As more content accrues across the network, right?

So and they become aged and more trusted and all of that. So the idea with the syndication network is to, and this is what I always recommend guys, and I’ve said this since day one when it comes to client work, content marketing is no, it’s not an option. It’s part of my SEO, monthly services, right, that they’re paying them monthly. And part of that is content marketing, which includes blog posts.

You know, if it’s a lead gen property that I own, I might not blog all the time, or I might not have vas blog all the time. Because once I get results, and I get it to rank, and typically I, you know, can pull back in some cases, I can pull back to where it reduces my expenses for lead generation properties. But for clients, I always tell them, Look, if we pulled back, there’s a possibility that you could slip in, you know, in results, you could stop getting as good results, and then there’s always a catch-up period. So there’s going to be a delay but between when you start to stop getting good as good results and the time that we can get them back for you. So I just recommend never taking your foot off the gas. So that’s what I always recommend to clients and so it’s an ongoing thing.

As far as how do you report to them like I rankings are no longer my primary reporting method, I still include rank reports. I’m not gonna lie to my clients, guys. But I made it clear to them well over a year ago now, that it’s because of the way that the algorithm is now with mobile index first and proximity and all of that, that the rank reporters are very, they’re inaccurate, they may provide an indication as to the health, the ranking health of something but they are there they are really rather inaccurate. Because it really depends on where somebody is, what kind of device they’re searching from their search history, all of that kind of stuff influences search rankings now, for each individual user. So what we focus on and I know my partners will agree, is that we focus more on providing traffic kind of statistics that so analytics GMB Insights, Google Search Console. For Search Console, you could show that there are years the site is being given as getting more impressions, which means that the site is being recognized by Google for more keyword search queries and given impressions. You could for Analytics, you can show traffic increasing for GMB insights, more maps activity, you know, impressions clicks, click for driving directions as storefront phone calls, those kinds of things. So, my primary reporting methods to my clients now are analytics GMB Insights and Search Console. And if I’m doing AdWords stuff, obviously, you know, Google Ads stuff, I can show them ads, traffic statistics, and in rank, reports are always thrown in there, but they’re kind of a secondary thing. They’re not you know, I’ve made it real clear that they’re no longer the primary reporting method.

Marco: Alright, so specifically, around or regarding the syndication network. The conversation needs to be around branding. And ongoing brand recognition. That’s how you’re reporting well. The initial conversation with the client, that’s what needs to take place, you’re going to tell the client that you’re going to have the brand throughout the web, you go you and that you’re going to be working on ongoing brand recognition, which just means that you go and add, because we have a ton of an update videos, you add new profiles, according to the updates that Bradley does on an ongoing basis. It’s very simple you keep if you keep the conversation that way, and that you’ll be working on the brand and that you’ll be working on brand recognition, then you can bring in content syndication of as part of it, because the only way that you could that you could get the brand that you can get a branded correctly and you can get the brand recognized is by posting on a regular basis into these different social media web two point O properties that you’re going to create. That’s how I would frame the conversation with the client. So that

There’s nothing else that you have to account for it no ranking or anything else. Now, as Bradley said, the second part of this would also be that you’re paying for me getting paid for results. That’s at least how I do it. And I know Bradley does it the same way my partners do, you get paid because you produce results. And so as long as as long as you can show that you’re producing results, which is all of the things Bradley said and also phone calls, you make sure that you have a way to get into those phone call your clients phone calls to see and to be able to show the client that you have affected the number of calls that have come into the business on a monthly basis and it’s because of your work and what you’ve done. That’s how I would frame the recording.

Hernan: Yeah, I totally second and third, what these guys were saying. The reason why is because if you if you’re providing a keyword report, you’re missing so much like you’re leaving so much out of the table because people do not search as the Google Keyword Planner tells you that they search, right? They have so many variations, but they are infinite variations of any keyword imaginable. Right? So having that in mind, the reality is those business owners, they don’t get they don’t care if they’re like ranking number one or number two, what they do care is how many new clients you’re generating. So the best report, in my opinion, would be a really simple one would be before hiring me or my firm, my agency, how much how many how much money or how much revenue how many sales you are doing? Now after hiring me 30 days 60 days down the road has done increase. If it does, then that means that we’re doing something right. So just like the bare-bones reports that will be added, you can add impressions, you can add the increase in traffic, I don’t know the longer length of sessions, you know, under website decrease, decrease the bounce rate and all that good stuff. But at the end of the day, what our business owners should be focusing upon is, is your help helping them or easier or your services, helping them move the needle and move their business forward. Right? a business owner that is like focusing on Oh, well with you, we decrease one spot, or we, you know, like, we lose like 10% of our rankings, that guy is putting their, their main focus and energy where there’s where it shouldn’t be, which is that’s your job, you know, that’s why they’re hiring you. So that’s my two cents.

Bradley: Okay, oh, I have an update. I had a client that had a GMB that was suspended from their new Pest Control industry. And I just went in and made a slight edit and it got suspended and it’s a legit business. It’s been legit for seven years. It wasn’t spammy. Nothing I did was spammy. We’ve never done anything spammy for that business. And it’s always

Just dominated in its local area, and then it got suspended. And it took, I tried to do a reconsideration request or reinstatement request. And I got denied and it took four weeks for them to reply back finally and say that Nope, it’s in violation of quality guidelines, which is total BS. So I replied back said, you know, please explain, you know, there’s nothing was, you know, anyways, I rebooted it, but of course, I never got a reply. So I talked to my client about two weeks ago and told him that you know, I was going to have to create a spam listing in the same area in order for us to generate a new one unless he want wanted to go through the processes the actual business owner, the bonafide business owner, because I did it through my manager account as a manager of the GMB but I had him do it. I asked him if he would do it under his owners’ account. And so he submitted a reinstatement request. And it took only about two, two weeks, maybe two and a half weeks and we just got notification yesterday that the listing has gone live again. And I’ve confirmed that it is back. So just so you guys know if anybody that has a GMB, you know, the newer ones I don’t know, but this was an aged one it’s been in existence for like seven years and it got suspended because of just a slight edit that I made to it, which was bullshit. It was just one of those algorithmic suspensions, I believe, and but they wouldn’t allow me they denied my request to reinstate as a manager. But as the business owner, he was able to get it reinstated and about half the time that it took them to even reply to me so just so you guys know, that’s something you may want to check out if you run into the same issue. Okay.

How Do You Create A New GMB Listing For A Business Expansion Without Changing The Existing GMB Page?

Okay, wills up and we’ve got lots more questions, guys. So I’m going to try to roll through these a little bit quicker will says Hey, guys, I have a client that has a current GMB listing and has recently expanded to a new location. He doesn’t want to change the current GMB listing and instead wants to know if there’s a way of creating a new GM dealer listing for the new location. The new location has its own phone number and business address. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. If it’s especially if it’s got its own business address, that’s a genuine new location. So there’s no reason why you can’t set up another GMB listing for that. postcard verify it to to the new business address, all I would recommend is that you create a separate landing page on the same if you’re going to use the same website, just create a location-specific landing page and use that as the website URL and that new GMB listing for the new location. So it makes sense. But yes, as long as you got a unique address and a unique phone number, and like I said, I would recommend using a unique URL, not a new website, just it could be a location page and inner page of the same website. This location-specific so your brand.com/locationname, does that make sense? Or city or whatever like that they use that as the actual website URL. Then there’s no reason why you can’t create a new GMB for that I would absolutely do that. Okay.

Marco: Totally agree.

Should You Use The Blog In Shopify Or Should You Build A WordPress Blog On A Subdomain?

Bradley: Moving on. The next one is some very nice things that this gentleman says and he says question one actually, I am trying to rank a Shopify store for the syndication network. Oh, I’m trying to rank a Shopify store and for the syndication network, I have two options which I guess a) either host a WordPress blog on my subdomain and use it as the syndication source or b) just post blogs on Shopify as they have an RSS feed so I can use that as a source. So I’m confused about which way to go that provides more link juice and authority to my main ecommerce site. Also, if I have a normal woo commerce store, Then should I use a blog subdomain or not? Okay, I’m not an econ guy. I’m going to give you my opinion and maybe some of the other guys can chime in because I know really none of us do much any calm stuff, really. My opinion is if you can blog on a Shopify store that may be great, typically that you can get a little bit more authority from blogging from the actual money site itself. But I don’t know how much how, first of all, how those blogs posts are going to look, I don’t know how you know what it looks like when it’s syndicated. In other words, I don’t know how much control you have over the content that you know, like the like, is like a WYSIWYG editor. In other words, can you add elements to the content and you know, the blog posts, all that kind of stuff? I don’t know, because I’ve never done Shopify stuff.

With WordPress, you know, what you know, I know what you can get with WordPress, and you probably know as well. So if you use a subdomain on an ecommerce site as your blog as content center, distribution engine, essentially, you know that you have really a lot of control over the content and how it’s formatted and the elements and what it looks like and what it looks like syndicated and what happens if you mirror and we always talk about this, you know, network Empire kind of coined a term it’s called theme mirroring. So if you mirror and if you create a subdomain, a blog, a WordPress installation on a subdomain for your money site, then if you create a theme, mirrored structure, so in other words, a silo structure based upon the categories within your store, and you basically link your category URLs, do a 301 redirect from your category URLs over to your category pages on your money site. Then you do all of your blogging from your subdomain, you place your posts in the correct categories, which you know and do all of your internal linking to your store pages, then you can use the blog and still push 90% of all the juice back to this the money site. So you know, the the main site, the root domain, which would be your Shopify store, we’ve had I know I don’t really do any ecommerce stuff, but I have done content marketing for ecommerce clients in the past and we’ve always been able to get really good results doing that exact same method that I just covered. Does anybody else want to go on that?

Hernan: Yeah, I want to come in something. But now Yeah, I want to I wanted to say real quick that Shopify does come with a block solution and it will allow you to SEO optimize it. But the reality is that here with a WordPress subdomain, I would like to know what Adam has to say about this because I know that he’s been playing with Shopify a little bit as well. But with a Shopify store, like if you’re trying to rank on Google for your Shopify store, go the WordPress route, like WordPress is second to none when it comes to SEO capabilities. Yeah, like you can get away with the Shopify blog. But it’s not like unless you’re doing paid media, which 99% of Shopify owners, you know, do paid media by, by that I mean, sending traffic to an article via Facebook ads or Google ads or you know, sending like actually paid traffic to your store, which is like 99% of the Shopify stores out there. Other than that, then I would definitely suggest what Brad is just said because you can control that way. One of the, if not the best one of the best SEO optimized platforms in the world, which is WordPress, if you’re planning on blogging, right, number one and also number two, you can still leverage the ease of use that that Shopify has. So that would be my take on it.

Adam: Yeah, I’m basically going to pair it with what Hernan says and just agree I would probably go with if you have the choice, go with WordPress, especially if you’re more familiar with it and getting it set up. But other than that, as far as the actual benefit these days, I haven’t seen anything. Have you guys seen any actual studies recently about whether that Okay, yeah, we should dig that up? If anyone’s watching in the scene one recently let us know. Yeah, I’ve been working a lot with the emails and optimizing like actual landing pages but not so much the back end or you know using subdomains. So

Marco: Yeah, I don’t know one against the other, but the econ taste study it will be talking about next week is a.com TLD with it with a blog. It’s not a Shopify store anything it’s built on WordPress. Right. WooCommerce. Yeah, that’s what’s getting. It is WooCommerce. And that’s what’s getting syndicated. Right. It’s getting syndicated from the from the.com TLD. Right.

Hernan: Yeah. So Shopify, it’s really, really powerful. And it’s not like it’s simple. Because you don’t want to you don’t have to fuck around with hosting and whatnot, they will allow you to add subdomains to your domain. And then at the end of the day, like, you can still use Claudio, which is the solution that animates you know, he’s really good at that. So you can use Claudio to you know, to send emails, and then you will be basically getting the best of both worlds, which would be the SEO world and the ecommerce store. It’d be pretty cool.

Adam: So yeah. I’m taking the page off finance book to the like, if don’t spend so much time worrying about it, like if it’s going to take a couple of weeks, like or a month, you know to like get the subdomain or get the client or who if it’s yours, like, just start getting some content out there. And you can you know, switch the syndication point like start if you’ve got content, check out Shopify that way, if you are doing this for a client, maybe you know how the blog works when someone’s like, no, I refuse to do it this way. But in the meantime, yeah, would go the WordPress route.

What’s The Best Way To Link Review And Curate Content To The Money Site?

So question number two is for creating blog posts, both review and curated type posts. What would be the best way of linking to my money sites? Should the blog content be linked to category pages or direct product links, either-or, in some cases, both? It just it really just depends on what your content of the blog post is. So for example, my blog is about 10 best baby products. So what I linked to all 10 products individually or just the baby category page. In that case, I would probably link to the category page but you do want some internal link diversity. In other words, you want to keep your silos tight. So what I just mentioned about if you’re creating a blog on a subdomain, and like WordPress blog, essentially, you’re going to want to silo the site into categories just like you would have your products. So you know, your products go into specific categories, because it’s logical for them to go into the categories that they’re in. Well, you want to stack your content the exact same way. So again, you would, for the WordPress category URL, you can set up three one redirects from the category URLs to the category pages on your money site, your Shopify site, or ecommerce site. But then in the actual blog posts themselves, as I said, you want to have you want to any posts that you place in a product category, and likewise, a content category on the blog. You want to link to both the products within that category and the category page itself, not both at the same time all the time. What I’m saying is you do want to switch up your internal linking strategy somewhat to were sometimes only into the category page, sometimes you’re linking to a product or two within that same category. And it really just depends on what the content is about. But in that case, I wouldn’t link to all 10 baby products individually. I mean, you could, it wouldn’t hurt anything. Because as long as they’re all still in the same category, it’s still going to pass some juice. But what we teach in the mastermind, and I know I can’t get too deep into this at all his specific ways to do internal linking now, especially within silo structure, tight silo structures, that can get really, really good results. So again, I would recommend it. What you don’t do though, is cross-post from within one category to another with internal links, if it makes sense to do so from a reader or viewer standpoint, for strictly SEO purposes, you don’t want to cross-link from the within the same post to other categories or other products within other categories. If you’re going to for the users benefit, then nofollow those links as a nofollow tag or attribute to those links, okay.

Marco: Back to a nod or heads of the network Empire again, brilliancy still works like crazy. So if you work bottom-up so that your blog posts are pushing up that top-level category, just say you think I think about it this way you going, you’re going after the top of the pyramid, but what holds the top of that pyramid is all the work that you did on the bottom. So pushing from the bottom up, you pushing up that top-level category, your top market level keyword, and all of the work that you do to push that top-level category up is going to carry everything up along it as up as the top market level category begins to climb up in the SERPs. it’ll pull everything along so it’ll have the effect that he’s looking for, if he doesn’t, right, but where he can get the most value from this is if he joins the mastermind and comes to comes and listens to what we’ve been doing. As far as internal linking in concerned.

Bradley: Yeah, we’ve only got five minutes left. So I’m going to skip that last part of the question. It looks like Adam dropped a link for the art.

Adam: I just want to say real quick if anyone else is interested in this, we did a webinar. This was a couple of years ago now with Scott Scanlon and curation suite and he talked a lot he had some great info about content curation so on the content side, go check that out. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend the tool itself. Right now, I’ve been hearing some issues with people not being responded to but watch the webinar for the content information, how to generate content. There are some great ideas. Yeah.

Does Hiding An Adress On A GMB Listing Affect Citations?

Alright, so then this one says, Is there a way to use all the all of the products without giving away your full address for privacy reasons? And can we change address easily? Does that affect citations and everything else? I set up my Google business with full address but chose to hide it then did citations using just the part of Google address that does show like city-state zip? Yeah, I mean,

yes, and no. If it’s best to be able to use the full address, there’s no question. But if you for whatever reason you absolutely want to hide the street address, then what I would recommend is on every time that you create a citation that you don’t include the street address you as long as you keep them consistent, right and as long as the name is unique, you know if it’s if it’s a name that can be ambiguous aided with others. In other words, if there is another business with a similar name, that is in close proximity to you, and you try to just get away with city-state, zip, name, city, state, zip and phone number and then obviously URL, then that can cause and regulation, right, that can get muddy the waters a bit for both your business as well as your competitors business that has a similar name, and can cause both of you guys to have issues with ranking or getting results. So but as long as it’s unique, a unique name and you’ve got you know, like I said unique phone number unique web address, then then you can get away with that.

Although it’s still his best to give it more data than less data, so again, I would recommend that you know, if if, if at all possible, just use the address. Remember, most of the places that you’re going to be publishing the address aren’t really going to get it’s free for SEO purposes, right? So you’re not going to get a lot of eyeballs to it, which is going to reveal like for people to come knocking at your door pissed off or whatever like it’s not I mean, you shouldn’t really have to worry about that in my opinion. But you know, like I said, as long as you stay consistent and you don’t have a common type name that will and cause ambiguous ation with another type of business which would hurt both of you, not just you. Does that make sense? Then you can get away with that but more data is better than fewer data in that case. Okay.

All right. This is the last question guys unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to get to the rest of them.

Warning To PressCable’s PR Syndication Network Posting To PBN Junk Sites

He says You guys rock I want to add a few things to the conversation in case you can help someone Bradley mentioned a few times I press cable has a lot of PBN type junk sites in their PR syndication network. I’ve posted a few prs recently and they appear to have gotten worse. You know, unfortunately, some some some of the pbn disk or a press release distribution services are more worried about inflating their distribution numbers than they are about the quality of the distribution sites. And that’s unfortunate. I can’t comment on it anymore Just because I haven’t used them in quite some time. I’m happy with my providers. So you can now verify a Bing places maps listing based on your verified GMB listing. Bing Yahoo still covers about 30% of search if we believe the public statements are probably worth doing for all properties. No, I agree. I absolutely agree.

Verify Bing Places Based On Verified GMB Listing

You know, I’m even using Bing Ads and a couple of businesses that are my own business for one but also for a couple of other businesses because there is traffic and is not nearly as much as Google guys, but Bing Ads work and same thing I imagined with search but or excuse me, organic stuff and local stuff is being ads when you Run Bing Ads. They appear on Bing, Yahoo, and AOL Who the hell still uses AOL as a browser. But they do they appear there too. And I do get traffic from there and the clicks are cheaper than they are for Google PPC as well.

Hernan: Dude, specifically for your demographic for the stuff that you’re doing with the land stuff that is a slam dunk because it’s exactly the demographic that you want to target.

Bradley: So the older demographic, you me, hey, well, browsers. Yeah, I didn’t want to say it. But uh, yeah, yeah. That’s funny.

What Are The Benefits Of Using RYS Drive Stack?

Man, Marco. If you got 30 more seconds. Let’s cover this other one. Just because I think that’s a perfect ending question. What is the main reason people use an RYS drive stack is it only to help

Marco: No, you stop it right there, power, hour wherever you want it to go. Has nothing to do with it with a GMB. It has nothing to do with anything. You want it to be the GMB in be it. The what he called the GMB, the business site, your money site, a tier-one branded property wherever you want the power to go. That’s where you direct power. And that’s where it goes. That’s right. That’s why you use it. And the power that you’re going to push behind that is going to end up wherever you’ve connected it. That’s why. So just we’re going to talk about this next week. And it’s at five o'clock. So we do have to wrap it up, guys, but I’m just going to point this out really quick because this is the four-year-old case study from a poorly built syndication or drive stack that I built on my own the day that Marco revealed this strategy to me, and I always show this but the reason why is because it just goes to show you, I built a drive stack to push the power to the G site of a dry stack, right. And you can see that it’s four years later because this is the day that it was published. You can see it’s also one of the properties in that stack that all I did was took the same Drive files from the RYS stack and embedded them into a wordpress. com post for

From my you know Bradley better dot WordPress com and that you can see the day it was published it was Saturday, May 16, 2015. And I’m ranking number one for Virginia SEO, SEO Virginia, Virginia SEO agency like multiple variations of that keyword and have been for four years over four years now.

When all we did like the primary, the focal point of where we were pushing the where I was pushing the juice with this particular drive stack was the G site. And you can see that that’s what’s ranking. We’ve learned or you know, Marco probably already knew this but what we you can push the juice of an RSRYS Drive stacked anywhere you want it to go. If you want it to be a GMB map listing, it’ll be a GMA map, listen, you want it to push you a money site. It can be a money site, it can be a web to auto property, a tier-one branded entity, it can be anything the G site, obviously, it can be anywhere that you want to push. It just depends on where you want and that’s when you go to order a stack. It says specifically, what is your primary target URL, and that’s what you want to push it to

So yeah, but I don’t know if it works. It doesn’t work. Yeah, shoot, shoot come next week to see how it doesn’t work. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t work it can if it does work. And if it does work, Google can shut it down and anytime, right?

The world could end tomorrow. So let’s all go hide under the bed. Alright, well, thanks, everybody for being here. We do have a mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we’ll see you guys in the mastermind on that. Otherwise, we’ll see you guys next week. Thanks, everybody. All right.

Always pitch fest.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 250 published first on your-t1-blog-url https://ift.tt/1WMpNvB August 26, 2019 at 06:54PM Semantic Mastery https://ift.tt/2YeHIxM

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