#man being a creator is hard OOPS that is also an evil thing to say being a creator is the luckiest thing you can ever be and ur just beinh

[foulfeast]

Ohhhh i now remember why i got shy about talking abt ocs

24/7 fear that someone will tell me my ideas are cliche/stupid/bad in some other and it will hurt more bc these are my own creations and not just fun and play

[shaonsim]

Your take on grey characters 😈

An excellent question, and let me preface it with the fact that although I believe that every person is morally grey, I am also of the opinion that there is a difference between a grey person and a grey character. Fiction is always a little on-your-nose with everything, and a character with grey shades will have their complexities highlighted quite strongly, more often than not, as a direct contrast to a 'pure' white, positive character. And by doing that, fiction downplays the grey shades of the character standing on the moral high ground and that's really interesting and totally irrelevant to the answer, but I wrote it in anyway, because it fascinates me and kind of ties in with the stuff I hope to explore in the later parts of this answer, so, just hold on, I guess.

Let me also just point out, that fiction, as it says, is, and always will be, a little detached from reality. While it is true that fiction does not exist in a vacuum, it is a way for us to escape our worldly troubles and perhaps that's why sometimes serious issues get brushed under the carpet to give everyone a happy ending. It's an utopian world. And I bring this up because grey characters receive a lot of acceptance that they might not receive had they been real, flesh and bones, human beings. They also receive a lot of flak for not fitting into the 'good box', because more often than not, grey characters are show leaning towards the good side, as in, their actions directly or indirectly support the protagonists, or, in some cases, they go against the antagonist, thus leaving them on shaky ground. People would cry that they are being whitewashed (which, although it pains me to admit it, they are, but again, fiction is an utopia, even if we are talking about a zombie apocalypse).

Anyway, this too is confusing and I am terribly sorry for this disorganised mess of an answer you have to read through.

Forgive moi?

Okay, let's get back to the topic of grey characters. In the recent few years, I have come to sort 'grey characters' into different categories. So I'll just quickly (ha!) go over that.

GREY CHARACTER™

The characters who are introduced with the grey tag, by the creators themselves (or, in case of literary works, are addressed as grey by the writer(s) once the book is published and people have read it). Their moral ambiguity is their core feature, their whole personality is shaped up around that little nugget of information. The narrative gives them a layered, intriguing character traits (and a lot of snark - like, a lot of it), intricate backstories (and past trauma!!!) that remain hidden behind a facade of casual disinterest in everything that exists on our beautiful Earth, and we get snippets where they are being genuinely affectionate with their people, or where other, minor characters share a cordial, if not a little personal, relationship with them.

^ Another great way is to show them being polite to the staff, drivers and/or salespeople, that makes them likeable.

And it is extremely necessary that they are likeable, because these characters do plenty of questionable things. Some of their actions might even fall under the 'bad' category, where they commit crimes and plan to destroy lives (most of the time the plan fails, or they actively do something to redeem themselves with respect to that particular event, because they are grey characters, not the devil incarnate trope they go for when it comes to the villains and vamps).

Also, this type of a grey character is usually written in with a host of other characters, for whom the character will cross every limit, and a group of characters, with whom our grey character crosses all boundaries. The second group is the intended target, and the creative outlet for writing the morally questionable things that make a character grey™.

Usually, this type of a grey character gets one out of the three kinds of endings outlined below ⬇️

Grey™ but softer

Where they continue to do questionable things, but less frequently, or with less intensity. Nice trope. Moi likey.

Platinum grey, but grey™ if necessary

The go-to if they are the protagonist. I will explain about the 'platinum grey' bit later on, but this is essentially, this character has fulfilled (or abandoned) his course of doing questionable things, but if push came to shove, will not hesitate to destroy some lives. My favourite (♥️)

And the worst kind of ending - whitewashing

There is a difference between accepting the consequences of your actions, repenting for it (or not, both can work, but you have to acknowledge what you did), and justifying it because 'hey, look! I did one good thing in my life, I am pure™, love me!! ' This is my least favourite trope.

((can you guess which ending I have planned for Dhruba?))

TEAM GREY

This type of grey is usually reserved for influential side characters. Influential, in the sense that they contribute to the plot, and have relationship ties that leave a heavy impact on the story. My favourite people. These characters are not given the tag of 'grey', but they move from one camp to another, with their actions and thoughts that move the story forward. They don't switch sides, that's another type. These characters don't change teams because they want to support one side against the other. No, their actions are fueled by their own motivations, and that's what makes them special. They are often overlooked because of Grey ™ characters, but I love them so much.

THE FAKE GREY (AKA DAL BADLUS)

The narrative tries to make us perceive these characters as grey, and in their haste, they make these characters change teams every now and then, and the characters lose all credibility. They differ from 'team grey' in the sense that the reasoning behind them choosing sides is flimsy at best, non-existent at worst. They are inconsistent and ugh, how I hate inconsistencies. What irks me the most is that the narrative doesn't even try to establish them as complex characters (which isn't that hard, humans are complex!!!)

SUPPOSEDLY WHITE BUT OOPS I AM GREY NOW, PLEASE KEEP LOVING ME

I love these characters, if they are executed properly. Tons of potential. The story always reminds us that these characters are supposedly white, but their actions (or reactive action because of the circumstances/events brought on by the grey™) and I love to see them spiral out of control and become complex, layered characters. And if they have comic potential, then I am squealing with joy. Love these people. 

((spoiler alert: this is my Agni))

GREY BECAUSE I STAND IN THE NO MAN'S LAND BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE

Love, love, love them! Love characters who are not inherently evil and who do not engage in criminal activity, but also, they are not pure and white and good™ and they have their fair share of character flaws. They do lots of wrong things, but nothing destructive. All the love ❤️

((spoiler alert: this is my plan with Chandni))

I HAVE TRAVELLED FAR FROM THE GREY ZONE BUT I AM NOT TOTALLY BLACK, BELIEVE ME

Negative characters with plenty of redeeming traits, and a strong (and emotionally manipulative) reason behind their wrongdoings, with their motivation exploited by the antagonists. Can be very interesting if done well, and even the simplest of tracks is better than the plain old everyone is evil unless they are the protagonist (and their supporters). 

((spoiler alert: My rendition of Manju)) 

GREY BECAUSE I HAVE FALLEN FROM MY PEDESTAL FOR GREATNESS AND I AM NO LONGER WHITE ™

Another favourite. Genuinely good characters who do that one wrong thing, but it's pretty big and affects the plot in a bad way and that kind of behavior cannot go unchecked because we need to prove a point. Tons of potential. 

((spoiler alert: My rendition of Kakai)) 

<< are you tired of me screaming about my plans for the Fic Which Must Not Be Named? Sorry, not sorry 😈 >>

THE WORLD COULD NOT HANDLE MY GREATNESS, I AM GREY NOW 

Pure, sweet, soft characters who see the world for what and now they are either a very soft grey (as in their negative side comes out quite often, but it doesn't affect the story all that much) or a very manipulative person. Love this trope! 

((Deepti is a soft grey character, but that's more because she is bitter and she points that bitterness towards herself. Meghna, on the other hand, flits in and out of this trope))

TOO COOL TO BE WHITE, TOO SANE TO BE DARK 

All the snark! Brutally honest, mature, logical people who are cool™ and who do lovely, manipulative stuff. We stan! 

(( Ranja from my ff, not Ranjabati the warrior princess)) 

PLATINUM GREY (AKA SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ™) 

The protagonist, often used as narrative foil to the Grey™ or vice versa. They are portrayed as good and pure™ but have plenty of grey character traits that either get glossed over or are shoved into the cupboard to highlight the differences between the grey character and the protagonist. They also have serious self destructive tendencies where they ruin their lives on purpose and this is often complemented by a generous helping of saviour complex. Like, all the love for these characters. They are supposed to be white, but aren't, but they do shine bright, even if their flaws are sharp and in your face, like a cloudy sky that is a terribly cold, sharp white. I choose to use the word platinum because that's what comes to my mind when I try to visualise their place in the shade card of life, the color of a platinum band. This is my favourite trope when it comes to protagonists. Love them. ♥️

((Tara, Prabha, and Meghna - PLATINUM BABES))

Now that we have covered the type of grey characters in fiction (my brain is fried and I might have missed some, sorry! Feel free to reblog with your additions!!), let me tell you how much I love grey characters. I would choose them every time, as opposed to characters who can be neatly sorted into the black and white categories.

Every. Time.

We need more grey characters in fiction, especially the soft greys and the team grey ones. And we need to appreciate grey characters for how amazing they are!!!

In conclusion, I love grey characters (but you already know that, don't you? Come on Babe, you have known me long enough, you know how crazily excited I get about grey characters) and I need more of them ♥️♥️♥️

[ stuff for my 100th celebration ]

[flyingvgroupca]

A $5,000 Link Building Strategy: How Real Estate Companies and Realtors Should Generate More Clients and Referrals

If you could invest $5,000 in backlinks to secure increased rankings for your real estate website, what would you do? Would you risk, buying as many links as possible from as many sources as you can find, in an attempt to quickly rank in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines? Or, would you rather, partner with a link building team, and work out a scalable strategy to attract trust-worthy, ‘white-hat’ links, reaping the benefits for months and years to come?

What is link building you may ask?

The story of link building traces back to Adam and Eve. There are some subtle connotations you ought to know about, which we’ll reveal in a minute. But first, let me tell you what link building is not. Link building is not a magic wand that instantly transforms you into a traffic-generating ninja. It is not the holy grail to mediocre content. It is not a push-button tool that sends hundreds of visitors to your website overnight. It is not a content marketing hack. It is not a cold email outreach template that you blast to 100’s of random leads, then sit back and wait for them to do business with you. It is not a quick SEO ranking formula. Just ask around. More often than not, you’ll hear that most real estate marketers and agencies erroneously believe these to be proven methods. Usually, they realize the contrary to be true, only after squandering $5,000. When it comes to link building for Google rankings, no budget in the world will solve your lack of organic traffic, clients, and referrals.

So what’s the alternative you ask?

You need an expert SEO team by your side, to help: Run a professional audit of your website, and then Create a custom link building strategy for your real estate website. The question is: will you be able to trust an SEO agency with your $5,000 budget? Should you pay a general SEO firm to handle your link building campaign, or should you employ a team who is highly specialized and experienced in real estate website ranking and link building? Unfortunately, Adam and Eve learned the hard way whom to TRUST. The ancient story of managing the Garden of Heaven, teaches us some vital modern SEO lessons that we can apply to our websites and businesses. This power couple lost everything they had, in a split second, such as: A one-on-one, direct relationship with the almighty God. And access to everything the Heavenly realm offered them, free of charge.  The Bible reveals that our spiritual mother and father conducted what the SEO experts refer to as ‘black hat’ experiments. As you recall, the enemy, also known as Satan, used ‘link-bait’ to engage Eve in a high stakes conversation, which ultimately changed the direction of human destiny.

I’ll explain this statement in a second.

For now, understand this: For most website owners and marketing newbies, the first SEO encounter starts off with a bad experience. They get lured into believing the various ‘link building’ scams out there, and mistakenly place their trust in the empty lies promising ‘get fast rankings’ touted by the so-called ‘SEO experts’. Stop! You don’t have to tolerate their drivel anymore. Once you know the truth, the truth will set you free! What I mean is simple: test-drive the reputation of an expert, before paying for their service. Here’s what you need to do: Engage those SEO teams with an extensive proven track record in helping businesses like yours generate consistent traffic and rankings via ethical link building. Ask them to perform an SEO audit for your real estate website, and share the findings with you. If you like what you see, and your gut instinct tells you that this team is the perfect fit, then ask about pricing.  Try to negotiate a smaller contract in the beginning. Maybe $1,000 or $1,500 would be enough to ensure you get a feel for their service, and see results before fully embracing their proposed strategy. I call this the ACM Method, also known as Authentic Conversational Marketing, a trust-building approach that does not pressure you into buying anything when you search for an SEO partner for your real estate business. Some important points to consider: Genuine link building starts with a ‘white-hat’ link building pro performing competitive SEO intelligence, and keyword research. Most teams are aware of this, but do not apply it correctly. Therefore, you should always double check their actual website rankings and client testimonials. Back in Heaven, everything was strategically mapped out in advance, and “link-bait” was fundamental. The fallen angel, Satan, didn’t approach our ancestors directly. He used a serpent as his furtive ally to execute his cunning plan.  The goal was to captivate Eve’s attention, while she was away from Adam  bewitching her and engaging her imagination (the right brain), inspiring her curiosity about the forbidden fruit. It all started with an ‘innocent’ question: ‘God said, you shall not eat from every tree of the garden?’  A strange, insidious counter idea was rapidly planted in her mind… with a single goal: To question God’s authority, and to ignore the only demand he made of man. ‘And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die.’ Eve’s faith in God was battled-tested, for the first time. At least, that’s what the narrative tells us. Eve’s guard is down when confronted with this surreptitious proposal, therefore, she is swiftly mired in the swamp of lies. ‘And the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die. For God knows that the day you eat, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Again, Satan starts to construct his arguments on the earlier, completely false premise. This reminds me of when these 'SEO experts' claim top rankings for lower than industry standard fees. Consequently, many succumb to the offer, since it seems like such an irresistible bargain. Today, Satan still claims that God is unfair, and wants to prevent humans from accessing “God-like” status and achievement. Some SEO ‘experts’ construct a similar lie when leading you to believe that you can get a certain amount of links in a specific amount of days for a minimal investment. Long story short, Eve got sidetracked, and was influenced to trust in the ‘father of all lies’ instead of the Creator himself. She was systematically indoctrinated… to look at the fruit in a “new,” distorted way, ultimately touching and consuming it. 'And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit, and did eat, and gave it to her husband with her; and he did eat.’ Both fell into the trap, designating the entire human race to either eternal life or eternal damnation. Oops.

How is this universal mega event applicable in today’s SEO and link building shaddy industry?

First, you have to understand this: SEO and link building is a skill that can be learned. Just like communication. Once you master it, you can mesmerize your audience and lure them to your real estate website, turning them into raving clients and referrals, just like Netflix is doing with their consumers. Your content has one goal: to produce loyal clients and referrals. Otherwise, your precious time, money and energy spent on content marketing are all in vain. I’d say link building it’s more of a soft skill than a hard skill since it requires more creativity and imagination than technical SEO know-how per se.  In my experience, there are two types of real estate companies. One company, let’s call it A, creates its own exceptional content and then waits for links to come in. The second company, let’s call it B, publishes fabulous content, provided by or featuring third party sources, and is proactive in link building. Company A makes two major mistakes: #1 - Creating Its Own Content  This method presents significant drawbacks. First, you have to invest a considerable amount of time on these 5 common, yet time-consuming, and energy-draining tasks: Research Writing Editing Rewriting Proofreading It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours to produce a single article or blog post, depending on the content length and research. Plus, let’s consider the time required for proper graphics creation and content uploading. This may take up to 60 minutes per post. You may need multiple posts per week to generate enough demand. It is imperative that this content is highly-engaging to transform prospects into clients, right? If you’ve systematized your business in such a way as to involve your team or allow VAs to handle content research, creation, and publishing, then it’s a significant improvement to your approach. You’re left with more time to handle other priorities and challenges within your company, while an SEO expert team takes care of ‘content marketing’ via the Authentic Conversational Marketing approach I have mentioned earlier. Still, other real estate companies take advantage of a different approach, which is more sustainable and profitable, and important for you to use in your business as well. #2 - Build it, and they’ll come Sitting back and waiting to receive back-links and brand mentions from industry leaders, as well as targeted bloggers and social media pros who have access to your desired audience, is not going to drive much traffic or attention to your real estate website and content. It is essential for you to be proactive and highly-strategic in your approach, or not much will happen. Company B does two things right: #1 - It publishes content created in-house, in combination with expert interviews, and crowdsourced articles (by non-competitive, third party, ‘authority’ sources) Example: 25 Real Estate Agents Share Their Best Tips & Advice For First-Time Home Buyers The result…? Here’s the number of shares and backlinks (captured via Ahrefs)

Here’s another one 44 Realtors Tips On Selling And Buying A Home At The Same Time

This strategy, if performed right, creates a ‘wildfire’ brand exposure effect for your content, substantially increasing the number of likes, shares, comments, and more importantly, back-links to this type of content. In time, this combined effort produces consistent organic visitors, and higher web page rankings.

Who said link building for free targeted traffic was a zero cost technique and a working scheme to produce fast results?

However, what I’ve shared above is only the tip of the iceberg. Let me explain what I mean. For example, you shouldn’t publish expert roundups just to get backlinks. Think beyond this selfish vision. You’re creating this popular form of content primarily with your audience in mind, and secondly, to help build trust with the experts, for future beneficial relationships, and mutual growth. You’ll be rewarded with rankings and visitors as an afterthought. Does this make sense? I’d say, publishing expert content gives you more time and freedom to focus on your business instead of spending countless frustrating hours trying to figure out how to make your content go ‘viral.’ #2 - It promotes the content on a vast scale Crowd sourced blog posts created by real estate bloggers and agencies make one major mistake. They think that once their expert roundup goes live, traffic will melt their website servers. In most cases, the majority of these link building campaigns fall short, and is prevented from taking off due to two main reasons: The initial intention of the website owner or SEO team was to get traffic, shares and links, instead of considering their audience and producing insightful content set to spread rapidly due to its fascinating nature. That’s why some deceitful experts are featured in ‘experts roundups.’ Their responses are mainly based on theory and guessing rather than on hands-on experience.  This is also the reason why poorly conceived questions are asked ad nauseum. Finally, this is why these blog posts aren’t usually optimized for SEO and ranking purposes. There’s no active outreach involved once a post goes live. In this case, some outreach is done, but it is executed incorrectly. This means that the focus is on obtaining a share or backlink request, instead of providing value for the experts involved. One expert roundup created with 50 business coaches received a 35% backlink placement response, which is unheard of in the industry. They’ve managed to provide enough value during the entire process, so that a significant number of experts have linked to the final blog post from their websites.

Authentic Conversational Marketing Strategy, that is covered here, is something you may want to implement in your link building campaign. If you do it right, it works without fail! If you’re interested in finding out more about a custom SEO link building strategy for quality link building results, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with FlyingVGroup, and request a free website SEO audit. You may see surprising results within 12 months when your traffic and rankings are propelled through the roof! Thank you so much for reading A $5,000 Link Building Strategy: How Real Estate Companies and Realtors Should Generate More Clients and Referrals. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter to receive monthly emails on all of the latest trends and happenings in the digital marketing space. You will also receive our FREE E-Book with the Amazing Marketing Tools for Powerful Business Growth. Sign-up below! Also, if you received some value out of this article, please share with your friends or colleagues, or leave a comment/question below. We really appreciate you reading our blog and every share/comment means the world to us and allows us to continue producing valuable tools to help you grow your business! Share this PostAbout the Author

Robb Fahrion Facebook Twitter Google+Robb Fahrion is the Co-Founder and a Partner of Flying V Group. He is passionate about helping businesses grow using the power of the internet. Robb graduated from Chapman University in Orange, CA and currently resides in Costa Mesa, CA. Robb enjoys writing about digital marketing, helping his clients turn their dreams into reality, and is a HUGE Mike Trout fan. The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid AdsNovember 25, 2019What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or BlogNovember 19, 2019Real Estate SEO Tools Exposed: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs MozPro Review (2019)November 11, 2019

Discover the Best Digital Business Growth Strategies! Join 10,000+ Other Digital Marketers, Consultants, and SEO Experts Now: Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. var formDisplay=1;var nfForms=nfForms||;var form=;form.id='35_1';form.settings={"objectType":"Form Setting","editActive":true,"title":"IN USE - 16 Tools - non-sidebar - copy GLOBAL BLOCK EMAIL GLOBAL","created_at":"2018-10-02 23:58:52","form_title":"Top Ten List Blog - non-sidebar - copy - copy","default_label_pos":"above","show_title":"0","clear_complete":"1","hide_complete":"1","logged_in":"0","wrapper_class":"","element_class":"","add_submit":"0","changeEmailErrorMsg":"Please enter a valid email address!","changeDateErrorMsg":"Please enter a valid date!","confirmFieldErrorMsg":"These fields must match!","fieldNumberNumMinError":"Number Min Error","fieldNumberNumMaxError":"Number Max Error","fieldNumberIncrementBy":"Please increment by ","formErrorsCorrectErrors":"Please correct errors before submitting this form.","validateRequiredField":"This is a required field.","honeypotHoneypotError":"Honeypot Error","fieldsMarkedRequired":"Fields marked with an * are required","currency":"","unique_field_error":"A form with this value has already been submitted.","not_logged_in_msg":"","sub_limit_msg":"The form has reached its submission limit.","calculations":,"formContentData":,"order":0,"type":"part","clean":true,"title":"Part Title","key":"sysrdshp"}],"drawerDisabled":false,"key":"","mp_breadcrumb":1,"mp_progress_bar":1,"mp_display_titles":0,"allow_public_link":0,"embed_form":"","ninjaForms":"Ninja Forms","fieldTextareaRTEInsertLink":"Insert Link","fieldTextareaRTEInsertMedia":"Insert Media","fieldTextareaRTESelectAFile":"Select a file","formHoneypot":"If you are a human seeing this field, please leave it empty.","fileUploadOldCodeFileUploadInProgress":"File Upload in Progress.","fileUploadOldCodeFileUpload":"FILE UPLOAD","currencySymbol":"$","thousands_sep":",","decimal_point":".","siteLocale":"en_US","dateFormat":"m\/d\/Y","startOfWeek":"1","of":"of","previousMonth":"Previous Month","nextMonth":"Next Month","months":,"monthsShort":,"weekdays":,"weekdaysShort":,"weekdaysMin":,"currency_symbol":"","beforeForm":"","beforeFields":"","afterFields":"","afterForm":""};form.fields=,"old_classname":"","wrap_template":"wrap"},{"objectType":"Field","objectDomain":"fields","editActive":false,"order":3,"type":"submit","label":"Sign Up","processing_label":"Processing","container_class":"","element_class":"","key":"sign_up_1556741674462","drawerDisabled":false,"id":"188_1","beforeField":"","afterField":"","value":"","label_pos":"above","parentType":"textbox","element_templates":,"old_classname":"","wrap_template":"wrap-no-label"}];nfForms.push(form); {{{ data.renderProgressBar() }}} {{{ data.renderBreadcrumbs() }}} {{{ data.renderPartTitle() }}} {{{ data.title }}} {{{ data.renderNextPrevious() }}} Read the full article